By now we re all familiar with Donald Trump s speech in front of 40,000 boy scouts at their National Jamboree last month, when the President rambled like a drunken stepfather, straying from the usual topics of diplomacy and citizenship and turning an 80-year presidential tradition into a campaign rally before a crowd of adolescents. But the madness didn t stop there.According to reports, White House aides told Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, host state of this year s quadrennial Boy Scouts of America National Jamboree, that she could fly with him on Air Force One when he addressed the boy scouts, but only on one condition; that she vote in favor of Senate Republicans healthcare bill. At the time the offer was made to Capito, Republicans were clutching at straws and doing anything possible to salvage their overhaul in the Senate in an effort to actually try and come through on one of the main promises Donald Trump made the entire time he was on the campaign trail, to repeal and replace the disaster that is Obamacare. Naturally, Capito took the high road and turned down the offer, mainly due to the fact that she hadn t even read the actual text of the bill at the time, however, Capito was also one of several Republicans senators who had made their doubts clear about it in the first place.There were several versions of the plan that failed so the Republicans ultimately threw together a skinny repeal, but that also failed when 49 voted for it while 51 voted against, with Arizona Senator John McCain casting the deciding negative vote. Capito also voted against the Republican s skinny repeal, sending them back to the drawing board.President Trump still vows to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and is adamant that he will get his bill passed, however, it may take a little more than a ride on Air Force One to get the votes.


Perhaps this young girl aspires to be the First Lady someday. Is it really fair to fire her for making racist remarks on social media when our President and First Lady have been on a hate/blame the white man media tour since they entered the White House? Meet Illinois resident Shana Poohpooh Latrice, a Brookfield Zoo employee who made the mistake of sharing an Instagram photo on Facebook with the caption, At work serving these rude ass white people :She made the even bigger mistake of tagging the photo as having been taken at the zoo.As a result, Brookfield Zoo got bombarded with a litany of complaints from pissed-off zoo visitors who found her comments to be clearly hateful and racist. Some even demanded that Latrice be fired for her mistake, and judging by what spokeswoman Sondra Katzen told reporters, that s exactly what s going to happen. This employee s statements in social media are in violation of our policies and do not reflect our institution s values, she said. We have zero tolerance for these kinds of divisive behaviors. We treat all employment matters confidentially, but rest assured that we have taken prompt action to remedy the situation.


The U.S. Department of Homeland Security will study whether to discontinue using privately run detention centers, which the Justice Department recently called unsafe, for migrants and shares of private prison operators fell on Monday after the news. Department Secretary Jeh Johnson said he directed his advisory council to evaluate whether the agency should continue to contract with private prison operators and make a recommendation by Nov. 30. Advocates for immigrants have accused the companies of withholding proper mental health and medical care from detainees to boost profits. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a division of DHS, currently uses detention facilities run by Corrections Corp of America (CXW.N) and The GEO Group (GEO.N). Corrections Corp of America's stock slid 9.4 percent and The GEO Group's stock fell 6 percent immediately after news of the review. Both stocks were rebounding later in the afternoon. Corrections Corp of America earned $689 million from ICE contracts since 2008, 12 percent of its revenue from state and federal contracts over that time, according to the website SmartProcure which tracks government contracts. The company currently manages a facility for Central American women and children in Dilley, Texas. The GEO Group runs a similar facility in Karnes City, Texas and has earned $1.18 billion from contracts with ICE since 2008, about 35 percent of its total revenue from government contracts, according SmartProcure data. The GEO Group said in a statement, "GEO's facilities under contract with ICE are highly rated and provide high-quality, cost-effective services in safe, secure, and humane residential environments pursuant to strict contractual requirements and the federal government's national standards," the statement said. Corrections Corp of America spokesman Steve Owen said, "We're proud of the quality and value of the services we provide and look forward to sharing that information." Immigration advocates and members of Congress have ramped up pressure on DHS to end its contracts with the private prison companies since the Justice Department announced on Aug. 18 it would do so. That was prompted by an inspector general's report that criticized the safety and effectiveness of private prisons. "Rather than wait for a review and a report from a committee, the president should ensure that the phase-out of private prisons ... is extended to DHS operations immediately," said Greg Chen, advocacy director at the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Senator Bernie Sanders, former Democratic presidential candidate, and Democratic Representative Raul Grijalva asked DHS in a letter last week to end the practice. A Department of Homeland Security official told Reuters on Aug. 19 that ICE needed private prison companies because they offer flexibility to quickly build facilities and adjust detention space as migration flows fluctuate. Both companies also contract with state and local prison systems, which make up about half of their revenue. A Reuters survey of 10 states with the largest contracts with private prison companies, including California and Texas, showed none had immediate plans to drop their contracts.


President Trump's sweeping new immigration policies — which include efforts to shine a harsh national spotlight on cities that released undocumented immigrants who went on to be accused of serious crimes — are sharply increasing the legal and political risks confronting local law enforcement officials. As Mr. Trump ratchets up the pressure on sanctuary cities through what some advocates are denouncing as a " " campaign to force them to work more closely with federal immigration authorities, police and sheriff's departments are being caught in a crossfire. In Denver, Sheriff Patrick Firman, who runs the local jail, has long received one set of instructions from the city government and local advocates. The city attorney warned him against detaining anyone without a warrant. The American Civil Liberties Union threatened to sue him if he did. Immigrants' rights groups applied the added deterrent of local political pressure. So Mr. Firman's department began doing what many law enforcement officers around the country have learned to do: balance contradictory requests. When the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency wants to deport one of his inmates, the jail sends a fax notifying ICE before the inmate is about to walk free — leaving it to federal agents to show up and make an arrest. But the fax is not necessarily sent with a great deal of advance notice. In the case of Ever Valles, 19, a Mexican national awaiting trial for car theft, the Denver jail's fax was sent in the middle of the night in late December, 10 hours after Mr. Valles posted bail but less than a before he walked free. ICE was nowhere to be seen. Last Friday, Mr. Valles was charged with a much more serious crime: murdering a man at a light rail station in a robbery gone awry. Now, Mr. Firman is in the eye of a political storm that highlights the precarious position confronting many law enforcement officials. Immigration officials accused Mr. Firman of ignoring their detainer request. "Had the officer for ICE been sitting at the fax machine, waiting for it to come in, it still would not have been enough time for us to come and get him," said Shawn Neudauer, an ICE spokesman. The Fox News host Bill O'Reilly declared that Mr. Firman and Denver's mayor had "blood on their hands. " Angry messages quickly began flooding the sheriff's department and its social media pages. Mr. Firman declined to be interviewed. Officials at the jail, which releases about 100 people a day and receives three to five detainer requests a week, say they try their best to cooperate with immigration officials and to notify them in a timely manner, despite calls from local advocates not to communicate with the agency and to release undocumented immigrants through a side door to elude federal agents. The Trump administration hopes the firestorm will help shift public opinion in cities that have vowed to protect their undocumented populations. Yet, the attacks on Mr. Firman do not acknowledge the confusing and often conflicting rules that have led to complaints by the law enforcement agents. United States appeals courts have ruled that federal detainer requests are not a substitute for a warrant or for the probable cause required to get one. "You can't just pick up the phone and say, 'Please hold an individual,'" said Jonathan F. Thompson, executive director of the National Sheriffs' Association. When federal officials began issuing detainers in 2008 under a pilot program called Secure Communities, most jurisdictions treated the requests as mandatory. But after American citizens were mistakenly held, filed suit and won costly damage awards, some jurisdictions stopped cooperating. More confusion occurred when cities and states adopted their own policies spelling out when to turn over undocumented immigrants. As compliance with detainers dropped sharply, the Obama administration ended the program and introduced a new one allowing local jurisdictions far more leeway to decide when to cooperate. But that has caused even more confusion among law enforcement officials, when what they want is clarity about their obligations, Mr. Thompson said. He said his members were relieved this week when Mr. Trump reinstated the Secure Communities program. But Mr. Thompson said the rules surrounding federal detainers were still "a work in progress. " It remains to be seen how the reinstated program will avoid the same legal setbacks that took the program down under President Obama. "We're all trying to figure out how to do that as quickly as possible," Mr. Thompson said, mentioning a meeting he and some of his members had recently with Mr. Trump. Recent clashes between local and federal officials have only muddied the waters. In New York City this week, ICE officials publicly assailed the city government after an undocumented Salvadoran teenager with suspected ties to a violent gang, Estivan Rafael Marques Velasquez, was released from Rikers Island despite a federal request for assistance with his deportation. "Honoring a detainer request is not about politics," Thomas R. Decker, director of enforcement and removal operations for ICE in New York, said in a news release. "It is about keeping New York citizens safe. " But the city's mayor, Bill de Blasio, vigorously defends that policy, adopted by the City Council in 2014, under which only those accused of 170 serious felonies — such as arson, robbery or homicide — can be turned over to immigration enforcement agents. And in a radio interview last month, the mayor suggested that turning local police into a deportation force would make the city more dangerous because fewer people would report crimes or cooperate with investigations. "If so many of our fellow New Yorkers who are undocumented feared to communicate with the local authorities because they thought they might be deported, we couldn't run our city," he said. The case of Mr. Velasquez, 18, who has been arrested six times since 2014 on charges that remain sealed because he was a minor at the time, highlights how quickly public opinion can shift if an undocumented immigrant commits a serious crime. A trenchant New York Post headline — " 'Sanctuary City' Law Let Gang Member Walk Free From Rikers" — lit up social media as Trump supporters across the country railed against New York's defiance. The prospect of more such cases being publicized has rattled New York officials. "I don't think that litigating this in the public sphere is the best path forward," said Nisha Agarwal, the city's commissioner for immigrant affairs. Mr. Velasquez — known to city officials as Steven Marquez — was involved in a clash last year between youths outside Queens County Criminal Courthouse witnesses told investigators they heard gunshots. He was charged with felony weapons possession, which would have made him eligible to be handed over to ICE under New York City's policy. But he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, weapons possession. He served less than a year at Rikers Island, where investigators noted that he had a tattoo associating him with the Salvadoran gang . On Feb. 16, he was released from jail. Hours later, he was rearrested by federal agents at a Queens apartment, according to ICE, whose agents say it is far more dangerous to arrest someone on the streets than in jail. To highlight the additional risks they say they must take in sanctuary cities, ICE agents make a point of issuing news releases that criticize jurisdictions that decline to cooperate with deportations. That kind of warfare is almost certain to escalate. This week, the Department of Homeland Security ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release weekly reports of crimes committed by immigrants who were the subjects of detainer requests that went ignored. Some sanctuary cities view the move as beyond the pale. "This is a shaming list, a scarlet letter that the federal government is going to put on jurisdictions around the country," said Dennis Herrera, San Francisco's city attorney. "We welcome an open and honest discussion about immigration and crime, because numerous studies have shown that immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be incarcerated than individuals. " But Mr. Thompson, of the National Sheriffs' Association, said the effort was merely meant to illuminate the constraints under which law enforcement agencies are operating. The new directive "wasn't written in a way to shame anyone," he said. "It was written in a way to give the department a handle on, 'Why can't these criminal aliens be held? Is it state law or local law preventing a sheriff from cooperating? '"


