Life-sized doll was left in a tree at Mike Cunningham's home in Oakdale, Indiana
Army veteran also left signs calling the new US President 'a disgrace to America'
Police 'cannot act because the homeowner has a right to freedom of speech'
An army veteran has displayed an effigy of Donald Trump hanging by a noose outside his home in Indiana.
The life-sized doll, which is holding a Soviet flag, was left in a tree at Mike Cunningham's home in Oakdale, Fort Wayne along with signs calling the President a 'disgrace to America'.
A local neighbourhood group says the controversial protest 'crossed a line' - but police say the display is legal since the homeowner has a right to free speech.
Hanlontown, IA — Beginning around 5:30 am on Wednesday morning, local authorities in Hanlontown, Iowa, realized the Magellan Pipeline was leaking what amounted to 138,600 gallons of diesel fuel. KIMT in Iowa reported that emergency responders with the Worth County Sheriff’s Office, Freeborn County Sheriff’s Office, Iowa Department of Natural Resources, Worth/Mitchell County Emergency Management, and Freeborn County Emergency Management were all on the scene. The cause of the leak is still under investigation.
Later in the afternoon, KIMT provided an update on the situation:
“The owners of the pipeline that leaked over 138,000 gallons of diesel fuel in Worth County Wednesday say the spill has been contained and the fuel had not flowed into any waterways.
Magellan Midstream Partners says the leak has caused no injuries or evacuations so far. Over 70 people, including Magellan representatives, emergency crews, regulators and contracts, are on the scene Thursday.
“Magellan says operations on this section of their pipeline system have been halted and repairs are expected to begin soon. There is no estimate on when the pipeline could go back into operation.”
Tom Byers, Manager of Government and Media Affairs for Magellan Mainstream Partners, told KIMT, “There will be an investigation on what caused release and what can be learned from this to try and help us and ensure this doesn’t happen again.” Unfortunately, this is not the first time Magellan has dealt with spills from pipelines. The U.S. Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently settled federal charges against Magellan related to three previous spills.
Magellan, based out of Tulsa, Oklahoma, agreed to pay $2 million for a civil penalty and another $16 million for relief across its 11,000-mile pipeline system in the Midwest, the Oil and Gas Journal reported. Magellan, formerly known as Williams Pipe Line Co. LLC., was sued for their role in the spill of 5,177 barrels of petroleum products, which spilled into waterways. Magellan also contaminated the Pierre Bayou north of Texas City, Texas, when 482 barrels of gasoline leaked. Two Magellan pipelines in Nemaha, Nebraska, also burst after being struck by construction machinery and leaking 650 barrels of diesel fuel, 655 barrels of jet fuel, and 1,529 barrels of gasoline.
This latest spill comes only days after President Trump issued executive orders and a presidential memorandum regarding moving forward on the Keystone XL pipeline and the Dakota Access pipeline. Both projects have faced heavy resistance from indigenous activists, environmentalists, and private property advocates who view eminent domain as theft. Will this latest spill have any effect on Trump’s upcoming decisions? Or will the deep pockets of Big Oil and the banksters behind the pipelines be enough to sway Mr. Make America Great Again? Only time will tell. Hopefully, for the sake of the Earth and humanity, Trump will end the suppression of alternative energy sources and allow the Oilgarchy to collapse under the weight of its unsustainable products.
The Pentagon is about to seal a $9 billion deal with Lockheed Martin Corp to buy more F-35 fighter jets amid ongoing negotiations to make the aircraft less expensive.
The new deal includes 90 more aircraft and is expected to be announced at the end of this month, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing three sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The negotiations for the tenth batch of the F-35s are overshadowed by US President-elect Donald Trump’s criticisms of the project’s high costs.
According to Roger Carr, the chairman of the UK weapons manufacturer BAE Systems, Trump has urged Lockheed and its partners to slash the aircraft’s cost by at least 10 percent.
A few weeks ago, Trump asked Boeing in a tweet to “price-out a comparable F-18 Super Hornet,” causing Lockheed and BAE’s shares to drop overnight.
The $400 billion Joint Strike Fighter program, which is described as the most expensive in history, has been dogged by problems since it was launched in 2001.
