On December 9, an unidentified 41-year-old mother was killed in a hotel room during an attempt by five family members to exorcise a demon which they claim was possessing her.According to authorities, the woman s family exerted massive force on her chest and stomach area, as well an extreme amount of violence to her neck. A towel and a clothes hanger were shoved down her throat, reportedly to keep her from screaming.Prosecutors say that the woman was subjected to at least two hours of pain and agony, before she finally died from a combination of asphyxiation and traumatic injuries, all of which were sustained during the exorcism. The killers include a 44-year-old female relative, along with the relative s children, a 21-year-old son, 19-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son. The 15-year-old son of the woman who was killed is also suspected of participating in the violence.Instead of calling police or paramedics after the woman died, the family called a priest.The priest immediately notified authorities, who ultimately discovered the woman s body at the Frankfurt InterContinental hotel.A second victim was later found, another 41-year-old woman, who is believed to be another family member. She was discovered inside a garage.According to Fox 10 in Phoenix, the second victim was taken to a hospital, where she was treated for hypothermia, dehydration and undisclosed injuries.The family involved in the woman s murder is South Korean, and had recently relocated to the Frankfurt, Germany area.The practice of exorcising demons, known as anchal-gido, is common among Charismatic Christians living Korea.As reported here and here, the western media often refers to these exorcisms as Shamanism when in fact they are legitimized by the Protestant Church in Korea.As Kyung Hong explains in the International Journal of Religion and Spirituality: anchal gido rituals are their own kind of abuse, since they often involve forms of physical violence against those deemed to be possessed. The intensity of the healing prayers for cleansing demonic spirits also often accompanies intense physical contact in the belief that physical assaults intimidate and assist to expel demons. Thus, the healing ritual may well become so intense as to involve physical striking, beating, poling, or choking the possessed individual, though each action is viewed by the healers as attacking the demon, not the person. There is a similarity between Korean exorcism and shamanic rituals, but the latter often lacks the violence and is more about appeasing unfriendly nature or ancestral spirits than outright spiritual warfare. Religion Watch reports that in Korea, protestant women who are seen as demon possessed are often viewed as disobedient to their husbands and are subject to shame and condemnation, even in their deaths. The facts about anchal-gido don t fit in with the western narrative of the Christian religion.When 18-year-old Rayoung Kim was killed in her home during a similar exorcism in Fairfax County, Virginia, the media reported that her death was due to a Shamanistic exorcism, although the facts in the case show that she died during the type of violent exorcism that is associated with anchal-gido, not kut or mudang, as the media routinely reported.The Shamanistic ritual of Kut involves singing, dancing and offering sacrifices. It is not associated with the violent driving out of demons, seen in these cases.That is far more typical of Korean Charismatic Christianity.In the case of the women killed in Frankfurt, the most telling sign that the family was conducting the kind of violent, Christian exorcism associated with anchal-gido is that the first person they called was a priest.Here in the U.S. we are constantly subjected to right-wing propaganda about the violent nature of the Muslim religion. At the same time, the media often presents us with a filtered version of current events, especially as they pertain to the Christian religion.Whether this is done purposely or out of ignorance and unconscious bias is up for debate.Either way, had this family killed a relative during a religious ceremony associated with Islam, the right wing would be all over that. In this case, however, the narrative will no doubt seek to shift the blame away from the Christian church and onto Shamanism, without a shred of evidence or single fact to support that theory.*Featured image credit: Michal via Flckr, CC 2.0


U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Twitter he postponed a news conference scheduled for Friday in New York to announce his running mate because of the deadly truck attack in Nice, France. Trump's campaign advisers have told Republican officials he has picked Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his vice presidential running mate, two Republican sources said, but Trump officials said he had not yet made a final decision.


in: Multimedia , US News (image credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty) ( The Real Agenda News ) More details have emerged about the never ending levels of corruption among the DNC, the Obama White House and the Hillary Clinton campaign, as a result of James O'Keefe's Project Veritas' investigation. Corrupt practices go from promoting seemingly harmless campaigns to have people dressed as ducks at Trump rallies to collusion between the Clinton campaign, the DNC and the non-profit organization Americans United for Change. In the third video put out by Project Veritas, Hillary's cohorts confess how they managed to coordinate with her campaign and the DNC to set up what can be described at the very least as provocative moves to get the Trump campaign in trouble and to have the corrupt mainstream media cover the events while blaming Trump for violent outbursts outside his rallies. As we learned from the previous two videos, it was the Clinton campaign itself the one using agent provocateurs to cause violence outside Trump rallies as these agents disguised themselves as Bernie Sanders' followers. In his second video, James O'Keefe showed how the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign, hire operatives to successfully carry out commit voter fraud on a massive scale. Scott Foval, who has since been fired, admits that the Democrats have been rigging elections for fifty years. In his first video, Rigging the Election – Video I: Clinton Campaign and DNC Incite Violence at Trump Rallies, O'Keefe showed how second and third parties associated with the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign, were responsible for violence and attacks on Trump supporters all over the country. As we said before, the veil of corruption that surrounds the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party continues to fall and people can easily see what is behind their fake progressive and fake liberal masks. Submit your review


Email  Well, if this doesn't inspire you to do your civic duty, nothing will!  When California resident Candice Payne woke up this morning, she wasn't totally sure she was up to going through the hassle of voting. She figured the lines would be long, the wait would be awful, and the stress probably wouldn't be worth it. But just when this 26-year-old woman was feeling too lazy to vote, something absolutely amazing happened—her ovaries burst out of her body and dragged her to the polling place.  Amazing! Now THAT is how you rally on Election Day!  Like so many Americans, Candice spent her morning lying in her bed, kicking herself for not having voted early, but as soon as it seemed like she'd go back to sleep, her fallopian tubes shot out of her abdomen, curled themselves around the side of her bed, and threw her to the floor. After dragging her body to her living room, her helpful ovaries crawled up to the doorknob and jostled the front door open. What started out as a lazy morning ended with her ovaries anchoring themselves to the floor and pulling the rest of her body to a polling place at nearby Jefferson Public School, where she dutifully filled out her ballot for President of the United States!  If that's not getting out the vote, we don't know what is! It's definitely easy to come up with a million excuses to avoid the polls, but once Candice's ovaries had shot out of her body, they weren't going to retract back inside until she had done her civic duty!  While it might have been a bit of an inconvenience to spend the morning voting, no matter how much she tried to resist, Candice's ovaries kept pulling and clawing at the floor, dragging her flailing body farther and farther until she arrived at a voting booth to cast her vote. Sure, she would rather have been sleeping, or at work, but three miles and several forceful tugs later, she was inside a voting booth and back on her feet, casting her ballot, and exercising her fundamental American right.  Awesome. If you're thinking of just staying inside, going to work, and skipping the polls altogether, it's not too late to change your mind. Candice felt just like you once, but after being violently dragged by her ovaries to a polling station, she's never felt better!


Pope Francis canonized 35 new Roman Catholic saints on Sunday, including three indigenous children martyred in 16th century Mexico and considered the first Christians killed for their faith in the New World. Francis used the occasion to announce that he had decided to call a meeting of bishops, or synod, from countries in the Pan-Amazon region for October, 2019, to discuss the condition of the Church in the area and the plight of indigenous people. The region includes Guyana, Suriname, French Guyana, Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Brazil. The three children the pope canonized before a crowd of tens of thousands in St. Peter s Square were of the Talaxcaltec people, an indigenous pre-Colombian group in what is now Mexico. The first child, Cristoforo, was converted to Christianity by Franciscan missionaries and was killed in 1527 by his own father, a tribal chief who spurned his son s attempts to convert him from paganism. The boy was beaten and thrown into a fire when he was 13. Two other indigenous children from the same area, Antonio and Juan, were killed by Indios in the village of Cuauhtinchan in 1529 as a result of their conversion. They are believed to have been 12 or 13 when they were beaten to death for helping Dominican missionaries. The pope also canonized 30 martyrs who were killed for their faith in Brazil in 1645. They included two Portuguese missionaries and 28 followers killed by Dutch colonial soldiers during a period of persecution of Catholics. In announcing the 2019 synod for bishops from the Amazon region, Francis said indigenous people there today were often abandoned and without the prospect of a bright future, even due to the crisis of the Amazon Forest, a lung of utmost importance for our planet . Francis, an Argentine and the first Latin American pope, has often linked his calls for social justice, particularly for indigenous people, to those for defense of the environment, saying the poor will suffer the most from the effects of climate change. In 2015 he wrote a landmark encyclical, or papal letter, on defense of the environment and he has called for special protection for the Amazon region because of its vital importance to the planet s ecosystem. In his comments on Sunday, the pope did not mention the role of the Church in suppressing native cultures in the New World. But during a visit to Bolivia in 2015, Francis said many grave sins were committed against the native people of America in the name of God . He asked forgiveness for the Church, for crimes committed against native peoples during the so-called conquest of America . On Sunday, Francis also canonized Father Faustino Miguez, a Spanish priest who lived in the 19th and 20th centuries, and Father Angelo d Acri, an Italian itinerant preacher who died in 1739 after serving in some of the most remote areas of mountainous southern Italy.


