Reader’s links for August 24, 2018

171 Replies to “Reader’s links for August 24, 2018”

1. “Former East German Communists Training, Guiding Democratic Socialists of America”
   By Trevor Loudon – August 22, 2018
   https://www.theepochtimes.com/former-east-german-communists-training-guiding-democratic-socialists-of-america_2628662.html

2. Former East German Communists Training, Guiding Democratic Socialists of America

   In other words: “SHADDAP! IT’S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD!”

   Should any Communist near you ever squeal, “It just hasn’t been done right, yet!”

   Sprint away from them at top speed without a single backward glance. I promise that you will miss NOTHING!

3. First comment by someone called “Red Mile” is informative:

   https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-23/europe-making-plans-new-world-order

   • Very interesting, if we can get an honest investigation into what happened the whole Deep State house of cards will come tumbling down.

   • This should be the direct link. I sent it to a friend to see if this is accurate.

     https://www.zerohedge.com/comment/12245706#comment-12245706

     • Ioriginally saw this on Reddit
       https://www.reddit.com/r/greatawakening/comments/98yduw/connnecting_some_dots/
       along with
       More ‘connect the dots’…. Deep State is deeper than you realize! – CP Some thing else U MIGHT NOT KNOW!! Obama ws mentored when in Chicago by former Priest, Gregory Galluzzo. Gregory Galluzzo graduated from the Spring Hill College in 1960. James Strzok graduated from there in 1964. Peter Strzok’s uncle is James Strzok. James Strzok was stationed in Kenya where Obama once lived. Once Obama is in office, Peter Strzok nephew of James Strzok rockets right up to the top of the FBI, becoming the guy for Obama & Hillary to destroy evidence & impact investigations. Sept. of 2015 Strzok requested ALL HRC email copies from DOE, NSA, NRC, DOJ, NSA, US Treasury. He was the last person to view HRC’s deleted emails. The father of Peter Strzok is Peter StrzokSr. The brother of Peter Strzok Sr. is Mark Strzok. The wife of Mark Strzok is Mariana Strzok. Mariana Strzok is the daughter of General James Cartwright. General James Cartwright was pardoned by Barrack Obama on his last day of office. The wife of Peter Strzok, Melissa Hodgeman whom it just so happens was promoted to the role of director of the SEC at the same time the FBI was drafting the exoneration letter for HRC. The father of Peter Strzok, Peter Strzok Sr. just happened to be in Iran in 1979, the year that the Shah was removed from power & the 2,500 years of continuous Persian monarchy was replaced with an Islamic Republic under the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. CIA? Dot-dot-dot. Father of Peter Strzok, Peter Strzok Sr. was in the Army Corp of Engineers. An expert in sanctions and nuclear activity in Iran. His brother Mark Strzok of Mammoet, world leader in big cranes, with a specialty in moving Nuclear Reactors. Want to bet there’s a Strzok in Iran? Mariana Strzok, mother of Devin Strzok, Devin Strzok was in the situation room in the White House West Wing in May 2015 with his new wife, at 9:45 at night. Now why would that be? The agreement on the nuclear program of Iran was reached in Vienna on 14 July 2015. Interesting, no? Wonder what or whom the Strzok family represents? Obama knows. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DlYYS0yWsAE5Chp.jpg

   • BREITBART – Seamus Bruner: Comey-Mueller ‘Cash in Through the Revolving Door’ of the Swamp

     Seamus Bruner, Government Accountability Institute (GAI) researcher and author of Compromised: How Money and Politics Drive FBI Corruption, explained how former FBI Directors James Comey and Robert Mueller leveraged their government positions to enrich themselves. He joined Peter Schweizer, GAI president and Breitbart News senior editor-at-large, for a Wednesday interview with Sean Hannity.

     “This is a familiar story [about] the revolving door; turning public service into self service,” said Bruner. “We followed the money. We followed it to the top, and we found that these choir boys or boy scouts — as the media likes to depict them — James Comey and Robert Mueller, they’re really no better than anyone else in the swamp. They use their public service [and] their contacts and they cash in through the revolving door.”

     Bruner described Lockheed Martin’s — the country’s largest national defense and security contractor — hiring of James Comey in 2005 to the dual position of general counsel and senior vice president as unusual. Comey was 44 at the time and without requisite corporate experience.

     Bruner added, “[James Comey] wasn’t just consulting Lockheed Martin, he was their general counsel and a senior vice president at the corporation, which begs the question, why would you choose a young James Comey? He’s got no corporate experience of that kind.”

     Bruner drew on a 2012 Huffington Post article describing Next Generation identification — a proposed biometric database and facial recognition system commissioned by the FBI via Lockheed Martin — as a “billion-dollar boondoggle.” He noted that Comey “signed off” on the project as a Lockheed Martin executive and chief legal counsel in 2012, and the project’s authorization by then FBI Director Robert Mueller.

     Bruner spoke of Comey’s and Mueller’s complementary roles in expanding “the surveillance state.”

     “James Comey and Robert Mueller have this long history together going back to the nineties at the DOJ,” recalled Bruner:

     They’ve been very concerned with matters relating to surveillance, especially FISA and the Patriot Act. We see repeatedly throughout the early 2000s and all the way up through today [that] Robert Mueller and James Comey wanted to “tear down the wall,” so to speak, between intelligence agencies, and had issues with what they call “the going dark problem,” where they didn’t have enough information. So they really rapidly expanded [what I describe as] “the surveillance state” which is now, of course, being used against journalists, citizens, and even now a presidential candidate.

     Schweizer explained how government officials leverage their roles towards self-enrichment: “What this highlights is this problem, happens at Health and Human Services, it happens at DoD, where you have government officials, who basically, while they’re in government, create demand for their own services when they leave.”

     Schweizer continued:

     So in the case of Jim Comey, he goes to Lockheed Martin from the Department of Justice. At the Department of Justice, he helped establish some of these very programs that Lockheed Martin was getting contracts to implement and carry out. So he sets up these programs, who is Lockheed Martin going to look for to give a paycheck to who understands this program better than anybody else? The government official who helped put it together, and that is sort of a tried and true story in Washington, DC, and the point is, you played that clip at the beginning of James Comey talking about how sensitive he is to the appearances of doing something wrong or wrongdoing, the fact of the matter is, this is a very familiar story, unfortunately, in the swamp.

     Schweizer concluded, “What Seamus shows is this pattern where, when Mueller is in the private sector and Comey is in government, there seem to be contracts and resources that flow in that direction, as well. It’s kind of a tag team arrangement that these two have. It speaks to the financial underbelly that exists even at the Department of Justice. … There are lots of ways in which these officials self-enrich themselves.”

     https://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2018/08/23/seamus-bruner-comey-mueller-cash-in-swamp/

   • Mueller, Comey leveraged their relationship for profit, author says

     Government Accountability Institute researcher Seamus Bruner says former FBI Directors James Comey and Robert Mueller appear to leverage their relationship for monetary gains.

   • Overall, a few rather interesting analyses.

     Some quick “deep dives” into the global economy’s pivot-points. As in: those who oppose the US dollar’s status as this world’s de facto currency had best be careful about what they wish for. Does anyone care to recount the saga of BRIC? Methinks that any reconciliation between Red China and The Subcontinent will remain a sociopolitical-economic-crash-course (as it were) for yet a few more decades into the future.

     An immediate showing of hands about this issue might be quite useful. As it is:

     “[Communist Chinese] Official says widely cited estimate of a million Muslims under detention is ‘completely untrue’”

     The real number is probably something a lot more like Two Million, and the for-profit organ transplant schedules must be clotting clogging up something fierce…

     Rat poison, STAT!!!

4. Court: Man paid German mom so he could rape 10-year-old son

   NR: This upgefü¢ked hausfrau had best hope that her son never connects all of the dots. I’m confident that German and Spanish bookies already are accepting “death pool” bets on the remaining lifespan of this abusive, Teutonic sow.

5. Maybe the tard driver of this vehicle just took the parking sign at the bottom left of the photo literally.

   https://ottawasun.com/news/local-news/cars-2-buildings-0-after-latest-vehicle-miscue/wcm/7eae7995-73ba-4d3b-8e19-f4a28c0551dc

6. Yesterday I saw something strange on television, which showed me how crazy and twisted, but above all how dishonest everything is, especially through the abuse of the mass media. And how stupified the audience must be, who consume this shit without criticism.

   In a talk show, the popular film star Terence Hill (79), the son of a German mother and an Italian, witnessed the bombing of Dresden from afar and suffered nightmares from this up to the age of 25. He has been married to a German-American woman for 50 years and lives in the United States.

   https://www.tag24.de/nachrichten/dresden-albtraeume-von-bombennaechten-terence-hill-erlebte-1945-die-luftangriffe-markus-lanz-zdf-745944#article

   His father, who worked in a factory in Dresden, escaped with his life, while the civilian population, especially women and children, were to be deliberately destroyed in Bomber-Harris’ “Operation Gomorrha”. In the city there were especially many displaced persons (real “refugees”!) from the eastern areas occupied by Russians, this was well known to the
   phosphorus bomb strategists.

   http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2276944/I-destroyed-Dresden-Bomber-Harris-unrepentant-German-city-raids-30-years-end-World-War-Two.html

   But now madness comes into play: to the left of Mr Hill sits a woman named Katrin Göring-Eckardt (imagine: Göring!), a particularly perfidious representative of the destruction of the German people. She is the leader of the Green Party, which floods Germany and all of Europe with foreigners from the Third World. Unfortunately, Mr Hill was not aware of this.

   But not only that: She is a high representative of the Protestant church, which now lives largely from the import of the “needy” bearded criminal alleged “children” from Africa and the Orient, since hardly any local visits a church in Germany (no wonder with such “church representatives”, who hate their own people!).

