Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Monday vowed an unbreakable U.S. alliance with Israel if he is elected president in November, seeking to clear up confusion over his repeated pledges to remain neutral in any peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. Trump's speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful pro-Israel lobbying group, was part of a daylong effort by the anti-Washington candidate to persuade establishment Republicans to get behind his insurgent candidacy and give up on an effort to deny him the party's presidential nomination. Describing Israel as ready to negotiate a peace agreement, Trump said the Palestinians would have to be willing to accept that Israel will forever exist as a Jewish state and able to stop attacks on Israelis. "The Palestinians must come to the table knowing that the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable," the New York billionaire businessman said. Trump has drawn fire for his position on Middle East peace negotiations. He has described himself as extremely pro-Israel, but has said he would take a "neutral" stance in trying to negotiate an elusive peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. Trump's critics have said he could harm long-standing U.S. support for Israel. Trump's leading Republican rival, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, reminded the AIPAC gathering of Trump's position. "Let me be very, very clear," Cruz said. "As president I will not be neutral. America will stand unapologetically with the nation of Israel." Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, a former secretary of state, used her AIPAC appearance to attack Trump. "We need steady hands, not a president who says he's neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday and who-knows-what on Wednesday because everything's negotiable," she said. Clinton also took aim at Trump's vow that, if elected, he would deport illegal immigrants and bar Muslims temporarily from entering the United States. "If you see bigotry, oppose it, if you see violence, condemn it, if you see a bully, stand up to him," she said. In a rarity, Trump delivered his AIPAC speech with the aid of a TelePrompter, abandoning his typical free-wheeling style. Throughout the day, his public remarks lacked their usual bombast, an obvious effort to appear more presidential. At a news conference, Trump presented himself as Republicans' best chances of capturing the White House in the Nov. 8 election. He took steps to appear as the nominee-in-waiting, releasing the names of some foreign policy advisers and pledging to name seven to 10 people he would pick for the Supreme Court. Trump said establishment Republicans would be making a mistake if they persuade a high-profile party leader to launch a third-party run to deny him the White House. He said it would "almost certainly" mean the Democrats would win the presidency. "If people want to be smart, they should embrace this movement," Trump said at the site of a new hotel he is building in Washington. "If they don't want to be smart, they should do what they're doing now and the Republicans are going to go down to a massive loss." Trump laid out some foreign policy priorities in a CNN interview, saying the United States is contributing more than it should to the NATO alliance and that he would continue a U.S. thaw toward Cuba begun by President Barack Obama, who is now in Havana. Trump was in Washington for closed-door talks with a variety of Republicans organized by his top backer in the capital, U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama. It was his most overt bid yet to seek party unity at a time when many establishment Republicans bitterly oppose him. The meeting, held at the offices of the Jones Day law firm, included some Republican lawmakers and a former Republican speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, and former Congressman Bob Livingston. "We've had almost eight years of Mr. Obama, who's been a disastrous president. We have now an opportunity to change course or have four more years of the same. And I think that Donald Trump is the alternative," Livingston said after the session. Also at the meeting were Representatives Renee Ellmers of North Carolina and Chris Collins of New York, as well as former Senator Jim DeMint, who is head of the Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative Washington think-tank. In a separate session with the Washington Post editorial board, Trump named some members of his foreign policy team. The team included Walid Phares, who Trump called a counter-terrorism expert; George Papadopoulos, an oil and energy consultant; and Joe Schmitz, a former inspector general at the Department of Defense. Trump's rise has alarmed establishment Republicans who have tried in vain to stop him. Their best hope of derailing his insurgent candidacy is to stretch the contest out and deny him the 1,237 delegates needed to formally win the party's presidential nomination. Trump has 678 delegates to 423 for Cruz and 143 for Ohio Governor John Kasich, according to the Associated Press. If Trump does not win the 1,237 delegates, the Republican nominee would be decided at the party's convention in Cleveland in July.


This is truly a chilling story of organized voter fraud We reported on a massive voter fraud operation was discovered in Democratic Broward County, Florida ealier this week:https://twitter.com/TEN_GOP/status/793890171058085888The amazing citizen journalist Mike Cernovich broke this story this morning at Danger and Play. Florida residents have been complaining that they re not getting their absentee ballots. Chelsey Marie Smith, was working full-time at Broward County Supervisor of Elections main office blew the whistle on the voter fraud scheme:LIVE on #Periscope: Breaking news! Voting fraud uncovered in Florida #MAGA3X https://t.co/q7jeEz6Rgh Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) November 4, 2016The Florida State Attorney is actively investigating the fraud case that involves Secretary of Elections Brenda Snipes: Source: FL State Attorney investigators are actively reviewing Broward County Voter Fraud Case Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) November 4, 2016 Democrat Dr. Brenda Snipes was appointed by Jeb Bush in 2003 and is no stranger to controversy. On October 20, the Sun Sentinal reported that former Oakland Park Commissioner Anne Sallee noticed something troubling about her vote-by-mail ballot. It is missing Constitutional Amendment 2, the medical marijuana question.Sallee, now Broward chapter director of the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association, knows her way around government. Yet she said she spent a week unsuccessfully trying to get someone at the Broward elections office to pay attention to her complaint.She was cleared on Wednesday of another election snafu, the early posting of primary election results. Her office also was criticized for sending out inaccurate voter ID cards, and for printing ballots for November that include the word no in the yes line on the county s transportation sales surtax question.There were multiple reports that Hillary personally met with Brenda Snipes days ago:There were multiple reports Hillary personally met with Brenda Snipes days ago. No photos, but where there's smoke Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) November 4, 2016According to a former Secretary of Elections Department employee, there is a secret room where Democrat insiders fill out those absentee ballots.The woman provided her sworn testimony via affidavit.The affidavit by Chelsey Marie Smith accuses Broward County officials of filling out blank absentee ballots to officials who she saw filling the ballots out at the Supervisor of Elections headquarters.


An employee of Canadian aircraft and train maker Bombardier facing bribery charges in Sweden is to be released immediately from custody, his lawyer said on Wednesday. A 37-year-old Russian man was arrested in March on suspicion that he and several others at the company had bribed an Azerbaijani official to secure a contract worth around $340 million. The Stockholm district court has ordered the man - who denied the allegations - to be released immediately, his lawyer said. Our interpretation is that he will be completely acquitted, or that he is guilty only of a minor part of the accusation and, if so, has already served his time, the employee s lawyer Cristina Bergner told Reuters. The district court could not immediately be reached for comment. The prosecutor had demanded a sentence of five years in prison. The trial has concluded and sentencing is set for Oct. 11. In their March statement, Swedish prosecutors alleged Bombardier had won the tender in question after competitors that had offered better prices were disqualified by Azerbaijan s rail authority. The Canadian firm said in August it took the allegations very seriously as they ran counter to its values and high standards, and it supported an investigation into the facts.


A small group of bipartisan senators introduced a bill Thursday that would block a pending judicial rule change allowing U.S. judges to issue search warrants for remote access to computers in any jurisdiction, even overseas, arguing the change would expand the FBI's hacking authority. The one-page legislation from Democratic Senator Ron Wyden and Republican Senator Rand Paul would undo the change, adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court in a private vote last month and without congressional involvement, to procedural rules governing the court system. Republican Senator Steve Daines and Democrats Tammy Baldwin and Jon Tester are co-sponsoring the Stopping Mass Hacking Act. Magistrate judges currently can only order searches within the jurisdiction of their court, typically limited to a few counties. "This is a dramatic expansion of the government's hacking and surveillance authority," Wyden said in a statement. "Such a substantive change with an enormous impact on Americans' constitutional rights should be debated by Congress, not maneuvered through an obscure bureaucratic process." Companion legislation is expected in the House soon, Wyden's office said. The U.S. Justice Department has pushed for the rule change since 2013 and has portrayed it as a procedural tweak needed to modernize the criminal code to pursue sophisticated 21st century criminals. Congress has until Dec. 1 to vote to reject, amend or postpone the changes to Rule 41 of the federal rules of criminal procedure. If lawmakers fail to act, the change will automatically take effect, a scenario seen as likely given the short timeline. But civil liberties groups and Alphabet's Google have argued the change should be properly authorized by Congress and could violate the U.S. Constitution's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. Many organizations have vowed to lobby Congress intensely in the coming months to block it. The change would permit judges to issue warrants in cases where a suspect uses anonymizing technology to conceal the location of his or her computer or for an investigation into a network of hacked or infected computers, such as a botnot. Tensions over the FBI's secretive hacking tools, also known as "network investigative techniques," have played out in a number of recent cases involving the bureau's covert seizure of a dark web child pornography website in February 2015 to track thousands of the site's visitors. Two defendants in the investigation secured rulings last month declaring the warrants used in their cases were invalid under current limitations of Rule 41.