When U.S. President Donald Trump announced a review last week of tough Obama-era vehicle emissions and fuel-efficiency standards, he proclaimed that the "assault on the American auto industry is over." But rules set by the Environmental Protection Agency may take a backseat to consumers demanding vehicles that guzzle less gas and automakers having to meet tougher standards if they want to export cars overseas, according to auto industry analysts. In the end, U.S. carmakers may just gain a few more years to meet the more stringent targets that former President Barack Obama's administration negotiated with the companies in 2012, analysts said. If Europe and China continue to toughen their emissions standards, "the U.S. might become an outlier," American Axle President Mike Simonte told Reuters on Thursday. Trump's move was widely seen leading to a rollback or loosening of more stringent targets, which would slash vehicle exhaust emissions while effectively doubling average fuel economy to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. Automakers have argued the rules for 2022-2025 are too expensive and could cost American jobs, so the Trump administration's review was seen as a win for them. On a conference call Thursday with investors, Bob Shanks, Ford Motor Co's chief financial officer, said, "We are not seeking a rollback in any way. We just want to have a conversation around the levels we want to achieve." Despite what the EPA may want, California and nine other states in the Zero Emission Vehicle program — eight in the northeast, plus Oregon — are expected to move ahead on Friday with the previously established targets. Those states account for nearly 30 percent of U.S. auto sales. The potential divide with the rest of the country could create a "two-tiered environment with two sets of regulations," said Mark Wakefield, managing director of AlixPartners' automotive practice. This "could drive costs higher if automakers have to build two versions of the same vehicle to meet the two different standards." The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group that sued to overturn the Obama-era rules on behalf of several big automakers, wrote the White House on Thursday urging talks to begin quickly with California to ensure that national standards remain in place. "Automakers seek certainty, predictability and rationality – over time – from the regulatory process," the group's CEO Mitch Bainwol wrote. Kristin Dziczek, director of the Center for Automotive Research's labor and industry group, said U.S. automakers could find it hard to export cars to markets such as China and Europe with tougher regulatory regimes if the U.S. targets were rescinded. "I don't think we're going to see a rollback," she said. "At most, I think we may see a slowing of the timetable" for implementing the tougher standards. AlixPartners' Wakefield said if China, the world's largest market, continues pushing electric vehicles while America backpedals, it could lead to "some movement of investment from the U.S. to China, especially as the latter market continues to grow." General Motors Co and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV referred Reuters to public comments made by the industry's lobbying group, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, a climate change skeptic, said the Obama administration estimated it would cost $200 billion over 13 years to comply with stricter standards, which he believes will lead to higher prices for consumers and jobs leaving the country. Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said the auto industry expected to miss the 2022-2025 targets regardless of who occupied the White House, but he believes the EPA's recent move may carry relatively little weight. "Of all the things that are likely to drive fuel economy, I would rank the EPA a distant third on the list, behind consumer preferences and the direction of technology," he said. United Auto Workers union President Dennis Williams said while around 60 percent of U.S. auto sales are currently trucks and SUVs, consumers value fuel-economy improvements for those vehicles. "The automakers shouldn't make the mistake of sliding backward," Williams said. "We're here to protect our (union) members, but we understand that in doing so we also have to look at the future."


South Korea s President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to exert stronger pressure through sanctions on North Korea following its nuclear and missile tests, South Korea s presidential office said following a telephone call between the two leaders on Sunday. The two leaders agreed to strengthen cooperation, and exert stronger and practical sanctions on North Korea so that it realizes provocative actions leads to further diplomatic isolation and economic pressure, Blue House spokesman Park Soo-hyun said in a televised briefing. The Blue House said Moon and Trump had strongly condemned the latest missile launch by North Korea, and agreed that the two nations would work with the international community to implement the latest UN Security Council s resolution 2375, Park said.


Editor's Note : If we weren't already, as soon as our votes went virtual, we became disenfranchised. These machines are hacked every election. With as corrupt as our system is at this point, it'd be shocking if that weren't the case. by Joseph Jankowski A U.K. based company that has provided voting machines for 16 states, including important battleground states like Florida and Arizona, has direct ties with billionaire leftist and Clinton crusader George Soros.  With recent WikiLeaks emails showing that Hillary Clinton received foreign policy directives and coordinated on domestic policy with Soros , along with receiving tens of millions of dollars in presidential campaign support from the billionaire, concerns are growing that these shadowy players may pull the strings behind the curtains of the upcoming presidential election. As Lifezette reports , the fact that the man in control of voting machines in 16 states is tied directly to the man who has given millions of dollars to the Clinton campaign and various progressive and globalist causes will surely leave a bad taste in the mouth of many a voter. The balloting equipment tied to Soros is coming from the U.K. based Smartmatic company, whose chairman Mark Malloch-Brown is a former UN official and sits on the board of Soros' Open Society Foundation. According to Lifezette , Malloch-Brown was part of the Soros Advisory Committee on Bosnia and also is a member of the executive committee of the International Crisis Group, an organization he co-founded in the 1990s and built with funds from George Soros' personal fortune. In 2007 Soros appointed Malloch-Brown vice-president of his Quantum Funds, vice-chairman of Soros Fund Management, and vice-chairman of the Open Society Institute (former name of OSF). Browns ties also intertwine with the Clintons as he was a partner with Sawyer-Miller, the consulting firm where close Clinton associate Mandy Grunwald worked. Brown also was also a senior advisor to FTI Consulting, a firm at which Jackson Dunn, who spent 15 years working as an aide to the Clintons, is a senior managing director. When taking that into account, along with the poor track record Smartmatic has of providing free and fair elections, this all becomes quite terrifying. An astonishing 2006 classified U.S. diplomatic cable obtained and released by WikiLeaks reveals the extent to which Smartmatic may have played a hand in rigging the 2004 Venezuelan recall election under a section titled "A Shadow of Fraud." The memo stated that "Smartmatic Corporation is a riddle both in ownership and operation, complicated by the fact that its machines have overseen several landslide (and contested) victories by President Hugo Chavez and his supporters." "The Smartmatic machines used in Venezuela are widely suspected of, though never proven conclusively to be, susceptible to fraud," the memo continued. "The Venezuelan opposition is convinced that the Smartmatic machines robbed them of victory in the August 2004 referendum. Since then, there have been at least eight statistical analyses performed on the referendum results." "One study obtained the data log from the CANTV network and supposedly proved that the Smartmatic machines were bi-directional and in fact showed irregularities in how they reported their results to the CNE central server during the referendum," it read. With such suspicion and a study which claims to prove that the U.K. firm's equipment tampered with the 2004 Venezuelan recall election, should be enough for states to reject these machines if they desire a fair election. Smartmatic is providing machines to Arizona, California, Colorado, Washington DC, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, which means these Soros and Clinton linked machines are going to take the votes of thousands of Americans. While GOP nominee Donald Trump has been voicing his opinion that the elections are indeed rigged due to media bias, and the proof that mainstream polls are heavily weighted to favor Clinton , it is needless to say that if the results show Hillary as a winner in November, there is going to be a mess to shuffle through to find signs of honesty. Delivered by The Daily Sheeple  We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses, breaking news and videos ( Click for details ).  Contributed by Planet Free Will of planetfreewill.com .  The mission of Planet Free Will is to enlighten as many people as possible with truthful and thought provoking information while at the same time keeping you up to date on news occurring around the world.


Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to Donald Trump, doesn t like the media attacking the alleged president just two weeks into office. Trump has screwed up big time but Gorka seems to believe there s a rest period from the media for a newly minted president.On Monday, Gorka said that the Trump administration will continue using the term fake news until the media understands that their monumental desire to attack Trump is wrong, according to Fox6Now. Gorka is a former Breitbart editor, a site dedicated to promoting fake news. There is a monumental desire on behalf of the majority of the media, not just the pollsters, the majority of the media to attack a duly elected President in the second week of his term, Gorka told conservative radio host Michael Medved. The host, for the record, blasted Trump before the election as insecure, unprepared and angrily unhinged. That s how unhealthy the situation is and until the media understands how wrong that attitude is, and how it hurts their credibility, we are going to continue to say, fake news. I m sorry, Michael. That s the reality, he added.Team Trump repeatedly uses the term fake news to discredit the press and media outlets. The crybaby-in-chief even called negative poll numbers fake news on Monday. Each time Trump and his administration call CNN or the New York Times fake news, they offer no proof of any deceptive reporting.Medved asked Gorka if he would admit that the administration s controversial statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day was at least questionable in being the first such statement in many years that didn t recognize that Jewish extermination was the chief goal of the Holocaust. It s a Holocaust remembrance statement, Gorka said. No, I m not going to admit it. Because it s asinine. It s absurd. You re making a statement about the Holocaust. Of course it s about the Holocaust because that s what the statement s about. It s only reasonable to twist it if your objective is to attack the President. A caller told Gorka, every time you call everything fake news, it just turns everyone except your hardcore fans off. Not everything s fake news, the caller added. You know, I would beg to differ, Gorka said. Every single organ that generates these kinds of stories comes from the same clique of media organs that predicted that Hillary (Clinton) would win and that Brexit wouldn t occur. I know what fake news is. And it s coming from those organizations. It s time that you yourself understood that as well. Gorka is the second Breitbart employee brought into the White House. Steve Bannon was the head honcho of the right wing propaganda outlet. The Trump administration is fake news.Image via Twitter.


