This Blog is created to stress the importance of Peace as an environmental directive. “I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.” – Harry Truman
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The House of Representatives (click here) passed new legislation designed to deal with the threat of domestic terrorism on Wednesday along a largely party line vote, with just one Republican in favor.
Members of Congress approved the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act by a vote of 222 to 203, with Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois joining Democrats in voting yes.
Four Republican members of the House didn't vote on the new legislation, which was passed in the wake of a mass shooting at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, New York, that left 10 people dead.
President Joe Biden has described the attack, which authorities believe may have been racially motivated, as "domestic terrorism."
The bill would create an office of domestic terrorism in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI. It will now head to the evenly divide Senate.
This is the list of Republicans who voted against the bill, grouped by state....
...A hate crime (click here) is a traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias. For the purposes of collecting statistics, the FBI has defined a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.” Hate itself is not a crime—and the FBI is mindful of protecting freedom of speech and other civil liberties....
Title 18, U.S.C., Section 249
This statute makes it unlawful to willfully cause bodily injury (click here) —or attempting to do so with fire, firearm, or other dangerous weapon—when 1) the crime was committed because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin of any person, or 2) the crime was committed because of the actual or perceived religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of any person and the crime affected interstate or foreign commerce or occurred within federal special maritime and territorial jurisdiction.
The law also provides funding and technical assistance to state, local, and tribal jurisdictions to help them to more effectively investigate, prosecute, and prevent hate crimes.
The law provides for a maximum 10–year prison term, unless death (or attempts to kill) results from the offense, or unless the offense includes kidnapping or attempted kidnapping, or aggravated sexual abuse or attempted aggravated sexual abuse. For offenses not resulting in death, there is a seven–year statute of limitations. For offenses resulting in death, there is no statute of limitations....
Title 18, U.S.C., Section 242 - Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law
Title 18, U.S.C., Section 245 - Federally Protected Activities
Title 18, U.S.C., Section 247 - Church Arson Prevention Act of 1996
Title 18, U.S.C., Section 248 - Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act
Title 18, U.S.C., Section 844(h) - Federal Explosives Control Statute
Title 42, U.S.C., Section 3631 - Criminal Interference with Right to Fair Housing
Title 42, U.S.C., Section 14141 - Pattern and Practice
June 2019 - Steve Schmidt quoted, "“29 years and nine months ago I registered to vote and became a member of The Republican Party which was founded in 1854 to oppose slavery and stand for the dignity of human life. Today I renounce my membership in the Republican Party. It is fully the party of Trump,” Steve Schmidt tweeted early Wednesday morning.
Schmidt went on to call the party “corrupt, indecent and immoral.”
Political strategist Steve Schmidt (click here) has made headlines recently over new revelations about his professional—and personal—relationship with the late Senator John McCain, as well as with the McCain family.
Schmidt, to hear him tell it, has nothing to sell or promote with this discussion of a campaign that took place a decade and a half ago. He's merely setting the record straight, and drawing a throughline from our nation's infancy to Sarah Palin to the present.
Schmidt joined Declassified With Naveed Jamali to discuss his frustration with McCain's choice of running mate in 2008 and the trajectory of the party he very publicly left in 2018.
I think that the overwhelming majority of Americans...recognize that Russia is a geopolitical adversary, and a great threat to the stability of the world and world peace. And that the fetishizing of Putin and Russia that takes place with Tucker Carlson, with Laura Ingraham, with CPAC, who is doing their convention in Budapest...really speaks to a reawakening of a political tradition in the country that's always been there—has manifested itself over time and a lot of different ways....
(1)the term “international terrorism” means activities that—
(A)
involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State;
(B)appear to be intended—
(i)
to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii)
to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(iii)
to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
(C)
occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum;
(2)
the term “national of the United States” has the meaning given such term in section 101(a)(22) of the Immigration and Nationality Act;
(3)
the term “person” means any individual or entity capable of holding a legal or beneficial interest in property;
(4)the term “act of war” means any act occurring in the course of—
(A)
declared war;
(B)
armed conflict, whether or not war has been declared, between two or more nations; or
(C)
armed conflict between military forces of any origin;
(5)the term “domestic terrorism” means activities that—
(A)
involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;
(B)appear to be intended—
(i)
to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii)
to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(iii)
to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
(C)
occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States; and
(6)the term “military force” does not include any person that—
(A)has been designated as a—
(i)
foreign terrorist organization by the Secretary of State under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1189); or
(ii)
specially designated global terrorist (as such term is defined in section 594.310 of title 31, Code of Federal Regulations) by the Secretary of State or the Secretary of the Treasury; or
(B)
has been determined by the court to not be a “military force”.
