Mon, 24 Oct 2016 10:26 UTC © Sophie Wolfson 'Music probably does something unique. It stimulates the brain in a very powerful way, because of our emotional connection with it.' The multimillion dollar brain training industry is under attack. In October 2014, a group of over 100 eminent neuroscientists and psychologists wrote an open letter warning that "claims promoting brain games are frequently exaggerated and at times misleading". Earlier this year, industry giant Lumosity was fined $2m, and ordered to refund thousands of customers who were duped by false claims that the company's products improve general mental abilities and slow the progression of age-related decline in mental abilities. And a recent review examining studies purporting to show the benefits of such products found "little evidence ... that training improves improves everyday cognitive performance". While brain training games and apps may not live up to their hype, it is well established that certain other activities and lifestyle choices can have neurological benefits that promote overall brain health and may help to keep the mind sharp as we get older. One of these is musical training. Research shows that learning to play a musical instrument is beneficial for children and adults alike, and may even be helpful to patients recovering from brain injuries. "Music probably does something unique," explains neuropsychologist Catherine Loveday of the University of Westminster. "It stimulates the brain in a very powerful way, because of our emotional connection with it." Playing a musical instrument is a rich and complex experience that involves integrating information from the senses of vision, hearing, and touch, as well as fine movements, and learning to do so can induce long-lasting changes in the brain. Professional musicians are highly skilled performers who spend years training, and they provide a natural laboratory in which neuroscientists can study how such changes - referred to as experience-dependent plasticity - occur across their lifespan. Changes in brain structure Early brain scanning studies revealed significant differences in brain structure between musicians and non-musicians of the same age. For example, the corpus callosum, a massive bundle of nerve fibers connecting the two sides of the brain, is significantly larger in musicians. The brain areas involved in movement, hearing, and visuo-spatial abilities also appear to be larger in professional keyboard players. And, the area devoted to processing touch sensations from the left hand is increased in violinists. These studies compared data from different groups of people at one point in time. As such, they could not determine whether the observed differences were actually caused by musical training, or if existing anatomical differences predispose some to become musicians. But later, longitudinal studies that track people over time have shown that young children who do 14 months of musical training exhibit significant structural (pdf) and functional brain changes (pdf) compared to those who do not. Together, these studies show that learning to play a musical instrument not only increases grey matter volume in various brain regions, but can also strengthen the long-range connections between them. Other research shows that musical training also enhances verbal memory, spatial reasoning, and literacy skills, such that professional musicians usually outperform non-musicians on these abilities. Long-lasting benefits for musicians Importantly, the brain scanning studies show that the extent of anatomical change in musicians' brains is closely related to the age at which musical training began, and the intensity of training. Those who started training at the youngest age showed the largest changes when compared to non-musicians. Even short periods of musical training in early childhood can have long-lasting benefits. In one 2013 study, for example, researchers recruited 44 older adults and divided them into three groups based on the level of formal musical training they had received as children. Participants in one group had received no training at all; those in the second had done a little training, defined as between one and three years of lessons; and those in the third had received moderate levels of training (four to 14 years). The researchers played recordings of complex speech sounds to the participants, and used scalp electrodes to measure the timing of neural responses in a part of the auditory brainstem . As we age, the precision of this timing deteriorates, making it difficult to understand speech, especially in environments with a lot of background noise. Participants who had received moderate amounts of musical training exhibited the fastest neural responses, suggesting that even limited training in childhood can preserve sharp processing of speech sounds and increase resilience to age-related decline in hearing. More recently, it has become clear that musical training facilitates the rehabilitation of patients recovering from stroke and other forms of brain damage, and some researchers now argue that it might also boost speech processing and learning in children with dyslexia and other language impairments. What's more, the benefits of musical training seem to persist for many years, or even decades, and the picture that emerges from this all evidence is that learning to play a musical instrument in childhood protects the brain against the development of cognitive impairment and dementia. Unlike commercial brain training products, which only improve performance on the skills involved, musical training has what psychologists refer to as transfer effects - in other words, learning to play a musical instrument seems to have a far broader effect on the brain and mental function, and improves other abilities that are seemingly unrelated. "Music reaches parts of the brain that other things can't," says Loveday. "It's a strong cognitive stimulus that grows the brain in a way that nothing else does, and the evidence that musical training enhances things like working memory and language is very robust." Learning to play a musical instrument, then, seems to be one of the most effective forms of brain training there is. Musical training can induce various structural and functional changes in the brain, depending on which instrument is being learned, and the intensity of the training regime. It's an example of how dramatically life-long experience can alter the brain so that it becomes adapted to the idiosyncrasies of its owner's lifestyle.


Wednesday 9 November 2016 by Spacey Donald Trump could regain access to Twitter account on completion of successful trial with nuclear codes  Donald Trump, who had his Twitter access revoked by his campaign managers, has successfully secured access to America's nuclear codes.  Trump was denied control of his Twitter account in the build-up to the presidential election due to a series of monumentally stupid tweets.  According to a senior aide, the new president will only regain full control of his Twitter account once he's proved that he can act responsibly.  "We'll give him the nuclear codes, and if he can get through a week without triggering armageddon then we'll review his Twitter access," confirmed the senior aide.  "It's one thing to bring on the apocalypse, but we can't risk him reacting to criticism with an ill-judged tweet." Get the best NewsThump stories in your mailbox every Friday, for FREE! There are currently


During the year 2016, some 90, 000 Christians were killed for their faith around the world, according to a new study from the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR). [The director of CESNUR and leader of the study, Dr. Massimo Introvigne, told Breitbart News that Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world, and the numbers of those affected are staggering. Christians are targeted primarily for two reasons, Introvigne said, "first because their proclamation of peace disturbs more belligerent groups and second, because their social teachings on life, family and poverty are opposed by powerful forces. " While in the past century, atheistic communist regimes were the greatest persecutors of Christians, Introvigne added, the geopolitical landscape has changed considerably since then and the actors have changed as well. While "Communism's last salvoes" are still responsible for some of Christians, Introvigne told Breitbart, "Islamic " has taken its place as the agent of persecution. Introvigne's findings coincide with those of other scholars and human rights groups. According to the 2016 "World Watch List," for example, published by the Open Doors organization, nine out of the top ten countries where Christians suffer "extreme persecution" had populations that are at least 50 percent Muslim. The 2016 report found that "Islamic extremism is by far the most significant persecution engine" of Christians in the world today and that "40 of the 50 countries on the World Watch List are affected by this kind of persecution. " Introvigne told Breitbart that in Nigeria, "over the last 12 years, the most reliable estimates assess at more than 10, 000 the Christians killed by the Islamic organization Nigeria's Boko Haram. " Yet while some groups, like Boko Haram, are private organizations, in a number of countries, "persecution of Christians is actually promoted by the governments," Introvigne said. "Several Muslim countries still have laws punishing apostasy — converting from Islam to another religion," he noted. "Others have laws against blasphemy, and some tend to consider any criticism of Islam as blasphemy. " While tens of thousands of Christians are killed for their faith, Introvigne said, they are just the tip of the iceberg and much persecution takes place on a daily basis that never makes news. CESNUR's annual study, which is slated for release next month, indicates that between 500 and 600 million Christians were in some way persecuted and prevented from freely practicing their faith. Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter: Follow @tdwilliamsrome


Vertical Pools Help Heal Wounded Combat Veterans Seeks Positive Doers To Help Make It Happen ‹ › Since 2011, VNN has operated as part of the Veterans Today Network ; a group that operates over 50 plus media, information and service online sites for U.S. Military Veterans. UFC GYM® Celebrates "Veterans Day" with Complimentary Military Access By VNN on November 1, 2016 Complimentary 'Bootcamp' Themed Class Offered on Saturday, November 12  UFC GYM® will celebrate the upcoming Veterans Day holiday by offering active duty and veteran military personnel as well as their families VIP status at more than 130 locations across the United States from Friday, November 11 through Sunday, November 13.  During this celebratory weekend, VIP attendees will receive total gym access, including a special 'Bootcamp' themed Daily Ultimate Training® (DUT®) class on Saturday, November 12. The 50-minute class is designed to challenge participants of all fitness levels and will include a variation of exercises often used in military training. For this specific class, all sessions will also be offered using body-weight based exercises, making it easy to execute in any setting.  Due to limited spacing, attendees are encouraged to contact their local club for more information. Please visit your local club at UFCGYM.com for the time slots offered for this class.  Offering a full-range of functional fitness classes, group and private MMA training, group fitness, personal and group dynamic performance-based training, plus MMA youth programming, UFC GYM creates training programs to fit all ages and fitness levels. UFC GYM programming has been developed through exclusive access to the training regimens of internationally-acclaimed UFC® athletes, providing members with everything they need for the entire family to move, get fit and live a healthy life.  Since debuting in 2009, UFC GYM has opened more than 135 locations throughout the United States,  Australia, Canada, South America and the United Arab Emirates. The fitness franchise has continued to grow at a rapid pace with more than 50 locations opening in the past two years and over 50 gyms expected to open in the next year.  For more information about UFC GYM, please visit UFC GYM.com , or follow us on Facebook.com , Twitter or Instagram: @UFCGYM. You can also subscribe on YouTube at UFCGYM .  About UFC GYM®  UFC GYM® is the first major brand extension of UFC®, the world leader in the sport of mixed martial arts (MMA). In alliance with New Evolution Ventures(tm) (NeV), developers of many of the world's most successful fitness brands, the UFC GYM brand gives UFC enthusiasts and fitness seekers of all ages the opportunity to practice the training techniques of famed UFC athletes. Offering a full-range of group fitness classes, private MMA training, personal and group dynamic training, plus MMA style youth programming, UFC GYM creates something for all ages and fitness levels. As the first to combine the world of mixed martial arts and fitness, UFC GYM's TRAIN DIFFERENT® approach has developed an atmosphere where members can see immediate results. UFC GYM is the ultimate fitness experience. The brand is not what you expect, and more than you can imagine, aiming to continue revolutionizing the fitness industry. Related Posts:


Illegal migrant sea crossings to Italy are up 57 per cent on 2016 so far, with 1, 300 landing in Sicily over the weekend. [Reuters reports that around half a million migrants have made their way to Italy since the beginning of 2014, with a 181, 000 making landfall in 2016. Numbers so far indicate that 2017 will mark another high for landings and drownings, with both up on the same period last year. Sicily's latest arrivals were picked up on two ships, one from Norway operating on behalf of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) and one operating on behalf of an NGO named Proactivia Open Arms. NGOs like Proactivia Open Arms have been accused of becoming an "indispensable" part of the industry by the think tank GEFIRA. The organisation states NGO vessels pick up migrants from smuggler boats just outside Libyan waters and, rather than taking them to safe Tunisian ports nearby, bring them to Italian Coast Guard vessels which will transport them to Europe. Consequently, GEFIRA argues "these operations cannot be classified as genuine rescue operations" and has called for their prosecution. Source: GEFIRA, Frontex chief Fabrice Leggeri claims that around 40 per cent of migrants arriving in Italy are transported by NGO vessels, and has also accused them of acting "like taxis" for . "[W]e must avoid supporting the business of criminal networks and traffickers in Libya through European vessels picking up migrants ever closer to the Libyan coast," he said. "This leads traffickers to force even more migrants onto unseaworthy boats with insufficient water and fuel than in previous years. " However, the Frontex agency has previously confessed that "all parties involved in [ ] operations" including itself, "unintentionally help criminals achieve their objectives at minimum cost [and] strengthen their business model by increasing the chances of success". Despite an admission that its current approach is encouraging and increasing drowning deaths, the agency has said it will not change its tactics in the Mediterranean Sea "because they stem from European values". This contrasts sharply with the "tough love" approach to illegal sea crossings adopted by Australia, which sees all incoming vessels intercepted at sea and removed to their port of origin or a processing centre. The deterrent effect of this strategy has prevented any illegal crossings for over 900 days. Tony Abbott, the former prime minister who introduced it, advised EU leaders in September 2016 that "if you want to stop the deaths [and] you want to stop the drownings, you have got to stop the boats". "Effective border protection is not for the squeamish, but it is absolutely necessary to save lives and to preserve nations. The truly compassionate thing to do is: stop the boats and stop the deaths. "


Turkey warned its citizens about travel to the United States on Saturday in response to what the foreign ministry called increasingly violent protests against President-elect Donald Trump. "Within the context of risks caused by the incidents and of social tension, our citizens who live in the U.S., or who are considering traveling there, should be cautious," the ministry said in a statement. Demonstrators planned to gather again on Saturday in U.S. cities nationwide to protest against Trump, whose election they say poses a threat to their civil and human rights, a day after a protester was shot in Portland, Oregon. Last month, the U.S. State Department updated its travel warning on Turkey, ordering family members of consulate employees in Istanbul to leave the country, citing threats against U.S. citizens. There has been growing tension between the two NATO allies after repeated calls from Turkey to extradite U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara blames for a failed coup in July. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Wednesday he hoped for an improvement in bilateral ties after Trump's victory, and again called for Gulen's extradition.


The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider reviving litigation seeking to hold Arab Bank Plc financially liable for militant attacks in Israel and the Palestinian territories that accused the Jordan-based bank of being the "paymaster" to militant groups. The justices agreed to hear an appeal by roughly 6,000 plaintiffs, who included relatives of non-U.S. citizens killed in such attacks and survivors of the incidents, of a lower court ruling throwing out the litigation. The plaintiffs accused Arab Bank under a U.S. law called the Alien Tort Statute of deliberately financing terrorism, including suicide bombings and other attacks. They are hoping to overturn a 2015 New York federal appeals court ruling that the bank could not be sued under the statute because it is a corporation. The Alien Tort Statute, a law dating back to 1789, lets non-U.S. citizens seek damages in U.S. courts for human rights violations abroad. The lead plaintiff in the case is Joseph Jesner, whose British citizen son was killed at age 19 in a 2002 suicide bombing of a bus in Tel Aviv. The plaintiffs filed several lawsuits under the law in Brooklyn federal court, claiming Arab Bank used its New York branch to transfer money and "serve as a 'paymaster' for international terrorists." The transfers helped Hamas and other groups fund attacks and reward families of the perpetrators between 1995 and 2005, the suits alleged. The bank said in court papers that the U.S. government has called it a constructive partner in the fight against terrorism financing. The bank said only four transactions out of 500,000 involved "designated terrorists" by the U.S. government, and they were the result of machine or human error. The bank also cited a separate 2010 case, Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum, in which the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that corporations cannot be sued under the Alien Tort Statute. After reviewing that case, the Supreme Court in 2013 narrowed the law's reach, saying claims must sufficiently "touch and concern" the United States to overcome the presumption that the Alien Tort Statute does not cover foreign conduct. But the high court declined to explicitly decide whether the 2nd Circuit ruling on corporate liability was correct. Based on the Kiobel ruling, the 2nd Circuit threw out the litigation against Arab Bank. The plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court, urging it to decide once and for all whether or not corporations are shielded over foreign conduct.


After a string of scandals this year, Uber has rushed to repair its corporate culture. The company has started an internal investigation into workplace practices, issued apologies for some of its behavior, and has had several female executives and a board member speak up on its behalf. On Tuesday, Uber continued its mea culpa tour by releasing its first report detailing the composition of its work force, which depicted an overwhelmingly male employee base and showed that the largest ethnic group is white. In addition, the company forcefully repudiated its past, saying that its intense, masculine culture went too far. "Every strength, in excess, is a weakness," Liane Hornsey, the recently appointed chief human resources officer, said in an interview at the company's headquarters in San Francisco. "What has driven Uber to immense success — its aggression, the attitude — has toppled over. And it needs to be shaved back. " Fixing Uber's culture and image has become a top priority for the privately held company, which is valued at nearly $70 billion. Last month, Uber's dysfunctions were thrust into the public eye after a former engineer detailed her experience with sexual harassment and a lack of support from human resources at the company. Employees have described a cutthroat, political environment among some managers. Scrutiny has fallen on Uber's chief executive, Travis Kalanick, who helped found the company and has set its tone. In recent weeks, Uber has moved quickly to shed that past. The company hired Eric H. Holder Jr. the former United States attorney general, and others to conduct an investigation of the workplace. Arianna Huffington, a board member, has repeatedly said that the company would no longer hire "brilliant jerks. " Ms. Hornsey, a former executive at Google, has also moved into the hot seat. She joined Uber late last year from SoftBank and has essentially been given a blank check — money, head count, resources — to revamp the workplace processes and managerial styles put into place when the company was still a fledgling . Along with resources, Ms. Hornsey has embarked on a "listening tour" with employees who wish to share grievances. She is reworking the human resources structure and how Uber rates employee performance, long considered a problem area for insiders. And she spoke on behalf of the company about the diversity report, which covered employees but not drivers, who work as freelancers. The report's numbers were stark. Only 36 percent of Uber's work force is made up of women, while the technology jobs at the company — some 85 percent — are overwhelmingly held by men. In terms of racial composition, 50 percent of Uber's employees in the United States are white and 31 percent are Asian, while 9 percent are black and 6 percent are Hispanic. "We have to build more trust with our employees, and transparency will build that trust," Ms. Hornsey said of the report. In the past, Mr. Kalanick has resisted publishing a diversity report, current and former employees have said. In a statement on Tuesday, Mr. Kalanick said, "I know that we have been too slow in publishing our numbers — and that the best way to demonstrate our commitment to change is through transparency. And to make progress, it's important we measure what matters. " Compared with statistics at other technology companies, Uber's diversity figures are not that different — and are modestly better than some. According to Google's most recent diversity report, for example, just 31 percent of its work force are women. Google also said 81 percent of its technical jobs were held by men, while 1 percent of its employees in the United States were black and 3 percent were Hispanic. Many of the numbers stack up roughly along the same lines at Apple and Facebook. Many of the diversity issues at Uber are also endemic to Silicon Valley. The venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers was sued over gender discrimination in 2012 by a former partner it won the case in 2015. The software development GitHub has also dealt with allegations of sexism and harassment. At Uber, issues of internal culture may have been compounded by its dizzying growth over the past few years. The service is available in hundreds of cities across more than 70 countries and completes hundreds of thousands of trip requests a day. In the last year alone, the company's employee base has doubled in size to more than 12, 000. But that turbocharged expansion has come at a cost, employees have said. Growth, they said, was prioritized above anything else. That skewed the development of the organization into something that embraced the "cult of the individual," Ms. Hornsey said. Top performers were rewarded and promoted into management positions. Some 63 percent of managers had never previously held a leadership position, and Uber did not provide much training for new managers, some said. "For the first several years, we had to just focus on executing our operational goals, and that was kind of the " said Nicole Cuellar, an operations and logistics manager who has worked at Uber for nearly four years. "There was never the need to think about our culture like that. And I don't think it sunk in until we all had this really experience. " Among the things that Uber now has on the table to change are its list of 14 corporate values, which include being "super pumped" and "always be hustlin'. " Mr. Kalanick is open to revising or adding new values, Ms. Hornsey said. She added that Uber was creating a task force to pinpoint major human resources failings, aided by Frances X. Frei, an adviser from Harvard Business School who has helped companies through organizational change. Uber also pledged to donate $3 million over the next three years to groups working on bringing women and underrepresented minorities into the tech industry. Some current and former employees have expressed concern over whether Uber will be able to change, given the trait of aggressive individualism that Mr. Kalanick has fostered. But others like Tasneem Minadakis, who is active in Uber's LadyEng organization, an internal group at the company that supports and campaigns for women, said they have been galvanized by the efforts to fix the culture. In total, Ms. Minadakis said LadyEng has more than 500 employees eager to enact change. "They really do believe that this company can be a force for good," Ms. Hornsey said. "If it could only stop shooting itself in the foot. "