Trump has repeatedly said that all the ways he avoided paying taxes was legal, and has even shown his ignorance about how our government works to paint Hillary as incompetent because she didn t single-handedly change these laws during her time in the Senate. However, while he was busy avoiding taxes in the 1990s, his own lawyers warned him against doing, well, exactly what he did.A new report in The New York Times explains that, order to avoid total financial ruin, Trump didn t report hundreds of millions that was technically income. He didn t just not report it, though the IRS would have seen through that immediately. Instead, his first step to avoiding taxes was successfully pushing his various bondholders to cancel the hundreds of millions he owed them.To the IRS, a dollar of canceled debt is a dollar of taxable income. That could have crippled the self-proclaimed master of debt and taxes about as badly as all that debt he couldn t pay. So what did he do? He used what s called a stock-for-debt swap maneuver.Except Congress banned that practice for corporations in 1993. However, Trump s real estate holdings in Atlantic City the ones that were all in trouble weren t corporations. They were partnerships. So he thought he could still swap what s called partnership equity for his debt.Apparently, this works even if the stocks, or, in Trump s case, the equities, are worth considerably less than the canceled debt. The Times says that this is as close as anyone can get to making taxes just magically disappear.But legally, this is fraught with its own problems and Trump s own lawyers actually warned him against doing it. He asked his tax attorneys for formal opinion letters on his plan, which all came back saying: The letters bluntly warned that there was no statute, regulation or judicial opinion that explicitly permitted Mr. Trump s tax gambit. Due to the lack of definitive judicial or administrative authority, his lawyers wrote, substantial uncertainties exist with respect to many of the tax consequences of the plan.' In other words, they felt that his scheme wouldn t stand up to IRS scrutiny. We don t know if the IRS went after him for this because nobody has the whole story. However, from what we do have, tax expert and former chief tax council for the House Ways and Means Committee, John L. Buckley, was able to say: He s getting something for absolutely nothing. Buckley also said: He deducted somebody else s losses. He is double dipping big time. Buckley means that the only people who should have been able to deduct those losses were the bondholders who canceled his debts, and thus, lost out on their investments.This could be one of the bombshells he s hiding in his tax returns. Since all of this involved partnerships, profits could go straight to his personal returns, as could other items. With Trump refusing to release those, though, we don t know just how badly he stretched the law, if not broke it altogether.This scheme quite possibly laid the groundwork for his massive $916 million loss in 1995, which may have allowed him to avoid paying taxes again for 20 years. In other words, not only has he possibly sailed along while Americans who earn an honest day s pay for an honest day s work dutifully paid their taxes, but he very likely broke the law in all his machinations here in a way that the regular Americans he claims to understand would never get away with (hell, we wouldn t even know where to start, most likely).Oddly enough, using partnership equity swaps to avoid taxes was banned by Congress in 2004. Among the Senators who voted to close that loophole was Hillary Clinton.Featured image by Brian Blanco via Getty Images


How many Hillary supporters does it take to fill a basket of serious sex offenders? Let s see, there s Bill and then there s Bill s pedophile friend Jeffrey Epstein, and oh yeah now we can add Tony to the basket of men who assault the candidate who represents women?Something tells me Trump supporters would rather be in Hillary s imaginary basket of deplorables You might remember a Hispanic political activist named Tony Yapias, who was extremely critical of Donald Trump s assertion that some illegal Mexican aliens were rapists.Tony Yapias is the director of Proyecto Latino de Utah . Mr. Yapias also coordinated numerous protest events against Donald Trump including a rather violent display in Salt Lake City, Utah.Yes, it appears Mexican rapist Tony Yapias felt additionally empowered by the fact his victim was less likely to be able to contact law enforcement.However, as Fox13 in Salt Lake City reports:[ ] Despite the woman s fears concerning immigration issues, court documents state, she reported the assault the day after it happened. She was also examined by a forensic nurse who found she had multiple physical injuries consistent with her explanation of what happened (link)Mr. Yapias threatened, raped and blackmailed his victim specifically because of her undocumented illegal immigration status. Conservative TreehouseWatch Tony complain that a list was released with names of Hispanic illegal alines living in Utah. He actually calls it an act of terrorism against the illegal aliens. This is how these people roll


Egypt has arrested 22 people in the past three days as part of a crackdown on gays after a rainbow flag was raised at a concert, activists and rights groups said on Monday. At least 33 people have been arrested since Sept. 23, a day after a group of people were seen raising the flag, a rare public show of support for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in the conservative Muslim country. The public prosecutor announced an investigation after local media launched a highly critical campaign against those who raised the rainbow flag at a Mashrou Leila concert, a popular Lebanese alternative rock band whose lead singer is openly gay. On Monday police arrested Ahmed Alaa and Sarah Hegazy, the latter being the first woman involved in such an incident in years, in relation to the case, their lawyer said. They were both charged with joining a group formed in contrary to the law and propagating that group s idea . Hegazy faced a further charge of promoting sexual deviancy and debauchery and the Supreme State Security Prosecution ordered them detained for 15 days, lawyer Amr Mohamed told Reuters. Two men had been arrested earlier in relation to the flag incident but one was released. The remaining arrests were unrelated to the incident but have all been over the perceived sexual orientation of the defendants and came after it. At least 10 men were arrested between Sept. 28-30 and six others earlier that week, judicial sources said. All 16 went on trial on Sunday charged with promoting sexual deviancy and debauchery , euphemisms for homosexuality. A verdict is due on Oct. 29. One man has been sentenced to six years in jail over similar charges. Although homosexuality is not specifically outlawed in Egypt, it is a conservative society and discrimination is rife. Gay men are frequently arrested and typically charged with debauchery, immorality or blasphemy. Those arrested are subjected to anal examinations to determine whether they have had gay sex, which rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch say amounts to torture. Five such examinations have taken place, Amnesty International said on Monday. Judicial sources do not deny the examinations take place but say they are legally carried out and are not a form of abuse. In a matter of days the Egyptian security forces have rounded up dozens of people and carried out five anal examinations signaling a sharp escalation in the authorities efforts to persecute and intimidate members of the LGBTI community following the rainbow flag incident, said Najia Bounaim, North Africa Campaigns Director at Amnesty. In 2001, 52 men were arrested when police raided a floating disco called the Queen Boat.


Do you hear that sound? That sizzling and popping? That s the beautiful melody of the heads of conservatives across the nation exploding in the wake of some very, very bad news (for them) delivered by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California. In a precedent-setting decision, the San Fransisco-based court ruled Thursday that gun owners do not have a constitutional right to conceal carry their weapons if they face no specific threat.The court determined that San Diego and Yolo counties did not violate the Second Amendment when they denied some applicants concealed carry licenses. In those counties, applicants must show good cause to be armed at all times. In other words, a woman who is being stalked by her ex-boyfriend or someone in a dangerous profession can carry their guns around because they have a legitimate need for protection. Someone who just feels like taking his gun to the grocery store, however, might want to think twice before he tucks it in his waistband. In a 52-page opinion, Judge William Fletcher wrote: Because the Second Amendment does not protect in any degree the right to carry concealed firearms in public, any prohibition or restriction a state may choose to impose on concealed carry including the requirement of good cause, however defined is necessary allowed by the Amendment, the 9th Circuit said.Reuters notes that this ruling isn t exactly unusual:The ruling places the 9th Circuit Court in line with other U.S. appellate courts that have upheld the right of officials in the states of New York, Maryland and New Jersey to deny concealed carry applications in certain cases.Under California s concealed carry law, more than 70,000 residents or less than 1 percent of the state s population had active permits last year, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting.The U.S. Supreme Court in 2013, in the middle of a raging national debate on guns, declined to weigh in on whether firearm owners have a constitutional right to carry their weapons in concealment outside the home.This is also in line with the Supreme Court s 1897 finding that the right of the people to bear arms is not infringed by laws prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons. This decision reversed a 2014, 2-1 decision by a 9th Circuit Court panel that found California residents have an inherent right to carry concealed weapons. While this issue may seem settled, these gun owners promise to keep fighting for the right to carry their confidence around with them everywhere they roam though they may be in for a bit of a surprise, as the Supreme Court could refuse to hear the case because other circuit courts have upheld limitations on the issuance of concealed carry permits.