U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, seeking to tamp down a firestorm over meeting with former President Bill Clinton, said on Friday she will accept the recommendations of career prosecutors and the FBI director on whether to charge Hillary Clinton for mishandling emails. The United States' top law enforcement officer, however, stopped short of saying she would recuse herself from the investigation of the Democratic presidential candidate. "I will be informed of those findings, as opposed to never reading them or never seeing them, but I will be accepting their recommendations and their plan for going forward," Lynch said. She was responding to questions from a Washington Post journalist who was introducing a talk by Lynch at the Aspen Ideas Festival, a gathering of government, technology and other business leaders in Aspen, Colorado. Republicans, including presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, have said a political appointee like Lynch should not be involved in the email investigation and that the Monday night meeting with Bill Clinton shows Lynch is too close to the Clintons. With a regretful tone, Lynch said on Friday she would not privately meet with Bill Clinton again and that she understood how the meeting "casts a shadow" over the perception of the Justice Department's probe into Hillary Clinton's email use. The attorney general said she has received many questions about her role in the investigation and "whether someone who was a political appointee would be involved in deciding how to investigate." Republican lawmakers have called for an independent investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of state, saying the Obama administration's Justice Department could not be free of bias. In Washington, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told a daily news briefing that the investigation is being handled completely independently of the White House and President Barack Obama. Lynch was appointed by the Democratic president and sworn in on April 1, 2015, well after Hillary Clinton left Obama's Cabinet in 2013. Career prosecutors are not appointed by a president and may serve through different administrations. The FBI director is appointed by the president but is not part of his Cabinet and is considered apolitical. Lynch said on Friday that she had already decided to accept whatever recommendations prosecutors presented her before her meeting with Bill Clinton. The private meeting with the former president took place on Lynch's plane after she landed in Phoenix on Monday night. Bill Clinton was leaving the airport after a rally for his wife earlier that day. Lynch told reporters earlier this week that she did not discuss the email probe or other matters pending before the Justice Department with Bill Clinton, calling their meeting "primarily social." The FBI is investigating Hillary Clinton's email use and whether laws were broken as a result of a personal email server kept in her Chappaqua, New York, home while she was secretary of state, an issue that has overshadowed her campaign. She apologized last year for using the server, saying that while she did nothing wrong, she should have used two email accounts: one for State Department business and another for personal matters. Representatives for her campaign could not be reached immediately for comment on Friday. Trump on Thursday called Lynch's meeting "a sneak" and questioned the judgment of both Bill Clinton and the attorney general. In a tweet on Friday, the wealthy businessman said the meeting showed the U.S. political system was "totally rigged" and that Hillary Clinton had bad judgment. "Bill's meeting was probably initiated and demanded by Hillary!" Trump said on Twitter. The Justice Department, along with the White House, has said the probe should be free of political interference.


Thailand s Supreme Court convicted and sentenced former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra in absentia to five years in prison on Wednesday for mismanaging a rice subsidy scheme that cost the country billions of dollars. Yingluck fled abroad last month fearing that the military government, set up after a coup in 2014, would seek a harsh sentence. For more than a decade, Thai politics have been dominated by a power struggle between Thailand s traditional elite, including the army and affluent Bangkok-based upper classes, and the Shinawatra family, which includes Yingluck s brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was also ousted by a coup. Yingluck had faced up to 10 years in prison for negligence over the costly scheme that had helped get her elected in 2011. She had pleaded innocent and accused the military government of political persecution. Nine judges voted unanimously to find Yingluck guilty in verdict reading that took four hours, and a warrant was issued for her arrest. The court said Yingluck knew that members of her administration had falsified government-to-government rice deals but did nothing to stop it. The accused knew that the government-to-government rice contract was unlawful but did not prevent it ..., the Supreme Court said. Which is a manner of seeking unlawful gains. Therefore, the action of the accused is considered negligence of duty, it said. A former commerce minister in her government was jailed for 42 years last month for falsifying government-to-government rice deals in connection with the subsidy scheme. Norrawit Larlaeng, a lawyer for Yingluck, told reporters outside the court that an appeal was being discussed. The Shinawatras had commanded huge support by courting rural voters, helping them to win every general election since 2001, but their foes accused them of corruption and nepotism. Under the rice scheme, Yingluck s government bought rice from farmers at above-market prices, leading to stockpiles and distorted global prices. Losses amounted to $8 billion, the military government has said. Yingluck s Puea Thai Party defended the scheme on Wednesday. The Puea Thai Party believes in the various schemes that the party introduced during the previous administration, Phumtham Wechayachai, secretary-general of party, said. Yingluck was banned from politics for five years in 2015 but remained the unofficial face of the party and the populist movement that supports it. Kan Yuengyong, executive director of the Siam Intelligence Unit think-tank, said Wednesday s sentence marked the end of her political career, adding that it was unlikely she would return to Thailand in the near future. Politically, this is an execution for Yingluck. The verdict has effectively taken her out of politics, Kan told Reuters. Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University, said the Puea Thai Party was now rudderless . Pheu Thai officially becomes rudderless and will have to regroup under new leadership. If it is not dissolved and if its leader is more compromising, then maybe Thailand can move on, he said. The bottom line is that the Shinawatras have corruption problems and their elected governments are flawed but their unintended legacy of helping and connecting with the masses will need to be openly adopted by their opponents if Thailand is to move on. Dozens of supporters had gathered outside the court to hear the verdict on Wednesday. That was far fewer than on Aug. 25, when the court was originally scheduled to deliver its verdict, only to find out that Yingluck had fled the country. Though her whereabouts has not been disclosed by either her aides or the junta, Reuters reported last month that she had fled to Dubai where Thaksin has a home and lives in self-imposed exile to avoid a 2008 jail sentence for corruption. Neither Yingluck or Thaksin commented publicly immediately after the verdict. Nothing has been heard from Yingluck since she fled the country, and one of her lawyers, Sommai Koosap, told Reuters outside the court on Wednesday that she has not been in contact. Photos posted on Instagram this week by one of Thaksin s daughters show Thaksin in London. None of the photos features Yingluck. The leader of the junta, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, said on Tuesday he knows where Yingluck is but would not reveal it until after the verdict is read. Thai authorities investigating how Yingluck escaped said last week they have questioned three police officers who admitted to helping her.


http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/04/... Here's Bill Clinton, calling Obamacare the craziest thing in the world. Then, after he got an earful from Hillary, he tried to walk back his comments.


