Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Victims Of Police Brutality Get A Star On Hollywood Walk Of Fame

A group brings the Black Lives Matter movement to Hollywood Blvd.


A new effort by an anonymous group of artists shines a light on the victims of police brutality in a unique way.
Indecline, who describe themselves as an “underground movement” of “activists, musicians, graffiti writers [and photographers],” honored the Black Lives Matter movement by giving Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Dontre Hamilton, Eric Garner, Oscar Grant, Kimani Gray, Aiyana Stanley-Jones and Freddie Gray their own stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.


On Saturday, March 19, the group used an industrial-strength adhesive to install the names of the aforementioned victims alongside the group’s logo on vacant stars. The following Wednesday, they posted a video of the act with audio of a Malcolm X speech on police brutality playing in the background. 


On Friday, Indecline, which has produced several videos and apparel with  messages to disrupt authoritarian figures and principles, told Sputnik News that they believed the names were still in place; however, Brown’s name had been crossed out with black spray paint. By Monday, however, it appeared the plates had been removed, according to one Instagram account. 

The group’s Instagram page gave a nod to the blog 12ozProphet that explained the message behind their art: 
“Indecline wanted to basically say that the few men and women featured in this piece, along with the overarching issue that binds them together, are more important than any of the names embedded in a star on the Hollywood Boulevard. Police Brutality and blatant disregard for human rights on behalf of rogue officers of the law are among some of the serious issues at present and they thought this would be a way to engage the public in this conversation.”
 Whether or not the group will face vandalism charges for the Hollywood Walk of Fame project is unclear. A representative from Indecline told Sputnik that they haven’t discussed a plan to cover more stars. 

The Striking Similarities Between ISIS & Israel's ME Agendas



Rania Khalek, associate editor of the Electronic Intifada and a journalist who focuses on Palestinian liberation and the police state, explains to Mnar Muhawesh how she and Max Blumenthal created the #JSIL hashtag in 2014 to bring attention to the media’s double-standard toward Israel’s war crimes, which are treated far more leniently than similar human rights violations carried out by terrorist groups. 

Sunday, March 27, 2016

Wikileaks: Hillary Clinton Helped Topple Gadhafi While France & UK Fought Over Libya’s Oil

Clinton bragged about the U.S. role in Moammar Gadhafi’s death, and her emails leaked by Wikileaks show the race to claim Libya’s resources in the aftermath.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton talk during an interview by PBS's Charlie Rose, Wednesday, April 20, 2011, at the State Department in Washington. (AP Photo / Alex Brandon)
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton talk during an interview by PBS’s Charlie Rose, Wednesday, April 20, 2011, at the State Department in Washington. (Alex Brandon/AP)


WASHINGTON — A message from Hillary Clinton’s private email server reveals that France and the United Kingdom both sought to control Libya’s oil in the days after the U.S.-backed coup in 2011.
An email sent on Sept. 16, 2011 to Clinton, then the U.S. Secretary of State, from journalist and family friend Sidney Blumenthal, shows that French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron each traveled to Tripoli about one month after Moammar Gadhafi’s government fell in order to assert their claim on Libya’s energy reserves.
                               Hillary : Courting Gaddaffi Son

