In every country where a revolution has taken place (whether it be a “soft” revolution or a violent overthrow), those who are part of the winning team make a point of glorifying the revolution and all the “good” that it has brought. For this reason, the inhabitants of most countries where a revolution has taken place at some point in their history will believe that the revolution was positive. In countries where that revolution was opposed, the people will most likely regard the revolution as negative.
As an example, Frenchmen tend to praise their Revolution of 1789, in which the aristocracy were overthrown. Since then, the emphasis has been on the “little man.” The little man would not only be treated equally to the aristocrat, he would receive preferential treatment. Not surprisingly, this devolved into the socialism that dominates France today. In spite of the dysfunctionality of the French system, most Frenchmen fondly praise the Revolution and the “freedom” that it ostensibly created for them.
And then we have the Cuban Revolution of 1959. Its stated purpose was to overthrow the aristocratic Batista Regime and replace it with one that favoured the campesinos. The aristocracy was removed and ownership of most everything moved to the state. There is most certainly greater equality in Cuba today (albeit at a very low level), and yet we’re taught to regard the Cuban Revolution as having been destructive, as it devolved into socialism. Although the current system is largely dysfunctional, the Cuban people, even today, speak of the freedom that the Revolution created for them.
Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth – Sherlock Holmes.
Let’s talk about Comey and the newest “revelation” in the Hillary saga.
There was this gagging sound that had to have been from Huma Abedin when the announcement was made. She protested she “didn’t know” how the emails got on her estranged pervert husband’s laptop, but it wasn’t a few emails, as the Clinton camp originally protested — it appears it was 650,000 emails.
This is the consequence, incidentally, of the combination of technical incompetence and arrogance in the world of today. It is why there are protocols for secure communications, there are rules and laws governing classified data, and the government is, except when a Clinton is involved, assiduous about enforcing them.
It is why classified information is never allowed on the Internet.
A business owner in Manhattan is suing the city after being forced to waive his Fourth Amendment rights and potentially forfeit his business because an NYPD officer sold illegal goods at his store.
You read that right.
According to a lawsuit filed this month by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian legal advocacy group, an undercover NYPD detective attempted to sell stolen electronics to customers at Sung Cho’s laundromat in Inwood, which located near the northern tip of Manhattan, in 2013. After the officer successfully sold stolen goods to two people — one inside the store and one outside — the city threatened Cho with eviction “merely because a ‘stolen property’ offense had happened at his business,” the legal organization’s website explained.
Institute for Justice (IJ), which takes on cases involving the suppression of free speech, eminent domain, and civil asset forfeiture, among other government encroachments, detailed Cho’s case:
Guest post by Earl Holt III, via www.conservative-headlines.com. Why would any American support Hillary Clinton and the New Marxist Party?
We are indebted to Wiki Leaks for its recent revelation — found in “hacked” e-mails from Hillary’s Campaign Manager, John Podesta — that Hillary has developed an increasing contempt for “everyday Americans.” This should come as no surprise to any intelligent person.
Hillary’s contempt for normal Americans is simply a mirroring of the prevailing attitude most members of the New Marxist Party (sometimes mistakenly referred to as “Democrats,”) have toward all decent Americans.
This is really not political. The statue involved only requires negligence, not intent. Comey before Congress told them (1) Hillary was grossly negligent and (2) she outright lied. I “believe” Comey’s hands were tied and he was not allowed to “recommend” an indictment of Hillary. So he told Congress using the very careful words of the Statute that she effectively committed a felony. This has been a political white-wash and to elect Hillary will unleash an unbelievable amount of chaos in Washington. This will ultimately destroy whatever respect for government still exists. This is the prerequisite for the decline and fall and the Democrats are more in the pocket of the Clinton Inc. machine than they are for defending the people and the integrity of the nation.
When they do not prosecute police for some of these outrageous murders of citizens, it had diminished the respect for ALL police. When they covered up priests for child molestation, it generated an image of all priests in the mind of many. If you do not prosecute the wrong-doing and and turn a blind eye, you undermine the entire system. The Democrats are betraying the people and the country by allowing this insanity to continue.