Tom Hanks is set to executive produce an HBO miniseries about Donald Trump's historic election and stunning victory over Hillary Clinton, according to the Hollywood Reporter. [Jay Roach will direct the project while Gary Goetzman is also signed on to executive produce. The Trump miniseries will be based on the third installment of political commentary duo Mark Halperin and John Heilemann's book Game Change. Roach, Hanks, and Goetzman all collaborated with Halperin and Heilemann on the 2012 HBO film Game Change, which chronicled the 2008 presidential campaign of Senator John McCain and former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin. The 2012 installment of Game Change was described by Breitbart News as a "heinous piece of propaganda," an " contribution to Barack Obama," and an overall hackneyed political on Governor Palin. Halperin and Heilemann's 2010 bestseller Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime was over 400 pages long. But, as Breitbart reported, the HBO film focused primarily on Palin and largely ignored President Obama. Of course the 2012 installment of Game Change, which starred Ed Harris, Julianne Moore, Woody Harrelson, and Sarah Paulson, was a runaway success. It snagged three Golden Globes and five Primetime Emmy Awards, among others. "We are thrilled to continue our relationship with Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, whose work on their book Game Change set the bar for political reporting and storytelling inside a presidential campaign," HBO Films president Len Amato said in a statement. "Reuniting Game Change director and executive producer Jay Roach and Playtone producers Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman with Mark and John for a project based on their upcoming book promises to vividly capture the most unique and impactful event in modern American politics. " No writer has been attached yet for the Trump miniseries. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson


Report Copyright Violation If the Christian evangelicals believe Trump will save America then that means he will destroy it instead. These people are always wrong. They supported bush. The patriot act. Torture. The war in Iraq. They demonized anybody who didn't support the war. Called them unpatriotic. These also are the same people who want to bomb Iran because it would bring about the rapture. They told us Obama was the antichrist and would take away your guns but then nothing happened. And they think Putin(Mr. KGB)is a great man. They control hellholes like Mississippi and Alabama(two of the sorriest states in the country).If Trump is Pat Robertson's man you better hope he doesn't get elected. It will be a disaster. No doubt about it. Page 1


In the book, The World is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean s are One, Marine Biologist Sylvia Earle wrote: Even if you never have the chance to see or touch the ocean, the ocean touches you with every breath you take, every drop of water you drink, every bite you consume Everyone, everywhere is inextricably connected to and utterly dependent upon the existence of the sea. A report released this week discovered roughly 93 percent of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the largest living structure on Earth, has been damaged due to coral bleaching. We ve never seen anything like this scale of bleaching before, said Professor Terry Hughes in a press release. Professor Hughes is Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, and leader of the National Coral Bleaching Task Force which produced the report. In the northern Great Barrier Reef, it s like 10 cyclones have come ashore all at once. The task force evaluated 911 coral reefs by air around Australia, and found 93 percent were suffering from coral bleaching to some extent. The bleaching was found to be worse in the northern sector of the reef, where no coral has escaped its impact. Based on diving surveys, the researchers say they have seen nearly 50 percent coral death so far.According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, part of the United States Department of Commerce, increased ocean temperatures caused by climate change are the leading cause of coral bleaching. Coral depends on algae to survive, which is very sensitive to temperature changes. If warm temperatures remain constant for a long period of time, the coral dispels the algae, leaving it colored white, and eventually leading to the death of the coral if the stresses are prolonged. In 2005, the United States lost half its coral reefs in the Caribbean Sea due to a massive bleaching event. High carbon emissions absorbed by the ocean also decrease Ph levels, leading to ocean acidification. Observation stations monitored by the US EPA in Hawaii, Bermuda, and the Canary Islands found that in the past two decades, carbon dioxide levels in the oceans have increased, directly resulting in the acidification. These changes also put stresses on marine life, diminishing the quality of their habitats and depleting food sources. If emissions aren t reduced soon, the negative effects already being seen in these environments will be irreversible. The bleaching doesn t necessarily mean the coral is dead, but the greater the stressors causing coral bleaching, the less likely the coral is able to recover. It can take thousands of years for coral reefs to fully form, so once the coral dies, those ecosystems are unlikely to ever recover. This is, by far, the worst bleaching they ve seen on the Great Barrier Reef, Mark Eakin, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration s Coral Reef Watch, in an interview with the Washington Post. Our climate model-based Four Month Bleaching Outlook was predicting that severe bleaching was likely for the [Great Barrier Reef] back in December. Unfortunately, we were right and much of the reef has bleached, especially in the north. Today on Earth Day, it is important to acknowledge and fully comprehend how dire the situation of our world s ecosystems are because of climate change. There is no time for incremental efforts. We must either make the necessary changes to mitigate the effects of climate change in the future now, or pay dearly for the consequences which will manifest exponentially in the near future. We can no longer treat our Earth as a source of infinite economic development when the resources on it are finite.Featured Image Courtesy of Flickr


Cultural exchanges between countries need to consider the temperature of popular opinion and how people feel about each other, a senior Chinese official said on Friday, amid a freeze in cultural ties with South Korea over an anti-missile system. China has been angered by Seoul s decision to deploy the U.S.-made Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, saying that its powerful radar harms China s own national security and will do nothing to lessen tensions with North Korea, which THAAD is supposed to defend against. Popular South Korean soap operas have been pulled from streaming sites, K-Pop singers have had concerts canceled and there has been a dramatic drop in Chinese tourists to South Korea. China has not officially linked the moves to the THAAD tensions, but has said relations need to have a basis in popular opinion . Asked about the prospects for cultural exchanges with South Korea amid the THAAD dispute, deputy media regulator Zhang Hongsen said cultural exchanges were not an ordinary exchange of goods . Cultural exchanges relate to where the popular will inclines and to emotional choices, he said, speaking on the sidelines of a Communist Party Congress. So what we say is that culture exchanges are an exchange of temperatures, and this temperature comes from popular feeling and emotion, added Zhang, who is a Vice Minister of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television. When popular sentiments and emotions align, cultural exchanges and cooperation can certainly develop in a positive direction, he said, without elaborating.


China s ambassador to Washington on Friday called on the United States to refrain from making threats over North Korea, which a day earlier launched another missile over Japan into the Pacific Ocean. Ambassador Cui Tiankai told reporters at an embassy event: Honestly, I think the United States should be doing ... much more than now, so that there s real effective international cooperation on this issue. They should refrain from issuing more threats. They should do more to find effective ways to resume dialogue and negotiation, he said. President Donald Trump and others in the United States and beyond have urged China to increase diplomatic and economic pressure on its Communist ally to help resolve the standoff over North Korea s weapons programmes. China fought alongside North Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War, in which Chinese leader Mao Zedong lost his eldest son, and Beijing has long been Pyongyang s chief ally and primary trade partner. But the Chinese government has pushed back against the notion that it has any control over Pyongyang, and says it is the United States that should be doing more. Trump tweeted earlier this month that the United States was considering halting trade with countries doing business with North Korea. Cui on Friday cautioned against putting China-U.S. trade on the table. Efforts to undermine Sino-U.S. trade, or even slapping sanctions on China, I think would be off-target, the Chinese state news agency Xinhua quoted Cui as saying on Friday at a Chinese National Day reception. If someone were to pressure China or impose sanctions on China over the DPRK, it would not be supported by many U.S. citizens, Cui said, referring to North Korea by the acronym for its official name, Democratic People s Republic of Korea. Workers at U.S. airplane factories, farmers growing soybeans, companies that sell smartphones to China, manufacturers that enjoy large market shares in China, companies in the service sector that have gained trade surplus in China, U.S. states that engage in robust trade with China would all stand against it, Xinhua quoted him as saying.


Turkey under President Tayyip Erdogan needs more Westernization, and not less, to bolster dwindling free speech rights and a wobbly democracy, Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk said on Tuesday. Pamuk, 65, also said in an online chat in the Reuters Global Markets Forum that he laments much modernization and saw his stories, including his 10th novel published last year, The Red-Haired Woman as focused on the personal costs people pay for discarding traditions in the rush to adapt to the ways of 21st century. The following are edited excerpts: Question: Is Turkey, often described as a bridge between West and East, becoming too Westernized? Answer: The lack of free speech is so grave that we definitely need to be more friendly with the West and Europe. I am not worried about too much Westernization, especially in these days when government is trying to push us away from Western values. Q: Do you see gentrification in Istanbul and other Western influence in Turkey as threats or positives to Turkey s identity? A: I actually do not want to bring East and West together. I essentially want to write poetic, literary observations about the lives of the people in and around Istanbul. And since Istanbul is made up of things from the West, and modernity, and also things that come from traditional cultures, and East, readers think my intention is to bridge them. Actually, there are things from East and West that are already harmoniously together in Istanbul. All I do is invent stories about them. Q: How is that theme in The Red Haired Woman ? A: My main character carries the weight of having an idealist political father, while he is more busy with making money. I have many friends like that ... They are troubled by moral issues like the ones I discussed in this book. Individuality versus belonging to community ... Or economic development and comforts of modernity versus preserving the past than the old architecture and culture. My books are always about how to be modern without losing your identity. Q: It is Nobel award season. How did your win in 2006 affect you? A: My books were already translated to 46 languages before I won the Nobel prize. Now my books are translated into 63 languages. The prize may have helped. It definitely brought me new readers and some diplomatic responsibility of representing my country.