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katrin_G%C3%B6ring-Eckardt

   The dogmatic feminist grew up in the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany, the so-called “GDR” (which was neither German nor democratic, nor a republic). But that does not stop her from thinking left and acting left, to the detriment of her country and people. These are her political “friends”:

   http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2565463/Outrage-feminist-activists-hold-naked-protest-praising-Bomber-Harris-middle-DRESDEN-fight-against-fascism.html

   Mrs. Göring-Eckardt has always been a big fan of Terence Hill, even as a little girl, she says, and is glad she didn’t grow up in the “Valley of the Clueless”, as the area around Dresden was called. Since Dresden lay in a radio hole, it was not possible to receive capitalist “West Television” or “West Radio” there.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tal_der_Ahnungslosen

   Interestingly, Dresden is the city that became the centre of resistance against communism as early as 1989 (alongside Leipzig). And now also because of the peaceful but ultimately ineffective PEGIDA demonstrations became known. In other words, Mrs. Göring-Eckardt owes her freedom to the “Valley of the Clueless”, which she abuses badly.

   It is of course no wonder that Germany’s former eastern cities still have immune powers against the insane “liberality” of the West. Equally interesting is that Dresden has for years been one of the few cities in Germany that generates a population surplus from pure births without importing migrants.

   https://www.thelocal.de/20170515/germany-sees-highest-birthrate-since-reunification-still-lags-behind-in-europe

   Dresden is the city with the highest number of newborn Germans. Only a deeply Catholic region in northwestern Germany around Cloppenburg can keep up, but today only through the Russian Germans who immigrated there.

   • “ In other words, Mrs. Göring-Eckardt owes her freedom to the “Valley of the Clueless”, which she abuses badly.”

     I call this, “Feeding the hand that bites you.” It manifests as a bizarre sort of kabuki “shadow theater” that the Germans seem to have taken up as some kind of obsessive compulsive, pseudo-redemptive act—despite how Berlin simply cannot bring itself to demonstrate even minor gratitude to its very own people and their indigenous population’s stolid determination to make Germany great again.

     Incidentally, anyone who remains deluded about WWII Dresden’s ostensible lack of military–industrial production had best start doing their homework. There’s Zeiss optics in nearby Chemnitz—where I received field service training on focused ion beam systems—which, all by itself, made for a crucial target. Additionally, there were two plants producing radar components, an arsenal, and finally, a poison gas factory. Dresden also had become a key nodal point in the German postal and telegraph system along with being the site of a strategic railway marshaling yard for the movement of troops and materiel in Eastern Germany.

     Immediately surrounding the Dresden-like metropolis are mission critical operations like Siemens glassworks and VON ARDENNE GmbH—I have been to VA’s HQ and toured their production facilities—one of the world’s oldest optical coating specialists (think, corrosion-resistant, anti-reflective layers for U-boat periscope optics).

     Here’s a list of capabilities and capital equipment furnished at their own website:

     Products: Equipment: Highly productive web coating equipment; roll-to-roll metal strip coaters; roll-to-roll coating systems for flexible glass, in-line sputter systems for glass; modular process systems for R&D and pilot production; electron beam systems and components; special coating equipment.

     Coatings: Optical multi-layer stacks for display, window, automotive and photovoltaic applications; AR/ARAS [Anti-reflective/Antistatic] coatings; transparent conductive coatings (TCO); solar reflective coatings; barrier coatings; sample coatings using in-house roll-to-roll coater for flexible film, glass & metal foil.

     Components: Rotatable magnetron; planar magnetron; electron beam evaporation systems; monitoring systems for process control.

     (Please pardon any unnecessary line-breaks, should they appear in the preceding content. The webmaster at VON ARDENNE GmbH clearly has brit for shains about hard carriage returns.)

     To put things in perspective … while it is obvious that some of these capabilities (e.g., transparent conductive ITO—Indium-Tin-Oxide—coatings) were not-yet-available, none of the items listed above are entirely without military use.

     From – “City of industry“:

     Even though there were, in 1929, for example, ten major enterprises with more than 1,000 employees in the city, it was equally the endless number of small and medium companies and businesses which determined the extraordinary diversity in Dresden’s economic profile.

     During both World Wars of the 20th century, Dresden’s industry was placed almost fully at the disposal of armaments production…

     One of the only great tragedies associated with the Dresden carpet-bombing came from German efforts to conserve the tremendous collections of art from whatever local schlösser (i.e., castles).

     A convoy of several semi-trailer trucks had been loaded up at various regional locations with artworks readied for storage in the surrounding coal mines—just as Dresden’s town fathers had thankfully done with the stupendous Staatliche Kunstsammlungen (i.e., state art collection), Das Grünes Gewölbe, literally, “The Green Vault” (DO NOT miss clicking the link and following it into this mind-boggling hoard of the very finest that Western art has to offer – six minute video to follow).

     SIDEBAR: Nowhere else on earth will you be presented with such a stunning array of objets d’art. People fly in all the way from Tokyo, Moscow, and Cairo, specifically to view this astounding assemblage of unrivaled artistic masterpieces. They are displayed in an admirably reconstructed treasure-house of Augustus the Strong, Saxon elector and later Polish king. Whatever does not fit in Das Historisches Grünes Gewölbe (“The Old Green Vault”) is installed upstairs in Das Neue Grüne Gewölbe (“The New Green Vault”). Upon request, I will provide the double-secret formula for gaining admission without pre-ordering tickets SIX MONTHS IN ADVANCE.

     Back to the WWII narrative: Having loaded up their semi-trailers with bazillions of dollars worth of priceless artworks, the trucks assembled in Dresden for their final leg to offload out at the coal mines. Germans, known for folgende Bestellungen (i.e., “following orders”), saw it was getting dark and, according to their ironclad union rules, parked for the night. PRECISELY AT GROUND ZERO for Bomber Harris’ carpet bombing several hours later.

     Anyone else who has toured Das Grünes Gewölbe—something that this inveterate art snob HAD TO DO TWICE as part of gaining even a slight appreciation for this mind-bending treasure trove—will have a bare inkling of the unimaginable loss involved.

     To say that the Germans brought this yuge loss upon themselves would be a pathetic understatement. Dresden was NOT like Hiroshima, a non-military target reserved strictly for the purpose of demoralizing America’s WWII Japanese enemy. We will not even go into how richly Nagasaki—home to Mitsubishi’s manufacturing base of their military’s puissant “Zero” fighter airplane and the torpedoes used at Pearl Harbor—deserved its own unique brand of comeuppance. Something that “Fat Man” (or “Big Boy”) delivered in plutonium-laced spades.

     In closing, much to her eventual distress, Mrs. Göring-Eckardt’s contempt for the “Valley of the Clueless” eventually will come back to haunt and bedevil her. A derisive attitude towards one’s own electorate (or just the electorate in general) is a fundamental political hypocrisy (just ask Nixon) whose toleration represents a slumbering voter base.

     Counting on that somnolent electorate to remain in their semi-catatonic state is the gravest of errors. It is exactly akin to basing one’s chess strategy upon the opponent making a mistake. As the electorate slowly begins learning how to play political chess, trolls like Göring-Eckardt may well become some of the earliest object lessons in reciprocity.

     Liberal abuse of power (e.g., the EU) evokes so many rich examples of The Law of Unintended Consequences™ to such a point whereby it just as rapidly becomes a classic Ride the Tiger® situation. Soon enough, voters everywhere will be learning about the necessity of looking backwards to see who’s been riding them. Some dismembering and feasting may be involved…

     • Thank you for telling the truth about the Dresden bombing, the only thing you forgot to put in is that during WWII bombing was very inaccurate, most bombers were lucky if they could drop their loads withing 1 to 5 mils of the target. This is why the Allies used pattern bombing over a large area to ensure that they hit their targets. Also the massive destruction of the pattern bombing was the only way to ensure that the target was destroyed, one or two 500 to thousand pound bombs knocked the factory out of operation for about 1 week.

       As an example When General Eisenhower was ask what were the most devastating weapons the Allies used were he said the 6X6 trucks and the Higgens boat that allowed the Allies to land on beaches instead of having to use ports. These “weapons” reduced the causalities in the landings and allowed the Allies to (usually) keep their forces supplied with gas, ammo and food. There were a couple of times when the Germans were retreating/losing so fast our forces outran their lines of supply and had to stop and wait for the supplies to get to them so they could continue the advance.

       • “Thank you for telling the truth about the Dresden bombing…”

         S’alright, Richard (and thank you for your various replies). Few, if any, non-military people understand the facts about why Dresden was such a strategic bombing target.

         As the “City of industry“ article notes: “During both World Wars of the 20th century, Dresden’s industry was placed almost fully at the disposal of armaments production…”

         “There were a couple of times when the Germans were retreating/losing so fast our forces outran their lines of supply and had to stop and wait for the supplies to get to them so they could continue the advance.”

         As Napoleon famously noted, “An army marches on its stomach.” That maxim, along with, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”, continue to stand as some of the finest battlefield advice any general ever could hope to receive.

7. Berlin sees rise in Salafists, extreme right and radical left: report
   Number of Muslims who espouse the Salafist ideology has risen to 950, according to new report.

   By ZACHARY YOUNG 8/22/18, 11:23 AM CET Updated 8/22/18, 2:53 PM CET
   The German capital is home to a growing number of followers of radical Islam and members of the extreme right, according to a new report.

   The total number of Salafists in Berlin rose to 950 from 840 the previous year, Der Tagesspiegel reported Wednesday, citing an as-yet-unpublished report by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution Berlin.
   The growing numbers in Berlin mirror a nationwide pattern that saw the number of Salafists — who espouse a hard-line interpretation of Islam, and in some cases embrace jihadist ideology — in Germany edge up to 10,800 in 2017 compared to 9,700 the previous year, according to an interior ministry report released last year.

   In its report, the ministry describes Germany’s Salafism scene as “the main recruiting source for jihad” despite the fact that “political Salafists usually refrain from using violence.” It also noted that analysis of recent terror attacks in Germany and in Europe shows that “jihadist activities are very often preceded by Salafist radicalization.”

   Berlin has also seen a rise in adherents of the extreme right Reich Citizens’ Movement, which advocates for a return to Germany’s pre-World War II borders and rejects the legitimacy of the modern German state. The movement counts 500 Berlin adherents, up from 400 the year before, according to the Berlin report. Roughly 100 are classified as far-right extremists.

