FBI Obtains Warrant To Search Huma Abedin's Emails zero hedge  While we explained earlier today why the DOJ and FBI had found themselves in the awkward position of knowing that Anthony Weiner's computer contained thousands of Huma Abedin emails sent from Hillary Clinton's private server, yet were unable to access them, we noted it was only a matter of time before this particular hurdle was rectified. A few hours later, according to CBS' Jeff Pegues, in the matter of the FBI having much needed access to begin poring over Weiner's emails, which we now know number roughly 650,000 (and thus will take the FBI months to pore over), the FBI has just obtained the needed warrant.  — Jeff Pegues (@jeffpeguescbs) October 30, 2016  As NBC confirms , the FBI obtained a warrant to search emails related to the Hillary Clinton private server probe that were discovered on ex-congressman Anthony Weiner's laptop. The warrant came two days after FBI director James Comey revealed the existence of the emails, which law-enforcement sources said were linked to Weiner's estranged wife, top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. The FBI already had a warrant to search Weiner's laptop, but that only applied to evidence of his allegedly illicit communications with an underage girl.  The warrant came moments after Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid scolded Comey, saying in a letter that he " demonstrated a disturbing double standard for the treatment of sensitive information, with what appears to be clear intent to aid one political party over another. "  Reid added that his office determined that Comey may have violated the Hatch Act, which bars government officials from using their authority to influence elections.  The following screengrab from WaPo, perhaps summarizes best how the democrats' take on things has changed dramatically over the past few weeks:  Meanwhile, the CBS reporter also noted that according to law enforcement sources HumaAbedin Is cooperating and "seemed surprised that emails were there." #developing #law enforcement sources also say #HumaAbedin Is cooperating and "seemed surprised that emails were there."  — Jeff Pegues (@jeffpeguescbs) October 30, 2016  Finally, Pegues also points out that after having fieled much pressure from Democrats for the past 48 hours, FBI Director Comey has been quietly reaching out to members of Congress as pressure mounts on him. #BREAKING News #FBI Director #Comey has been quietly reaching out to members of #Congress as pressure mounts on him.  — Jeff Pegues (@jeffpeguescbs) October 30, 2016  So will the FBI promptly announce that nothing of material important was found among Weiner's emails, or will it now begin a protracted, intensive investigation? Will Comey resigns? Will Huma quit from her role in the Clinton campaign? Will Loretta Lynch take some of the blame? We hope to have some of these much needed answers in the coming days as the FBI's reopened probe begins gaining traction. Share This Article...


Shock report! 650,000 emails were found on Anthony Weiner's laptop that he shared with his wife Huma Abedin. Abedin is Hillary Clinton's longtime personal assistant. That's a lot of emails! Zero Hedge reported: Yesterday, we reported that the FBI has found " tens of thousands of emails " belonging to Huma Adein on Anthony Weiner's computer, raising questions how practical it is that any conclusive finding will be available or made by the FBI in the few days left before the elections Now, according to the WSJ , it appears that Federal agents are preparing to scour roughly 650,000 emails that, as we reported moments ago were discovered weeks ago on the laptop of Anthony Weiner , to see how many relate to a prior probe of Hillary Clinton's email use, as metadata on the device suggests there may be thousands sent to or from the private server that the Democratic nominee used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter. As the WSJ adds, the review will take weeks at a minimum to determine whether those messages are work-relatedemails between Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide and the estranged wife of Mr. Weiner, and State Department officials; how many are duplicates of emails already reviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and whether they include either classified information or important new evidence in the Clinton email probe, which FBI officials call "Midyear." And, as we further reported earlier today , the FBI has had to await a court order to begin reviewing the emails, because they were uncovered in an unrelated probe of Mr. Weiner, and that order was delayed for reasons that remain unclear. More stunning is just how many emails were found on Weiner's computer. And while one can only imagine the content of some of the more persona ones, the WSJ writes that the latest development began in early October when New York-based FBI officials notified Andrew McCabe, the bureau's second-in-command, that while investigating Mr. Weiner for possibly sending sexually charged messages to a minor, they had recovered a laptop with 650,000 emails. Many, they said, were from the accounts of Ms. Abedin, according to people familiar with the matter. ** One-Third of likely voters are less likely to vote for Hillary Clinton following the announcement of a new FBI criminal investigation. Democrats are going psycho right now as they are in full panic mode. Expect ANYTHING from them now, BUT disregard and ignore any stunt they may pull. Remember this was a prophetic prediction and warning! Source


For four months, the Republican Party and its many presidential hopefuls have laid into likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton over donations to a family foundation. That these attacks contradict the GOP's broader stand on campaign finance -- and call into question their own weighty burden of donor conflicts -- hasn't troubled them at all. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) called contributions to the nonprofit Clinton Foundation "thinly veiled bribes." The nation can't afford the "drama" represented by those donations, according to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina asked Clinton to explain why contributions to the foundation "don't represent a conflict of interest." And the Republican National Committee has made the donations a central part of its campaign against Clinton. In embracing this critique of the Clinton Foundation, Republicans are investing in a view of money in politics that they have otherwise rejected in recent years: that spending money to gain influence over or access to elected or appointed officials represents a conflict of interest or an appearance of corruption or could even lead to outright corruption. Since 2010, the conservative Supreme Court majority has rejected this argument as a reason to regulate campaign finance in their Citizens United, McCutcheon and Williams-Yulee decisions. Most leading Republican federal officeholders now take the view that spending of any sort on campaigns should not be impeded by legal restrictions as fears of corruption are overblown. So the critical piling on Clinton Foundation donations creates a problem for Republicans, especially those running for president. If contributions to the foundation, a 501(c)(3) entity not involved in political campaigns, create a valid source of corruption concern, then what are we to make of the hundreds of millions of dollars in undisclosed donations to 501(c)(4) nonprofits that have worked to elect Republicans over the past three elections? Since the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision opened the door for unlimited corporate, union and, ultimately, individual spending on elections, Republicans have maneuvered to use so-called dark money nonprofits to fund large portions of their electoral efforts. Dark money spending on federal races exceeded $400 million in the 2012 presidential election and $200 million in the 2014 midterms with the vast majority of those dollars going to aid Republican candidates, according to previous analysis by The Huffington Post. The public is not privy, however, to the sources of funds fueling a large part of the Republican electoral apparatus and a smaller part of Democratic efforts. Party leaders and wealthy donors have increasingly worked through nonprofits that are not required to disclose their funding sources. Republicans, including those now running for president, defend dark money groups as a means to protect what they argue is the First Amendment right of donors to engage in political activity without "retaliation." Perhaps, that retaliation would come in the form of stories informing the public about how those donors are seeking to influence public policy. The very limited record on dark money shows that those funding these groups -- just like those funding super PACs, which must identify their donors -- include many high-powered corporate and individual interests with well-connected lobbyists in search of favors. HuffPost reports have found that dark money groups tightly connected to congressional and party leadership, both Democratic and Republican, have received large sums from pharmaceutical, insurance, banking and online payday lenders seeking specific policy changes while retaining lobbyists previously employed by those very leaders. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has his Right to Rise Policy Solutions, which is playing an increasingly important role in his not-yet-declared, super-PAC-centered presidential campaign. Rubio's advisers run the Conservative Policy Solutions group in collaboration with an affiliated super PAC. And potential candidates like former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal are all running around the country fueled by funding from undisclosed nonprofit groups. In 2012, Walker faced a recall election after labor unions in his state rebelled over legislation gutting public employee union rights. His recall campaign coordinated with a band of nonprofit political groups, led by the Wisconsin Club for Growth, to promote Walker and his policies in a positive light. Walker aides worked closely with the outside groups, and the governor directly raised undisclosed contributions for the effort. John Menard Jr., considered the wealthiest man in Wisconsin, was another big donor to the save-Walker effort. The billionaire owner of the chain store Menards gave $1.5 million to the Wisconsin Club for Growth, according to a report by Yahoo News. During Walker's term in office, Menard's company received $1.8 million in tax credits from an economic development corporation led by the governor. He also received help in his battle with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources as Walker defanged the watchdog agency. The same failure to see their own conflicts applies to candidates elected since the Citizens United decision precipitated the dramatic rise in dark money. Both Paul and Rubio were elected to the Senate in 2010 with $2.3 million and $2.7 million, respectively, in allied spending by groups that do not disclose their donors, including the Karl Rove-founded Crossroads GPS and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Thanks to its bankruptcy filings, it is known that for-profit Corinthian Colleges made contributions to Crossroads GPS. While the dates and amounts of those donations are still hidden, Rubio's strong support for Corinthian is well-established. In 2014, he pleaded with the Department of Education for leniency for the company as it faced a fraud investigation. No one doubts that huge sums of dark money will again be spent supporting presidential candidates in the 2016 election. While the public will be able to consider whether the corporations, billionaires and foreign governments that contributed to the Clinton Foundation would hold undue sway over a Clinton White House, they will not even know the identities of those pouring in the secret donations.