They made these demands, Blumenthal wrote, during meetings with the country’s National Transitional Council, a de facto government which formed with Western support in the aftermath of the coup:
“According to knowledgeable individuals, as part of this effort, the two leaders, in private conversations, also intend to press the leaders of the NTC to reward their early support for the rebellion against Muammar al Qaddafi. Sarkozy and Cameron expect this recognition to be tangible, in the form of favorable contracts for French and British energy companies looking to play a major role in the Libyan oil industry. According to this source, Sarkozy feels, quite strongly, that without French support there would have been no revolution and that the NTC government must demonstrate that it realizes this fact.”
Blumenthal reported that Cameron sought to downplay the historically strong ties between the U.K.-based BP Oil and the Gadhafi government. France, he wrote, was negotiating “to reserve as much as 35% of Libya’s oil related industry for French firms, particularly the major French energy company TOTAL.”
Barack Obama, David Cameron
AP Photo
Analysis of the Clinton emails by Antiwar.com shows Sarkozy also lusted after Gadhafi’s gold and silver reserves, valued at about $7 billion.
The United States, France, U.K. and other NATO allies backed rebel forces in Libya that ousted Gadhafi in August 2011, in what was widely reported to be a “humanitarian intervention” against a government with a history of severe human rights abuses.
However, far from improving conditions, the fall of Libya’s government left what was once an economically prosperous nation in chaos and disarray.
The failed state proved to be a perfect opportunity for Daesh, the terrorist group commonly known in the West as ISIS or ISIL, as Catherine Shakdam reported for MintPress last March. She highlighted that it brought extremists closer to European shores:
“With ISIS now inserted into the mix of Libya’s unravelling, the country is back on the forefront of the war on terror. Two days after the video surfaced, Egypt’s Ambassador to the U.K. Nasser Kamel told the BBCthat ISIS would attempt to break into Europe by exploiting conventional migration routes, camouflaging its fighters within the waves of illegal migrants pouring toward Western capitals.”
Both the U.S. and France were reported to have re-entered the conflict in Libya in February.
Clinton’s emails also suggest that another U.S. ally, Israel, supported the destabilization of Syria through efforts to weaken Iran and control energy reserves in Syria’s Golan Heights, a region illegally occupied by Israel.
Similar to the conflict in Libya, the Syrian civil war is driven by competing interests in gas pipelines which would run through the country.  


EXCLUSIVE: Belgian Intelligence Had Precise Warning That Airport Targeted for Bombing

Attack in subway likely also known in advance by Belgian and Western agencies; attack plan was formulated at de-facto ISIS capital of Raqqa, in Syria.

Three men who are suspected of taking part in the attacks at Belgium's Zaventem Airport. The man at right is still being sought by the police, while the two others were suicide bombers.
Three men who are suspected of taking part in the attacks at Belgium's Zaventem Airport. The man at right is still being sought by the police, while the two others were suicide bombers.

The Belgian security services, as well as other Western intelligence agencies, had advance and precise intelligence warnings regarding the terrorist attacks in Belgium on Tuesday, Haaretz has learned.

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The security services knew, with a high degree of certainty, that attacks were planned in the very near future for the airport and, apparently, for the subway as well.

Despite the advance warning, the intelligence and security preparedness in Brussels, where most of the European Union agencies are located, was limited in its scope and insufficient for the severity and immediacy of the alert.


As far as is known, the attacks were planned by the headquarters of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Raqqa, Syria, which it has pronounced as the capital of its Islamic caliphate.

The terror cell responsible for the attacks in Brussels on Tuesday was closely associated with the network behind the series of attacks in Paris last November. At this stage, it appears that both were part of the same terrorist infrastructure, connected at the top by the terrorist Salah Abdeslam, who was involved in both the preparation for the Paris attacks and its implementation.
Abdeslam escaped from Paris after the November attacks, hid out in Brussels and was arrested last week by the Belgian authorities.

Abdeslam's arrest was apparently the trigger for Tuesday's attacks, due to the concern in ISIS that he might give information about the planned attacks under interrogation, particularly in the light of reports that he was cooperating with his captors.


The testimony of the detained terrorist, alongside other intelligence information, part of which concerned ISIS operations in Syria, should have resulted in much more stringent security preparedness in crowded public places in Brussels, along with a heightened search for the cell.

As of now, the search is focused on the terrorist Najim Laachraoui, who created the explosive vests used by the bombers and escaped from the airport at the last moment.

There is concern, however, that other cells connected to ISIS in Western Europe will attempt to carry out additional attacks in the near future, either in Belgium or in other countries involved in the war against the terror organization in Syria and Iraq.

At least 31 people were killed and 260 wounded in the terrorist bombings at the Brussels airport and in the subway system on Tuesday. Responsibility for the attacks was claimed by ISIS.

Belgian authorities have named the two airport attackers as brothers Ibrahim and Khalid El Bakraoui. Laachraoui, who was photographed with the brothers at the airport and was observed fleeing the scene, is the subject of a massive manhunt.

