Three senior Brazilian law enforcement officials, including the former prosecutor general, said new leaders of the federal police and prosecutors offices are curbing an anti-corruption drive that challenged centuries of impunity in Latin America s biggest country. Rodrigo Janot, who until mid-September was Brazil s prosecutor general and remains an influential senior prosecutor, told Reuters this week he believes that President Michel Temer, whom he charged on three different counts of corruption, appointed a new head of federal police specifically to divert graft investigations. Separately, two other senior law enforcement officials said that Raquel Dodge, Janot s replacement as prosecutor general, told some senior prosecutors in the capital Brasilia to shift away from corruption probes and stop talking publicly about anti-graft efforts. In a statement, the president s office said the police chief was appointed after consultations with the police force. It criticized any suggestions the new director would hinder investigations. Only someone ill-informed or ill-intentioned could suppose that interference in investigations is possible, Temer s office said. A spokeswoman for Dodge said the new prosecutor general was vigorously combating corruption on numerous fronts. Fernando Segovia, the new police director, in an email to Reuters said his office will strengthen the fight against corruption. Brazil s crackdown on graft in recent years led to dozens of convictions of senior politicians, government officials and corporate executives, inspiring many Brazilians to believe that a longstanding culture of impunity was changing. It also helped spawn similar crackdowns elsewhere in Latin America. But in Brazil, where Congress recently shielded Temer from charges, some investigators and prosecutors say that elected officials are finding ways to outmaneuver them, especially as they seek, before elections next year, to retain seats that give them constitutional safeguards against prosecution. The sprawling nature of many of Brazil s inquiries, conducted by investigators in dozens of far-flung offices, would make any concerted effort to derail them difficult, corruption experts said. But Janot s dissent, and growing criticism expressed by other senior officials, reveal a growing rift at the top levels of Brazilian law enforcement at a time when some investigators believe Temer and Congressional allies are out to quash landmark investigations. Now is the time to speak up, Janot told Reuters, so that all this effort will not have been in vain. The effort, including Operation Car Wash and several other major investigations, involves probes into kickbacks by private construction firms to government officials and politicians in exchange for public works and other contracts. It uncovered billions of dollars worth of illicit payments and led to sharing of evidence with 40 other countries, many of which launched their own probes and convicted officials based on Brazilian investigators findings. During a rare, two-hour interview in Brasilia, Janot was especially critical of Segovia s appointment to head the federal police, which spearheaded Car Wash and other investigations. The 61-year-old prosecutor, who stepped down as prosecutor general because the second of his two terms in the office expired in September, said he believes that Segovia was named to complete a mission to divert the focus of the investigations. Janot cited public commentary made by the new police chief, including Segovia s criticism of prosecutors investigations at a press conference shortly after he took office. By the statements he has made, it appears he was selected for the mission to discredit the investigation, Janot added. Segovia, 48, who has spent over two decades on the force, in the email said he seeks to strengthen investigations of crimes against public coffers and involving corruption. I have made clear in all my public statements that we will broaden and strengthen Operation Car Wash, he added. The new police chief was appointed with strong support from Temer s ruling Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, or PMDB. His appointment surprised some within the federal police because Segovia has never held what is considered one of the force s major posts, according to other investigators and law enforcement experts. During a press conference on Nov. 20, ten days into the new job, Segovia criticized prosecutors for their case against Temer, calling it a rushed investigation. He belittled the evidence, including a video shot by federal police of a Temer aide accepting a bag with 500,000 reais ($150,000) in cash. A single bag does not provide the criminal evidence needed, Segovia said, prompting widespread scorn in Brazilian press and social media. It cannot be denied that the statements made by the new director of the federal police were extremely unfortunate, read an editorial in the Folha de S. Paulo, Brazil s largest newspaper, afterward. When Dodge took office on Sept 19, she was widely criticized by police, prosecutors and many others in Brazil for failing in a speech to acknowledge the historic Car Wash probe. The two senior law enforcement officials, who requested to remain anonymous, said that the new prosecutor general has told other prosecutors to shift their focus from graft. Dodge also told some prosecutors to stop using the word corruption so much in public, they said. The prosecutor general s spokeswoman did not respond to questions about whether Dodge told prosecutors to avoid the word corruption or whether she told prosecutors to de-emphasize graft cases. Janot declined to comment on Dodge s dealings with other prosecutors, saying he has a professional and respectful relationship with his successor. Although it is early in the tenure of both Dodge and Segovia, some prosecutors and police investigators say they are already seeing a significant slowdown in procedures necessary to pursue some cases. Janot, for instance, said Dodge s office has filed far less paperwork with Brazil s Supreme Court than would have been expected given the caseload when she took over. The paperwork is a key step in many big investigations because only the top court can authorize probes involving elected federal officials. A spokeswoman for the top court did not respond to a request for comment on the volume of the paperwork. Before his term expired, the prosecutor general s office this year sent an average of 302 requests related to the Car Wash corruption investigations to the Supreme Court each month, Janot said. Dodge s office said it had filed a total of 450 requests since she took office in mid-September, representing an average of 180 per month, or a roughly 40 percent drop. Some experts say it is too soon to know whether a shift away from corruption investigations is underway or even possible to orchestrate, particularly because of the number of investigators pursuing cases across Brazil. More time is needed, they say, to evaluate Dodge s administration. Even if Dodge and Segovia were strategically appointed to stop or create delays in investigations, I doubt they would succeed because the process has become decentralized, said Carlos Pereira, a professor of public administration at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro and a leading expert on corruption. Still, those involved in ongoing cases are troubled by any prospect of a slowdown, particularly with national elections looming next October, which would prolong constitutional protections for many office-holders facing charges. The risks increase exponentially as the elections approach, said Carlos Lima, the top regional prosecutor in Curitiba, the southern city where the Car Wash investigations began. During his conversation with Reuters, Janot criticized Segovia s support from Temer and his allies, some of whom are also facing investigations and charges. A person with close ties to these people some under investigation, some charged I cannot say if they should be allowed to run an institution of the size and importance of the federal police, Janot said. In the email, Segovia said I have no type of political or party ties with the PMDB or any other political party. Temer, who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, staved off prosecution largely because allies in the lower house of Congress, which must authorize charges against a sitting president, voted against it. The vote outraged many Brazilians because some of those who voted against the charges in Congress are also being investigated. Temer will still face charges once he leaves federal elected office. The pushback is such that a Congressional committee is now investigating how federal prosecutors carried out their probe against Temer. We re going to investigate those who have always investigated us, said Carlos Marun, a PMDB Congressman and Temer ally, who danced on the lower house floor after it voted against sending the president for trial. Marun himself is facing a corruption trial in his home state of Mato Grosso do Sul. He has denied any wrongdoing.


0 comments  With just 10 days to go before the most important election of our lifetime, Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans are soaring in the polls. The Friday announcement that the FBI would be re-opening its investigation into Hillary Clinton's personal email server has not helped matters for Democrats, either.  But none of this will matter if they are able to manipulate the vote. According to MRC Blog , that's why the left is going to drastic measures to drum up Democratic voters, expanding voting rights to include non-citizens in major cities nationwide.  The latest notable city to do so is San Francisco, whose Election Day ballot will include a measure allowing the parents or legal guardians of any student in the city's public schools to vote in school board elections. Under this measure, people with green cards, visas, or no documentation at all would be allowed to vote.  San Francisco Assemblyman David Chiu, who believes illegal aliens should be allowed to vote to bypass the "broken immigration system in this country," made the following statement:  "One out of three kids in the San Francisco unified school system has a parent who is an immigrant, who is disenfranchised and doesn't have a voice. We've had legal immigrants who've had children go through the entire K-12 system without having a say."  Chiu is the son of Taiwanese immigrants.  It is no secret that the vast majority of illegal aliens vote Democrat, because that is the party which is incessantly trying to buy their loyalty with an endless stream of handouts and promises of blanket amnesty. If it weren't so, we wouldn't see all of these liberals pushing so hard to give illegals voting rights; they simply do so because it works in their favor, not because it is actually good for anyone.  Major cities from sea to shining sea are following San Francisco's lead, which is just one more very important reason to vote for Donald Trump on Nov. 8. We need to turn this country around and FAST!


Donald Trump's proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United States would go nowhere in the Senate, the Republican leader there says. "We're not gonna follow that suggestion that this particular candidate made," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told CNN's Jake Tapper Sunday on "State of the Union." "It would prevent the president of Afghanistan from coming to the United States. The king of Jordan couldn't come to the United States," he said. "Obviously we're not going to do that." McConnell had previously criticized Trump's proposal to temporarily block Muslims from entering the United States in the wake of terror attacks in Paris and California. Despite his rebuke of Trump's proposal, McConnell wouldn't weigh in any further on the presidential race Sunday.