Trisha Brown, the choreographer and exemplar of the founding generation of American postmodern dance, died on Saturday in San Antonio. She was 80. Barbara Dufty, the executive director of Ms. Brown's dance company, confirmed the death. Ms. Brown had been treated for vascular dementia since 2011. Few dance inventors have so combined the cerebral and sensuous sides of dance as Ms. Brown did, and few have been as influential. Her choreography, showcased primarily in New York, helped shape generations of modern dance creators into the 21st century. [ Mikhail Baryshnikov, Laurie Anderson and other artists speak on working with Ms. Brown. ] In December 2012, it was announced that the two dances she had made the previous year would be her last. By that point, she had been an international figure for over 30 years, choreographing for the Paris Opera Ballet, collaborating with Mikhail Baryshnikov, and commissioning stage designs from Robert Rauschenberg and other eminent visual artists, including Donald Judd and Nancy Graves. In 1983, she won European as well as American acclaim for "Set and Reset. " This intensely sensuous theater piece, with music by Laurie Anderson and designs by Rauschenberg, became the most beloved work ever made in postmodern dance. In the 1980s, her influence was cited by the American choreographers David Gordon, Mark Morris and Stephen Petronio and her work began to join the repertories of other dance companies. In 1988, the French government named Ms. Brown Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres. In January 2000 she was promoted to Officier and in 2004 to Commandeur. In 1991, she was named a MacArthur fellow, the first female choreographer to achieve this distinction. Patricia Ann Brown was born on Nov. 25, 1936, to the former Dorothy Louise Abel, an English teacher, and Martell W. Brown, a salesman. In later years she often spoke of her debt to the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest. In public conversation with the choreographer Merce Cunningham (also from Washington State) she once remarked, "The rain forest was my first art class. " Ms. Brown graduated from Weatherwax High School in Aberdeen in 1954 and studied modern dance at Mills College, in Oakland, Calif. earning a degree in 1958. She taught dance at Reed College in Oregon for the next academic year and also studied at the American Dance Festival summer schools of 1958, 1959 and 1961, learning especially from Louis Horst, the veteran pedagogue of modern dance composition. Her next chief influences were the postmodern choreographer and teacher Robert Ellis Dunn and John Cage, the radical composer whose ideas on music and art opened up many possibilities. After moving to New York in 1961, she helped found the Judson Dance Theater group the next year. Like her colleagues Mr. Gordon, Steve Paxton and Yvonne Rainer, she made dances that eliminated bravura, academic technique, acting and musicality — the hallmarks of modern dance as it had been developed by Martha Graham and others, not to mention ballet. In 1970, Ms. Brown helped found another experimental collective, Grand Union, as well as her own troupe, the Trisha Brown Dance Company. In those years she worked, as a rule, in unconventional spaces and without music. The term "postmodern dance" was not coined until the late 1970s, and perhaps it can now be seen that Ms. Brown and others were leading dance at that time into the radical extremes of modernism. Cunningham, whom she greatly admired, had made dance independent from music and design she in turn helped to make it independent of technical rigor and, in the 1970s, to present it with no musical accompaniment. This was "democratic dance," composed largely of movement that the average untrained dancer could do, albeit in new combinations. Some dances were performed barefoot, others in sneakers. Three historic works that Ms. Brown made in 1971 suggest much in their titles alone: "Walking on the Wall," "Roof Piece" and "Accumulation. " "Walking" had dancers suspended in harnesses moving sideways along walls "Roof" spread its dancers across 12 roofs on 10 SoHo blocks "Accumulation" was a formal study in graduated movement, with repeated phrases building in complexity — like sentences that each time added one word. The experimental dance of that era, embodied in those pieces, set itself up against virtuosity. Ms. Brown nonetheless now became a virtuoso of a new kind. In 1978 she took her "Accumulation" solo and embellished it, showing, in "Accumulation With Talking Plus Water Motor," just how many things could be done simultaneously. She could coordinate several physical acts while talking, as if illustrating multiple trains of thought in action. Having earlier pared dance down to its basics, she was now rebuilding it in new ways, and it was then that she became a seminal figure of truly postmodern dance. A classic of hers from this era was "Opal Installation" (1980) among the purest of all works. A quartet in silence, it is its own music, the connections and reactions between the dancers making its harmonies marvelous. Here "the line of least resistance" became gorgeous: a fascinating chain sequence of hitches, ripples, shimmies, hops, knee bends. The style was often called "release technique," and some accredited its invention to her. (In fact, release technique was devised by another native of Washington State, Joan Skinner.) Ms. Brown, a gently but memorably witty woman, simply described her own idiom as "the line of least resistance," neatly evoking the rippling of impulses and ricochets that characterized much of her dance. By this time, Ms. Brown was already moving on, starting a different kind of dance theater. From 1979 she made a series of pieces that turned her purity into a new kind of theatricality, sometimes ravishing and generally novel, working with designers like Rauschenberg, and with sound scores and music by Ms. Anderson, Judd and others. (When asked why she had stopped choreographing in silence, she once replied, "I got fed up with listening to all the goddamn coughing. ") Although the names of works from this era are uninviting — "Glacial Decoy" (1979) "Set and Reset" (1983) "Lateral Pass" (1985) "Newark" (1987) "Astral Convertible" (1989) "Foray Forêt" (1990) and "Astral Converted" (1991) — the works themselves excited lasting adoration. These remained creations, with ingeniously inventive choreography, but their music, costumes and décor made them potently theatrical: Each had a strong atmosphere in which visual effects and music made contributions. It was these pieces, notably "Set and Reset," that brought her a new kind of worldwide prestige. By the late 1980s, she was having seasons in big theaters like City Center in New York and Sadler's Wells in London and she became a darling of the French. She never quite abandoned this style, returning to it in 2011 for her final creation, "I'm going to toss my arms — if you catch them they're yours," which had designs by her husband, Burt Barr, and music by Alvin Curran. From the late 1980s on, Ms. Brown opened up her next phase: a new engagement with classical music. The composers Monteverdi, Bach, Rameau, Schubert and Bizet supplied her with the challenges she needed, and her responses were never conventional in musicality or theatricality. Her "M. O. " (1995) was based on Bach's "Musical Offering" in 2002, she staged Schubert's "Winterreise" with the eminent baritone Simon Keenlyside (a superb mover). For decades, Ms. Brown was her own greatest dancer, creating many remarkable solos for herself. "If You Couldn't See Me" (1994) memorably fused her cerebral and sensuous sides. The underpinning notion — a gimmick, you might say — was that her back remained turned to the audience throughout. The transcendent factor lay in her spine's fluidity. When, in 1989, Mr. Baryshnikov turned from being a ballet specialist to a master investigator of American modern dance, Ms. Brown was a favorite collaborator. That solo in 1995 became a duet, "You Can See Us. " As danced in 1996, this showed Mr. Baryshnikov facing front Ms. Brown still kept her back to the audience. From the 1930s on, a series of choreographers had made New York a haven for pure dance. Of those choreographers, Cunningham and Ms. Brown were among the brainiest. Devotees of difficulty, they never needed to court an audience. The news that her 2011 dances would be her last — she had made over 100 dances, many of which had been recorded on film and video — followed Cunningham's death in 2009 and the closing of his company in December 2011. Plans for the limited afterlife of her company were announced in the ensuing months and years. In January 2016, the Brooklyn Academy of Music gave a season to the company's final presentation of her "proscenium" theater pieces. Since 2015, "In Plain Site" seasons have been given in special locations, excerpting dances from her repertoire and asking audiences to walk around different rooms to observe the various dances (an entirely Brownian idea). In 2016, the art historian Susan Rosenberg published "Trisha Brown: Choreography as Visual Art" (Wesleyan University Press). Mr. Barr, Ms. Brown's husband, died in November. She is survived by her son, Adam four grandchildren a brother, Gordon and a sister, Louisa Brown. Since the 1980s, Brown dances have often been performed by other companies. Her "Set and Reset" is usually included in the undergraduate curriculum for French dance students. The choreographer Mr. Petronio, a member of her dance company in the early 1980s, added her "Glacial Decoy" to his company's repertoire in 2016. But Ms. Brown's work is not easily codified, and its language may prove elusive to dancers from generations who did not know the casual body language of the last century. All dance legacies are fragile hers may prove especially so. Any of this pertinacity should continue to provoke debate. How great was even Ms. Brown's greatest work? That motto of hers, "the line of least resistance," has sometimes suggested her own limitations: Her work has often seemed to lack drama. Or did it rather extend our idea of drama? Much of Ms. Brown's work created intensely kinesthetic currents. Audiences felt them even as they watched them. Dances in which nothing happened became dances in which much was eventful.


Out of all of the places we ve ever been overseas, and of all the places we ve been overseas it don t matter where ya know. When we come back to this country, we love it a whole lot more than when we left and went somewhere else. I thank God for all of the freedoms we ve got in this country. I cherish them and treasure them. Um even the rights to burn the flag, ya know. I m proud of those rights. The crowd can be heard moaning and is clearly not happy with Cash saying he cherished the right to burn the American flag. Lemme tell you something. Shhh! We ve also got the right to bear arms, and if you burn my flag, I ll shoot you! Cash then clarified his statement, But I ll shoot you with a lot of love, like a good American! After such a trip overseas in 1975, I wrote this Watch, as Johnny Cash performs Ragged Old Flag, a beautiful song he wrote that gives the history of why Americans honor our flag:Before becoming a musician, Cash worked in the Air Force. While most people waited to be drafted for the required two years, Cash wanted more and stayed for four. He was shipped to Germany during the Korean War. His role was to intercept and decipher Russian morse code.The man in black, discovered that Soviet Union Premier, Joseph Stalin, died before US president Dwight Eisenhower even knew. He was working as a radio operator for the military at the time of Stalin s death and was the first person to receive the message.


(INTELLIHUB) —"Everyone's phone in the office did the same thing at the same time," one person reported, after a "Area Emergency Test" was forced to devices by FEMA in several parts of the U.S..  "As you can see here this is run by FEMA," Youtuber DAHBOO7 stated on his latest video.  This type technology may actually be pinging devices and may even be able to locate peoples whereabouts, DAHBOO told his viewers.  "[…] they are able to get a ping on your location." Featured Image: Jhaymesisviphotography/Flickr


Does this piss off Conservatives, Liberals or both? Is there a way to upload this as a regular image for GLP to use? Anonymous Coward Re: Does this piss off Conservatives, Liberals or both? Page 1 09/28/16 2 09/30/16 3 08/24/12 5 "Godlike Productions" & "GLP" are registered trademarks of Zero Point Ltd. Godlike™ © 1999 - 2015 Godlikeproductions.com Page generated in 0.005s (7 queries)


Militants seeking independence for Cameroon s English-speaking regions killed four gendarmes on Monday, the government said, as disputes with the Francophone-dominated government degenerate into open warfare. Several separatists were killed by security forces in ensuing clashes, the government spokesman said. Repression by President Paul Biya s government against what began as peaceful protests a year ago by Anglophone activists over perceived social and economic marginalization has bolstered support for armed militants demanding a full break with Yaounde. The separatists have launched a series of deadly raids on government police and soldiers in recent weeks, leading authorities to escalate a crackdown that has killed dozens of civilians. Issa Tchiroma Bakary, Cameroon s government spokesman, said the separatists had killed four gendarmes earlier on Monday in the town of Kembong in Southwest region s Manyu Division. The assailants, ensnared by the measures put in place by our defense and security forces, are now reduced to sporadic attacks carried out by hidden faces and using perfidy, Tchiroma said. A representative for the separatists could not be immediately reached for comment. Manyu, with its dense equatorial forests along the Nigerian border, has become the center of the insurgency from which the separatists have launched a series of attacks on security forces in villages. The violence there has fueled a mounting refugee crisis. At least 7,500 people have crossed into Nigeria since Oct. 1, when the secessionists declared an independent state called Ambazonia, and the U.N. refugee agency says it is bracing itself for as many as 40,000. Cameroon s linguistic divide harks back to the end of World War One, when the German colony of Kamerun was carved up between allied French and British victors. The English-speaking regions joined the French-speaking Republic of Cameroon the year after its independence in 1960. French speakers have dominated the country s politics since. Tensions have long simmered but the recent violence is the most serious to date and has emerged as a serious challenge to Biya s 35-year rule. The 84-year-old is expected to seek a new term in an election next year.