Link: http://www.haaretz.com/world-news/1.710572

Lawmakers want answers why VA stripped 260K vets of gun rights

Lawmakers want answers why VA stripped 260K vets of gun rights
Senators take issue with the fact the VA uses the fiduciary trustee status of a veteran to regulate firearms possession without due process. (Photo: John Schreiber/My News LA)

Two Senate Republicans are seeking to understand the Veterans Affairs office practice of reporting veterans to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check system.
Currently a veterans assigned a fiduciary trustee to act on their behalf is automatically declared “mentally defective” and is reported to NICS, the database Federal Firearms Licensees use to determine whether a prospective buyer is eligible to buy guns. As of December 2015, the VA has reported 260,381 individuals to the FBI, effectively making them prohibited firearms possessors under the law.
U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa lawmaker who is currently the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, finds this unacceptable.
“Our military heroes risked their lives to protect and defend this country and all that we stand for, including our most basic constitutional rights,” said Grassley in a statement. “Now the very agency created to serve them is jeopardizing their Second Amendment rights through an erroneous reading of gun regulations. The VA’s careless approach to our veterans’ constitutional rights is disgraceful.”
In an effort to fix the issue, Grassley, along with Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., penned a letter to VA Secretary Robert McDonald last week and another to the subcommittee over the agency’s funding, questioning the practice.
Making a due process argument, the lawmakers argue the VA uses the fiduciary trustee status of a veteran to regulate firearms possession without ever seeking to find out if the service member is a danger to themselves or others.
“The use of the VA regulation, adopted for a totally unrelated purpose, is suspect, especially in light of the Supreme Court holding that the Second Amendment is a fundamental right,” reads the letter to McDonald. “That holding changed the legal calculus by which a regulatory scheme can survive constitutional scrutiny and it is not clear how these regulations would fare under that increased scrutiny.”
Demanding answers, the senators want the VA to explain the process which now supplies over 99 percent of the individuals reported as being “mentally defective” to NICS and how they satisfy the constitutional argument.
A similar standard has been proposed by the Social Security Administration to strip gun rights from as many as 75,000 beneficiaries per year according to figures released by the White House in January.


Link: http://www.guns.com/2016/03/25/lawmakers-want-answers-why-va-stripped-260k-vets-of-gun-rights/

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Clinton Email Shows US Sought Syria Regime Change for Israel’s Sake



It is rare for a succinct foreign policy platform paper to so fully encapsulate a candidate’s thinking process. A State Department email of Hillary Clinton, available on WikiLeaks, lays out the Democratic front-runner’s strategy as an architect of US intervention in Syria, shows the flawed reasoning that beget the scheme. Perhaps most importantly, the document shows utter blindness to the huge problems that the war ultimately led to.


As with so many US wars in the Middle East, it all starts with Israel, and then-Secretary of State Clinton saw the US imposing regime change in Syria as primarily about benefiting Israel and spiting Iran, a position that closely mirrors that of several Israeli officials.
The Clinton ideal was that the US would impose regime change by supplying arms, but without US troops, and that Russia wouldn’t dare oppose America (noting Russia did nothing during Kosovo), that the new US-backed Syrian government would abandon ties with Iran, turn against Hezbollah, and potentially negotiate a peace settlement with Israel, while the rest of the Arab world cheers America “as fighting for their people.”


There are myriad flaws in this reasoning, and in hindsight very few of Clinton’s predictions came to pass, from her declaration that the Iran nuclear talks wouldn’t lead to a deal, that Russia wouldn’t defend the Assad government from US-backed rebels, that US pledges of arms would lead to more defections from the Syrian military, etc.
Perhaps the most glaring mistakes was the failure to acknowledge even to the prospect of Islamist groups getting involved. Five years into the civil war, US-backed rebels are still comparatively ineffectual, despite huge weapons shipments, and ISIS and other Islamist groups control more than half of the country.
Clinton’s position seems to be wrong at nearly every turn, with her one correct analysis being the fairly trite observation that Israel wants to retain a nuclear monopoly in the Middle East, without offering any plausible reason for why the US should commit forces to supporting of this objective
While the paper reveals Clinton’s interventionist leanings, it may also be elucidative regarding interventionist mentality in general, showing how quickly the notion of a “low cost” war becomes official policy, and that policymakers are ultimately blind not just to the reality on the ground, but also to the bigger risks of their schemes.

BRICS Under Attack: The Empire Strikes Back In Brazil

Despite all the fancy anti-corruption rhetoric, the assault on President Rousseff’s leftist government is the result of a coordinated campaign by business interests tied to Washington and Wall Street.