"I can guarantee that," Obama answered when asked by Fox News' Chris Wallace if he would direct the Justice Department to treat Clinton as the evidence shows. "That is institutionally how we have always operated: I do not talk to the attorney general about pending investigations. I do not talk to FBI directors about pending investigations. We have a strict line," he said. Wallace asked Obama if he can still stand by his previous claims that the emails did not jeopardize national security. "I continue to believe that she has not jeopardized America's national security," Obama said. "Now what I've also said ... there's a carelessness in terms of managing emails that she has owned and she recognizes. But I also think it is important to keep this in perspective." The President tried to distinguish between different levels of top secret -- or classified information -- as a means of defending Clinton. "What I also know, because I handle a lot of classified information, is that there's classified, and then there's classified," he said. "There's stuff that is really top secret-top secret, and there's stuff that is being presented to the President or the secretary of state, that you might not want on the transom, or going out over the wire, but is basically stuff that you could get in open source." Obama said his former secretary of state saying she would "never intentionally put America in any kind of jeopardy." "This is somebody whose served her country for four years as secretary of state, and did an outstanding job, and no one has suggested that in some ways as a consequence of how she's handled emails that that detracted from her excellent ability to carry out her duties," he said. Obama was also questioned by Wallace on criticism to his personal responses to terrorist attacks, citing the President calling the November terrorist attacks in Paris "a setback." "There isn't a president who's taken more terrorists off the field then me over the last seven and half years," Obama said, defending himself. "I'm the guy who calls the families or meets with them or hugs them or tries to comfort a mom or a dad or a husband or a kid after a terrorist attack. So let's be very clear how much I prioritize this. This is my No. 1 job and we have been doing it effectively," he said.


21st Century Wire says You know that western society is approaching its final hour when animal rights activists start advocating individual animals to be able to sue humans in courts. That s exactly what has happened in the US.We can trace some of this line of thinking back to Cass Sunstein, the radical, liberal progressive technocrat and chief advisor to President Barack Obama (as well as the husband of disastrous UN Ambassador Samantha Power). According to his own writing and public declarations, Sunstein believes that activists should be able to bring a lawsuit on behalf of an animal in US courts. In his 2004 book Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions, Sunstein remarked:Cass Sunstein. My simplest suggestion is that private citizens should be given the right to bring suits to prevent animals from being treated in a way that violates current law. I offer a recommendation that is theoretically modest but that should do a lot of practical good: laws designed to protect animals against cruelty and abuse should be amended and interpreted to give a private cause of action against those who violate them, so as to allow private people to supplement the efforts of public prosecutors. Somewhat more broadly, I will suggest that animals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives, to prevent violations of current law. As one of liberal America s most influential technocrats, Sunstein argues that this legal right can be invoked on the basis of animal cruelty. While no cruelty seems to be present in the case of the Monkey Selfie (see story below), activists at PETA were no doubt emboldened by Sunstein and others who have propelled their ideological argument into the political activist discourse.While our society and our legal system are far from perfect, a move like this from a wealthy charity like PETA could throw that system into even further chaos.Surely, if animals can sue humans, then shouldn t humans be able to sue animals? As you can see, when you pursue this activist rabbit hole, reality starts to dissolve rather quickly.More on this incredible story from AP Monkey Selfie Copyright credited to David J. Slater (UK)Linda Wang APcurious monkey with a toothy grin and a knack for pressing a camera button was back in the spotlight Wednesday as a federal appeals court heard arguments on whether an animal can hold a copyright to selfie photos.A 45-minute hearing before a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco attracted crowds of law students and curious citizens who often burst into laughter. The federal judges also chuckled at times at the novelty of the case, which involves a monkey in another country that is unaware of the fuss.Andrew Dhuey, attorney for British nature photographer David Slater, said monkey see, monkey sue is not good law under any federal act.Naruto is a free-living crested macaque who snapped perfectly framed selfies in 2011 that would make even the Kardashians proud.People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals [PETA] sued Slater and the San Francisco-based self-publishing company Blurb, which published a book called Wildlife Personalities that includes the monkey selfies, for copyright infringement. It sought a court order in 2015 allowing it to administer all proceeds from the photos taken in a wildlife reserve in Sulawesi, Indonesia to benefit the monkey.Slater says the British copyright for the photos obtained by his company, Wildlife Personalities Ltd., should be honored Continue this story at AP/Chicago TribunePictured here is a typical Indonesian Crested Black Macaque monkey (Image Credit: Lip Key Yap, Wikicommons)READ MORE FINANCIAL NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Financial FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV


The Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigrants will likely weaken overall U.S. consumer spending and economic growth as those targeted for arrest increasingly choose to stay home and save more, a Federal Reserve policymaker said on Wednesday. Millions of immigrants "are not going out and shopping, they are staying home, they are afraid if they go out they are not coming home," Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan said when asked about U.S. President Donald Trump's months old directive. "On the margin - and it's too soon for the data to pick it up, but you hear it anecdotally - I believe we are going to see it, I believe those people are more likely to save than to spend," he added at the Council on Foreign Relations. "And those two effects have some muting effect on consumer spending and therefore GDP growth."


It s now no surprise that Donald Trump, the most hated presidential candidate in the field, is the GOP s frontrunner. It seems being hated is all the Republican Party is good for these days.And there s even better news for Democrats!A new poll from the Pew Research Center shows that the GOP is overwhelmingly hated by the American public and has reached its highest level of disdain since 1992. According to the poll, 62 percent of Americans have an unfavorable impression of the GOP whereas only 33 percent view it favorably. American s positive perception of the GOP fell four points in the last six months.The poll also found a very interesting trend: most of the negativity towards the GOP came from self-identified Republicans, where only 68 had a favorable view of their own party an 11 point drop from October.As Trump rises is in the polls, Republicans feelings about their party falls. What a coincidence.In contrast, 45 percent of Americans had a favorable view of the Democratic Party versus 50 percent who harbored negative views. Eighty-eight percent of Democrats had a favorable view of the party.Not surprisingly, Independent voters were more favorable to the Democratic Party preferring them 37 to 28 percent than the Republican Party. As Trump continuously tells the public he s winning with Independents, he certainly hasn t been very successful. Also not surprising was respondents who were black, female or young were also much more likely to give favorable impressions of the Democratic Party compared to the GOP.When broken down, the poll reminds us of what we already know:White people, in general, are almost identical in how they feel about both parties; 37 percent have a favorable view of both parties, while 59 percent have an unfavorable view of the Democrats and 58 percent for the Republicans.It looks like the two-party system has failed the oppressed whites yet again how sad.Over 2,000 Americans responded to the poll, which was conducted between April 12 to 19 and it has a margin of error at 2.5 percent.


