Vladimir Putin recently made comments on the seriousness of global conflicts that can lead to nuclear conflict. Patriots worldwide should pay close attention as the globalists build their dangerous nuclear arsenal.
In stark contrast to attempts in numerous western countries to stifle free speech online, Russian President Vladimir Putin defended Internet freedom during a conference...
A prominent Swedish lawmaker asserts that Hungarian billionaire George Soros's influence on European politics and policies make him "one of the most dangerous men,"
The world’s largest social network has just rolled out a new feature of its facial recognition technology that will notify users when someone has uploaded a photo of them even if they haven’t been tagged in it on Facebook.
The new feature sprang into action Tuesday. Facebook says it will “help people better manage their identity” on the platform “using face recognition.” Though not all of the network’s over 2 billion users will be able to avail of the new feature as those in the European Union and Canada are excluded due to privacy laws which prohibit Facebook's use of facial recognition.
Under EU law, personal data can only be gathered legally under strict conditions, for a legitimate purpose. Furthermore, “persons or organisations which collect and manage your personal information must protect it from misuse and must respect certain rights of the data owners which are guaranteed by EU law.”
Once Facebook identifies an image it thinks your face is in, it will send a notification to a new Photo Review feature, much like the Timeline Review feature when someone tags you in a post.
Within the review section, users can then choose to tag themselves, send a message to the person who uploaded the photo, report the image for breaking the site’s rules or let Facebook know if the photo isn’t of them.
“These new features help you find photos that you’re not tagged in and help you detect when others might be attempting to use your image as their profile picture,” Joaquin Quinonero Candela, Facebook’s Director of Applied Machine Learning wrote.
Users can opt out of this new feature as Candela explains: “If your tag suggestions setting is currently set to “none,” then your default face recognition setting will be set to “off” and will remain that way until you decide to change it.” However if it is not, the user will have to opt-out.
This all sounds rosy, with Facebook just being the nice guy and allowing you better control over content about you but posted by others, but of course, it benefits the company too. More notifications equals more activity which in turn results in more ad impressions, the same can be said in relation to tagging.
As I noted in an editorial last week, President Donald Trump has only one viable option to repel the partisan lynch mob now nipping at his heels in the form of a taxpayer-funded pack of legal hyenas, masquerading as objective prosecutors under the droopy eyes of old reliable deep state hatchet man Robert Swan Mueller III, the special counsel appointed to “investigate” the Clinton-Podesta-Schiff-Democrat Party-Corporate Media fabricated Russia collusion delusion.
As the GOP Congress finally begins to stir, as rapid-fire events make it increasingly impossible to deny the true nature of Mueller’s handpicked partisan hit squad of Trump-hating, Hillary-supporting D.C. swamp lawyers and arrogant federal careerists, as firings and other departures quickly erode the carefully-contrived, totally-counterfeit veneer of credibility ascribed to Mueller and his henchpeople, my advice to the president has only become more apropos…and more imperative.
President Trump can, and must, kill two birds with one stone.
First, the president must completely disempower and dismantle Robert S. Mueller’s fraudulent rogue prosecution gang, which is merely an extension of a larger corruption of power that is unparalleled in our history.
Second, the president must use every resource at his disposal to prosecute the almost-seditious abuses of power by lawless Clinton-Obama FBI and NSA apparatchiks who:
1) Politically weaponized the federal government’s electronic intelligence capabilities to spy on a presidential candidate and his campaign,
2) Colluded with foreign and non-state intelligence agents to manufacture evidence used as false pretexts for securing FISA warrants(s) that employed the national security laws of the United States to give illicit, illegal cover to this political espionage,
3) Used the fruits of this political espionage activity to damage or otherwise hinder this candidate once they had become president-elect and eventually President of the United States through surreptitious releases of the criminally-procured information,
4) Fabricated and instigated false allegations about foreign state collusion implicating the president’s election campaign and family members, and
5) Perpetuated this massive criminal fraud on the American people for nearly a full year by manipulating and abusing the investigatory and prosecutorial powers of the Department of Justice.