The project has missed several deadlines due to recurrent software bugs and dissatisfactory performances.
A technical problem forced the Air Force to ground its fleet of F-35s in September, only two months after declaring the aircraft combat-ready.
A fuel system deficiency, faulty diagnostic systems, cracks in wing spars, lack of high-fidelity simulators for combat missions, and a pilot escape system that could kill ejecting pilots are among the problems that has so far been cited for the system, according to Michael Gilmore, the Defense Department’s top weapons tester.
The US Defense Department expects to purchase 2,443 of the stealth warplanes over the next few decades.
The F-35 has three variants: the A-model with conventional takeoff and landing which is the export version; the F-35 B variant, which can handle short takeoffs and vertical landings for the Marine Corps and the British navy; and the F-35C, designed exclusively for the US Navy.
Lockheed's F-35 program manager Jeff Babione said last summer that the price of the F-35A is expected to drop to under $100 million per unit in the coming months.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Tuesday said he will introduce legislation allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices and called on President-elect Donald Trump to support the proposal.
"If Mr. Trump is serious about taking on Pharma, if Mr. Trump is serious about having Medicare ... negotiate prescription drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry, we are going to have very shortly very significant legislation to do just that," Sanders told reporters.
"I would hope that Mr. Trump would join us and support that legislation."
Trump indicated throughout the campaign that he would support allowing the government to negotiate drug prices and said last week that the pharmaceutical industry is "getting away with murder" because of what it charges the government.
Sanders did not say when he would be introducing his legislation, which is also expected to allow for importing drugs from Canada and other countries.
The Senate rejected an amendment from Sanders and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) that supported allowing people to import prescription drugs from Canada.
Twelve Republicans supported Sanders's amendment, but 13 Democrats voted against it.
Sanders said last week he would be speaking with every Democrat who voted against it "to find out their concerns and look forward to them joining us in the future to help make prescription drugs more affordable."
Progressive groups blasted Democrats after the vote. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), who is up for reelection in 2018 and voted against the amendment, took to Twitter afterward to explain why he voted against it.
Sanders has also been publicly pressing Trump to stand by his campaign pledge to avoid cutting entitlement programs, including Medicare.
He said Tuesday that he read Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) — Trump's pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services — a Trump tweet from the campaign bragging that he was the only GOP candidate to pledge he wouldn't meddle with entitlement programs.
"I asked Representative Price whether or not Mr. Trump was going to keep his word on that issue," he told reporters. "He said he can't speak for Mr. Trump but he expected that he will."
Mayor Jim Fouts of Warren, Michigan came under fire on Monday after audio surfaced of him allegedly using disparaging remarks against African-Americans and women. In recordings obtained by Motor City Muckraker, Fouts reportedly uses the N-word and refers to older women as “dried-up c*nts.” “Blacks do look like chimpanzees,” the voice says in one recording. “I was watching this black woman with her daughter and they looked like two chimps.”
The Chicago Police Department has unconstitutionally engaged in a pattern of excessive and deadly force, US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Friday, wrapping up a 13-month federal probe of a department that has been under heavy scrutiny over officer-involved shootings.
MINNEAPOLIS — The “fog of war” erupts in the confusion caused by the chaos of war. And in the media, it’s an intentional phenomenon that makes it difficult to separate fact from fiction.
While the battles over war narratives evolve, they all have a common goal: to distort reality on the ground.
Such is the case on the crisis in Syria, the new cold war with Russia, and even the buildup for President Bush’s support for Kuwait’s “humanitarian” war against Iraq.
On Oct. 10, 1990, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl identified only as “Nayirah” told the Congressional Human Rights Caucus that she witnessed Iraqi soldiers removing babies from incubators and leaving them on a cold floor to die.
Her testimony was cited numerous times by senators and even President George H.W. Bush as justification for backing Kuwait in the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, which erupted just three months later.
However, it was later revealed that “Nayirah” was the daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States, and her testimony was arranged by a PR firm representing a Kuwaiti-sponsored group lobbying Congress for military intervention.
15-year-old Nayirah al-Ṣabah testifies in front of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus that she witnessed Iraqi soldiers removing babies from incubators. Her testimony would later be used to justify America’s involvement in the first Gulf War.