Soldiers stand guard outside Planalto presidential palace where protesters have projected the word "Impeachment" on the building, as they call for the impeachment of Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff in Brasilia, Brazil, Monday, March 21, 2016. (AP/Eraldo Peres)
Soldiers stand guard outside Planalto presidential palace where protesters have projected the word “Impeachment” on the building, as they call for the impeachment of Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff in Brasilia, Brazil, Monday, March 21, 2016. (AP/Eraldo Peres)

NEW YORK — (Analysis) The last decade has seen a remarkable coalescing of non-Western nations in both economic and political partnerships. These multilateral institutions have been championed as alternatives to Western organs of political and economic power such as NATO, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank.
From the growth of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to the establishment of the Eurasian Economic Union, China’s “One Belt, One Road” strategy to link much of the Eurasian landmass via trade and investment, and most recently the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, many have viewed these developments as essential for the decentralization of global power away from the imperial centers of Washington, Wall Street, London and Brussels.  
But perhaps none of the emerging Global South international groupings has been more promising in terms of both public relations and real economic partnership than that of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).

BRICS countries account for 46 percent of the world’s population – over 3 billion people, as of 2015 – making it the single largest bloc in terms of human capacity among global alliances. The scope of BRICS, combined with its increasing assertiveness as an economic power unto itself, has undoubtedly ruffled a few feathers in Washington and elsewhere in the West.  
It should come as no surprise that major moves have been taken in the last 12 to 24 months to undermine each BRICS member nation and destabilize them through political and economic means. And it is no coincidence that those leaders shown smiling and shaking hands at recent BRICS summits are now either the targets of destabilization efforts and subversion – as in the cases of Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa – or are a target of a military and political charm offensive, as in the case of India. In each case, the United States and its allies benefit significantly from the latest developments.  

Brazil in the crosshairs

One of the U.S. empire’s tried and true methods of destabilizing a targeted country is through manufacturing and promoting political scandals and/or political movements that appear oppositional but whose interests, whether consciously or not, align with the ruling establishment in the West. Both of these elements are at play in Brazil, which has been moving toward increased economic, and consequently political, independence in recent years.  
Woman shows poster written in Portuguese "There will not be a coup" next to a picture of Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff, during a rally in her support and of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in Brasilia, Brazil, Friday, March 18, 2016. Supporters of Silva and Rousseff gathered for rallies in a handful of cities across Brazil, particularly in the industrial south, where the former factory worker has his base. Silva has tageted in an alleged corruption investigation involving the Brazil oil giant Petrobras. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
Aw oman shows poster written in Portuguese “There will not be a coup” next to a picture of Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff, during a rally in her support and of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in Brasilia, Brazil, Friday, March 18, 2016. Silva has been targeted in an alleged corruption investigation involving the Brazil oil giant Petrobras. (AP/Eraldo Peres)

In Brazil, the government of Dilma Rousseff is facing a major destabilization campaign orchestrated by powerful right-wing elements in the country and their U.S. backers. Under the always convenient banner of “anti-corruption,” millions have turned out in the streets to demand the ouster of the twice-elected Rousseff government on the heels of a series of revelations about alleged corruption pertaining to the quasi-state, quasi-private Petrobras oil company.  
According to the allegations, a number of leading political figures, some of whom are connected to President Rousseff and the Workers’ Party, have skimmed at least 3 percent of the billions in oil revenue from Petrobras, illustrating the still active tradition of corruption in Brazil.  
The latest target is former President Lula da Silva, who was forcibly removed from his home in an ostentatious show of force by law enforcement authorities meant to humiliate the 70-year-old founder of the Workers’ Party. Because of his working class background, the former president was seen as the hope and pride of the left in Brazil, and the public removal from his home earlier this month sparked the latest round of protests.

But what — or who — is really behind the soft coup in Brazil?