To this end, President Trump must begin at the intersection of these seditious current and former federal officials who had previously facilitated and covered up a similarly-breathtaking and brazen criminal fraud on the country during the previous presidential administration, to include the previous president.
The president must order his Attorney General to appoint a special counsel to investigate the Obama-Clinton-Mueller-Rosenstein criminal collusion that enriched the Clinton-Democrat crime syndicate by 100s of millions of dollars and further embedded the power of the deep state operators who facilitated what may be the most brazen of self-serving criminal treasons in American history: the multi-billion-dollar Uranium One pay-to-play scam.
This incredible scheme perpetrated by the criminal Clintons and their coterie of minions and fellow travelers, implicates top officials of our federal government…including and especially the U.S Department of Justice, including and especially Robert Mueller and Rod Rosenstein.
This course of action is manifestly in the best interests of this country and of justice. It is not some political maneuver against the president’s cynical partisan persecutors or some clever machination to spare his presidency from the illegitimate cabal that is single-minded in its intent to fraudulently remove the president from office, by any means possible.
This action by the president is both legally and constitutionally necessary to preserve any remaining credibility in our institutions of government, which now hinges on whether or not justice will, once and for all, be visited upon the Clintons and their well-placed partisan accomplices, finally vindicating our system of law and justice after decades of brazen, yet-unpunished corruption that the Clintons and their ilk have insinuated into these institutions, bringing unparalleled and a now-accelerating degradation to American civic life itself.
Pro-active Republican lawmakers have already demanded the resignation of Robert Mueller, as a start, and are calling for a thorough probe of his entire ad hoc operation, which is now coming apart at the seams with almost daily revelations of its rotten fraudulent core.
Mueller’s decades as an establishment federal careerist, which only ended with his ceding of the FBI’s top job to his good pal, criminal leaker and manipulator Big Jim Comey, offer more than enough grounds for Mueller’s disqualification for merely the appearances of impropriety and professional conflicts of interest they raise, just at the outset. They are of such incestuous nature as it concerns key figures of the conspiracy to remove the president that Mueller should never even have been considered for appointment.
That Mueller took the Special Counsel appointment without even blinking, despite his own close professional and personal connections to key figures implicated in the DOJ, NSA and FBI corruption in service to ulterior partisan ends, via the Clinton crime family, was a major red flag, right from the beginning.
Reinforcing this red flag was the fact that Mueller’s entire (supposed) vetting for this sensitive, consequential special counsel position amounted a single-sentence approval letter signed by some faceless Deputy AG barely a day after the appointment was promulgated.
Aside from Mueller’s blatant disregard for both attorney and public service ethics in accepting the special counsel appointment, some GOP lawmakers have also cited the former FBI director’s close involvement with the Obama administration’s secret Russian-U.S. uranium deal as more than enough reason for his immediate removal and the commencement of a real (untainted) investigation of the Obama-Clinton Russia-connected treason that Mueller has been instrumental in abetting and covering up.
So exactly what is the story with Uranium One?? The short version is that in 2010, when Mueller was FBI director, the Obama administration and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton approved and facilitated a highly-suspicious business deal that had grave public implication in that the result of it was that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton effectively handed Russia and Vladimir Putin control over upwards of 20% of the uranium assets of the United States.
As this deal was coming to fruition, after years of nefarious Clintonian machinations urging it along, Mueller’s FBI was not only investigating, but had uncovered clear evidence of, Russian bribery and fraud to the detriment of U.S. uranium contractors, as part of a larger Russian (Putin) racketeering scheme to gain control of global uranium resources, namely by purchasing the power and influence being peddled by the Clintons to anyone who would meet their terms.
As early as 2009, the FBI had obtained evidence (secret recordings and intercepted emails) showing that a Moscow-compromised uranium trucking company called Tenex was engaged in racketeering through a pattern of bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. At the same time, Russian nuclear officials were routing millions of dollars to benefit the Clinton Foundation. Mueller’s evidence even included a secret informant willing to testify to these illicit schemes.