Mainstream Media Calls Real News "Fake" Because Their Narrative Is Collapsing Mainstream Media Calls Real News "Fake" Because Their Narrative Is Collapsing Relampago Furioso  Relampago is the author of The New Modern Man blog. He is a former member of the mainstream media turned dissident. He enjoys striking at the Establishment using politically incorrect truths and electrifying SJWs with logic. He is now living the expat dream in the Caribbean and does not want to come back to The Matrix. Relampago also maintains a library of Red Pill Book and Film recommendations and is a Red Pill Life Coach , helping other men realize the dream of getting laid on the regular, getting out of debt, and traveling the world.  Facebook | Twitter November 23, 2016 Manosphere  There are those who think we should only get our news from "official" sources. You know, like the blonde telling you what to believe in between hocking a hockey game.  If there's anything the 2016 election showed us, it's that the American people are increasingly distrustful of and not listening to the commands laid out by the once mainstream media. They're increasingly reticent to commit national and demographic suicide under the guise of "diversity" and other nebulous ideals. They're desperate not only to "drain the swamp" but to restore some sense of national pride and stability to the declining USA.  In response, the controllers of the presstitutes (the people who really run the world) are already hard at work trying to find some way to create a false narrative about "fake news" sites in order to lay the ground work for censorship and control. The Internet has all but destroyed the corporate-government narrative, and there is a shit fit happening at the highest levels of the propaganda ministry (i.e. CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, et. al.) because they have learned the American people know how full of shit they really are.  Sites like Return Of Kings are on the front lines of this war in support of free speech and it is vitally important we stay on top of our game to avoid a reversion to the managed propaganda the centralized control of mass media gave us over the last 50 years. Hackers and leakers play right into the hands of the censorship narrative  Make no mistake, one of the reasons leakers of misdeeds done by politicians and the elite they work for have been allowed to continue leaking dirty laundry is because it plays into the hands of those with designs on censorship and re-gaining control of the information the sheeple get to listen to. Having Julian Assange and Edward Snowden doing leaks of information and giving them extensive press coverage plays right into the hands of the censorship brigade because they can also play the protecting national security game when the time to silence dissent comes .  Fake news is only the first assault in what is sure to become a full scale war on free speech on the Internet. We can be thankful Trump won the election rather than The Bitch since his election will slow the process of censorship, but the aggressiveness of the "fake news" narrative shows us how determined some people are to shut us up and shut us down.  The New York Times is already on the front lines of this assault on free speech on the Internet. Only days after The Bitch lost the election, publisher Arthur Sulzberger published a Mea Culpa and promised to rededicate the newspaper to "honest" reporting.  We cannot deliver the independent, original journalism for which we are known without the loyalty of our subscribers… [The New York Times promises to] give the news impartially, without fear or favor… We also approach the incoming Trump administration without bias.  Don't buy into it. This is what's known in Public Relations as a diversion tactic. While we focus on our seeming victory, they're already moving on to their next false narrative – so-called fake news. No sooner than the ink dried on the promise to give Trump a chance, The New York Times was moving to shut up the very people who made possible his rise to power – the alt-right and alternative news web sites.  While some fake news is produced purposefully by teenagers in the Balkans or entrepreneurs in the United States seeking to make money from advertising, false information can also arise from misinformed social media posts by regular people that are seized on and spread through a hyperpartisan blogosphere.  They did a spurious case study on how a "rumor" got started about protesters being bussed in to protest at Trump rallies. Never mind the mainstream media is a business that runs lock, stock and barrel on fake news. Almost every narrative they create is a false one. One need do no more than a Google search to discredit many, if not most of the mainstream media's stories. The hypocrisy is astounding. Pulling The Plug Facebook censorship algorithms are nothing compared to the elite's agenda of eliminating free speech online  Whether or not the "fake news" narrative gains traction, the next step will be for the elite to create a problem that affects millions of people online, then follow through with the Hegelian Dialectic with a pre-ordained "solution" to "make everyone safer online" and to "stop the spread of false information" while "protecting free speech" online by destroying it.  Look for no less than a figurative "Internet 9/11" if the elite become desperate enough.  They'll pull the plug on the backbone of the Internet, shutting down e-commerce and communication online for a few days, blame it on a "fake news" story (just like Benghazi was blamed on a YouTube video) then spring in to save us from ourselves by passing all sorts of creative laws and restrictions aimed at nothing more than eliminating competition to the corporate-government narrative and gutting yet another of our Bill of Rights protections.  Make no mistake, Freedom of Speech is the most important of Amendments to the Constitution. Once that is taken away, it's Game Over. Obama has already floated the idea of silencing those of us who "cling to our guns and religion" and continues this narrative even after the election of Trump  Obama has already been floating the idea of official news web sites. This is nothing more than proposing the creation of the American equivalent of Pravda in the Soviet Union, in which only the state-approved newspaper was considered the truth and everything else was considered lies. Obviously, the New World Order socialist narrative would be the only truth under a system such as this, and traditional and conservative views would be relentlessly silenced  Check out what The Messiah said in Berlin recently.  In an age where there's so much active misinformation, and it's packaged very well, and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television, where some overzealousness on the part of a US official is equated with constant and severe repression elsewhere, if everything seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won't know what to protect. If we can't discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems.  The fact he is saying these things should frighten you. It should also make you angry. This statement is a PC way of saying the goal of the power structure is to shut us the fuck up. They want us to listen to clueless "journalists" who encourage the idea of microchipping your children and later, yourselves so every aspect of your life can be controlled by the government.  We must fight back by discrediting the "fake news" narrative at every turn and informing those who will listen of the possibility of a fake "Internet 9/11" designed to give the government a reason to curb free expression on the very Libertarian Internet of today.


Islamic Militant Compound Discovered Inside America's Borders, Obama Refuses To Act (Obviously) Oct 26, 2016 Previous post  The threat of terrorism on United States soil continues to skyrocket at the hands of Obama's weak policies. Not only have terrorist groups like ISIS gotten stronger internationally, but they are also finding ways to resettle inside the United States and carry out attacks here.  Within the past month, we have experienced three terrorist attacks on our own soil. A Muslim jihadi in Minnesota went on a stabbing spree the same weekend that a group of Muslims set off pressure cooker bombs in New York and New Jersey while pledging allegiance to ISIS.  It has been reported that an Islamic compound has been spotted on American soil. The facility is known as "Islamberg," and it has many in the area very scared and worried.  Islamberg is located in the small town of Tompkins, Delaware County. As the video below will show, many have speculated that dozens of these Islamic compounds exist on American soil, and when these two reporters stumbled upon one, they confirmed our deepest fears.  They wanted to investigate reports of "unusual sounds of gunfire and explosions…emanating from the compound."  Here is what else they found:


ARLINGTON, Va. — Walk into the immigration court here, and scenes of a justice system in collapse abound. In the overflowing courtrooms, one judge raced through hearings, opening 85 cases on a recent day, and several others were not far behind. The judge in Courtroom 2 had unsettling news for Edhite Pouken Shienji, a woman from Cameroon seeking asylum. After 14 years of delays, she was finally scheduled for a hearing. But at the last minute, the judge was reassigned to handle the cases of some migrants from Central America. Her hearing was postponed once again — to 2019. In Courtroom 8, there was a deportation hearing for Damián Martínez, from Mexico. The judge soon discovered he was a infant, dozing on the shoulder of his mother. Somehow the baby's case had become separated in court records from hers. The bewildered mother, in court without a lawyer, had no clue how to fix the problem. The judge could only urge her to make sure that Damián "presents himself in all of his future hearings. " Weighed down by a backlog of more than 520, 000 cases, the United States immigration courts are foundering, increasingly failing to deliver timely, fair decisions to people fighting deportation or asking for refuge, according to interviews with lawyers, judges and government officials. With too few judges, overworked clerks and an antiquated docket based on stacks of paper files, many of the 56 courts nationwide have become crippled by delays and bureaucratic breakdowns. The courts will be a major obstacle for Donald J. Trump and his plans to deport as many as three million immigrants he says have criminal records. Many of those deportations — at least hundreds of thousands — would have to be approved by immigration judges. Mr. Trump has also said he intends to freeze federal hiring, which would prevent the courts from bringing on new judges and clerks, who are federal employees. Without significant new resources, the courts would probably slow Mr. Trump's deportations to a stall. On a visit to the immigration court in Denver four years ago, cases were moving briskly, but judges were starting to worry because hearing delays were reaching 18 months. Now in Denver, the court with the longest wait times in the country, most cases drag on more than five years, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research group studying federal data, has found. In Arlington, by reputation one of the nation's courts, eight judges have more than 30, 000 cases, with some scheduling hearings in 2022. "The system has been failing, but now it is reaching a tipping point," said Benjamin Johnson, the executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Unlike other federal courts, which are part of the judiciary, immigration courts are run by the Justice Department, making them subject to shifting political priorities in Washington. The backlog started building years ago, as President Obama stepped up immigration enforcement while Congress clamped down on spending. A hiring freeze at the Justice Department under the budget sequester from 2011 to 2014 exacerbated the problem. In the past two years, the administration won increases for the courts from Congress, and the number of immigration judges rose by 65 to about 300 today. But the hiring of judges is glacially slow. With each judge completing an average of 750 cases a year, the courts would need at least 520 judges to eliminate the backlog within one year, according to an analysis by Human Rights First, a watchdog group in New York. The worst crunch was created by the Obama administration after families from Central America surged across the southwest border in 2014 and again this year. In late 2014, justice officials ordered the courts to rush asylum claims of Central American parents and children to the front of their dockets, pushing other cases back. Officials hoped migrants who were denied would be deported quickly, sending a message to others in Central America to stay home. Judge Paul W. Schmidt observed the effect of this edict from his bench in an austere Arlington courtroom. "It's total chaos," he said in an interview, after retiring from the immigration bench in June after nearly two decades. Mr. Schmidt was given cases that were not priorities. Before long, his docket was piled with more than 10, 000 cases. The only dates open on his hearing calendar were six years away. Mr. Schmidt recalled the shock on the faces of those before him when he announced the distant date when they could expect a decision. "It becomes clear to people these are just imaginary dates," he said. "That robs the judges of credibility. The court as a whole loses credibility. " The administration's plan did not succeed, Justice Department officials acknowledge. Across the country, more than 161, 000 cases of parents and children from Central America have been opened since 2014, but so far judges have finished only about 67, 000 — or about 40 percent — of them, according to records. Other cases are inching forward as migrants fearing for their safety press their arguments for protection. In nearly 41, 000 of the cases completed, judges ruled against immigrants and ordered them deported, the records show. But in practice, with enforcement agents under instructions from the administration to focus on deporting dangerous criminals, few deportations of families from Central America, who mostly do not have criminal records, have been carried out. "The system is there to provide due process. It isn't there to send enforcement messages," Mr. Schmidt said. Mr. Trump has said he will choose as his nominee for attorney general Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, a vigorous proponent of strong immigration enforcement. With broad powers over the immigration courts, Mr. Sessions could appoint tough judges and change procedures so the system in the future would move faster and be more restrictive. Mr. Sessions could cancel the appointments of roughly 75 new judges selected by Attorney General Loretta Lynch to choose judges to his liking. But it might be a year or longer before they took the bench. And Mr. Sessions would not have authority to summarily reduce the backlogs, lawyers said. As the backlogs grow, they create new problems. People who come to the courts with urgent stories of terrifying dangers that drove them from their homes find they cannot be heard for years. Circumstances change, evidence grows old, witnesses move on. Cases get scrambled or misplaced. When Reina Rojas de Ayala first filed for asylum in Arlington in 2012, she had a strong argument that she would be in grave danger if she was forced to return to El Salvador. By the time she had a hearing four years later, her legal case was diminished even though the perils at home were not. Ms. Ayala, 43, lived in Virginia with her Salvadoran husband, a legal immigrant. But she was undocumented, and in 2009 she went to El Salvador to try to obtain papers to return legally, taking two children born in the United States. The danger came from one of her older sons in El Salvador, Samuel Ayala, now 26. He demanded money, saying he needed to pay dues to a criminal gang. "He was violent, telling me he had to have the cash," Ms. Ayala said. "I told him to get a job. Many times he shoved me down and hit me. " Fearing he would kill her, she sent her American children to Virginia by plane while she went to the border to request asylum. Over time, the gang turned on Mr. Ayala, threatening the whole family. He fled to the United States, making peace with his mother. But her legal case, based on his threats, unraveled. At her hearing, the judge denied asylum but agreed to dismiss her deportation. She is in immigration limbo, allowed to remain with her family but uncertain for how long. Many foreigners cannot afford to pay for lawyers indefinitely, and in a court system where there is no right to counsel, volunteers are reluctant to take cases that could last for years. Among those who need a lawyer is a woman who crossed the border in August 2014, after hiding for months in her own darkened house in a Salvadoran mountain village to protect her family from a gang. When she could not pay the $6, 000 they demanded, she said, they went to her daughter's high school, dragged her into the street and beat her unconscious. "I saw her blood," said the woman, 36, who asked that she be identified by only her initials, Z. A. which are used on her court docket. Still fearful after two years in Virginia, in her small apartment she keeps the lights low and the curtains drawn. The daughter had scars from the beating, which persuaded a judge to grant her asylum in January. Z. A. should have won as well, but the government lost track of her case. It took a lawyer to recover it, but Z. A.'s case will begin moving forward only at a hearing next May. "This case could be done in 10 minutes," said the lawyer, Christina Wilkes. "But the court is so overwhelmed, no one can look at it. " There are some benefits for people stalled in the courts, as immigrants can stay legally in the United States and many receive work permits while their cases wind through the system. But for asylum seekers, endless waiting can be agonizing. Until they are approved, they cannot help spouses and children escape the same dangers that caused them to run. Another immigrant fled Ethiopia in 2012, one step ahead of government officials coming to jail him. An Arlington judge set the hearing to decide in his case in May 2019. His wife and two young sons, still in Ethiopia, have been continuously harassed. "My kids are suffering because of me," said the man, who requested that he be identified by only the initials on his case file, S. Y. "I used to call them two times a day. But now I stopped because I feel like I am lying to them. I used to be sociable, but now I don't even know who I am. I just sit in my house alone. "