One of Afghanistan s most powerful regional politicians was ousted as governor of the northern province of Balkh on Monday, setting up a confrontation that adds to the uncertainty around President Ashraf Ghani s Western-backed government. Atta Mohammad Noor is one of the leading figures in Jamiat-e-Islami, a party which mainly represents Afghanistan s Tajik ethnic group, and has used his position in Balkh, on the northern border of the country, as a powerbase to push for a major role on the national stage. His removal, at a time when tensions between Tajiks and Pashtuns, Afghanistan s two biggest ethnic groups, have been rising, injects extra uncertainty to the already fractured political landscape ahead of presidential elections in 2019. My dismissal has no legal or legitimate basis, Noor said on Afghan national television. For now we are only resorting to civil action but if this atrocity continues, there are many other options. Atta Noor is one of a clutch of powerful regional and ethnic leaders whom Ghani has struggled to control since he came to office after the disputed election of 2014. Ghani, a Pashtun, has tried previously to remove him but also discussed a possible role in the government for him. He submitted his resignation several months ago but the move never took effect until Ghani approved it on Monday, announcing at the same time that Mohammad Daoud, also from Jamiat, would become the next governor of Balkh province. The Afghan president has accepted Atta Mohammad Noor s resignation and announced Engineer Mohammad Daoud as the new governor, Shah Hussain Murtazawi a spokesman for Ghani said. In his remarks on Monday, Atta Noor, who has demanded a number of senior positions in the government for some of his allies, said the resignation had been offered with conditions attached and said these had not been respected. Since they didn t meet their responsibilities, I don t accept it, he said. Ghani s national unity government, formed after the 2014 election forced him into an uneasy power-sharing arrangement with his former rival Abdullah Abdullah from Jamiat, retains the support of the international community and the United States. But it has faced mounting criticism from a growing array of opposition groups. Parliamentary elections originally due to be held next year are in doubt and former President Hamid Karzai has called for a loya jirga, or traditional grand council of political leaders and elders to decide the future of the government. The confrontation with Atta Noor comes several months after a standoff with Vice President Rashid Dostum over accusations of the sexual abuse of a political opponent. Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek leader and veteran of decades of Afghan politics, has been in Turkey since May, ostensibly for medical treatment.


With just three days until Inauguration Day, Donald Trump is desperately trying to convince everyone that it will be the most attended inauguration in history and that everyone likes him.For months, Trump has repeatedly tried and failed to get big-name entertainers to perform at the ceremony, with many even backing out after accepting the invitation. So far, Trump has only managed to get a reality show singer and a has-been band to commit.Experts predict that Trump s inauguration attendance will be smaller than President Obama s but that isn t stopping Trump from trying to convince everyone otherwise.People are pouring into Washington in record numbers. Bikers for Trump are on their way. It will be a great Thursday, Friday and Saturday! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2017Except Trump is delusional as usual.Not only are experts predicting that Trump s inauguration crowd will be far less than the record set by President Obama in 2008 at 1.8 million, he seems to be forgetting that many of those who are attending are going there to protest against him.In fact, hundreds of thousands of people are expected to participate in the Women s March on Washington, and it s being predicted that the demonstration will be bigger than the inauguration itself while also making history as the largest demonstration ever organized in the United States. Meanwhile, the Bikers for Trump that Trump bragged about are expected to only draw 5,000. And ticket scalpers are struggling to sell tickets to the inauguration. That s how unpopular Trump is right now.So once again, Trump s ego apparently took control of his Twitter account.And Twitter users shattered it.@realDonaldTrump they re protestors Mike Denison (@mikd33) January 17, 2017@realDonaldTrump Do you really believe that your pee-wee band of trump grunts will out number the protesters sweetie? aww thats cute Diva (@sammypolsen12) January 17, 2017.@realDonaldTrump Hate to break it to you, but more people will be protesting your inauguration than celebrating it. https://t.co/koIEU3A7iw Al x Young (@AlexYoung) January 17, 2017@realDonaldTrump Over a million less pouring in than Obamas inauguration Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) January 17, 2017.@realDonaldTrump We have a clip pic.twitter.com/aDRpodgIMa Christo Grozev (@christogrozev) January 17, 2017Reminder We the people DIDN T elect his KIDS 2 run OUR country.Actually We the people by a majority DIDN T elect @realDonaldTrump either. pic.twitter.com/bTkzxpoBy0 Lil Kim Ms. G.O.A.T (@killerbee805) January 17, 2017@realDonaldTrump Does it makes you sad to be this historically unpopular? Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) January 17, 2017@realDonaldTrump Oh. pic.twitter.com/wcD06GfHIJ Erick Fernandez (@ErickFernandez) January 17, 2017Featured Image: Alex Wong/Getty Images


U.S. President Donald Trump s plans to step up air strikes on Islamist militants in Afghanistan risk increasing civilian casualties and stirring resentment, despite an initial welcome by Afghan officials and international allies. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has avoided vocal criticisms of errant air strikes, but in previous years they sparked intense friction and soured ties between his predecessor, Hamid Karzai, and the international coalition in Afghanistan. With the U.S. set to resume a more active role in the war, many analysts expect a rise in the U.N.-documented first-half figure of 232 civilian casualties from international and Afghan air operations, a spike of 43 percent from a year earlier. The issue about air strikes is part of a broader package of concerns, said one Western official. I don t hear Western diplomats saying, How many bombs should we drop? I hear them saying, Why are we bombing? What are we doing here, in general? During the 16 years since a U.S.-led campaign toppled the Taliban from power in 2001, resentment has repeatedly been fueled by coalition missteps that undermined hard-won progress on the political or military fronts. The exact contours of Trump s plan remain uncertain, but officials of several coalition nations told Reuters they feared more civilians could be harmed, despite avoiding the subject in public remarks. Additional airstrikes can be a double-edged sword for leaders looking to stem Taliban offensives, said Christopher Kolenda, a former U.S. Army officer who served in Afghanistan and worked on American military strategies for the conflict. Better air support for Afghan forces on the ground will limit gains Taliban can make, and that s helpful in negotiations, he said. The downside is if this creates a rise in civilian casualties, then you run a high risk of creating a cascade of negative perceptions among Afghans. There is no question Ghani cares deeply about protecting Afghan civilians, Kolenda added, but domestic political challenges and future elections make it inevitable that he will have to address any rise in civilian casualties. By the government s count, civilian casualties have dropped in recent years, a spokesman for Ghani said. The Afghan government and its international partners main aim is to provide a secure environment for its people, Shah Hussain Murtazawi told Reuters, adding that Afghan forces coordinate with foreign troops to protect non-combatants. Even as overall civilian casualties by pro-government forces dropped this year, casualties from aerial operations spiked 43 percent in the year s first half, the United Nations says. In the first six months, the U.N. recorded 29 civilian deaths and 85 injuries from Afghan air force strikes, and 54 deaths and 31 injuries in strikes by international warplanes. The prospects of more air strikes provoked mixed feelings in areas hardest hit, where many leaders fear attacks by Taliban or Islamic State, but also worry about the threat to residents. Air strikes will not bring long-term security, said Abdul Jabbar Qahraman, a lawmaker from the restive southern province of Helmand. They can defeat enemies when Afghan forces are under a huge attack, but they can also promote hatred between locals and government. In the eastern province of Nangarhar, where Islamic State made its greatest gains before being targeted by joint Afghan-U.S. offensives, the governor s spokesman, Attaullah Khogyani, agreed. Air strikes are important and helpful in many situations, but if they cause civilian casualties repeatedly that may hurt government legitimacy. U.S. Air Force aircraft dropped 503 weapons in August, in the most monthly air strikes since August 2012. American warplanes are also more likely to launch air strikes this year, with the Air Force dropping weapons during one of roughly every four close air support sorties, up from one in every eight last year, and one in every 14 in 2015. International advisers have also pushed the Afghan Air Force to take a greater role in the air war, boosting the number of civilians killed or injured by Afghan bombs and rockets. Pressure will probably grow for Ghani to ensure the Afghan forces take measures to protect civilians, Kolenda added. Civilian casualties is one of many problems that is damaging the legitimacy of the government, he said.


Charles Goyette https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/running-hillary-ticket-let-ask/  Unless you think "What's your favorite color?" is a hard question, you shouldn't expect much from lapdog press interviews of Statist candidates.  In a Wall Street Journal column this morning, James Freeman, an editorial page editor, notes that getting candidates in races below Donald Trump on the Republican ticket to denounce him has become a regular sport in the media. But he wonders why reporters "don't force down-ballot Democrats to take a position on each new Clinton email revelation."  That would be fine. Although there is nothing we didn't suspect, thanks to WikiLeaks, we have more details than ever about Clinton venality and political corruption.  But there is a line of questioning that is even more important.  Why shouldn't other candidates on the Democrat ticket be asked to endorse or disavow Hillary's regime change wars in Libya and Syria?  Shouldn't they be made to own the jihadist-generating carnage she champions? Wouldn't it be wise to tie political supporters to her war trajectory with Russia as well, so that if she has her way the survivors will know who was to blame? 1:20 pm on October 28, 2016


Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said on Tuesday the United States should use waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques when questioning terror suspects, and renewed his call for tougher U.S. border security after the attacks in Brussels. The billionaire businessman said authorities "should be able to do whatever they have to do" to gain information in an effort to thwart future attacks. "Waterboarding would be fine. If they can expand the laws, I would do a lot more than waterboarding," Trump said on NBC's "Today" program, adding he believed torture could produce useful leads. "You have to get the information from these people." Waterboarding, the practice of pouring water over someone's face to simulate drowning as an interrogation tactic, was banned by President Barack Obama days after he took office in 2009. Critics call it torture. Trump's main Republican rival, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, suggested heightened police scrutiny of neighborhoods with large Muslim populations. "We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized," he said in a statement. Trump also called for increased law enforcement surveillance of mosques in the United States. "You need surveillance. You have to deal with the mosques, whether we like it or not," Trump told Fox Business Network. "These attacks ... they're not done by Swedish people, that I can tell you." Islamic State claimed responsibility for Tuesday's suicide bomb attacks on Brussels airport and a rush-hour metro train in the Belgian capital which killed at least 30 people. Trump, who has called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, urged tougher measures to stop the flow of illegal immigrants, particularly Syrian refugees, into America. "As president ... I would be very, very tough on the borders, and I would be not allowing certain people to come into this country without absolute perfect documentation," said Trump, campaigning to become the Republican nominee for the Nov. 8 election that will decide on Obama's successor. The Brussels attacks brought national security back to the top of the presidential election agenda, possibly sharpening the division between Trump's isolationist approach to foreign policy and his Republican rivals' more traditional interventionist outlook. On Monday, Trump expressed skepticism about the U.S. role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and said the United States should significantly cut spending on the defense alliance. Cruz criticized Trump's NATO proposal. "The way to respond to terrorist attacks is not weakness. It's not unilateral and preemptive surrender. Abandoning Europe, withdrawing from NATO, as Trump suggests, is preemptive surrender," Cruz told reporters in Washington. Earlier attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, have pushed security issues to the forefront of the White House campaign debate. When 130 people were killed in Paris in November, the threat of terrorism jumped from fifth to first on a Reuters/Ipsos poll list of the country's most important problems and remained there until the economy moved back to the top of the list in mid-January. Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said U.S. military leaders have found techniques like waterboarding are not effective. "We've got to work this through consistent with our values," she said on NBC, adding officials "do not need to resort to torture, but they are going to need more help." Clinton's Democratic rival, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, backed stronger intelligence-sharing and monitoring of social media in the fight against Islamist militants, but opposed bolstered surveillance of Muslim communities. "That would be unconstitutional, and it would be wrong. We are fighting a terrorist organization, a barbaric organization that is killing innocent people. We are not fighting a religion," Sanders told reporters. Walid Phares, named by Trump this week as one of his foreign policy experts, told Reuters the Brussels attacks would force Europe and the United States to "reassess" counter-terrorism strategies in "identifying the radicalized elements and also the type of protection soft targets need." Trump looks to take another step toward winning the Republican presidential nomination in contests in Arizona and Utah on Tuesday, aiming to deal another setback to the party establishment's flagging stop-Trump movement. He has a big lead in convention delegates who will pick the Republican nominee, defying weeks of attacks from members of the party establishment worried he will lead the Republicans to defeat in November. In Arizona, one of the U.S. states that borders Mexico, Trump's hardline immigration message is popular and he leads in polls, while in Utah Trump lags in polls behind Cruz. In addition to the temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, Trump has called for the building of a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border to halt illegal immigration.


France called on all sides to show restraint and reject violence after soldiers killed at least eight people and wounded others in Cameroon s restless English-speaking regions on Sunday, during protests by activists calling for its independence. France is following the situation in Cameroon carefully and is preoccupied by the incidents that took place over the weekend, foreign ministry spokeswoman Agnes Romatet-Espagne told reporters in a daily online briefing on Monday. We call on all the actors to show restraint and reject violence, she added.


U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump's portrayal of Japan as a free-rider on security is stirring worries in Tokyo about damage to its U.S. alliance, and could embolden hardliners keen to bolster Japan's military in the face of a rising China. The U.S.-Japan alliance has been the lynchpin of Tokyo's security policy for decades, but worries have simmered in recent years as to whether Washington will continue to be willing and able to defend its key Asian ally. Comments from the Republican Party frontrunner have done little to allay those fears. "If somebody attacks Japan, we have to immediately go and start World War III, okay? If we get attacked, Japan doesn't have to help us," Trump said at a campaign speech late last year. "Somehow, that doesn't sound so fair." Trump has also accused Japan of stealing jobs and criticized the U.S.-led 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact that Tokyo sees as vital for strategic as well as economic reasons. "If you listen to his comments (on security), the United States would become isolated so I think there is great anxiety for allied countries," Itsunori Onodera, who served as defense minister under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, told Reuters. Last year, Abe spent considerable political capital enacting controversial legislation that allows Japan's military to defend friendly countries under attack, a major reinterpretation of the country's pacifist constitution. "It is incumbent on Japan to protect itself and its defense is necessary for the alliance to be maintained in the best possible posture," said a source close to Abe. Abe also wants to formally revise the post-war charter to further loosen limits on military action overseas. "Most people consider Trump bad news, but for those who want to revise the constitution and strengthen the military, it actually provides a boost for their position," said a former Western diplomat still in touch with Japanese policymakers. As host to around 50,000 U.S. troops, Japan is vital to Washington's "rebalance" of its economic and security focus to the Asia-Pacific region. Trump did not respond to requests for comments about the U.S.-Japan alliance. Both Washington and Tokyo are alarmed by China's increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea, where Beijing has territorial rows with several Southeast Asian nations. Japan has a separate dispute with China over tiny islands in the East China Sea. Like many Trump observers around the world, Japanese policy makers at first watched with amusement and then disbelief as the reality TV star and property tycoon garnered growing momentum. Only in recent weeks have they begun taking Trump's chances seriously and are now scrambling to find out who is advising him on security, another government source said. Japanese policymakers have not geared up specifically to counter what they see as his misleading rhetoric, which seems to hark back to an outdated 1980s vision of Japan, the source close to Abe said. "I think it's too early. Number one, he has not made it known even to the American voters whom he counts on as far as foreign policy goals," the source said, adding they expected Trump would change if elected. "We are fully aware campaign rhetoric is dramatically different from real policies pursued by incumbents." For now, though, Japanese government insiders say they are betting that if Trump becomes the Republican nominee and goes on to win the Nov. 8 presidential election, he would surround himself with experts who would draft more realistic policies. Publicly, Japan is playing it politely. Asked about Trump's candidacy on Wednesday, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters: "We are of course watching this because of the impact such a large country has, but we cannot otherwise comment on another country's election."