Thinking about what comes next in this most bizarre of campaign seasons, it occurs to me that this is a good lesson in how nothing exists in isolation. Every decision has consequences. Those consequences may not be obvious and they may not show up until much later, but no action exists without a reaction. It’s the old gag about the time traveler going into the past, stepping on a spider, only to return to a world ruled by super intelligent insects. It is formally known as the Butterfly Effect.
In the early days of the Clinton administration, Team Clinton hoped to put a fellow crook in the job of attorney general. That way, they could make sure they had a member of the family blocking the inevitable criminal probes that follow the Clintons around like an odor.They tried Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood, but both failed to get confirmed. They settled on Janet Reno, a dull-witted bureaucrat just happy to have the work. They put her in the job for the same reason crooked southern politicians install their retarded brother in-law as sheriff. She was too dumb to get curious.
Congress overwhelmingly voted for the Patriot Act nearly 16 years ago, and our civil liberties have never been the same since. As if this singular bill, passed by George W. Bush, wasn’t invasive enough, allowing big banks to demand our internet data, and more — the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) makes cyber-spying by the shadow government and the financial entities controlling it, a forgone conclusion.
As with most shadow government legislation, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act is packed with hidden surveillance allowances. CISA was quietly passed to allow government to demand that private companies hand over personal information to them at will. It also allows companies to mine data, under the auspices of government-created urgency.
Just when it looked like Hillary Clinton was poised to win the 2016 election, the FBI has thrown a gamechanger into the mix. On Friday, FBI Director James Comey announced that his agency has discovered new emails related to Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information that they had not previously seen. According to the Associated Press, the newly discovered emails “did not come from her private server”, but instead were found when the FBI started going through electronic devices that belonged to top Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her husband Anthony Weiner. The FBI has been looking into messages of a sexual nature that Weiner had exchanged with a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina, and that is why they originally seized those electronic devices. According to the Washington Post, the “emails were found on a computer used jointly by both Weiner and his wife, top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, according to a person with knowledge of the inquiry”, and according to some reports there may be “potentially thousands” of emails on the computer that the FBI did not have access to previously.
Even though there are less than two weeks to go until election day, this scandal has the potential to possibly force Clinton out of the race, and if that happens could Barack Obama delay or suspend the election until a replacement candidate can be found?
Let’s take this one step at a time. On Friday, financial markets tanked when reports of these new Clinton emails hit the wires. The following comes from CNN…
Additionally, a Michigan grandmother has written an Open Letter to Donald Trump, which is below, courtesy of Ann Corcoran and www.refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com
Dear Mr. Trump:
I am so happy to hear you will be coming to Michigan at least one more time before the election. I doubt I will have a chance to speak to you in a throng of thousands of supporters, but if I could this would be my message.
Michigan represents the United States on the cusp of collapse if Hillary Clinton and the globalists backing her prevail on November 8th. Michigan has been so damaged by job loss and permanent unemployment from companies moving elsewhere that it has caused the social fabric to change. Like many of my friends I am a grandmother with grandchildren elsewhere. When our children graduated from college they all had to move to other states for jobs. There was no future for them in Michigan.
So now the central planners on the left are flooding our state with refugees from war torn and third world countries to provide a pool of very low wage workers who will be reliable Democrat voters to help keep the sinking ship of state afloat. Per capita Michigan has been receiving the most refugees in recent years and now we are receiving the most Syrian refugees. While the Refugee Resettlement program operates under the radar as much as possible, the presence of a large concentration of refugees is being noticed because some parts of Michigan are being transformed almost overnight.
People are concerned. Why are we bringing in unvettable potential terrorists into our midst? Most of these newcomers are Muslim and many of them are Sharia compliant. Sharia is not compatible with the US Constitution. Now we are discovering that a number of these refugees are harboring TB and in at least one case the drug resistant variety. This seems to be nothing short of insanity. A few informed citizens have sounded the alarm, but it is difficult to find leaders who are willing to buck the unfair charges of bigotry and discrimination.