Turkey s Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Sunday that Turkey would employ an additional 110,000 public servants in 2018 including teachers, medical and religious personnel. Speaking in the southern border town of Kilis, Yildirim said that among the total, the government would hire an extra 36,000 medical personnel and 20,000 teachers.


Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio received boosts Monday in his drive to become the mainstream Republican alternative to front-runner Donald Trump, with a string of high-profile endorsements and missteps by rival Ted Cruz's campaign. Rubio, who eked out a second-place finish in South Carolina's primary by fewer than 1,000 votes over Cruz on Saturday, racked up endorsements from prominent Republicans including U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson and former presidential candidate Bob Dole. Rubio and Cruz came out of South Carolina with sharper criticism of Trump, who swept the Southern state with a comfortable margin of victory. At the same time, the two senators' rivalry intensified - and soured. Cruz fired his main spokesman, Rick Tyler, on Monday afternoon over a video that falsely showed Rubio dismissing the Bible. Tyler had apologized late on Sunday for posting "an inaccurate story" involving a video purporting to show Rubio referring to the Bible and saying, "Not many answers in it." Tyler had retweeted a link to the misleading video and posted it on Facebook. Cruz fired Tyler the next day, saying his campaign did not question the faith of other candidates. "That's why I'm asking for Rick Tyler's resignation," Cruz said. The first-term senators from Texas and Florida are locked in a battle to become their party's alternative to political outsider Trump in Nevada's caucus on Tuesday, the last Republican presidential contest before the busy voting month of March. Tyler's dismissal came amid intense criticism of the Cruz campaign as dishonest from both Rubio and Trump. Rubio spokesman Alex Conant called Cruz a "candidate willing to do or say anything to get elected" and urged him to apologize. "There is a culture in the Cruz campaign, from top to bottom, that no lie is too big and no trick too dirty," he said. Trump seized the opportunity to pile on Cruz, whom he has repeatedly characterized as a liar. "Wow, Ted Cruz falsely suggested Marco Rubio mocked the Bible and was just forced to fire his Communications Director. More dirty tricks!" the billionaire businessman from New York said on Twitter. "Ted Cruz has now apologized to Marco Rubio and Ben Carson for fraud and dirty tricks. No wonder he has lost Evangelical support!," continued Trump, who has derided Cruz for failing to live up to expectations he would get solid support from evangelical Christians in South Carolina. Trump was the big winner in that state on Saturday, finishing ahead of Rubio by 10 percentage points. Opinion polls show Rubio and Cruz running close in Nevada, and both candidates hope to get a boost going into the contests in a dozen states on March 1. Super Tuesday is the crown jewel in the state-by-state nominating contests to pick the Republican and Democratic candidates for the Nov. 8 presidential election. Rubio on Monday also secured the backing of three Republican leaders from Nevada: U.S. Senator Dean Heller and U.S. Representatives Cresent Hardy and Mark Amodei. Senator Hatch said that, unlike many in the Republican establishment, he did not dislike Trump. "I just feel that Rubio is the more serious candidate. And I feel he has the background to be able to really help turn this mess around," Hatch told Reuters. (Additional reporting by Emily Stephenson, Megan Cassella, Susan Cornwell, Eric Beech; Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Frances Kerry and Jonathan Oatis) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production.


India s home ministry said on Monday it would confidentially share intelligence information with the Supreme Court showing Rohingya links with Pakistan-based militants, in a bid to get legal clearance for plans to deport 40,000 Rohingya Muslims. The Supreme Court is hearing an appeal lodged on behalf of Rohingya against the deportation plan proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi s Hindu nationalist government. India s home ministry submitted an affidavit to the court arguing that the hardline stance was justified by the security threat posed by illegal immigrant Rohingya, hundreds of thousands of whom have fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh, from where many have crossed into India. The ministry said the illegal influx of large numbers of Rohingya into India began four to five years ago, long before an exodus that saw more than 400,000 Rohingya flee to Bangladesh since Aug. 25 to escape a Myanmar military counter-insurgency offensive that the United Nations has called ethnic cleansing . The affidavit went on to say the government had reports from security agencies and other authentic sources indicating linkages of some of the unauthorized Rohingya immigrants with Pakistan-based terror organizations and similar organizations operating in other countries. It also said there was information on Rohingya involvement in plots by Islamic State and other extremist groups to ignite communal and sectarian violence in India. Senior home ministry official Mukesh Mittal said the Indian government would privately show the court material gathered from sensitive investigations to substantiate the claims in its affidavit. Lawyer Prashant Bhushan, who filed the plea on behalf of two Rohingya men, will file a rejoinder to the government s affidavit, his office told Reuters. The court will next hear the matter on Oct. 3. Meantime, police said on Monday that they had arrested a suspected member of al Qaeda who they believed was trying to recruit Rohingya living in the country to fight security forces in Myanmar. Senior police officer Pramod Kushwaha told Reuters that British national Shauman Haq, 27, was arrested near a bus stop in Delhi on Sunday. He had come to India via Bangladesh. Rohingya in India voiced worries that they were being unfairly tainted by the allegations and sought more understanding for their plight. We feel helpless and hopeless, said Rohingya youth leader Ali Johar, who came to India in 2012 and lives with his family in a Delhi settlement. The world s largest democracy has given us shelter but they should handle this situation more empathetically. Modi s government has been criticized by activists for not speaking out against Myanmar s recent military offensive against Rohingya insurgents, and right-wing groups in India have begun vilifying Rohingya living there. The Rohingya are denied citizenship in Buddhist-majority Myanmar and regarded as illegal immigrants, despite claiming roots that date back centuries. More than 800,000 Rohingya currently live in Bangladesh.


