Archived threads in /news/ - Current News - 128. page

>>118477
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/05/us/politics/trump-seeks-inquiry-into-allegations-that-obama-tapped-his-phones.html

It is not clear why Mr. Comey did not issue the statement himself. He is the most senior law enforcement official who was kept on the job as the Obama administration gave way to the Trump administration. And while the Justice Department applies for intelligence-gathering warrants, the F.B.I. keeps its own set of records and is in position to know whether Mr. Trump’s claims are true. While intelligence officials do not normally discuss the existence or nonexistence of surveillance warrants, no law prevents Mr. Comey from issuing the statement.

lol

>>118495
I don't get it.

I like how all you right-wing people just buried your heads in the sand. Keep reading your breitshit, idiots

>>118452
>While the president cannot, as Mr. Trump suggested, unilaterally undo a 194-nation accord that has already been legally ratified, he could initiate the four-year process to withdraw the world’s largest economy and second-largest climate polluter from the first worldwide deal to tackle global warming. Such a move would rend a global deal that has been hailed as historic, throwing into question the fate of global climate policy and, diplomats say, the credibility of the United States.

>But it would also demonstrate to his supporters that Mr. Trump is a man of his word, putting American coal interests ahead of a global deal forged by Mr. Obama.

>On one side of that debate is Mr. Bannon, who as a former chief executive of Breitbart News published countless articles denouncing climate change as a hoax, and who has vowed to push Mr. Trump to transform all his major campaign promises into policy actions.

>On the other side are Ms. Trump, Mr. Tillerson, and a slew of foreign policy advisers and career diplomats who argue that the fallout of withdrawing from the accord could be severe, undercutting the United States’ credibility on other foreign policy issues and damaging relations with key allies.

>>118454
>Although Ms. Trump has not spoken out publicly for action to combat climate change, proponents and opponents of such action see her as an ally. Former Vice President Al Gore met with her during the Trump transition, and was ushered in by the “first daughter” to see the president-elect. The actor and activist Leonardo DiCaprio even slipped her a DVD copy of his climate-change documentary.

>“President Trump Must Not Wobble on Climate Change — No Matter What Ivanka Says …,” blared a Breitbart post on Monday written by James Delingpole, who is close to Mr. Bannon and who leads the website’s coverage of climate-change policy.

>Mr. Trump wants to make a decision by next week, say people familiar with the White House’s debate on the climate pact, in order to announce his executive order to undo Mr. Obama’s climate regulations in conjunction with his plans for the Paris deal.

>>118456
>According to leaked budget documents, the president will also propose killing off nearly two dozen E.P.A. programs, including the Obama-era Clean Power Program, climate partnership programs with local governments, Energy Star grants to encourage efficiency research in consumer products and climate-change research. Those would be part of a broader budget submission that would cut the E.P.A.’s funding by 25 percent, to around $6.1 billion from $8.2 billion, and its staff by 20 percent.

>“If the goal is to fulfill the president’s campaign promises and implement his agenda, there is no value in staying in Paris,” said Thomas J. Pyle, an adviser to the Trump transition and the president of the Institute for Energy Research, an organization partly funded by the billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch, who have worked for years to undermine climate-change policies.

>Mr. Trump has cited Mr. Pyle’s group as being influential in shaping his energy and climate proposals, including his campaign pledge to withdraw from the Paris deal.

>Mr. Trump has signaled his preference to respond aggressively against the North Korean threat. In a Twitter post after Mr. Kim first issued his warning on New Year’s Day, the president wrote, “It won’t happen!” Yet like Mr. Obama before him, Mr. Trump is quickly discovering that he must choose from highly imperfect options.
Continue reading the main story

>He could order the escalation of the Pentagon’s cyber and electronic warfare effort, but that carries no guarantees. He could open negotiations with the North to freeze its nuclear and missile programs, but that would leave a looming threat in place. He could prepare for direct missile strikes on the launch sites, which Mr. Obama also considered, but there is little chance of hitting every target. He could press the Chinese to cut off trade and support, but Beijing has always stopped short of steps that could lead to the regime’s collapse.

>In two meetings of Mr. Trump’s national security deputies in the Situation Room, the most recent on Tuesday, all those options were discussed, along with the possibility of reintroducing nuclear weapons to South Korea as a dramatic warning. Administration officials say those issues will soon go to Mr. Trump and his top national security aides.

>The decision to intensify the cyber and electronic strikes, in early 2014, came after Mr. Obama concluded that the $300 billion spent since the Eisenhower era on traditional antimissile systems, often compared to hitting “a bullet with a bullet,” had failed the core purpose of protecting the continental United States. Flight tests of interceptors based in Alaska and California had an overall failure rate of 56 percent, under near-perfect conditions. Privately, many experts warned the system would fare worse in real combat.
...

>So the Obama administration searched for a better way to destroy missiles. It reached for techniques the Pentagon had long been experimenting with under the rubric of “left of launch,” because the attacks begin before the missiles ever reach the launchpad, or just as they lift off. For years, the Pentagon’s most senior officers and officials have publicly advocated these kinds of sophisticated attacks in little-noticed testimony to Congress and at defense conferences.

>The Times inquiry began last spring as the number of the North’s missile failures soared. The investigation uncovered the military documents praising the new antimissile approach and found some pointing with photos and diagrams to North Korea as one of the most urgent targets.

>After discussions with the office of the director of national intelligence last year and in recent days with Mr. Trump’s national security team, The Times agreed to withhold details of those efforts to keep North Korea from learning how to defeat them. Last fall, Mr. Kim was widely reported to have ordered an investigation into whether the United States was sabotaging North Korea’s launches, and over the past week he has executed senior security officials.

>The approach taken in targeting the North Korean missiles has distinct echoes of the American- and Israeli-led sabotage of Iran’s nuclear program, the most sophisticated known use of a cyberweapon meant to cripple a nuclear threat. But even that use of the “Stuxnet” worm in Iran quickly ran into limits. It was effective for several years, until the Iranians figured it out and recovered. And Iran posed a relatively easy target: an underground nuclear enrichment plant that could be attacked repeatedly.

>In North Korea, the target is much more challenging. Missiles are fired from multiple launch sites around the country and moved about on mobile launchers in an elaborate shell game meant to deceive adversaries. To strike them, timing is critical.
...

>Advocates of the sophisticated effort to remotely manipulate data inside North Korea’s missile systems argue the United States has no real alternative because the effort to stop the North from learning the secrets of making nuclear weapons has already failed. The only hope now is stopping the country from developing an intercontinental missile, and demonstrating that destructive threat to the world.

>“Disrupting their tests,” William J. Perry, secretary of defense in the Clinton administration, said at a recent presentation in Washington, would be “a pretty effective way of stopping their ICBM program.”
Decades in the Making

>Three generations of the Kim family have dreamed that their broken, otherwise failed nation could build its own nuclear weapons, and the missiles to deliver them, as the ultimate survival strategy. With nukes in hand, the Kims have calculated, they need not fear being overrun by South Korea, invaded by the United States or sold out by China.

>North Korea began seeking an intercontinental ballistic missile decades ago: It was the dream of Kim Il-sung, the country’s founder, who bitterly remembered the American threats to use nuclear weapons against the North during the Korean War.

>His break came after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when out-of-work Russian rocket scientists began seeking employment in North Korea. Soon, a new generation of North Korean missiles began to appear, all knockoffs of Soviet designs. Though flight tests were sparse, American experts marveled at how the North seemed to avoid the kinds of failures that typically strike new rocket programs, including those of the United States in the late 1950s.
...

If it's any small consolation, floods are more beneficial than drought and famine.

>>118252
Damn

>>118275
>consolation
Maybe if I thought it was true.

I don't see how losing your home and crops to a flood is "more beneficial" than losing your crops to a drought.

They already lost a lot of maize to pests this year.

>>118078

Is it just me or is a pitched battle between political supporters like this starting to sound uncomfortably similar to the brawls between the SA and the KPD in 20s Germany?

example: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst-Wessel-Lied#Horst_Wessel

This is why police gotta keep political groups from laying a hand on each other and not stand by to let them make martyrs.

>>118081
inb4 beerhall putsch

>>118078
>Trump supporters fired pepper spray at counter-protesters
yet most pictures airing are trump supporters down on the ground having been pepper sprayed

>The theater's Facebook page promoted showings of "Passengers," a sci-fi romance with Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, and the upcoming entry in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series.

>The Facebook message said the theater came under new ownership in December.

>Conversation starter online

>The post drew thousands of responses and comments on Facebook from supporters and opponents.

>"Good for you," one man wrote. "I certainly will not be taking my six-year-old daughter to see this and have to try and explain that afterwards not cool."

>Another wrote, "Its sad that someone uses jesus to defend his own sins of discrimination against other people."

>Theater patron Jeremy Reed told CNN affiliate WAAY about the fairy tale, "When I grew up it was just a regular story of a regular romance between a man and a woman."

>Clete Wetli, a gay rights advocate, called the theater's decision "absolutely absurd," adding, "I commend Disney for being inclusive and showing the real diversity of love in our world."

>Theater owner Carol Laney also spoke to the station.

>"My salvation isn't about money. It's not about men. It's what God wants me to do," she said.

>"We will not be playing movies that have sex. We will not be playing movies that have nudity. It's my choice."

>Remember #GiveElsaAGirlfriend?

>"Beauty and the Beast" opens March 17 and stars Emma Watson, who rose to fame playing a witch in the "Harry Potter" movies. She falls in love with a prince who is under a curse that makes him appear, well, beastly.

>The gay twist might not be so new, after all.

>Some viewers wondered about LeFou in the classic animated version that, um, came out in 1991. The story features singing and dancing teapots and other household items.

>Previous animated Disney characters have appeared to be stereotypically gay without acknowledging it, according to some viewers.

>And some "Frozen" fans took to Twitter campaiging for a sequel to
#GiveElsaAGirlfriend.

i feel like the 11 year old granddaughter and 8 year old grandson won't even notice the implied homosexuality. it's just disney catering to SJW's. i think "god or jesus" wouldn't mind gay people in movies. who knows, maybe jesus was gay. he really seemed to care about that Lazarus fellow, maybe a little something was going on behind the scenes

They aren't the only ones

>Beauty and the Beast: Russia considers ban over 'gay moment'

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-39168153

>Russian officials are coming under pressure to check if Disney's new film Beauty and the Beast breaches the country's law against "gay propaganda".

>Vitaly Milonov, an MP of the governing United Russia party, urged the culture minister to hold a screening of the film before it was released to see if it complied with the law

>In another groundbreaking moment, the film is to feature the first interracial kiss in a Disney live-action film.

>A small number of them were recovered for analysis, the commission reported. “These remains,” it said, “involved a number of individuals with age-at-death ranges” from approximately 35 fetal weeks to 2-to-3 years.

>“Radiocarbon dating of the samples recovered suggest that the remains date from the time frame relevant to the operation of the Mother and Baby Home,” the commission said. “A number of the samples are likely to date from the 1950s.”

>Further tests are being conducted.

>The commission said it was “shocked” by the discovery and “is continuing its investigation into who was responsible for the disposal of human remains in this way.”

>The testing and excavation found another structure as well, which the commission said appeared to be “a large sewage containment system or septic tank that had been decommissioned and filled with rubble and debris and then covered with top soil.” The report did not say whether researchers had yet looked for remains in that structure.

>“This is very sad and disturbing news,” Katherine Zappone, Ireland’s minister for children and youth affairs, said in a statement. “It was not unexpected, as there were claims about human remains on the site over the last number of years.”

>But previously the claims amounted to mere rumors, Zappone said. “Now we have confirmation that the remains are there, and that they date back to the time of the Mother and Baby Home,” she said.

>“Today is about remembering and respecting the dignity of the children who lived their short lives in this Home,” Zappone added. “We will honour their memory and make sure that we take the right actions now to treat their remains appropriately.”
...

>In a statement published in the Irish Times, the Bon Secours sisters said they were “fully committed to the work of the commission regarding the mother and baby home in Tuam. … On the closing of the home in 1961, all the records for the home were returned to Galway County Council, who are the owners and occupiers of the lands of the home. We can therefore make no comment on today’s announcement, other than to confirm our continued cooperation with and support for the work of the commission in seeking the truth about the home.”

>Corless’s original theory and now its confirmation “provide a glimpse into a particularly dark time for unmarried pregnant women in Ireland, where societal and religious mores stigmatized them,” McCoy wrote in 2014 for The Post.

>Without means to support themselves, women by the hundreds wound up at the Home, Corless told The Post in 2014. “Families would be afraid of neighbors finding out, because to get pregnant out of marriage was the worst thing on Earth. It was the worst crime a woman could commit, even though a lot of the time it had been because of a rape.”

>The government’s placement of mothers in institutions such as the Tuam home was a form of social welfare outsourcing, accompanied by payments to the homes, albeit small ones.

>Corless’s research found that infant mortality at the home in Tuam was particularly high. Records for that home show that babies died at the rate of two per week from malnutrition and neglect, and from diseases such as measles and gastroenteritis, Corless told the Post in 2014.
...

>Her interest in a subject others preferred to forget began when she was doing research for an annual local historical journal. She heard about a graveyard near what had been the Tuam home and wondered how many children might be buried there. In addition to looking at records of deaths at the home, Corless found that several boys had stumbled across a cracked piece of concrete “filled to the brim with human skulls and bones,” she told The Post in 2014. “They said even to this day they still have nightmares of finding the bodies.”

>In the wake of the commission’s report Friday, Corless told the Irish Times that it was “an enormous relief to have the truth come out about what I knew. I can only imagine what the survivors of those who died there must feel, and those who had family connections to the home. The Church and State owes them all an apology,” she said.

>The commission is already investigating how unmarried mothers and their babies were treated between 1922 and 1998 at 18 religious institutions used by the state.

>“This could have gone either way,” Corless told the Irish Mirror.

>“It could have been covered up as it was in the 1970s when this investigation should have taken place,” she said. “The county council knew at the time that there were remains there, the guards knew it, the religious [orders] knew it and it was just all nicely covered in and forgotten about.

>“When I started this research,” she told the Mirror, “I was asked, ‘What are you doing? It’s a long time ago. If there’s bodies there just leave them.’

Isn't this like the 3rd or 4th time Fox has been caught doing this with their so called Sweden experts?

Right wing extremist = normal person

What a time to be alive

>>117812
Extremists come in all shapes and sizes, Anon.

>fail to renew your shit on time
>instead of studying and working hard, become part of the new blm movement
>complain when the law is enforced

Should have used "her" head.

>>117148
Wasn't the cost of renewal retardedly low considering how long it is good for compared to legal immigration fees?

>>117135
BTFO

>>116869
>various non-victim entities

Is there a list of these nefarious leftist groups?

>>118263
Something tells me that if they showed the list, it would be full of charities like The United Way or the March of Dimes, all technical leftist for their wealth redistribution, but in reality non-political. Even The Red Cross is technically a leftist organization.

>>118276
>Something tells me that if they showed the list
Don't worry they will.

>it would be full of groups with financial and personnel ties to the Clinton campaign
FTFY. Can't wait to see the charges.

But Australian think tank the Institute for Energy Economists and Financial Analysts commented yesterday that the capacity utilisation rate in the coal power sector was also falling, to just 47.5 per cent last year.

Xu Zhaoyuan, the research head of industrial economy for the State Council, said the Chinese economy was entering a “new normal”.

“A stage of moderate growth, with overall energy demand unlikely to significantly increase again,” Mr Xu said.

“Furthermore, clean energy will keep growing rapidly in the coming years, and energy intensive industries will continue to shrink due to resource and environmental constraints.”

The latter refers to the strong priority given politically to reducing pollution, which remains one of the most cited causes of popular discontent and criticism of government in China.

Imports of coal rose 25 per cent to 255 million tonnes last year, following two years of substantial falls, as China acted to reduce overcapacity in its own coal mines, with output declining by 9 per cent.

Australian revenues from coal sales to China reached $5.6 billion in the last financial year, though that figure includes coal for steel making as well as for the generation of power.

>>116597
>But Australian think tank

top kek. isnt that one which welcomened us marines, which made australian into fucking nuclear bombardment target by chinese and indian nukes?

>>116596
China's doing great things. Amazing!

>>116575
Lol

Cool

>>116575
Heh

Wow

Ha

Nice

Oh, great, so now every twitter account without the bullshit verified email/ phone number (which want so that they can more easily track you) is risking the chance of getting muted. Oh well, twitter is garbage anyway

>>116478
Oh, is that what the CEO says?
CEOs are liars.

>>116478
I'll be impressed if they ban Trump from the service. If only for the royal temper tantrum that would ensue.
Too bad there'd be no way to tell he was mad without Twitter.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Sunday that she believed President Trump would support an investigation.
"The mission has a lot of different critics, but it did yield a substantial amount of very important intel and resources that helped save American lives and other lives,'' she said.
Mr Owens said he was told that his son was killed early on in a fierce gunfight that erupted with AQAP militants.
A flag-draped casket bearing his body was flown to Dover Air Base on 1 February for a private ceremony. Mr Owens said he only learned that President Trump and his daughter Ivanka were on their way when he was already there.
"I told them I didn't want to make a scene about it, but my conscience wouldn't let me talk to him," he said.
A military veteran, he told the Miami Herald that Mr Trump's comments during the presidential campaign about the family of a dead Muslim US soldier had disturbed him.
He said that the White House should not "hide behind" his son's death to ignore criticism of the raid.
William "Ryan" Owens, a 36-year-old married father of three, was a member of the elite Seal Team 6.

>>115805
This guy shouldn't hide behind his sons body who is probably rolling in his grave.

where is investigation?

how come no one is proposing sinking YEARS and MILLIONS into this, like bengahzi? if trump truly did nothing wrong, then he should have no problem allowing an independent investigation into this, right?

why does trump fucking hate the troops so much?

>>115581
>Billionaire hedge fund manager Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah have been key allies of Trump. The Mercers funded a PAC that supported Trump's candidacy, and Rebekah Mercer was part of Trump's transition team. The Mercers have been huge donors to conservative causes, and Politico last fall called Rebekah Mercer "the most powerful woman in GOP politics." The Center for Responsive Politics lists Robert Mercer as one of the 10 top political donors of 2016, having given more than $22 million to conservative causes.

>Last August, after Bannon joined the Trump campaign, Breitbart announced that Bannon had taken a temporary leave of absence, but the committee had asked for more details about Bannon's relationship with the site. Solov said that Bannon called him shortly after the election to resign from the company, and that it is a total severing of ties, but he said there is no written documentation of his resignation, and he could not provide an exact date for the conversation. Solov said he would be willing to write a letter stating that Bannon has left the company.

I didn't know this was a matter of dispute. It's been obvious they were on the Trump train since Ted Cruz fell apart.

I have screenshots from back before that when the Mercers were still supporting Cruz over Trump (remember that Kelly Ann Conway used to work for Cruz too) in the primaries and they tried to rig some of the Breitbart polls in favor of Cruz after the first debates.

>>115632
Agreed. Not news.
Of course, neither is Breibart . ..