As the presidential inauguration drew near in January, something bordering on panic was taking hold among some scientists who rely on the vast oceans of data housed on government servers, which encompass information on everything from social demographics to satellite photographs of polar ice. In a Trump administration that has made clear its disdain for the copious evidence that human activity is warming the planet, researchers feared a broad crusade against the scientific information provided to the public. Reports last week that the administration is proposing deep budget cuts for government agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency have fueled new fears of databases being axed, if only as a measure. "We'll probably be saying goodbye to much of the invaluable data housed at the NCEI," Anne Jefferson, a water hydrology professor at Kent State University, wrote on Twitter Saturday, referring to the National Centers for Environmental Information. "Hope it gets rescued in time. " It is illegal to destroy government data, but agencies can make it more difficult to find by revising websites and creating other barriers to the underlying information. Already there have been a handful of changes to the websites of federal science agencies, according to the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, a new organization with researchers monitoring the content. On the E. P. A. 's website, for instance, the science and technology office had described as its mission the development of "scientific and technological foundations to achieve clean water. " Now the office says the goal is to develop "economically and technologically achievable performance standards. " Pie charts on a Department of Energy website illustrating the link between coal and greenhouse gas emissions also have disappeared. So has the description on an Interior Department page of the potential environmental effects of hydraulic fracturing on federal land. Changes like these appear only to reflect the publicly stated priorities of the new administration and there have been few signs as yet that federal databases are being systematically manipulated or restricted. But concern about the vulnerability of scientific information has also focused attention on a nonpartisan problem of government: Much of the scientific information so painstakingly collected over the decades, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, remains held only by the government, scattered on thousands of servers in hundreds of departments where it may not be backed up and could be impossible to find. As thousands of academics, librarians, coders and citizens have gathered at what are called "data rescue" events in recent weeks — there were at least six this past weekend alone — the enormousness of extracting government data that is easily found has become apparent, as has the difficulty in tracking down the rest. Some activists refer to it as "dark data" — and they are not talking about classified information or data the government might release only if compelled by a Freedom of Information Act request. "It's like dark matter we know it must be there but we don't know where to find it to verify," said Maxwell Ogden, the director of Code for Science and Society, a nonprofit that began a archiving project in collaboration with the research libraries in the University of California system. "If they're going to delete something, how will we even know it's deleted if we didn't know it was there?" he asked. The obstacles have spurred debate among activists over how to build an archiving system for the government's science data that ensures that the public does not lose access to it, regardless of who is in power. "No one would advocate for a system where the government stores all scientific data and we just trust them to give it to us," said Laurie Allen, a digital librarian at the University of Pennsylvania who helped found Data Refuge. "We didn't used to have that system, yet that is the system we have landed with. " At the moment, the closest thing to a central repository is Data. gov, which, under a 2013 Obama administration directive, is supposed to link to all of the public databases within the government. But it relies on agencies to and the total size of all the data linked to by the directory, Mr. Ogden recently found, comes to just 40 terabytes — about as much as would fit on $1, 000 worth of hard drives. NASA alone provides access to more than 17. 5 petabytes of archived data, according to its website (a petabyte is 1, 000 times bigger than a terabyte) over dozens of different data portal systems. And of the links on Data. gov, Mr. Ogden found, take users to a website rather than the actual data, which makes it hard to devise software that can automatically copy it. Even databases that are listed on Data. gov — and there are more than two million, according to Mr. Ogden's published logs — often sit behind an interface designed for ease of use but built with proprietary code almost impossible to reproduce. The need to write custom code to extract data from, say, the E. P. A. 's discharge monitoring reports is one reason that, despite having hosted more than two dozen "data rescue" events since January, the activist group Data Refuge lists only 158 data sets in its public directory. Andrew Bergman, a graduate student in applied physics at Harvard, along with two physics department colleagues, suspended his studies to help found the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, which has also helped to organize the events. "We have things that are considered really important from NASA, E. P. A. NOAA," Mr. Bergman said. "But in terms of finalized, completed data sets that are actually useful, it's a very small number compared to the total. " The transition to digital distribution that made government documents more accessible, librarians say, has also left them more at risk. Without physical copies in libraries, the internet's promise of making government information more widely available has made it far more centralized. Except when certain data is the subject of a lawsuit or multiple F. O. I. A. requests, it remains unclear what compels an agency to keep it online. "Destroying federal records is a crime," said Patrice McDermott, who heads a public advocacy organization called Open the Government. "Taking them off of the internet does not have the same penalty. " In a recent letter to the federal Office of Management and Budget, Ms. McDermott's group cited a clause in the 1995 Paperwork Reduction Act that requires agencies to "provide adequate notice when initiating, substantially modifying, or terminating significant information dissemination products. " But what that means for the age of big data has not been defined. To make secure copies of government research that researchers can trust is no easy task, librarians say. But many of those who have been trying for years to find funding and a system to do it reliably hope to harness the current wave of interest. "At the moment, more people than ever are aware of the risk of relying solely on the government to preserve its own information,'' two government document librarians, James A. Jacobs, of the University of California, San Diego, and James R. Jacobs of Stanford University, wrote in an essay circulated online last week. "This was not true even six months ago. '' At the archiving events, participants are typically divided into groups. One uses a web browser extension to flag government web addresses for the Internet Archive, an existing service that operates an automated "web crawler" that can make copies of federal websites but typically not the databases that store information in more exotic formats. Another group is tasked with scrutinizing data sets that researchers have identified as particularly useful or vulnerable. Those are "tagged" with a description of where they came from and what they are. At one of last month's events, at New York University, many marveled at the breadth and depth of the research they were sorting through, even as they worried about its future. "Look, you can get temperature and salinity readings from any one of these buoys,'' said Barbara Thiers, the vice president for science at the New York Botanical Garden, another participant. "This is the raw data for tracking ocean warming. ''


President Donald Trump called for the NATO alliance to renew their struggle against radical Islamic terrorism, hosting a moment of silence in remembrance of the victims of the attack in Manchester. ["Terrorism must be stopped in its tracks, or the horror you saw in Manchester and so many other places will continue forever," he said during his remarks in advance of a NATO summit in Brussels. Trump called the attacks a reminder of the "barbaric" and "vicious" evil that the world faced. "Innocent little girls and so many others were horribly murdered and badly injured while attending a concert," he said, describing the victims of the attack. "Beautiful lives with so much great potential, torn from their families forever and ever. " Trump made his remarks during an unveiling of the Article 5 and the Berlin Wall memorials, recalling the success of the partnership against communism. The monument includes a section of one of the Twin Tower buildings that were destroyed on which Trump described as "a painful reminder" of the threat the world still faced. The president again described the terrorists as "losers" that should be obliterated from the world. "Wherever they exist in our societies, we must drive them out and never, ever let them back in," he said.