Tenex was operating out of Bethesda, Maryland through a subsidiary named “Tenam USA.” The company was run by a corrupt Russian official named Vadim Mikerin. As the FBI was investigating Tenam’s extortion and bribery scheme, Russia was seeking permission from the Obama administration and the Clinton State Department to acquire ownership in Uranium One. Despite evidence of Tenex and Mikerim’s ongoing corruption as early as 2009, the Obama administration rubber-stamped a U.S. work visa twice for Mikerim, as late as 2014.
And what did our intrepid paragon of justice Robert Swan Mueller III do to thwart this brazen scheming and arrest its perpetrators? The answer is absolutely NOTHING. In fact, and even worse, the deep state’s Russia collusion fantasy crusader Mueller actually moved to silence the FBI’s confidential informant, forcing the informant to sign a non-disclosure agreement. This otherwise-inexplicable gag order on a key witness to the Clinton-Russia uranium treason was only just lifted on October 25, 2017, a full seven years after the fact, under pressure from Congressional intelligence committee leadership.
Robert Mueller ensured that his own FBI investigators were effectively walled off from exposing the real players in our own government who were complicit in this epic influence-peddling scam founded on the Clintons’ ruthless greed and epic criminality.
Obama’s Justice Department and Mueller’s FBI knowingly kept Congress and the American people in the dark about Russia’s significant and illegal manipulations involving American uranium companies and the highest officials of American government, first and foremost among them U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The result was that the Clintons’ criminal treason, in collusion with Russian nuclear criminals, went full steam ahead, unperturbed.
Mueller’s key role in the covering up of these Russia-Clinton uranium dealings constitutes more than enough justification for Robert Mueller’s immediate and unceremonious removal this autonomous, secretive inquisitor limitlessly probing the newly-inaugurated president who defeated his former Obama administration crony Hillary Clinton.
There are probably a dozen other reasons why Mueller should be criminally charged, but for now let’s just focus on this most heinous of schemes to which Mueller has been party: the transfer of our precious uranium resources to criminal Russian oligarchs to benefit the Clinton-Obama crime junta and sleazy hucksters from the ranks of the Democrat party.
How is it even possible that Russia (a supposed enemy) could acquire a 20% interest in U.S. uranium production, you might ask. The answer is that while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State under President Barack Obama, the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom, was handed official U.S. Government authorization to purchase a Canadian company named Uranium One which controlled uranium mining stakes stretching from Central Asia to the American West, including approximately 20% of America’s known uranium resources.
Uranium One, as handed over to the Russians by the Obama-Clinton, was effectively the creation of a Canadian entrepreneur named Frank Giustra. Mr. Giustra “coincidentally” and quite conveniently happened to be a major Clinton donor and a personal friend of Bill Clinton.
Bill Clinton and Frank Giustra
The Clinton-Giustra genesis of the Uranium One scam was detailed in a lengthy New York Times story in April 2015 titled “Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal.” [Based on the old Grey Lady’s incessant animus for Donald Trump and its complicity in puffing up the Russia collusion delusion about the president, it would seem that amnesia is the order of the day at the Times.]
In 2005, Clinton was flown on Giustra’s lavish private jet to Kazakhstan, a central Asian country once part of the former Soviet Union. Kazakhstan possesses around 12 percent of the world’s uranium resources and Giustra wanted to acquire ownership interest in several uranium mines.
Using his substantial network of contacts as a former U.S. President, Bill Clinton had arranged for he and Giustra to dine with Kazakhstan’s despotic ruler, Nursultan Nazarbeyev. During the meal, Clinton handed the Kazakh president a propaganda coup when Clinton expressed support for Nazarbayev’s bid to head an international elections monitoring group.
Apparently it was of no consequence or concern to officialdom in Washington that this move by Clinton ran directly counter to American foreign policy and undermined much-deserved criticism of Kazakhstan’s poor human rights record by, among others, Clinton’s wife, at the time a U.S. senator.
The new company Giustra formed to effectuate the Uranium One deal, UrAsia Energy Ltd., signed a preliminary deal giving it stakes in three uranium mines controlled by Kazatomprom, the government agency that runs Kazakhstan’s uranium mines and nuclear energy industry. In 2007 UrAsia merged with Uranium One in what was described as a $3.5 billion transaction, with the successor company retaining the name Uranium One.