Dick Eastman The Truth HoundWhen Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller met with Zhou Enlai in China in 1973 just after President Richard Nixon had visited China establishing official relations an understanding was reached whereby the U.S. would supply industrial capital and know-how to China.In return Kissinger-connected corporations would gain the monopolistic advantage of low-cost labor production which could outcompete all U.S. domestic industry.The comparative advantage gained was being able to hire Chinese laborers who were ready to work hard at exceedingly low cost with no drugs, no alcohol, a strong work ethic, no unions, no paid benefits and weak environmental standards. And with such a large labor pool, burned out workers could simply be replaced. This gave the Rockefeller/Kissinger corporations a major edge over their domestic U.S. competitors who had to pay relatively high wages, high regulation costs, deal with union strikes and collective bargaining etc.Of course, the American consumer did not see greatly lowered prices commensurate with such greatly lowered labor costs. The $19.99 plastic action-figure toy marketed with a Hollywood movie still cost $19.99 even though it cost $12 to $15 to produce in the U.S. but less than $2.00 per copy to produce in China and transport to America s West Coast container ports for distribution throughout America.The consumer paid pretty much the old prices but the corporations split the monopoly profit with China s Princelings since it did not take much of a lowering of prices to drive high-wage, high-benefit, contracted-labor domestic corporations out of business (not to mention the environmental and workplace safety regulations with which domestic companies were saddled). Then, Wal-Mart became a near-monopoly retailer that increased and reinforced the widespread selling of these off-shore manufactures.Thus, America s domestic producers were not simply being bested on one or another area of production; they were being bested across the entire spectrum of manufactured goods that American buy. It was anticipated that these domestic firms would fail, and their failure was hastened by the banks maintaining a deflationary domestic economy in the U.S. throughout the post Rockefeller-Kissinger-Zhou buildup of China and the degrading of American domestic manufacturing.Remember, the entire money supply of the U.S. is borrowed that is, the money co-created with a debt of an even bigger amount (principal plus compound interest) that must in due course be returned to the lender. But money in the domestic economy was going to multinational corporations and to China, while also going to taxes to pay on the national debt that resulted [NOTE: Due to U.S. industrial depletion, federal revenue receipts as well as the tax-take of state and local governments, shrunk, resulting in greater government borrowing and therefore greater public debts TRUTH HOUND note]. And of course, compound interest was attached to that debt.Rockefeller and Kissinger were (and to some extent still are) at war with middle-class America with intelligent, self-supporting, self-respecting, ambitious, industrious citizens who always pose the greatest threat in the form of populist politics to the bankers and their Bank-of-England/East-India-Company/Rothschild monetary and trade system, the very system that Rockefeller and Kissinger were representing and expanding when they visited Zhou Enlai.So here we are in 2016 and newly elected President Donald J. Trump says he intends to place a tariff on goods imported from China, while the media decries the tariff proposal as a violation of long-standing liberal free-trade policies. One more thing in defense of who I believe was a great president and a warning for the new one.Richard Nixon opened China believing in peaceful co-existence and the fact that if given time for a fair comparison of how free-enterprise and representative government functions in contrast to the communist planned economy, that the U.S. model would win out over a system where each receives what the state deems he needs and where work is ordered by the state.But of course Kissinger and Rockefeller instigated the Watergate coup against Nixon a frame-up with John Dean and Kissinger as the real Deep Throats by my deductions from public information so that the Rockefeller/Kissinger plans for China s industrialization and America s deindustrialization could proceed unopposed, as it certainly did after Nixon resigned to avoid a constitutional crisis that would hinder the proper working of government.Nixon should have fought them because they were about to take a financial axe to this country as soon as Nixon was gone. When Nixon was gone, they first robbed the middle-class of their savings with banker Paul Volcker s QE (quantitative easing) bond purchases at the New York Federal Reserve branch. Then, when that was accomplished, America s savings-and-loans were cast into crisis (because they had been taking in money short-term at 3% and lending long-term at 6%). This helped force the deregulation of banking to Rockefeller advantage after which Volcker moved to become Federal Reserve Chairman in control of the discount rate. With that lever of power that sets the interest-rate framework of the nation, Volcker inaugurated the tight-money (deflation) policy that has persisted to this day, making it very hard for firms to invest in automation to combat the cost advantage of Chinese subsistence labor.Japan was hit with deflation too they were going to provide us with the robots. THE WHOLE THING WAS A GREAT PLAN AGAINST US, COORDINATED AT EVERY LEVEL, WITH EVERY INSTITUTION, FROM THE NEWS TALKING ABOUT HOW THE LEVERAGED BUY-OUTS OCCURING IN THE DEFLATION WERE MAKING US LEAN AND MEAN, WHEN IN FACT THEY WERE TEARING OUT THE GUTS OF AMERICAN PRODUCTION. And the news media and the economics and business administration courses in colleges sung the praises of international free trade and the efficiency of markets nonstop.I watched it all from a pretty good seat on the sidelines, but of course I was marginalized as just another excess white person who needed to stand aside so that blacks and women could have their fair chance. And who could argue with that? So I took to the internet to see what effect I could have simply speaking as a citizen, where I ve met encountered considerable abuse and ridicule, which certainly makes it unpleasant to try and be the Paul Revere awakening the good citizens.I do wish President Donald Trump the best. But let us make sure that none of the neo-conservatives he is taking into his administration are really Kissingers beholden to Goldman-Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Beware of new Watergates.Washington writer Dick Eastman taught economics at Texas A & M University and also studied the behavorial sciences.READ MORE CHINA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire China Files


New Zealand's country's entire east coast and urged residents in low-lying areas to evacuate and seek higher ground.  Waves of up to two meters (6 feet) could be possible for up to two hours, it said.  Anna  "That's reasonably significant so people should take this seriously," she told Radio New Zealand.  New Zealand's Geonet revised up its estimated magnitude of the quake to 7.5, from 6.6 earlier.  USGS Zealand's South Island.  A 6.3 quake there in February 2011 killed 185 people and caused widespread damage.  The  "The whole house rolled like a serpent and some things smashed, the power went out,"  Chris Hill, a fire officer in Cheviot, a coastal town near the quake's epicenter, said officials had gone door to door evacuating residents.  Learn More:


[Graphic: Clinton vs Trump by DonkeyHotey .] Paul Jay interviews Henry A. Giroux Editor's Note The idea here that there politics is theater is not new; however, "political theater" has never taken on the connotations that embrace what this campaign has revealed. It is clear that there has been an agreement about what "story" is being played out, but that has gotten repeatedly derailed by two (now 3) sources of counter-story. One source, as noted in the following interview, are the wikileak materials. Another source has been Trump himself. While he may not understand politics, he is very adept with theater and controlling the media, and he has played them like a piano. Throughout this endless campaign I kept remembering "there is no such thing as bad press." Trump has certainly proved the truth of that adage repeatedly. The third source is James Comey. His repeated breaching of judicial-political norms will likely reverberate well after November 8th. Mentioned within this interview is the phenomenon of Americans seeming inability to maintain a long term memory. I believe this is a rich area to examine though this is not the focus of this discussion. Most people in the U.S. seem to live in the cultural equivalent of anteretrograde amnesia and lack the ability to make long term memories that extend beyond themselves. They remember their own histories, but their social memory is constantly being rewritten and little if anything seems to stick. Transcript PAUL JAY, TRNN: Welcome to the Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore. I'm known for a documentary I made called Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows. It was about professional wrestling and a battle between Bret Hart and Vince McMann and we got a lot of behind the scenes coverage in that and I got to know the wrestling world some. It occurred to me that there's a certain kind of press that covers wrestling much the way a lot of press covers American politics. Now everyone that has any sense about them at all knows that professional wrestling is theater. In fact, the film I made helped kind of make that clear for everyone. But it is theater and everyone acknowledges it's theater but there is still some press out there that plays along and covers the wrestling theater as if it's real. Well I think much the same thing goes on in American politics. Much of the election campaigns are positioning, rhetoric, language, supposedly support this, oppose that, which is really all part of the theater. But because it does affect the horse race of the outcome of the elections, most of the corporate media covers all of this theater as if it's real. Well something's happening in this election which because of partly the bluster and in some ways weird honesty of Donald Trump, some of that theater is breaking down. The WikiLeaks about Hillary Clinton and behind the scenes machinations of the Clinton campaign, there's been somewhat of a tear in the fabric of this theater. Now joining us to talk about this is Henry Giroux. Henry joins us from Hamilton, Ontario. He's a professor of scholarship in the public interest at McMaster University and author of his most recent book, America at war with itself. Thanks for joining us Henry. HENRY GIROUX: It's a pleasure to be with you. JAY: So, what do you make of the idea that wrestling and American politics have a lot in common? GIROUX: I think it's a fabulous analogy. I think that in many ways what we see happening is the cultural celebrity which has never really been taken too seriously, although it confers a great deal of authority, has all of a sudden outed itself. It's out of the closet. I mean people realize that what we're getting is not only an exercise in performance and showmanship but we're also getting what I would call, an elimination of the truth. The truth is one of the great causalities of this particular election cycle. It's never been more visible than it is now. In one hand, what you have basically a celebrity who has no trouble lying because he believes that nobody will really take him too seriously because he thinks he really is a celebrity. On the other hand, you have the alternative press, you have the alternative media exposing all the nonsense that of course Hillary Clinton believes in and making it clear that she has no lock on honesty either. It seems to me that as the truth begins to disappear, questions are being raised about what are the conditions that produced this. What are the contradictions at work here? What does it mean for instance when Hillary Clinton says she believes in families and she believes in children and she worked for the Children's Defense Fund when in actuality as the first lady, she had no trouble calling black youth super predators, she basically supported her husband's welfare program which did horrible things for pro minorities? She supported an educational system in part that had nothing to do with the imagination and real learning. Had everything to do with accountability and standardization. So, it goes on and on. I think that as this fabric gets torn, as the veil gets sort of taken away and as the mystic of theater begins to dissolve, a kind of shocking reality emerges. One steeped in corruption, despair, inequality, poverty, systemic violence, racism, that becomes increasing difficult for the American political, financial, and corporate elite to basically legitimize. JAY: I think the Clinton campaign's particularly interesting. First of all, you have a 74 senator from Vermont. If he'd had maybe another month or two, might' have actually might have won in terms of especially in his weakness in the south and amongst African Americans. Another month or two and he might have sorted some of that out. It's quite remarkable that someone at least in terms of mainstream media, someone who came from obscurity, I think people that followed progressive politics, he was certainly well known. But for most of the country, they barely knew his name. To go from there to almost winning and there's some suggestion, some of the specific state races he certainly didn't lose fairly. Now you have the majority of the country simply says they don't believe Hillary Clinton is a truth teller. They think she's a liar. They don't trust her. Yet she's the only candidate these elites got. Trump lies exposed. Even the republicans, the fact that the system couldn''t come up with better candidates within the republican party to actually take on someone like Trump that should've been an easy duck to shoot of anybody of any caliber. The whole caliber of these political candidates has just banal. GIROUX: I think what's interesting here is that the republican party, they couldn't come up with a decent candidate because they had no sense of the degree to which they had violated any principles that sort of [attaches] them to any notion of civic justice or to the economic issues that have caused enormous anger throughout the country, that they were unwilling to address. I think there's another issue here. I think the issue is something you mentioned earlier about Bernie Sanders, who I find very hopeful, in that people don't realize that language matters and I think what Bernie did, taking off from the Occupied movement which gave us a new language about inequality. Bernie gave us a language for economic and social justice and political justice in a way that we haven't heard before because it was endlessly being replayed over and over again. I think that what you have there is you have the power of what I call a reimagination machine that attacks a disimagination machine. He took the disimagination machine which covers everything over in lies and false metaphors and indecent stories and corruption and he exposed them and I think that one of the great beginnings, one of the great movements for any form of insurrection of democracy is to make power visible. I think he did that. I think the black lives matter movement does that. I think they're all driving liberals absolutely crazy because it's becoming increasingly difficult for the liberals to basically defend this thing that they call democracy. It's not a democracy at all. They know it. But they don''t have a language to basically come back at this. I know. I was listening to a radio this morning and I don''t know if you know this but the alt-right, they''re responding to this by intimidating people, by attempting to ruin the lives of now I think it's like 500 reporters throughout the United States attacking their families, putting stuff on twitter, putting pictures of their children up in ways that are utterly disgusting and vile. I think you see two moments here. You see a moment of impending fascism which is utterly violent and criminogenic. Then you see another moment which is criminogenic but not as violent. But' its grappling at the same time with some way to rescue itself by pointing only to Trump without at the same time pointing to its own liabilities. JAY: I think the sort of mediocrity banality of these candidates, it's not just a happen chance, and many of the presidents in the past and I would put both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama – they're smart guys. I disagree with probably 98 or 99% of their policies and both of them were involved in what I think could be categorized as war crimes, including Bill Clinton and sanctions on Iraq and the drone policy and others and the development of the war on Syria with Obama and such and Libya of course. But that being said, these are smart guys. They speak in full paragraphs. They are articulate. They can crack jokes. They're knowledgeable. But it was under their watch that we had a great leap in this transfer of wealth to the top 1 or so percentile. A great leap in the parasitism of capital. Casino capitalism. Massive derivatives and speculative markets and this very parasitical, very degenerate you could say type of capital created this orgy of profits for this top tier at a level they'd never seen before and when you live in the bubble of those massive profits, perhaps they have no idea what's going on amongst the American people. So, all of a sudden they get this shock in the republican party and almost a major shock in the democratic party and I don't know if they really come back from this because I don't know if they can really get out of this bubble disconnect with what's going on in terms of daily life. GIROUX: They meaning the financial elite. Is that what you're saying? JAY: Well the financial and political elites, yea. GIROUX: Exactly. Well I don't want to underestimate the power of the cultural apparatuses that they control to basically normalize what appears to be unimaginable. I mean I'm always shocked by that I think the real issue here is that we live in a country in which memory is very short. We live in a culture of the immediate. I'm often shocked about what gets forgotten 5 days after the news cycle. So, the real question is, how do you keep the count of memories. These images. How do you keep this language up? This critical language that consistently reminds people of the contradictions and the crimes. The United States is a war culture. I mean there''s no other way to talk about it. It's primarily organized for the production of violence at almost every level. Of course, the punishing state is getting worse and the acceleration of police violence is getting worse. I think as long as the alternative media can focus on and sustain these images and these stories and these counter narratives, I think they're fine. But it's a hard fight because as you well know Paul the mainstream media controls most of the media and so the real question here is how do we take the question of culture and power and education and link it to everyday life in ways that allow it to travel across a variety of public spheres so that these memories and injustice and corruption can be sustained? JAY: Thanks very much for joining us Henry. GIROUX: My pleasure. JAY: And thank you for joining us on the Real News Network.  Henry A. Giroux, Contributing Editor C urrently holds the Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University. His books include: American at War with Itself , Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism (Peter Land 2011), On Critical Pedagogy (Continuum, 2011), Twilight of the Social: Resurgent Publics in the Age of Disposability (Paradigm 2012), Disposable Youth: Racialized Memories and the Culture of Cruelty (Routledge 2012), Youth in Revolt: Reclaiming a Democratic Future (Paradigm 2013). Giroux's most recent books are America's Education Deficit and the War on Youth (Monthly Review Press, 2013), are Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education, America's Disimagination Machine (City Lights) and Higher Education After Neoliberalism (Haymarket) will be published in 2014). He is also a Contributing Editor of Cyrano's Journal Today / The Greanville Post , and member of Truthout's Board of Directors and has his own page The Public Intellectual . His web site is www.henryagiroux.com . [email-subscribers namefield="YES" desc="" group="Public"]


The U.S. Senate on Thursday confirmed five of President Donald Trump's U.S. Treasury nominees, including the top officials for international affairs and tax policy, easing a shortage of top political appointees in the department. The Senate confirmed by unanimous voice vote: David Malpass as Undersecretary for International Affairs; David Kautter as Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy; Brent McIntosh as General Counsel; Christopher Campbell as Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions and Andrew Maloney as Deputy Undersecretary for Legislative Affairs.


Hundreds of civilians left a besieged Islamic State enclave in central Syria after the Syrian government and Islamic State reached an evacuation deal, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday. The Syrian army could not be reached for comment but a Syrian military source quoted on state media later said that the army and its allies had captured several areas in the enclave. An insurgent source in northwestern Syria said the civilians - mostly shepherds - from the enclave, straddling the border between Hama and Homs provinces, had arrived in rebel-held Idlib province. The Syrian army - supported by Russian air power and Iranian-backed militias - isolated the pocket, Islamic State s last presence in central Syria, in August during its eastward drive against the jihadists. The military source said the army had captured the areas of Mazin al-Baqr, al-Mushirfa al-Shomalia, Rasm al-Tawil and Jawra al-Nazal, . The Observatory reported that the government and Islamic State had finalised the deal on Thursday, allowing Islamic State fighters, their families and civilians to leave the pocket and cross government areas into areas held by Islamist groups. Some crossed to areas held by Tahrir al-Sham, a jihadist alliance that includes the former Nusra Front group, in northern Hama and eastern Idlib provinces, it said. Others moved to camps set up west of the enclave in government-held areas in accordance with tribal deals, the British-based monitor said. Last week, jihadists launched an offensive against government-held parts of northern Hama province, advancing south from rebel-held Idlib. The Syrian government has responded with strikes on rebel-held positions. Russia, Iran and Turkey had previously struck a tripartite deal to deploy an observer force on the edge of a designated de-escalation zone in Idlib. The Islamist militants who hold sway in Idlib rejected the diplomatic effort. The Syrian army s main focus has been its offensive against Islamic State in the east of the country, where the Islamist group is also facing an offensive by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.


U.S. President Barack Obama said on Wednesday he expects the world economy will be steady in the short run after Britain's decision to leave the European Union but expressed concern about longer term global growth. Obama, appearing at a North American summit with the leaders of Canada and Mexico, said there have been reactions in markets, stock prices and currencies since last Thursday's so-called Brexit vote. Preparations by central banks, finance ministers and the U.S. treasury secretary helped ensure the global economy will hold steady in the short term, he said at a news conference. "I think there are some genuine longer term concerns about global growth if in fact Brexit goes through and that freezes the possibilities of investment in Great Britain or in Europe as a whole," Obama said. "At a time when global growth rates were weak already, this doesn't help." The U.S. president, who had openly sided with British Prime Minister David Cameron against Brexit, said the leaders of G20 nations, who will meet in China this year, will have to work to boost global demand and fortify the global economy. Obama said that, while the special relationship between Britain and the United States will endure, that country's absence from the EU would "make it harder for us to solve some of the other challenges that have to be solved." He said his main message to Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders involved in the Brexit would be: "Everybody should catch their breath, come up with a plan and a process that is orderly, that's transparent, that people understand and then proceed, understanding that both sides have a stake in getting this right. "And I think that will be a difficult, challenging process but it does not need to be a panicky process."