It is, by its humblest definition, ink on paper, and that is the way it has been for a very long time. For the Chicago Tribune, that time began June 10, 1847, and over the next several Sundays, we will chart the 175-year history of this newspaper.
That is, of course, a lot to bite off, for it is a story that has unfolded against the backdrop of this remarkable city. Chronicling Chicago, as well as the “outside” world, has made for a colossal pile of Tribune pages, full of triumphs and tragedies, oddities and oddballs, events and people both wonderful and wild....
The age-adjusted death rate (click here) for the total population increased 16.8% from 715.2 per 100,000 standard population in 2019 to 835.4 in 2020. Age-adjusted death rates increased in 2020 from 2019 for all race-ethnicity-sex groups, increasing 42.7% for Hispanic males, 32.4% for Hispanic females, 28.0% for non-Hispanic Black males, 24.9% for non-Hispanic Black females, 13.4% for non-Hispanic White males, and 12.1% for non-Hispanic White females.
The pandemic. The vaccine refusals. The variants. The chronic spread. The deaths that are still occurring. The stressed hospitals. It all was completely preventable.
There is a mindset to white men of the Republican and/or Libertarian variety that states masculinity is decided by toughness. That is literally killing Conservative White American Men. They do not listen to anyone, except, maybe another peer. But, for the most part Conservative White Men rather have their tombstone reflect their lives forever rather than living them.
And that is the truth.
I experienced it first hand with a member of my family. He was a self-made millionaire and golfer. He loved to golf. One day he was convinced he needed to consult with a dermatologist about the mark on his arm. It was melanoma. There is no cure melanoma. It is a life of chronically pursuing any spread of the tumor and defeating it as it erupts.
My Uncle was tougher than the tumor, you know. He went into surgery and that mark on his arm took one third of the skin and tissue on his left upper arm. The surgeon told him they got all of it, but, melanoma would occur again and he was to see his dermatologist regularly for anymore eruptions.
My Uncle died when he was 72 years old for no other reason except self-righteous neglect. The real disease for the people that rail against society and social norms is self-righteousness. Self-righteousness is a disease when every aspect of life dictates certain behaviors to save your own life, like getting a vaccine in the face of a pandemic, and a person simply won't accept that reality.
My uncle was self-righteous. He never followed up with doctors after his initial surgery, but, saw them regularly when it was too late to save his life. He died because his self-righteousness was out of control and no one, not even his wife, could convince him he was neglecting himself and not in control of his tumor's spread.
He was a great guy. He believed in God. He put his grandchildren through private Catholic school. All twelve of them. There is no doubt his faith was deep into his soul, but, faith is about the soul, not about having miracles. Expecting God to be able to care for a human body is arrogance and keeping score. That is not faith. Just because a man or woman is a devout practitioner of the faith does not mean anything about life on Earth, so much as the soul after parting the body. Don't expect God to save one's life from disease if one does not act upon the miracle of medical science in their vigilance and life sustaining interventions.
A miracle came to human beings in the form of a vaccine to fight off a deadly virus and it's deadly variants.
Indeed, acute stubbornness. How does anyone discount a vaccine? That makes no sense.
May 22, 2022
By Julia Prodis Sulek
The obituary of Stephen Elliott, who died of COVID-19 on Jan. 5, 2022, rests in the hands of its author, his son Ryan Elliott, on May 4, 2022, in Palo Alto. Ryan and brother Jason tried and failed to persuade their dad to get vaccinated.
Ryan Elliott (click here) couldn’t put off writing his father’s obituary any longer. Word was already spreading through Vallejo that his dad – a well-known commercial real estate broker and civic leader – had died.
But he had to work his way up to it. He and his brother, Jason, held warm childhood memories of their father teaching them to waterski at Lake Tahoe and drive off-road along the Rubicon Trail, but like many sons and fathers, their relationship was complicated. Their dad could be difficult – especially when it came to COVID-19.
The first week in January – nearly two years after the pandemic began and a year after the vaccine first became available – Ryan sat down with his laptop and began:
Acute stubbornness.