Mukhtar Dzhakishev, president of Kazatomprom, subsequently revealed that then-Senator Hillary Clinton had pressured Kazakh officials to cede the uranium rights to Giustra. Hillary served as the stick to her husband Bill’s proverbial carrot in making the deal happen.
According to the Washington Post, Dzhakishev “described the deal as “a financing mechanism of the Democratic Party” and said a Clinton adviser named Tim Phillips championed it in meetings with him and other officials.”
From the same WaPo article:
“At the time, Clinton denied taking any action to support Giustra’s purchase. Giustra also said Clinton played no role in the deal and rejected any link between the deal and his Clinton Foundation donations.
But in the leaked video of him speaking to the authorities, Dzhakishev said a senior Kazakh official told him to look into the deal after then-Sen. Hillary Clinton canceled a meeting with him. Dzhakishev said he was told that “investors who currently work in Kazakhstan and have ties to Clinton have problems and meetings will be resumed only after Kazakhstan resolves the problems.”
“I called them, and they came. I met them in Astana and then Clinton’s aide, Tim Phillips, began to scream that this deal involves Democrats and is financed by them, and that we were hampering the deal,” Dzhakishev said.”
When all was said and done, UrAsia’s investors controlled the new Uranium One. Chairman of the new company was Canadian Ian Telfer. Telfer donated $2.3 million to the Clinton Foundation.
Frank Giustra, who had shepherded Bill Clinton’s influence with the Kazakhstanis, held a personal stake in the deal estimated at about $45 million. Through a spokesperson, Giustra said he sold his stake in 2007. According to the New York Times, one year after the 2005 uranium deal was final Giustra donated $31.3 million to the Clinton Foundation with a promise of $100 million more.
One adviser on the Uranium One-UrAsia merger was Paul Reynolds. Reynolds donated $1 to $5 million to the Clinton Foundation.
A company called U.S. Global Investors Inc. held $4.7 million in Uranium One shares. A U.S. Global executive named Frank Holmes donated $250,000 to $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation.
This is just the short list of Uranium One-connected donations that flowed back to the Clintons. Although the Clintons had an obligation to report these donations, they conveniently waited until 2008 to do so, and only when the New York Times was poised to expose and publish details about this obvious multi-million dollar pay-to-play scheme.
As is modus operandi with all of the Clintons’ sleazy machinations, any questions or suggestions posed about the connections between shady Clinton influence-peddling business deals and the inevitable cash windfalls realized by the Clintons were glibly pooh-poohed as either mere coincidence (please) or lacking any “evidence” (as if we need signed receipts and written agreements to connect the obvious dots of the Clintons’ epic lucre).
With classic Clintonian prevarication, treating the public as either blind, stupid or both, the Clintons steadfastly deny the obvious quid pro quo connections at the root of the Uranium One Kazakhstan acquisitions. Of course, the crony beneficiaries of the deal know enough to follow suit with similar huffy denials, lest they meet with an unfortunate premature demise like so many others who have dared run afoul of the Clintons’ scamming and scheming, all the way back to the Arkansas backwater days.
Russo-Clinton Treason: Phase II
Bubba and Putin in 2010 contemporaneous with the Clinton uranium treason
Once Uranium One was set up with the Kazakhstani uranium holdings and firmly in the control of Clinton cronies, the stage was set for the next step in the Clintons’ treasonous plot: handing over Uranium One and its holdings (including 20% of America’s uranium resources) to the Russians, or more accurately to Vladimir Putin. The Clinton cabal’s uranium wheelings and dealings began immediately at the commencement in 2009 of the Obama administration, under the close direction of newly-installed Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
In order for Russian nuclear entity Rosatom to purchase Uranium One the deal required approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS. The committee consists of top officials from nine different federal agencies. Not surprisingly, given the foreign subject matter intrinsic to the committee’s work, the key agency — the main driver out of all government players involved — is the U.S. Department of State, conveniently headed by Mrs. Bill Clinton in 2009.