More recently, during the “Arab Spring” uprisings that swept the Middle East in 2011, Libyan media claimed that Moammar Gadhafi loyalists carried out mass “Viagra-fueled rapes,” and that the Libyan leader had ordered rape as a weapon of war. When Luis Moreno-Ocampo, a prosecutor with the International Criminal Court, opened an investigation into these allegations, it grabbed international headlines, appearing in Al-Jazeera, the BBC, and Reuters, among many others.
Even as Amnesty International questioned the legitimacy of the allegations, other supposedly humanitarian groups hit a loggerhead on the veracity of the claims. One top U.N. official said he believed the claims were meant as a scare tactic to invoke “massive hysteria” even as another top U.N. official defended them, creating a distraction from the war itself.
And today the fog of war is obscuring realities on the ground in Syria.
Major news outlets frequently cite unnamed sources, a convenient way to manipulate public perception. From CNN to Reuters, these outlets are publishing unverifiable claims and providing minimal evidence to support them, and readers are supposed to drink it all up
The crisis in Syria has attracted international attention and concern, and the corporate media is using the tragedies of war to push an agenda and boost its audience. This push for content — no matter what — has serious consequences. On Dec. 20, for example, Egyptian police arrested five people for making videos they claimed were set in Aleppo, but were actually filmed at a demolition site.
Social media further distorts reality on the ground, presenting a fragmented image of war as the media promotes only those accounts that align with the goals of the United States and its allies.
The media and public both accept the accounts of the White Helmets as gospel. Yet that group, which purports to serve as volunteer first responders in Aleppo, receives training from British mercenaries and funding from a PR firm with ties to George Soros.
Whether the White Helmets are the apolitical first responders they claim to be or not, one thing is clear: The narrative being weaved by and about them supports U.S. intervention in the war in Syria.
It’s time to put a critical lens to the propaganda in the news and social media. It’s time to demand more than reporting that toes the government line and makes claims without real evidence.
Learn more about fake news and about the forgotten genocide in Yemen on the full episode of the Behind the Headline:
The career of Jeff Sessions, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for attorney general, has been shadowed by his prosecution of the "Marion Three." Sessions brought forth the voter fraud case as a U.S. attorney in 1985, and his critics alleged the charges to be racially motivated.(Video: Dalton Bennett/Photo: Dalton Bennett/The Washington Post)
Coretta Scott King, the widow of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., urged Congress in a letter to block the 1986 nomination of Jeff Sessions for federal judge, saying that allowing him to join the federal bench would “irreparably damage the work of my husband.” The letter, previously unavailable publicly, was obtained on Tuesday by The Washington Post.
(Read the full letter below)
“Anyone who has used the power of his office as United States Attorney to intimidate and chill the free exercise of the ballot by citizens should not be elevated to our courts,” King wrote in the cover page of her nine-page letter opposing Sessions’s nomination, which failed. “Mr. Sessions has used the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters. For this reprehensible conduct, he should not be rewarded with a federal judgeship.”
Thirty years later, Sessions, now a senator, is again undergoing confirmation hearings as President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, and he is facing fierce opposition from civil rights groups.
In the letter, King writes that Sessions’s ascension to the federal bench “simply cannot be allowed to happen,” arguing that as a U.S. attorney, the Alabama lawmaker pursued “politically-motivated voting fraud prosecutions” and that he “lacks the temperament, fairness and judgment to be a federal judge.” She said Sessions’s conduct in prosecuting civil rights leaders in a voting-fraud case “raises serious questions about his commitment to the protection of the voting rights of all American citizens.”
“The irony of Mr. Sessions’ nomination is that, if confirmed, he will be given a life tenure for doing with a federal prosecution what the local sheriffs accomplished twenty years ago with clubs and cattle prods,” she wrote, later adding, “I believe his confirmation would have a devastating effect on not only the judicial system in Alabama, but also on the progress we have made toward fulfilling my husband’s dream.”
During the 1986 hearing, the letter and King’s opposition became a crucial part of the argument against Sessions’s confirmation. The current Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), has not previously released the letter, which committee rules grant him the sole authority to reveal.