“Anybody could read into that and understand,” Jason Elliott said, “that odds are he probably didn’t have a vaccine.”
As Americans near a cruel milestone of one million COVID deaths, personal obituaries like Stephen Elliott’s, humble death notices written by family and friends, have become a heartbreaking historical record of the worst pandemic of our lives....
Humility as a practice, instead of gratefulness, is a character strength.
Self - Righteousness is arrogant, a character flaw and very, very dangerous.
There is no way any one person can know everything that is benevolent and good for their lives. To believe one is in complete control of their life outcomes is pure stupidity.
Society in the USA has provided for education of professionals such as doctors to even the odds that life has handed to you. No one should ignore the greatness within our society that seeks to guarantee a healthy and happy life, through all of life.
Whites are being replaced? Wow. That is flat out racism. They offer no plausible proof. None.
What are white peoples replaced with? Dogs, cats, horses or elephants? Maybe monkeys?
Oh, white people are being replaced with black people. Job market? Really? Right. Well, it just goes to prove the old small brain theory is horseshit.
Oddly enough, all the white people on FOX News haven’t been replaced unless they are women leaving to sue for sexual assault. Even then they are replaced with more white people.
RACISM is on full display at FOX News if anyone is wondering what it looks like. My understanding is that those white people are payed a lot of money so they stay on those jobs promoting racism. That should tell everyone something about capitalism at the extreme. They sell their souls and there is no indication they will be repenting anytime soon.
Why did Ginni Thomas have Trump's ear? Because of the deceptive authority she leaned into. There is absolutely no way Ginni Thomas can deny she was a power player. She was. Definitively she was.
We have testimony from those that worked in the Trump White House that everyone dreaded the day Ginni Thomas showed up at Trump's office, because, people would be fired from their jobs.
When a wife of an Associate Supreme Court Justice calls on lawmakers there is an undertone to that interaction whether it is witnessed or simply pillow talk. A spouse of a Supreme Court Justice has access to one of the nine highest ranking legal authorities in the country. What conversation at the dinner table occurs is confidential, but, not illegal to share with the public.
Ginni Thomas had/has an air about her. She is an activist and a woman married to a powerful man. It is completely clear she cannot mind her own business to save her own life. So, I am quite sure there were times when the activist would converse with hubby about the potential of "this or that." That this or that when it came to Trump was the understanding that one could use measures, albeit ancient, that could return a decision to put Trump into the White House again and this time if the US Constitution was to fall, Trump could be king forever.
Hypothetical, of course. Right, Ginnie?
Where it becomes a problem is when Ginnie's activism seeks to destroy an entire election of a president. That is subversion at the very least of the USA Constitution. Chapter 115 is something Associate Justice Thomas would know something about, so Ginny would carry messaging to the country and the world that was profoundly safe and not at all unconstitutional, right Clarence?
Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
But, activist Ginni would state, "I wasn't there!" Physically, she was not there. But, organizationally, she definitely was there.
There are times when I sincerely feel bad for the hubris the Republican elite actually subscribe to as they believe every dollar has a vote. Ginni simply took that understanding one step further. Since, money of any kind voted, surely there was more money spent in Arizona among Republicans than at any other time in history. Therefore, there must be a problem in the vote in that state.
Ginni Thomas broke the law. She used her power within a marriage to an Associate Justice to advance an agenda that would dissolve the election of 2020 and carry out a coup d'é·tat. In that coup lay the idea that the existing president would be the last president of the USA forever, basically a king. Realizing that was a goal, not only by Trump, but, the Federalist Society, there is real peril for Ginny Thomas. She was intimately involved in grooming the Trump staff within the power of the White House to an agreeable group that were "believers" in a certain outcome for Trump, hence, the Republican Elite.
To say this is unethical when it comes to the Associate Justice Thomas in his willingness to entertain his spouse's activism in theory alone, is an understatement. If Thomas actually knew she was empowered in a way that would seek a coupe to the presidency resulting in a permanent king, Justice Thomas at the very least has many questions to answer.
The American people need to understand the brevity of all these activities and the plans made long ago to overthrow the USA Constitution. Americans need to understand how close this came to dissolving the USA Constitution. This is serious and not simply politics.
May 20, 2022 By Emma Brown
Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, (click here) the conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pressed Arizona lawmakers after the 2020 election to set aside Joe Biden’s popular-vote victory and choose “a clean slate of Electors,” according to emails obtained by The Washington Post.