Mr. Trump, this is why we are so enthusiastic about you. We salute your leadership on protecting our borders and our citizens. It is not unreasonable to call a halt on bringing in more refugees until they can be properly vetted, not just for terrorist ties, but also their adherence to an ideology that makes it impossible for them and their children to be Constitution abiding US citizens.
We call on you to shine the spotlight on the Michigan situation, which will soon be the norm all over the country if we can’t put the brakes on this mad dash to bring in more and more refugees. We call on you to support our bold leaders like Oakland County Executive, Brooks Patterson, and the entire town council in Waterford, Michigan who stepped up to protecting their citizens, the job of all our elected representatives.
There is much to learn from the Michigan experience and a course correction is in order to hold the line in Michigan and protect the rest of the country. Please continue your bold leadership and you will have a winning issue that crosses all demographic and party lines. I really believe you when you say you will MAGA. Keep up the good work!
With the latest revelation that 650,000 emails were found on Carlos Danger’s laptop and the fact that Huma Abedin is in hot water with her main squeeze Hillary, Joe Joseph gets into why this could all be a huge psy-op to distract us from the rigging of the election.
He even offers up a simple yet effective way of doing away with election fraud and the power of special interests. Who knew it could be this simple…watch to find out!
A new study by a prominent Russian astrophysicist claims the “new Little Ice Age” started at the end of 2015 due to low solar activity, kicking off decades of “deep cooling” in the latter half of the 21st Century.
“As a result, the Earth has, and will continue to have, a negative average annual energy balance and a long-term adverse thermal condition,” Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov, who is the head of space research for the Pulkovo Observatory at the Russian Academy of Sciences, wrote in a recent study.
“The quasi-centennial epoch of the new Little Ice Age has started at the end 2015 after the maximum phase of solar cycle 24,” Abdussamatov wrote. “The start of a solar grand minimum is anticipated in solar cycle 27 in 2043 and the beginning of phase of deep cooling in the new Little Ice Age in 2060.”
To understand the situation in Aleppo is to understand the key to the conflict in Syria at this juncture: Will Washington and its allies or the Syrian Army and Russia liberate Raqqa, the capital of the so-called Islamic State.
It does not take a military genius to discern Washington’s strategy in prolonging the military operation being conducted by the Syrian Army, supported by Russia, to liberate eastern Aleppo – which remains occupied by Nusra Front and the “moderates” fighting alongside the Salafi-jihadist group.
Keeping the Syrian and Russian military forces bogged down in eastern Aleppo is key to allowing the US-led coalition to complete the operation, currently underway, to take the Iraqi city of Mosul from ISIS, before continuing an east-west advance across the Syrian border to take Raqqa. Raqqa will then be established as the de facto capital of so-called moderate Syrian forces, which will re-group there, presumably under cover of a US-imposed no-fly zone, to become a counterweight to the authority of the Assad government in Damascus. Such a development would also establish a permanent US military presence in a country that has long been key to Washington’s objective of dominating the region.
I’ll bet that AG Loretta Lynch is shaking in her boots right now, because when Hillary Clinton goes down, Lynch’s career will go down with her. Heck, maybe they’ll even be cellmates.
Loretta Lynch’s ties to the Clintons go back to 1999 when then-President Bill Clinton appointed her to run the Brooklyn US Attorney’s office. She left in 2002 and went into private practice, but returned to the Brooklyn office in 2010 at the behest of President Barack Obama. (Here’s her official bio.)
In 2015, she was sworn in to become the 83rd Attorney General of the United States, taking the place of the blatantly corrupt Attorney General, Eric Holder, who will probably be most famous for his roles in the Fast and Furious operation, inciting racial tensions, and his mishandling of the Lois Lerner/IRS debacle.
During the first six months of 2016, migrants committed 142,500 crimes, according to the Federal Criminal Police Office. This is equivalent to 780 crimes committed by migrants every day, an increase of nearly 40% over 2015. The data includes only those crimes in which a suspect has been caught.