Qatar must do more to protect construction workers from heat which often reaches levels that are potentially fatal, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday. HRW and other rights campaigners are frequent critics of Qatar s treatment of migrant laborers whose working conditions have received additional scrutiny as the country prepares to host the 2022 World Cup. The group said existing regulations only set limits on outdoor work during the period June 15 to Aug. 31, and then only from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Climate data shows that weather conditions in Qatar outside those hours and dates frequently reach levels that can result in potentially fatal heat-related illnesses in the absence of appropriate rest, it said. HRW called authorities also to investigate the causes of migrant worker deaths and publish data on such incidents. In 2013, health authorities reported 520 deaths of workers from Bangladesh, India, and Nepal, HRW said. Like other wealthy Gulf Arab states, Qatar relies on vast numbers of migrant workers, mostly from the Philippines, South Asia and Africa. Around 2 million migrant workers live in Qatar, outnumbering the local workforce by nearly 20 to one. Some 800,000 work in the construction sector. Unions and labor protests are banned and authorities penalize dissent with jail or deportation. The Qatari government s Communications Office said: Qatar is committed to its labor reform program and is constantly reviewing its policies to ensure that migrant workers receive the necessary on-site protections. We continue to coordinate closely with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and international NGOs to implement reforms that will improve the health, safety and rights of migrant workers, Sheikh Saif Al Thani, head of the Communications Office, said in a statement sent to Reuters.


PORTLAND, Ore. — The trial of Ammon Bundy, his brother Ryan and five of their followers, antigovernment protesters charged in the armed takeover of a national wildlife refuge this year, will begin here on Tuesday in a federal court. The takeover, at a remote eastern Oregon reserve, began Jan. 2 and lasted nearly six weeks, starting a national debate about homegrown militias, public lands and constitutional rights. The defendants face conspiracy, weapons and theft charges. In all, 26 people have been indicted. One protester was shot and killed by the state police during the occupation. On Jan. 2, a small group of members of a militia group adopting the name Citizens for Constitutional Freedom — the number grew as the occupation wore on — seized control of administration buildings at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, about 30 miles southeast of Burns, in Harney County, a sparsely populated area in the high desert of eastern Oregon. In daily briefings with reporters, Ammon Bundy said the group had acted against what he called unconstitutional federal land management policies that infringed on the rights of citizens. His softly spoken statements echoed terms of a simpler, earlier America, where individual effort on the land counted for all, and government's business was to stay out of the way. But guns, on hips and in the arms of lookouts, were . As they were en route to a community meeting on Jan. 26, where they hoped to persuade local ranchers to join their cause, Mr. Bundy and seven others were arrested in a traffic stop about 40 miles from the refuge. The arrests spiraled into bloodshed when a member of the group, LaVoy Finicum, 54, raced his truck toward a police roadblock. After his vehicle went off the road, Mr. Finicum got out and was shot and killed by Oregon State Police officers as he appeared to reach for a weapon. The last four holdouts at the refuge surrendered peacefully two weeks later. A grand jury indicted 26 members of the group on various charges, including conspiracy to impede federal employees from performance of their duties, which is punishable by up to six years in prison, as well as weapons charges and theft of government property. Eleven defendants have reached a plea deal with prosecutors charges were dropped against one defendant this month. The trial of seven other defendants is scheduled for February. In Oregon, as in many Western states, most of the land is owned by the federal government — a fact that has rankled conservative politicians and protesters like the Bundys for many years. Efforts to wrest land back into private ownership or state control have simmered in state capitols in the Rocky Mountain region for years, fueling resentment even as they have foundered. At the Malheur refuge, a dispute between federal officials and a local ranching family — Dwight L. Hammond and his son Steven D. Hammond — became a catalyst for the militants. But a long decline in the area's economic health, mainly driven by a collapse of the timber industry, compounded local frustrations. Cliven Bundy, Ammon and Ryan's father, led the family into confrontation in an armed standoff in 2014 against federal officials over illegal cattle grazing on public land in Nevada. The elder Mr. Bundy has for many years refused to obtain permits to graze his cattle on public land. When federal officials said they would confiscate the cattle, an armed standoff ensued. Cliven Bundy was arrested and indicted this year for his role in that episode, as were Ammon, Ryan and two other men who were also at the Malheur takeover. That case is proceeding separately in Nevada, with a trial scheduled for February.


Kyrgyzstan votes in a presidential election on Sunday that is being closely fought between a protege of the outgoing president and an opposition leader, testing stability in a country where two previous leaders were ousted in violent riots. The mainly Muslim ex-Soviet state of six million people stands out from its neighbors, mostly run by autocrats, in having a boisterous democracy that produces sometimes chaotic changes of leadership. Serving President Almazbek Atambayev has to step down because of term limits, and is backing Sooronbai Jeenbekov, a 58-year-old member of Atambayev s Social Democratic Party, to succeed him. He is facing strong opposition from Omurbek Babanov, 47, who heads the biggest opposition party, Respublika-Ata Zhurt (Fatherland). The most likely outcome is that neither Babanov nor Jeenbekov will win outright on Sunday, setting up a second round run-off, according to the U.S.-based International Republican Institute, which has conducted its own polling. Both leading candidates differ little on the main points of policy: a secular state, hewing close to Russia in a region where Moscow vies for influence with the United States and China. However, they represent rival interest groups and clans inside Kyrgyzstan that are fighting for access to power and state resources. In a September poll by Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society, a Western-backed NGO, 38.7 percent of respondents said they expected Babanov to win and 41.2 percent picked Jeenbekov. Eleven more candidates are running in the vote. A candidate needs more than 50 percent for an outright win. Opposition candidate Babanov is a wealthy businessman with a charismatic style, while Jeenbekov is a former livestock technician turned bureaucrat. Both say they will maintain strong ties to Moscow. Kyrgyzstan hosts a Russian military airbase. Remittances from hundreds of thousands of migrant laborers working in Russia are a vital source of Kyrgyzstan s foreign currency revenue. The campaign has featured allegations of coup plots and corrupt practices, hinting at the fragile political stability that has dogged Kyrgyzstan since a revolution in 2005 that ousted long-standing leader Askar Akayev. I am going to start my fight against corruption with you, Jeenbekov told opposition candidate Babanov in a televised debate, in which he also called his younger opponent a chick . The Kyrgyz government detained one of Babanov s supporters on Sept. 30, charging him with plotting a violent coup during the vote. It has also accused several Babanov campaign workers of planning to bribe voters. Babanov has denied any wrongdoing and dismissed the charges against his supporters as dirty election tactics. Atambayev s government last month accused Kazakhstan, a bigger and wealthier neighbor which is also close to Russia, of interfering in the election after Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev met Babanov and appeared to endorse him. Kazakhstan has denied backing any candidates, and, citing security concerns, introduced tighter checks on the Kyrgyz border this week.


Former FBI Director James Comey is now leaking details of a private dinner with President Donald Trump to the media, through some of his close associates. [According to the New York Times, the FBI director had dinner with Trump in January after the inauguration, citing private details of the meeting that portray Comey as a martyr. Comey's people, "who have heard his account of the dinner" and spoke anonymously, insist that Trump asked the director to pledge his personal loyalty to him, but he declined. They added that Comey was wary about dining with the president, but believed he couldn't turn him down. The White House, however, disputed the report. "We don't believe this to be an accurate account," said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy press secretary. "The integrity of our law enforcement agencies and their leadership is of the utmost importance to President Trump. He would never even suggest the expectation of personal loyalty, only loyalty to our country and its great people. " According to the White House, one of the many reasons Comey was fired was because he failed to stop sensitive leaks of information to the media. In an interview with NBC's Lester Holt, Trump said he asked Comey whether he was under investigation during a dinner with the FBI director and also spoke with him on the phone. "I said, if it's possible would you let me know, am I under investigation? He said, 'You are not under investigation. '" Trump told Holt. Trump said Comey was "a showboat" and "a grandstander. " "You know that, I know that. Everybody knows that," he said. "You take a look at the FBI a year ago, it was in virtual turmoil, less than a year ago. It hasn't recovered from that. " Trump said that he was anxious for the results of the FBI investigation into Russia's efforts to disrupt the election. "If Russia or anybody else is trying to interfere with our elections, I think it's a horrible thing and I want to get to the bottom of it and I want to make sure it will never ever happen," he said.


White House economic adviser Gary Cohn said he backed bringing back the Glass-Steagall Act, a Depression-era law that would revamp Wall Street banks by splitting their consumer-lending businesses from their investment arms. The National Economic Council director, also a former Goldman Sachs (GS.N) president, expressed support to lawmakers for a banking system where firms would focus primarily on trading and underwriting securities or issuing loans. Big banks have strongly opposed such a move that would fundamentally overhaul their business. Reinstating the law, which was repealed in 1999, has not attracted significant attention in Congress, but advocates in the White House and both parties now argue it would provide critical safeguards to prevent another financial crisis. Critics of that approach say it lacks nuance and would not have prevented the last financial meltdown. The fact Cohn, widely viewed as one of Wall Street's own, was willing to push that position spooked big banks' representatives in Washington. The White House confirmed Cohn's remarks in a private meeting with lawmakers on Wednesday. A spokesperson said he was "simply discussing the President's previously stated position" in favor of a "21st century Glass-Steagall." Cohn's remarks were first reported by Bloomberg. bloom.bg/2nZK5n1 The Trump administration has indicated support for a return to Glass-Steagall. The White House has stuck by the idea since it was included in the Republican Party platform during the presidential campaign, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin expressed interest in a modernized version of the law. When asked on Thursday when large financial institutions should begin to worry about Glass-Steagall becoming a reality, one industry representative said, "Right now." However, any legislation establishing such a firewall faces long odds in the current Congress. The heads of the House and Senate banking committees have indicated support for alternative approaches, and efforts to move Glass-Steagall legislation in prior years have garnered little support. "A new Glass-Steagall would require legislation, and it simply isn't a priority issue in Congress," wrote Ian Katz, a financial policy analyst for the research firm Capital Alpha Partners, in a note to clients. In the meeting which was arranged by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, Cohn was asked by Senator Elizabeth Warren about Glass-Steagall. Cohn responded favorably, noting that the Republican Party platform supports the idea, according to sources familiar with the meeting. The meeting included lawmakers from both parties and their staff. Bringing back Glass Steagall would likely have a significant impact on banks like JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) and Citigroup (C.N) that have large highly intertwined commercial lending and investment banking operations, say analysts. It would impact Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) and Morgan Stanley (MS.N) to a lesser degree although, they would likely have to revert to being standalone investment banks and shed their deposit funding.