NICE, France — It was the first and last fireworks show in this seaside city that Yanis Coviaux ever saw. He died in the carnage Thursday night. So did Brodie Copeland, 11, who was visiting from the United States. Haroun El Kamel, 12, survived but might never look at fireworks the same way. Then there was Laura Borla, 14, who came to see the fireworks with her twin sister and their mother but was separated from them in the chaos. After days of searching frantically for her, Laura's family learned on Sunday morning that she was dead. "We miss you already we will love you always," her sister, Lucie, said in a Facebook post. The driver who plowed his truck into crowds at the conclusion of the Bastille Day fireworks in Nice killed at least 84 people and injured hundreds more. The trauma was exacerbated by the presence of a large number of children, whose deaths, injuries and psychological scars gave this attack — like the one in March that killed many children at a park in Pakistan, or the recent slaughter of families celebrating the end of Ramadan in Baghdad — an especially brutal feel and underscored its indiscriminate cruelty. At least 10 children were killed Thursday night, and at least 35 were treated for injuries at hospitals in Nice. Others were separated from their parents in the chaos, and some no doubt saw and heard things they might carry with them for a long time. No one who was visiting the waterfront that night could have imagined such a horrific ending. Going to the fireworks on July 14 is an annual family ritual in Nice, a time for picnics on the beach — and, when the beach is too full, for spreading tablecloths on the meridian of the waterfront road known for more than 150 years as the Promenade des Anglais. From there, people have a fine view of the sea and the extravagant fireworks display. "You have to bring your children because if you don't, you will pay for it all year — all their friends are there," said Raja El Kamel, 43, Haroun's mother, who was with him and a close friend from Sweden and her two children to watch the festivities. In a city that enjoys a party, the July 14 fireworks are especially beloved because the entire community joins in: Christian and Muslim, religious and secular, but French above all. The presence of large numbers of tourists gives the evening even more of a festive feel. For Yanis and his parents, Mickael and Samira Coviaux, the evening was a first. The parents, both truck drivers, live in Grenoble, and this was their first time seeing the July 14 fireworks on the Mediterranean as a family, said Yanis's aunt Anaïs Coviaux, a law student in Paris, who came to support her brother and after Yanis was killed. "The children were playing among themselves, and they had their back to the road," she said. "They did not hear the truck until just one second before it hit. It went up on the sidewalk it struck Yanis and the mother of one of the other children with them. " The mother also died. There was no first aid nearby. Finally, Mr. Coviaux picked up his little boy and began walking with him until they found a person with a car who agreed to take them to the hospital. When they passed some firefighters, they stopped and asked them to try to revive him. But the child was dead. "He was my parents' only grandson, the only grandson in the family," Anaïs Coviaux said softly. She explained that her brother and his wife were too distraught to speak. "Yanis loved people," she said. "He especially liked Sundays when all the family was gathered, and he would say, 'Mamie and Papi, we are going to have a party. '" Later, Mr. Coviaux said in an email that "every single person that Yanis met in his short life fell in love with him. " The entire family gathered on the promenade Saturday to view the last sights he had seen. "It was important for us to come to the place he died to pay him a tribute," Anaïs Coviaux said, "because we could not bear to say goodbye to him. We left a picture of him and flowers. " Identifying children and examining them has been difficult because of the level of trauma and because some were brought to the hospital without relatives, said Sylvie Serret, a child psychiatrist at the Lenval Foundation hospital, which treated at least 30 injured children on Thursday night. "A lot of the children coming in were in a state of shock they were not speaking, for instance," she said. An emergency room nurse at Pasteur Hospital, Mejdi Chemakhi, cared for several children, including a boy and a girl who had been brought in without their parents. The boy was 4, Mr. Chemakhi said, and the girl was 6. The boy, Mr. Chemakhi recounted, spoke in a flat tone, apparently in shock. "My mummy is dead, but my daddy is still alive," he recalled the boy saying over and over. The boy, expressionless, finally said, "I am tired, I need to sleep, I have no clothes," Mr. Chemakhi recalled. "So I took him in my arms and tried to console him," he said. "You don't really know what else to do in those situations. It is really important to make them feel safe. " Later that night, a wounded man was brought to the hospital and told Mr. Chemakhi that he had lost his wife and could not find his children, a boy and a girl. Mr. Chemakhi realized the three belonged together and helped reunite them. On the Promenade des Anglais on Saturday, there were memorials of flowers and notes, sometimes every few feet, to mark where people had lost their lives. Nathalie Russo, 30, a Muslim who wears a hijab, came with her mother to retrace the steps she and her children, Mayssa and Emine, took on Thursday night. "My daughter is telling me that she does not want to see fireworks again," Ms. Russo said, adding, "She kept asking me, 'How did the bad people get from Paris to Nice? '" "She thought the man who did this was one of those who attacked the Bataclan," she said, "and he had come here to do the same thing. " The Bataclan is the Paris concert hall where 90 people were shot dead by three Islamic State operatives on Nov. 13, when a total of 130 people were killed in and around Paris by terrorists. Some mothers and fathers who had not been near the fireworks brought their children to see the memorials on Saturday as a way of expressing unity with the community and defiance toward the terrorists. Nour Hamila, a Nice native who has converted to Islam, made a point of bringing her three children, who are 8, 5 and 3. "I told them not to be afraid because that's what the terrorists want we have to support each other," she said as her son, Mohamed, placed flowers on one of the memorials. It is harder for those children who witnessed the killings. For Ms. Kamel's son, Haroun, the moment is etched in his mind. "We saw it from far away, a white truck in this black night," she said. She recalled thinking that the truck did not belong there because the street was closed to traffic. Her son and her friend's son and daughter were playing and laughing. Then the driver accelerated and began to veer from one side of the road to the other, "plowing into people," she said. Somehow she pushed herself and her son onto the sidewalk as the truck neared. Then it passed, and all she remembers was her son saying, "Mama, Mama, you must come to help the people. " She looked at the road and recognized a neighbor who was kneeling next to her husband, wailing his name. Ms. Kamel told her son to go with her friend and the other children. Everything was silent. "There was just this terrible wind," she said. "To the left you saw bodies you looked right and saw bodies there were strollers, and people trying to save other people. " After trying to comfort her neighbor, she looked for her son, but by then the crowds were running, and it was chaos. Hours later, when she found him and her friend, her son said, "Mama, did you manage to save the man?" Ms. Kamel responded that the emergency services had come for him. "You know, children don't have a global vision," she said. "He saw all those corpses, but for him, the one at his feet was supposed to be saved. "


The top Democrat on the House committee investigating Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton s use of a private email system released an email exchange Wednesday between former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Clinton in which he advised her on circumventing State Department servers.The exchange between Clinton and Powell, two days before the start of her tenure as secretary of state, shows Clinton asked him for advice on the use of a BlackBerry. He responded with multiple tips, saying he used a personal computer for government and personal business that wasn t going through the State Department servers. Powell said, I even used it to do business with some foreign leaders and some of the senior folks in the Department on their personal email accounts. The emails were cited in the FBI s notes from their investigation into Clinton s and her aides handling of classified information during her time at the State Department. According to The Wall Street Journal, the FBI quoted some, but not all, of the conversations between Powell and Clinton.Clinton has told federal authorities she didn t follow Powell s guidance, even though she used a private email account to handle government business. FBI Director James Comey recommended no charges be brought against Clinton, but said that she had been extremely careless with classified information.What exactly Powell advised Clinton to do had been a matter of debate, and Powell even recently suggested Clinton s allies were trying to pin the controversy on him. Democrats released the full exchange in a bid to show that Clinton s predecessors did not use official email accounts.In his Jan. 23, 2009, response to Clinton, Powell said he used a personal computer and a PDA.The latest release appears to show that Powell acknowledged he exchanged work-related emails with foreign leaders and State Department officials using a personal device. He said the setup allowed him to bypass the government s computer network. The release of the email by Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md. came on the eve of a House Oversight hearing in which Republicans are expected to focus on Clinton s use of a private email server and whether the State Department had been forthcoming with Freedom of Information requests.However, Cummings came down on Republicans accusing lawmakers of holding Clinton to a double standard during the investigation into her private email server. If Republicans were truly concerned with transparency, strengthening FOIA, and preserving federal records, they would be attempting to recover Secretary Powell s emails from AOL, but they have taken no steps to do so despite the fact that this period including the run-up to the Iraq War was critical to our nation s history, he said.