BuzzFeed News first reported the existence of the letter earlier Tuesday, noting that it was never entered into the congressional record by then-Judiciary Committee Chair Strom Thurmond.
Clark, New Jersey School District officials are investigating the incident and vow to take action if necessary.
So this is what our girls basketball team from plainfield high school had to see in the classroom where they was getting changed for the game. This was deliberately done and an act of racism at Arthur L Johnson in CLark NJ share and get this out. And FYI our coach said there was other dolls/muppets in the room but this particular one had a string around the neck with a basketball on top so I wouldn't call this an indirect message this is a clear message of hate and racism!!!!
ANew Jersey girls high school basketball team found a black dummy hanging from its neck by a string in their changing room on Saturday, MyCentralJersey.comreports.
The Plainfield High School team, which comes from a community that is 50 percent African-American, was visiting Arthur L. Johnson High School in Clark, New Jersey, a predominantly White community, the news outlet explained.
Plainfield’s head coach Keshon Bennettconfirmed to MyCentralJersey.com that the dummy was in the changing room when his team arrived to playing the game, which they lost 64-20. After the match ended, they departed quickly.
On the other side, Johnson High School’s coach Joe Marino told the news outlet Saturday afternoon that he was unaware of the incident.
School officials, however, learned about what happened and launched a probe.
“The Clark Board Education and the Clark Community does not condone any demonstrations of intolerance,”said Edward Grande, superintendent of Clark Public Schools. He said the school board will take appropriate action following its investigation.
Johnson High School officials said they are also investigating the incident.
President Barack Obama is stuck between false flag operations and political circus?
” I am deeply offended by the lies being told by the US Government – and more specifically, by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with the explicit approval of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the President – with respect to the Russians “hacking” the US election. Robert David Steele,Intelligence expert
– I am reminded of the 935 now-documented lies told by Dick Cheney to justify a $5 trillion war and multiple occupations from Afghanistan to Niger – or in more Nordic terms, the falsification by the Swedish military, in collaboration with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and CIA, of a Russian submarine that never existed, allegedly “invading” Swedish waters.
As a CIA spy, I have faked intelligence, lied to government leaders, and managed a modest false flag operation (no one died). This is what CIA does. I accuse John Brennan, Director of the CIA, of being a liar who is in betrayal of the public trust with his lies. The most recent DHS-FBI report – and related reports from small companies seeking to curry favor with the Deep State – are absolute crap.
Image Left: Robert David Steele
I was the author of the first letter to the White House warning of our cyber-security shortfalls, in 1994. In the same year I was the opening speaker for Hackers on Planet Earth. The year before, in 1993, I introduced NSA to hackers — of the 900+ participants in my international conference roughly 60 were from NSA, bused down from Fort Meade to listen to a panel led by Emanuel Goldstein, founder of 2600.
Here are the facts as I understand them, augmented by public statements from Julian Assange, Craig Murray, William Binney, James Bamford, Ray McGovern, Philip Giraldi, and John McAfee – and others who do not wish to be named.
The only people “hacking” the US election have been the two political parties. The Democratic Party actively conspired against Bernie Sanders and actively stole thirteen primaries from Bernie Sanders using electronic ballot tampering. The Democratic Party also organized roughly three million dead, duplicate, and illegal alien voters. The Republican Party used various means to repress a million black voters.
The Russians – as well as the Israelis, French, Germans, Chinese, and everyone else on the planet with any curiosity – have absolutely been conducting electronic espionage against US political targets. They have not “leaked” anything (generally intelligence services try not to demonstrate that they have successfully hacked in anywhere).
The “leaks” from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to WikiLeaks were a combination of disgruntled NSA officials furious with Hillary Clinton’s mis-handling of classified materials (including sending emails with classified information to IP addresses in Saudi Arabia and Qatar), and a DNC insider with authorized access who shared copies – all this according to William Binney, Julian Assange, and Craig Murray.
The exposure (I use the term advisedly) of John Podesta as a very unethical political operative with very strong possibilities of also being a pedophile, resulted from a single phishing expedition by a single hacker who social engineered Podesta into changing his Google email password through an intermediate site that then was able to steal all of Podesta’s email. This hacker is in jail in the US and it is almost certain that he is collaborating with a US intelligence service, not the Russians.