The right wing is the driving force of the protests, despite any progressive-minded, anti-corruption sentiment being expressed by various segments of the protest movement. Two of the principal groups responsible for organizing and mobilizing the demonstrations are the Free Brazil Movement (MBL) and Students for Liberty (EPL), both of which have direct ties to Charles and David Koch, the right-wing, neocon, U.S. billionaires, as well as other leading figures of the far right, pro-business neoliberal establishment.
MBL is fronted by Fabio Ostermann and Juliano Torres, both of whom were educated in the Atlas Leadership Academy, a satellite of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which is directly funded by the Koch brothers. EPL is a direct affiliate of the U.S.-based Students for Liberty, a well-known Koch brothers outfit with deep ties to the right-wing political establishment in the U.S.
One of the leading faces of the movement is Kim Kataguiri, a 20-year-old “activist,” who is both a founder of MBL and a leader in EPL. Unabashedly pro-big business, he’s an adherent of the so-called Austrian School of Economics, the economic ideology that advocates total deregulation of the economy in the interests of private business, and a great admirer of Milton Friedman, the father of what is known today as neoliberal capitalism.
Kataguiri and his fellow right-wing activists have been quick to distance themselves from the blood-soaked legacy of right-wing coups in Brazil and Latin America for obvious reasons. Yet they espouse precisely the same economic policies as those enacted throughout the region, perhaps most famously in Chile under the brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, whose economic policies were directly guided by none other than Friedman.  
In this March 18, 2015 photo, anti-government protest leader Kim Kataguiri poses for a picture in Sao Paulo, Brazil. (AP/Andre Penner)
In this March 18, 2015 photo, anti-government protest leader Kim Kataguiri poses for a picture in Sao Paulo, Brazil. (AP/Andre Penner)
“We defend free markets, lower taxes and the privatisation of all public companies. … In Brazil, the left is still seen as cool by young people. … We want to destroy this idea that if you defend free markets then you’re an old man who is asking for a dictatorship. …  Unfortunately, we don’t have any big sponsors. The government and some sectors of the press say that we are financed by rich people. We would have no problem in being financed by rich people.”
Unfortunately for Kataguiri, Ostermann, Torres and their colleagues, the truth about their connections to powerful finance capital and business in the U.S. and throughout Latin America is well known. Still, the corporate media whitewashes these connections, presenting the protests as some sort of pure expression of people’s discontent, rather than a manufactured form of political manipulation and destabilization which has seized upon difficult economic times to cynically exploit public opinion. Brazil’s economic downturn over the past two years has made this much easier.
Other influential groups such as VemPraRua (“Come to the Streets”) are directly funded by powerful right-wing business interests inside the country, including Brazil’s richest man, Jorge Paulo Lemann. As Bloombergnoted in a 2013 profile of Lemann:
“In the U.S., Lemann is virtually unknown, even though he and his two longtime partners, Marcel Herrmann Telles and Carlos Alberto Sicupira, now control three icons of U.S. consumer culture: Heinz ketchup, Burger King, and, after the $52 billion takeover of Anheuser-Busch in 2008, Budweiser beer. The combined market value of the companies they run is $187 billion—larger than that of Citigroup.
In Brazil, Lemann is a business-class hero. … Worth some $20 billion, Lemann is No. 32 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, seven slots behind George Soros and three ahead of Carl Icahn.”
Meanwhile, the reactionary, pro-U.S. elements inside (and outside) Brazil are particularly angered at the Workers’ Party and, more broadly, the left. This is not because of corruption – though corruption undoubtedly remains a problem – but because of the ascendance to power of political forces representing working class and poor Brazilians.
As the North American Congress on Latin America correctly assessed in April 2015: “Don’t believe the right-wing media’s emphasis on corruption—the recent demonstrations are motivated by entrenched elite discontent over expanding economic and political inclusion for the nation’s majority.”

Bringing BRICS to heel

In short, despite all the fancy anti-corruption rhetoric, the assault on Rousseff’s leftist government is the result of a coordinated campaign by business interests tied to the U.S. Washington and Wall Street that see in Brazil a dangerous precedent in which a left-wing government sympathetic to and allied with Bolivarian movements in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and until recently, Argentina, was able to gain power and preside over an economic boom.  
A graph demonstrating the correlation between expansion of anti-government sentiment and the stagnation of GDP growth.
A graph demonstrating the correlation between expansion of anti-government sentiment and the stagnation of GDP growth.
Indeed, this point should not be understated — namely, the economic downturn in commodities such as oil which has put the brakes on Brazil’s rapid economic progress.
In fact, recent data shows that the expansion of anti-government sentiment directly correlates to the stagnation of GDP growth, which itself directly correlates to the decline in commodities prices. As many have convincingly argued, the collapse of oil has no doubt been fomented and encouraged, if not directly orchestrated, by the U.S. and its allies in the Gulf in order to target non-Western countries whose economies are tied to oil and gas revenue — Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, and especially Russia.  
Essentially, what’s unfolding in Brazil is a multi-pronged effort to destabilize the country via a variety of political and economic means, with the ultimate goal of bringing to heel a key member of BRICS. But it is not the only one.
Brazil is certainly not the only BRICS member facing an offensive by the U.S.-NATO system. The next article in this series will examine the destabilizing forces reaching into South Africa. Future pieces will examine the growing military relationship between the U.S. and India, as well as the multi-faceted strategies to contain, isolate, and destabilize Russia and China.