Elections in the Netherlands on Wednesday are being watched especially closely across Europe and beyond as a key gauge of whether formerly strong barriers to the far right still stand on a continent with painful memories of fascism, but also with a growing number of aspiring nationalist leaders. The Dutch vote is the first of several critical European elections this year, to be followed by those in France, Germany and possibly Italy. A common thread in the campaigns has been attacks on the European Union for diluting sovereignty, opening borders to migrants and leaving nations vulnerable to terrorism. "These are the quarterfinals in trying to prevent the wrong sort of populism from winning," Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister and leader of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, said of the Dutch election. "The half finals are in France in April and May and in September in Germany, we have the finals," he said. Almost everywhere populist parties have risen with nationalist calls to stem immigration to secure and preserve local cultures. The question now is whether the populists will maintain their momentum or be blunted by a newfound hesitancy among voters. Even as support for centrist parties craters nearly everywhere, some analysts see new hints of wariness of the protest and votes that aided the rise of recent populist politicians, given the uncertainty and conflict ushered in by the first weeks of the Trump administration and the British vote last year to exit the European Union, or Brexit. Hajo Funke, a political scientist at the Free University in Berlin, said he had detected early signs in the past several weeks of a backlash against populism. In Germany, for example, the Alternative for Germany party has slipped in the polls. Mr. Funke said he thought that voters in Europe were looking at Brexit and the Trump presidency not as points of inspiration, but rather with deep concern. "There is no Trump effect," he said. "Nothing happened. " On the current moment for populist parties, he said, "I see stagnation, or decline. " In the Netherlands, Mr. Funke noted, Geert Wilders, one of the most stridently politicians in Europe, has struggled to improve his standing in recent weeks after climbing quickly in the polls. "There is a danger that it can go out of control, as far as the voting for Wilders," he said, "but I doubt that will be the case. " Even if populists like Mr. Wilders do not prevail, other analysts said, their high profiles and often inflammatory presence had moved much of the political debate to the far right's turf. The battle in many ways is already won. "Since the entrance of Geert Wilders into the political arena, he hasn't had any office but he has exerted influence," said Bert Bakker, a communications professor at the University of Amsterdam. Discussions in the Netherlands now often center on restrictions on immigrants, identity politics and nationalism. Professors, pollsters and others who closely watch elections emphasize that, at least in the Netherlands, the far right is not going to win or control the government — or even come close — not least because the other parties have promised publicly not to work with Mr. Wilders in a coalition. That has not stopped them from adopting somewhat milder versions of the far right's positions on many issues. One result is that the far right's views have dominated the debate, crowding out other views and issues. "Even if these parties are not actually winning or part of the government, everything is moving to a more stance, more to try to win voters who are the losers in globalization," said Jasper Muis, a professor of sociology at the Free University of Amsterdam, who studies populism. "Immigration and asylum seekers become the focus on the one hand and values and norms on the others," he said, "but not much is said about economic development or employment and that's a part of the success story of the populist right: that they've been able to make it difficult to talk about other subjects. " In the most optimistic outlooks, Mr. Wilders, who heads the Freedom Party, will get about 15 percent of the vote. Even if his votes were combined with those of other and parties, the combined number of likely seats in the Parliament would not exceed about 30, or 20 percent of the Parliament. However, the Christian Democratic Appeal party is promoting a line almost as conservative on immigration as that of Mr. Wilders, a change from its more moderate position of several years ago. That party now looks likely to win about as many seats as Mr. Wilders, and if the mainstream right's seats are added to that, the and parties would have a majority. Even if the right has dominated the campaign, the reality is that the Netherlands is deeply divided and its centrist parties are losing ground in an increasingly fractured political landscape. There are 28 parties on the ballot. Only between 10 and 12 will get enough votes to win a seat in Parliament. There are still likely to be four or five parties in the governing coalition — all but guaranteeing it will include both and parties. For that reason some experienced observers of European politics say the rightward drift by the Dutch may be more important as a harbinger of trends on the Continent than for its practical impact. Some analysts are far more worried about the French vote, because the leader of the National Front, the presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, has a bloc of voters that is much more solidified behind her. "The bloc for Le Pen is very consistent, which is different than the other populists," said Mr. Funke of the Free University in Berlin. An even greater concern may be Italy, where the populist Five Star party and the Northern League could win if elections are held, in part on a platform proposing a referendum on whether Italy should continue to use the euro. That could trigger a loss of confidence by foreign investors and capital flight from the Continent. "Italy is potentially the worst case because if they are forced by election results to have a euro referendum," Mr. Funke said, "then there would be a big danger. "


Reports out of Texas are saying that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead while visiting the luxury resort at the Cibolo Creek Ranch just south of Marfa, Texas. He was apparently on a hunting trip, and it looks at though his death was from natural causes, but his death is still under investigation.The 79-year-old justice was found in his hotel room after he didn t appear for breakfast. He was attending the ranch with about 40 other people.Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued this statement after the news of Scalia s passing: He was the solid rock who turned away so many attempts to depart from and distort the Constitution. We mourn his passing, and we pray that his successor on the Supreme Court will take his place as a champion for the written Constitution and the Rule of Law. Cecilia and I extend our deepest condolences to his family, and we will keep them in our thoughts and prayers. While there are definitely differing opinions of the Reagan appointed justice, many of whom believe the justice a harsh critic of equality and justice for all, it is still a very sad day in America with the passing of Justice Scalia.Featured image: Flickr


South Korea's trade minister Kim Hyun-chong said on Friday the United States may demand that Seoul guarantees it will step up arms purchases and imports of U.S. shale gas if the two countries renegotiate a free trade agreement. The comments, made at the parliament, came as Seoul indicted last week that it was open to talks on amending the five-year-old bilateral deal, which U.S. President Donald Trump had threatened to terminate unless it was renegotiated. U.S. President Donald Trump said in his tweet last month that he was allowing Japan and South Korea to buy a substantially increased amount of highly sophisticated military equipment from the United States, amid rising tensions with North Korea. Last month, Seoul deployed the four remaining launchers of the U.S. anti-missile system designed to protect against mounting threats from Pyongyang. South Korea, the world's second-biggest liquefied natural gas (LNG) importer after Japan, received its first LNG cargo under a 20-year supply deal with U.S. exporter Cheniere in early July through Korea Gas Corp. Asked about China's trade retaliation against South Korea's decision to deploy a U.S. anti-missile defence system, Kim said Korea has not "abandoned" an option to file complaints to the World Trade Organization (WTO). China had been taking punitive measures such as restricting tourism with South Korea against the deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system as Beijing worries the system can threaten its security and undermine regional stability.


21st Century Wire says Last April, the UN general assembly met to discuss how the world s nations can combat the global drug problem. It was just the latest non-event in a long line of categorical failures, led by the United States. Ever since US president Richard Nixon declared the War on Drugs in 1971, the international narcotics trade has grown from strength to strength, in a black global market that is now worth hundreds of billions of dollars per year. After Nixon, other US presidents tried to champion the issue, from Reagan to Clinton, Bush and Obama. Each of them presided over one epic failure after another. However, where long-term data is available, it does point to systematic failures in drug policies. A study published in the British Medical Journal in 2013 found that despite efforts to limit the supply of these drugs, since 1990 prices have fallen while the purity of the drugs has increased. The trends were similar in the US and in Europe. The authors conclusion was clear: These findings suggest that expanding efforts at controlling the global illegal drug market through law enforcement are failing. (The Guardian)As a direct result of the policies of western governments led by the US, and their corrupt accomplices in the international banking, UN and NGO sectors in 2017, cheaper, newer and more deadly drugs continue to ruin families and communities, and millions of lives in the new western underclass and youth population Zero HedgeThe opioid crisis that is ravaging urban and suburban communities across the US claimed an unprecedented 59,000 lives last year, according to preliminary data gathered by the New York Times. If accurate, that s equivalent to a roughly 19% increase over the approximately 52,000 overdose deaths recorded in 2015, the NYT reported last year.Overdoses, made increasingly common by the introduction of fentanyl and other powerful synthetic opioids into the heroin supply, are now the leading cause of death for Americans under 50. And all evidence suggests the problem has continued to worsen in 2017. One coroner in Western Pennsylvania told a local newspaper that his office is literally running out of room to store the bodies, and that it was recently forced to buy a larger freezer.The initial data points to large increases in these types of deaths in states along the East Coast, particularly Maryland, Florida, Pennsylvania and Maine. In Ohio, which filed a lawsuit last week accusing five drug companies of abetting the opioid epidemic, the Times estimated that overdose deaths increased by more than 25 percent in 2016.In some Ohio counties, deaths from heroin have virtually disappeared. Instead, the primary culprit is fentanyl or one of its many analogues. In Montgomery County, home to Dayton, of the 100 drug overdose deaths recorded in January and February, only three people tested positive for heroin; 97 tested positive for fentanyl or another analogue.In some states in the western half of the US, data suggest deaths may have leveled off for the time being or even begun to decline. Experts believe that the heroin supply west of the Mississippi River, traditionally dominated by a variant of the drug known as black tar which is smuggled over the border from Mexico, isn t as easily adulterated with lethal analogues as the powder that s common on the East Coast Continue this story at Zero HedgeREAD MORE WAR ON DRUGS NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire War on Drugs FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV


EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said Britain must accept the full economic and legal status quo in a transition period after it leaves the EU and should expect no tailor-made terms on trade in its future relationship. Suggesting a transition should run for 21 months from Brexit on March 30, 2019 until the current EU budget expires at the end of 2020, Barnier said Britain would certainly remain subject to EU laws and courts during that transition. During this period, the EU legal framework including on jurisdiction would continue to apply to Britain, Barnier said in an interview published on Tuesday in Germany s Handelsblatt newspaper. We don t have time to invent a new model. So for a short time after the formal exit from the EU the economic status quo would continue to apply, which besides the internal market also includes the customs union and collective political decisions. In a version of the interview in Belgium s L Echo, he said of the transition: The only difference is that the British would no longer take part in decisions on European legislation. British Prime Minister Theresa May has proposed a transition of around two years to give time to put a new free trade pact in place, although she faces opposition in London from some Brexit supporters who want a clean, quick break. Barnier noted that May had rejected the option of staying in the EU single market long-term the Norwegian model as he called it, referring to Norway s membership of the EU internal market, accepting all its rules and costs without having a say. So we must work on other hypotheses, Handelsblatt quoted him as saying. Another option would be a free trade treaty using the example of the CETA agreement with Canada. It would take several years, however, to negotiate such an agreement. Asked if that meant there could be a specifically British model along the lines of the bespoke arrangements May has referred to without giving detail, Barnier replied simply: No. Quoted by L Echo, he said a trade deal could be agreed in three years meaning that if talks start in December it would be ready just in time for a transition ending in December 2020. He said his staff were already working on drafting a withdrawal treaty that will include terms for transition. Barnier said he still hoped that May could provide more detail on her offer to meet financial commitments on withdrawal so that EU leaders could agree in December to end their refusal to negotiate a future trade deal. May told an EU summit last week that she could not agree a figure until she knows what trade terms the EU offers. Barnier said it was important to de-dramatise talks on the payment.