   The number of violence-prone members of far-right groups has stayed steady at 700, the report also finds. Berlin’s chapter of the far-right National Democratic Party — the successor of the German Reich Party — did not see a rise in members either, with 230 adherents.

   The far-left prisoner support group Rote Hilfe, meanwhile, bolstered its following to 1,450 members in Berlin, with 980 far-left activists deemed prone to violence overall, a slight increase compared to 2016, according to the report.

   • Berlin sees rise in Salafists, extreme right and radical left: report
     Number of Muslims who espouse the Salafist ideology has risen to 950, according to new report.

     If German officials specifically can identify these Salafists, then they can execute prosecute and–or deport them. Any German official or politician that shrugs their shoulders at this flagrant threat to national security belongs in the dock, right alongside their pet terrorist buggermates.

8. Trump slams social media firms for ‘silencing millions’
   Reuters Staff
   AUGUST 24, 2018

   WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump criticized social media companies on Friday for silencing “millions of people” in what he called an act of censorship.
   Trump did not mention any of the companies by name. On Tuesday, Facebook Inc (FB.O), Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) and Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) removed hundreds of accounts tied to an alleged Iranian propaganda operation, while Facebook took down a second campaign it said was linked to Russia.

   “Social Media Giants are silencing millions of people. Can’t do this even if it means we must continue to hear Fake News like CNN, whose ratings have suffered gravely. People have to figure out what is real, and what is not, without censorship!” Trump said.
   https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-tech/trump-slams-social-media-firms-as-silencing-millions-idUSKCN1L917W

   • “Social Media Giants are silencing millions of people. Can’t do this even if it means we must continue to hear Fake News like CNN, whose ratings have suffered gravely. People have to figure out what is real, and what is not, without censorship!” Trump said.

     How is it possible for this raw political newbie to take such seven league strides?

     ‘Tis a rhetorical question, at best, eh? The upshot being that Bush 1.0, Clinton, Bush 2.0, and 0bama all were devastatingly incompetent. Be it, respectively, being bought and sold by the Deep State©, pimped out by special interests, pwned by Gulfies or just voluntarily whoring one’s own self (and US national security) out to America’s most violent virulent enemies—there is little, if any, viable alternate explanation for such outrageous combinations of shameless cupidity and idiocy.

     Although political cartoonist, Mike Keefe, may be a Liberal Loon – he totally nails it with this 2016 campaign trail portrayal of Trump. Well worth clicking on:

     https://fightforrhinos.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/trump-gop-ele-cartoon.jpg

     Enjoy!

     • Trump saw freedom and the rule of law in the US being destroyed, he had enough money to ensure that his kids and grandkids would be able to buy safety from the government but decided to move to change things so the poor people would enjoy the same protection. Protection that was suppose to be provided by the Constitutions, and was until the left got enough power to use the Courts to strip rights away from us instead of protecting them.

       Our current fight is to restore our freedom and the rule of law without a violent civil war, I don’t think the left will allow this to be done peacefully but we have to try to do it peacefully. Violence is the first resort of the tyrants and the last resort of the reasonable people. We have almost reached the point where we will have no choice but to fight back.

       • “Our current fight is to restore our freedom and the rule of law without a violent civil war, I don’t think the left will allow this to be done peacefully but we have to try to do it peacefully. Violence is the first resort of the tyrants and the last resort of the reasonable people. We have almost reached the point where we will have no choice but to fight back.”

         I agree with you on all points, Richard. And, no, Liberals will NOT allow any peaceful resolution of this matter. Quite clearly, they’ll continue pushing for cancellation of Second Amendment Rights, even as their game plan remains unhatched and their followers remain unhinged.

         This has Unhappy Ending™ scrawled tagged all over it (excellent Branco cartoon at link). Too bad that all of these Monster Raving Loonies have yet to “get the memo”.

         This reminds me very little of, “Planting the Flag“…

         Prep for major larf!

9. Tech Companies Are Gathering For A Secret Meeting To Prepare A 2018 Election Strategy

   Reps from up to a dozen of the US’s biggest tech companies plan to meet in San Francisco to discuss efforts to counter manipulation of their platforms.

   Representatives from a host of the biggest US tech companies, including Facebook and Twitter, have scheduled a private meeting for Friday to share their tactics in preparation for the 2018 midterm elections.

   Last week, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, invited employees from a dozen companies, including Google, Microsoft, and Snapchat, to gather at Twitter’s headquarters in downtown San Francisco, according to an email obtained by BuzzFeed News.

   “As I’ve mentioned to several of you over the last few weeks, we have been looking to schedule a follow-on discussion to our industry conversation about information operations, election protection, and the work we are all doing to tackle these challenges,” Gleicher wrote.

   https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kevincollier/tech-companies-are-gathering-for-a-secret-meeting-to

   • Richard: Considering what they are doing to conservatives they are probably meeting to see how they can silence all conservative and Republican voices during the election.

   • Facebook Censors Articles From Salena Zito, Jenna Lynn Ellis, Saying They ‘Look Like Spam’

     Multiple posts sharing articles by prominent conservatives have been temporarily censored on Facebook under the excuse that they “look like spam.” Both articles dealt with the Paul Manafort conviction and the Michael Cohen guilty plea, arguing that these events were not nearly as damning to President Donald Trump as the media supposed.

     First, Facebook blocked Salena Zito, CNN contributor and author of the groundbreaking book “The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics.” On Wednesday afternoon, Zito published a New York Post article explaining “why Trump’s supporters won’t care about Cohen and Manafort’s convictions.”

     On Thursday morning, she noticed something out of place. “So this is interesting… [Facebook] took down my post of my reporting for the [New York Post] — I’ve received nine separate messages from readers telling me the same thing has happened to them. ‘sup [Facebook]?” Zito asked in a tweet.

     https://pjmedia.com/trending/facebook-censors-articles-from-salena-zito-jenna-lynn-ellis-saying-they-look-like-spam/

   • “Representatives from a host of the biggest US tech companies, including Facebook and Twitter, have scheduled a private meeting for Friday to share their tactics in preparation for the 2018 midterm elections.”

     JUST AS AMERICA WAS BIRTHED in proverbial “smoke-filled rooms”, so do we now have the not-so-golden opportunity TO SEE AMERICA DIE in identical “smoke-filled rooms”. Only the transmission rates have changed.

     The time is NOW to begin starving out these über-Liberal Internet puppeteers. So far, both CNN and the NFL have taken tremendous hits in their audience numbers. Hallelujah for that quantum of solace.

     However many multimillions of dollars these CNN and NFL dropouts may represent, THEY ARE WEE LITTLE BABY STEPS (i.e., farts in a windstorm) compared to the nonviolent financial mayhem it will prove necessary to inflict upon these treacherous, polarizing, divisive, sacks of Leftist sh!t and their demagnetized moral compasses.

     This purposeful interference with and intentional biasing of an American federal election cycle is a Capital Crime and ought to be treated as such.

     Basta ya!

     • Keep your musket clean and your powder dry, events are approaching the point where they will be necessary if we are to retain our freedom.

10. Trump slams social media firms as ‘silencing millions’

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump criticized social media companies on Friday, saying without evidence that they have silenced “millions of people” in an act of censorship.

    Trump did not mention any companies by name. On Tuesday, Facebook Inc, Twitter Inc and Alphabet Inc removed hundreds of accounts tied to an alleged Iranian propaganda operation, while Facebook took down a second campaign it said was linked to Russia.

11. ‘Whichever way you dress it up, it’s theft’: EXCLUSIVE – White farmer who is set to become the first to have his £10m game reserve seized in South Africa’s controversial land grab policy says government just wants to mine for minerals

    The owner of the first South African farm lined up to have his land seized without payment or fair compensation blasted the government yesterday saying: ‘Whichever way they dress it up it is theft’.

    Johan Steenkamp, 67, who co-owns a £10million hunting farm in Limpopo province, has been ordered to hand over his land, following a ten-year battle to stop the government buying it for a tenth of its value.

    Mr Steenkamp says Prime Minister Cyril Ramaphosa’s plans of redistribution of white-owned land to South Africa’s black poor is just a cover so that the government can get their hands on valuable coal deposits found under his farm land.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6094565/White-farmer-set-game-reserve-seized-South-Africa-calls-theft.html

    • OVERVIEW: ‘There’s a black genocide in SA and US’ – EFF hits back at Trump following Twitter storm
      2018-08-23 15:00

      South Africans have expressed their views after US President Donald Trump tweeted that he has asked his secretary of state to look into land expropriation and the killing of farmers in South Africa.

      https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/live-sa-reacts-to-donald-trump-comments-on-land-expropriation-farm-murders-20180823#item-94

    • ‘We’re prepared to die for land expropriation without compensation’

      EFF leader Julius Malema has accused President Cyril Ramaphosa and the Democratic Alliance (DA) of colluding with AfriForum to sabotage plans to expropriate land without compensation.

      JOHANNESBURG – Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema says they’re prepared to die if it means South Africa will achieve land expropriation without compensation.

      The party has claimed that it’s aware of white extremists who are opposed to the policy and are training as snipers in Pretoria to kill them.

      Malema was addressing the media on Thursday at the party’s headquarters in Braamfontein.

      https://ewn.co.za/2018/08/23/we-re-prepared-to-die-for-land-expropriation-without-compensation

      • Media sugarcoat race-based South African land seizures condemned by economists
        By Jerome Woehrle August 23, 2018

        South Africa’s government has begun seizing land from white farmers for only “a tenth of” its market value. And it is moving to change the country’s constitution to explicitly allow the South African government to seize white land without paying any compensation at all.

        Neighboring Zimbabwe seized the land of white farmers, and doing so destroyed its economy: It resulted in widespread malnutrition among black farm workers who used to work on white farms, and an exodus of white farmers from the country. South Africa has learned nothing from Zimbabwe’s tragic history, and is now seizing land owned by whites for nominal amounts of money. Even South Africa’s union of black farmers, the National African Farmers Union, thinks this is a bad idea. It will reduce land values, shrink agricultural production, and harm the country’s banks, which have mortgages on the land, as well as harming farm owners and most black farm workers.