The emails, sent by Ginni Thomas to a pair of lawmakers on Nov. 9, 2020, argued that legislators needed to intervene because the vote had been marred by fraud. Though she did not mention either candidate by name, the context was clear.
Just days after media organizations called the race for Biden in Arizona and nationwide, Thomas urged the lawmakers to “stand strong in the face of political and media pressure.” She told the lawmakers that the responsibility to choose electors was “yours and yours alone” and said they had “power to fight back against fraud.”...
“I don’t give a f***k about what I am accused of, believe it or not,” he said, according to a recording of the conversation. “I shot 15 prisoners dead. I don’t give a f***k.”
Wartime prisoners have a special status. Pavlov violates every one of them.
Pro-Russian militants carry a man with his eyes covered outside the regional state building they seized in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk on May 5, 2014.
May 21, 2022
By Dan Peleschuk Kyiv - “If I want to, I kill. If not, I don’t.”
That’s part of the cold, startling alleged confession of an infamous separatist commander in eastern Ukraine. This week he reportedly admitted to the Kyiv Post newspaper that he personally executed more than a dozen Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Arseniy Pavlov, better known by his nom de guerre “Motorola,” is one of many Russian volunteers who have flocked to eastern Ukraine in the past year to join the Moscow-backed insurgency against Ukrainian government forces.
He's gained a cult following among rebel sympathizers in Ukraine and Russia, and has featured as a star in Russian state media.
His exploits include leading the seizure earlier this year of the highly symbolic Donetsk airport, and even staging a high-profile wartime wedding last summer with a local Ukrainian insurgent....
There is also a huge division among the people taken prisoner by Russia. Some are innocent Ukrainians that never was involved in any aspect of the war.
December 2021
...When Ukraine, (click here) Russia and Moscow-backed separatists exchange prisoners, it is usually men — captured fighters and male civilians. In the latest exchange on December 29, 2019, however, pro-Russian separatists handed over a total of 76 people to Ukraine, more than a dozen of them women. DW met two of those women in a clinic in Kyiv, where they were receiving medical care.
Olena Sorokina stood out during the prisoner swap. She got off the bus wearing a white sweatshirt that had a trident, the Ukrainian national emblem, sketched on the front with a ballpoint pen. On the back, the shirt was emblazoned with the words: "Ukraine is my state."
"I drew on the sweatshirt at night in my cell under the bed," Sorokina said, adding that was what she wanted to wear when returning to Ukrainian forces. "There were armed guards on the bus, so I only put the sweatshirt on when I saw soldiers with Ukrainian insignia outside — at that point, nobody could hurt me anymore."...
Regardless the danger in identifying themselves as Ukrainian, they never, not one second succumbed to the pressure of changing their identity. These people are NOT Russian in any aspect of their hearts or minds.
Vladimir Putin and his Duma have on many, many legal fronts indicated the "rights of Russian speaking people" for their enforced civil war in eastern Ukraine. There is absolutely no one in Ukraine that sees their identity as "Russian speaking" as a proof of their nationality/ethnicity. Putin has CREATED a scenario for his politics to maintain the civil war in eastern Ukraine even if he has to kill every Russian Speaking UKRAINIAN in the process.
THESE ARE NOT LEGITIMATE PRISONERS OF WAR!!!!!!!!!!
Stop allowing Putin's delusion! There is no legitimate narrative that can have within it's context any justification for the civil war nor the current killing campaign.
This is all a propaganda campaign and not a legal or legitimate reason for killing. All Ukrainians are confronted with the option to live up to expectations as prisoners, etcetera, or die. There is no real choice in any aspect of Putin's war. The Ukrainians have an obligation to the world to survive. The methods in maintaining their lives, regardless any guilt, will always be justified. There can be no crime for staying alive.
April 12, 2018
First deputy chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, (click here) representative of Ukraine in the humanitarian subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group for Donbas, Iryna Gerashchenko, has said that the Ukrainian side is ready to transfer 20 Russians who are held in Ukrainian prisons in order to release Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia; this issue will be raised in Minsk on Wednesday, April 4.
“The working group will meet in Minsk on April 4 … The second issue that we will raise is the release of hostages. The Ukrainian side is doing everything to ensure that the next wave of hostage release is taken as soon as possible. But for us it is important to release not only those, who remain in the occupied territory, but also the captives of the Kremlin,” Gerashchenko told reporters in Kyiv on April 2.