The final “leaks” came from the New York Police Department (NYPD) after it confiscated a laptop from Anthony Weiner that turned out to have – it is alleged – all 650,000 emails that included Huma Abedeen as an addressed. This is a mother lode. The FBI immediately sequestered this machine, but not before the NYPD copied many of the emails and leaked the fact that they provided evidence of treason by Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedeen in taking money from Qatar and Saudi Arabia in return for regime change in Syria and Yemen as well as classified information in passing; and information reinforcing the possibilities of female as well as male pedophilia in the highest ranks of the Democratic Party.
The only intelligence services that persistently spy on US politicians across every device they own are the US intelligence services, specifically NSA, with CIA focusing on selected Senators and Representatives. NSA has explicitly spied on Barack Obama in detail since Obama was a junior Senator. The US media, very much under control, is both replaying the false narrative against the Russians, and strictly avoiding any independent commentary on the fact that it is US traitors, not the Russians, who are the threat to US peace and prosperity.
It is highly likely that the neo-Nazi element in European leadership is conspiring with the neo-Nazi, neo-conservative element in US leadership, to start a war with Russia. The assassination of the Russian Ambassador in Turkey, the assassination of the NATO chief auditor about to expose a Euro 250 billion black budget used by NATO to bribe politicians and carry out false flag operations, and the various false flag operations in France (these with Mossad assistance) and Germany and elsewhere are all part of trying to start WWIII – war is a business model for the City of London and Wall Street, for the Vatican and the Rothschilds.
There is good news. It is my judgment that WWIII has been averted by a combination of restraint on the part of Vladimir Putin, confident that Donald Trump will make things right (pun intended) once he is in office, and public intelligence. For the first time in history, a sufficiency of retired intelligence professionals and alert citizens have come together to demonstrate with compelling depth that both the US secret intelligence community and their fellow travelers, the US media (both mainstream and “progressive”) cannot be trusted to tell the truth about anything of import.
For those who wish to learn more, I offer the three links as starting points.
Those wishing to understand how Donald Trump won accidentally, against all odds within a system rigged twelve different ways, are invited to review the two links below.
In my view, the truth at any cost lowers all other costs. The truth is not available from the US secret intelligence world or the US media – for truth, we must look to one another.
The retailer said Wednesday that sales at its established stores fell 2.1% in November and December compared to the same period last year.
Macy’ s Inc. pointed to changing consumer behavior and said its performance reflects the challenges that are facing much of the retail industry.
As if to underscore that point, Kohl’s Corp. also reported disappointing holiday shopping numbers Wednesday.
Macy’s said the 68 store closures, which span the nation, are part of the 100 closings it announced in August.
Of the 68, three were closed by the middle of 2016, 63 will close in the spring and two will be closed by the middle of 2017.
Macy’s is selling or has sold three other locations, but is leasing the properties back and will keep operating those stores. Some employees may be offered positions at nearby stores, but Macy’s estimates that 3,900 employees will be affected by the closures.
Macy’s also said it plans to restructure parts of its business and sell some properties. This will lead to the reduction of 6,200 jobs. The moves are estimated to save $550 million annually.
Overall, Macy’s said, the job reductions represent about 7% of its workforce. The company, which owns the Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s brands, has been struggling with declining traffic in its stores, where the bulk of its business is still conducted.
It said it is closing stores that are “unproductive or are no longer robust shopping destinations” as well as selling those with highly valued real estate.
It plans to invest some of its savings in growing its digital business.
Macy’s said it now expects to earn between $2.95 and $3.10 per share on an adjusted basis for its 2016 fiscal year, versus its prior forecast of $3.15 to $3.40 per share.
The company is scheduled to report full results in February. Shares in Macy’s fell more than 10% to $32.20 in after-hours trading. Kohl’s shares fell almost 15% to $44.15 after it cut its earnings guidance for fiscal 2016.
It now expects $3.60 to $3.65 a share on an adjusted basis, down from its previous forecast of $3.80 to $4.00 per share.