Vladimir Putin at the Valdai International Discussion Club : «Shaping the World of Tomorrow» by Vladimir Putin Voltaire Network | Sochi (Russia) | 27 October 2016 français русский Tarja, Heinz, Thabo, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, It is a great pleasure to see you again. I want to start by thanking all of the participants in the Valdai International Discussion Club, from Russia and abroad, for your constructive part in this work, and I want to thank our distinguished guests for their readiness to take part in this open discussion. Our esteemed moderator just wished me a good departure into retirement, and I wish myself the same when the time comes. This is the right approach and the thing to do. But I am not retired yet and am for now the leader of this big country. As such, it is fitting to show restraint and avoid displays of excessive aggressiveness. I do not think that this is my style in any case. But I do think that we should be frank with each other, particularly here in this gathering. I think we should hold candid, open discussions, otherwise our dialogue makes no sense and would be insipid and without the slightest interest. I think that this style of discussion is extremely needed today given the great changes taking place in the world. The theme for our meeting this year, The Future in Progress: Shaping the World of Tomorrow, is very topical. Last year, the Valdai forum participants discussed the problems with the current world order. Unfortunately, little has changed for the better over these last months. Indeed, it would be more honest to say that nothing has changed. The tensions engendered by shifts in distribution of economic and political influence continue to grow. Mutual distrust creates a burden that narrows our possibilities for finding effective responses to the real threats and challenges facing the world today. Essentially, the entire globalisation project is in crisis today and in Europe, as we know well, we hear voices now saying that multiculturalism has failed. I think this situation is in many respects the result of mistaken, hasty and to some extent over-confident choices made by some countries' elites a quarter-of-a-century ago. Back then, in the late 1980s-early 1990s, there was a chance not just to accelerate the globalisation process but also to give it a different quality and make it more harmonious and sustainable in nature. But some countries that saw themselves as victors in the Cold War, not just saw themselves this way but said it openly, took the course of simply reshaping the global political and economic order to fit their own interests. In their euphoria, they essentially abandoned substantive and equal dialogue with other actors in international life, chose not to improve or create universal institutions, and attempted instead to bring the entire world under the spread of their own organisations, norms and rules. They chose the road of globalisation and security for their own beloved selves, for the select few, and not for all. But far from everyone was ready to agree with this. We may as well be frank here, as we know full well that many did not agree with what was happening, but some were unable by then to respond, and others were not yet ready to respond. The result though is that the system of international relations is in a feverish state and the global economy cannot extricate itself from systemic crisis. At the same time, rules and principles, in the economy and in politics, are constantly being distorted and we often see what only yesterday was taken as a truth and raised to dogma status reversed completely. If the powers that be today find some standard or norm to their advantage, they force everyone else to comply. But if tomorrow these same standards get in their way, they are swift to throw them in the bin, declare them obsolete, and set or try to set new rules. Thus, we saw the decisions to launch airstrikes in the centre of Europe, against Belgrade, and then came Iraq, and then Libya. The operations in Afghanistan also started without the corresponding decision from the United Nations Security Council. In their desire to shift the strategic balance in their favour these countries broke apart the international legal framework that prohibited deployment of new missile defence systems. They created and armed terrorist groups, whose cruel actions have sent millions of civilians into flight, made millions of displaced persons and immigrants, and plunged entire regions into chaos. We see how free trade is being sacrificed and countries use sanctions as a means of political pressure, bypass the World Trade Organisation and attempt to establish closed economic alliances with strict rules and barriers, in which the main beneficiaries are their own transnational corporations. And we know this is happening. They see that they cannot resolve all of the problems within the WTO framework and so think, why not throw the rules and the organisation itself aside and build a new one instead. This illustrates what I just said. At the same time, some of our partners demonstrate no desire to resolve the real international problems in the world today. In organisations such as NATO, for example, established during the Cold War and clearly out of date today, despite all the talk about the need to adapt to the new reality, no real adaptation takes place. We see constant attempts to turn the OSCE, a crucial mechanism for ensuring common European and also trans-Atlantic security, into an instrument in the service of someone's foreign policy interests. The result is that this very important organisation has been hollowed out. But they continue to churn out threats, imaginary and mythical threats such as the 'Russian military threat'. This is a profitable business that can be used to pump new money into defence budgets at home, get allies to bend to a single superpower's interests, expand NATO and bring its infrastructure, military units and arms closer to our borders. Of course, it can be a pleasing and even profitable task to portray oneself as the defender of civilisation against the new barbarians. The only thing is that Russia has no intention of attacking anyone. This is all quite absurd. I also read analytical materials, those written by you here today, and by your colleagues in the USA and Europe. It is unthinkable, foolish and completely unrealistic. Europe alone has 300 million people. All of the NATO members together with the USA have a total population of 600 million, probably. But Russia has only 146 million. It is simply absurd to even conceive such thoughts. And yet they use these ideas in pursuit of their political aims. Another mythical and imaginary problem is what I can only call the hysteria the USA has whipped up over supposed Russian meddling in the American presidential election. The United States has plenty of genuinely urgent problems, it would seem, from the colossal public debt to the increase in firearms violence and cases of arbitrary action by the police. You would think that the election debates would concentrate on these and other unresolved problems, but the elite has nothing with which to reassure society, it seems, and therefore attempt to distract public attention by pointing instead to supposed Russian hackers, spies, agents of influence and so forth. I have to ask myself and ask you too: Does anyone seriously imagine that Russia can somehow influence the American people's choice? America is not some kind of 'banana republic', after all, but is a great power. Do correct me if I am wrong. The question is, if things continue in this vein, what awaits the world? What kind of world will we have tomorrow? Do we have answers to the questions of how to ensure stability, security and sustainable economic growth? Do we know how we will make a more prosperous world? Sad as it is to say, there is no consensus on these issues in the world today. Maybe you have come to some common conclusions through your discussions, and I would, of course, be interested to hear them. But it is very clear that there is a lack of strategy and ideas for the future. This creates a climate of uncertainty that has a direct impact on the public mood. Sociological studies conducted around the world show that people in different countries and on different continents tend to see the future as murky and bleak. This is sad. The future does not entice them, but frightens them. At the same time, people see no real opportunities or means for changing anything, influencing events and shaping policy. Yes, formally speaking, modern countries have all the attributes of democracy: Elections, freedom of speech, access to information, freedom of expression. But even in the most advanced democracies the majority of citizens have no real influence on the political process and no direct and real influence on power. People sense an ever-growing gap between their interests and the elite's vision of the only correct course, a course the elite itself chooses. The result is that referendums and elections increasingly often create surprises for the authorities. People do not at all vote as the official and respectable media outlets advised them to, nor as the mainstream parties advised them to. Public movements that only recently were too far left or too far right are taking centre stage and pushing the political heavyweights aside. At first, these inconvenient results were hastily declared anomaly or chance. But when they became more frequent, people started saying that society does not understand those at the summit of power and has not yet matured sufficiently to be able to assess the authorities' labour for the public good. Or they sink into hysteria and declare it the result of foreign, usually Russian, propaganda. Friends and colleagues, I would like to have such a propaganda machine here in Russia, but regrettably, this is not the case. We have not even global mass media outlets of the likes of CNN, BBC and others. We simply do not have this kind of capability yet. As for the claim that the fringe and populists have defeated the sensible, sober and responsible minority – we are not talking about populists or anything like that but about ordinary people, ordinary citizens who are losing trust in the ruling class. That is the problem. By the way, with the political agenda already eviscerated as it is, and with elections ceasing to be an instrument for change but consisting instead of nothing but scandals and digging up dirt – who gave someone a pinch, who sleeps with whom, if you'll excuse me. This just goes beyond all boundaries. And honestly, a look at various candidates' platforms gives the impression that they were made from the same mould – the difference is slight, if there is any. It seems as if the elites do not see the deepening stratification in society and the erosion of the middle class, while at the same time, they implant ideological ideas that, in my opinion, are destructive to cultural and national identity. And in certain cases, in some countries they subvert national interests and renounce sovereignty in exchange for the favour of the suzerain. This begs the question: who is actually the fringe? The expanding class of the supranational oligarchy and bureaucracy, which is in fact often not elected and not controlled by society, or the majority of citizens, who want simple and plain things – stability, free development of their countries, prospects for their lives and the lives of their children, preserving their cultural identity, and, finally, basic security for themselves and their loved ones. People are clearly scared to see how terrorism is evolving from a distant threat to an everyday one, how a terrorist attack could occur right near them, on the next street, if not on their own street, while any makeshift item – from a home-made explosive to an ordinary truck – can be used to carry out a mass killing. Moreover, the terrorist attacks that have taken place in the past few years in Boston and other US cities, Paris, Brussels, Nice and German cities, as well as, sadly, in our own country, show that terrorists do not need units or organised structures – they can act independently, on their own, they just need the ideological motivation against their enemies, that is, against you and us. The terrorist threat is a clear example of how people fail to adequately evaluate the nature and causes of the growing threats. We see this in the way events in Syria are developing. No one has succeeded in stopping the bloodshed and launching a political settlement process. One would think that we would have begun to put together a common front against terrorism now, after such lengthy negotiations, enormous effort and difficult compromises. But this has not happened and this common front has not emerged. My personal agreements with the President of the United States have not produced results either. There were people in Washington ready to do everything possible to prevent these agreements from being implemented in practice. This all demonstrates an unexplainable and I would say irrational desire on the part of the Western countries to keep making the same mistakes or, as we say here in Russia, keep stepping on the same rake. We all see what is happening in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and a number of other countries. I have to ask, where are the results of the fight against terrorism and extremism? Overall, looking at the world as a whole, there are some results in particular regions and locations, but there is no global result and the terrorist threat continues to grow. We all remember the euphoria in some capitals over the Arab Spring. Where are these fanfares today? Russia's calls for a joint fight against terrorism go ignored. What's more, they continue to arm, supply and train terrorist groups in the hope of using them to achieve their own political aims. This is a very dangerous game and I address the players once again: The extremists in this case are more cunning, clever and stronger than you, and if you play these games with them, you will always lose. Colleagues, it is clear that the international community should concentrate on the real problems facing humanity today, the resolution of which will make our world a safer and more stable place and make the system of international relations fairer and more equal. As I said, it is essential to transform globalisation from something for a select few into something for all. It is my firm belief that we can overcome these threats and challenges only by working together on the solid foundation of international law and the United Nations Charter. Today it is the United Nations that continues to remain an agency that is unparalleled in representativeness and universality, a unique venue for equitable dialogue. Its universal rules are necessary for including as many countries as possible in economic and humanitarian integration, guaranteeing their political responsibility and working to coordinate their actions while also preserving their sovereignty and development models. We have no doubt that sovereignty is the central notion of the entire system of international relations. Respect for it and its consolidation will help underwrite peace and stability both at the national and international levels. There are many countries that can rely on a history stretching back a thousand years, like Russia, and we have come to appreciate our identity, freedom and independence. But we do not seek global domination, expansion or confrontation with anyone. In our mind, real leadership lies in seeing real problems rather than attempting to invent mythical threats and use them to steamroll others. This is exactly how Russia understands its role in global affairs today. There are priorities without which a prosperous future for our shared planet is unthinkable and they are absolutely obvious. I won't be saying anything new here. First of all, there is equal and indivisible security for all states. Only after ending armed conflicts and ensuring the peaceful development of all countries will we be able to talk about economic progress and the resolution of social, humanitarian and other key problems. It is important to fight terrorism and extremism in actuality. It has been said more than once that this evil can only be overcome by a concerted effort of all states of the world. Russia continues to offer this to all interested partners. It is necessary to add to the international agenda the issue of restoring the Middle Eastern countries' lasting statehood, economy and social sphere. The mammoth scale of destruction demands drawing up a long-term comprehensive programme, a kind of Marshall Plan, to revive the war- and conflict-ridden area. Russia is certainly willing to join actively in these team efforts. We cannot achieve global stability unless we guarantee global economic progress. It is essential to provide conditions for creative labour and economic growth at a pace that would put an end to the division of the world into permanent winners and permanent losers. The rules of the game should give the developing economies at least a chance to catch up with those we know as developed economies. We should work to level out the pace of economic development, and brace up backward countries and regions so as to make the fruit of economic growth and technological progress accessible to all. Particularly, this would help to put an end to poverty, one of the worst contemporary problems. It is also absolutely evident that economic cooperation should be mutually lucrative and rest on universal principles to enable every country to become an equal partner in global economic activities. True, the regionalising trend in the world economy is likely to persist in the medium term. However, regional trade agreements should complement and expand not replace the universal norms and regulations. Russia advocates the harmonisation of regional economic formats based on the principles of transparency and respect for each other's interests. That is how we arrange the work of the Eurasian Economic Union and conduct negotiations with our partners, particularly on coordination with the Silk Road Economic Belt project, which China is implementing. We expect it to promote an extensive Eurasian partnership, which promises to evolve into one of the formative centres of a vast Eurasian integration area. To implement this idea, 5+1 talks have begun already for an agreement on trade and economic cooperation between all participants in the process. An important task of ours is to develop human potential. Only a world with ample opportunities for all, with highly skilled workers, access to knowledge and a great variety of ways to realise their potential can be considered truly free. Only a world where people from different countries do not struggle to survive but lead full lives can be stable. A decent future is impossible without environment protection and addressing climate problems. That is why the conservation of the natural world and its diversity and reducing the human impact on the environment will be a priority for the coming decades. Another priority is global healthcare. Of course, there are many problems, such as large-scale epidemics, decreasing the mortality rate in some regions and the like. So there is enormous room for advancement. All people in the world, not only the elite, should have the right to healthy, long and full lives. This is a noble goal. In short, we should build the foundation for the future world today by investing in all priority areas of human development. And of course, it is necessary to continue a broad-based discussion of our common future so that all sensible and promising initiatives are heard. Colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, I am confident that you, as members of the Valdai Club, will actively take part in this work. Your expertise enables you to understand all angles of the processes underway both in Russia and in the world, forecast and evaluate long-term trends, and put forward new initiatives and recommendations that will help us find the way to the more prosperous and sustainable future that we all badly need. Thank you very much for your attention. Vladimir Putin