She said that the Ukrainian side is ready to hand over “20 Russians who are detained in Ukrainian prisons for violating Ukrainian legislation and participating in the war in order to free Sentsov [a Ukrainian film director who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for terrorism], Kolchenko [Crimean activist Oleksandr Kolchenko] and our other prisoners.”
At the same time, Gerashchenko noted that in this issue “the will of the Russian Federation is very important.”...
US Rule of Law 50 U.S. Code § 4105 - Prisoners of war
As used in subsection (b) of this section, (click here) the term “prisoner of war” means any regularly appointed, enrolled, enlisted, or inducted member of the military or naval forces of the United States who was held as a prisoner of war for any period of time subsequent to December 7, 1941, by any government of any nation with which the United States has been at war subsequent to such date....
The Azov Special Forces Regiment was on the very front to end the atrocities of the Russian War. Russia has no justifiable grounds for this destruction which really was intended to kill the people hiding inside. This steel rubble is proof of the attempts at further genocide by Russia. If Russia truly had one objective to stop production of steel at his plant, that status occurred long before this picture took place. This is pre-meditated genocide. There were also children inside the steel plant.
I remind. This is all pre-meditated with significant proof. Russia was never a rigorous partner at Minsk I or II. President Zelenskyy had been seeking peace and prosperity talks with Russia for two years prior to the attack. Russia was never successful in ending the civil war it initiated in eastern Ukraine. Russia initiated a civil war in eastern Ukraine for the sole reason of a pre-meditated timeline to celebrate his politics on May 9. There is absolutely no reason for the invasion into Ukraine that is causing pain and suffering by over 40 million Ukrainians.
In this photo (click here) provided by Azov Special Forces Regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard Press Office, a Ukrainian soldier stands inside the ruined Azovstal steel plant prior to surrender to the Russian forces in Mariupol, Ukraine, May 16, 2022. For nearly three months, Azovstal’s garrison clung on, refusing to be winkled out from the tunnels and bunkers under the ruins of the labyrinthine mill. A Ukrainian soldier-photographer documented the events and sent them to the world. Now he is a prisoner of the Russia.
May 21, 2022 By Elena Becatoros, Oleksan, Oleksandr Stachevesky and Ciaran McQuillan
Pokrovsk, Ukraine (AP) — Russia’s claimed seizure of a Mariupol steel plant that became a symbol of Ukrainian tenacity gives Russian President Vladimir Putin a sorely needed victory in the war he began, capping a nearly three-month siege that left the city in ruins and more than 20,000 residents feared dead.
After the Russian Defense Ministry announced late Friday that its forces had removed the last Ukrainian fighters from the plant’s miles of underground tunnels, concern mounted for the Ukrainian defenders who now are prisoners in Russian hands.
Denis Pushilin, the head of an area of eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed separatists, said Saturday that the Ukrainians considered heroes by their fellow citizens were sure to face a tribunal for their wartime actions.
That is a carefully worded statement. Denis Pushilin is not stating genocide, but, uses "...wartime actions" to bring the Russian law to oversee it's burden. The Russian Courts are not the place for these jury trials. The prisoners should immediately be transported to The Hague for a free and open trial. Russia is not capable of fair hearings of prisoners as it is at war and will use the trials for propaganda for Putin's politics. If the trials are to go forward, the poisoners should be held in a disinterested third party country while hearings to determine guilt are held at The Hague.
“I believe that a tribunal is inevitable here. I believe that justice must be restored. There is a request for this from ordinary people, society, and, probably, the sane part of the world community,” Russian state news agency Tass quoted Pushilin as saying.
The Ukrainian government has not commented on Russia’s claim of capturing Azovstal, which for weeks remained Mariupol’s last holdout of Ukrainian resistance, and with it completing Moscow’s long-sought goal of controlling the city, home to a strategic seaport....
…proves Trump’s intent of dissolving the USA Constitution. The GOP gubernatorial candidate for 2022 openly premeditates using the power of the Governor’s office to manipulate the vote in 2024 to place his favored candidate in the presidency of the USA regardless of the people’s votes.
Steven Bannon is author of “Stop the Steal” blueprints by using regressive politics to remove the authority of the people’s vote. The “Stop the Steal” plan to remove the USA Constitution from sovereign authority is and has been endorsed by Trump.