Nixon Aide Reportedly Admitted Drug War Was Meant To Target Black People



John D. Ehrlichman, appointed counsel to the White House, is seen in 1968. (AP Photo)

An eye-opening remark from a former aide to President Richard Nixon pulls back the curtain on the true motivation of the United States’ war on drugs.
John Ehrlichman, who served 18 months in prison for his central role in the Watergate scandal, was Nixon’s chief domestic advisor when the presidentannounced the “war on drugs” in 1971. The administration cited a high death toll and the negative social impacts of drugs to justify expanding federal drug control agencies. Doing so set the scene for decades of socially and economicallydisastrous policies.
Journalist Dan Baum wrote in the April cover story of Harper’s about how he interviewed Ehrlichman in 1994 while working on a book about drug prohibition. Ehrlichman provided some shockingly honest insight into the motives behind the drug war. From Harper’s:
“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
In other words, the intense racial targeting that’s become synonymous with the drug war wasn’t an unintended side effect — it was the whole point.
The quote kicks off Baum’s “Legalize It All,” the cover story for Harper’s April 2016 issue. Read the whole article, which is a comprehensive argument for drug legalization, here.
Baum explained to The Huffington Post why he didn’t include the quote in his 1996 book, Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure.
“There are no authorial interviews in [Smoke and Mirrors] at all; it’s written to put the reader in the room as events transpire,” Baum said in an email. “Therefore, the quote didn’t fit. It did change all the reporting I did for the book, though, and changed the way I worked thereafter.”
The quote does, however, appear in the 2012 book The Moment, a collection of “life-changing stories” from writers and artists.
Baum also talked to HuffPost about why Ehrlichman would confess such a thing in such blunt terms.
“It taught me that people are often eager to unburden themselves, once they no longer have a dog in the fight,” Baum said. “The interviewer needs to be patient sometimes, and needs to ask the right way. But people will often be incredibly honest if given the chance.”

Monday, March 14, 2016

N.J. Gov. Chris Christie skips cop’s funeral to campaign for Donald Trump in Florida





While a New Jersey state trooper was laid to rest Monday, Gov. Chris Christie (r.) was in Florida to support Donald Trump (l.).


New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie skipped a state trooper’s funeral Monday to fuel his out-of-control lovefest with Donald Trump with whom he campaigned with in Florida on the eve of that state’s presidential primary.
As mourners honored Sean Cullen, 31, who was killed in the line of duty last week when he was struck by a passing motorist while responding to a highway car fire, Christie was in the Sunshine State, cozying up to Trump
Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno took Christie’s place at the funeral, while Christie’s camp referred all questions about his scheduling decision to the Trump campaign.
NYC PAPERS OUT. Social media use restricted to low res file max 184 x 128 pixels and 72 dpi
After Christie's bizarre Trump endorsement, he told reporters that he would not be a “full-time surrogate” for the Republican front-runner.
Yet, there he was in Florida, more than a thousand miles away extolling the virtues of the man he had lambasted on the campaign trail before ending his own presidential bid.
Cullen’s funeral was the third police funeral Christie has missed since December.
Christie missed the funeral services of Port Authority police officer Eamonn Mautone in January, as well as the December 2015 memorial of New Jersey State Police trooper Eli McCarson.
Christie was also on the campaign trail in January during a major snowstorm that killed five people.
Christie has lauded law enforcement during his failed 2016 presidential campaign, often complaining that there was "a chill wind blowing through law enforcement in this country."
NO SALES

The governor did tweet a message about the officer hours before the funeral.
“All State buildings are flying flags at half-staff today in honor of the passing of New Jersey State Trooper Sean Cullen,” Christie posted.
Cullen died Tuesday, a day after he was injured on Interstate 295 in Deptford Township while responding to a car fire. Several fire and police vehicles had emergency lights on, and Cullen was walking near the crash when he was struck.