Thousands of migrants who entered the country as "asylum seekers" or "refugees" have gone missing. They are, presumably, economic migrants who entered Germany on false pretenses. Many are thought to be engaging in robbery and criminal violence.
Local police in many parts of the country admit that they are stretched to the limit and are unable to maintain law and order.
"Drug trafficking takes place right before our eyes. If we intervene, we are threatened, spat on, insulted. Sometimes someone whips out a knife. They are always the same people. They are ruthless, fearless and have no problems with robbing even the elderly." — Private security guard.
According to Freddi Lohse of the German Police Union in Hamburg, many migrant offenders view the leniency of the German justice system as a green light to continue delinquent behavior. "They are used to tougher consequences in their home countries," he said. "They have no respect for us."
"It cannot be that offenders continue to fill the police files, hurt us physically, insult us, whatever, and there are no consequences. Many cases are closed or offenders are released on probation or whatever. Yes, what is happening in the courts today is a joke." — Tania Kambouri, German police officer.
The rape of a ten-year-old girl in Leipzig, the largest city in Saxony, has drawn renewed attention to the spiraling levels of violent crime perpetrated by migrants in cities and towns across Germany — and the lengths to which German officials and the media go to censor information about the perpetrators of those crimes.
The girl was riding her bicycle to school at seven o'clock in the morning on October 27 when a man ambushed her, threw her to the ground and raped her. The suspect is described as being in his mid-thirties with short brown hair and a stubble beard.
What was with James Comey’s Friday letter to congress? It looks to me like the FBI Director had to go nuclear against his parent agency, the Department of Justice, and Attorney General Loretta Lynch, his boss, in particular. Why? Because the Attorney General refused to pursue the Clinton email case when more evidence turned up in the underage sexting case against Anthony Weiner, husband of Hillary’s chief of staff, Huma Abedin.
Over the weekend, the astounding news story broke that the FBI had not obtained a warrant to examine the emails on Weiner’s computer and other devices after three weeks of getting stonewalled by DOJ attorneys. What does it mean when the Director of the FBI can’t get a warrant in a New York minute? It must mean that the DOJ is at war with the FBI. Watergate is looking like thin gruel compared to this fantastic Bouillabaisse of a presidential campaign fiasco.
One way you can tell is that The New York Times is playing down the story Monday morning. Columnist Paul Krugman calls the Comey letter “cryptic.” Krugman’s personal cryptograph insinuates that Comey is trying to squash an investigation of “Russian meddling in American elections.” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid chimed in with a statement that “it has become clear that you [Comey] possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers and the Russian government.” How’s that for stupid and ugly? It’s the Russian’s fault that Hillary finds herself in trouble again?
Has America become so numb by the decades of lies and cynicism oozing from Clinton Inc. that it could elect Hillary Clinton as president, even after Friday's FBI announcement that it had reopened an investigation of her emails while secretary of state?
We'll find out soon enough.
It's obvious the American political system is breaking down. It's been crumbling for some time now, and the establishment elite know it and they're properly frightened. Donald Trump, the vulgarian at their gates, is a symptom, not a cause. Hillary Clinton and husband Bill are both cause and effect.
FBI director James Comey's announcement about the renewed Clinton email investigation is the bombshell in the presidential campaign. That he announced this so close to Election Day should tell every thinking person that what the FBI is looking at is extremely serious.
This can't be about pervert Anthony Weiner and his reported desire for a teenage girl. But it can be about the laptop of Weiner's wife, Clinton aide Huma Abedin, and emails between her and Hillary. It comes after the FBI investigation in which Comey concluded Clinton had lied and been "reckless" with national secrets, but said he could not recommend prosecution.
Recently, I was asked a question about Kill Anything That Moves, my history of civilian suffering during the Vietnam War. An interviewer wanted to know how I responded to veterans who took offense at the (supposed) implication that every American who served in Vietnam committed atrocities.
I think I softly snorted and slowly shook my head.