This method of regression of citizens’ rights and powers is now being witnessed as an organized political movement intended to destroy the USA at a time of the rise of violent communism in and coming out of Asia.
There is every reason to expose this movement and prepare to prosecute anyone in authority that moves against the sovereign authority guaranteed to the majority vote including decertification of voting machines which is the basis of the majority vote.
Mastriano has been endorsed by Trump after a clear demonstration of Russian alliance at Helsinki. The circle is closed. Mastriano and those like him are a threat to the national security of the United States of America.
Today, we feel a neighborly sense of solidarity, along with anger, grief and resolve, in the aftermath of a hate-inspired mass shooting Saturday targeting Black people at a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood on Buffalo’s East Side.
Ten people died, including two with ties to Central New York. Three more were injured. The shooter, an 18-year-old white man, had an elaborate plan to kill more Black people but surrendered to police first.
The gunman traveled 200 miles from his home near Binghamton to execute his racist plan. It could have been our city. It could have been any city. That is the point of terrorism: to make people everywhere feel that nowhere is safe from murderous hate.
Not a synagogue. Not a mosque. Not a church. Not a nightclub. Not a supermarket on a sunny Saturday afternoon....
Come on, everyone. This is the truth and we haven't ended the nightmare. Decades of time. Decades and we haven't ended the extremist views that carry danger within their ideology.
White Supremacy/Nationalism is a source of fear. The ideology is a predator to the young minds and hearts of boys. There is no looking the other way. This is a poison in our country and it has to end. It has no legitimate place. For far too long, Americans have tolerated the idea that such extremism as allowed to be expressed in public demonstrations and parades. It was all to uphold the First Amendment. That lost it's permission with the death of Heather Heyer (click here).
Peaceful protests have always been the way to let those in power know there is something wrong and it needs to be addressed. The White Supremacists of Charlottesville, Virginia proved they are capable of a great deal of damage along with their protests (click here).
There is no basis for benevolence within the White Supremacist/Nationalist belief system. It places a majority ethnicity as superior to all other races in the USA and that is proven over and over to be a lie. Allowing the conjuring of old, bad habits of political dogma is unacceptable in the face of modern day society.
Back when White Supremacy manifested with burned crosses and lynching, those that carried the out such atrocities were ashamed to be known and considered dressing in white cloth necessary. Even their horses were not to be identified.
Make no mistake, this is a political movement to change the face of the USA (click here).
Today, being identified as a KKK member is accepted as if they are nothing more than a member of a club with "certain beliefs" not identified in other areas of life and government. This belief system espouses hate and that is simply Un-American. This is a belief system that needs to be reduced to a bad time in USA history before Martin Luther King, Jr. worked so diligently to pass legislation to free the USA of this burden of hate.
Today, (click here) two granite monuments stand on either side of the Potomac River. These are memorials to Lyndon B. Johnson and Martin Luther King, Jr. Little seems to connect them. One is filled with remarkable calls to justice. The other is a landscape of pine trees.
But for two years they strategized together—behind closed doors and during secretly recorded phone calls. They came together in the days after President Kennedy’s assassination. From 1963 to 1965, their coordination helped to push forward the landmark civil rights laws of the 20th century.
During Johnson’s time as president, he signed into law the most significant Civil Rights legislations in over a century: The 1964 Civil Rights Act, which ended legal segregation, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited laws meant to suppress Black voters, and the 1968 Civil Rights Act, which focused on Fair Housing policy. Johnson referred to these civil rights laws as “the greatest achievement of my administration.”...
There is no room in the USA for hate anymore. There is much work to be done to recover this country from a deadly pandemic and the disruption it caused. Hate is a waste of time. We should have no patience with any of it.
President Lyndon Johnson and the great civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. were not minor figures in history, they moved mountains. Where is that legacy today? It is missing among high powered and expensive political ads that promote the very essence that is destroying our national fabric of unity. There is no room in the USA for extremism as it continues to kill Americans through insidious ways mired in ignorance and hate (click here). It is believed a full one third of the one millions USA deaths from the pandemic were preventable. Then there was the impact on minority communities and families. They will never be whole again.
What Buffalo, New York proves is that social media has become a platform of hate in a way no one could initially understand. The underground of hate finds it convenient to harness the power of media and make it serve an illegitimate purpose.