        But “news” reporters here in the U.S. don’t like being reminded of these realities. After President Donald Trump criticized the seizures and the treatment of white farmers by South Africa, media organs rushed to take issue with Trump’s criticism, including CNN, and newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times. They depict the seizure of white farms as an act “to redress racial inequalities.” Their thinking seems to be that the land seizure must perforce help South Africa’s blacks because it harm whites, apparently viewing economics as a zero sum game in which harming one group of people must benefit another. They avoided quoting the many South African economists critical of the seizures or the concerns about the seizures expressed by the black farmers union. Nor did most of them disclose to their readers the fact that neighboring Zimbabwe had tried the same approach, with tragic results. Nor did they quote the scholars at a well-known free-market think tank (the Cato Institute) who had asked President Trump to take action.

        https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/08/23/media-sugarcoat-risky-south-african-land-seizures-condemned-by-economists/

    • “Johan Steenkamp, 67, who co-owns a £10million hunting farm in Limpopo province…”

      They don’t call it the “great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River” for nothing. Incidentally, £10million converts into nearly USD13MM.

      Much like with Churchill’s immortal shake-off of whatever minor nobility from Burke’s Peerage—now, it is only a matter of determining just how, “grey-green and greasy” the locale really is.

      Prime Minister Cyril Ramaphosa and his institutionalized confiscation strikeforce theft of legitimately held property merely represents a “last button on the coat” in this thinly veiled genocide against White South African land owners.

      After all, look at how well everything turned out for Zimbabwe (nee Rhodesia). In a short decade or two under Robert Mugabe’s supremely skilled supervision, it went from being famed as sub-Saharan Africa’s “bread basket” over to international famine-aid recipient. We’ll desperately struggle to omit any mention of Mugabe’s printing up 100 Trillion Dollar banknotes. Emkay? At least Mugabe got to add a few dozen extra sprockets to his pristine (i.e., an outfit never once stained by something so repulsive as ecktual combat) uniform.

      Farmin’ be hard, dagnabbit!. (I’ll invite Richard to step in here and explain such agricultural rocket science to the uninitiated.) This is all-the-more-so when those involved are semi-retarded from the outset. It’s yust another pluperfect example of how every last political connection on earth won’t alter the outcome of complex land management issues. Especially for those who never even could have built a log cabin using multiple chainsaws, drayage teams, and enough mortar to crush Hue City like a slow-moving cockroach!

      Now, where was I?!? Oh, yas … farmin’ be hard, and the cronies of Prime Minister Ramaphosa are about to find out exactly how demanding it is, even just to operate a game park.

      Any bets on the near-warp speed with which all edible game—a term that carries an already wide degree of latitude almost anywhere in Africa—will be stripped out of Steenkamp’s game preserve?

      [crickets]

      • Farming good land is hard work, farming marginal land like that in most of South Africa is highly skilled work that if done will do damage it will take a minimum of one decade to repair and it may take several decades. The family farms I know are on good land that is in small portions of hilly grazing or hunting land. Even then you have to work from sin to sun to get the crops in (planting the seeds at the right time of the moon does give you a better crop, don’t ask me why I just know it works. No I don’t know which time of the moon to plant) during harvest time you can spend as much as 20 hours a day on the combine harvesting the crop. Raising livestock is even harder and more expensive, and you have to sell this years crop at the time when they are ready to be sold no matter what the current price is.

        Farming is damn hard work and if y ou don’t have a large amount of land you are doing the work for piss poor pay.

        Don’t give me the BS about farming being a way of life, it is a business and if you don’t run it as one you will soon lose the farm. You have to know the crops to plant (different locations in the nation/world different crops. You have to know how to take care of and nurture the land so it will remain productive. You have to know the various animal and plant diseases and how to fight them.

        Finally if you don’t have a minimum of around 1000 acres to farm you will need another job, either part time or full time to bring in enough money to keep the farm in production. When I was a kid if you had around 100 acres of fertile land you could make a good living, thanks to the planned inflation of Keynesian economics you now need a minimum of 1000 acres and after 8 years of Obama that may have increased to 1500 acres. The only good news is that new technology allows the Farmer and his/her family (when the law will allow them to help on the family farm) farm the more and more land without having to hire temporary of full time help.

        FYI if you are thinking of moving to a farm if you can’t expect to recover the purchase price in 20 years the price of the land is too high. The way people are fleeing the Democrat controlled states land prices have been pushed os high the purchasers would recover their purchase price for 50 years or more. The people are paying the prices knowing they will never recover their money to get out of the Democrat controlled states and in some cases to get into states with rational gun control laws and rational self defense laws.

        • Thank you for your usual reliable assessment, Richard.

          From The 10 Most Dangerous Jobs in America (2011):

          1.) Fishermen
          2.) Logging workers
          3.) Airplane pilots and flight engineers
          4.) Farmers and ranchers
          5.) Mining machine operators
          6.) Roofers
          7.) Sanitation workers
          8.) Truck drivers and delivery workers
          9.) Industrial machine workers
          10.) Police officers
          [emphasis added]

          What the article (and its list) does not adequately convey is how, within that #8 cohort of, “Truck drivers and delivery workers”, there resides an especially high-risk specialty sub-group of urban pizza delivery drivers.

          How their work manages to be even more hazardous than that of law enforcement officers in the exact same environment bespeaks a particularly dangerous occupation that, too often, is lavishly rewarded with minimum wage plus tips.

          Move half-way up the chart and there are your “Farmers and ranchers”. For those who wonder about how such seemingly simple jobs became so high-risk—please think about single-handedly operating a tractor whilst disc harrowing the back forty (miles away from the farm house).

          Trying to do this with two people (for safety’s sake) automatically drops both productivity and already razor-thin profit margins. Although cellular telephones have helped to ameliorate some of the serious risk involved, there’s still plenty of time to die while hoping that someone finds you in time.

          Having both people ride on a single tractor doesn’t do much to reduce risk, as a simple overturning still could kill both people.

          By now, it should be fairly obvious that farm life is rife with hazards to human health—like few other rural operations.

          This is why farmers (and ranchers) deserve an extra measure of respect from all of us who are fed and sustained by this hardy breed of individual.

          Agribusiness has done its level best to minimize that respect and may those sodding ivory-tower bastards rot in everlasting hell for downplaying the immense risks being taken to feed us.

12. People are growing marijuana illegally in national forests – and it’s ravaging themSome of America’s most pristine forests are under assault by illegal marijuana cultivation that is ravaging the environment. Federal narcotics agents destroyed more than 1.4 million marijuana plants last year, according to the U.S. Forestry Service, and thousands of pounds of trash and numerous toxic chemicals were also removed.

    It’s so rugged in the San Bernardino National Forest that federal agents searching for marijuana are sometimes lifted from place to place by helicopter, reports CBS News’ John Blackstone, who joined agents in Southern California as they confronted the illegal and dangerous growing operation.

    “We have a marijuana garden down here with unknown number of plants and as of right now an unknown number of suspects,” said Dan Briot of the U.S. Forest Service. He is overseeing the undercover operation.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/growing-marijuana-illegally-national-forests-ravaging-environment/

    • America’s Invisible Pot Addicts – More and more Americans are reporting near-constant cannabis use, as legalization forges ahead.
      https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/08/americas-invisible-pot-addicts/567886/

13. David Horowitz: Visa, Mastercard Cut Off Payments to My Think Tank Based on SPLC ‘Hate Group’ Label

    The David Horowitz Freedom Center has had their donation processing system blocked by Visa and Mastercard allegedly following a campaign by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Visa has since contacted Breitbart News to deny involvement in the blacklisting of the Freedom Center.

    The David Horowitz Freedom Center stated in a recent email that its ability to accept donations by credit card has been disabled by both Visa and Mastercard following a campaign by the SPLC to label the Freedom Center as a hate group. This situation comes shortly after Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch was forced off the funding platform Patreon following pressure from Mastercard.

    The Freedom Center is the next target of the SPLC, and they are using Mastercard and Visa again in their attempt to shut down conservative voices. In an email sent to supporters, Horowitz outlined how the SPLC had convinced Mastercard and Visa to block the Freedom Center from receiving payments and donations via credit card. In the email, Horowitz requested that supporters send donations via check to a P.O. Box.

    In the email to supporters, the Freedom Center lashed out at the move by Mastercard and Visa, saying: “this blow could be the end of the Freedom Center. Decades of work, down the drain because the hateful Left wants to squash free speech and silence an organization that dares to question them.

    https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/08/23/david-horowitz-visa-mastercard-cut-off-payments-to-my-think-tank-based-on-splc-hate-group-label/

    • David Horowitz: Visa, Mastercard Cut Off Payments to My Think Tank Based on SPLC ‘Hate Group’ Label

      Easy, peasey! Yust scissor up your Visa and Mastercards, then switch over to American Express (AMEX) or a Capital One Venture Rewards credit card. Ideally, the pieces would be mailed back to their respective institutions with a copy of the article that Horowitz is referring to. Including an image of the once-intact (and now cut up) credit card would be icing on the cake.

      Few things get the mule’s a lender’s attention like shards of their particular credit card tumbling out of a newly opened envelope.

      • I thought Capital One is Mastercard, isn’t it?

        • “I thought Capital One is Mastercard, isn’t it?”

          I tried to research this carefully. However, if Capital One is sitting astride Mastercard, then screw them and the horse they rode in on.

          It’s long overdue to begin starving out these bloodsucking leeches. NOBODY gets off easy in this upcoming kerfuffle.

          These large banking institutions only will sit up and take notice once their wallets begin to dramatically thin out. They’ve been farting through silk for a dozen decades and there are few alternate ways to “get the mule’s attention”, other than by assuring a significant reduction in profits.

          Liberals can howl all they want about Eeeeeeevil Capitalism—even as they charge up yet another round of plane fare, Club Med bookings, and the latest Caribbean fashions. Time and again, those on the Left repeatedly demonstrate a degree of moral flexibility that defies polite description.