German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a newspaper she would be prepared to become involved in a diplomatic initiative to end the North Korean nuclear and missiles program, and suggested the Iran nuclear talks could be a model. South Korea on Saturday braced for a possible further missile test by North Korea as it marked its founding anniversary, just days after its sixth and largest nuclear test rattled global financial markets and further escalated tensions in the region. If our participation in talks is desired, I will immediately say yes, Merkel told Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in an interview to be published on Sunday. She pointed to negotiations that led to a landmark nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers in 2015. Back then, Germany and the five countries on the United Nations Security Council with veto power took part in talks that led to Iran agreeing to curb its nuclear work in return for the lifting of most sanctions. Merkel said that was a long but important time of diplomacy that ultimately had a good end last year, referring to when the deal was implemented. I could imagine such a format being used to end the North Korea conflict. Europe and especially Germany should be prepared to play a very active part in that, Merkel added. She said she thought the only way to deal with North Korea s nuclear program was to come to a diplomatic solution, adding: A new arms race starting in the region would not be in anyone s interests. Europe should stand united in trying to bring about a diplomatic solution and do everything that can be done in terms of sanctions , she said. Merkel is expected to win a fourth term in office in a Sept. 24 vote, with polls giving her conservatives a double-digit lead over their rival Social Democrats. Merkel is widely seen in Germany as a safe pair of hands at a time of global uncertainty such as the North Korea crisis, Britain s looming departure from the European Union and Donald Trump s presidency in the United States. Merkel has spoken to leaders including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe about North Korea this week. The newspaper said, without naming its sources, that she would speak by telephone with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday.


A decision by Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc (MUFG) to shift its U.S. banks from state regulators to a federal bank regulator is garnering scrutiny from a pair of U.S. Democratic senators. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Van Hollen sent a letter to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on Monday, pressing for details on the regulator's decision to allow the bank to come under its purview, after it had sparred with New York's banking regulator. Earlier this month, MUFG's Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd branches in New York, Illinois, Texas and California were granted federal charters, allowing the bank to be regulated by the Trump administration rather than state governments. The pair said they were "disturbed" by the decision, and questioned whether the shift to a federal banking license allowed the bank to escape any investigations by the New York Department of Financial Supervision, where the company had bank branches. They also questioned the role of Acting Comptroller Keith Noreika, who previously counted MUFG as a client, in the decision. Noreika recused himself from the bank's application for a federal charter, but the two senators are demanding additional details on that decision, and who was responsible for approving the bank's charter instead. An OCC spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.


The moment the initial members of the Bundy militants were arrested, effectively ending the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, one thing was for certain: as paranoid, anti-government conspiracy theorists, these people could be counted on for some absolute batsh*t crazy legal defenses. But no one could anticipate the sheer stupidity of their other legal filings.Shawna Cox, the woman who falsely claimed that LaVoy Finicum was executed with his hands in the air when in actuality he was attempting to pull a gun on law enforcement, filed a lawsuit against the big, bad federal government. Cox is seeking a whopping $666,666,666,666.66 in damages because she says the government harmed her in performing works of the devil including her attempted execution.KATU reports that Cox, who managed to convince the court to do her a special favor in allowing her to attend Finicum s funeral, quickly found her lawsuit tossed out because her claims are not cognizable in this criminal proceeding and will not be addressed in this case. Cox maintains that she did not interfere with public employees when she and her friends undertook an armed occupation of the Refuge because it was their choice not to come to work out of guilt, that federal employees were secretly extending the boundaries of Malheur, and says that she is being maliciously prosecuted by the State and Federal Bar Association members because they do not want to be held accountable for their subversive activities against the people of the United States of America. No one is safe from her wrath. Cox says she will be asking the jury to render civil and criminal charges against a number of public officials, including All of the Oregon State Bar members, and public employees who were involved in the persecution, prosecutorial misconduct, and ineffective council involving the incarceration of the Hammonds, including each and every one of them who violated the separation of powers and held offices in the judiciary and / or legislative and /or executive branches at the same time, anyone who interfered with the militia s attempt to form an illegal and unrecognized Grand Jury to prosecute public officials, and all involved in the ambush that attempted to execute myself and others and executed LaVoy Finicum. She also says she wants charges against all state, public, and federal officials involved in organizing and authorizing the ambush execution of myself and others including LaVoy Finicum as well as all of the state employees involved in the ambush that attempted to execute myself and others, and resulted in LaVoy Finicum s murder. Cox specifically names Judge Grasty, Senator Cliff Bentz, Harney County Prosecutor Tim Calhoun, Governor Kate Brown, U.S. prosecutors Dwight Holton, Kirk Engdall, Kelley Zusman, S. Amanda Marshall, Judge Hogan, and Judge Ann Aiken as well as officials who committed crimes against the Hammond family and myself by omissions and misprision [sic] pf felony s [sic], Sheriff David Ward and Special Agent Katherine Armstrong.She says she is seeking the $666 billion in damages because these individuals subjected her to damages from the works of the devil. If this seems nuts to you, you re probably right. These armed and crazed individuals declared war on the federal government, openly, and have essentially received a slap on the wrist for their anti-government efforts.Words can not describe the insanity of this woman s claims, so read them for yourself. Shawna Cox's claim for damages


21st Century Wire says The Democratic Party National Convention hit full swing in Philadelphia yesterday, as fashion and celebrity politics dominated the the presentation. The First Lady also took to the podium and invoked slavery in order to to stir delegates, and to try and propel DNC nominee Hillary Clinton forward for November s election. I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, she said. Watch:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuqu61b3YVE . See more celebrity and fashion highlights here. Watch as Texas-based, black/Afro-American author and pundit E.T. Williams breaks down the psychological messaging behind Michelle Obama s slavery comments, as well as what he believes is her party s over-reliance on identity politics as its primary strategy.


China aims to pass a national supervision law and set up a new commission next year to oversee an expansion of President Xi Jinping s campaign to fight corruption in the ruling Communist Party and government, the party said on Sunday. The moves will be made during China s annual meeting of parliament early next year, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the party s anti-graft watchdog, said in its report to a five-yearly party congress last week. The report, issued by the official Xinhua news agency, had not been previously released and gave few other details on the new commission. All provinces, regions and cities must closely connect regional practices, integrate reform pilot scheme experience, implement the overall plan according to the decision of the party s Central Committee, and promote organizational integration, the report said. The report also said former Chongqing Party boss Sun Zhengcai and a group of other top officials ousted for graft, including former security tsar Zhou Yongkang, were schemers and plotters out to further their own careers. The official line on Sun and Zhou had been that graft, not politics, was the primary reason for their downfall. Zhao Leji, the newly appointed head of the CCDI, told the commission that they must secure a sweeping victory in the fight against corruption, and set up an institutionalized legal framework to make it impossible for officials to be corrupt, Xinhua reported. Zhao took over from Wang Qishan as part of a leadership reshuffle announced at the close of the 19th National Party Congress of the Communist Party, which ended last Tuesday. Wang had been widely credited with the success and vigor of the graft fight. Analysts say Zhao is likely to take a more institutional approach. The new National Supervision Commission will work alongside the CCDI, sharing much of its power and resources, and will merge multiple additional anti-graft units, according to an announcement last year. It will also expand the purview of Xi s anti-graft campaign to include employees at state-backed institutions who are not necessarily party members. Since coming to power in 2012, Xi s signature anti-corruption drive has jailed or otherwise punished nearly 1.4 million party members and he has emphasized the importance of improving China s rule of law architecture. In his congress address, Xi said China would keep up with the irreversible momentum of the anti-corruption campaign, and announced a central leading group responsible for overseeing China s law-based governance. Xi also said the party would scrap the practice of secretive interrogations known as shuanggui , in which cadres accused of graft and other disciplinary violations are routinely subjected to extrajudicial detention, isolation and interrogation by the CCDI. The CCDI only hands cases over to police and the judiciary for prosecution. International rights groups have raised concerns about torture, including sleep deprivation, being used to obtain confessions.