One gunman (click here) turned loose hate within him that was transformed by others that espouse hate online and seek to take the hate and turn it into power. That is what is at the essence of White Supremacy. It isn't just about the idea of racial superiority, it is about taking hate and turning it into power to cause widespread carnage. That is the goal of White Supremacy. It is not simply a neighbor with distasteful leanings. White Supremacy's ugliness is seen when those in power turn toward these leanings and encourage voting with the idea it will win out in a way that will finally bring about the final outcome for the manifesto of hate.
There are many layers of power within White Supremacy. They have to be defeated. The politics of hate in the USA is disgraceful. There is absolutely a political dogma that accompanies these acts of violence. There absolutely is and we cannot turn from it.
Great men and women have provided a proud legacy of diversity in this country and it is up to each one of us to revel in it and bring about a country that no longer values such hate or the violence that accompanies it.
Congress held a rare public hearing Tuesday (click here) into the existence of what the government calls unidentified aerial phenomena, more commonly known as UFOs, a subject of scrutiny by the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies following an increase in sightings by military personnel and pilots in recent years.
By taking testimony from senior government officials, lawmakers intended to bring “out of the shadows” a Defense Department organization that has been tracking the sightings, said Rep. André Carson (D-Ind.), chairman of the House Intelligence’s Committee’s panel on counterterrorism, counterintelligence and counterproliferation....
I think this is perfectly justifiable use of government's capacity to understand potential dangers to the USA. I once heard there is regular activity off the east coast of the USA of unidentified objects splashing down into the ocean. To realize we have observations of these elements and not the capacity to understand them is irresponsible.
There needs to be funding to investigate any and all sightings or radar record or any other detection interference of entities that are uncertain to know their characteristics and/or origins.
It is important to understand our world and all aspects of it. This is a part of the world we do not understand. If there is intelligence in these sightings, we may regret we started to pursue them. Why? Because the more we understand the unknown, the better the unknown may understand us and there in lies the lack of fear that would cause hesitation of attack. There is a safety in being as mysterious to others as they are to us.
I find this simply fascinating and don't understand how all this is simply left to the imagination. Hollywood doesn't seem to mind the mystery of ET, Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Arrival. I think Americans are interested and quite frankly would be ready to understand other lifeforms if they truly exist.
OWhen The West looks at the fallow and dangerous agricultural fields (bombed by Russia delivering metals and chemicals into the soil) of Ukraine it sees a world in need for food.
When communists look at the fallow and dangerous agricultural fields of Ukraine they see a victory. They look to their own capacities to feed their people. They do not look at the unproductive agricultural fields in Ukraine and wonder how the world will eat. They don’t care. They don’t care if their own people go hungry. When that occurs the communists will blame it on the Nazis.
Vladimir Putin launched an unprovoked war into a Post-Soviet country during a global pandemic for no other reason but to satisfy his own politics on Russia’s victory day.
Got that? The Ukraine invasion, genocide and continuing war is to benefit the wrongful politics of Russia. No other reason. When The West measures it’s national security and the benevolent acts it holds dear to its purpose nowhere in that equation is there any room for communists. None. Non-proliferation is the only path available. It benefits the communists to see their shortcomings in promoting any escalation of tensions.
Basically, no more nice-nice.
Genocide is non-negotiable.
The West worries about The West and defends against communists. If The West wants to find places to be benevolent and promote economic ties, there is an entire continent in Africa that is fertile fields for peace and prosperity.
May 16, 2022
Seoul, South Korea — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (click here) criticized officials over slow medicine deliveries and mobilized the military to respond to a surge in suspected COVID-19 infections as his nation struggled to contain a fever that has reportedly killed dozens and sickened nearly a million others in a span of three days.
North Korean health authorities said Monday that eight more people died and an additional 392,920 were newly found to have feverish symptoms. That brings the death toll to 50 and illnesses to more than 1.2 million, respectively. It's a sharp jump from the six dead and 350,000 sick reported last Friday, a day after the North said that it found that an unspecified number of people in capital Pyongyang tested positive for the now-widespread omicron variant of the coronavirus.
Kim has acknowledged that the fast-spreading fever, highly likely driven by COVID-19, is causing "great upheaval" in the country, and outside experts say the true scale of the outbreak is likely much bigger than what's described in the state-controlled media....
There is no way Western democracy can bring about any peace or economic ties to encourage peaceful paths between the countries of planet Earth. This is hopeless. There have been successes in the past, but, all that changed with the global pandemic. We are farther and farther from any form of peace or even any kind of productive dialogue than ever before.