The U.S. Air Force has developed a new framework for assessing the resilience of its satellites that should allow it to start the acquisition process for more military communication and missile detection satellites this autumn, a senior official said at the Farnborough Airshow this week. Lockheed Martin, Boeing Co, Northrop Grumman Corp and Raytheon Co are keeping a close eye on these satellite programs, which could be worth billions of dollars and represent the first big new business opportunities in the military space market for some time. U.S. officials have grown increasingly concerned about the need to protect their military satellites - which are critical to being able to identify targets, navigate, communicate and operate drones - given the growing use of electronic jammers and other threats. Winston Beauchamp, the U.S. Air Force deputy undersecretary for space, told Reuters that officials had developed a new set of criteria over the past year to help military leaders determine their options for more satellites. The Air Force had previously looked at the options for follow-on satellites in both programs but until now had not included specific criteria for their resilience, or their ability to operate in the face of "hostile action or adverse conditions," such as electromagnetic interference. Beauchamp said senior Pentagon leaders last week endorsed the work done so far on the framework and further work planned before it is presented to Defense Secretary Ash Carter for approval in the fall. Once that decision is made, the Air Force hopes to begin the long-awaited acquisition process to buy follow-on satellites for the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) system built by Lockheed Martin for protected satellite communications, and new missile warning satellites, also currently built by Lockheed under the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) program. Work was already underway on the acquisition strategy for each of the two programs so they could begin shortly after the resilience decision this autumn, Beauchamp said. The U.S. Air Force was also focused on increasing coordination and planning among allies for its space operations, as well as more multilateral wargaming and work on developing rules of engagement and joint concepts of operations. "We are thinking more broadly about how to conduct operations in a joint manner," Beauchamp said. "In the past it was tacked on at the end. But we'd like to find a way to shift the planning to the left in a number of areas."


A church treasurer from Ohio is going to jail for five years after blowing $800,000 of church funds on a decade-long drugs and sex rampage. So much for that Christian Morality that Evangelicals argue makes them better than people of other faiths and none.61-year-old Garry Meyer was the trusted treasurer of Tri-County Baptist Church in West Chester Township, Ohio for 14 years. What his church did not know, is that he was actually cooking the books, spending nearly a million dollars of church money on drugs, lavish holidays, expensive cars, pornography and high end escorts for more than a decade.While maintaining the pretense of a god-fearing, responsible, married father, Meyer lived a rock star lifestyle on the side and his church community picked up the tab.But, sadly for Meyer, his wife uncovered the crime. Under pressure, he made a confession to the church. The only problem was, he confessed to stealing $400,000. Once the full investigation was complete, Meyer was exposed as a liar all over again. The full sum stolen was twice that figure.Meyer s wife sobbed in the courtroom as her husband s exploits were exposed, and he was sentenced to five years in prison. He told the court: There is no excuse for my actions, I also want to say I am sorry to my family. I have caused unimaginable hurt and suffering, Turning to his wife, Meyer said: I am sorry for betraying your trust you have always been the best part of my life. Meyer stole nearly a million dollars from his own congregation in order to fund a lifestyle to which his church is supposed to stand opposed. Also speaking at Meyer s sentancing hearing was colleague Pastor Brian McManus, who said: Our church family has continued to pray for everyone involved in this very sad event. The truth is, our life choices always come down to personal not religious morality. A person bent on making the wrong decisions in life, will do so with or without the bible. This lesson is everywhere from child-abusing priests, to chumps like Garry Meyer, and on to so-called Christian Conservative leaders who lay the sin of wrath upon anyone who fails to follow their warped Ayn Randian version of God.


U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he would strike numerous bilateral trade deals, as opposed to multilateral accords like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and they would include clauses to allow a 30-day termination notice. "Believe me, we're going to have a lot of trade deals," Trump told a gathering of Republican lawmakers. "If that particular country doesn't treat us fairly, we send them a 30-day termination, notice of termination."


A man arrested on suspicion of trying to carry explosives onto a plane in western Sweden will be released from custody and is no longer a suspect, the prosecutor said on Friday The suspicious objects have been analysed during the day and the man is no longer suspected of any crimes, the prosecutors office said in a statement. The man was stopped as he tried to get onto a flight at Gothenburg s Landvetter airport on Thursday morning when a regular security check flagged up signs of explosive materials.


During the opening monologue of "Tucker Carlson Tonight," host Tucker Carlson offered his thoughts on last week's controversy involving Kathy Griffin holding up a severed bloodied mannequin head of President Donald Trump. After apologizing, Griffin later held a news conference and declared herself to be the victim, to which Carlson said was a signal of her embodiement of the left. Transcript as follows: Earlier this week, as you just saw, Kathy Griffin released a video of herself posing with a bloody mannequin head made up to look like President Trump, comedy that failed completely, nobody thought it was funny. As performance art, it was lame, least creative stunt of the week by far. As a political statement it didn't even make any sense but it did have the effect of briefly making Griffin famous again and of course, that was likely the whole point. Today, Griffin elbowed her way back into the news cycle holding a press conference with celebrity misery chaser Lisa Bloom, here's part of what she said. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KATHY GRIFFIN, COMEDIAN: Imagine that I participated in. That apology absolutely stands. I feel horrible. I have performed in war zones, the idea that that people think of this tragedy, have been touched by this tragedy is horrifying and it's horrible. Thrust me, if I could redo the whole thing, I would've had a blowup doll and no catch up. I'm going to make fun of the President and, you know, what, I'm going to make fun of him more now, more. I'm not afraid of Donald Trump, he's a bully. I've dealt with older white guys trying to keep me down my whole life, my whole career. I just wanted to say, you know, if you don't stand up, you get run over. And what's happening to me has never happened ever in the history of this great country. Which is that a sitting president of the United States and his grown children and the First Lady are personally I feel personally trying to ruin my life forever. This is America, and you shouldn't have to die for it. The death threats that I'm getting are constant and they are detailed and they are serious and they are specific. And today it's me, and tomorrow it could be you. I don't think I will have a career after this. I think he — I'm going to be honest, he broke me. And then I was like, no, this isn't right, it's just not right. There's a bunch of old white guys trying to silence me and I'm just here to say that's wrong. CARLSON: That's just unbelievable, I don't know where to begin. Kathy Griffin isn't particularly talented or amusing, he does have a point, it's a little disproportionate for all of us to keep so much attention on someone who probably shouldn't be famous in the first place, so why are we doing this segment? Because whether she realizes it or not and I bet she has no idea, Griffin is an important figure in American life and that she's the perfect embodiment of what the modern left beliefs. Consider carefully what she said today. Griffin publicly fantasizes violently about murdering the President yet she holds a press conference to announce she's the one who has been wronged. Trump and his family bullied her she says, so have unnamed older white guys who have oppressed her despite giving her a series of very high paying jobs. In other words, she is the real victim here. Of course she is, liberals are always the victims. Being the victim is virtually what it means to be a member of the progressive America. It has more benefits it turns out than AAA and it's free. It means never having to say you're sorry, it also means being right even when you're wrong. Victimhood is the modern equivalent of holiness, it excuses anything. That's why liberals will say almost anything no matter how ludicrous to get it. Do you remember when President Obama the most powerful human being in history use to imply that he was somehow the victim of racial bias? Did you catch Hillary Clinton the other day, a woman so rich and pampered, she hasn't driven her own car in 30 years complain that sexism prevented her from becoming even richer and more pampered. Before you laugh, remember that overpaid sports figures make these kinds of claims all the time, entertainers — even TV anchors and now even unfunny comedians. We see a trend here because there is one. Wait, if the most powerful and richest people on the planet can be victims, who can't be a victim? Good question. The most remarkable thing about victimhood as that it allows the alleged victims to commit to the very offenses they are complaining about. They will punch you in the face and accuse you of assault. Or more specifically smash you in the head with the bike lock and then complain you're making them feel unsafe. They'll crush a bible club at a school that never even been to and then tell you that other people's beliefs oppressed them. They will take over a college campus forcing spineless administrators to enact every one of their demands and then claimed to be powerless victims of a climate of racism. And then they will conduct a nationwide for Christian small businesses trying to shut them down if they don't violate their own faith. They will throw illiterate refugees into public schools and call you a bigot for questioning it. Oh, well, they fled a $50, 000 a year private schools for their own kinds. And then of course, they will fly private even as they berate you for destroying the world with your SUV. It used to be that the point of running a country was to make things better for the people who live there. That has changed. Now the goal, it's almost explicit is to achieve moral superiority over the population often while making their lives worse. It's quite a trick and victimhood makes it possible. Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor


French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday he called German Chancellor Angela Merkel to congratulate her on winning a fourth term in office and said France and Germany would forge ahead with their cooperation. I called Angela Merkel to congratulate her. We continue with determination our vital cooperation for Europe and for our countries, Macron tweeted. Macron ran for the French presidency on a pledge to relaunch Europe, in tandem with Germany, after years of economic and financial crisis and the new shock dealt by Britain s vote last year to leave the bloc. Merkel s conservatives beat their rivals to win her a fourth term in an election that will also bring a far-right party into Germany s parliament for the first time in more than half a century, exit polls showed.