          Then again, turnabout is as always, fair play. BDS (Boycott, Divest, And Sanction) cuts both ways and represents just one of many “sauce for the gander” countermeasures (e.g., Butter, Dill, and Saffron). While it may not trip off of the tongue, for the first time in I-don’t-know-how-long, America finally seems to have someone in the Oval Office who isn’t just a babbling chair-warmer.

          Put another way: NOT devising some some coordinated and seriously detrimental campaigns against these verminous @ssclowns is the equivalent of rewarding them.

          We can, and MUST, do better. Anything less is a tacit surrender of our fundamental power as voters or consumers and an abject concession of our most basic role in shaping the West’s future.

          As Barry Goldwater was wont to observe:

          “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

          Now, please take a brief moment to integrate Goldwater’s negative concept of “virtue” with the Left’s psychotic “virtue signalling”. We both know what sort of catastrophic outcome awaits a voting public that is unable to discern the glaring differences involved.

          TYVM, YMMV.

          We owe it to ourselves, if no one else…

14. Venezuela’s nightmare is spreading to its neighbors

    After the collapse of Chavism, which way will Latin America turn?

    It wasn’t long ago that Venezuela, led by a fiery caudillo and dedicated to spreading its brand of populist super-socialism, boosted allies’ economies near and far with petrodollars. Hugo Chavez was spreading his Bolivarian revolution all over and times were good.

    No más.

    Spending lavishly to prop up like-minded allies’ hold on power, investing heavily in giveaways at home and neglecting modernization of the aging oil industry did the trick. Venezuela, possessing some of the world’s largest oil reserves, is bankrupt.

    History-making inflation rates are predicted to reach 1 million percent by year’s end. Supermarket shelves are empty. Hospitals no longer can or will tend to the sick. Gangs roam the streets. Think “Babylon Berlin” — with a sense that “Mad Max” is where things are headed.

    https://nypost.com/2018/08/23/venezuelas-nightmare-is-spreading-to-its-neighbors/

15. NASA Chief Wants to Send Humans to the Moon — ‘To Stay’

    HOUSTON — Jim Bridenstine wants to make sure that there is never another day when humans are not in space.

    “In fact,” the NASA administrator said, “we want lots of humans in space.”

    Bridenstine, who became the space agency’s chief in April, recently sat down with Space.com and other reporters during a visit to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, during which he shared what he saw as his priority for NASA going forward. [These 9 Astronauts Will Fly the 1st Flights on SpaceX and Boeing Spaceships]

    https://www.space.com/41599-nasa-moon-space-priorities-jim-bridenstine-update.html

    • NASA Chief Wants to Send Humans to the Moon — ‘To Stay’

      I could not agree more. Let’s please start with Al Sharpton, Nancy Pelosi, Mr. and Mrs. Dianne Feinstein, Jeremiah Wright Jr., Angela Merkel, plus a handful of other wriggling sniggroes to bolster this lunar colony’s A-List.

      There is so much work that needs to be done here on earth that humanity simply cannot afford to have these sociopaths sociopolitical lampreys underfoot, so to speak.

      Without massive berms to shield human habitats from incoming micrometeorites, and stray laser beams, such a lunar installation would be supremely vulnerable.

      It’s difficult to imagine a better outcome.

      • This is how that would work out:

        https://youtu.be/DXRp3qWJDWA

        • Since you had to bring the immortal genius of Robin Williams into this, here’s a clip of him in his prime, on the Carson show, with his idol and beloved mentor, Jonathan Winters.

          Just blink and you will miss a masterful joke.

16. It’s not just fog turning the sky gray: SF air quality is 3 times worse than Beijing

    Update: The Bay Area Air Quality Management District issued a Spare the Air Alert for the Bay Area for Thursday and Friday. Read the full story here.

    End of update.

    The gray haze over San Francisco isn’t just summer fog. It’s also smoke from a series of wildfires burning on the West Coast, which has pushed air quality into unhealthy levels.

    The Air Quality Index for San Francisco Thursday was 152, qualifying as “unhealthy.” At this level, even those without respiratory diseases may begin to experience negative side effects, such as coughing, trouble breathing and irritated eyes and airways. Parts of the East Bay, including Oakland and Berkeley, and the South Bay were also in the “unhealthy” air quality range.

    READ ALSO: Bay Area weather updates

    Smoke from West Coast fires — in Northern California, the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia — spread over the Pacific Ocean and onshore winds are pushing it into the Bay Area, said Daniel Alrick, a meteorologist at the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, by tweet.

    https://www.sfgate.com/weather/article/air-quality-wildfire-smoke-fog-gray-breathe-health-13178427.php

17. Fenced out: LA businesses find new way to keep away homeless

    As homelessness rises in the city, business owners are blocking off sidewalks

    The day the fence arrived, Gabe was sitting next to his tent, right at the heart of Los Angeles’ Skid Row. It was a chain link fence – about six feet tall – placed at the edge of the sidewalk, where it neatly enclosed Gabe, his neighbors, and the tented homes they have made for themselves on the streets of what is sometimes called the homeless capital of the country.

    “They put the whole sidewalk inside the fence,” said Gabe, an older black man with kind eyes and a disarming demeanor who has lived on the streets of Skid Row for about five years. He was scaling a fish over a red plastic cooler as he talked. “I felt like we were in prison on the sidewalk. It felt like we were in prison and could get out, but still in prison, you know what I mean?”

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/aug/24/where-the-sidewalk-ends-businesses-keep-out-homeless-with-fences

    • And how many of the people who put up the fence want Trump gone because he wants to build one on the border?

      • Probably most.

18. Bruce Ohr Bypassed Superiors to Give Info from Steele Dossier to FBI Officials

    According to a new report, Bruce Ohr bypassed his superiors to share intelligence from the so-called ‘Trump dossier’ with the FBI.

    The report came Thursday ahead of a scheduled hearing where GOP investigators will grill Ohr on an alleged anti-Trump bias campaign launched by the Obama-administration.

    The Justice Department official has been accused of relaying opposition research to Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS during President Trump’s campaign in 2016.

    However, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has stated Ohr was “never involved” in the Russia investigation.

    Ohr is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee and the Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

    http://www.oann.com/bruce-ohr-bypassed-superiors-to-give-info-from-steele-dossier-to-fbi-officials/

    • “Ohr is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee and the Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.”

      So, is this the “high White Horse souse” … er, I mean, “high White House source” that I keep hearing about?!? Enquiring minds want to know!

      • Possibly, I know he and his wife are deeply involved in all of the scandals.

19. Report: Pres. Trump Floats Idea Of Death Penalty For Fentanyl Dealers

    President Trump is renewing calls for the death penalty for convicted drug dealers, according to reports.

    The president has told Attorney General Jeff Sessions he believes those who illegally deal fentanyl should be sentenced to death, according to a report released Thursday.

    Those comments are said to have come during a meeting with other cabinet members Thursday at the White House.

    President Trump has previously made similar remarks, as he looks to take a tough stance against those who distribute potentially deadly drugs.

    Fentanyl generally comes into the country through Mexican drug cartels, but it is mostly produced in China.

    In 2017, 29 thousand Americans were estimated to have died using fentanyl.

    http://www.oann.com/report-pres-trump-floats-idea-of-death-penalty-for-fentanyl-dealers/

    • “In 2017, 29 thousand Americans were estimated to have died using fentanyl.”

      Isn’t this the sort of sh!t that’s supposed to set off klaxons and strobes all throughout America’s ship of state?

      Where is the Stuxnet virus when we really need it?!?

      Maybe once the captains of Red China’s fentanyl manufacturing facilities begin experiencing tragically avoidable, yet unexpectedly fatal automobile accidents and residential structural collapses, will they begin to sit up and take notice.

      If such unanticipated events fail to attract sufficient attention, p’raps a few dozen of their first-born children (especially sons) kacking off from fentanyl overdoses might “get the mule’s attention”. Same goes for any of the Mexican narco-warlords that are transshipping this Commie chemical weapon.

      Shock chlorinating yust a few dozen of these deep-end (i.e., wealthy) gene pools would convey an unmistakable message. If it was Beijing’s Mandarins (or their children) who were taking the hit, we all know that these fentanyl scum-suckers would be twisting gently in the breeze, YESTERDAY!

      Pour encouragé les autres of course…

      29,000 dead Americans in a single year is an outright declaration of WAR.

      Yust ask Filipinos how they feel about North Korea’s state-run, industrialized production and distribution of shabu (i.e., smokeable methamphetamine hydrochloride AKA Methedrine™).

20. China seeks domination, U.S. says, after El Salvador dumps Taiwan

    WASHINGTON/TAIPEI (Reuters) – The United States on Thursday attacked El Salvador’s decision to ditch diplomatic ties with Taiwan in favor of China, saying the change was of grave concern to Washington and warning that China was offering economic inducements to seek domination.

    Self-ruled Taiwan now has formal relations with only 17 countries, almost all of them small and less developed nations in Central America and the Pacific, including Belize and Nauru.

    Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen this week vowed to fight China’s “increasingly out of control” behavior as El Salvador became the third country to switch allegiance to Beijing this year. China views Taiwan as a wayward province, with no right to state-to-state ties.

    In a statement likely to inflame already strained relations with Beijing, the White House said El Salvador’s government had made the decision “in a non-transparent fashion only months before they leave office”.

    “The El Salvadoran government’s receptiveness to China’s apparent interference in the domestic politics of a Western Hemisphere country is of grave concern to the United States, and will result in a reevaluation of our relationship with El Salvador,” it said.

    http://www.oann.com/u-s-says-china-seeks-domination-after-el-salvador-ditches-taiwan/

    • “China views Taiwan as a wayward province, with no right to state-to-state ties.”

      Let’s see just how much time Beijing will have to spare for such piddling little matters like Taiwan once that massive environmental catastrophe known as “Three Gorges Dam” has been breached. Saber rattling doesn’t count for much when you’re walking into a free-fire zone.