Rallies in support of President Donald Trump took place across America this weekend in a show of support for the new administration's agenda. [In many places, resorted to violence. Media outlets, however, suggested inaccurately that the protests were an outgrowth of the protests themselves. demonstrations were held in cities across the country, including New York, Washington, San Diego, Palm Beach, Nashville, Lansing, and Minnesota. Most rallies went forward without disruption, apart from in Berkeley, California, where anarchists became violent after holding a . Ten people were arrested in scenes reminiscent of protests at UC Berkeley against former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos's talk, while an elderly man could be seen lying in agony after being by the anarchists. Fighting is spreading to the streets in Berkeley. This isn't a Trump rally anymore. It's the anarchists. pic. twitter. — Lizzie Johnson (@lizziejohnsonnn) March 4, 2017, Violence also ensued at a rally in Minnesota, where 400 Trump supporters rallied around the state capitol rotunda in St. Paul, before being accosted by an . According to the Minnesota Star Tribune, the conflict led to scuffles, and six were arrested. WATCH: 'March 4 Trump' participants and counterprotesters engage in dueling chants at MN Capitol rotunda https: . — KSTP (@KSTP) March 4, 2017, In New York, around 200 people demonstrated their support for the president in front of Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan. Photos: Trump Supporters Rally at Trump Tower In Support Of President And Against 'Seditious Fringe' https: . pic. twitter. — New York City News (@NewYorkCityOBN) March 5, 2017, Meanwhile, in Washington D. C, around 150 Trump supporters marched from the Washington Monument to Lafayette Square. This handsome guy speaking at the #march4trump rally in Washington DC. I'm one lucky girl! 😘 @DustinStockton pic. twitter. — Jennifer Lawrence (@JenLawrence21) March 4, 2017, In Nashville, Tennesse, a huge crowd turned out at Legislative Plaza as part of the Spirit of America, with rally organizer Mark Skoda telling Breitbart News that the crowd size was estimated at 2, 000 people. Huge Crowd at Nashville Spirit of America Rally in Support of President Trump https: . pic. twitter. — Patricia Miler (@PatriciaMiler1) March 5, 2017, In Palm Beach, Florida, the president's motorcade was stopped by dozens of supporters, with Trump stepping outside the vehicle to greet them. President Trump stops by #March4Trump Rally Outside Palm Beach #PeoplesPresident pic. twitter. — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) March 4, 2017, Supporters in Lansing, Michigan, turned out in their hundreds. Donald Trump was the first Republican to win the state of Michigan since George H. W Bush in 1988, defeating Hillary Clinton in the tightest race in state's electoral history. Pro Trump rally in Lansing Michigan. pic. twitter. — #ObamaGate (@lisafedup) March 4, 2017, Over 200 Trump supporters also rallied in downtown San Diego. #NEWS President Donald Trump Supporters Rally in San Diego — NBC 7 San Diego https: . #RT pic. twitter. — Political Informant (@ThePolinformant) March 5, 2017, On Sunday evening, Donald Trump thanked supporters for the "tremendous support" he had received throughout the weekend. Thank you for the great rallies all across the country. Tremendous support. Make America Great Again! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 5, 2017, You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com


Democrats were seething Tuesday night over President Donald Trump's decision to nominate Judge Neil Gorsuch to the U. S. Supreme Court, claiming that Trump "stole" the seat from President Barack Obama. [In a fundraising email, the Democratic National Committee said (original emphasis): Judge Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, has a legal history that shows a deep sympathy for corporate interests and an apparent disdain for workers. Donald wants to put Judge Gorsuch in the Supreme Court seat the GOP stole from President Obama. Add your name to tell the Senate to reject his nomination. As an attorney, Judge Gorsuch routinely represented big businesses in class action lawsuits. As a judge on the Tenth Circuit, he wrote a concurring opinion in Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius — the case that allowed employers to deny basic health care coverage to women by ruling the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive mandate was unconstitutional. He upheld a decision that denied insurance benefits to a worker who sustained a injury that required spinal surgery. He even dissented from a ruling in favor of a truck driver whose employer illegally fired him for abandoning a trailer with locked brakes — so he wouldn't freeze to death. And as a member of the "Federalist Society," Gorsuch believes in severely restricting the power that federal agencies like the EPA have to regulate businesses. It's not hard to see why Trump loves him so much — but from where we're sitting, Joel, Judge Gorsuch has no business on the Supreme Court bench. Republicans declined to move Obama's nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, through the Senate, based on the principle — articulated by . Joe Biden ( ) decades before — that a Supreme Court Justice should not be confirmed in the last year of a lame duck administration. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the "most influential" people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.


For the first time in months, a national poll shows Donald Trump is not leading the Republican 2016 primary race, and instead has Ben Carson in first place. Carson won the support of 26% of Republican primary voters, compared to 22% who are backing Trump, according to CBS News/New York Times . Though within the poll's margin of error, it marks the first time since the billionaire businessman's dominant rise over the summer where he has been bumped from the top spot nationally. The new numbers also represent a reversal from the last CBS /New York Times poll, taken more than a month ago, which saw Trump leading Carson 27%-23%. Carson and Trump have been running consistently neck-and-neck since the start of September -- with other candidates struggling to keep pace. The switch in the lead comes as Carson has taken a clear lead in the Iowa race, beating Trump in some polls by double-digits. Trump told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Tuesday morning "I don't get it." CBS/New York Times pollsters found Carson outpacing Trump among women and evangelicals and running even with him among men. Trump performed better with moderate Republicans and voters without college degrees. No other candidate cracked double-digit support in the latest poll. Marco Rubio won 8% support, Jeb Bush and Carly Fiorina tied for fourth place with 7 percent and Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and John Kasich each got 4%. The poll does carry an important caveat, however: 70% of respondents said they had not settled on a choice yet. Trump's supporters, however, are more locked in with their support. The most recent CBS/New York Times poll surveyed 575 Republican primary voters and carries a 6-percentage-point margin of error. RELATED: Donald Trump on poll slump: 'I don't get it'


Investors and traders in Asia indicated on Monday they are mostly increasing their bets on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton winning the U.S. presidential race after the second of three debates with Republican party nominee Donald Trump. Some, though remain cautious, saying there was still a chance of a surprise Trump win. They said many in the markets were wary after being burned by the shock "Brexit" vote in June. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan edged up around 0.1 percent by mid-afternoon in Singapore on Monday, while Wall Street index futures were little changed after Clinton exchanged barbs with Republican party nominee Donald Trump in the televised event, which was shown live across trading rooms during Asia's morning. The 90-minute debate quickly turned into an acrimonious discussion of a 2005 video that emerged on Friday in which Trump was heard using vulgar language and talking about groping women. The controversy has caused some senior Republicans to withdraw their support for him. "For those that think that Trump has a very, very low chance of winning the U.S. elections it might be a good time to go long on global equities," said Itay Tuchman, Citi's head of markets for Australia and New Zealand. Markets could be prematurely pricing in a Clinton victory, as they did during the "Brexit" vote in June, when the United Kingdom voted unexpectedly to leave the European Union, said Lee Jin Yang, research analyst for Aberdeen Asset Management in Singapore. "We need to remember that Brexit only became a key focus one week before the vote. The market had priced in near zero probability of it happening but it did." According to a CNN online poll, Clinton won the debate by 57 percent to 34 percent. But Josh Crabb, head of Asian equities at Old Mutual Global Investors in Hong Kong, said he is wary of such polls - especially after Brexit. "The way that mainstream media, and a lot of commentators, interpret the outcome of the debate may be different to what the voting public in general takes away," Crabb said. "That is a concern because often, a lot of these polls have not been quite as accurate as people are expecting." Mathan Somasundarum, a strategist at stock brokerage Baillieu Holst in Sydney, said a Clinton victory would reduce the risk of the United States adopting a strong trade protectionist policy. Trump has been highly critical of the NAFTA trade deal with Mexico and Canada as well as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has yet to be ratified by the U.S. Congress. He has promised to build a border wall and make Mexico pay for it. "I would expect the U.S. dollar to weaken and you would expect then there is some pressure coming off emerging markets, and then commodities, which (are a) proxy for emerging markets," Somasundarum said. "China, commodities and the Aussie dollar should do better." While the markets had already begun to price in a Clinton victory even before the Republican party's crisis over Trump's 2005 remarks, some are beginning to game out what would happen if the Democrats won both houses of Congress, which are now Republican controlled. The possibility of the Democrats controlling Congress and the White House is a concern to some in the markets as they see it leading to more regulation of businesses and higher taxes. "Over time, people will start thinking, is this going to mean a big difference in the way taxation works? Is it going to mean more government involvement?," said Crabb at Old Mutual Global in Hong Kong. "But the immediate reaction will be a relief rally." Angus Gluskie, managing director of White Funds Management in Sydney, said while markets usually view one party dominating the government as a risk, it could be different this time. "Investors have been disappointed by the political stalemate over recent years, which has prevented meaningful and well-needed changes being pursued," Gluskie said. Steven Friedman, senior investment strategist at BNP Paris bas Investment Partners in New York, said he saw little in the debate that represented a game-changer for either candidate. "This obviously plays to Clinton's advantage, given her lead in the polls," he said. Strategists in a recent Reuters equity poll mostly viewed an election victory on Nov. 8 by Clinton as more positive for the stock market through the end of the year, largely because her positions - unlike her opponent's - are well-known. Chris Brankin, chief executive at stock brokerage TD Ameritrade Asia, said he thought Trump was much better prepared for the town hall debate in St. Louis than he was for the first debate, and that could give markets some pause. "I have always said markets 'know what they get' with Hillary, as she as always been seen as pro-Wall Street and Trump is a bit of an unknown for investors. "After tonight's debate I still think there are a lot of questions as who will be elected into office next month and markets are probably going to remain range-bound till after the U.S. elections."