To be clear, Hillary Clinton did not have the authority to push such a potentially-controversial deal through by herself. Such power ultimately resides with the president, in this case Barack H. Obama. But also joining Madame Clinton on the CFIUS was the contemptible, corrupt, partisan U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.
Under the careful orchestration of the Obama-Clinton-Democrat graft artists, the CFIUS voted twice, first in 2010 and then in 2013, to approve Rosatom’s acquisition of Uranium One, thereby giving Vladimir Putin control of 20 % of all U.S. uranium.
It would be ridiculous to think that Obama, Hillary, Holder, and Mueller would not have been well aware of the FBI’s investigation into the Russian racketeering and all of the bribes and kickbacks, in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, that formed a backdrop to the Uranium One acquisition by Russia.
These sworn federal officials did not step in to expose and halt the tainted Uranium One deal, they quite unabashedly cleared the way for it. Robert Mueller, far from being just the head of the FBI investigating Russia’s racketeering activities around the deal, seems to have in fact been an active participant in it, going so far as to personally deliver ten grams of HEU (highly enriched uranium) to the Russians in September 2009.
The HEU in question had been confiscated in 2006 by the U.S. Department of Energy in a “nuclear smuggling sting operation involving one Russian national and several Georgian accomplices.” A cable, one of several released by WikiLeaks details Director Mueller’s mission to personally deliver the HEU to Russian law enforcement at the behest of Hillary Clinton.
Another interesting bit of “innocent timing” or convenient coincidence (take your pick): in June of 2010, the same month that Rosatom struck its deal for a majority stake in Uranium One, Bill Clinton spoke in Moscow for the tidy sum of $500,000, the 2nd highest fee he had ever received for a speech.
Clinton’s half-million dollar bonanza for 90 minutes “work” was paid by Renaissance Capital, a Russian investment bank with ties to the Kremlin. Renaissance Capital analysts talked up Uranium One’s stock, assigning it a “buy” rating and saying in a July 2010 research report that it was “the best play” in the uranium markets. Of course this, too, is just a “coincidence.”
If you think all of these connections and occurrences are too mind-boggling to accept as mere coincidence, hold on to your seat for this next one. Remember how the Tenam/Rosatom racketeering activities were centered in Bethesda, Maryland at the Tenex U.S. offices? As rank-and-file FBI agents were assiduously investigating these Russian schemes to obtain U.S. uranium resources through corruption of public officials, Robert Mueller knew he had to suppress the case, what with Hillary impatiently waiting in the background for the deal to close so she and Bill could realize the multi-million dollar windfalls to their “Foundation.”
Since the case technically arose in Maryland, Mueller moved to hand it to a trusted ally who conveniently happened to be a prosecutor with jurisdiction over the case. Mueller had known this prosecutor for over 20 years. In fact, the prosecutor’s career began as a trial attorney working for Mueller in (ironically) the Public Integrity Section of the DOJ’s Criminal Division.
At the time Mueller handed his longtime legal crony the Uranium One case to be buried and forgotten, clearing the way for approval of the Rosatom deal by the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton, the attorney was serving as United States Attorney for the District of Maryland. His name was Rod Rosenstein.
And the rest is history. I leave you, the good reader, to draw the obvious conclusions about what is really behind this cozy little bromance between Robert Mueller and Rod Rosenstein, the two lawyers who promulgated Mueller’s grotesque, unaccountable partisan hit squad that is clearly intent on taking out our president.
Let’s not forget what Donald Trump said to Hillary Clinton and the entire nation in a televised presidential debate on October 9, 2016:
“I’ll tell you what. I didn’t think I’d say this, but I’m going to say it, and I hate to say it. But if I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation, because there has never been so many lies, so much deception. There has never been anything like it, and we’re going to have a special prosecutor.”
After his election, Donald Trump chose to be magnanimous and forward-looking rather than follow-through on his words and appoint that special prosecutor. Trump naively thought he could commence his presidency free from the tentacles of his seething, embittered dragon lady of an opponent.