      “The El Salvadoran government’s receptiveness to China’s apparent interference in the domestic politics of a Western Hemisphere country is of grave concern to the United States, and will result in a reevaluation of our relationship with El Salvador…”

      It seems as though only Trump is able to speak in a dialect that these tinpot, banana republic weasels can understand. Muh heart pumps piss.

      • How much time would they have to spare when their environmental damage causes a total economic collapse?

21. Vietnamese website taunts Chinese drama fans with South China Sea quiz

    HANOI (Reuters) – A Vietnamese website, which only works when users correctly answer a quiz about disputed islands in the South China Sea, has infuriated scores of television fans in China desperate to catch the latest episode of a popular Chinese period drama.

    The drama — “The Story of Yanxi Palace” — has attracted a huge following in China for its colorful depiction of Qing Dynasty-era politics and the tale of a brave and plucky young concubine who outsmarts her rivals.

    The first 56 episodes of the show are being aired for free on Chinese video streaming platform iQiyi, which holds exclusive rights to the drama. For a fee, iQiyi members can watch eight more episodes.

    But a Vietnamese website somehow obtained extra episodes which have not yet been broadcast in China.

    Chinese drama fans flocked to bomtan.org, which hosts online copies of Asian television dramas, only to be met with a challenge which pits patriotism against the insatiable urge to binge watch television.

    The website, which did not appear to have rights to broadcast the drama, asks users to answer questions confirming their Vietnamese identity before the website loads.

    http://www.oann.com/vietnamese-website-taunts-chinese-drama-fans-with-south-china-sea-quiz/

22. 1 in 5 Democrats agrees with Cuomo’s original assessment that America was never great
    By Rusty Weiss August 24, 2018

    New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo went into overdrive to recant his casual observation that “America was never that great,” but maybe he needn’t have bothered.

    A new poll from Rasmussen Reports indicates that a surprisingly high percentage of Democrats share the view that America “was never that great.”

    Cuomo recently made those comments to a room full of people at a bill-signing event, drawing audible gasps and awkward laughter from the crowd.

    “We’re not going to make America great again,” Cuomo said, taking a shot at President Trump’s famous campaign slogan. “It was never that great.”

    While a vast majority of voters disagree with the anti-American sentiment, one in five Democrats agrees.

    https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/08/24/1-in-5-democrats-agrees-with-cuomos-original-assessment-that-america-was-never-great/

23. Sara Carter Weighs in on Timing of Replacing Jeff Sessions

24. Joe diGenova: Jeff Sessions has no command presence
    35,703 views

25. US Firm Claims Indicted Iranian Hackers Still Targeting American Universities (sputniknews, Aug 24, 2018)
    https://sputniknews.com/world/201808241067448224-iran-us-cyber-security/

    “An Iranian hacker group with the improbable name Cobalt Dickens, indicted by the United States in March, is likely behind hundreds of fake websites set up to steal research and student passwords from at hundreds of universities, the security firm Secure Works reported on Friday.

    “Sixteen domains contained over 300 spoofed websites and login pages for 76 universities located in 14 countries, including Australia, Canada, China, Israel, Japan, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States,” the release said.

    The hacker group was especially active this month, despite a March 2018 indictment by the US Department of Justice of the Mabna Institute and nine Iranian nationals in connection with Cobalt Dickens activity occurring between 2013 and 2017, the release explained…”

26. Former Turkish lawmaker seeking political asylum in Greece (abcnews, Aug 24, 2018)
    https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/turkish-lawmaker-seeking-political-asylum-greece-57375878

    “Greek authorities say a pro-Kurdish former lawmaker convicted of insulting Turkey’s president is requesting asylum in Greece after illegally crossing the border.

    A police official said Turkish national Leyla Birlik, 44, surrendered to Greek police Thursday near the northeastern town of Alexandroupolis, and was in the process of requesting asylum in Greece.

    He spoke on condition of anonymity Friday because he was not authorized to discuss the case.

    Birlik, a former People’s Democratic Party, or HDP, lawmaker was sentenced in January to 21 months’ imprisonment for insulting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. She was freed pending appeal but banned from leaving Turkey.

    Birlik had also been arrested in 2016 along with the HDP co-leaders on separate terror-related charges. She was released pending trial but was banned from leaving the country.”

27. French Woman Dies in Fire After Firefighters Harassed By French ‘Youths’ During Rescue (breitbart, Aug 24, 2018)
    https://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/08/24/french-woman-dies-in-fire-after-firefighters-harassed-and-robbed-by-french-youths/

    “A 61-year-old French woman died early Wednesday morning in Nice as a result of a fire in her apartment building, with firefighters unable to help her after being harassed by local “youths.”…”

    • That’s a serious breakdown of public order, hope the French government will finally crack down on this sort of thing.
      I used to be preplexed when people attack first responders, they’re there to help after all. I guess the purpose is to ambush representatives of the state, to show that they’re stronger and the real power in the hood. It’s a show of force.
      In this case,the arsonists may have targeted this woman, maybe somebody who called the police on them before.

28. French Police Seize Dozens of Sheep Hidden in Garage Ahead of Islamic Ritual Slaughter Festival (breitbart, Aug 24, 2018)
    https://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/08/24/french-police-seize-dozens-of-sheep-hidden-in-garage-ahead-of-islamic-ritual-slaughter-festival/

    “French police in the heavily migrant populated suburbs of Paris have seized 32 sheep that were found in the garage of a pizzeria ahead of the Islamic Eid al-Adha festival in which Muslims sacrifice animals.

    The animals were found in the commune of Drancy, which is located in the heavily migrant populated Seine-Saint-Denis suburbs to the north of Paris which have become well-known for having a large Muslim population. The seized sheep were taken to an animal shelter in Chailly-en-Brie, Le Parisien reports.

    While adherents of the Islamic faith are allowed to engage in ritual halal slaughter for Eid al-Adha, by French law they must do so in a controlled environment at a recognized slaughterhouse both for hygiene reasons and to combat potential animal cruelty.

    The discovery was not the only one of hidden sheep intended to be slaughtered over the Islamic festival. In Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil, police were tipped off by the association for the defence of animals and found five more sheep located at three separate addresses.

    Police also arrested a man earlier this week after he had illegally shot two sheep.

    The slaughter of animals in connection with the festival has also been the subject of controversy in neighbouring Belgium, with two of the country’s three regions banning slaughter without having the animal stunned beforehand…”

    • Eid al Adha 2018 -Muslim ritual slaughter in a bathroom

      graphic

      • They’ve been doing this in europe sine they first arrived 50 years ago. At least these guys have the decency to do it indoors, it’s common to use the balcony, lol.
        i wonder how they’ll dispose of the waste. I’ve seen bloody sheep fur just dumped on the street, disgusting.

    • Muslim responds to Bardot on Eid slaughter

29. ‘Islamic State has NOT been vanquished’: Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt warns ISIS terrorists are far from beaten as he reveals 180 British jihadis have been killed (dailymail, Aug 24, 2018)
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6093867/ISIS-NOT-vanquished-warns-Foreign-Secretary-Jeremy-Hunt.html

    “ISIS has ‘not been vanquished’ despite 180 British-linked jihadis having been killed in the Middle East, Jeremy Hunt has warned

    The Foreign Secretary said the terror group has been driven from almost all of its territory in Syria and Iraq but has responded by evolving into a covert terrorist network with tentacles around the world.

    Mr Hunt also repeated United Nations estimates that around 20,000 ISIS fighters remain in Syria and Iraq, with citizens of many countries among them.

    He said around 900 people with links to the UK travelled to fight in Syria and Iraq, telling the UN Security Council in New York: ‘About 40% returned to the UK in the early days of Daesh’s (ISIS’s) so-called caliphate and some 20% are believed dead. The rest are still in Iraq, Syria or elsewhere.’

    Speaking at the UN headquarters in New York, Mr Hunt said: ‘The point I wish to emphasise today is Daesh has not been vanquished and the root causes of its emergence have yet to be resolved…”

30. https://www.csis.org/analysis/frances-determined-struggle-against-salafi-jihadism

31. ISIL releases new audio purportedly of leader al-Baghdadi encouraging attacks in Canada

    The question of whether al-Baghdadi is dead or alive has been a continuing source of mystery and confusion

    BEIRUT — The Islamic State group has released a new militant audio recording, purportedly of its shadowy leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi inciting followers to attack Canada and Europe.

    In the audio, al-Baghdadi — whose whereabouts and fate remain unknown — urges followers to “persevere” and continue fighting the group’s enemies everywhere.

    The 54-minute audio entitled “Give Glad Tidings to the Patient” was released by the extremist group’s central media arm, al-Furqan Foundation, on Wednesday evening.

    The audio’s authenticity could not be independently verified and there were no clues as to where it was recorded.

    The group first called on followers to attack Canada in 2014 in an audio recording by spokesman Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani. One month later, ISIL would take credit for Michael Zehaf-Bibeau storming Parliament Hill and killing Cpl. Nathan Cirillo. Since then, ISIL has also taken credit for the Danforth shootings in Toronto, where Faisal Hussain killed two and injured 13. Authorities, however, have said there’s no evidence to support a link between Hussain and ISIL.

    The question of whether al-Baghdadi is dead or alive has been a continuing source of mystery and confusion. The extremist group has lost around 90 per cent of territory it controlled in Iraq and Syria in 2014, when IS declared its so-called “caliphate.”

    He is believed to be hiding somewhere in the desert that stretches across the Syrian-Iraqi border region. His last audio message was on Sept. 28, 2017 in which he called on his followers to burn their enemies everywhere and target “media centres of the infidels.”

    In Wednesday’s recording, al-Baghdadi congratulates followers on the occasion of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Ada and makes references to current events, including Turkey’s row with the United States over its detention of American pastor Andrew Brunson.

    If the voice on the audio is confirmed to be that of al-Baghdadi, this would date the message to this month and disprove reports of his death.

    “America is going through the worst time in its entire existence,” al-Baghdad says, adding that Russia is competing with the U.S. over regional influence and clout.

    He also criticizes surrenders by the rebels in southern Syria to President Bashar Assad’s forces, calling them traitors and urges fighters to join the Islamic State group instead. He also urges patience, perseverance and continued jihad, or holy war.