The Palestinian leadership is "disappointed" by the feckless Arab reactions to reports the United States may relocate its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a former Fatah official told Breitbart Jerusalem. ["Trump is unpredictable and Arab leaders don't want to get on his bad side so soon," Dimitri Diliani, a former member of Fatah's Revolutionary Council, said, adding that "Arab leaders are waiting to see what will happen eventually and how exactly the embassy will be moved. " "It's impossible to foresee the reaction of the Palestinians on the street, but I expect it will be harsh," he said. "The Palestinian Authority must use whatever measure it has at its disposal — from rolling back the security coordination with Israel, to disbanding the PA and turning its security officers into paramilitaries. The Palestinian Authority cannot react lightly. It's the moment of truth. " "Jerusalem is not the capital of the State of Israel, it's an occupied territory," he wrongly claimed, "and the question is whether the United States wishes to become a country that violates international law," he said. "I expect the PA leadership to use whatever means it has at its disposal to resist that decision. " Earlier this week, White House Spokesman Sean Spicer was asked by reporters for an update on the embassy matter. "We are at the very beginning stages of even discussing this subject," Spicer said, according to Reuters. President Trump told Fox News's Sean Hannity on Thursday it was "too early" to discuss moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.


Five people were taken to hospital after a shooting at a baseball field in Alexandria near Washington, where Republican members of Congress were holding baseball practice, the Alexandria police chief said on Wednesday. Police Chief Michael Brown did not elaborate on the extent of their injuries. He told a news conference police received a call about an active shooter shortly after 7 a.m. ET and were on the scene within three minutes. U.S. Capitol Police Matthew Verderosa said on-scene Capitol Police officers exchanged gunfire with the suspect.


Benghazi was just a ploy to hurt Hillary Clinton s shot at the presidency, admits Rep. Darrell Issa. Like other senior Republicans who have also admitted the truth about the right s never-ending Benghazi investigations, Issa opened up and told the truth to a friendly right-wing radio show. You know, people often ask Trey Gowdy and myself, what did our investigations do? Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) told Boston Herald Radio on Friday morning. Gowdy currently chairs the House Select Committee on Benghazi, while Issa conducted his own investigation in 2012 when he served as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Well what they did is that they opened up an opportunity for the American people to sort of smell what s in the garbage can, Issa said. And I think that s the reason that a devout socialist who wants to nationalize almost everything in America is close to and probably will beat Hillary here in New Hampshire. It s not because they like Republicans. It s because they don t trust Hillary. Multiple bipartisan investigations have repeatedly cleared Sec. Clinton and President Obama of malicious wrongdoing in response to the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya. Those investigations found that systemic problems in the policies protecting ambassadors and other diplomats on foreign soil led to the tragedy that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and the contractors hired to provide security.That hasn t deterred the right from constantly invoking Benghazi, particularly in relation to Clinton s presidential campaign. Fox News and other conservative media outlets recently expressed the hope that the Michael Bay movie 13 Hours would provoke an outcry against Clinton outside of the circle of the right. Instead, the film has been a box office flop and is one of the worst-performing films ever released by the super-successful director.Just as screaming Benghazi failed to derail President Obama s re-election, it does not appear to be a potent force in halting Sec. Clinton s presidential campaign.


If Megyn [sic] Kelly Doesn't Want Her Pussy Grabbed, Why Did She Pose for This "Grab My Pussy" Photo Shoot?  Andrew Anglin Daily Stormer October 27, 2016  Megyn [sic] Kelly has continually asserted over the last two weeks that she personally fears that if Donald Trump is elected President, he will use his Presidential powers to grab her by the pussy.  However, this begs the question: if Megyn [sic] Kelly is so concerned about having her pussy grabbed, why did she pose for this "grab my pussy" photo shoot for GQ?  Keep in mind, these pictures are from 2010. She wasn't some dumb college student trying to make a few bucks to pay rent with a quick "grab my pussy" photo shoot. She was already a multi-millionaire Fox News host.  Last year, when the whore Kelly was attacking Trump as a sexist, he pointed out this "grab my pussy" photo op, and noted that Kelly is a bimbo.  In response to allegations of bimboism, Kelly told People Magazine : "I was 40, and I was pregnant, I was like, 'I look pretty good.'"  Of course, in woman-speak this translates to "I was 40, and I was pregnant, and I wanted to send the message to random men that they should grab me by the pussy to confirm that I am still attractive."  And sure, the pictures do look good, but they are airbrushed all to hell and back  For instance, she is wearing a push-up bra, but the curvature of her breasts has been corrected and wrinkles have been removed from the place where her breasts connect to her chest and from her neck. Armpit wrinkle removal is also plainly obvious.  So nothing is proved by these pictures – other than the fact she wants her pussy grabbed.  In the same year, 2010, she went on the Jew Howard Stern's show and said that she wanted to fuck Bill O'Reilly, which is bizarre and I believe sick. In this interview she also talked about her breasts and her husband's penis size.  (Full interview here .)  It is not like she didn't know she was walking into a sex interview here. That is Stern's entire shtick. And everyone knows who Howard Stern is.  So the only reason she would go on this show is to sexually objectify herself, which again, is to feel sexy when old and beginning to sag  All of this simply confirms that Megyn's continued attacks on Donald Trump – such as we saw Newt Gingrich slap her around like an even cheaper hooker than she actually is for earlier this week – are part of a gigantic shit test against Donald Trump.  Basically, Kelly's entire career is now devoted to trying to bully Donald Trump into grabbing her by the pussy.  Tsk-tsk, Megyn [sic].  Tsk-tsk.  Roger Ailes Firing Conspiracy Confirmed?  Way back when Fox News chief Roger Ailes was fired – OVER A SEXUAL HARASSMENT HOAX THAT MEGYN [sic] KELLY TOOK PART IN BY SAYING HE HUGGED HER WEIRDLY – I said that it was obviously part of an anti-Trump conspiracy by the station's owner, Rupert Murdock .  Murdock, while claiming to be a "conservative," is an elite globalist and friend of the Clintons.  Ailes, while not a perfect guy (shilled for Bush's wars, shilled for Israel), is a friend of Trump and wasn't going to allow this whore Kelly – as well as a whole bunch of other hosts and pundits – to betray the network's viewership by shilling for Hillary Clinton.  Because that is exactly what we are seeing now: a massive betrayal of Donald Trump by the Fox News channel.  O'Reilly hasn't been horrible, but he hasn't been great either.  The only one who has consistently supported Donald J. Trump is Sean Hannity, and his ratings have now gone through the roof because of it. I'm half-surprised Murdock doesn't just fire him for it, but I suppose that wouldn't work, as the entire viewership would boycott the channel. Right now, they can do a lot of damage to Trump by having the majority of their hosts shill for Hillary, but still having a few support Trump so they don't totally expose themselves as being part of a Clinton conspiracy.


Apparently, Tom Brady's missing Super Bowl jersey nearly caused an international incident. [The international manhunt that ensued after Brady's jersey went missing eventually brought authorities to the home of Martin Mauricio Ortega, a Mexican journalist and tabloid newspaper boss who, as it turns out, not only had Brady's jersey from this past Super Bowl but also had Brady's jersey from Super Bowl XLIX and Von Miller's helmet from Super Bowl L. Though, as reported by Robert Klemko and Jenny Vrentas in the Monday Morning Quarterback, this case was about a lot more than a missing jersey. It also had the potential to hurt U. S. relations. In fact, so concerned were U. S. authorities that they didn't even want to ask the Mexican police for help. According to the MMQB, "American officials were also cognizant of the charged atmosphere. 'We had [Ortega] identified — that wasn't the point,' says a U. S. investigator who worked on the case. 'It was now the point of walking that political minefield as delicately as we could to appease everybody. We didn't want to upset the Mexican authorities, we didn't want to upset the Mexican people, we didn't want to upset the U. S. embassy. '" Though Ortega was in possession of more than $500, 000 dollars of property stolen from American citizens in the U. S. the on the part of U. S. law enforcement over making Mexican authorities "upset," resulted in American officials only seeking the return of the stolen Super Bowl hardware, as opposed to pressing any charges against Ortega. From the MMQB: Dressed in his pajamas, his stunned wife looking on, Ortega was with armed federal agents. According to a source in the Mexican government, a deal was presented: Hand over the Super Bowl jerseys and whatever else you've stolen, and you will sleep in your own bed not only tonight, but for the foreseeable future. Ortega fished a black trash bag out of a dresser drawer and gave it to the police, who took photos of the transaction to prove Ortega's cooperation. Agents didn't tear up the floorboards, toss cabinets or pull kitchen appliances from their wall connections. They didn't even search the lower floor. They simply asked, Do you have anything else? He did. He made a phone call to a friend who arrived shortly thereafter. (Mexican police on the scene dubbed the physically stout newcomer Gordito, "little fat one. ") The friend brought with him an helmet with scuff marks on the crown: Von Miller's Super Bowl 50 helmet. The rest is history: Brady got his jersey back, American citizen and Rob Gronkowski attempted to steal it again, we all had a laugh, and all's well that ends well. However, if you were wondering why Donald Trump got elected president, it's pretty well laid out for you here. Here you have a Mexican citizen, in this country as a guest, robbing two U. S. citizens of merchandise totaling more than $500, 000, and American law enforcement seem more concerned over "appeasing" Mexico than they are with securing justice for the Americans who got robbed. Of course, the FBI didn't have to arrest Ortega for stealing jerseys and a helmet. If the only people we had to worry about crossing the border to commit crimes were Mexican sports memorabilia thieves, then the world would be a far better place. However, the attitude displayed by U. S. law enforcement here, the attitude which prioritizes niceties and appeasement of foreign countries and foreign people over and above justice for Americans citizens, seems to only rear its ugly head when law enforcement is investigating NFL memorabilia thieves and not when they're investigating murders, drug trafficking, and kidnapping. The wall just got ten feet taller. Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter: @themightygwinn