Already twobooks behind me, Kill Anything That Moves might as well have been written by someone else in another lifetime. In some sense, it was.
It takes effort for me to dredge up the faded memories of that work, a Kodachrome-hued swirl of hundreds of interviews on two continents over the course of a decade. But this particular question was easy enough to answer. Almost all the Americans I interviewed had seen combat, but most American veterans of the war hadn’t. Many had little or no real opportunity to commit war crimes. Case closed.
But that question caused me to recall a host of related queries that churned around the book. Questions by skeptics, atrocity-deniers, fair-minded interviewers attempting to play devil’s advocate. A favorite was whether the book was “anti-veteran.” That, too, was a head-shaker for me.
“How could that be?” I would respond. After all, the book owed its genesis to veterans. Veterans were key sources for it. Veterans provided the evidence. Veterans provided the quotes. Veterans even supplied the title. The book was, to a great extent, the history of the war as described to me by veterans. The story I told was their story. How could that in any way be anti-veteran?
Many of the vets I spoke with viewed their truth-telling as a form of patriotism, of continuing service to country. Nate Terani’s inaugural TomDispatch essay follows in the same American tradition. His eyes were opened to the abuse of military power while living in Iran as a boy. Later he would join the U.S. Navy and wear the stars and stripes with particular pride. September 11th and all that came after -- notably the demonization of his Muslim faith in his homeland -- imbued him with a new mission, one he now views as no less sacred than his military service.
From Smedley Butler to Andrew Bacevich, Daniel Ellsberg to Chelsea Manning, Vietnam Veterans Against the War to Iraq Veterans Against the War, the U.S. armed forces have produced a steady stream of truth-tellers and whistleblowers, men and women willing to serve their country in profound ways during trying times. There’s no bronze star for activism, no Navy Cross for unpopular or contrarian opinions, no Purple Heart for the hard knocks involved in speaking out against war crimes or Islamophobia or laying bare information vital to the American public. Veterans who dare to do so have sometimes walked a cold, lonely road far from the warm glow enjoyed by summer soldiers and sunshine patriots. Those who do so exhibit a special form of courage that may even exceed the bravery of the battlefield, the courage to stand tall and make oneself a target, a courage deserving (with a nod to Thomas Paine) of the love and thanks of man and woman. Nick Turse
Tehran, USA Fighting Fundamentalism in America By Nate Terani
I’m not an immigrant, but my grandparents are. More than 50 years ago, they arrived in New York City from Iran. I grew up mainly in central New Jersey, an American kid playing little league for the Raritan Red Sox and soccer for the Raritan Rovers. In 1985, I travelled with my family to our ancestral land. I was only eight, but old enough to understand that the Iranians had lost their liberty and freedom. I saw the abject despair of a people who, in a desperate attempt to bring about change, had ushered in nationalist tyrants led by Ayatollah Khomeini.
What I witnessed during that year in Iran changed the course of my life. In 1996, at age 19, wanting to help preserve the blessings of liberty and freedom we enjoy in America, I enlisted in the U.S. Navy. Now, with the rise of Donald Trump and his nationalist alt-right movement, I’ve come to feel that the values I sought to protect are in jeopardy.
Inferno is a great thriller, featuring Tom Hanks reprising his role as Professor Robert Langdon. The previous movie adaptations of Dan Brown’s books (Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code) were a success, and I expect Inferno will do well in theaters, too.
Langdon is a professor of symbology whose puzzle solving skills and knowledge of history come in high demand when a billionaire leaves a trail of clues based on Dante’s Inferno to a biological weapon that would halve the world’s population.
The villain, however, has good motives. As a radical Malthusian, he believes that the human race needs halving if it is to survive at all, even if through a plague. Malthus’s name is not mentioned in the movie, but his ideas are certainly there. Inferno provides us an opportunity to unpack this overpopulation fear, and see where it stands today.