    Al-Baghdadi has only appeared in public once in 2014 in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. There have been recurring reports of his death or injury, including reports by Russian officials last year who said there was a “high probability” that al-Baghdadi was killed in a Russian airstrike on the outskirts of the Syrian city of Raqqa.

    U.S. officials later said they believed he was still alive.

    https://calgaryherald.com/news/canada/is-leader-releases-purported-audio-1st-in-almost-a-year/wcm/aaceb4cb-705c-4eef-a2e4-d06fc7d2feb5

32. <strong<Italy threatens to suspend EU funding over migrant issue

    • Threats are useless’ – Brussels rejects Italy’s migration ultimatum

    • EU Meeting Ends With No Deal On Migrant Redistribution

      Italy and other EU member states couldn’t find a solution at a meeting in Brussels on how to share the burden over migrant redistribution coming by sea, nor what to do with the 177 migrants currently stranded on a ship that is docked in an Italian port.

      Ten European Union states meeting over their latest migration tussle in Brussels on Friday found no solution for disembarking Mediterranean migrants stranded on the Ubaldo Diciotti ship which is docked in the Sicilian port of Catania, diplomats confirmed to Reuters. As a reminder, yesterday Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio threatened to stop financial contributions to the European Union next year unless other states agreed to take in migrants being held on a coastguard ship in Sicily.

      “Italy was pressing to come up with a solution for Diciotti,” one diplomat said. “But it was not the most important element for the others, they wanted to talk more about structural solutions for the Mediterranean ships.”

      “So there has not been a deal on Diciotti.”

      After the meeting, the exasperated Italian PM Conte said the EU has “lost an opportunity” to show solidarity and responsibility by failing to offer a solution on the migrant ship.

      Conte also said that the meeting on migrants didn’t follow the June decisions, and decried the EU’s “hypocrisy”, slamming the “gulf between words and actions over immigration” and said Italy would act accordingly.

      Meanwhile, according to press reports, scabies have been reported among 177 migrants stranded on the Diciotti with chief prosecutor Luigi Patronaggio describing the situation as “devastating.” Pattinaggio, who is investigating the situation on behalf of the city of Agrigento, said: “On board Diciotti there are people sick with scabies and babies: devastating reality.”

      MSF psychologist Nathalie Leiba said: “I went to the harbour in Catania to give psychological support to a group of Eritrean children who had been allowed to leave the Diciotti boat. I found them exhausted. They were confused.”

      “They understood that there had been a problem which meant that they couldn’t disembark, but they didn’t know why.”

      On Thursday, Salvini described those aboard the Diciotti as “illegal immigrants,” and said they won’t be allowed to step foot on Italian soil. Instead, he insisted fellow European Union nations take in some of the asylum-seekers.

      “Italy’s no longer Europe’s refugee camp,” he tweeted. “Upon my authorization, no one is disembarking from the Diciotti.”

      Siding with his Italian colleagues, Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Thursday after meeting Italian counterpart that the Italian and Hungarian governments’ policies on migration are identical on a multitude of points.

      “The Hungarian government cooperates with everybody who seeks to stop illegal migration and prioritizes border protection,” Szijjarto told MTI after his meeting.

      The position of the new Italian government and the new Italian Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini, coincides with the Hungarian government’s in many ways, he said. “We agreed that the root causes [of migration] must be addressed … and entering Europe must be done according to European rules.”

      Hungary maintains that migrants should not be distributed among EU countries but should be prevented from coming to Europe in the first place.

      https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-24/eu-meeting-ends-no-deal-migrant-redistribution

    • Catania – protesters and counter protesters

    • Italy: Tensions run high as Forza Nuova and antifa rally over refugees

      Tensions ran high as Forza Nuova supporters rallied in Catania on Thursday, demonstrating against what they claim to be an “invasion of immigrants.”

      Some 300 anti-fascists held a counter-demonstration to support refugees.

    • EU hits back hard at Italy’s budget threat in migration row

      Country will pay a big price if it withholds payments, Günther Oettinger says.

      Günther Oettinger, the EU’s budget chief, warned Italy on Friday of “heavy sanctions” if its populist government follows through on a threat not to pay into the bloc’s coffers in a row over migration.

      The Italian threat and Oettinger’s strongly-worded rebuke of an EU member country marked a further escalation in an already bitter, years-long dispute over migration within the European Union.

      The latest battle centers on whether 150 migrants rescued in the Mediterranean should be allowed to disembark from an Italian coast guard ship, the Diciotti, docked in a Sicilian port for the last four days.

      The government, made up of the far-right League and anti-establishment 5Star Movement, has declared the migrants — mainly from Eritrea, Syria and Bangladesh, according to Intersos, an humanitarian organization that has staff on board — should not be allowed onto Italian soil unless other EU members agree to take them in.

      On Thursday, Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio, the 5Stars’ leader, said his party was no longer willing to “give €20 billion” to the EU if it did not reach a decision on the redistribution of migrants (an Italian official said the figure was actually €15 billion).

      Budget Commissioner Oettinger hit back hard on Friday.

      “If Italy would refuse to pay its contribution to the #EUbudget, it would be the first time in the history of the EU. This would result in late payment interests. And a breach of Treaty obligations leading to possible further heavy sanctions,” he tweeted.

      “#EU is a Community of law and values and all Member States must play by the rules. Each Member State is expected to fulfil its obligations and has a duty to cooperate. #Cooperation not threats is the European solution.”

      In his remarks, Di Maio tied his threat to a meeting of officials from 12 EU member countries to discuss migration in Brussels on Friday. That gathering ended without agreement — although the Commission insisted it was not a decision-making meeting.

      The Commission had also said the meeting was meant to discuss general policy issues rather than the specific case of the ship in Sicily. Italy tried and failed to change that, raising tensions in the room, an EU diplomat said.

      “At the meeting, the Italians wanted to discuss the Diciotti but the others told them this was not the purpose,” the diplomat said. The scale of the divisions in the room was so high that “they were meant to sign a common declaration, but even that wasn’t possible.”

      The Italian government appeared split over the budget threat. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte reacted angrily on Facebook to the outcome of the Brussels meeting, saying that “Italy will draw the consequences.” But Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero said at an event in Rimini that paying into the EU budget was a “legal duty.”

      Interior Minister and Lega leader Matteo Salvini, meanwhile, kept up his hardline rhetoric on migration. He said Thursday he wanted to adopt a scheme inspired by Australian policies, under which migrants would be sent back before even being identified — a plan that would contravene international legislation including the 1951 U.N. convention on refugees.

      https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-hits-back-hard-at-italys-budget-threat-in-migration-row/

      • Belgium: Ten Euro envoys fail to reach deal in migrant boat standoff

    • 2017 – Italian TV talk show – SALVINI : AFRICANS DON’T BELONG IN ITALY

33. Migrants who stormed Morocco-Spain border sent back

    Spain sends back to Morocco 116 migrants who had forced their way into the Spanish territory of Ceuta, in a mass expulsion condemned by human rights activists

34. test 01

35. Trump slams Sessions in new tweet on DOJ ‘double standard’

    President highlights sentence of Reality Winner to call out attorney general on investigating Hillary Clinton’s emails;

    Catherine Herridge reports from the Justice Department.

36. Report: Bulk of Weiner laptop emails were never examined

37. Trump: I may have to force Justice Department to turn over documents

    President Trump is threatening to force his Justice Department to hand over documents Republicans have sought for months about its investigation into his campaign.

    Trump has said for months that he didn’t want to get involved. But in a Fox News interview that aired Thursday, he said he may have to step in.

    “At the right time, I think I’m going to have to do the documents,” he said when asked if he would use his power to force the department to act.

    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/trump-i-may-have-to-get-involved-with-justice-department-documents

38. UK Children Born to Migrant Mothers Approaches One Third of all Births, Highest Level Ever (breitbart, Aug 24, 2018)
    https://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/08/24/uk-births-to-migrants-highest-ever-nearing-a-third/

    “The proportion of babies born in the UK to a migrant mother has risen to the highest level on record, hitting 75 per cent in some areas of London.

    Live births last year in England and Wales to mothers born outside Britain rose to 28.4 per cent, the highest level since records began 50 years ago.

    There were more than 192,000 births to mothers born outside the UK, with the top three countries of origin being Poland, Pakistan, and Romania, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed Thursday.

    An even higher percentage, 33.9 percent, of babies born in England and Wales had at least one parent born outside the UK in 2017.

    Pakistan has been the most common country of birth for fathers born outside the UK since figures were first produced in 2008, with 10.2 percent of foreign-born new fathers in 2017 born in Pakistan.

    Poland has been the most common country of birth for mothers born outside the UK since 2010, with 10.8 percent of foreign-born mothers in 2017 born there.

    More than three-quarters of births in Brent, northwest London, were to mothers born outside the UK, the highest in England and Wales.

    The borough of Redcar and Cleveland, in North Yorkshire, had the lowest proportion of babies born to migrant mothers, at 3.7 percent.

    Nicola Haines, of the Vital Statistics Outputs Branch at the ONS, commented: “Just over a third of the babies born in England and Wales in 2017 had at least one parent who had been born outside the UK.

    “This will include parents who moved to the UK as children and have lived here most of their lives as well as those who have recently migrated.

    “The proportion of live births to non-UK-born parents has been growing since 1990 and is now the highest on record.

    “Our birth statistics also show that, since 1975, babies born to mothers aged 45 years and over have been most likely to have a mum who was born outside the UK…..”

39. Trump’s Fake Allies in the Gulf

    by Burak Bekdil
    August 24, 2018 at 5:00 am

    https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12908/turkey-qatar

    In theory, the oil-rich sheikhdom of Qatar is an ally of the United States. The peninsula hosts more than 10,000 U.S. military personnel and approximately 72 F-15 fighter jets at its Al Udeid military base. In this turbulent part of the world, alliances, like enmities, can be treacherous. In March, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives was already looking at four alternatives that could become the military headquarters when the Al Udeid contract with Qatar will expire in 2023. After “closely observing its [Qatar’s] financial and banking system due to fears of support for terrorist organisations and individuals associated with them,” Washington apparently decided it had to rethink Al Udeid and its Qatari “allies.”