It had been decades since I'd flown over a pair of handlebars. One moment I was bouncing along, in sagebrush, mind reeling from all the natural beauty zipping by, and the next I'd caught a wheel on a rock and gone sailing into that familiar somersault: butt rising from the saddle, shoulders twisting violently, hips lurching heels actually clicking midair, sunglasses and water bottle and Clif Bar hurtling into the trees, the ground closing in. Because I was aimed steeply downhill, partway into a gully, I landed more or less on my feet, like a gymnast, before flopping onto my stomach with an "Ugh!" and briefly bodysurfing. Miraculously unscathed, I dusted myself off and glanced around. Out here, alone in the wilderness, at least nobody was watching. Looking back, it seems strange that I kept going. I was just of the way into a trip with an old friend, Dacus, whom I had abandoned an hour earlier with a broken chain. It wasn't even my first wipeout. My shins were already pulped after crashing through a wall of thistle. Most alarmingly, I had scant cellphone reception. But the thought of returning the way I had come — wading a murky creek and huffing up a rutted cow path choked with wood ticks — was more depressing. Besides, it had been my idea to cycle the Maah Daah Hey Trail, the longest and arguably most grueling mountain biking route in the United States. I was an unlikely candidate for the trip: I had never ridden a mountain bike before, or even camped much. But I'd read about the trail — a doorstep to the lush, vertiginous, sunstruck vastness of the North Dakota Badlands, which Theodore Roosevelt called "a place of grim beauty" — and was sold. Dacus, a neophyte living in New Orleans, took some convincing. But in early June, we arrived in the striving tourist town of Medora, a point for the trail. At Dakota Cyclery, an excellent bike shop and outfitter, we rented sturdy mountain bikes, trail maps and bike bags for carrying our gear, and booked a shuttle ride to a northern trailhead, all for a reasonable $375 apiece. With four days of food and clothing lashed to our bikes, and with the vaguest notion of what awaited us, we started pedaling. Something I didn't know about mountain biking, at least on a trail this challenging: You cannot look up. Even for a second. To do so is to court ruin. Forget about the scenery, all that peripheral beauty gone by in a flash, the profound silence, the bliss of seclusion. Was that a bull elk up ahead or merely a juniper? Oh, how the rings of morning light smolder over that ridgeline . .. Wake up! Dial it in, man! Head down! Eyes locked on the trail! Let your mind drift and you are toast. Unfortunately for me, on the Maah Daah Hey, the temptation to look up is endless. The North Dakota Badlands are sometimes compared to the loping greenery of New Hampshire's White Mountains — but that's apt only if the greenery had been painted on top of canyon land. At its edges, the Badlands flatten into farm country, but their heart is the swaying, steppe of the Little Missouri National Grassland: more than a million acres of astonishingly beautiful, infernally punishing terrain. At every turn, it induces a wandering eye. Bridging the north and south sections of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the Maah Daah Hey is 144. 7 miles all told, but Dacus and I were tackling only the first 96, departing from Bennett camp, just outside the north section. From the very start, it was all up, up, up. With an elevation gain of 8, 600 sidewinding feet, it began to feel Dantean. Everywhere were wonderful reminders of our mortality: sheer drops into river bottoms eroding hillside ledges that slid away in our wake cows with a knack for materializing around blind turns and at road crossings, careening oil trucks. Had I been in a morbid frame of mind, I might have chucked it all at Mile 3, when Dacus's chain broke. The plan at that point was to reconnect farther along, after Dacus had hiked back to the trailhead, called Dakota Cyclery for help, and had them drop him off around Mile 10. I rolled on, feeling abruptly, utterly alone. We'd seen no one else all morning, and our first campsite was still 22 miles away. My prevailing concern, however, was staying on my bike. Before my acrobatic dismount, I'd narrowly missed being brained by a lolling branch. Later, I had screeched to a halt at the lip of a sharp declivity and, unable to find a foothold, simply timberrrrrrrrred into the sagebrush. But it was a warm day, in the low 80s, with a delicious tailwind. Wildflowers crowded my wheels: blue flax and sego lily, golden pea and spiderwort. Prairie grasses of muted yellows and olives bristled under a heartbreakingly blue sky. I startled a pronghorn, a relative of the antelope, which took off, kicking up sparks of dirt I trailed it across several hundred yards of upland meadow, until it was a bead in the distance. I had been reading a biography of Sitting Bull, the great Lakota holy man, and knew that far to my left was a siltstone butte called Killdeer Mountain, where in the summer of 1864, the United States Army attacked a peaceful Indian encampment, killing around 150 Santee and Lakota Sioux, though Sitting Bull survived. As they retreated and regrouped for the Battle of the Badlands — fought later that summer at the trail's midsection near Medora — the Sioux very likely passed not far from where I was riding. Straddling a $2, 000 mountain bike, and with three liters of cold water in my insulated hydration pack, it was humbling to think of Sitting Bull, a fugitive in his own home, short on water and horses, trying to lead his people to safety over this broken ground. Onward I slogged, from tabletop plain to forests of pinyon and juniper to gravel culvert and back again. Where the trail crossed County Road 50, the outfitter's van appeared with Dacus grinning in a window. A doctored chain, a and we were off again. And then, within minutes, we were lost. While mostly well marked, with signposts placed every 500 feet or so, the Maah Daah Hey can devolve into a latticework of tracks — some of them cow paths, some blazed by backcountry regulars — forking this way and that, and ebbing into voids. I the map and scanned its stupefying squiggles for a clue. Which way was north again? And then there it was, in the dirt at my feet: Some benevolent soul had scrawled an arrow with a fingertip, pointing the way ahead. We soon crossed Beicegel Creek, where petrified cedar stumps stood in the shallows, a reminder that western North Dakota had once been subtropical wetlands, like today's Everglades. I gazed down at fossilized abalone and nautilus shells. Toward dusk, we found ourselves flying through an immense pasture, scattering herds of black cows and calves, the light running out behind us. It felt like a reward for a very patchy first day, perched in our pedals and roaring across the beautiful emptiness, tilted slightly downhill with the wind in our faces. After 25 hard miles, our campsite was just minutes away. Now I got this whole mountain biking deal. We were ripping! Until Dacus went airborne. He lacked the luck I'd had earlier and bounced off his head before crashing onto his tailbone. Somehow he walked away, but with the air of a sky diver whose chute had only partly opened. We inspected his helmet. It had a crack down the middle. "Wow," I said. "You O. K.?" "I think so," he said, woozily. "What happened?" "It was so beautiful, I decided to look around for a second. " "Big mistake. " We camped that night next to creek called Magpie, in a copse of ash and cottonwood. It was shady down in there, so cool and quiet. I crawled on all fours into my tent and sat plucking ticks from my legs. I was spent, my body a factory of pain. But as I stared into the woods, into the fields beyond, I felt . The Maah Daah Hey was a long time in coming. Originally conceived as a horseback trail, it took the Forest Service a decade to stitch together the inaugural 96 miles in 1999 — a patchwork of federal, state and private lands — and in 2014 they finished a second section, called the Deuce, which tacked on 48. 7 miles (there are more miles to come, pending federal financing). For mountain bikers, who caught wind of the trail early on and now make up the vast majority of its 15, 000 annual users, the wait was worth it. The Maah Daah Hey ranks with the storied Slickrock Trail in Utah and the McKenzie River Trail in Oregon as among the country's greatest . It laps both by more than 100 miles. But the landscape of the Maah Daah Hey has a deeper meaning. The trail happens to run straight through what until the late 19th century had been home to scores of Badlands tribes, principally the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara, but also the Assiniboine, Blackfoot, Chippewa, Crow, and Oglala and Lakota Sioux ("maah daah hey" is Mandan for grandfather). In fact, the trail is part of an ancient, intertribal trading and hunting network that once stretched all the way to South Dakota, Montana and the Knife River Indian villages near Stanton, N. D. where in 1804, Lewis and Clark met Sacagawea while wintering among the Mandan. On the heels of Lewis and Clark's visit, the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara were nearly wiped out by smallpox. The survivors banded together and endured, but like all Badlands natives, they were eventually forced to forsake their ancestral lands for reservation life. Before arriving in North Dakota, I had spoken to Gerard Baker, a and former superintendent of the Mount Rushmore National Monument. It was Mr. Baker who had named the trail — at the Forest Service's request — partly inspired by stories his late father, Paige Baker Sr. had told him about the longstanding presence there. "I wanted to name it 'maah daah hey' because grandfathers are always supposed to be around," Mr. Baker said. "From a clanship standpoint, we Indians have a lot of grandfathers, and whether you're having hard times or good times, they're supposed to be there for you. That's what the trail means. You can go out there by yourself and cry and nobody will hear you except the spirits, and they'll help you. " Mr. Baker had little interest in mountain biking, and saw the trail more as a symbol of his secular and spiritual bond with the Badlands. "This is an area that the associate with our spirits and our history," he said, adding that the trail's northern end is a short drive from the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara reservation at Fort Berthold. "The Badlands were closed off to us for so long. Now they're open to us again. We have a lot of spirits that still live out there, and we feel an ownership to the land. Deep in our hearts, it's still ours, man. " At Mr. Baker's suggestion, I had placed a clump of tobacco on the trail as Dacus and I had set out, praying to the four directions — North, South, East, West — for our safe delivery. Whether or not it was working seemed to be an open question. Each morning we wondered what the day would bring. The wind was constantly at our backs, like a gentle hand pushing us. Rain that had churned the ground into impassable sludge days earlier was nowhere to be seen. Pronghorn sprung from crowns of gamagrass and foxtail barley. Western meadowlarks and bobolinks shot over the fields. At a place called Devils Pass, we gingerly negotiated a gangplank of shattered stone as the trail narrowed over a shadowy gorge. But then the Maah Daah Hey mellowed into flatlands, veering southwesterly and roughly paralleling the Little Missouri River. We crossed the shallows carrying our bikes on our shoulders, wading the reddened, sluggish water up to our thighs. Dacus, hankering for a swim, plopped down in the middle and flapped his legs, style. We cruised into a maze of huge cottonwoods, a rare length of shade where the grass grew up past our saddles. This was the best part of the trail. The air was stunningly crisp, birdsong flaring and fading. The going was easy. I found a deer antler, a tiny forked thing that I stuffed into my pack, and a little farther on, a hawk feather, fluted rustling across the grass. We headed up again, a dizzying climb in equatorial heat, past the tree line, then stopped for lunch on an alcove with amphitheater views. Miles and miles of rough country rolled to the horizon, a leafy sandstone valley sprouting interior courtyards and alleyways, the swollen sun overhead. Scattered incongruously on distant bluffs were several pumpjack oil drilling rigs, most of them inactive, poised over the earth like herons. Western North Dakota has some of the richest oil and natural gas reserves in the world — part of the vast Bakken Formation, a geologic superfund of sorts holding billions of barrels of oil, almost all of it reachable only through controversial fracking. During the height of its oil boom from 2006 to 2012, North Dakota produced over a million barrels per day, more than any state besides Texas. When the price of oil dropped in 2014, many rigs went idle. By 3 p. m. we had put 22 miles behind us. Whooping and shouting, we rode a rushing swell of grass, birds in orbit all around, then dropped into a draw, snaking through shoals of boulders. One boulder turned out to be a dead cow, its face and hindquarters eaten away. It was hard not to think of it as an omen. Our camp was a wide basin a mile or two from Elkhorn Ranch, where a young Theodore Roosevelt lived from 1884 to 1887. Roosevelt loved the Badlands. He came to rely on their restorative qualities after wearying stints back East. As an avid hunter, partly what he loved was the chance to shoot the bison, elk and bighorn sheep. Evenings, he'd sit on his veranda with a rifle close at hand. But the Badlands eventually changed Roosevelt, giving shape to a conservationist credo. Sickened by the ravages of hide hunters, he protected 230 million acres of public land during his presidency, including a stunning parcel of North Dakota Badlands. My notes from Day 3 are mostly unprintable here. miles of blistering, infuriating, jackknifed rock. We pushed and pulled and lugged our oppressive, bikes over nearly every inch of ground, cursing and sputtering. We couldn't get enough water. I have an image of Dacus slumped on the trail, febrile and panting, handkerchief covering his face, madly gulping from his water bottle while turkey vultures circled overhead. We decided to ration the four liters apiece we carried, just in case. When we reached a spot with some shade, Dacus lay down for a nap and I scrambled to the top of a butte, that I'd check my cell reception to see if I could call for a medevac. As I sat there, a mule deer clomped into the clearing below me twitching its big khaki ears. Far off, wavering on the thermals, two golden eagles swung into view. With twilight approaching, we found ourselves in a petrified forest, swerving wildly to avoid the blackened stumps. Camp had to be close by, we reasoned. But our map showed we were still an hour out. We weren't quite in tears, but we were close. Sooner or later, the Maah Daah Hey Trail, we had to admit, turns grown men into simpering mama's boys. It's a place for stern, bushwhacking cyclists and not for city kids after a fleeting nature fix. Dacus put our problem succinctly: "I think what we're finding is our skill levels just aren't very high. " It was almost dark when we arrived in camp, plumb out of water and near the brink of physical and emotional collapse. By good fortune, four experienced mountain bikers were riding the trail that week, and they greeted us with restorative beers and a dinner. It was a deciding to wimp out on the last day. A shortcut via a graded service road, we realized, would put us back in Medora by lunchtime, nearly halving the trail's last 28 miles. With a cloud of dust in our wake, we were in town by noon, sharing a large Hawaiian pizza and guzzling pints of beer. As we sat toasting our accomplishment, I felt a twinge of pride. It hadn't been pretty, and I was glad it was over, but we'd ridden the Maah Daah Hey Trail, or a good chunk of it anyway, and lived. "Thanks for inviting me along," Dacus said. "It was amazing. One of the most incredible trips of my life. And I'll never do it again. " But I thought happily of our last night in camp, of those gifted cans of Canadian beer, and of some Maah Daah Hey advice that Gerard Baker had given me: "Don't just look, but listen. Stand out there in the middle of the night and listen. Listen to the trees and to the grass, because you'll hear a lot in those Badlands. " And I did. I stood in the darkness sipping beer and missing my wife, listening to the chirr of summer insects while the stars brightened, trying to tune my ears to the unknown.