US House Seeks Syria-War Escalation November 22, 2016  Moving to trap President-elect Trump into a war escalation in Syria, the House rushed through a resolution promoting a U.S.-imposed "no fly zone" that could spark World War III, reports Rick Sterling.  By Rick Sterling  Late in the day, on Nov. 15, one week after the U.S. elections, the lame-duck Congress convened in special session with normal rules suspended so the House could pass House Resolution 5732, the "Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act" calling for intensifying the already harsh sanctions on Syria, assessing the imposition of a "no fly zone" inside Syria (to prevent the Syrian government from flying) and escalating efforts to press criminal charges against Syrian officials.  HR5732 claims to promote a negotiated settlement in Syria but, as analyzed by Friends Committee for National Legislation, it imposes preconditions which would actually make a peace agreement more difficult. The West Front of the U.S. Capitol  There was 40 minutes of "debate" with six representatives (Ed Royce, R-California; Eliot Engel, D-New York; Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Florida; Dan Kildee, D-Michigan; Chris Smith, R-New Jersey; and Carlos Curbelo, R-Florida) all speaking in favor of the resolution. There were few other representatives present, but the House Foreign Affairs Committee stated that the resolution was passed "unanimously" without mentioning these special conditions.  According to Wikipedia, " Suspension of the rules is a procedure generally used to quickly pass non-controversial bills in the United States House of Representatives … such as naming Post Offices…" In this case, however, the resolution could lead to a wider war in the Middle East and potentially World War III with nuclear-armed Russia.  Most strikingly, the resolution calls for evaluating and developing plans for the United States to impose a "no fly zone" inside Syria, a sovereign nation, an act of war that also would violate international law as an act of aggression. It also could put the U.S. military in the position of shooting down Russian aircraft.  To call this proposal "non-controversial" is absurd, although it may say a great deal about the "group think" of the U.S. Congress that an act of war would be so casually considered. Clearly, this resolution should have been debated under normal rules with a reasonable amount of Congressional presence and debate.  The motivation for bypassing normal rules and rushing the bill through without meaningful debate was articulated by the bill's sponsor, Democrat Eliot Engel: "We cannot delay action on Syria any further. … If we don't get this legislation across the finish line in the next few weeks, we are back to square one."  The current urgency may be related to the election results since President-elect Donald Trump has spoken out against "regime change" foreign policy. As much as neoconservatives and their liberal-interventionist allies are critical of President Obama for not doing more in Syria, these Congressional hawks are even more concerned about the prospect of a President who might move toward peace and away from war.  The Caesar Fraud  HR5732 is titled the "Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act," which House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Royce explained was named after "the brave Syrian defector known to the world as Caesar, who testified to us the shocking scale of torture being carried out within the prisons of Syria." U.S.-backed Syrian "moderate" rebels smile as they prepare to behead a 12-year-old boy (left), whose severed head is held aloft triumphantly in a later part of the video. [Screenshot from the YouTube video] In reality, the Caesar story was a grand deception involving the CIA with funding from Qatar to sabotage the 2014 Geneva peace negotiations. The 55,000 photos which were said to show 11,000 torture victims have never been publicly revealed. Only a tiny number of photos have been publicized. However, in 2015, Human Rights Watch was granted access to view the entire set. They revealed that almost one half the photos show the opposite of what was claimed: instead of victims tortured by the Syrian government, they actually show dead Syrian soldiers and civilian victims of car bombs and other terror attacks. The "Caesar" story, replete with a masked "defector," was one of the early propaganda hoaxes regarding Syria. One of the other big lies regarding Syria is that the U.S. has been doing nothing. Royce said, " The administration has decided not to decide. And that itself, unfortunately, has set a course where here we sit and watch and the violence only worsens. Mr. Speaker, America has been sitting back and watching these atrocities for far too long. Vital U.S. national security interests are at stake."  Rep. Engel said, "Four years ago I thought we should have aided the Free Syrian Army. They came to us in Washington and begged us for help. … They were simply looking for weaponry. I really believe if we had given it to them, the situation in Syria would have been different today."  That narrative is nonsense. By late 2011, the U.S. was actively coordinating, training and supplying armed opposition groups. When Muammar Gaddafi's Libyan government was toppled in fall 2011, the CIA oversaw the diversion of Libyan weapons to the Syrian armed opposition, as documented in the Defense Intelligence Agency report of October 2012.  These weapons transfers were secret. For the public record, it was acknowledged that the U.S. was supplying communications equipment to the armed opposition while U.S. "allies" — Saudi Arabia and Qatar — were supplying the weaponry. This is one reason that Saudi purchases of weapons skyrocketed during this time period; they were buying weapons to replace those being shipped to the armed opposition in Syria. It was very profitable for U.S. arms manufacturers.  Huge weapons transfers to the armed opposition in Syria have continued to the present, with the U.S. government even more directly involved. This past spring, Janes Defense reported the details of a U.S. delivery of 2.2 million pounds of ammunition, rocket launchers and other weaponry to the armed opposition.  So, the political claims that the U.S. has been inactive are baseless. In reality, the U.S. has done everything short of a direct attack on Syria. And the U.S. military is starting to cross that line. On Sept. 17, the U.S. air coalition conducted a series of airstrikes on the Syrian Army in Deir Ezzor, killing 80 Syrian soldiers and enabling ISIS to launch an attack on the position. Claims that it was a "mistake" are highly dubious.  The assertions by Congressional hawks that the U.S. has been "inactive" in the Syrian conflict are part of the false narrative suggesting the U.S. must "do something" which leads to a "no fly zone" and full-scale war. Ironically, these calls for war are masked as "humanitarian" though even proponents, such as Hillary Clinton, privately have acknowledged that large numbers of Syrians, including civilians, would be killed in the U.S. attacks needed to establish the "no fly zone."  And, never do the proponents bring up the case of Libya where the U.S. and NATO "did something": destroyed the government and created chaos.  Fact-Free House of Propaganda  With only a handful of representatives present and no dissent, the six Congressional members engaged in unrestrained propaganda and misinformation. Samantha Power, Permanent Representative of the United States to the UN, addresses the Security Council meeting on Syria, Sept. 25, 2016. Power has been an advocate for escalating U.S. military involvement in Syria. (UN Photo)  Engel, said "We're going into the New Year 2017, Assad still clings to power, at the expense of killing millions of his citizens." Even if all the deaths, including Syrian soldiers and civilians killed by anti-government jihadists, were blamed on Assad, this number is way off anyone's charts.  Rep. Kildee said "The world has witnessed this terrible tragedy unfold before our eyes. Nearly half a million Syrians killed. Not soldiers – men, women, children killed."  The official text of the resolution says, " It is the sense of Congress that– (1) Bashar al-Assad's murderous actions against the people of Syria have caused the deaths of more than 400,000 civilians…"  The above accusations – from "millions of citizens" to "half a million" to "400,000 civilians" – are all preposterous lies. Credible estimates of casualties in the Syrian conflict range from 300,000 to 420,000. The opposition-supporting Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates the documented 2011-2016 death toll as follows: killed pro-Syrian forces – 108,000; killed anti-government forces – 105,000; killed civilians – 89,000  In contrast with Congressional and media claims, civilians comprise a minority of the total death count and the heaviest casualties are among those fighting in defense of the Syrian state. In the U.S. political world and the mainstream media, these facts are ignored and never mentioned because they point to the reality versus the propaganda narrative which has allowed the U.S. and its allies to continue funding terrorism and a war of aggression against Syria.  The Congressional speakers were in full self-righteous mode as they accused the Syrian government of "committing crimes against humanity and war crimes against civilians including murder, torture and rape. No one has been spared from this targeting, even children." A naive listener would never know that the Syrian government is primarily fighting the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda including thousands of foreign fighters supplied and paid by foreign governments.  The speakers went on to accuse the Syrian military of "targeting" hospitals, schools and markets. A critical listener might ask why they would do that instead of targeting Al Qaeda terrorists and their allies who launch dozens and sometimes hundreds of hell-cannon missiles into the government-held sections of Aleppo every day.  The Congressional propaganda fest would not be complete without mention of the "White Helmets." Royce said "We (previously) heard the testimony of Raed Saleh of the Syrian White Helmets. These are the doctors, nurses and volunteers who actually, when the bombs come, run towards the areas that have been hit in order to try to get the injured civilians medical treatment. … They have lost over 600 doctors and nurses."  This is more Congressional nonsense. There are no nurses or doctors associated with the White Helmets. The organization was created by the U.S. and U.K. and heavily promoted by a " shady PR firm ." The White Helmets operate solely in areas controlled by Al Qaeda's Nusra Front (recently renamed Syria Conquest Front) and associated terrorist groups. The White Helmets do some rescue work in the conflict zone but their main role is in the information war manipulating public opinion.  The White Helmets actively promote U.S./NATO intervention through a "no fly zone." Recently, the White Helmets became a major source of claims about innocent civilian victims in east Aleppo.  Given the clear propagandistic history of the White Helmets, these claims should be treated with skepticism. We need to ask exactly what is the evidence?  The same skepticism needs to be applied to video and other reports from the Aleppo Media Center. AMC is a creation of the Syrian Expatriates Organization whose address on K Street in Washington, D.C., indicates it is a U.S. marketing operation.  What's Going On?  The campaign to overthrow the Syrian government is failing and there is possibility of a victory for the Syrian government and its allies. A heart-rending propaganda image designed to justify a major U.S. military operation inside Syria against the Syrian military.  The earlier flood of international jihadi recruits is drying up. The Syrian Army and allies are gaining ground militarily and negotiating settlements or re-locations with "rebels" who previously terrorized Homs, Darraya (outer Damascus) and elsewhere. In Aleppo, the Syrian army and allies are tightening the noose around the armed opposition in east Aleppo.  This has caused alarm among neoconservative lawmakers devoted to Israel, Saudi Arabia and U.S. empire. They are desperate to prevent the Syrian government from finally eliminating the terrorist groups which the West and its allies have promoted for the past five-plus years.  "Pro Israel" groups have been major campaigners for passage of HR5732. The name of Simon Wiesenthal is even invoked in the resolution. Rabbi Lee Bycel wrote, "Where is the Conscience of the World?" as he questioned why the "humanitarian" HR5732 was not passed earlier.  Israeli interests are one of the primary forces sustaining and promoting the conflict. Syria is officially at war with Israel which continues to occupy the Syrian Golan Heights; Syria has been a key ally of the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance; and Syria has maintained its alliance with Iran. In 2010, Secretary of State Clinton urged Syria to break relations with Hezbollah, reduce relations with Iran and come to settlement with Israel. The Syrian refusal to comply with these Washington demands was instrumental in solidifying Washington's hostility .  Congressional proponents of HR5732 make clear the international dimension of the conflict. Royce explains, "It is Russia, it is Hezbollah, that are the primary movers of death and destruction. … It is the IRGC [Revolutionary Guard] fighters from Iran."  Engel echoes the same message: "Yes, we want to go after Assad's partners in violence … Iranian and Hezbollah forces."  In words and deeds Israel has made its position on Syria crystal clear. Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren explained in an interview: "we always wanted [President] Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren't backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran … the greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc."  These statements have been fully backed up by Israeli actions bombing Syrian positions in southern Syria and providing medical treatment for Nusra/Al Qaeda and other armed opposition fighters.  What Will Happen Now?  If the Syrian government and its allies continue to advance in Aleppo, Deir Ezzor, outer Damascus and the south, the situation will come to a head. The enemies of Syria – predominately the U.S., Gulf Countries, NATO and Israel – will come to a decision point. Do they intervene directly or do they allow their "regime change" project to collapse? HR5732 is an effort to prepare for direct intervention and aggression.  One thing is clear from the experience of Libya: Neoconservatives do not care if they leave a country in chaos. The main objective is to destabilize and overthrow a government which is too independent. If the U.S. and its allies cannot dominate the country, then at least they can destroy the contrary authority and leave chaos.  What is at stake in Syria is whether the U.S. and allies, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, are able to destroy the last secular and independent Arab country in the region and whether the U.S. goal of being the sole superpower in the world prevails. The rushed passage of HR5732 without any meaningful debate is indicative of that.  Despite Trump's election and his stated priority of taking on Islamic terrorism – not overthrowing Assad – the "regime change" proponents have not given up their war on Syria. They still seek to escalate U.S. aggression there and hope to box President Trump in.  It's also clear that the U.S. Congress has become a venue where blatant lies can be stated with impunity and where violent actions are advanced behind a cynical and amoral veneer of "humanitarianism."  Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist and member of Syria Solidarity Movement.


From the Daily News: SAN FRANCISCO &gt&gt "Sutter" Brown, a Pembroke Welsh corgi christened California's first dog by his owner Gov. Jerry Brown, died Friday following a brief illness. He was 13. The dog's health had deteriorated rapidly in recent days and the decision was made to say goodbye, the governor's press office said in a statement. He passed away peacefully with the governor and first lady Anne Gust Brown at his side, and was laid to rest at the family ranch in Colusa County, where he "loved to roam, sniff and play," the statement said. While mom dad got to go light the real Capitol Christmas Tree, we got stuck with this fake fir 2 stuffed dogs #Ruff pic. twitter. — Sutter Brown (@SutterBrown) December 6, 2016, Trick or treat! pic. twitter. — Sutter Brown (@SutterBrown) November 1, 2016, https: . I may not be able to get a @PNKPL8, but I'm still doing my part. #BreastCancerAwarenessMonth #PowerColor #ThinkPink pic. twitter. — Sutter Brown (@SutterBrown) October 1, 2015,


The European Union on Monday urged Saad al-Hariri to return to Lebanon, calling on all political forces inside the country to focus on the domestic agenda and warning Saudi Arabia against meddling. Hariri s resignation, announced from Riyadh, and its aftermath have put Lebanon at the forefront of regional rivalry between Shi ite-led Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia Riyadh in recent days. We appeal first of all to the political forces to focus on Lebanon and what they can deliver to their citizens, Prime Minister Hariri to return to his country and the unity government ... to focus on domestic achievements, the bloc s top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, told reporters. We expect no external interference in this national agenda. We believe it is essential to avoid importing into Lebanon regional conflicts, she said after hosting a meeting of all 28 EU foreign ministers in Brussels. She praised the achievements of the Lebanese government under Hariri, who resigned saying he feared assassination. He has criticized the Iran-backed Hezbollah, which is part of his coalition government, for sowing strife in the Arab world and said he could take his resignation back if the group agreed to stay out of regional conflicts. France s foreign minister, speaking on the sidelines of the ministerial gathering in Brussels, also called on other countries not to interfere in Lebanon. We are preoccupied by the situation in Lebanon... we are worried about its stability, we are worried about its integrity, we are worried about non-interference, Jean-Yves Le Drian said. To reach a political solution in Lebanon, all political figures must have complete freedom of movement, he told reporters when asked about Hariri. Germany s Sigmar Gabriel also said Hariri should return as his departure has shaken Lebanon. Their Luxembourgish counterpart Jean Asselborn warned Riyadh that a meltdown in Lebanon would further destabilize the tumultuous Middle East, adding that a hostage crisis, if that is what is happening with the Lebanese Prime Minister in Saudi Arabia, is not very good news for the region.


Главная » News » Peru proposes its own TPP to Russia Peru proposes its own TPP to Russia Monday, 14 November, 2016 - 10:30  Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said that the TPP project is likely to be revised. At the same time, he stressed that a similar arrangement, but with the participation of Russia and China instead of the United States would be the best opportunity for the countries of this region.  Despite the fact that the Peruvian citizens have been regularly protesting against the TPP, the Liberal President is not said to have decided to do the will of the people. Rather, after the victory of Donald Trump, who doesn't support this agreement and taking into consideration the White House's statements that the Obama administration would not have time to ratify the TPP, Kuczynski has decided to be the first one in occupying a niche near the other major countries in the region, including the «economic heavyweight»- China. Related links


Will this be the nail in the coffin for the Obama/Clinton crime families? They ve been able to skate through so many scandals and lawless deeds but this seems so different. Last night, Washington DC Lawyer Victoria Toensing told how the FBI witness ties Obama to the uranium one scandal:Obama knew of the criminality involved with the Russia Uranium One deal because he got daily briefings on it! How is it that Obama knew of this yet he approved the sale of American uranium to the Russians anyway?!The informant is an American businessman who worked undercover as an FBI confidential witness. He was silenced via gag order from exposing what he witnessed.John Solomon: Just a little bit ago before we came on Victoria and I talked and she was able to confirm to me that her client has information that Director Mueller and President Obama and other officials were briefed on this investigation in real time as it was going on Attorney Victoria Toensing: My client was told this information, now maybe the bureau is bluffing but I don t think so because they were very specific. They said that the briefing made it into President Obama s daily briefing papers. So I don t think they made that up.BOOM! LET THIS MAN SPEAK!


Donald Trump is having a hard time recovering from his fallen soldier debacle, not only because he continues to make it worse, but because America is tired of his nonsense and demands the truth.It was only yesterday that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly infuriated everyone by criticizing Rep. Frederica Wilson for calling Trump out for disrespecting a Gold Star widow. Kelly also went after Wilson for an old speech in 2015, stating that she d bragged about how she had gotten money for the FBI acknowledging two deceased agents. Little did Kelly know, this lie would ignite a sh*tstorm for the Trump administration.Earlier today, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was the unfortunate recipient of the media s frustration with the dishonest Trump administration. Reporters blasted Sanders with questions in the press briefing, directly pointing out that Wilson s FBI speech completely contradicted Kelly s claims. When a reporter boldly pointed out that Wilson had never boasted about funding in her speech, Sanders stumbled through her response: Absolutely, General Kelly was stunned that Representative Wilson made comments at a building dedication honoring slain FBI agents about her own actions in Congress, including lobbying former President Obama on legislation. As he pointed out, if you re able to make a sacred act like honoring American heroes all about yourself, you re an empty barrel. Or as we say in the South, all hat, no cattle. This was hardly the end for Sanders. Because she d defended Kelly despite being faced with facts that challenged his claims, reporters attacked her and asked if she d even seen the speech. Sanders claimed she had, and a reporter pointed out that she should know that Wilson actually praised the FBI agents and didn t talk about funding. Even as her spot was completely blown up, Sanders pathetically defended Kelly.The icing on the cake was when a reporter asked if Kelly would respond to more questions over the matter. When Sanders said he already had yesterday, the reporter pointed out: He was wrong yesterday! As usual, the Trump administration responded with intimidation and bullying. Sanders fired back: If you want to go after General Kelly, that s up to you. If you want to get into a debate with the four-star Marine general, I think that s something highly inappropriate. Go ahead. You can watch Sanders get grilled by reporters below:


A federal judge in south Texas handed down an prison sentence to a Cuban national who posed as a U. S. Border Patrol agent. The Cuban man attempted to scam a confidential informant into giving him $7, 000 in exchange for permanent resident status documents. [U. S. District Court Judge Randy Crane said he needed to protect the community from Euginio Augustin a Cuban national with Legal Permanent Resident status in the U. S. because of his criminal history of theft and fraud. However, the judge only sentenced the man to 18 months in prison, according to a statement from the Department of Justices' Southern District of Texas. The maximum penalty for the crime of impersonating a federal agent or officer (18 U. S. Code § 912) is three years in prison. Court records obtained by Breitbart Texas revealed that introduced himself to a confidential informant (CI) claiming to be an illegal alien. The Cuban man identified himself to the CI as a U. S. Border Patrol agent. He told the CI he could obtain Legal Permanent Resident (LPR) documents for him in exchange for $7, 000. During a call in advance of the meeting, told the CI he would need a copy of his Mexican visa and two passport photos, claiming those documents were what he needed to obtain the LPR documents. The CI gave the suspect a down payment of $2, 800 and the requested documents. U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agents from the Office of Professional Responsibility arrested as he left the meeting. The statement from the DOJ revealed that solicited bribes from multiple people seeking legal status in the U. S. Officials stated they expect ICE Enforcement Removal officer to deport to Cuba upon the completion of his sentence in a federal prison. Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX.


Part of the problem is that organizations are registering people without any proof they are legal American citizens .Leaked funding documents reveal an effort by George Soros and his foundations to manipulate election laws and process rules ahead of the federal election far more expansively than has been previously reported.The billionaire and convicted felon moved hundreds of millions of dollars into often-secret efforts to change election laws, fuel litigation to attack election integrity measures, push public narratives about voter fraud, and to integrate the political ground game of the left with efforts to scare racial minority groups about voting rights threats.These Soros-funded efforts moved through dozens of 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) charities and involved the active compliance with civil rights groups, government officials, and purportedly non-partisan groups like the League of Women Voters.The leaked documents also reveal deliberate and successful efforts to manipulate media coverage of election issues in mainstream media outlets like the The New York Times.IF YOU LIVE IN ONE OF THE STATES BELOW, PLEASE DEMAND THAT VOTER ID IS ENACTED: Although some states require some form of ID before voting, California, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming, and Washington, D.C. all require no identification before voting.Please contact True the Vote for any and all information regarding voter fraud.


Black mob goes crazy and attacks fair ride operator at the Delta Fair in Tennessee. what they attacked him for is just so lame he wasn t loading kids fast enough. so the poor kids looked on in horror as the ride operator was pummeled. Update: Memphis Police have arrested a man who allegedly started a fight at the Delta Fair Sunday afternoon.24-year old Antonio Butler is the man seen at the center of what appeared to be an all-out brawl in front of a ride at the fair. Police say the fight started because Butler wasn t admitted on the ride because it was full at the time. After Butler was denied he, along with a few others, became irate and the attack began.A fair patron recorded the fight and put the video on Facebook, which has since received millions of views. Many of the comments on the video express concerns about safety at the fair, and whether or not it will return for another year. Sunday was the last day for the fair.Everyone involved in the fight was escorted off the premises shortly after. Butler now faces assault charges.


Britain has only 10 days left to deliver on all three areas of its divorce terms with the European Union if London wants to start talks on a transition period after Brexit and a future relationship, the chairman of EU leaders Donald Tusk said. We need to see progress from UK within 10 days on all issues, including on Ireland, Tusk tweeted on Friday after a meeting with British Prime Minister Theresa May in Brussels. Sufficient progress in Brexit talks at December council is possible but still a huge challenge, he said on Twitter. An EU official said that May agreed in the one-hour discussions that Dec. 4 was the absolute deadline to allow the EU s Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier to recommend moving onto the next stage on trade and future ties. Tusk presented the timeline ahead of the December European Council, with Dec. 4 as the absolute deadline for the UK to make additional efforts, allowing Barnier to be in a position to recommend sufficient progress, the official said. May agreed to this timeframe, the official said. The official said Tusk had warned that if there was no progress within next 10 days, that would make moving forward impossible. The official said that the way Ireland s border with Northern Ireland functioned after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019 was still an issue. The UK will need to give credible assurances as to how to avoid a hard border before Dec. 4, as it is still unclear how this can be done, the official said.


Gun safety advocates are pouring tens of millions of dollars into Maine and Nevada to support ballot initiatives that would mandate background checks for gun sales in an effort to clinch state-level victories after years of failed drives in Congress. The avalanche of money spent on supporting such initiatives ahead of the Nov. 8 vote could hand gun control organizations their biggest win since they failed to secure the passage of federal legislation after the massacre of 26 children and educators at a Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school in December 2012. Voters in California and Washington state will also cast ballots on gun control initiatives, and opinion polls show the measures are likely to pass in all four states. Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun control group founded by billionaire former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has been leading the charge, throwing its financial weight behind three of the four measures. The organization plans to spend $25 million nationwide on the issue, almost as much as the powerful National Rifle Association has spent on television advertising for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. The right to own firearms is protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and any efforts to restrict that guarantee are fought vehemently by gun rights advocates, who are highly influential within the Republican Party. Victories by gun control groups in Maine and Nevada would mean that half of the U.S. population would live in states with expanded background checks, including private sales not involving a licensed dealer. Gun control supporters say that would be a symbolic and strategically important threshold. Opponents of the measures say the laws are poorly written, would do little to combat crime and would punish law-abiding gun owners. A University of New Hampshire poll in late October found 52 percent of Maine residents support the measure and 43 percent oppose it. In Nevada, two polls in late October found a 16-percentage-point margin and a 25-point margin in favor of the initiative, respectively. The measures come in a year that voters around the United States will weigh in on 71 citizen-submitted ballot initiatives on topics ranging from marijuana legalization to raising the minimum wage, the largest number in a decade, according to Ballotpedia.org, a website that tracks voting data. Everytown described its strategy as part of an effort to copy the state-by-state tactic that helped legalize gay marriage across the United States, with Congress unwilling to pass universal background check legislation. "One of the great advantages of going directly to the electorate is that you can go around the legislative bodies and make law," said Zach Silk, a consultant who has worked with Everytown in Nevada and previously helped oversee Washington state's 2014 successful background-check ballot initiative. Nevada in particular has become an expensive battleground. Bloomberg has personally donated nearly $10 million to the effort there, and Nevadans for Background Checks had collected $14.3 million as of Oct. 18. That is nearly triple the $4.8 million that the leading opposition group, NRA Nevadans for Freedom, had received, all from the NRA. In Maine, supporters of background checks have outspent opponents by more than 5-to-1, with the Everytown-backed Mainers for Responsible Gun Ownership Fund reporting $5.3 million in contributions as of last week. The NRA did not respond to a request for comment on its campaign spending decisions. Critics have accused Bloomberg of trying to buy victory. "This law is convoluted and way overregulatory," said David Trahan, the executive director of the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine and a former state legislator. "It reflects the person funding this initiative, Michael Bloomberg. His solutions are overkill, and they border on social engineering." But Everytown's executive director, John Feinblatt, said it was the gun lobby that has tried to take power away from the citizenry. "While the NRA can control legislators and the government, they can't control the people," he said.


The Oregon State Senate has just approved a bill that would increase the state s minimum wage over the next six years in incremental steps.Democrats can be thanked for pushing the measure through on a margin of 16-12, saying that it was necessary to help lift residents out of poverty and handle increasing costs of living. One lone sellout, Democratic Senator Betsy Johnson, voted no along with all Republicans. The bill will raise the minimum wage to $14.75 in Portland, $13.50 in other urban counties, and $12.50 in rural counties to prevent harming business in lower cost of living areas. The current minimum wage in the state is $9.25, which is higher than the federal minimum. However, it still is inadequate, especially in urban areas.The bill passed after a floor debate that lasted six hours. It was introduced by Democratic Senator Michael Dembrow, of Portland. Gradual increases will take place yearly, leading up to the maximum numbers in 2022. The measure is set to move to the State House next, with expectations of approval by Governor Kate Brown.As usual, wealthy wanna-be plutocrats have come out threatening doom and gloom over the attempt to make sure Oregonians are not living in grinding poverty. Jason Brandt, CEO of the Oregon Restaurant and Lodging Association released the following statement: It will kill jobs, harm consumers, force school and government service cuts and hurt Oregon farms and small businesses. We urge the House to defeat this plan that puts election year politics ahead of Oregon s economy. Source: oregonlive.comAll that anyone needs to do is refer to Seattle Seatac, who raised its minimum wage to $15/hour. The results are amazingly good, with an unemployment rate of only 3.3 percent a rate not seen since 2008. Seatac is also one of the fastest growing airport hubs in the United States, which destroys the myth that a living wage will stifle growth and explode unemployment.One of the most basic concepts of capitalism is lost on literally every Republican who claims to LOVE the system the fact that more money in the hands of consumers equals higher demand which increases the need for employment. Everywhere a minimum wage goes up, unemployment tends to trend down, and the anecdotal accounts of it weeding out already-failed businesses or spiteful greedy owners can t counter the right-wing propaganda anymore. It s happening, and the positive results are not going to stop.Featured image from Twitter


Two U.S. F-22 fighter aircraft fired warning flares on Wednesday after two Russian Su-25 jets entered an agreed upon deconfliction area in airspace east of the Euphrates river in Syria, the U.S. military said. Eric Pahon, a Pentagon spokesman, said the F-22 aircraft were providing air cover to partnered ground forces when the Russian jets came into airspace near Albu Kamal. The incident lasted for about 40 minutes and coalition officials contacted the Russians through a communication link to avoid a miscalculation. At one point, Pahon said, a Russian jet came close enough that one of the F-22 aircraft had to aggressively maneuver to avoid a midair collision. U.S. officials have said that as the battlefield against Islamic State shrinks, they expect Russian and U.S. aircraft to be in closer proximity. Since early November, Russian jets have flown east of the Euphrates river in the deconflicted airspace about six to eight times a day, according to the U.S. military. It s become increasingly tough for our pilots to discern whether Russian pilots actions are deliberate or if these are just honest mistakes, Pahon said. The Coalition s greatest concern is that we could shoot down a Russian aircraft because its actions are seen as a threat to our air or ground forces, he added. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has said the U.S. military will fight Islamic State in Syria as long as they want to fight, describing a longer-term role for U.S. troops after the insurgents lose all of the territory they control.


The European Union on Wednesday called on President Barack Obama to block a U.S. bill allowing survivors and families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia, saying it was in violation of international law. "The possible adoption and implementation of the (bill) would be in conflict with fundamental principles of international law and in particular the principle of State sovereign immunity," the European Union delegation to the United States said in a letter to the U.S. Department of State seen by Reuters. The letter said the EU considers that the bill's adoption and its implementation could have unwanted consequences, as other states adopt similar legislation. Congress has overwhelmingly passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, known as JASTA, in reaction to long-running suspicions, denied by Saudi Arabia, that hijackers of the four U.S. jetliners that attacked the United States in 2001 were backed by the Saudi government. Obama in coming days is expected to veto the bill on grounds that other countries could use the law as an excuse to sue U.S. diplomats, service members or companies. But Congress could have the last word if the Senate and House of Representatives each override that veto by a two-thirds vote.


When Tidjane Thiam took over at Credit Suisse last July, he laid out a new direction for a financial giant with a storied investment banking history: Do less investment banking. And he used forceful language in doing so. He has referred to once core businesses — such as trading in distressed bonds and derivatives — as "ugly ducklings. " He has suggested publicly that traders increased their investments in risky debt without his knowledge. Instead, Mr. Thiam said, the firm should dedicate itself to cultivating billionaires in China, Indonesia and Africa. The message: The future for the company is in managing the wealth of others. One year in, Credit Suisse stock is down 50 percent. And the investment bank, the second largest in Switzerland after UBS, is in open revolt. Credit Suisse has a wide range of businesses, like overseeing the fortunes of billionaires and managing initial public offerings for technology companies. But for decades, the bank has been dominated, both culturally and financially, by a richly paid banking elite. These deal makers in New York and London are now furious at Mr. Thiam, not just for cutting their pay but also because they resent his blaming them for the $6 billion in losses that the firm has suffered on his watch. Across Europe, banking giants like Barclays, Deutsche Bank, UBS and Royal Bank of Scotland have, to varying degrees, moved away from traditional investment banking activities because of increased regulation and volatile markets. Sluggish growth in large European economies — not to mention the remarkable phenomenon of negative interest rates — have not helped matters, either. But what makes the situation at Credit Suisse stand out is that Mr. Thiam appears to have done little to cloak his disdain for these activities. The question is not whether Mr. Thiam is right to grab power and capital from these declining businesses but whether his blunt, domineering style as a change agent will end up alienating bankers instead of winning them over. "It is never easy to tell people that whole parts of the business that have put bread on their table and bought them a second house have become uneconomic," said Guy Moszkowski, a longtime securities analyst at Autonomous Research. By any measure, Mr. Thiam is an unconventional choice to lead an investment bank. Born to a prominent family in Ivory Coast, he cut short a career at McKinsey Company in Paris in 1994 to join a government in his home country as a top banker and minister. Following a military coup in 1999, Mr. Thiam returned to McKinsey, and in 2009, he was named chief executive of Prudential, the British insurance conglomerate — becoming the first African to head a major listed company in Britain. and snugly tailored, Mr. Thiam has an air about him of not suffering fools. He had a successful run at Prudential (no relation to an American company with a similar name) overcoming an uproar following a failed bid to buy the Asian operations of the American International Group. Along the way, he became one of London's more celebrated executives and a regular on the circuit of global . That he has not bent to the complaints of bankers and traders in unprofitable businesses should not come as a surprise. "There needs to be a cultural change," he said in a televised interview in March, in which he argued that bankers were pursuing risky trades to justify their high pay. "A lot of the problems in the investment bank are that people are trying to generate revenue at all costs. " In turn, deal makers in London and New York, who have seen their bonuses slashed by nearly 40 percent, are not hiding their dislike of the man. More than any other bank on Wall Street, Credit Suisse restricts the cash portion of its bonuses, allocating large chunks in company stock, which has halved in value. So when their new chief executive gave a speech in May and said that Credit Suisse's stock price "reflected reality," bankers, especially the many who have worked at the firm for decades, could not believe it. On Credit Suisse's newly renovated trading floor in New York, several bankers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, grumbled that Mr. Thiam had "lost the building," which is Wall Street parlance for chief executives who no longer command the respect of their traders. And when he has appeared on television in recent months, employees loudly vented their frustrations at the screen, according those bankers, who witnessed the events but were not authorized to speak publicly. Mr. Thiam was hailed during his first visit to the trading floor in New York last year, but the reception during a more recent appearance was chillier, said two employees who were on the floor during his visits but were not authorized to speak publicly. In particular, many at Credit Suisse find Mr. Thiam's personal style to be jarring at a time when thousands are being laid off and the stock is trading at a multiyear low. This is particularly true when compared with Brady W. Dougan, his predecessor: Mr. Thiam's own dealings with the media are handled by a British firm, Powerscourt. He enjoys a robust social life and has been seen doing the rounds at clubs in London and Davos, Switzerland. And he recently purchased a luxury home in Herrliberg, an exclusive lakeside enclave in Zurich. To be sure, analysts agree that Credit Suisse can no longer rely on trading derivatives with firms like Deutsche Bank as a profit center. Instead, Mr. Thiam is encouraging his deal makers to support the firm's private bankers in Asia, by providing loans to magnates in Indonesia or helping billionaire clients in China with initial public offerings. Mr. Thiam is clearly enamored with the prospect of tapping growth markets in emerging economies. He has been to China and broader Asia at least four times in his new capacity, and his business cards carry a Mandarin translation on the back. Mr. Thiam's defenders say that with the future of Credit Suisse in doubt, he has no choice but to make these painful changes and that resistance from traders and bankers should not deter him. And it is also true that wealth managers in Switzerland and Asia, where Mr. Thiam is adding resources, are embracing the new strategy. Following last year's losses, he also asked his board for a 40 percent cut in his bonus, taking in $4. 5 million for the six months he worked last year. To date, the Credit Suisse board appears to be standing with Mr. Thiam. Indeed, having had two Wall Street chiefs since 2001, the board clearly believes that only a prominent nonbanker like Mr. Thiam can wean the firm off a line of business that has so long defined it. Nevertheless, directors were not happy with his televised comments in March when Mr. Thiam suggested that traders at the bank were hiding losses from him. Mr. Thiam quickly corrected himself at a conference that same day and said no limits were breached, though not without taking another dig at his traders by questioning their judgment. Mr. Thiam also called these traders and offered what a spokeswoman for the bank said was a "clarification" of his remarks. "The board is 100 percent behind the strategy, Tidjane and the executive board," said Richard E. Thornburgh, a former Credit Suisse banker with 30 years of experience at the firm who is now chairman of the board's risk committee. With morale in New York at a low point, Mr. Thornburgh has had recent meetings with top bankers and traders, hearing them out and urging them to remain focused on their clients. For many, though, this is easier said than done. It is unusual, after all, for an incoming chief executive to be so publicly critical of employees responsible for a quarter of a firm's revenue. That is particularly true on Wall Street, where punctured vanities can quickly harm a firm, as productive bankers head for the exits in droves. Over the last six months, at least 18 bankers and traders have left the firm, with many of these coming from Credit Suisse's once prestigious technology unit in San Francisco. The culture clash at Credit Suisse recalls a similar dispute at Morgan Stanley a decade ago. Like Mr. Thiam, Philip J. Purcell was a former whiz kid consultant from McKinsey who preferred slow and steady brokers over bankers with big egos and even bigger paychecks. A uprising forced Mr. Purcell's departure, since power on Wall Street was then still in the hands of deal makers and traders. With wealth managers now ascendant, Mr. Thiam seems willing to accept the wounded cries of his own bankers as a painful necessity if his grand plan is to succeed. "Is there a vision. Is there a direction?" Mr. Thiam asked aloud last year in a speech introducing his strategy. "The Germans say that the horrible end is better than horror without end. "


Prepared foods are an increasingly important part of the grocery business, delivering fat margins at a time when sales of traditional packaged foods are lackluster. But the strategy also comes with serious risks. In the clearest example yet, the Food and Drug Administration this month sent a stern warning letter to Whole Foods Market, a longtime champion of fresh and healthy foods, saying that the company had failed to address a long list of food safety issues at its food processing plant outside of Boston. Among the problems cited: condensation dripping from the ceiling near food an sanitizer used on a work surface near the preparation of a salad and a failure to separate dirty dishes from . The letter from the F. D. A. is just the latest headache to afflict Whole Foods. Over the last couple of years, the company has struggled with slower growth as competitors have gotten better at copying what it did to distinguish itself in the grocery market. Other wounds have been like last year, when the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs called it out for mispricing some merchandise based on weight. Prepared foods, which have almost double the profit margins of packaged foods sold on grocery shelves, have remained a bright spot at the company — at least for now. Such foods accounted for almost 20 percent of its sales in 2014, ringing up $2. 7 billion in revenue. But the letter from the F. D. A. is the second black eye for health issues at the plant outside of Boston, known as its North Atlantic Kitchen, and could put some of those sales in peril. Phil Lempert, an expert on grocery store operations and marketing, said that the food safety crisis at Chipotle Mexican Grill late last year should have been a call for Whole Foods and anyone else in the business of preparing fresh foods for sale. "For Whole Foods to be in this predicament, frankly, there really is no excuse," Mr. Lempert said. "Because Wall Street has put it under such pressure to expand growth, I think Whole Foods has gotten sloppy — there's no reason anyone should have water dripping into foods. " Last fall, Whole Foods voluntarily recalled batches of Curry Chicken Salad and Classic Deli Pasta Salad after a sample prepared at the North Atlantic Kitchen tested positive for Listeria monocytogenes, a pathogenic strain of the bacterium. The plant is one of three preparation kitchens that help stock its stores in the Northeast, and South. (Most of the company's foods are prepared at the stores themselves.) In February, the inspectors spent five days at the plant and then shared their findings with Whole Foods, which responded within 15 business days. The company told the F. D. A. that it had retrained employees to address most of the issues the agency raised. That response, however, failed to satisfy the F. D. A. "We do not consider your response acceptable because you failed to provide documentation for our review, which demonstrates that all your noted corrective actions have been effectively implemented," the agency wrote in its June 8 warning letter. Whole Foods said the letter came as a surprise. The company said it had taken steps to correct the problems and would meet on Thursday with the F. D. A. to discuss what the issues are and how to address them. "What's confusing to us is the fact that the letter identifies issues we've already corrected," said Ken Meyer, the company's executive vice president for operations. "We worked with a consultant and our own global food safety team," he said, "to address their concerns and assumed we were in good standing with them until this letter arrived on Friday. " Whole Foods now has about two weeks to provide evidence to the F. D. A. that steps it has taken bring the company into compliance. Otherwise, the company might have to pay the agency to reinspect the facility. Groceries have long offered prepared foods like rotisserie chickens and broccoli salad. But as business has declined in the center store, companies have upped their game, adding sophisticated meals that consumers can take home or eat in the store. Research this year from the Food Marketing Institute and Technomic found that sales of prepared foods in groceries increased 10. 4 percent from 2006 to 2014, making the prepared foods department one of the highest performers in the food business. While only 8 percent of the supermarkets responding to that survey reported sales growth of more than 5 percent, more than of them said they had growth at that level or higher in their prepared food businesses. The risk for grocery companies is that preparing food receives a higher level of scrutiny from regulators than selling food made and packaged by others. A bad inspection in one location, or reports of food illnesses, can damage an entire brand. Shares in Whole Foods fell nearly 5 percent on Wednesday. Last year, Costco recalled celery sticks and turkey dinners, King Sooper recalled curried chicken salad and Raley's recalled its Asian Blue Cheese, Potato and Bacon salad after E. coli was found in celery supplied to all by a single supplier. Still, perhaps no company has been more aggressive about integrating prepared foods than Whole Foods. The company has long put bars and restaurants into its stores — a new store in Hawaii will have about 200 seats for shoppers to sit and enjoy a meal and a drink. "Whole Foods is one of the pioneers in providing restaurant quality meals to consumers," said Joe Pawlak, managing principal at Technomic. Now, stores like ShopRite and Safeway are opening groceraunts, too. The oyster bar at one of the Mariano's groceries in Chicago has become a place for a Friday night date, and a ShopRite in Morris Plains, N. J. added a atrium where people can enjoy a meal. Supermarkets tried moving into the food preparation business in the 1990s, Mr. Pawlak said, but offered too broad a menu and ended up throwing a lot of food away. "Now what's happened over the last five or six years, they've hired food service professionals who understand restaurants and how items move on a menu," he said. "That's taken the quality up to where I can get just as good a meal at the grocery store as I can in many restaurants — and for a lot better value. " An F. D. A. spokeswoman said the agency could not comment on whether its inspection of grocery food preparation operations was increasing. A Yahoo News analysis of the F. D. A. 's food safety recalls in 2015 found that prepared foods accounted for more recalls than any other food category.


U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday signed a repeal of Obama-era broadband privacy rules, the White House said, a victory for internet service providers and a blow to privacy advocates. Republicans in Congress last week narrowly passed the repeal of the privacy rules with no Democratic support and over the strong objections of privacy advocates. The signing, disclosed in White House statement late on Monday, follows strong criticism of the bill, which is a win for AT&T Inc, Comcast Corp and Verizon Communications Inc. The bill repeals regulations adopted in October by the Federal Communications Commission under the Obama administration requiring internet service providers to do more to protect customers' privacy than websites like Alphabet Inc's Google or Facebook Inc. The rules had not yet taken effect but would have required internet providers to obtain consumer consent before using precise geolocation, financial information, health information, children's information and web browsing history for advertising and marketing. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai praised the repeal in a statement late on Monday for having "appropriately invalidated one part of the Obama-era plan for regulating the internet." Those flawed privacy rules, which never went into effect, were designed to benefit one group of favored companies, not online consumers." Pai said the FCC would work with the Federal Trade Commission, which oversees websites, to restore the "FTC's authority to police internet service providers' privacy practices." Republican FCC commissioners have said the Obama rules would unfairly give websites the ability to harvest more data than internet service providers. The action is the latest in a string of reversals of Obama administration rules. On Monday, the FCC reversed a requirement that Charter Communications Inc extend broadband service to 1 million homes that already have a high-speed provider. On Friday, Comcast, Verizon AT&T Inc said they would voluntarily not sell customers' individual internet browsing information. Verizon does not sell personal web browsing histories and has no plans to do so but the company said it has two advertising programs that use "de-identified" customer browsing data, including one that uses "aggregate insights that might be useful for advertisers and other businesses." The American Civil Liberties Union said last month Congress should have opposed "industry pressure to put profits over privacy" and added "most Americans believe that their sensitive internet information should be closely guarded." Trade group USTelecom Chief Executive Jonathan Spalter in a statement praised Trump for "stopping rules that would have created a confusing and conflicting consumer privacy framework." Last week, 46 Senate Democrats urged Trump not to sign the bill, arguing most Americans "believe that their private information should be just that." Republicans later this year are expected to move to overturn net neutrality provisions that in 2015 reclassified broadband providers and treated them like a public utility - a move that is expected to spark an even bigger fight.


Don t let Hillary s cheerleaders in the mainstream media convince you that she can beat Trump. Trump has proven himself to be a formidable opponent and don t forget that Hillary was beaten by an amateur Jr. Senator in 2008. I ve consistently said throughout the analysis of this race that I would not want to run against Donald Trump because I think he s the most dangerous candidate. Give me Ted Cruz, give me John Kasich, give me any of the vanquished they re traditional politicians, easy to beat. And, Ted Cruz, in particular, way outside the mainstream, she said. Donald Trump, when you look from what he said the other day about the gender bill and using the bathrooms, it proves that point because he knows how to appeal to not only Libertarians but to Independents who support that, too. So he will be a very, very tough candidate to face in a general election. I think it will be one of the closest elections we see since 2000. https://youtu.be/ZqtKc1aPiA4


The European Commission called on Monday for Poland to seek European legal advice on two draft judicial reform laws put forward by President Andrzej Duda, to check that they comply with European democratic standards. In July, Duda, an ally of Poland s ruling nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, unexpectedly vetoed its plan to overhaul the judiciary, after nationwide protests and warnings from Western allies that the changes would undermine the independence of the courts. Earlier on Monday he presented his own drafts of the two vetoed laws, proposing a greater role for himself over the nomination of judges. The European Commission said Poland should seek the opinion of the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe on the drafts. The commission provides legal advice to its members to help them bring their laws and institutions into line with European standards. It would be extremely helpful if these two draft laws... would be given to the Venice Commission for advice, European Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans told a news conference. We will make our comments on that also once we have analysed it, he said, referring to the ongoing unprecedented process of EU monitoring of Poland s adherence to the rule of law launched at the beginning of 2016. The Venice Commission ruled last year that laws passed by the PiS government on the country s Constitutional Tribunal were incompatible with European standards, prompting the European Commission to launch its rule-of-law monitoring procedure. Timmermans said the Commission s monitoring of Poland s democratic practices had received broad support from national governments, which stressed that the rule of law was fundamental for the functioning of the European Union as a whole. He said he would be happy to receive Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro and Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski in Brussels or himself go to Warsaw to continue the dialogue with Poland that other governments were so keen on. Speaking to reporters after delivering an update on the rule of law monitoring process in Poland to EU ministers, Timmermans said he had broad support to continue. What is most important to me is that everybody around the table said: Rule of law? It is not an option, it is an obligation... it is the fundament of European cooperation... it concerns us all, he said. I was encouraged by the broad, broad support I felt in the Council for trying to find a solution. But there is still a lot, a lot we need to do before we can say that the problem has been solved, Timmermans said.


These videos are very disturbing. Americans are headed down this path if we don t fight back against the Left who put political correctness before our national security A German court has ruled that Islamists who patrolled a city s streets as Sharia police did not break the law and will not be prosecuted.Here is what a Sharia Patrol looks like:Nine were arrested in September 2014 after patrolling streets in Wuppertal, western Germany. They wore bright orange jackets with the words Sharia police . They told passers-by not to frequent discos, casinos or bars.The court said they had not violated laws on uniforms and public gatherings.Prosecutors have now lodged an appeal.The group of Salafists ultra-conservative Islamists included Sven Lau, a preacher whose passport was seized this year after he visited Syria and a photo surfaced, showing him posing on a tank, with a Kalashnikov rifle slung around his neck. He is suspected of trying to recruit Muslims to join jihadists fighting in Syria or Iraq and has spent some time in prison previously. He said he had gone to war-torn Syria in 2013 on a humanitarian mission.Sharia, the revealed, sacred law of Islam, governs all aspects of a Muslim s life.The group s appearance at night in Wuppertal, in the industrial Ruhr region, triggered sharp criticism in Germany. A film of their patrol appeared on YouTube:The action was condemned by the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, who said it was harmful to Muslims .The group also carried notices proclaiming in English a Sharia Controlled Zone . The notices spelled out prohibitions like those in force in some Gulf Arab countries, outlawing alcohol, drugs, gambling, music and concerts, pornography and prostitution. Activists in the anti-Islam Pegida movement campaigning to stop immigration to Germany demonstrated in Wuppertal last year. They have staged regular marches against the Islamisation of Germany nationwide.


One of the 44 crew members on board the Argentine submarine that is missing in the South Atlantic is Eliana Maria Krawczyk, who came from a landlocked province to become the country s first female submarine officer. In a Facebook video posted in January by the Defense Ministry, Krawczyk discussed her experience of being the first woman in a traditionally male space. She said that she aspired to become the commander of a navy submarine one day. If you think about being underwater, navigating, and being the only woman, it is strange, but at the same time it is exciting and very challenging, she said in the video. Any woman that wants to can do it. Krawczyk, 35, was born in the northeastern province of Misiones and joined the navy in 2004, after responding to an advertisement online. She rose to become the master-at-arms aboard the ARA San Juan, which went missing last week. She graduated from Argentina s submarine and diving school in 2012 as the first female officer and always loved her job working at sea, according to her sister Silvina Krawczyk. It is like she was born for this, Silvina told Reuters. She really likes to do what she does in the navy. Hopes of discovering the ARA San Juan received a setback on Monday when the navy confirmed that failed satellite calls traced to the area on Saturday did not come from the submarine. With rough seas and high winds hampering the search for the 34-year-old vessel, a navy spokesman said the German-built submarine had surfaced and reported an electrical problem before it disappeared 268 miles (432 km) off the coast. They are working very hard to find them, said Silvina Krawczyk who, like many relatives of the missing crew members, was camped out at a naval base in the coastal city of Mar del Plata, awaiting updates on the search and rescue mission. Besides just the faith one has to maintain in these situations, I truly trust that they are going to find them, Silvina said. The pioneering submariner had been aboard the ARA San Juan - the newest of the three operated by the Argentine navy - when it made the same trip from Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, to Mar del Plata last year without incident, her sister said. The voyage normally takes around a week, but modest delays due to poor weather are not uncommon. The submarine left Ushuaia on Nov. 13. It is the first time that something like this has happened, said Silvina, who herself is a machinist in Argentina s Merchant Marines. At the entrance to the Mar del Plata base, locals hung signs with messages in support of the crew members and their families on a chain-link fence. Strength for Argentina. We trust in God. We are waiting for you, read one inscribed on a celestial blue-and-white Argentine flag hanging on the fence.


Is North Korea irrational? Or does it just pretend to be? North Korea has given the world ample reason to ask: threats of war, occasional attacks against South Korea, eccentric leaders and propaganda. As its nuclear and missile programs have grown, this past week with a fifth nuclear test, that concern has grown more urgent. But political scientists have repeatedly investigated this question and, time and again, emerged with the same answer: North Korea's behavior, far from crazy, is all too rational. Its belligerence, they conclude, appears calculated to maintain a weak, isolated government that would otherwise succumb to the forces of history. Its provocations introduce tremendous danger, but stave off what Pyongyang sees as the even greater threats of invasion or collapse. Denny Roy, a political scientist, wrote in a 1994 journal article that the country's "reputation as a 'crazy state'" and for "reckless violence" had "worked to North Korea's advantage," keeping more powerful enemies at bay. But this image, he concluded, was "largely a product of misunderstanding and propaganda. " In some ways, this is more dangerous than irrationality. While the country does not want war, its calculus leads it to cultivate a permanent risk of one — and prepare to stave off defeat, should war happen, potentially with nuclear weapons. That is a subtler danger, but a grave one. When political scientists call a state rational, they are not saying its leaders always make the best or most moral choices, or that those leaders are paragons of mental fitness. Rather, they are saying the state behaves according to its perceived first of which is . When a state is rational, it will not always succeed in acting in its best interests, or in balancing against gains, but it will try. This lets the world shape a state's incentives, steering it in the desired direction. States are irrational when they do not follow . In the "strong" form of irrationality, leaders are so deranged that they are incapable of judging their own interests. In the "soft" version, domestic factors — like ideological zeal or internal power struggles — distort incentives, making states behave in ways that are counterproductive but at least predictable. North Korea's actions, while abhorrent, appear well within its rational according to a 2003 study by David C. Kang, a political scientist now at the University of Southern California. At home and abroad, he found, North Korean leaders shrewdly determined their interests and acted on them. (In an email, he said his conclusions still applied.) "All the evidence points to their ability to make sophisticated decisions and to manage palace, domestic and international politics with extreme precision," Mr. Kang wrote. "It is not possible to argue these were irrational leaders, unable to make calculations. " Victor Cha, a Georgetown University professor who served as the Asian affairs director on George W. Bush's National Security Council, has repeatedly argued that North Korea's leadership is rational. Savage cruelty and cold calculation are not mutually exclusive, after all — and often go hand in hand. States are rarely irrational for the simple reason that irrational states can't survive for long. The international system is too competitive and the drive for too powerful. While the North Korean state really is unlike any other on earth, the behaviors that make it appear irrational are perhaps its most rational. North Korea's seemingly unhinged behavior begins with the country's attempt to solve two problems that it took on with the end of the Cold War and that it should have been unable to survive. One was military. The Korean Peninsula, still in a formal state of war, had gone from a deadlock to an overwhelming tilt in the South's favor. The North was exposed, protected only by a China that was more focused on improving ties with the West. The other problem was political. Both Koreas claimed to represent all Koreans, and for decades had enjoyed similar development levels. By the 1990s, the South was exponentially freer and more prosperous. The Pyongyang government had little reason to exist. The leadership solved both problems with something called the Songun, or "" policy. It put the country on a permanent war footing, justifying the state's poverty as necessary to maintain its massive military, justifying its oppression as rooting out internal traitors and propping up its legitimacy with the nationalism that often comes during wartime. Of course, there was no war. Foreign powers believed the government would, like other Soviet puppets, fall on its own, and barring that wanted peace. So North Korea created the appearance of permanently imminent war, issuing flamboyant threats, staging provocations and, sometimes, deadly attacks. Its nuclear and missile tests, though erratic and often failed, stirred up one crisis after another. This militarization kept the North Korean leadership internally stable. It also kept the country's enemies at bay. North Korea may be weaker, but it is willing to tolerate far more risk. By keeping the peninsula on the edge of conflict, Pyongyang put the onus on South Korea and the United States to pull things back. From afar, North Korea's actions look crazy. Its domestic propaganda describes a reality that does not exist, and it appears bent on almost provoking a war it would certainly lose. But from within North Korea, these actions make perfect sense. And over time, the government's reputation for irrationality has become an asset as well. Scholars ascribe this behavior to the "madman theory" — a strategy, coined by no less a proponent than Richard M. Nixon, in which leaders cultivate an image of belligerence and unpredictability to force adversaries to tread more carefully. Dr. Roy, in an interview, said North Korea "intentionally employs a posture of seemingly acceptance and willingness to go to war as a means of trying to intimidate its adversaries. " But this strategy works only because, even if the belligerence is for show, the danger it creates is very real. In this way, it is North Korea's rationality that makes it so dangerous. Because it believes it can survive only by keeping the Korean Peninsula near war, it creates a risk of sparking just that, perhaps through some accident or miscalculation. North Korea is aware of this risk but seems to believe it has no choice. For this reason, and perhaps because of the United invasion of Iraq and the NATO intervention in Libya against Col. Muammar it appears to earnestly fear an American invasion. And this is rational: Weak states that face more powerful enemies must either make peace — which North Korea cannot do without sacrificing its political legitimacy — or find a way to make any conflict survivable. North Korea's nuclear program, some analysts believe, is designed to halt an American invasion by first striking nearby United States military bases and South Korean ports, then by threatening a missile launch against the American mainland. While North Korea does not yet have this ability, analysts believe it will within the next decade. This is the culmination of North Korea's rationality, in something known as desperation theory. Under this theory, when states face two terrible choices, they will pick the least bad option — even if that choice would, under normal conditions, be too costly to consider. In North Korea's case, that means creating the conditions for a war it would most likely lose. And it could mean preparing a effort to survive that war by launching multiple nuclear strikes, chancing a nuclear retaliation for the slim chance to survive. North Korea's leaders tolerate this danger because, in their calculus, they have no other choice. The rest of us share in that risk — vanishingly small, but nonzero — whether we want to or not.


Turkish police began an operation to detain 121 former foreign ministry staff across the country on Thursday over their alleged links to the U.S.-based cleric who Ankara says orchestrated last year s attempted coup, state-run Anadolu agency said. It said the ministry personnel were previously dismissed over suspected ties to Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania. He has denied involvement in the failed putsch in July 2016. Counter-terrorism police squads began simultaneous raids in 30 provinces to capture the suspects, some of whom were believed to be users of ByLock, an encrypted messaging app which the government says was used by Gulen s network, Anadolu reported. Under a crackdown since the coup, more than 50,000 people have been jailed pending trial over alleged links to Gulen, while 150,000 people have been sacked or suspended from jobs in the military, public and private sectors. The government dismisses rights groups concerns about the crackdown, saying only such a purge could neutralize the threat represented by Gulen s network, which it says infiltrated institutions such as the judiciary, army and schools.


Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was way out of line and way too political last night when he showed his cards BIGTIME on President Trump. He followed the latest leftist line that Trump isn t fit to serve Yes, the loony left has a new play book that makes the false claim that somehow Trump is unfit to be president.We ve reported on clapper before but his not wittingly comment before the Senate is legend. Remember when he was asked if the NSA spies on Americans and he replied not wittingly ? Yes, well, that was perjury.More recently Clapper bashed President Trump during a discussion on national security and the Trump/Russia fake scandal.It s clear that Clapper is a political pawn who is out to try and make our president look bad. This is serious Deep State stuff.We re sure this isn t the end of James Clapper s involvement in the opposition to President Trump.