Donald Trump genuinely did not want his presidency tangled up with the Clinton stain. He knew it this would be impossible to avoid were he to see to the much-deserved prosecution of Hillary Clinton and her extensive syndicate of cohorts, cronies, flunkies and fellow travelers, including the likes of Mueller and Rosenstein, for their countless crimes and endless scandals.
Unfortunately for him, they gave him his “special prosecutor.” And now this prosecutor is ruthlessly and illegitimately driving towards nothing less than a coup d’etat, ending with Donald Trump’s being removed from his duly-elected office.
It is time for President Trump to end this despicable sedition and begin the work of draining the swamp…for real.
What do we make of Trump’s national security speech? First of all, it is the military/security complex’s speech, and it is inconsistent with Trump’s intention of normalizing relations with Russia.
The military/security complex, using Trump’s position as President, has defined Russia and China as “revisionist powers,” Washington’s rivals who seek to put their own national interests ahead of Washington’s unilateralism. Russia and China are “revisionist powers” because their assertion of their national interests limits Washington’s hegemony.
In other words, Washington does not accept the validity of other countries’ interests if those interests are contrary to Washington’s interests. So, how does Trump expect to work with Russia and China when he reads a speech that Russia and China seek to “shape a world antithetical to our interests and values.”
“Our values” means, of course, Washington’s dominance.
Trump begins by honoring the military, police, Homeland Security, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In other words, “America first” means domination by Washington over the citizenry as well as over foreign countries.
Trump then cloaks himself in the American people who “voted to make America great again.”
Then Trump’s speech picks up the Israel Lobby’s line about a bad deal with Iran and asserts that previous administrations tolerated ISIS, when in fact they created it and set in upon Libya and Syria.
Then he attacks environmental protection and complains of illegal aliens, while ignoring the refugees Washington’s wars imposed on Europe.
In an era of neoconservative celebration of US world hegemony, Trump accuses his predecessors of losing confidence in America. This is extraordinary. When a country’s entire foreign policy is based on the assumption that it is the “exceptional and indispensable country,” how is this a loss of confidence? It is massive arrogance and hubris. The problem is not a loss of confidence by the rulers but an overbearing hubris.
Then Trump claims that through him, Americans again rule their nation.
He says that now Washington is serving the citizens. Looking at the tax bill, he must mean that citizens consist of the One Percent.
He next associates making America first with more money for the military.
Then he blames Iran for terrorism, something that Iran lives in fear of, but he does not mention Saudi Arabia’s support for terrorism or that of the US military/security complex’s which encourages terrorism as a weapon against Iran and Russia and as an excuse for its massive budget and power.
Trump then claims credit for the Russian/Syrian defeat of ISIS. It has been proved that ISIS is supported and financed by Washington. Trump’s claim is even more ridiculous than the previous claims of the Obama regime that the US defeated National Socialist Germany. Russia, which did defeat Germany, was not invited to the anniversary celebration.
Trump next demands that the countries we defend pay for it. Who are these countries and who do we defend them from? He can only mean Europe, Canada, Australia, Israel, and Japan. Is Washington defending them from Russia, China, North Korea and Iran or from the terrorists Washington creates, arms, and supplies to overthrow Libya, Syria and whatever countries Washington is successful siccing terrorists on. Apparently, some of these CIA-created terrorist organizations break loose from their creator and conduct operations on their own. So, Washington is a government that creates its own enemies.
Trump next brags on the sanctions he has imposed on “the North Korean regime.” He doesn’t mention, and I would bet he does not know, that Washington has withheld a peace treaty since the 1950s from North Korea. Washington has kept the war status open for 64 years. Having seen the fate of Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, etc., little wonder North Korea wants nuclear weapons.
Trump, standing there threatening the world, says that Washington will take all necessary steps to prevent North Korea from threatening the world.
Trump then delivers the establishment’s propaganda that unemployment is at an all time low and the stock market at an all time high. So, what is Trump rescuing Middle America from if unemployment is at an all time low? What happened to Trump’s case against jobs offshoring?