Market Watch U.S. stocks rallied Wednesday, with the Dow industrials jumping 257 points, led by a surge in financial, health-care and industrial stocks, as investors bet on the infrastructure spending policy promised by President-elect Donald Trump.The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.40% gained as much as 316 points, briefly surpassing the all-time closing high set in August. The index closed 256.95 points, or 1.4%, higher at 18,589.69, its highest level since Aug. 18. Pfizer Inc. PFE, +7.07% and Caterpillar Inc CAT, +7.70% led the gains, rallying more than 7%.


President Trump just signed a law overturning a last-minute Obama-era regulation forcing states to fund Planned Parenthood, America s largest abortion business.The regulation, which pro-life groups call former President Obama s parting gift to the abortion industry, forced states to give Title X money to organizations that commit abortions. Now, states if they wish will be able to withold Title X money from abortion-committing organizations, instead prioritizing non-abortion businesses.Federal Title X dollars fund family planning services, but technically not abortion. However, government money Planned Parenthood receives helps the abortion-centered organization overall. This money is fungible, pro-life advocates say.REMEMBER OBAMA WAS THE MOST PRO-ABORTION PRESIDENT EVER! Audio of his cold-hearted testimony before the Illinois State Senate:In 2001, then IL State Sen. Barack Obama for the 2nd year in a row was the sole senator opposing Born Alive Infant bills:The U.S. House voted 230 to 188 to overturn this regulation on February 16. The U.S. Senate voted 50-50 on it on March 13. Vice President Mike Pence broke the tie, sending the bill to Trump s desk.Rep. Diane Black, R-TN, Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America, and Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List were at the White House bill signing. This week the pro-life movement had two huge victories: first, the swearing-in of Justice Gorsuch and now, President Trump will undo former President Obama s parting gift to the abortion industry, said Dannenfelser. The resolution signed today simply ensures that states are not forced to fund an abortion business with taxpayer dollars. Rather, states have the option to spend Title X money on comprehensive health care clinics that better serve women and girls.


Pope Francis on Thursday called for decisive measures to resolve the political crisis causing mostly Muslim refugees from neighboring Myanmar to flee to Bangladesh. But, just as in the first leg of his trip in Myanmar, he did not use the word Rohingya, which is contested by the Yangon government and military. In a speech before Bangladesh s president hours after arriving, Francis instead spoke of refugees from Rakhine State . He also called on countries to give immediate material assistance to help Bangladesh deal with the crisis.


Britain s Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said it was time to begin serious negotiations on Brexit, hours before Prime Minister Theresa May visits Brussels in an attempt to unlock the stalled talks. We think in the UK that it is time to get on with these negotiations ... for us to start some serious conversations about the future and the new relationship, the deep and special partnership we hope to construct, Johnson told reporters. I think we will work very much in the interests of both sides ... let s put a tiger in the tank, let s get these negotiations going and stop letting the grass grow under our feet. We hope very much that our friends and partners will take that message and really begin to do some serious negotiations. Johnson, arriving for talks in Luxembourg with his European Union peers on Monday, also said London made a very good and fair offer on safeguarding expatriates rights after Britain leaves the European Union. May s office said on Sunday she would meet the European Union s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and the head of the bloc s executive Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, in Brussels on Monday.


With debate gearing up over the coming expiration of the Patriot Act surveillance law, the Obama administration on Saturday unveiled a 6-year-old report examining the once-secret program to collect information on Americans' calls and emails. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence publicly released the redacted report following a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the New York Times. The basics of the National Security Agency program had already been declassified, but the lengthy report includes some new details about the secrecy surrounding it. President George W. Bush authorized the "President's Surveillance Program" in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The review was completed in July 2009 by inspectors general from the Justice Department, Pentagon, CIA, NSA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence. They found that while many senior intelligence officials believe the program filled a gap by increasing access to international communications, others including FBI agents, CIA analysts and managers "had difficulty evaluating the precise contribution of the PSP to counterterrorism efforts because it was most often viewed as one source among many available analytic and intelligence-gathering tools in these efforts." Critics of the phone records program, which allows the NSA to hunt for communications between terrorists abroad and U.S. residents, argue it has not proven to be an effective counterterrorism tool. They also say an intelligence agency has no business possessing the deeply personal records of Americans. Many favor a system under which the NSA can obtain court orders to query records held by the phone companies. The Patriot Act expires on June 1, and Senate Republicans have introduced a bill that would allow continued collection of call records of nearly every American. The legislation would reauthorize sections of the Patriot Act, including the provision under which the NSA requires phone companies to turn over the "to and from" records of most domestic landline calls. After the program was disclosed in 2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, President Barack Obama and many lawmakers called for legislation to end that collection, but a bill to do so failed last year. Proponents had hoped that the expiration of the Patriot Act provisions on June 1 would force consideration of such a measure. A bipartisan group of House members has been working on such legislation, dubbed the USA Freedom Act. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Friday that Obama is pleased the efforts are restarting in the House. "Hopefully, the next place where Democrats and Republicans will turn their attention and try to work together is on this issue of putting in place important reforms to the Patriot Act," Earnest said. If no legislation is passed, the Patriot Act provisions would expire. That would affect not only the NSA surveillance but other programs used by the FBI to investigate domestic crimes, which puts considerable pressure on lawmakers to pass some sort of extension.


Liberia s supreme court cleared the way for a presidential run-off election, ruling on Thursday that it had not found enough evidence of fraud to halt the whole process. Ex-soccer star George Weah will now face off against Vice-President Joseph Boakai in a vote that could mark Liberia s first peaceful transition of power in seven decades. The court dismissed a complaint from the third-place finisher Charles Brumskine s Liberty Party, which had said fraud had undermined the first round of voting in October. In the absence of sufficient evidence, the court cannot order a re-run of the election, Justice Philip Banks said, reading out the court s decision. There were over 5,000 polling places, (so) to present evidence of just a few is problematic, the judge said. The evidence should have (shown) ... that they were committed in such magnitude that they could have altered the results. The winner of round two will replace Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as leader of the small West African country, one of the world s poorest despite abundant diamonds and iron ore. The delays caused by all the legal wrangling have ratcheted up tensions in a country still recovering from decades of civil war that killed tens of thousands. However, a spokesman for the Liberty Party said it would accept the result. If we did not respect the judiciary, we would not have come, Darius Dillion said. Liberia has won, our democracy has won. Liberians are eager for change after Johnson Sirleaf s 12-year rule, which sealed a lasting peace that many doubted was possible, but which has failed to tackle corruption or significantly lift living standards of the country s poorest. Authorities still have to name a date for the run-off. NEC spokesman Henry Flomo told reporters outside the court he believed one could be held in two weeks, but said the date would be announced shortly. The judges made the ruling with a 4-1 majority.


Musicians do not usually respond with patience when listeners refer to their music as "filth. " So the tweets that Vince Staples sent early Wednesday morning in response to a viral video of a mother criticizing his work were surprising, particularly to those unfamiliar with Mr. Staples's worldview. In a video posted to YouTube last month, a mother of four girls, who does not identify herself by name, says that she was driving her daughter to school when she heard "Norf Norf," a song from Mr. Staples's 2015 album "Summertime '06. " "This rap song comes on. Guys, I could not believe what I was hearing," she says, adding that she usually tunes her car radio to Christian music but put on a "top hits" station at her 's request. "This is on our local radio station? This crap is being played?" She continues, "I couldn't even believe the words I was listening to. As a mom, it infuriated me. " The video has received more than 800, 000 views. The lyrics of "Norf Norf" are explicit, painting a violent picture of Mr. Staples' adolescent years in Long Beach, Calif. In her reaction video, the mother reads the words aloud, bursting into tears several times. She seems particularly taken aback by the repetitive line of the chorus: "I ain't never ran from nothin' but the police. " "Let's just encourage kids to run from the police because that's O. K. right? ," she says. "We wonder why this society is so messed up — just listen to the music. " But responding to the video on Wednesday, Mr. Staples said that the woman seemed confused and frightened, and went on to defend her. "No person needs to be attacked for their opinion on what they see to be appropriate for their children," Mr. Staples tweeted. "They have a right to it. " He continued, "This misunderstanding of our community leads to miscommunication which we should convert into a progressive dialogue. " He then declared that he was done speaking about the issue. Mr. Staples's tweets, which were meant to clarify earlier comments in The Independent, were a contrast to the mother's disgust and to those who had mocked her ignorance about rap by responding to the video with laughing emojis or syncing the audio from the YouTube video with the beat of "Norf Norf. " Others blasted her comments as racist and ignorant. David Dennis Jr. a journalism professor at Morehouse College who has covered online for close to a decade, said that Mr. Staples's thoughtful reaction was "extremely unusual. " "Twitter is 140 characters of quick reactions and not a lot of nuance whatsoever," Mr. Dennis said. "There are brilliant people who, when they get on Twitter, they sort of become the lowest common denominators of themselves. " He said that the rapper's experience as a public figure with a vast online following may have helped him empathize with the mother. "As a famous rapper, he sort of knows how Twitter mob mentality works," Mr. Dennis said. "Through the lens of somebody who goes viral a lot, I think that empathy is something he learned. " In an interview in The Fader soon after "Summertime '06" was released, Mr. Staples talked about people he knew who were trapped in a cycle of gang violence. His attitude toward them mirrored his comments about the mother. "I just want to help people understand that we don't get to pick, bro," he said. "We don't get to pick where we was from. That ain't how it works. "