The communists need to stop practicing politics that does not promote peace. The Treaty of Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) has never been more important. This treaty must go forward and be the focus of peace for the purpose of saving lives through commonalities in the need for healthy citizens and an abundance of food. It is a viable path that I believe any country wants to believe will result in peace. It must be a high priority of The West. It is the last hope for these countries to end their poverty and save their people.
The BBC has been reporting about the atrocities left behind in town after town after the Russians have left. There are civilians killed everywhere. They also have tape from a closed circuit television that shows Russian troops speaking with a security guard and business owner exchanging greetings and even smoking cigarettes together. As soon as the security guard and business owner walks away, the two Russian soldiers open fire on them. It is some very horrific stuff.
At first when reading this report about these Ukraine soldiers in Mariupol I thought Russia had taken the soldiers, but, evidently it is a Ukraine operation that is going well to secure the safety of the troops left in Mariupol. The civilians were evacuated on May 7th.
This report from President Zelensky is live.
May 16, 2022
Volodymyr Zelensky (click here) has said an operation to "save the defenders of Mariupol" has started, but added the work will require "discretion and time".
Ukraine's defence ministry says 264 fighters have left the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol and been taken to areas held by Russian-backed rebels.
This report originated with CNN. Both of these civilians were shot in the back after the conversations with the Russians.
May 12, 2022 by Sara Sidner, Sandi Sidhu, Vasco Cotovio, Kostyantyn Gak and Oleksandra Titorova
CNN has obtained surveillance video of what is now being investigated as a war crime by Ukrainian prosecutors.
Both civilians died after the heartless shooting that goes against the so-called rules of war that outlaw the targeting of civilians. CNN has identified the victims. One was the owner of the vehicle dealership that was looted, whose family does not want to be named. The other was Leonid Oleksiyovych Plyats, a 68-year-old grandfather who worked as a guard there....
Since the Maidan of 2014 (click here) Putin has used the idea of Ukraine being full of Nazis to justify all the aggression he has exerted on Ukraine, including the annexation of Crimea and the continuing civil war in eastern Ukraine.
Putin's propaganda is such poison that the soldiers see no reason to practice any form of proper war protocols, especially when it comes to civilians. One can understand the Russian soldiers point of view, they were given the understanding that right next door to Russia lies the unfinished business of WWII. That is a complete lie, but, it doesn't matter because it is a lie that the Russian people believe and that the Russian military uses to justify it's killing. The Ukraine civilians have been attempting since the initial invasion to drive the Russian soldiers out of Ukraine. They have acted, in some instances, as a volunteer force creating their own offensives to end the bloodshed, defend their neighborhoods and bring about a degree of peace in Ukraine.
That resistance through the eyes of Ukrainians is about defense of their homeland, but, through the eyes of Russian soldiers, that is simply the Nazis striking back at the soldiers. There is nothing anyone can do to change the politics of Vladimir Putin in calling the special operations in Ukraine necessary to rid the world of the Nazis. He won't give it up because he has a former Ukrainian president in Viktor Yanukovych willing to testify that the Nazis drove he and his family out of Ukraine.
That is the story and that is what continues to be a false narrative within Russia. That false narrative, I believe, is what gave the Russian soldiers the right (in their own minds) to take the lives of civilians that were of no threat to them. These two men died needlessly because of Putin's politics. The war Russia is fighting is based in lies and nothing more. The politics within Russia has to change. How and when that will ever happen is anyone's guess. Putin will not change a narrative that continues to protect his grip on power.
The world economy has been rocked by this war into Ukraine. There is a burgeoning food shortage because of the chronic attacks on the farmers and farmlands in Ukraine. The West needs to address the needs of it's people that does not involve communist countries.
The document that completely discounts Durham’s assertions is the Mueller investigation that clearly found a relationship between many Russians and the Trump campaign.
There were no criminal charges because Barr ended the investigation prematurely. The report itself and its unpolished submission is proof of that.
The contacts between Russians and the Trump campaign are numerous and the financial support came through a Russian spy, Maria Butina and the NRA’s dark money. Butina served jail time and was ultimately deported.
The Muller investigation had plainly exposed the GRU and a special unit in the USA interfering with the 2016 campaign for President.
The Clinton Campaign and it’s members should sue for defamation after the obviously important Mueller investigation that proved Russian interference on many levels with the 2016 presidential elections.