The U.S. Congress taking office on Tuesday remains almost as overwhelmingly Christian as it was in the 1960s even while the share of American adults who call themselves Christians has dropped, according to Pew Research Center analysis. A report from the nonpartisan group said that 91 percent of lawmakers in the Republican-dominated 115th Congress described themselves as Christians, down slightly from 95 percent in the 87th Congress in 1961 and 1962, the earliest years for comparable data. By contrast, the portion of American adults who call themselves Christian fell to 71 percent in 2014, the Pew report said. While Pew did not have numbers for the early 1960s, a Gallup survey from that time found that 93 percent of Americans described themselves as Christian. "The most interesting thing is how little Congress has changed over the past several decades, especially in comparison with the general public," Aleksandra Sandstrom, the report's lead author, said in a telephone interview. The biggest gap between Congress and other Americans was among those who said they have no religion. Only one lawmaker, Democratic Representative Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, called herself religiously unaffiliated. The Pew survey found that 23 percent of Americans described themselves the same way. The percentage of Americans who have no religion has grown, but the portion of voters who said in exit polls that they have no religion is lower than the share of the general public, said Greg Smith, a Pew expert on the U.S. religious landscape. "The political power of that group might lag their growth in the overall population," he said. Among the 293 Republicans elected to the new Congress, all but two identify as Christians. The two Jewish Republicans – Lee Zeldin of New York and David Kustoff of Tennessee – serve in the House. The 242 Democrats in Congress are 80 percent Christian, but that side of the aisle includes 28 Jews, three Buddhists, three Hindus, two Muslims and one Unitarian Universalist. The share of Protestants in Congress has dropped to 56 percent today from 75 percent in 1961, while the portion of Catholics in Congress has risen to 31 percent from 19 percent. The U.S. population in 2014 was 46.5 percent Protestant and 21 percent Catholic, the Pew survey showed. The survey was based on data gathered by CQ Roll Call through questionnaires and phone calls to members of congress and candidates' offices.


The number of women infected with the Zika virus during their pregnancies in the continental United States has risen to 234, health officials said on Thursday. Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declined to say how many of the women had given birth, citing confidentiality concerns for the women and their families. But they did cite six cases with abnormalities — three babies with birth defects and another three who died before birth with evidence of defects. The numbers raised more questions than answers. Without knowing the total number of births, officials cannot know if the babies with birth defects represent a tiny fraction of the total, or a large part. The agency said some of the defects were related to microcephaly, a condition linked to Zika that causes brain damage and abnormally small heads. Others, like eye problems, were but not caused by microcephaly. Dr. Denise J. Jamieson, one of the leaders of the pregnancy and birth defects team, which is part of the C. D. C. 's Zika response effort, said the release of the numbers was the first in what will be weekly updates on birth outcomes in Zika pregnancies. As the number of births rises, she said, the agency will be able to release more detailed information. "We're sort of in a hard place," Dr. Jamieson said. "We can't provide a lot of information about where these women are in their pregnancy. We don't want to inadvertently disclose information about difficult decisions these women are making about their pregnancies. " She said the numbers included the nine pregnant women the C. D. C. had reported on in February. Of the babies in those cases, at least one was born with microcephaly. The C. D. C. also reported on Thursday that the total number of pregnant women who had been infected with Zika in United States territories, including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, was 189. But the agency did not report birth outcomes for that group. "Microcephalic babies are beginning to be born," Dr. Jamieson said. "The disease seems to be very similar no matter where it is. " Dr. Jamieson said some of the microcephalic births they were seeing were among women who had no symptoms of Zika, a troubling pattern. Roughly 80 percent of people who contract the virus never display symptoms. She estimated that the approximate risk of having a baby with birth defects — based on findings from Brazil, Colombia and other countries, including the United States — was between 1 percent and 15 percent. A study published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine found no cases of microcephaly among infants born to women in Colombia who were infected in the third trimester of pregnancy. "The pattern we are seeing in other places is the same as in U. S. travelers — that Zika is causing birth defects is real," she said. "It's not confined to one location or one time period. "


U.S. Democratic Senator Al Franken will announce his resignation on Thursday, a day after a majority of his Democratic Senate colleagues called for him to step down following a string of sexual misconduct allegations against him, CNN reported on Thursday, citing unnamed sources.