One month away from a national election, Germany s Social Democrats are struggling in their efforts to narrow a yawning gap in support behind Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives. The left-leaning Social Democratic Party (SPD) is languishing on around 24 percent support, polls show, far behind Merkel s conservatives bloc, on some 38 percent. Germans go to the polls on Sept. 24. The SPD is having difficulty in differentiating itself from the conservatives, with whom it rules as junior partner in a grand coalition - an alliance the party wants to avoid repeating, but which polls suggest is the only partnership that can guarantee a majority. We need to get more emotional, to fight and force Merkel to speak in clear terms so that the differences become clear, SPD Labour Minister Andrea Nahles told business daily Handelsblatt. Nahles accused Merkel, who is campaigning for a fourth term on a platform of economic stability, of trying to cruise through the election without staking out clear positions. Last year, Germany s refugee crisis threatened Merkel. But with the migrant flow now stemmed and unemployment at a record low, she is able to project herself as an anchor of stability in an uncertain world. Trying to rock her, SPD leader Martin Schulz has grown increasingly critical of Merkel this week, accusing her of blocking his party s efforts in the ruling coalition to win better pay for temporary workers and improve workers rights. On Thursday, Schulz takes his campaign to Essen, in the heart of the Ruhr area of North Rhine-Westphalia that was at the center of Germany s post-war economic miracle but which is now a rust-belt. Germany s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia has traditionally been an SPD stronghold but the party lost there in a state election in May - one of three regional votes Merkel s conservatives won earlier this year. Schulz, 61, led the SPD to a brief poll surge after the party selected him as leader at the start of the year. But the revival quickly fizzled as his campaign for social justice failed to gain traction. A former European Parliament president, he cannot match the clout of Merkel, 63, gained in 12 years of experience as leader of Europe s biggest economy. Searching for another point of difference, Schulz pledged on Tuesday to have U.S. nuclear weapons withdrawn from German territory if, against the odds, he defeats Merkel. Schulz s election campaign is jumping around so many areas that it is impossible to discern a theme, the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung wrote in an editorial. Striking a defeatist note, Schulz said earlier this month he wanted to stay on as SPD leader even if his party loses the election.


Negotiations between the White House and congressional leaders on a spending measure to keep the U.S. government running beyond this week are continuing, and President Donald Trump is still seeking border wall and military funding, the White House said on Monday. Asked if Trump was insisting on some funding for his planned border wall in the current spending measure, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the money for the military and the border security wall were a priority for the president and he would not take them off the table yet.


Neal Katyal made oral arguments for maintaining the injunction against President Donald Trump's executive order banning migrants from certain countries Monday before the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. ["He could say, like President Bush did right after September 11th, 'The face of Terror is not the true face of Islam, that's not what Islam is about, Islam is Peace.' Instead, we get 'Islam hates us'," Katyal told the bench, answering Judge Richard Paez's question on what, if anything, Trump could do to make the executive order acceptable. Katyal, former President Barack Obama's acting Solicitor General, has taken on the representation of the plaintiffs who stopped the executive order's implementation in March when a federal court in Hawaii ruled in their favor. The Justice Department has appealed the case to the Ninth Circuit, seeking to vacate that injunction. The most controversial element of district court Judge Derrick Watson's ruling was its justification of the injunction based not on the text or effect of the executive order, but on statements President Trump made during the 2016 campaign. According to that ruling, speaking about a "Muslim ban" and speaking negatively about the religion's relationship with the West mean that the plaintiffs had a high enough likelihood of proving a violation of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause to block the order. This is true even though the actual order does not take any action based on people being Muslim because, "[A] reasonable, objective observer — enlightened by the specific historical context, contemporaneous public statements, and specific sequence of events leading to its issuance — would conclude that the Executive Order was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion[. ]" Katyal doubled down on this line of argument Monday, contending, as the district court had, that no reasonable objective observer could not see that the purpose of the order was to disfavor Muslims. As evidence, he rattled off an extensive list of amicus briefs submitted in favor of striking down Trump's order. Mentioned were the usual bevy of and liberal religious groups. "Even the Cato Institute," Katyal finished, referring to the libertarian think tank with a long history of supporting weak immigration laws. The argumentation led naturally to the question of what, if anything, could be done to save such a facially neutral order. "Does that mean that the President is forever barred from issuing an executive order along these lines?" Judge Paez asked Katyal. "What does he have to do to issue an executive order that, in your view, might pass constitutional muster?" Trump might gain more power to issue executive order if he "disavows," Katyal argued. "One example would be what Judge Hawkins said about disavowing formally the stuff before. " "But that's not it, he could do a lot of things," Katyal continued. "I'm just going to throw out some examples, I'm not trying to micromanage the president. " In addition to suggesting Trump could save his order by telling the country "Islam is peace," Katyal also recommended removing references, in the text of the order, to the unsavory elements of Islamic society. "It could eliminate the text which refers to honor killings," he told the court. Katyal, in his work at the Justice Department during the Obama administration, frequentally defended presidential power to govern by executive order. He appeared to recognize the unusual nature of this suit challenging a president's authority on religious grounds. "Our fundamental point to you is that Presidents generally don't run into establishment clause problems. This is a very unusual case in which you have these public statements by the President," he said.


The GOP is bowing down to Cliven Bundy and his band of domestic terrorists by giving them exactly what they want.A proposal has been drafted to strip the federal government of all public lands and give it all to the states for private uses that would likely destroy what has been protected and conserved for generations. You know, the public lands that include National Forests and natural treasures like the Grand Canyon.In 2014, Cliven Bundy led an armed standoff against the federal government because he refused to pay grazing fees even though his cattle were grazing on federal property. And earlier this year, Bundy s sons Ammon and Ryan Bundy led an armed seizure of a federal wildlife reserve in Oregon that last for weeks until the FBI arrested them. All three Bundy s are now behind bars but the GOP is poised to adopt their wrongly held position that the federal government can t own land.In fact, Article 4, Section 3, Clause 2 of the Constitution specifically gives the federal government the power to own and regulate land.The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.But Republicans are proposing to turn over all public lands to the states so that they can sell them off to the highest bidders and strip the lands of all the resources. Congress should reconsider whether parts of the federal government s enormous landholdings and control of water in the West could be better used for ranching, mining or forestry through private ownership, the draft says. Timber is a renewable natural resource, which provides jobs to thousands of Americans. All efforts should be made to make federal lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service available for harvesting. The enduring truth is that people best protect what they own. But that is not true at all. These lands, such as the Alpine Lakes Wilderness area that was granted protection by Republican President Gerald Ford 40 years ago and the Noisy-Diobsud Wilderness Area that was granted protection by President Ronald Reagan, could be opened up to loggers if the new GOP has their way.These pristine lands and many others across the country haven t been touched, which means people are already protecting these public lands by keeping them public.Allowing these wilderness areas to fall into private ownership would mean Americans would lose access to these lands. Any private corporation that buys up this land will just put up signs that say No Trespassing and would proceed to cut down all the trees and strip mine the mountains and lands. Companies like Nestle could easily suck up all the water it wants. It would take generations for the forests to grow back and the area would never be the same. It would be devastated by private industry.That is why it is so important to vote in November. Republicans literally want to take our heritage away from us. They are bowing down to the demands of domestic terrorists. We can t let that happen if we want future generations to enjoy the natural wonders that past generations fought so hard to protect.Featured Image of Lake Tenaya in Yosemite National Park via Wikimedia


For a fifth consecutive night, American warplanes and drones on Monday pummeled suspected Qaeda targets in Yemen as the Pentagon said an earlier attack in the country had killed a former prisoner held at the United States detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said an airstrike last Thursday — the first night of a larger Pentagon campaign to roll back gains made by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or A. Q. A. P. — killed the former detainee, who was using the name Yasir Ali Abdallah al Silmi. While at Guantánamo, he was held as Detainee No. 679 and went by the name Mohammed Tahar, according to military records. Including an airstrike overnight on Monday that Captain Davis said killed seven Qaeda fighters, the United States has conducted more than 40 attacks across central and southern Yemen in the past week. By comparison, the military carried out 41 strikes in all of 2012, the most in a single year against the Qaeda affiliate in Yemen. Soon after taking office, President Trump authorized the air campaign against the Qaeda branch, one of the deadliest in the world, at the same time he approved the Special Operations raid in January that left one member of Navy SEAL Team 6 dead and three others wounded. An estimated two dozen civilians were killed in that raid. "It's a reflection of growing concern about the reconstitution of A. Q. A. P. in Yemen," Gerald M. Feierstein, a former United States ambassador to Yemen who is now at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said of the flurry of airstrikes. "The key issue is how they identify targets, the fidelity of the intelligence, and the care they take to maintain the standard of near certainty on no collateral damage," Mr. Feierstein said, referring to civilian casualties. "I don't know the answer to those questions. " The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has scheduled a hearing for Thursday on Yemen, the first since the raid in January. Mr. Tahar was imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay from 2002 to 2009. Because Yemen was in chaos at that time, officials were reluctant to repatriate detainees there. But Mr. Tahar was among a small group the Obama administration repatriated in December 2009 as part of an experiment. Later that month, however, after the attempted bombing of a airliner by Al Qaeda's Yemen branch, President Barack Obama halted further repatriations to Yemen. Years later, the Obama administration resettled many Yemenis in other countries. Military records show that Mr. Tahar's brother, who went by the name Ali Abdullah Ahmed, was also a Guantánamo detainee. He was among three detainees who died in June 2006 in what the military said was a coordinated suicide. Captain Davis said that Usayd whom he described as a "longtime explosives expert who served as the organization's emir" within Abyan Province, was killed in the same March 2 strike as Mr. Tahar. Yemeni civilians in three provinces where Al Qaeda has strongholds described the American bombing campaign as unrelenting. For three days beginning Friday, American drones and attack planes extensively hit the rugged mountains and valleys in central Baydha Province, where Qaeda military camps have long existed outside the control of the weak central government in Sana, the capital, according to residents reached by phone. "They appear on the sky at nearly the same time and quickly launched heavy fire against Al Qaeda gatherings," said Nayef, a resident who for security reasons preferred to be identified only by his first name. "The U. S. planes become more aggressive when Al Qaeda militants fire back," he said. "We can see balls of fire on the sky when the Americans exchange fire with Al Qaeda. " Abdul Aziz Awadh, a resident of Abyan Province in the south, the birthplace of Yemen's president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, said that an American drone struck a taxi carrying a number of Qaeda militants on Thursday afternoon. "The airstrike completely burned the car and killed at least four Al Qaeda," he said. "We later learned that they came from Aden to Abyan. The U. S. drone chased them until they passed through a farm and hit them. "