Whoever brings ruin on their family will inherit only wind
Proverbs 11:29
On the morning of Wednesday, November 3rd, 1976, I heard my father tell my mother Jimmy Carter won the election. I have not forgotten how my mother replied. In a resigned manner, and with a fatalistic sigh, she said: “Oh no”, to which my father replied with the same sense of concern, sadness and resignation in his voice: “Yep”. Looking at the pimply faced pre-teen staring back at me from the mirror that morning, I sensed something bad had just happened. Something big. And something that was soon to deliver real consequences of the sort that gave my two small town, main street, Republican parents pause and even a palatable sense of resignation and foreboding.
Word has reached me from Washington that the FBI has reopened the Hillary case of her violation of US National Security protocols, not because of the content of the new email releases, but because voter support for Trump seems to be overwhelming, while Hillary has cancelled appearances due to inability to muster a crowd. The popular vote leaves the FBI far out on the limb for its corrupt clearance of Hillary. The agency now has to redeem itself.
I myself do not know what precisely to think. Having been at the top of the Washington hierarchy for a quarter century, I have seen many mistaken judgments. At one time I had subpoena power over the CIA and was able to inform President Reagan that the CIA had misled him. He took note and proceeded with his policy of ending the Cold War with the Soviets. On other issues I have been mistaken, because I assumed that there was more integrity in government than actually exists.
However, FBI director Comey did not need to reopen the case against Hillary simply because some new incriminating emails appeared. Having dismissed the other incriminating evidence, these emails could have passed unremarked.
“THE STRUGGLE FOR SYRIA,” as Patrick Seale titled his 1965 classic, has escalated steadily since Britain seized the territory from Turkey in 1918. The British turned it over to France in 1920 and took it back from Vichy in 1942. Following nominal independence in 1946, Syria became a theater of Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. The stream of military coups between 1949 and 1970 concluded with the Hafez al-Assad putsch that left Syria in the Kremlin camp. Assad, however, proved anything but subservient to his superpower benefactor. The struggle for Syria continued in desultory fashion as Syria irritated Moscow by flirting with the U.S. in Lebanon and sending troops to support the American reconquista of Kuwait in 1991. The U.S. soon reverted to form, labeling Syria a “terrorist state” and condemning both its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and its alliance with Iran. In 2011, the struggle became a war. The U.S. and Russia, as well as local hegemons, backed opposite sides, ensuring a balance of terror that has devastated the country and defies resolution.
The Russians, having lost Aden, Egypt, and Libya years earlier, backed their only client regime in the Arab world when it came under threat. The U.S. gave rhetorical and logistical support to rebels, raising false hopes — as it had done among the Hungarian patriots it left in the lurch in 1956 — that it would intervene with force to help them. Regional allies, namely Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, were left to dispatch arms, money, and men, while disagreeing on objectives and strategy.
A school district in Texas came under fire earlier this year when it announced that it would require students to wear microchip-embedded ID cards at all times. Now, students who refuse to be monitored say they are feeling the repercussions.
Since October 1, students at John Jay High School and Anson Jones Middle School in San Antonio, Texas, have been asked to attend class with photo ID cards equipped with radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips to track every pupil’s location. Educators insist that the endeavor is being rolled out in Texas to stem the rampant truancy devastating the school’s funding. If the program is judged successful, the RFID chips could soon come to 112 schools in all and affect nearly 100,000 students.
Students who refuse to walk the school halls with the card in their pocket or around their neck claim they are being tormented by instructors, and are barred from participating in certain school functions. Some also said they were turned away from common areas like cafeterias and libraries.
Well, at least they aren’t sending us to camps… yet.
That’s probably next. One thing does follow another, like dominos. The logic of it being as inexorable, ultimately, as gravitational pull.
So I ought not to be surprised that GM has pulled its panties tight and told me I will no longer be granted access to GM press vehicles because of the article (this one) I wrote a few weeks back about GM’s retiring Vice President of Diversity, the right reverend Dr. Eric Peterson, LLD, DDS.
Well, GM hasn’t said it’s because of that.
Sort of like not mentioning the role of the Moon’s pull on the inflow of the tide.