President Donald Trump does not know anything about foreign policy. Now, it appears, he knows just as little about trade. This is more troubling as one of his selling points was that he was a successful businessman with a global company. You d think that a person with such a vast empire (there are Trump Towers all over the planet) would know a thing or two about the subject. This idea was blown out of the water this week by comments from a German official about Chancellor Angela Merkel s recent visit to Washington, DC.The official told The Times of London, Ten times Trump asked [German chancellor Angela Merkel] if he could negotiate a trade deal with Germany. Every time she replied, You can t do a trade deal with Germany, only the EU. On the eleventh refusal, Trump finally got the message, Oh, we ll do a deal with Europe then.' For a man who claimed to be able to make the best deals for the United States with our trading partners, it helps to know who exactly those partners are.As bad as that is, Trump s lack of world knowledge is more than just problematic when it comes to problems the country is dealing with on the other side of the world. Not only has the Trump Administration failed to even nominate an ambassador to South Korea, up until China President Xi Jinping visited him at Mar-a-Lago, he was under the impression that the only thing that had to happen to contain North Korean leader, Kim Jung Un, was have China tell him to behave.North Korea is looking for trouble. If China decides to help, that would be great. If not, we will solve the problem without them! U.S.A. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 11, 2017After his visit with Xi, Trump told the Wall Street Journal, After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it s not so easy. I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power [over] North Korea. But it s not what you would think. Keep in mind, Trump spent a lot of time during the campaign (and before) touting, I know China. He claimed that the combination of the work he has done with the Chinese and the hundreds of books he had read about China made him an expert on the region. All of this is odd, given his comments about that short (ten minutes!) conversation. His lack of understanding goes further.After his meeting with Xi, Trump told an interviewer, Korea actually used to be a part of China. This did not go over well with the South Korean government. South Korean foreign spokesman Cho June-hyuck responded with, It s a clear fact acknowledged by the international community that, for thousands of years in history, Korea has never been part of China. But wait, there s more.An interview with Fox & Friends makes it appear that Trump really doesn t even know who is running North Korea right now. He told them:I hope things work out well. I hope there s going to be peace, but you know, they ve been talking with this gentleman for a long time. You read Clinton s book, he said, Oh we made such a great peace deal, and it was a joke. You look at different things over the years with President Obama. Everybody s been outplayed, they ve all been outplayed by this gentleman and we ll see what happens. But I just don t telegraph my moves.Bill Clinton never dealt with the current leader, he dealt with his father, Kim Jung Il. Getting these facts wrong says a lot. Trump doesn t know who to deal with when it comes to trade with Germany. He seems to have taken his information about Chinese and Korean history from Xi. He doesn t appear to have a clue as to who the leader of North Korean leader. The questions with this president are not What did he know and when did he know it? but Does he know anything and can he be taught?


Monica Camacho-Perez came to the United States from Mexico as a child, crossing into Arizona with her mother in the same spot where her father made the trip before them. "Nobody stopped us,'' Camacho-Perez, now 20, said of her 2002 journey. Three years ago, her uncle tried to cross the border and join the family in Baltimore, where they remain illegal immigrants. He was stopped three times by the U.S. Border Patrol and jailed for 50 days. "He doesn't want to try anymore," said Camacho-Perez. "Now, it's really hard." As the Department of Homeland Security continues to pour money into border security, evidence is emerging that illegal immigration flows have fallen to their lowest level in at least two decades. The nation's population of illegal immigrants, which more than tripled, to 12.2 million, between 1990 and 2007, has dropped by about 1 million, according to demographers at the Pew Research Center. A key — but largely overlooked — sign of these ebbing flows is the changing makeup of the undocumented population. Until recent years, illegal immigrants tended to be young men streaming across the Southern border in pursuit of work. But demographic data show that the typical illegal immigrant now is much more likely someone who is 35 or older and has lived in the United States for a decade or more. Homeland security officials in the Obama and George W. Bush administrations — who have more than doubled the Border Patrol's size and spent billions on drones, sensors and other technology at the border — say enhanced security is driving the new trends. "We have seen tremendous progress," said R. Gil Kerlikowske, commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. "The border is much more secure than in times past." The issue of border security is central to the broader debate over immigration reform that has roiled Washington in recent years and is emerging as a flash point in the 2016 presidential campaign. Congressional Republicans have insisted on greater border security before they consider legalizing any immigrants who came to this country without proper documents. President Obama says the border has never been more secure and is urging a series of legislative steps to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants, streamline the visa system and further fortify the border. He has already moved to protect certain undocumented immigrants from deportation through executive actions. But these actions have faced resistance in the courts, including the decision Tuesday by a federal appeals court to keep one of the president's signature immigration efforts from moving ahead. What's increasingly clear is that the shifting fortunes of the U.S. economy account for less of the ebb and flow of illegal immigration. Even as the economy bounces back from recession, illegal immigration flows, especially from Mexico, have kept declining, according to researchers and government data. Since the 1990s, the opposite was true: The better the economy, the more people tried to come. "Every month or quarter that the economy continues to improve and unauthorized immigration doesn't pick up supports the theory that border security is a bigger factor, and it's less about the economy and we have moved into a new era,'' said Marc Rosenblum, deputy director of the U.S. immigration program at the Migration Policy Institute. Some researchers say factors other than security are playing a role and might even account for much of the reduced flow of illegal immigrants. These researchers point, for instance, to changes in Latin America that could be pushing fewer people to seek a better life in the United States. At odds with the government's claims of success, a series of academic studies in recent years have found little linkage between border security and illegal migration. Douglas S. Massey, a Princeton University sociologist, said the falling numbers of immigrants have "nothing to do with border enforcement." Massey, who helps run a project that has interviewed thousands of illegal Mexican migrants over the past three decades, attributed the trend to demographic changes in Mexico, such as women having fewer children. But even some researchers who are skeptical about the overall effectiveness of enhanced border security acknowledge indirect effects of these measures. For potential migrants who are calculating the pros and cons of trying to cross the border, stiffer U.S. security measures are making the trip much more expensive, in particular the exploding cost of hiring a guide. The journey has also become more arduous and dangerous, in part because the DHS has plugged traditional crossing points and driven migrants deeper into the desert. Since the Bush administration, the DHS has dramatically increased its efforts to lock down the southwest border. The budget for Customs and Border Protection has grown to $10.7 billion in the past decade, a 75 percent increase. The number of Border Patrol agents at the border has nearly doubled over the past decade, to more than 18,000 today. Much of the ramp-up occurred during the Bush administration, but the Obama administration has marshaled more forces as well. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has recently set up three task forces to increase coordination within the DHS. Current and former DHS officials acknowledge that a confluence of factors explains the decline in illegal migration, including demographic changes in Mexico, improvements in its economy and Mexico's crackdown on Central American migrants headed to the United States. But these officials insist that the massive investment to secure the border has been the key factor. "It used to be that you could literally sit at a bar in Tijuana, Mexico, look across the border into San Diego, wait for the Border Patrol to drive in the other direction and make a run for it,'' said Steve Atkiss, a former CBP chief of staff and now a partner at Command Consulting Group. "It's much more difficult and expensive now." Madai Ledezma crossed the Mexican border into Texas a decade ago at age 23 and remains in the United States as an illegal immigrant. She said her uncle and brother had recently wanted to join her. But, she said, they're staying put after her uncle was caught by the Border Patrol a year ago and locked up for a month before being sent back to Mexico. "The risk of crossing again is that he will be locked up again,'' Ledezma said. She added, "I just heard recently that the Border Patrol now has the ability to fire their weapons." Ledezma's uncle was one of a shrinking number of undocumented immigrants stopped by the Border Patrol. Government officials widely cite that trend as evidence that the overall flow is also down. In 2000, considered the peak of the flood of illegal Mexican migration, more than 1.6 million people were apprehended, according to DHS data. Those numbers have plunged to around 400,000 per year since 2012 and are down 28 percent in the first part of fiscal 2015 compared with last year. Even last year's widely publicized spike in unaccompanied minors crossing the border from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras has receded dramatically, the data show. While the declining number of apprehensions is not conclusive proof that illegal immigration is down, other less publicized research strongly suggests this is the case. Wayne Cornelius, director of the Mexican migration field research program at the University of California at San Diego, interviews hundreds of people each year in the Mexican state of Yucatan and asks them whether they are planning to come to the United States in the next 12 months. In 2006, 24 percent said yes. By 2009, as the U.S. economy was cratering, 8 percent said yes. This year, 2.5 percent answered in the affirmative. A recent study by the Pew Research Center, meanwhile, found that the median length of stay for illegal immigrants in the United States jumped from less than eight years in 2003 to nearly 13 years by 2013. Their median age has increased from 28 during the 1990s to nearly 36 today. Those figures wouldn't be possible if young men were still coming across the border in huge numbers, and it was those young men who accounted for most of the illegal traffic. But Massey, the Princeton researcher, highlighted an unintended consequence of the security crackdown on the border. He said immigrants who are already in the United States are afraid to go back and forth to Mexico as they traditionally did, and are "aging in place" in the United States. Ledezma's tale is a common one. Over the past decade, she and her husband, Jose Pina, a landscaper, have become involved in their community in New Carrollton. Their daughter, Heather, 6, is a U.S. citizen. Ledezma volunteers at Heather's school, reads with her at the public library and attends a local church. "After so many years of living here, I of course consider this my home," she said. According to estimates by the Migration Policy Institute, about a third of illegal immigrants own a home and have children who are U.S. citizens. "We have this population here and they haven't left and they don't appear to be going back and forth to Mexico anymore,'' said George Escobar, senior director of human services for CASA, a Maryland-based immigrant advocacy group. "These trends have reshaped the immigration debate right before our eyes."