It looks at though Sen. Ted Cruz will actually have to contend with a complaint issued by an Illinois voter who believes that the Texas senator is not a natural born citizen of the United States. After all, it is true the Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta Canada, so if found not to be a natural born citizen, it would disqualify Cruz from not only being on the ballot in Illinois, but would raise questions nationwide.The voter, Lawrence Joyce, is bringing the complaint before the Circuit Court of Cook County in Chicago. He tried previously to have it be heard, but the case was dismissed. However, according to USA Today, he appealed the decision and was granted a hearing for Friday before Judge Maureen Ward Kirby. Joyce, a pharmacist and attorney, and backer of Ben Carson, said: What I fear is that Ted Cruz becomes the nominee, come September, Congressman Alan Grayson of Florida will go forward with his threats and probably several other Democrats will file suit to prevent Ted Cruz from being on the ballot. What Democrats will do at that point is cherry pick which county courthouse they are going to show up in order to file these petitions. It will definitely be interesting to see what happens in this case, because if Cruz is determined not to be a natural born citizen, the implications nationwide would be huge.Just recently, another complaint was brought up in New York over his eligibility, and yet another in the senator s home state of Texas.Cruz has, time and time again, insisted that he is, in fact, a natural born citizen because his mother was born in Delaware, USA, thus making his a natural born citizen through birth. Although, this is still hotly contested by scholars nationwide. Perhaps only time will tell, and we ll all have to wait for the outcome of this hearing.Featured image: Flickr


Lebanese President Michel Aoun s office said on Saturday that Saad al-Hariri had phoned him from outside Lebanon to resign as the country s prime minister and that Aoun awaited Hariri s return to hear the circumstances of the resignation .


Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, strongly disputed accusations that President Trump's immigration order contains a "religious test" or "bans Muslims. "["I don't know where they're getting that from," he said. "I don't think they read the same executive order. " "I served on the U. S. Commission on Religious Freedom for four years," he pointed out. "We have an ambassador of religious freedom that goes around the world, trying to advance American values and protecting minorities. And it is extremely American, if not our first freedom, obviously, to protect religious freedom. That includes the persecution of minorities. " "The executive order from President Trump said nothing specifically about any specific religion. It said we will protect those persecuted in the name of religion, for their religion. So that would include Christians, Yazidis, and even Sunni Muslims like myself who are part of the majority in Syria — or Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, or wherever — but yet have dissident opinions that are persecuted," he pointed out. Jasser said it truly would be wrong to favor one religion over the other, "but it is very American to favor those who are persecuted over those who are the oppressors. " "And there's nothing more American than vetting refugees, and beginning to vet them against those who believe in theocracy," he added. "We don't want people coming into this country that believe in the Islamic states. We want those who believe in freedom and liberty. I think it's appropriate to pause and begin the process of vetting ideology, which hasn't happened so far. We're sort of welcoming in anyone, including jihadists. It's just amazing how the identity Left loves to use us Muslims as a foil of identity politics. They're really not addressing what was written in that order. " Jasser said Trump's order was, if anything, too narrow. "I think there should have been more countries: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Qatar. The havens of the founding fathers of ISIS, I think, should have been included. But that would not make it more ' .' There is nothing more than helping dissident Muslims, helping those persecuted under theocracy, under the sharia state, if you will. " He noted that the seven countries affected by Trump's executive order are "the same seven countries that Obama listed as hot spots. " "I will say, there should be some fair criticism about the messaging from the White House on this," he added. "I understand why they rushed it: because they didn't want people to get a head start, the radicals to get a head start. But still, probably the implementation could have been done better at the front lines, in airports, etc. But that's a different criticism from having what I believe are rallies across the country to try to undercut the stability of our country. " Jasser said it was time to begin shifting "the axis of the conversation" about Islam and religious freedom. "The conversation for the last eight years, or even into the Bush administration, has been about 'countering violent extremism,' which is a tactic," he said. "We need to start shifting to saying, 'Well, what are we for?' We're against extremism. I think we should change it so that we're against violent Islamism, so that we make it clear — because when you make it clear and identify the enemy as theocratic Islamists, then Americans can start to say, 'Okay, so the are our friends and allies, and the Islamists are our enemies.' That makes it actually more rather than creating this sort of generic phobia of, 'Well, any Muslim could be a terrorist. '" "That's number one. Number two, we need to talk about what we're for," he continued. "We will advance those who want freedom and liberty, who believe in secular democracy. Our Muslim reform movement has a declaration that is a declaration of principles, that says we're against the Caliphate. We believe in the universal declaration of human rights. These are things that I'd like to see the President, as he has this stay, start to engage. " "He talks about a commission on radical Islamism. I hope he starts putting that into play because the pause is just going to be a pause, with nothing gained, if we don't start to educate Americans about what we're for, and what the sides are," he warned. "The old allies in the Middle East — Saudi Arabia, etc. — they might be with us in this program, but they're both the firefighters and the arsonists. We need to make clear that our principles in America, our religious freedom, are not embodied in those countries that are the cauldrons of radical Islam," he said. Jasser invited listeners to consult the resources at the American Islamic Forum for Democracy website and the larger umbrella Muslim Reform Movement that stretches across Europe and Canada. "Unfortunately, the identity Left, and the Islamists who are what I call '' have been dominating the conversation, and they're just apoplectic right now because they've lost control," he said. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. LISTEN:


While Trump says he s like, a smart person, and so doesn t need the President s daily intelligence briefings, he s taking security and intelligence briefings from spy agencies from other countries. In this case, he actually got a secret briefing from one of Israel s spy chiefs, Yossi Cohen, Director of the Mossad. The Mossad is Israel s top intelligence agency, analogous to the CIA in many ways, and none other than Benjamin Netanyahu organized this secret meeting with Trump and his people.As if that wasn t suspicious enough, the meeting included discussions of the Iran nuclear deal, which Israel claims is a clear and present threat to its existence; along with discussions of Syria s civil war and terrorism.This is all stuff he could and should be getting from our own intelligence officials, but he s alienated our intelligence community twice now first by shunning briefings, and second by insulting the CIA after they said they were confident that Russia hacked our election to help Trump win.It s quite clear that he looks upon our intelligence community with severe disdain. That s problematic, because if he s planning on getting a lot of intelligence this way, then it s also clear that he doesn t realize these foreign envoys don t have our best interests at heart. They have their own, and they will take advantage of him this way if they can.When it comes to the Russian hacking scandal, Trump is getting most of his intel from military generals who probably don t have the complex knowledge of digital espionage that Trump needs to be able to put a solid cybersecurity plan forward. So it wouldn t be surprising to find that he s getting more intelligence briefings from more sources, like this secret one from the Mossad.(What s worse is wondering what role Trump s ego played here. It wouldn t be surprising to find out that Trump took that meeting more because it made him feel special, and less because it was something he truly believes in.)For reference, the Mossad secretly helped supply Iran with weapons in their war against Iraq as part of the Iran-Contra Affair that embroiled President Reagan s administration in a deep scandal. Now they re reaching out to our president-elect not just for help with Iran and Syria, but also for help with Palestine. As Netanyahu has said in the past, Israel must occupy all the land for the foreseeable future. They see this as essential to their security (it s actually essential to their expansion, but they d never say that).Israel also wants Trump to stand against Obama on a U.N. resolution that Israel and its supporters see as advocating pro-Palestinian rights.The horror.It s just terrible when someone wants equal rights a problem with which we here in the U.S. have some experience. And Obama is expected to speak out in support of this resolution and of restarting peace talks between Israel and Palestine.Trump has tapped his own bankruptcy lawyer, David Friedman, as the U.S. ambassador to Israel. Friedman a hardliner who doesn t believe in a two-state solution and wants to declare Israel s settlements in the West Bank legal. No wonder Israel sent a secret envoy to meet with Trump.Regardless, Trump needs to get his intelligence briefings on these subjects from U.S. intelligence officials, because he needs to see these things from our point of view. Israel isn t thinking about us, they re thinking about themselves, and could seriously undermine any efforts we re making in the Middle East. This meeting was for them, not for us. If this is how Trump plans on getting intelligence, then we re in a lot of trouble.Featured image by Drew Angerer via Getty Images