40. Iranian Spies Arrested on US Soil Were Plotting Attacks

    The two alleged Iranian spies arrested in the U.S. on August 9, 2018 were not just gathering intelligence on Americans and Iranians who oppose the regime. That intelligence was apparently to be used for attacks.

    Ahmadreza Mohammadi-Doostdar, an Iranian with dual U.S. citizenship, and Majid Ghorbani, an Iranian national with permanent U.S. residency, were charged with acting as agents on behalf of the Iranian government in federal court on August 20, 2018. According to the FBI affidavit, Doostdar and Ghorbani were preparing alleged “target packages” on individuals who posed a threat to the Iranian regime on American soil.

    Doostdar and Ghorbanin ran surveillance on Jewish facilities and events in the United States in support of Mujahdein-e Khalq (MEK), an exiled Iranian resistance group that advocates for the complete overthrow of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his Islamist regime.

    https://clarionproject.org/iranian-spies-arrested-plotting-attacks/

41. Sweden ABLAZE: Buildings, Cars & Restaurant TORCHED Overnight as Arson Attacks Continue

    This is now standard operating procedure. The new normal. “Youths” — as to which youths? What country of origin did the youths migrate from? Those questions are criminal to ask. In the meantime, it’s burn, Sweden, burn.

    Buildings, 7 cars & pizzeria torched in Sweden overnight as arson attacks continue
    Several buildings, including a pizzeria and a garage, as well as seven cars, were set on fire overnight in southern Sweden as police remain clueless on how to curb the ongoing wave of arson attacks.

    RT, August 23, 2018:

    The fire services received calls saying that a house was burning in a residential area of Kristianstad municipality shortly before midnight on Wednesday. The police said that a fire at the local pizzeria had started upstairs and quickly spread through the building.

    The firefighters fought the flames for several hours, but couldn’t save the building, which was “totally destroyed.”

    https://gellerreport.com/2018/08/sweden-arson-youths.html/

42. German FM Proposes Cutting Cooperation with US, Opposes Sanctions on Iran – World’s Largest State Sponsor of Terror
    By Pamela Geller – on August 23, 2018

    The Islamic Republic of Iran has vowed the destruction of the Jewish state. Germany did the same not too long ago. This is not surprising.

    German FM Proposes Cutting Cooperation with US Citing Iran Sanctions

    According to European Media, Germany has long been troubled by what Germans describe as President Donald Trump’s “erratic policy.” Washington and Berlin are not only at a crossroads over key policy issues – for the first time since WW2, the foundation of Germany’s alliance with the US is in question. German politicians are wondering if they still share with the US president a commitment to a free market economy, the rule of law, and liberal democracy.

    https://gellerreport.com/2018/08/germany-goes-nazi.html/

43. Burqa of Pakistan’s first lady ‘unmasks societal biases’

    With the nation’s eyes set on Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan’s inauguration as prime minister on Saturday, his wife’s outfit for the occasion also drew social media attention.

    Bushra Imran chose to wear a veil, but her choice was heavily criticised as ‘not fit’ for the country’s first lady. However, some admired her for dress modestly.

    Discourse in this regard has resurfaced after she assumed her new role. However, certain quarters termed the criticism as unwarranted policing of women’s choices.

    With some quick to note that men are judged for the choices made by the women in their life.

    A social media user lauded the freedom of choice for women to choose to dress as they please in ‘Naya Pakistan’.

    Sociologist Nida Kirmani spoke out saying that Bushra’s attire was the least of the problems the public should be worried about.

    Another social media user said that “I can’t believe people still think they have a say on what Bushra Maneka chooses to do or wear. None of your concern”.

    I cannot believe people still think they have a say on what Bushra Maneka chooses to do or wear. None. Of. Your. Bloody. Concern

    — hibiscus (@hibzdontlie4) August 18, 2018

    Notwithstanding, a Twitter user said that “Bushra Bibi has reached and I’m a little disappointed. But I think this is how she wants to be”.

    https://tribune.com.pk/story/1784011/1-bushra-imrans-veil-unmasks-societal-biases/
    =================================================
    Turkish Radio and Television ( TRT )

44. Major police incident – Armed police and dog units surround Essex road (express, Aug 24, 2018)
    https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1008104/shenfield-police-incident-essex-police-latest-york-road-updates-shenfield-train-station

    “ARMED police and dog units are surrounding a road in Essex in a major police incident with a helicopter circling overhead.

    A huge armed police presence has responded to the incident.

    15 police cars have swarmed York Road in Shenfield with officers said to be in pursuit of a vehicle.

    Witnesses have reported a heavy police presence in the area with officers also near Chelmsford Road.

    A police helicopter was seen circling above the area.

    Witness Alex Kensit said: “Something major happening near Chelmsford Road, Shenfield.

    “Around 15 police cars including several armed response vehicles and dog units as well as police helicopter circling.

    “They are in pursuit of a vehicle I believe.”

    But other witnesses told Essex Live that the police were “raiding a house”.

    Express.co.uk has contacted Essex Police for contact.

    This is a breaking story. More to follow…”

45. British Metropolitan Police LGBT Network:

    https://youtu.be/hZkEQTx5VRA

    • This is why your online data should be protected. Such Police Officers do not obey the law. Instead of recommending every criminal-offence go to court, they back-peddle when it is themselves.

      The unknown unknowns.

      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6094357/Man-hospitalised-stuffing-15-hard-boiled-EGGS-bottom-high-date-rape-drug-GHB.html#comments

46. Travel Warning Issued After Horrific Murder Scenes Discovered In Cancun

    The beaches of Cancun are normally littered with hammocks for relaxing beside the beach, but after Tuesday’s discovery of eight people brutally murdered, you might want to rethink any plans to Mexico.

    Eight bodies were found in the popular beach town, some were gruesomely murdered according to the Associated Press. One was found in a hammock, two in a taxi, two were dismembered and left in plastic bags.

    Now the Department of State has issued a travel warning for Mexico due to an ongoing increase in violence and criminal activity. If you read the travel warnings online, it will take you a long time.

    https://libertynewsnow.com/travel-warning-issued-after-horrific-murder-scenes-discovered-in-cancun/article9785

47. August 24, 2018: Ep. 792 Exposing the Left’s Real Strategy

    https://www.bongino.com/august-24-2018-ep-792-exposing-the-lefts-real-strategy/

48. Migrants Aboard Italian Coast Guard Ship Begin Hunger Strike (breitbart, Aug 24, 2018)
    https://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/08/24/migrants-aboard-italian-coast-guard-ship-begin-hunger-strike/

    “Many of the 150 migrants stranded aboard a coast guard ship for a ninth day began a hunger strike Friday out of frustration that Italy won’t let them disembark in Sicily unless fellow European Union nations first pledge to take them, authorities said, in the latest standoff provoked by Italy’s anti-migrant interior minister.

    “They can do whatever they believe,” Interior Minister Matteo Salvini tweeted, shrugging off the development that migrants were refusing meals aboard the Italian coast guard vessel Diciotti. The ship rescued them on Aug. 16 from a foundering human trafficker’s boat in the central Mediterranean, and for days now has been docked in the port of Catania, Sicily.

    An opposition lawmaker, Sen. Davide Faraone said that on Friday Catania port officials told him “there’s tension” on the ship and that migrants have stopped eating.

    Thirteen young children and ailing adults were evacuated from the Diciotti early in the drama. On Wednesday, 27 minors, all teenagers, were allowed to disembark in Catania. Salvini has been adamant that Italy’s populist government won’t allow any of the 150 adults still aboard the vessel disembark unless other EU nations commit to taking the asylum-seekers.

    All but about 18 of those aboard are Eritrean; the others are from Somalia, Syria and Sudan. They have told authorities they suffered months and even years of inhumane treatment in detention in Libya, while waiting to leave that lawless country aboard smugglers’ boats.

    Another opposition lawmaker who went aboard on Thursday expressed particular concern about 11 women, some as young as 19 or 20, still there.

    Appealing to Salvini, Laura Boldrini said: “As a father, they could be your daughter. At least let the young women off” the Diciotti.

    Sky TG24 TV said some women aboard ate lunch Friday but the men refused the meal.

    But Salvini was staying tough, as was fellow deputy premier, Luigi Di Maio, who heads the senior coalition partner, the euro-skeptic 5-Star Movement.

    Di Maio threatened that Italy could withhold some of its yearly 20 billion euro ($23 billion) contribution to the bloc if EU nations didn’t make good on promises earlier this year for more solidarity toward the Italians, who have seen more than 600,000 rescued migrants brought to Italian shores in recent years…”

49. “We’ll Find Out About Brennan”
    What did the ex-CIA boss know about Obama’s 1981 Pakistan trip – and the attempt to cover it up in 2008?
    August 24, 2018
    Lloyd Billingsley

    John Brennan became head of the Central Intelligence agency in 2013 and after leaving in 2017 he retained his security clearance, which President Trump recently revoked. Brennan is threatening a lawsuit, a prospect that delights the president’s lead lawyer.

    “I’d volunteer to do that case for the president,” Rudy Giuliani told Fox News. “I’d love to have Brennan under oath for I don’t know how many days, two or three days? We’ll find out about Brennan.” As the former New York mayor is doubtless aware, there is plenty to find out. Consider, for example, Brennan’s role in the famous passport case.

    Back in 2008, State Department contractors “unnecessarily reviewed” the passport file of Illinois Senator Barack Obama. The breach came without the knowledge of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who called the senator to apologize. “I myself would be very disturbed if I learned somebody had looked into my passport file,” Rice told reporters.

    According to the State Department, two of the contract employees were fired for the security breach and a third was disciplined but remained on the job. The department did not reveal the identities of the employees nor what they might have been looking for in the presidential candidate’s passport file. On the other hand, some information did emerge.

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271121/well-find-out-about-brennan-lloyd-billingsley

50. What is the K-12 Code of Ethics?
    2,559 views