At the Libertarian Town Hall on CNN earlier this month, the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate Gary Johnson and his running mate Bill Weld made a pitch to both "Never-Hillary" and "Never-Trump" voters on the left and right of the political spectrum as the sane and principled third-party alternative for 2016. And whether you agree or disagree with what the two former governors had to say, it's hard to deny their likability — especially in an election where the two major party candidates are as thoroughly unlikable as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Johnson and Weld presumably have a better shot at appealing to Never-Trump conservatives than Never-Hillary liberals or leftists (whose political views align much more with the Green Party's Jill Stein), but the former New Mexico governor did make a compelling pitch — superficially, at least — to disaffected Bernie Sanders supporters at the Town Hall. And while polls indicate that the majority of the democratic socialist's supporters will vote for Clinton in November, there is a minority faction that will be voting their conscience — and Johnson is certainly in a position to woo some of these voters. With this undoubtedly in the back of his mind, the libertarian candidate said that he and Bernie are similar "on about 75 percent of what's out there," from marriage equality and reproductive rights, to the legalization of marijuana and the end of futile military interventions overseas. From an "economic standpoint," however, Johnson admitted disagreement: "If Bernie supporters are really looking for income equality, I don't think that is something that government can accomplish. Taking from Peter to rob Paul, that's an equation that Peter really loves. But if Bernie supporters are looking for equal opportunity, I think that is something that can be accomplished. … In politics, you can definitely stand up for equal opportunity." It was a cogent response that included an acknowledgement that "crony capitalism is alive and well" — something that libertarians and leftists have long agreed on (and equally object to). But apart from this, Johnson's economic worldview is diametrically opposed to Sanders' egalitarian vision of social democracy — and this should be enough to stop the latter's supporters from voting for the former. In the economic realm, right-wing libertarians (as opposed to left libertarians or "libertarian socialists") are essentially classical economic liberals who reject most of the social democratic reforms that were enacted throughout the capitalist world during the 20th century. Instead of a mixed economy, libertarians advocate laissez faire capitalism and profess that even minimal state intervention in the economy will lead to tyranny — or serfdom, as the famous libertarian philosopher F. A. Hayek put it in his influential book "The Road to Serfdom" (this didn't pan out, of course — instead, it was the welfare state that likely prevented more radical assaults on capitalism in the West). In his statement, Johnson said that he doesn't believe that the government can reduce economic inequality — which has soared over the past forty years — and equated redistributive measures to theft. This alone reveals the candidates dogmatic worldview. The social democratic reforms of the 20th century clearly demonstrate that wealth and income inequality can be curbed within a capitalist economy (and should be if leaders want to achieve greater economic and political stability). While Johnson is less fanatical than some of his party colleagues (indeed, he is considered too moderate by many libertarians), he is still undoubtedly the most extreme candidate of 2016 on economic matters. He opposes corporate taxation, supports privatized healthcare, advocates eliminating the progressive income tax and replacing them with a regressive consumption tax, and is a proponent of widespread economic deregulation and privatization (including the privatization of prisons). Libertarianism may sound good on paper — championing individualism and maximum freedom; but in practice, its laissez faire prescriptions would result in corporate tyranny, the very opposite of freedom (libertarians are so consumed with the threat of state tyranny that they seem unable to even consider the very real threat of private tyranny, or as Noam Chomsky has described it, "tyranny by unaccountable private concentrations of wealth"). G. A. Cohen, the father of analytical Marxism and notable critic of libertarianism, discussed how private property actually inhibits the freedom of the ownerless in his essay "Capitalism, Freedom, Proletariat": "Private property, like any system of rights, pretty well is a particular way of distributing freedom and unfreedom. It is necessarily associated with the liberty of private owners to do as they wish with what they own, but it no less necessarily withdraws liberty from those who do not own it. To think of capitalism as a realm of freedom is to overlook half of its nature." Now, there was a time when the rugged individualism and minimal state intervention that libertarians advocate could have conceivably produced a greater degree of freedom: namely, in a pre-capitalist, pre-industrial economy — before the prevalence of wage-labor and the advent of multinational corporations, when independent producers (e.g. yeoman farmers, artisans, etc.) who sold their own commodities on the market (or simply produced for subsistence) were the dominant economic players. But in a modern corporate capitalist economy in which the richest 20 citizens control more wealth than the bottom half (about 152 million people in America), these notions are not only antiquated, but inimical to both freedom and democracy. Thus, a Bernie Sanders supporter would have to be grossly uninformed to go from backing the democratic socialist senator to a libertarian like Johnson. Yes, there are similarities between the two; but their political philosophies are so antithetical to each other — particularly when it comes to political economy — that the single issues where there is some agreement are basically irrelevant. Libertarianism is fundamentally opposed to the egalitarian and democratic values that Sanders represents.


This madness needs to stop and that means Donald Trump should not be president.Trump supporters have been rampaging ever since Election Day. Emboldened by the results, they have committed hundreds of hate crimes and the number continues to rise. Nazis and racists are celebrating because they believe Trump will turn America into a whites only nation.And one Trump supporter couldn t have made that any clearer.A San Jose mosque recently received a threatening letter from a Trump supporter promising them that Trump will treat them like Hitler treated the Jews. As we all know, six million Jews were systematically exterminated during World War II in an effort to wipe them out. In short, this Trump supporter threatened Muslims with mass genocide.Referring to them as the Children of Satan, the Trump supporter praised Trump and declared that he will cleanse America. You Muslims are vile and evil people, the letter began before hurling racist insults at their fathers and mothers. There s a new sheriff in town President Donald Trump. He s going to cleanse America and make it shine again. And he s going to start with you Muslims. He s going to do to you Muslims what Hitler did to the Jews. You Muslims would be wise to pack your bags and get out of Dodge. This is a great time for patriotic Americans. Long live President Trump and God bless the USA. The Trump supporter didn t even have the balls to use their real name, cowardly signing the letter, Americans for a Better Way. Here s an image of the letter via Twitter.(2). @SanJosePD investigating. Letter: You worship the devil. But your day of reckoning has arrived . Calls Muslims vile & filthy people pic.twitter.com/99WGI2giLF Damian Trujillo (@newsdamian) November 26, 2016San Jose police are now investigating but the mosque refuses to let hate win. We wanted to let law enforcement know so that in case there s an unfortunate event people are prepared, Evergreen Islamic Center Board President Faisal Yazadi told ABC7. Our doors are never locked. I hope that person knows that we re more than happy to have a dialogue. Hopefully, we learn a thing or two from him or her, and he or she learns something from us. Here s the video via NBC.Donald Trump has done nothing but bring about a rise of hate in this country and he hasn t even taken office yet. Just imagine how emboldened his supporters will be once that happens. The Electoral College can stop Trump from being president. All they have to do is vote for Hillary Clinton on December 19th. And we can do our part by asking them to do so by signing this petition. Hate cannot be allowed to win in this country, therefore, we need to make sure Trump loses.


Minnesota Man Arrested, Sentenced to 6-Months in Jail for Having a Windmill On His Property Nov 14, 2016 0 0 Now the State claims the right to tell you what you can and can't have on your own property.  Orono, MN – For more than a year, we have been following the story of a Minnesota man, Jay Nygard, who is routinely risking jail time because he refuses to remove a wind turbine from his property. Nygard has been in and out of court over the years, and despite a short-lived victory last October, he was recently back in front of a judge facing a contempt of court charge for refusing a court order to remove the turbines from his property.  He did eventually remove the turbines, leaving only the cement bases because removing them would cause structural damage to their house. This was not good enough for the local government, who ignored the advice of three different engineers and demanded that they remove the bases, despite the risk of damaging the home. This is all that remains of the windmill on Nygard's property, a concrete footing, in the ground.  On Friday, Nygard was arrested and, according to his son, has been given six months in prison for refusing to remove the base.  According to Kahler Nygard, Jay's son, his father even attempted to make peace with the county and compromise on a number of different issues, but they ignored his appeals.  "The choices for my dad were to potentially destroy our foundation in the house or go to jail, he even offered an olive branch saying he would add an easement to the deed saying when the house is demolished the pad must be removed, but that was ignored also, " Kahler said in an exclusive interview with The Free Thought Project.  "The base was level with the ground and 4 feet cubed. We removed the top half of the concrete and used a metal cutting tool to remove the top half of the bolt assembly, rendering the structure unusable," Kahler explained.  "They say that we have to remove to footing 100% and have it inspected by the city, which we have three different engineers all saying we should just leave it , one of them even does contract work for the city, " he added.  Kahler said that although there are no ordinances against windmills, the county has a personal vendetta against his family.  Nygard has the right to do whatever he wants with his own property, but unfortunately in a democracy such as the United States, the property rights of an individual can be overridden according to the whims of politicians and the demands of uninvolved third parties.  Please share this story with your friends and family in hopes of keeping a good man, whose only "crime" was self-sustainability, out of jail.  John Vibes is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter-culture and the drug war. In addition to his writing and activist work , he organizes a number of large events including the Free Your Mind Conference , which features top caliber speakers and whistle-blowers from all over the world. You can contact him and stay connected to his work at his Facebook page. You can find his 65 chapter Book entitled "Alchemy of the Timeless Renaissance" at bookpatch.com.  This article was originally featured on The Free Thought Project Vote Up