Cook these six vegetables for even greater health benefits   raw food , cooking , vegetables (NaturalNews) "To cook or not to cook?" has been a topic of heated debate among some health food advocates. Raw food junkies claim that eating foods in their most natural state is the answer to all our issues and diseases, cancer included. They believe that cooking destroys essential vitamins, live enzymes and antioxidants vital to our health.While nobody will dispute the fact that adding more raw, organic fruits and vegetables to our diet is essential for overall health and well-being, going raw all the way isn't always the best option either. A study published in the British Journal of Nutrition found that people who followed a strictly raw food diet had normal levels of vitamin A and beta-carotene, but low levels of the antioxidant lycopene. As reported by Scientific American , high lycopene levels have been associated with a lower risk of cancer and heart attacks. According to Rui Hai Liu, an associate professor of food science at Cornell University, lycopene may be an even more potent antioxidant than vitamin C .It seems that some vegetables need a little heat to release their plant goodness. Most plants have a tough cellular structure. Lightly cooking these food makes it easier for the body to break down the plant's thick cell walls, making nutrients more available for absorption .Read on to discover six foods that are healthier cooked. 1. Asparagus Lightly cooking asparagus spears makes it easier for the body to absorb cancer-fighting vitamins such as vitamin A, C and E, as well as folate. Furthermore, higher levels of antioxidants, ferulic acid in particular, have been reported when this vegetable is cooked. 2. Carrots Beta-carotene is the compound that gives carrots their vibrant orange color. The body converts beta-carotene to vitamin A, which is vital for vision, reproduction, bone growth and immune health.Carrots, however, are sturdy vegetables and don't give up their nutrients that quickly. To get the most out of your carrots, Researchers at the University of Arkansas advise that higher levels of beta-carotene are obtained when carrots are cooked. 3. Mushrooms According to Andrew Weil, M.D., mushrooms are indigestible when they are uncooked. He said that thoroughly heating them releases the nutrients they contain, including B vitamins, proteins and minerals, as well as compounds not found in other foods. 4. Pumpkin and other winter squash Not many people will eat raw pumpkin, unless it is put through a juicer , and that is just fine, since cooked pumpkin has been shown to be more nutritious. Just like carrots, pumpkins need a little heat to break down tougher cell walls and release their plant goodness. 5. Spinach Folate, vitamin C, niacin, riboflavin and potassium are more available in raw spinach. However, slightly cooking spinach increases the levels of vitamin A and E, fiber, zinc, thiamin, calcium, iron and protein – as well as essential carotenoids, such as beta-carotene, lutein and zeaxanthin. 6. Tomatoes While cooking tomatoes reduces vitamin C levels, it also makes lycopene more available to the body. As mentioned earlier, lycopene has been linked to a lower risk of cancer and heart attacks. Vitamin C is an abundant vitamin, so it is well worth the loss.As you can see, raw isn't necessarily always best. However, if you love tomato or spinach salads and can't stand them cooked, that doesn't mean you should stop eating them raw. Whether you enjoy your veggies raw or cooked, the most important thing is that you are eating them in the first place.


It's easy to talk about how giants existed and how ancient mankind created myths around alleged beings of incredible proportions. But apparently, not everything is pure myth. In this article, we take a look at three fascinating MASSIVE footprints that according to many prove ancient Giants did exist.  Interestingly, in nearly all ancient writings we find that in the distant past, giants walked among ordinary humans. If we look at ancient writings from South America, North America, Europe and Asia, we will find that ancient cultures mentioned giants in their ancient writings. However, some ancient texts not only mention giants but suggest they were real. Ok so, if giants did exist, then… show me the evidence!  Well, the evidence may well be all around us. It doesn't matter where we look, Asia, North America, Africa, we will see that there are 'footprints' embedded into a rock which are indicative of SUPERSIZED beings. We can find stories in many mythologies of the ancient world: Greek, Norse, Germanic, Indian, Indo-European, and also in the new world as in the traditions of the Mayans, Aztecs and Incas; but most importantly in almost all major sacred books of antiquity: the Lebhar Gabhale, the Hindu Ramayana and even in the Bible. However, in addition to the massive footprints found around the globe, there is written evidence which also suggests these beings were real. A 2,000-year-old book called 'The Book of Giants' is what many are referring to as the ultimate proof of the existence of giants. Over 50 years ago, scholars came across this fascinating book which details the Nephilim and how these beings were destroyed. Please note that the word 'Nephilim' is still not fully understood. Throughout the years, scholars have proposed some etymologies, among them: 'The Fallen, 'Apostates,' and even 'those that cause others to fall.' But regardless of their name and the meaning, the enigmatic Nephilim have long been considered the giant beings that inhabited our planet in the distant past. The 'Book of Giants' was found nearly half a century ago in the Qumran Caves where experts recovered thousands of ancient scrolls that offer invaluable details of mankind's past. But Giants are also mentioned in the Bible.  "There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown." -Genesis 6:4 So in addition to 'footprints,' we have ancient texts that speak of Giants and how these beings existed on Earth. But not everyone is convinced that these ancient texts are proof of giants. As a matter of a fact, many believe that these are just myths created by our ancients. But if giants are just a myth… how come we have MASSIVE footprints in different parts of the world? Recently, photographers exploring an area near a Chinese village came across a sensational finding. They discovered (and photographed) a footprint left behind by a massive being. In the image –se below— you can clearly see the footprint embedded into rock. Compared to an ordinary foot of a human being, the footprint embedded into rock is at least twice as big. Furthermore, in South Africa near the Swaziland border in the Mpumalanga province, another massive footprint was found embedded into rock. There a massive 1.2-meter long footprint stands firmly embedded into granite. Locals call it Goliath's Footprint or 'The Footprint of God'. Its big. Really big. Locals consider the region where the footprint is located as a place of love, peace, and healing and that the Mpuluzi footprint is there to serve the power of good. How the gigantic footprint was imprinted into granite is another mystery, local shamans tell the story that this particular footprint was left by a being which was running across the ground covered with warm lava ash and that this is how the footprint came to be imprinted in granite. However, many remain skeptical. Dr. Jay Wile, a nuclear chemist, asserted that "it is almost certainly not a footprint." However, as we can read on other websites , more controversial footprints have been found around the world. A news article published in the Strand Magazine, December of 1895, reprinted in "Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland" by W.G. Wood-Martin mentions this fossilized giant discovered during mining operations in County Antrim, Ireland: "Pre-eminent among the most extraordinary articles ever held by a railway company is the fossilized Irish giant, which is at this moment lying at the London and North-Western Railway Company's Broad Street goods depot, and a photograph of which is reproduced here… This monstrous figure is reputed to have been dug up by a Mr. Dyer whilst prospecting for iron ore in County Antrim. The principal measurements are: entire length, 12ft. 2in.; girth of chest, 6ft. 6in.; and length of arms, 4ft. 6in. There are six toes on the right foot. The gross weight is 2 tons 15cwt.; so that it took half a dozen men and a powerful crane to place this article of lost property in position for the Strand, magazine artist. Dyer, after showing the giant in Dublin, came to England with his queer find and exhibited it in Liverpool and Manchester at sixpence, sixpence a head, attracting scientific men as well as gaping sightseers". The idea that Giants walked on Earth —and that there is even possibly evidence to support claims of their existence— is something fascinating. So, while looking for more massive footprints, we've stumbled across the image posted below which seems to depict another GIANT footprint embedded into rock. While we have no information as to where the image was taken, we can provide the source where we found the image. Furthermore, another massive footprint embedded into solid rock can be found at Bheemana Hejje near Bangalore. It is referred to as the Giant Footprint of Bheema. Ancient-Code  SOURCE