***WARNING***This video will make your blood boil. The exchange between this Hispanic woman, (who we re pretty sure is not a legal citizen, based on her comment to the victim, when she screamed, F*ck your laws! after he cited his right to free-speech) and the victim is stunning. Over and over again, this ill-informed and unbelievably angry student makes up her own facts with absolutely no basis whatsoever. Saying things like the signature Trump hat that reads Make America GReat Again represents the genocide of a bunch of people and America was never great and of but of course, You stole this land! Just another ungrateful immigrant who is likely one of Obama s Dreamers. According to Campus Reform, here s how the unbelievable exchange went down:A Trump-supporting student at the University of California, Riverside had his MAGA hat stolen by a peer who demanded that administrators refuse to allow him to continue to wear it.A video of the incident obtained by Campus Reform shows an enraged female student taking the hat to the school s Student Life Department as Matthew Vitale fruitlessly attempts to explain to the young woman that the hat is his property. I swear to God I could burn this sh*t. I swear to God I could burn this sh*t, she continues as several staffers look on. Are you people not going to do anything? She is stealing my property, Vitale pleads, though the altercation went on for several more minutes. We will need to return his property to him, but we can talk about one university employee begins to explain before being abruptly cut off by the student thief. How about we talk about not letting him wear this sh*t on campus? the thief retorts, while Vitale later tells a growing presence of administrators that the fact that you people haven t gotten this back for me is sad and wrong. The altercation continued for several minutes until the hat was relinquished to an administrator who then returned it to Vitale, though not before his fellow student got in the last word. F*** your f***ing freedom of speech, boy. F***it. F*** it because your freedom of speech is literally killing a lot of people out there.


While Donald Trump has been taking vacations, special counsel Robert Mueller has been working hard on the Russia investigation. Instead of golfing this weekend, we suggest that the former reality show star huddle with his lawyers. Trump s former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about conversations with the Russian ambassador and he s fully cooperating with Mueller. As part of the plea deal, Flynn admitted that he was directed by a senior member of the Trump transition team to make contact with Russian officials in December. In addition, Flynn is prepared to testify that Trump as a candidate, ordered him to make contacts with the Russians.This marks the first instance of solid proof that there was collusion between team Trump and a hostile foreign government.On Friday, just after the news broke, the White House insisted that Flynn s guilty plea will not implicate Trump or anyone else in the White House.The White House said in a statement that Flynn was fired for making false statements to Trump officials, and that he worked for the administration for a short time and that he was a former Obama administration official. The false statements involved mirror the false statements to White House officials which resulted in his resignation in February of this year, said White House lawyer Ty Cobb. Nothing about the guilty plea or the charge implicates anyone other than Mr. Flynn. The White House then referred to Flynn as the former National Security Advisor at the White House for 25 days as well as a former Obama administration official. However, the White House left out a few important details. President Obama fired Flynn as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and he also warned Trump about Flynn during a discussion two days after the election and emphasized that he had concerns about him joining the national security team for the new president.On top of that, just after Flynn was forced to resign, Trump called him a wonderful man who was treated unfairly by the media.Photo by David Becker/Getty Images.


21st Century Wire says No doubt about it. In comparison to Washington s other weapons trafficking exploits, like Operation Fast & Furious, this one is even more reckless, dangerous, totally unethical and completely illegal. Back in 2011, President Obama green-lighted one of the CIA s worst ever operations one which resulted in a five year-long flood of weapons, ammunition right into the hands of moderate terrorist fighters running wild in Syria.In total, hundreds of millions in US taxpayer funds have been spent on arming terrorists in Syria. This is no accident. Obama assured Arab monarchs that the US would supply the weapons for the proxy war in Syria.The twisted logic and naive optimism of Washington elites was such that they were convinced that these terrorists would eventually bring Syria to its knees and topple the government in Damascus enabling the US-led coalition to divide up Syria and rules over a protracted period of chaos in the region, not caring about the collateral damage they have caused along the way.Somehow, we are meant be believe that the current US President really cares about gun control, and yet here he is running point one of the largest illegal weapons-tracking operations in history, and not a crocodile tear is shed for any of the hundreds of thousands of innocent Syrian lives that have been lost because of this criminal US policy.This is proof that the US has been actively undermining the ceasefire in Syria, but it s only the tip of iceberg IHS Janes 360Documents released by the US government s Federal Business Opportunities (FBO) website have provided an indication of the types and numbers of Eastern European weapons and ammunition the United States is providing to Syrian rebel groups as part of a programme that continues despite the widely respected ceasefire in that country.[The following manifest was make available through official channels]The FBO has released two solicitations in recent months looking for shipping companies to transport explosive material from Eastern Europe to the Jordanian port of Aqaba on behalf of the US Navy s Military Sealift Command.Released on 3 November 2015, the first solicitation sought a contractor to ship 81 containers of cargo that included explosive material from Constanta in Bulgaria to Aqaba.The solicitation was subsequently updated with a detailed packing list that showed the cargo had a total weight of 994 tonnes, a little under half of which was to be unloaded at Agalar, a military pier near the Turkish town of Tasucu, the other half at Aqaba.The cargo listed in the document included AK-47 rifles, PKM general-purpose machine guns, DShK heavy machine guns, RPG-7 rocket launchers, and 9K111M Faktoria anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW) systems. The Faktoria is an improved version of the 9K111 Fagot ATGW, the primary difference being that its missile has a tandem warhead for defeating explosive reactive armour (ERA) fitted to some tanks.READ MORE SYRIA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Syria Files


No party is likely to obtain a majority of votes in Austria s parliamentary election on Oct. 15. A coalition between two of the three biggest parties the conservative People s Party (OVP), the Social Democrats (SPO) and the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) will probably be needed to govern. Below is a breakdown of polling, positions and comments the parties have made about potential coalitions. Since 31-year-old Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz took over as leader of the OVP in May, his party has consistently attracted support in polls of around 33 percent on a platform dominated by tough rhetoric on immigration. That has dislodged the Freedom Party from the top position in polls it reached in the aftermath of the refugee influx of 2015 and 2016. The Freedom Party is competing with Chancellor Christian Kern s Social Democrats for second place, both at around a quarter of votes in most polls. Polls put the Greens, the liberal Neos and a new party founded by former Greens lawmaker Peter Pilz all on around 5 percent of the vote, above the 4-percent threshold for entering parliament. OVP leader Kurz called an end to the centrist coalition with the Social Democrats, triggering a snap parliamentary election. He has not ruled out any party as a potential coalition partner and has said he will hold talks with all parties if his party comes first. Kurz has avoided setting conditions before the vote apart from saying that any potential partner must be pro-European and not merely stand by Europe, but also have the desire to shape Europe . His plans on cutting immigration, reducing the corporation tax burden and streamlining the EU overlap with the Freedom Party s. The OVP wants a slimmer EU that focuses on its core competences such as trade and securing its external borders. In contrast to the FPO, however, Kurz is in favor of more European defense cooperation, which he says would not threaten Austria s neutrality. The FPO says it would only go into a coalition if it were given control of the Interior Ministry. It also would like to secure the post of foreign minister, but has not made that a fixed condition. FPO leader Heinz-Christian Strache has said the FPO will not enter a coalition with the SPO until a full SPO party conference has lifted the ban on coalitions with his party. The decision to lift the ban was taken by the SPO party leadership. The FPO has also said it would only enter a coalition that results in more referendums or direct democracy , which is part of the OVP program. Strache has rowed back from the FPO s former stark euroskepticism, but he has called the idea of a European army a red line. He says Austria is at the heart of Europe but also wants a referendum on Austria s future in the EU if it hands more powers to Brussels or if Turkey accedes to the bloc. Strache has also ruled out that the FPO will sign up to a coalition headed by the third-placed party if it comes second, as it did in 2000 when it became a junior partner to the OVP. Under Chancellor Christian Kern, the SPO has lifted self-imposed ban on national coalitions with the Freedom Party (the two parties already govern together in Burgenland, one of Austria s nine provinces). The ban was replaced by a values compass , which makes principles such as a pro-European position and gender equality pre-conditions for cooperation. Kern has also said the FPO must leave the far-right faction in the European Parliament, which France s National Front is also part of, if it wants to join a coalition with the Social Democrats. In a recent debate with Strache, Kern said the two parties are still worlds apart . The Social Democrats favor closer European integration on issues like economic and monetary union and social policy.