This is nothing but feel-good talk. Trump is repeating the lies because the lies make him look good. What Trump should be doing is pointing out the meaninglessness of the unemployment rate, because it doesn’t count the unemployed, only those few who looked for a job in the last 4 weeks. He should be pointing out that the stock market is not a sign of a growing economy but a sign of massive money creation by the central banks of the US, EU, UK, and Japan. The massive printing of money has flooded into paper assets, driving up their price and further enriching the One Percent.
Trump says that one leg of the strategy is to “preserve peace through strength.” What peace is he talking about? In the past two decades Washington has destroyed in whole or part eight countries and overthrown democratic governments in others. Is Trump equating peace with Washington’s wars? No other country has initiated wars and invasions and bombings and aggressive military actions on other countries’ borders. Trump says that America is threatened by enemies and to protect us the military will be enlarged. He said he was overturning the “defense sequester,” something that clearly does not exist.
My conclusion is that Trump has surrendered to the real rulers of America—the powerful interest groups such as the military/security complex, the Israel Lobby, the environmental polluters, Wall Street and the banks “too big to fail.”
America is a country in which despite the hopes flyover America had in Trump, an oligarchy rules. The American people, regardless of who they elect, have no voice, no input, no representation.
The governments of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush were the last governments that were subject to any accountability. With the Clinton regime the United States entered into the age of tyranny.
An Islamic preacher in Turkey launched a scathing attack on clean-shaven men, claiming that they “look like women” and provoke “indecent thoughts”.
Murat Bayaral’s intervention, made on a religious TV channel on 16 December, has highlighted the increasing Islamisation of Turkey under President Recep Erdogan.
“Men should grow beards. One of the two body parts that separate men from women is the beard,” Bayaral said.
“For example, if you see a man with long hair from afar you may think he is a woman if he does not have a beard. Because nowadays women and men dress similarly. God forbid! You could be possessed by indecent thoughts,” he added.
The preacher, who enjoys a sumptuous bounty of well-groomed facial hair, made the comments as Turkey’s secular heritage looks increasingly under threat.
President Erdogan, who does not have a beard relies on a conservative support base, which is eager to see a muddying of the separation between mosque and state.
Evolution was removed from science classes in public schools earlier this year and girls are now allowed to wear headscarves when attending school. Enrollment in religious schools has leaped from 63,000 children to 1,000,000 since Erdogan first rose to power in 2002, Politico reported.
“Turkish debates on piety and modesty reoccur frequently,” Magdalena Kirchner, a fellow at the Istanbul Policy Center in Turkey, told Newsweek.
“Erdogan declared in 2012 his intent to raise ‘devout generations,’ and former Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arinc stated in 2014 that women should not laugh out loud in public,” she added.
While Bayaral is a marginal figure in Turkey, Kirchner warned that his statement demonstrated that the government’s pious base exerted “bottom-up pressure against [a secular] way of life without having to impose legal constraints.”
Turkish school are not only being injected with a lot more religious studies, but also a lot more Erdogan studies. The 63-year-old is increasingly competing with Turkey’s founding father General Ataturk for space on the national curriculum.
The president appears to have consolidated his grip on Turkey after a controversial referendum in April cleared the way for him to transform the parliamentary system into an executive presidency.
Mostafa Kemel Ataturk established Turkey as a secular state in the 1920s. However, Erdogan has promised to “raise a devout generation” against the secular establishment.
The enemies, real or imagined, of Erdogan’s vision for Turkey, are an educated and liberal elite living in Istanbul, who have a taste for alcohol.
Preacher Bayaral’s claims are a reminder of the widening polarity within Turkish society. The beard is a pressure point for Islamist and Islamophobic policies alike.
Militant groups such as Isis have previously forced men living under their jurisdiction to wear beards, while China’s authoritarian government has banned men belonging to the Uyghur Muslim minority population from sporting facial hair.
Contrary to Bayaral’s claim, scientific studies have never shown that men without beards provoke “indecent thoughts”. However, several have demonstrated that homophobic men are more likely to be repressing gay desires.
Liberteon