Democrat Senator Kristen Gillibrand (NY) likes to think of herself as a champion of women. After multiple women came forward to accuse fellow Democrat Senator Al Franken of sexual assault (photos were also supplied as evidence of one of the accuser s claims), Gillibrand finally called for Franken to step down. Was Gillibrand s call for her fellow Senator to step down part of a larger plan to appear neutral, as she then attacked President Donald Trump for unfounded allegations against him only months before the election? Isn t it kind of hypocritical for Gillibrand to call anyone out of sexual misconduct after she fought to bring a Muslim athlete to upstate New York who molested an innocent 12-year old girl while he was in America?The media CHEERED when NY Democrat Senator s Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer helped a 24-yr old Muslim man enter the U.S. after he was denied entry The media was strangely SILENT, however, after he molested a 12-yr-old upstate NY girl while she was with her family at an event celebrating the Muslim athlete. Yesterday, it was discovered that the Islamic extremist who killed 9 people and injured dozens of others, when he rammed his truck into them on a busy bike path in New York City, entered our country on a Diversity visa that was the brainchild of none other than the Democrat Senator from NY, Chuck (I always put diversity before our nation s security) Schumer An Indian athlete who overcame a visa denial with the help of U.S. lawmakers and a local mayor to attend the World Snowshoe Championship in New York has been arrested on charges of the abuse of a minor.It was a long journey for Indian snowshoe champion Hussain and his coach to the World Snowshoe Championships in Saranac Lake, New York last weekend.The US embassy in New Delhi rejected Tanveer Hussain s application for a visa so he could compete in the World Snowshoe Championship last month, Fox News reported.Local officials then appealed for help to Schumer and Gillibrand, and their offices reached out to the New Delhi embassy, which let Hussain successfully reapply for a visa.Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer, an outspoken opponent of President Trump s position on stricter immigration policies for immigrants and visa holders coming into the United States, bragged about getting around Trump s temporary travel restrictions to bring convicted pedophile Tanveer Hussain to New York on his Facebook page:Schumer s office told Fox he often intervenes to help international competitions. As we often do when local communities ask for help, at the request of Saranac Lake we helped to navigate the visa process so these athletes could compete at a local competition. The charges against one member of the group, who is accused of a serious crime and abusing our visa program, are extremely troubling. If he s found guilty, he should be punished to the fullest extent of the law, a rep said.Gillibrand s office offered a similar response, adding that the charges are extremely serious. Hussain hails from the Indian side of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, which is predominantly Muslim. Although India is not one of the seven countries that were part of the initial travel ban, Hussain and Khan had alleged they were victims of it when their first attempt at procuring visas to travel to the United States was turned down in late January, the first business day after Trump s travel ban was put in place.Khan told the BBC that an employee at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi told them they were being rejected because of current policy. U.S. officials said at the time that the denial was not connected to the travel ban. An embassy spokesman said they were preparing a statement for release later in the day. National PostTanveer Hussain was indicted in August 2017, by an Essex County grand jury for allegedly having inappropriate contact with a 12-year-old Saranac Lake girl earlier this year.Tanveer is pictured below surrounded by young teenagers at Saranac Middle School. Taneer is pictured in center-left with his arms around a young girl.The grand jury returned the indictment charging Tanveer Hussain with one count of first-degree sexual abuse and two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, a report in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise quoted a press release from Essex County District Attorney Kristy Sprague as saying.The reckless and irresponsible acts of Democrat legislators like Senator Chuck Schumer, perfectly illustrates why Trump was right about demanding that we put additional vetting measures in place for immigrants.Hussain and team manager Abid Khan arrived Feb. 23 in the bucolic Adirondacks town, which had been following their visa ordeal and extended them a hero s welcome. Locals offered congratulations and free lodgings at an inn that in the snow looked like a fairy tale scene from a movie, Khan said in a Facebook post.The fairy tale was shattered Wednesday, when Hussain, 24, was arrested and charged with felony sexual abuse and child welfare endangerment, police said.The parents of the 12-year-old girl allegedly involved said the incident happened Monday, after the end of the three-day snowshoe competition, and reported it to local authorities.Chief Charles A. Potthast Jr. of the Saranac Lake Village police force said the girl was playing pool Monday afternoon with other young people at the inn where Hussain was staying. There was a moment when the two were alone, and that s when the incident occurred, Potthast said. The girl told police there was a passionate kiss and that Hussain touched her in an intimate area on top of her clothing.During their time in Saranac Lake, Hussein and his coach were honored with a special reception by the mayor and gave a talk about Kashmir at Saranac Lake Middle School, where students had waged a letter-writing campaign on their behalf. Pack your bags. Next year you are coming to Kashmir, Hussain told them, according to one of Khan s Facebook posts. Washington Post


When you re running for re-election in your toughest campaign yet, in a state with a heavy Hispanic voting population, what s the one thing you shouldn t do? Well, for starters, you shouldn t underestimate the voting bloc that could make or break you.But John McCain doesn t care. Even though he runs neck-in-neck with Democratic Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick in a general election matchup, he is adamant he and the GOP don t need the Hispanic vote to win:An interesting phenomenon right now is the huge turnouts for the Republican primaries, low turnout for the Democrat primaries. Now if all those people would get behind the Republican candidate, I think we could win this election despite the alienation, frankly, of a lot of the Hispanic voters.Two things: one, there s no correlation between primary turnout and wins in the fall in the last 11 elections (a statement that was rated true by Politifact), and two: do not underestimate Hispanic voters. As the Huffington Post notes, the Hispanic and Latino voting bloc could tip the scales for Democrats in Arizona. And, as of right now, the majority of them support Ann Kirkpatrick.The angry white vote can only carry McCain so far. And with a mounting challenge by Tea Partier Kelli Ward, McCain can t afford a split Arizona Republican Party.Like Donald Trump, Republicans are cashing in on their last ditch effort to convince enough angry, latently racist white voters to save them, and screw the rest.Kirkpatrick jumped all over McCain s idiotic comments, saying:I wonder what thousands of Latino families across Arizona will think when they hear that John McCain is willing to alienate them as long as he and Republicans win in November. McCain, who already revealed that his Latino outreach efforts are a pure, political move, has changed his positions on important issues such as immigration reform and the DREAM Act, depending on who he talks to or whether it s an election year. And McCain has repeatedly promised to support Donald Trump if he becomes the GOP nominee, in spite of Trump s racist, anti-Latino rhetoric.Donald Trump? Alienation? Flip-flopping? It s as if McCain is dying to retire. Let s make sure in November he gets what he deserves a swift kick in the behind.


Zimbabwe s First Lady, Grace Mugabe, has denied assaulting South African model Gabriella Engels with an electric cable in a Johannesburg hotel suite last month, saying an intoxicated and unhinged Engels attacked her with a knife. In a previously unreported Aug. 17 deposition seen exclusively by Reuters, Mugabe countered 20-year-old Engels version, portraying herself as the victim after intervening on behalf of her adult sons Chatunga and Robert Junior who were in trouble with a drunken young woman . The statement said Grace Mugabe, 52 and a contender to replace her 93-year-old husband as Zimbabwe s president, was thinking about filing attempted murder charges. A group representing Engels dismissed the allegations as lies. According to the model, an irate Mugabe burst into the room where she was waiting with two friends to meet Chatunga on Aug. 13 and started laying into her with an electric cable. Photographs taken by Engels mother soon after the incident showed gashes to the model s head. She also had bruising on her thighs. In her deposition, Mugabe dismissed Engels version as malicious allegations and said she had been attacked after going to help her sons. She was worried about them and went to see them at their hotel suite, the statement said. Upon her arrival, Ms Engels, who was intoxicated and unhinged, attacked Dr. Grace Mugabe with a knife after she was asked to leave the hotel. Security was left with no other option but to remove Ms Engels from the hotel suite, it continued. The statement also alleged that Engels had been in a fight with other women at Johannesburg s Taboo nightclub the previous evening and suggested that may have been the cause of her injuries. Afriforum, an Afrikaans civil society group acting on behalf of Engels, denied both accusations. Gabriella never attacked Grace Mugabe in any way and she did not participate in the fight at Taboo, Afriforum said. It is clear that Grace Mugabe is desperately trying to escape responsibility for her own violent behavior by using lies to falsely portray the victim in this case as the perpetrator. South Africa granted Grace Mugabe diplomatic immunity, allowing her to evade immediate prosecution for assault, although Engels and Afriforum have challenged that decision, saying Mugabe was not in South Africa on official business. They also argued that assault was a grave crime that was not covered by diplomatic immunity laws. The decision to let Grace Mugabe return home caused a row in South Africa, with the opposition Democratic Alliance also going to court to overturn the immunity. According to Zimbabwean intelligence files seen by Reuters, Robert Mugabe lobbied his South African counterpart, Jacob Zuma, to have the issue solved amicably and out of court but was stymied by Engels refusal to accept a settlement. He is trying to avoid the embarrassment of his wife appearing before the court, one file, dated Aug. 30, reads. The problem he is facing is that the woman who was assaulted is refusing to accept any money and she just wants justice to be delivered upon Grace. Afriforum lawyer Gerrie Nel - best known for prosecuting South African track star Oscar Pistorius over the shooting of his girlfriend - said last month Engels had been approached with a cash offer but had turned it down. The intelligence report is a part of a series of hundreds of files dating back to 2009 that have come from within Zimbabwe s Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO). Reuters has not been able to establish their original author or final audience. The Aug. 30 report said Mugabe was changing his attitude to the case and was now backing Grace while accusing Engels of impropriety. Mugabe wants people to stop castigating his wife and calling her all sorts of names, it said. Mugabe is saying that his wife acted in an angry mood like all other women who find their children being involved with sleeping with whores. Afriforum chief executive Kallie Kriel said this allegation was an absolute lie and part of a deliberate attempt by Harare to undermine Engels credibility as a witness. A spokesman for Zimbabwe s presidency, which has direct oversight of the CIO, was not immediately available for comment. Zimbabwe s ambassador to South Africa did not respond to a request for comment. Zuma has denied any hand in the affair, telling parliament on Aug. 31: I am not a lawyer. I don t know the point of law and I was not involved in this process. How it was done, I would be lying if I speculate. His spokesman declined to elaborate.


Ramush Haradinaj, a former guerrilla fighter who has twice stood trial for war crimes, was chosen on Thursday to form a new government in Kosovo, ending a political deadlock that has persisted since elections on June 11. President Hashim Thaci gave Haradinaj the mandate after his coalition struck an agreement with a smaller party that paved the way for them to take power. Haradinaj s coalition comprises parties made up of former guerrillas who fought Serbian forces in 1998 and 1999. That campaign led to accusations of war crimes against him, but he was acquitted twice by a United Nations war crimes tribunal. The coalition signed an agreement on Monday with the smaller New Alliance for Kosovo (AKR) party to put together a new government, an agreement that gives them 62 seats in the 120-seat parliament [nL8N1L42QO. The AKR is led by Behgjet Pacolli, whom media call the richest man in Kosovo. Haradinaj is expected to present his program to parliament on Saturday, after which the government should be elected. The new government will confront unemployment running at 30 percent and uncertain relations with Kosovo s neighbors, especially Serbia, a precondition for both countries to move forward in their efforts to join the European Union. It must also reform health and education and the tax administration system as well as include representatives of some 120,000 Kosovo Serbs who do not recognize independence. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, almost a decade after NATO air strikes drove out Serbian forces that had been accused of expelling and killing ethnic Albanian civilians in a two-year counter-insurgency.