Once again, the Republican Party should be embarrassed that Donald Trump is their nominee.During a press conference on Wednesday, Trump answered questions about his ties to Russia and Vladamir Putin. He denied it, of course, but openly urged Russia to commit an act of espionage against Hillary Clinton and the United States Government.First, Trump condemned the hack of the DNC that gave him ammunition to use against Democrats and then he urged Russia to do even more. Russia, if you re listening, I hope you re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, Trump said. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Here s the video via YouTube.Well, the media certainly did not reward Trump for calling upon Russia to continue their cyber attacks against Hillary Clinton and our government institutions.David Gregory compared Trump to a child playing with matches and said he has run out of words to express his shock at the things Trump says and does.CNN panelist Christine Quinn ripped Trump a new one for urging Russia to continue the attack against his political opponent. The man who thinks he s going to be the president of the United States stood in front of the world and called on Russia and Putin to hack the emails of the former Secretary of State. I mean, it s honestly, and I know I m partisan in this clearly, but it s almost treasonous! Former Republican South Carolina Lt. Governor Andre Bauer responded by going even further than Quinn by claiming Clinton committed treason outright because 30,000 emails went missing. But if that s the case, former President Bush should have been tried and imprisoned for treason years ago when millions of emails were deleted during his administration. Bauer also didn t seem to have a single problem with what Trump said and defended him.Here s the video via YouTube.The bottom line is that Donald Trump just told a repressive Russian regime to continue hacking a former high-tanking government official who could very well be the next president of the United States. This hack is a serious breach in national security and Trump is egging it on as long as it helps him gain politically.It s treason and those who commit treason are not allowed to hold office in this country.This is outrageous and shows that Republicans are totally incapable to leading this nation and only further solidifies the fear that Donald Trump would be nothing more than Putin s puppet if he wins in November.


On the campaign trail, Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has sold himself as a businessman who has made billions of dollars and is beholden to no one. But an investigation by The New York Times into the financial maze of Mr. Trump's real estate holdings in the United States reveals that companies he owns have at least $650 million in debt — twice the amount than can be gleaned from public filings he has made as part of his bid for the White House. The Times's inquiry also found that Mr. Trump's fortunes depend deeply on a wide array of financial backers, including one he has cited in attacks during his campaign. For example, an office building on Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan, of which Mr. Trump is part owner, carries a $950 million loan. Among the lenders: the Bank of China, one of the largest banks in a country that Mr. Trump has railed against as an economic foe of the United States, and Goldman Sachs, a financial institution he has said controls Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, after it paid her $675, 000 in speaking fees. Real estate projects often involve complex ownership and mortgage structures. And given Mr. Trump's long real estate career in the United States and abroad, as well as his claim that his personal wealth exceeds $10 billion, it is safe to say that no previous major party presidential nominee has had finances nearly as complicated. As president, Mr. Trump would have substantial sway over monetary and tax policy, as well as the power to make appointments that would directly affect his own financial empire. He would also wield influence over legislative issues that could have a significant impact on his net worth, and would have official dealings with countries in which he has business interests. Yet The Times's examination underscored how much of Mr. Trump's business remains shrouded in mystery. He has declined to disclose his tax returns or allow an independent valuation of his assets. Earlier in the campaign, Mr. Trump submitted a federal financial disclosure form. It said his businesses owed at least $315 million to a relatively small group of lenders and listed ties to more than 500 limited liability companies. Though he answered the questions, the form appears to have been designed for candidates with simpler finances than his, and did not require disclosure of portions of his business activities. Beyond finding that companies owned by Mr. Trump had debts of at least $650 million, The Times discovered that a substantial portion of his wealth is tied up in three passive partnerships that owe an additional $2 billion to a string of lenders, including those that hold the loan on the Avenue of the Americas building. If those loans were to go into default, Mr. Trump would not be held liable, the Trump Organization said. The value of his investments, however, would certainly sink. Mr. Trump has said that if he were elected president, his children would be likely to run his company. Many presidents, to avoid any appearance of a conflict, have placed their holdings in blind trusts, which typically involves selling the original asset, and replacing it with different assets unknown to the seller. Mr. Trump's children seem unlikely to pursue that option. Richard W. Painter, a professor of law at the University of Minnesota and, from 2005 to 2007, the chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, compared Mr. Trump to Henry M. Paulson Jr. a former chief executive of Goldman Sachs whom Mr. Bush appointed as Treasury secretary. Professor Painter advised Mr. Paulson on his decision to sell his Goldman Sachs shares, saying it was clear that Mr. Paulson could not simply have placed that stock in trust and pretended it did not exist. If Mr. Trump were to use a blind trust, the professor said, it would be "like putting a gold watch in a box and pretending you don't know it is in there. " "I am the king of debt," Mr. Trump once said on CNN. "I love debt. " But in his career, debt has sometimes gotten the better of him, leading to at least four business bankruptcies. He is, however, quick to stress that these days his companies have very little debt. Mr. Trump indicated in the financial disclosure form he filed in connection with this campaign that he was worth at least $1. 5 billion, and has said publicly that the figure is actually greater than $10 billion. Recent estimates by Forbes and Fortune magazines and Bloomberg have put his worth at less than $5 billion. To gain a better understanding of Mr. Trump's holdings and debt, The Times engaged RedVision Systems, a national property information firm, to search publicly available data on more than 30 properties in the United States. The Times identified these assets through Federal Election Commission filings, information provided by the Trump Organization and records, such as filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The search covered thousands of pages of public information, including loan documents, land leases and property deeds. It concentrated on Mr. Trump's commercial holdings, including office towers, golf courses, a vineyard in Virginia and even an industrial building in South Carolina that he ended up with after a troubled business venture involving Donald Trump Jr. The inquiry also examined some of Mr. Trump's residential properties, including his penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue and a house he owns in Beverly Hills, Calif. The examination did not include Mr. Trump's dealings outside the United States. That Mr. Trump seems to have so much less debt on his disclosure form than what The Times found is not his fault, but rather a function of what the form asks candidates to list and how. The form, released by the Federal Election Commission, asks that candidates list assets and debts not in precise numbers, but in ranges that top out at $50 million — appropriate for most candidates, but not for Mr. Trump. Through its examination, The Times was able to discern the amount of debt taken out on each property, and its ownership structure. At 40 Wall Street in Manhattan, a limited liability company, or L. L. C. controlled by Mr. Trump holds the ground lease — the lease for the land on which the building stands. In 2015, Mr. Trump borrowed $160 million from Ladder Capital, a small New York firm, using that lease as collateral. On his financial disclosure form that debt is listed as valued at more than $50 million. Allen Weisselberg, chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, said that Mr. Trump could have left the liability section on the form blank, because federal law requires that presidential candidates disclose personal liabilities, not corporate debt. Mr. Trump, he said, has no personal debt. "We overdisclosed," Mr. Weisselberg said, explaining that it was decided that when a Trump company owned 100 percent of a property, all of the associated debt would be disclosed, something that he said went beyond what the law required. For properties where a Trump company owned less than 100 percent of a building, Mr. Weisselberg said, those debts were not disclosed. Mr. Trump, for example, has a 50 percent stake in the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas. In 2010, the company that owns the hotel refinanced a $190 million loan, according to Real Capital Analytics, a commercial real estate data and analytics firm. Mr. Weisselberg said that a Trump entity was responsible for half the debt, and that all but $6. 4 million of the loan had been paid off. The Times found three other instances in which Mr. Trump had an ownership interest in a building but did not disclose the debt associated with it. In all three cases, Mr. Trump had passive investments in limited liability companies that had borrowed significant amounts of money. One of these investments involves an office tower at 1290 Avenue of Americas, near Rockefeller Center. In a typically complex deal, loan documents show that four lenders — German American Capital, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank UBS Real Estate Securities Goldman Sachs Mortgage Company and Bank of China — agreed in November 2012 to lend $950 million to the three companies that own the building. Those companies, obscurely named HWA 1290 III LLC, HWA 1290 IV LLC and HWA 1290 V LLC, are owned by three other companies in which Mr. Trump has stakes. Ultimately, through his investments, Mr. Trump is a 30 percent owner of the building, records show. Vornado Realty Trust owns the other 70 percent and is the controlling partner. A similar ownership structure is in place at 555 California Street in San Francisco, formerly the Bank of America Center. There, Pacific Life Insurance Company and Metropolitan Life Insurance Company lent $600 million in 2011 to a limited liability company of which Vornado owns 70 percent and Mr. Trump owns 30 percent. Green Street Advisors, a real estate research firm, estimates the combined value of the two buildings to be about $3. 7 billion. On a smaller scale, Mr. Trump also has a 4 percent partnership interest in a company that has an interest in a large Brooklyn housing complex, and owes roughly $410 million to Wells Fargo, according to Bloomberg data. The full terms of Mr. Trump's limited partnerships are not known. The current value of the loans connected to them is roughly $1. 95 billion, according to various public documents. Mr. Weisselberg, the Trump Organization's chief financial officer, said that neither Mr. Trump nor the company were responsible for the debt associated with the limited partnerships. Still, as with all of the properties in which Mr. Trump holds an interest, the value of the buildings as well as the terms and magnitude of their debt could have a major impact on his personal fortune. Mr. Trump, Mr. Weisselberg added, was liable for a "small percentage of the corporate debt" listed on the federal filing but would not elaborate. Other instances in which Mr. Trump could be personally responsible can be found in public filings. He guaranteed as much as $26 million for the loan taken out against his land lease at 40 Wall Street, money the lender could take if certain things went wrong. The United States Office of Government Ethics, which reviewed Mr. Trump's financial filing before the F. E. C. released it, said it does not comment on submissions by individual candidates. The agency's procedures for staff members reviewing presidential submissions, a copy of which was obtained by The Times through a Freedom of Information Act request, say the Office of Government Ethics does not audit reports for accuracy. "Disclosures are to be taken at 'face value' as correct, unless there is a patent omission or ambiguity or the official has independent knowledge of matters outside the report," the procedures say. Tracing the ownership of many of Mr. Trump's buildings can be a complicated task. Sometimes he owns a building and the land underneath it sometimes, he holds a partial interest or just the commercial portion of a property. And in some cases, the identities of his business partners are obscured behind limited liability companies — raising the prospect of a president with unknown business ties. At 40 Wall Street, Mr. Trump does not own even a sliver of the actual land his ground lease gives him the right to improve and manage the building. The land is owned by two limited liability companies Mr. Trump pays the two entities a total of $1. 6 million a year for the ground lease, according to documents filed with the S. E. C. The majority owner, 40 Wall Street Holdings Corporation, owns 80 percent of the land New Scandic Wall Limited Partnership owns the rest, according to public documents. New Scandic Wall Limited Partnership's chief executive is Joachim Ferdinand von a businessman based in Europe, according to these documents. The people behind 40 Wall Street Holdings are harder to identify. For years, Germany's Hinneberg family, which made its fortune in the shipping industry, controlled the property through a company called 40 Wall Limited Partnership. In late 2014, their interest in the land was transferred to a new company, 40 Wall Street Holdings. The Times was not able to identify the owner or owners of this company, and the Trump Organization declined to comment. Mr. Trump has ground leases on several other properties, including a golf course in New York's Hudson Valley and retail space in Midtown Manhattan. Private owners are also behind these leases, their identities sometimes obscured by L. L. C. s. Mr. Trump's status in these situations is indicated by the word tenant, which is listed under his signature on many of the relevant documents. Mr. Trump also holds a ground lease on the Trump International Hotel in the Old Post Office building in Washington, a few blocks from the White House. The federal government, which owns the land, gave a lease to Trump Old Post Office, a limited liability company controlled by Mr. Trump and members of his family. In return, the government receives a minimum of $3 million a year from the company. Mr. Weisselberg said that despite his holdings, Mr. Trump should not be held to the same standards that might apply to the heads of companies in highly regulated industries. "If you take away all the fancy stuff and so on and so forth, and the ratings, you are basically down to a closely held business that is fundamentally different from IBM or Exxon," Mr. Weisselberg said, quoting from an email he had received from Donald F. McGahn, a lawyer and former chairman of the F. E. C. who advised Mr. Trump on his federal filing. Mr. McGahn did not return calls for comment. Others disagree. Mr. Trump's opaque portfolio of business ties makes him potentially vulnerable to the demands of banks, and to business people in the United States and abroad, said Professor Painter, the former chief White House ethics lawyer. "The success of his empire depends on an ability to get credit, to get loans extended to his business entities," he said. "And we simply don't know a lot about his financial dealings, here or around the world. "