The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted narrowly to repeal regulations requiring internet service providers to do more to protect customers' privacy than websites like Alphabet Inc's Google (GOOGL.O) or Facebook Inc (FB.O). The vote was along party lines, with 50 Republicans approving the measure and 48 Democrats rejecting it. The two remaining Republicans in the Senate were absent and did not cast a vote. According to the rules approved by the Federal Communications Commission in October under then-President Barack Obama, internet providers would need to obtain consumer consent before using precise geolocation, financial information, health information, children's information and web browsing history for advertising and internal marketing. The vote was a victory for internet providers such as AT&T Inc (T.N), Comcast Corp (CMCSA.O) and Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N), which had strongly opposed the rules. The bill next goes to the U.S. House of Representatives, but it was not clear when they would take up the measure. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate was overturning a regulation that "makes the internet an uneven playing field, increases complexity, discourages competition, innovation, and infrastructure investment." But Democratic Senator Ed Markey said, "Republicans have just made it easier for American's sensitive information about their health, finances and families to be used, shared, and sold to the highest bidder without their permission." FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said consumers would have privacy protections even without the Obama administration internet provider rules. In a joint statement, Democratic members of the FCC and the Federal Trade Commission said the Senate vote "creates a massive gap in consumer protection law as broadband and cable companies now have no discernible privacy requirements." Republican commissioners, including Pai, said in October that the rules would unfairly give websites like Facebook, Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) or Google the ability to harvest more data than internet service providers and thus dominate digital advertising. The FCC earlier this month delayed the data rules from taking effect. The Internet and Television Association, a trade group, in a statement praised the vote as a "critical step towards re-establishing a balanced framework that is grounded in the long-standing and successful FTC privacy framework that applies equally to all parties operating online." Websites are governed by a less restrictive set of privacy rules overseen by the Federal Trade Commission. Jonathan Schwantes, senior policy counsel for advocacy group Consumers Union, said the vote "is a huge step in the wrong direction, and it completely ignores the needs and concerns of consumers."


The White House said on Friday that it will continue to work with the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress on a "legislative piece" to address the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law. White House spokesman Sean Spicer made the comment as President Donald Trump prepared to sign executive actions to direct a review of the Dodd-Frank Act and put the brakes on a retirement advice rule.


Donald Trump s army of deplorables are viciously attacking First Lady Michelle Obama because she dared to condemn his predatory sexual behavior towards women.On Thursday, Mrs. Obama took a powerful swing at the Republican nominee over his comments about sexually assaulting women and his predatory behavior that makes him totally unfit to be president. This is not something we can ignore, she said. It s not something we can sweep under the rug as just another disturbing footnote in a sad election season.Because this was not just a lewd conversation. This wasn t locker room banter. This was a powerful individual speaking freely and openly about sexually predatory behavior. And actually bragging about kissing and groping women. Using language so obscene that many of us are worried about our children hearing it when we turn on the TV. To make matters worse, it now seems very clear this isn t an isolated incident. It s one of countless examples of how he has treated women his whole life.The First Lady also urged parents to reject Trump because rewarding him with the presidency will only send a bad message to children, especially boys. In our hearts we all know that if we let Hillary s opponent win the election, then we are sending a clear message to our kids that everything they re seeing and hearing is perfectly okay. We are validating it, we are endorsing it. We are telling our sons that it is okay to humiliate women, telling our daughters that this is how we deserve to be treated, that bigotry and bullying are perfectly acceptable. Is that we want for our children? Let s be very clear, strong men, men who are truly role models don t need to put down women to make themselves feel powerful. Michelle Obama is no stranger at being attacked for any little thing she does and this time was no different as conservatives swarmed the internet to smear her as much as possible with all sorts of horrendous remarks.@CNNPolitics @CNN too bad her husband isn t a decent man. Wonder if she actually knows any. Oh her! She s a decent man! Deplorable Tiffany (@1tiffanyl) October 13, 2016@CNNPolitics @CNN @MichelleObama How do you feel about your sleazy husband flaunting his erection to other women? Just curious. FRAUD ALERT!! (@redco2012) October 13, 2016@CNNPolitics @CNN Michelle Obama is an embarrassment! I can t wait until your go Deplorable Marmy #DT (@Loofie68msncom2) October 13, 2016@CNNPolitics @benshapiro And exposing her daughters to revolting rappers and music about bitches and ho s that have been welcomed to WH sal (@tevet) October 13, 2016@CNNPolitics @CNN nothing like our own first lady standing in front of millions of you as she supports fraud, corruption n destabilization ? Trump STRONG (@allabouttrump) October 13, 2016@CNNPolitics @CNN your husband is an insult to all Americans!! Deporable American (@wendytogo34) October 13, 2016@CNNPolitics @CNN Oh please Michelle Obama @FLOTUS with your fake half cry and faux outrage .don t you have packing to do??? Ferkslaw (@ferkslaw1) October 13, 2016And these are just the tip of the iceberg.Conservatives somehow STILL support Donald Trump despite the fact that he is an admitted sexual predator and creepy pervert. And in order to defend their hero, they repeatedly bring up Bill Clinton even though he was never charged with committing a sex crime and is NOT running for president.Hillary Clinton was absolutely right. Trump s supporters are deplorable.Featured Image: Spencer Platt/Getty Images


President Donald Trump's son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, has hired a prominent trial lawyer to help represent him in inquiries linked to Russia, the New York Times reported on Monday citing another member of his legal team. Kushner took on Abbe D. Lowell, the newspaper said, joining other senior administration figures including U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Vice President Mike Pence and Trump himself in hiring private attorneys. The White House has come under increased scrutiny since Department of Justice Special Counsel Robert Mueller and a number of congressional committees launched investigations into whether there were ties between Russia and Trump's 2016 election campaign team. Trump and his key aides have repeatedly denied any collusion with Moscow. Mueller is examining Kushner's meetings with the Russian ambassador and a Russian banker as part of a broad enquiry, the New York Times said. But there are no signs that Kushner is the target of an investigation and Kushner has promised to cooperate, the newspaper added. The 36-year-old Kushner, a real estate developer with no previous government experience, had at least three previously undisclosed contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States during and after the 2016 presidential campaign, seven current and former U.S. officials told Reuters in May. When Mueller became special counsel in May, he left a job at WilmerHale, a legal firm that also employs another lawyer for Kushner, Jamie Gorelick. "When Bob Mueller left WilmerHale to become special counsel and three of our colleagues joined him, we asked Mr. Kushner to get independent legal advice on whether to continue with us as his counsel," Gorelick said in a statement to the Times. "He engaged Abbe Lowell to advise him and then decided to add Mr. Lowell to the team representing him in the various inquiries into the Russia matter," she said. Trump on Monday demanded that investigators apologize for looking into Russian interference and possible collusion with his election campaign, accusing predecessor President Barack Obama of having "colluded or obstructed," but he did not provide evidence. Russia has said it did not interfere in the vote.


Volition stakes its Seoul on the success of this successor to the world of Saints Row, but Agents of Mayhem doesn't leave a great first impression. [Agents of Mayhem takes place in a Row future, though it's unclear just how much influence that the purple gangsters of developer Volition's previous crime series have had on the "MAYHEM" . Still, their membership includes both Pierce and the (and presumably resurrected) Johnny Gat from previous Saints games, so we aren't straying too far from Volition's ongoing universe of sandbox mayhem. After the viral success of Saints Row 4's hijinks, the development team has decided to double down on slapstick anarchy. Agents of Mayhem offers at least ten different playable characters, each with their own skills, strengths, weaknesses, and upgrade paths. Choosing the right three for a given mission, which you can then switch between playing as on the fly, into a futuristic parody of Seoul will be crucial to success. Mission difficulty is extremely scalable, allowing you to balance risk versus reward before you've pulled the trigger. On the ground, swapping between said squadmates is instantaneous and allows for powerful combinations of both active and passive abilities. It's more than choosing the right weapon for the job — knowing who is better at disrupting shields, who can punch through armor, and who has a penchant for computer hacking is an important part of deciding who hits the streets. Vehicle gameplay doesn't look especially impressive or robust, but it remains present. Whether or not it's worth the time to slip into one of the many vehicles on the streets of Seoul remains to be seen, but Saints Row 4 rendered automotive transportation utterly pointless with its hijinks so there may not be much reason for concern. Agents of Mayhem recalls nothing so much as an especially crude Saturday morning cartoon, with easily as many as bullets. Volition's recent games have always had a sense of humor that can be hit or miss, but the humor is (mostly) endearing. Agents of Mayhem doesn't stick with me as much as past efforts in the demo I played, but I could see myself growing attached to members of the crew given time. Unfortunately, the game's promise seems to have stalled after the concept stage. When I sat down to actually play, I found a game that felt like the leftover missions from an title, with none of the freedom that implies. Though my team was aesthetically different, playing each of them was an exercise in holding down the trigger until the bloated life bars of faceless enemies depleted, and I moved to the next checkpoint. There were hints of progression — you can collect vehicles, experience, and shards. But the vehicles felt pointless, and I didn't have enough time with the game to stretch my legs with some of the advancement. Switching between characters has all the gravity of weapon swapping. On one hand, it wasn't cumbersome. On the other, it just didn't seem to matter very much. The game's visuals were similarly uninspired. Everything is just a little too smooth. Character models are simple, stiffly animated, and overly shiny, making the game feel more like an HD remake of a title than the heir apparent to a beloved franchise. The animated cutscenes felt more like a storyboard for real cinematics than something to ship with a finished title. As an ardent fan of the Saints Row franchise, Agents of Mayhem felt criminally underwhelming. Given some time in the open world, with a wider variety of team members and the opportunity to play with the character advancement system, my opinion could change. For now, however, all it did was make me wish for a true successor to the absurdly creative GTA knockoff that inspired it.