Wheel of Fortune caved to the left and apologized for using what appeared to be slaves in a photo on the show on Thursday: We regret the use of this background image, and we will be replacing it moving forward on any rebroadcast. But wait! The people in the photo are tour guides and NOT slaves! This didn t stop the goofballs on the left from freaking out on social media:Someone please tell me why @WheelofFortune has slaves in their Southern Charm Week images? pic.twitter.com/IPCFo9wh1b Joshua Itiola (@joshitiola) June 16, 2017The eternally butt hurt left was abuzz over a photo taken in 2005 at Oak Valley Plantation. The left claimed it was a photo of slaves! As it turns out, the two women were in period costumes and happen to be tour guides at the historic plantation: A spokesperson for the plantation said, The plantation employs a diverse range of people of all skin colors for tour guide roles. Even though they wear clothing indicative of the period, the actors who work at the plantation do not try to portray slaves. Get that? The actors who work at the plantation DO NOT try to portray slaves Can we move forward already? It s like the left wants to keep us stuck in the past.


The EU executive urged Spain to talk to Catalan separatists on Monday, condemning violence but also calling for unity, a day after Spanish police beat people trying to vote in an independence referendum in Catalonia. Edging into a minefield it has tried hard to avoid, despite a danger for stability in Spain and the euro zone, the European Commission issued a cautiously balanced statement. It voiced trust in Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy s ability to manage this internal matter , but also called for dialogue and reminded Madrid of a need to respect citizens basic rights. We call on all relevant players to now move very swiftly from confrontation to dialogue. Violence can never be an instrument in politics, the Commission said in a statement read out by chief spokesman Margaritis Schinas, just before Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont asked for EU mediation. Pressed by reporters, Schinas declined to say specifically that the EU was condemning Spanish police tactics, though it was their actions at polling stations on Sunday which mostly shocked fellow Europeans and generated public pressure that saw other governments including Germany and France call for more dialogue. Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker spoke to Rajoy later on Monday after being in contact over the weekend, though the EU spokesman declined to say whether the Union would mediate, an unusual step for Brussels to take within one of the bloc s own member states. Aides said Juncker spelled out the Commission position and was also in a listening mode . Donald Tusk, the former Polish prime minister who chairs summits of EU national leaders, said after his own conversation with Rajoy that he shared the Spanish premier s constitutional arguments but also appealed to him to find ways to prevent a further escalation and the use of force. The Commission statement also supported Madrid s line that the vote, which Catalan leaders said recorded a huge result for independence, was not legal under Spain s constitution. Brussels has in the past given little or no encouragement to separatist movements inside the European Union, whether those of the Catalans, Scots, Flemings or others. These are times for unity and stability, not divisiveness and fragmentation, it said. Any breakaway state would have to leave the EU and re-apply to join, the statement also noted. Even that could only happen if the split were amicable. This distinguishes Scotland, which held a referendum agreed with London in 2014, from Catalonia, where Spain s Constitutional Court has said the 1978 constitution forbids secession. For all the reluctance of other Europeans to be drawn into the dispute in public, there has been growing unease in Brussels about the way the conservative government in Madrid has handled the confrontation with Barcelona, reviving emotions rooted in 20th-century civil war and dictatorship. As pictures of heavily armoured Spanish police clubbing women on the ground stunned Europe on Sunday, the few governments that spoke out included those of Scotland, Slovenia, which emerged from the bloody collapse of Yugoslavia, and Belgium, where repeated rounds of devolution have averted a final split between French- and Dutch-speakers. On Monday, Berlin joined the calls for dialogue, warning against a spiral of escalation . Germany s BDI industrial federation warned that splitting the highly industrialised region from Spain would be very damaging for both sides.


The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's acting director criticized President Donald Trump for telling law enforcement officers not to be "too nice" to suspects, urging DEA agents to show "respect and compassion" and saying he felt compelled to speak out when "something is wrong." Acting Director Chuck Rosenberg sent an agency-wide email on Saturday, one day after Trump's speech to officers in Brentwood, New York, on Long Island. The email was seen by Reuters on Tuesday. Trump suggested to officers that, as part of a tougher approach to suspects, they do away with practices like protecting the head of a suspect being put into a patrol car. That suggestion drew criticism from many local law enforcement agencies, as well as Rosenberg. "I write because we have an obligation to speak out when something is wrong," the acting DEA chief said in the email. "The President, in remarks delivered yesterday in New York, condoned police misconduct regarding the treatment of individuals placed under arrest by law enforcement." Rosenberg, who was not nominated by Trump but is a holdover from the Obama administration, was the first head of a federal agency to challenge Trump's remarks in a wide arena. Incidents of police brutality and law enforcement killings of black suspects have sparked mass protests nationwide and led many departments to purchase body cameras to record interactions between officers and the public. Trump, a Republican, campaigned on a pro-law enforcement platform, winning the support of several police unions by promising to be tough on crime and more supportive of police than his predecessor, Democratic President Barack Obama. Chuck Canterbury, national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation's largest police union, said Trump's "off the cuff comments" are taken "too literally" by news media. "The President knows, just as every cop out there knows, that our society does not, and should not, tolerate the mistreatment or prejudgment of any individual at any point in the criminal justice process," Canterbury said in a statement on Saturday. The DEA combats drug trafficking into the United States from offices nationwide and several international posts. Rosenberg said he was not seeking to advance a political agenda, but to remind his agents of their core values, including accountability, diversity and integrity. "This is how we conduct ourselves. This is how we treat those whom we encounter in our work: victims, witnesses, subjects and defendants. This is who we are," he wrote.