Israel is expanding ties throughout the Middle East but not with Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday, accusing his country s arch-foe of trying to dominate the region. Addressing a Jerusalem diplomatic conference, Netanyahu said Israel has relations with nearly every single one of nations that do not formally recognize it, due to their growing need for its economic and security expertise. See that country in red? By the way that s not on our list of diplomatic allies, he said, pointing to Iran on a regional map. He deemed Iran an aggressive regime seeking nuclear arms and a land bridge via its allies to the Mediterranean sea.


Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room starting at 6 PM PST | 9 PM EST every Wednesday. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for barfly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher, & Spore along with Andy Nowicki from Alt Right Blogspot, ACR/21Wire contributor Randy J and Stewart Howe. In this broadcast we re going off the rails and off the cuffs, listeners will be hearing us go around the BOILER ROOM on a myriad of topics tonight including relief booths in the city, Sarah Palin s endorsement of Donald Trump, whether or not there is any hope in the political system, reported sexual assaults in Cologne, the Oregon standoff and El Chapo owning Fast and Furious weapons. If you want to participate, bring something interesting to throw into the boiler Join us in the ALTERNATE CURRENT RADIO chat room.BOILER ROOM IS NOT A POLICTALLY CORRECT ZONE! Live ACR player below Show goes live at 6 PM PSTThis week s topics:


Pakistan s government on Saturday called on the military to help police break up a sit-in by religious hardliners who have blocked the main routes into Islamabad for more than two weeks, state television reported. Army called in to control law and situation in capital, official Pakistan TV reported, citing an Interior Ministry notification. Pakistani police fought running battles on Saturday with stone-throwing activists of the ultra-religious Tehreek-e-Labaik party but failed to dislodge the activist who are blocking roads into Islamabad. By nightfall new demonstrators had joined the camp as protests spread to other main cities with activists brandishing sticks and attacking cars in some areas.


Or, how to stop worrying and love staving off the dystopian nightmare that threatens. Trump's victory party By Liam Miller / filmsforaction.org  Here we are. President Trump.  I'm going to say it again. The pain will stop sooner. We have to toughen ourselves up.  President Trump.  Look. I'm not surprised.  Turnout was low. Trump and Clinton each got 58 million votes and change. But it was enough to hurl Trump into office.  The polls were close; but Clinton's supporters just haven't been passionate enough, while Trump's supporters are all too.  We're looking at a bad situation. Potentially nightmarish. But we're also looking at the one situation that can get people to start working together who might otherwise have simply continued to jockey for power. (I'm looking at you, establishment Democrats.)  Mind you. It's still wretched. But look at it this way: now, we can deal with our racist, sexist, patriarchist history head on.  Every Sanders supporter is, deep inside, saying "I told you so". And they're right.  Virtually every poll had Bernie thumping Trump soundly. All the arguments people make in favor of Trump, which they seemed to think outweighed his flaws, included bucking the system. All of those people would have voted for Bernie. Someone very close to me, who had been a Republican for four decades, registered Democrat to vote for Bernie in the primary; and they voted for Trump yesterday.  Bernie was the people's candidate; independents (who now comprise 45% of the electorate) favored him 2:1. There's no doubt he would have trounced Trump; but there is also no doubt that Bernie's ideas are America's ideals. We just can't let these lunatics have their way with the country.  So look. There's really no time to lose. Let's get the ball rolling. The midterms are two years away; we need to win big. Trump has a Republican Congress; dear lord, the horror. There's a presidential election to win two years after that. Local elections up and down the line. And a lot of grassroots organizing, fundraising, and door-knocking to accomplish.  At least the Koch brothers and most of the establishment Republicans hate him too.  Pull together, people. We got this. This work is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License 3.5 ·


MOSCOW (AP) — A trial for the blogger who is accused of inciting religious hatred for playing "Pokemon Go" in a church has begun in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg. [advertisement


Tweet Widget A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by Bruce A. Dixon  Under President Obama, Democrats threw away their mandate to fight for health care for. Instead they let insurance companies concoct Obamacare, sketchy policies, skimpy coverage, high deductibles and co-pays for half the uninsured and empty promises for the other half. A Gallup Poll confirms that 58% of Americans want to see Obamacare replaced with a single payer system to guarantee health care, not health insurance for everybody. Time For the Real Left To Double Down on Single Payer Medicare For All A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by Bruce A. Dixon  The Affordable Care Act, which President elect Trump promises to repeal and replace with nobody knows what, was never all it was cracked up to be.  The promise to deliver affordable health care was a key campaign issue in 2007 and 2008. But while most Americans demanded a single payer system to replace the private insurance companies, and guarantee health care for everyone, the 44 th president his corporate funded Democrats instead delivered Obamacare –- billions in tax dollars to insurance companies for policies with skimpy coverage and such high co-pays and deductibles that many families cannot afford to use their new health insurance. Worse still, Obamacare only provided these sketchy policies to about half the uninsured leaving the rest to the tender mercies of state governments which control Medicaid.  Ever since 2009 corporate Democrats have justified their treachery with claims that single payer Medicare For All was impossible to get through even the majority Democratic Congress of 2009 and 2010. Hillary Clinton also declared single payer dead on arrival should she be elected. But Hillary was not elected, and even though this is the fourth consecutive Republican dominated Congress, and Republican politicians hate Medicare For All just as much as their Democratic rivals, the popular mandate for single payer health care is very much alive.  A May 2016 Gallup Poll confirms that "...58% of U.S. adults favor the idea of replacing the law (Obamacare) with a federally funded healthcare system that provides insurance for all Americans." The question for the left, however you read that term is what do we do about this? The answer has to be that we fight for what we know people want and need with all the means at our disposal. In the present era, the willingness to organize, to agitate, to educate, to demonstrate and to demand health care –- not health insurance, but health care for everybody as a human right is one of the markers by which we can tell actual flesh and blood leftists and their organizations from those who merely fake the funk until the next Democrat takes office. It's worth noting that the Green Party' candidates Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka were the only ones in this election calling for single payer health care.  A 2009 study by the National Nurses Union reveals that adoption of Medicare For All would create 2.6 million new jobs, from doctors and nurses to a host of health care professionals and technicians. That's as many jobs as were lost in the 2007-2009 recession. It would inject #75 billion per year into the US economy, including $100 billion in wages alone. President Trump won in part because he told people he'd "bring back the jobs." But steel mill jobs are imaginary, fictitious. Health care jobs are real.  The tens or hundreds of thousands in streets each night justifiably protesting the ascension of a crotch grabbing racist con man to the White House would be well advised to not repeat the mistake of Occupy a few years ago. They and others who want to be relevant in this new era urgently need to put forth some concrete demands which if struggled for will make them opinion leaders, and if won will improve the lives of millions. Quality single payer health care NOW is one of those demands.  Trump's threat to dismantle Obamacare is an invitation for us to reopen the struggle for health care as a human right. And this time we know we're struggling against Republicans AND Democrats.  For Black Agenda Radio I'm Bruce Dixon. Find us on the web at www.blackagendareport.com . Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report and serves on the state committee of the Georgia Green Party. He can be reached via email


21st Century Wire says Republican candidate Donald J Trump will be the 45th President of the United States.History has been made, as he will be the first person ever to hold office despite having no previous political or military experience Trump s victory was definitive. By breaking through the seemingly impregnable Blue Wall in the northern rust belt of Wisconsin and Michigan, Trump effectively ran the table on Democrat favorite Hillary Clinton in what pundits are calling one of the biggest political realignments in decades. It s time for America to bind the wounds of division, said Trump in front on a crowd of thousands at his acceptance speech at the Hilton in downtown Manhattan.Trump s victory over Clinton is now regarded as the most stunning upset in US political history upending the establishment s false polling and the mainstream media s collusion with the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign. Neither the polls or the pundits saw this coming.It s reported that Hillary Clinton called Trump to concede the race before he addressed his supporters. I ve just received a call from Secretary Clinton, said Trump. She congratulated us, it s about us, on our victory. And I congratulated her and her family on a very, very hard-fought campaign. I mean, she fought very hard. Hillary has worked very long and very hard over a very long period of time, and we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country. And I mean that very sincerely. Earlier this week, Trump predicted his victory, likening it to the UK s surprise BREXIT vote this past summer, saying it would be Brexit Plus Plus. After being written off by the media and the party establishment in the GOP primaries, and then again in the general election, Trump still managed to capture the imagination of one of the biggest insurgent voting blocks in electoral history. Before the results came in, yesterday 21WIRE editor Patrick Henningsen commented on the key to Trump s success, explaining: Granted, half of the American population have been conditioned to hate Trump for various reasons. But many of them are missing the key point in the Trump story, just like they did in the Sanders story. Trump offered millions of voters something profound: the idea that even in today s insulated political fortress that is Washington DC, anything is still possible in American politics where an outsider can come in and shake up a stale and corrupt ruling class. Stay tuned for more updates.READ MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV