Month: August 2017

Authored by Carey Wedler via TheAntiMedia.org,

The Trump administration continues to demonize Iran, advocating regime change even as the U.S. acknowledges that the country is complying with the nuclear deal.

Defying Western perceptions, however, the Middle Eastern nation recently announced its plans to move toward decriminalizing drugs in order to combat addiction and weaken the power of drug traffickers. If the plan receives final approval, the country will join a handful of other nations that have opted to help addicts rather than punish them.

The Independent reports that “[b]y allowing the government to give out diluted drugs to addicts, the proposal aims to cut the relationship between drug addicts and drug traffickers.”

The plan would allow the government to distribute methadone to addicts in place of heroin, cannabis, and other commonly used drugs in Iran. It would also allow the government to provide addicts with diluted forms of these commonly used drugs to help wean them off the substances.

Hassan Norouzi, a spokesperson for the Parliament’s Judicial and Legal Commission, said that in order to undermine the relationship between addicts and traffickers, “we decided that the government hand out diluted drugs to addicts, so that they will be able to give up their addiction gradually and, instead of being drawn to drug-traffickers, turn to the Establishment and meet their needs through official channels,” Iranian government-approved outlet IFPNews reported.

“These drugs include methadone and substances more diluted than previous ones, and the authority to decide on that rests with bylaws which are to be jointly drawn up by the Ministry of Justice and [Iran’s] Drug Enforcement HQ, and which could come into effect after getting the all clear from the Cabinet,” Norouzi said.

Norouzi noted that “The plan to distribute [low-grade] drugs is similar to what used to be implemented before the [1979 Iran’s Islamic] Revolution.”

IFP reports that Norouzi said “all relevant authorities have given the go-ahead to the proposal,” though it has not been finalized.

The Independent reported that “The judicial committee has also proposed a draft law halting the death penalty for carrying and distributing less than 100kg of traditional drugs such as opium or less than two kilograms of synthetic drugs.”

Iran has employed militarized anti-narcotic measures against traffickers in the past, even while showing some sympathy to addicts. Human Rights Watch previously reported that authorities often obtained forced confessions for traffickinf and also imposed the death penalty on indivuals possessing large quantities of drugs.

The latest measures come in response to skyrocketing rates of addiction in Iran in recent years, particularly in regard to opium. According to Iran’s Drug Control Organization, there are roughly 2.8 million people in the country consistently using drugs.

Despite Western perceptions that Iran is country doomed to the dark ages, some of its relatively progressive stances on drug addiction prove otherwise. In 2015, Maziyar Ghiabi, an Iranian-Italian Ph.D. candidate at Oxford University discussed rumors that the Iranian government would legalize cannabis and opium.

“This is an actual possibility but not in the short term,” Ghiabi, who focuses on drug policy and use in Iran, told Salon two years ago.

 

“One institution is really discussing measures to regulate the drug market. By regulation of the drug market, we can mean many different things. One of the ideas is to allow certain substances, in this case cannabis and opium, to be used under specific circumstances. It hasn’t been clearly stated what these circumstances are. What is interesting to me is that the discussion is open. It is a very interesting fact that in the Islamic Republic such discussions are taking place.”

Though Iran is far from completely ending its war on drugs — and its government is indisputably repressive in a variety of ways — its openness to a more lenient policy mirrors some Western nations like Portugal, which decriminalized all drugs in 2001, and parts of Canada, where injection centers have been established to allow addicts to consume drugs like heroin in safe environments. The Iranian government already has some 8,000 rehab clinics that offer methadone treatment for opium addicts  (however, it has been reported that addicts are tennis forcibly admitted to these clinics and arrests still occur).

Norouzi said the Judicial and Legal Commission will continue work to finalize the latest policy change.

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President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and special adviser Jared Kushner has inadvertently produced a stunningly effective counternarrative to the allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to tilt the election in the former reality television star’s favor.

In response to a question asked during a private meeting with White House interns, Kushner joked that the shambolic Trump campaign was too disorganized and incompetent to pull off such a remarkable coup.

“They thought we colluded, but we couldn’t even collude with our local offices,” Kushner told congressional interns during a private talk at the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington on Monday afternoon. The remarks were first reported by the magazine Foreign Policy, which was provided a transcription of Kushner’s remarks by an unnamed source.

The legal ramifications of Kushner's remarks weren't lost on Foreign Policy, which noted that Kushner’s characterization of the campaign could lay the foundation for an effective defense should Special Counsel Robert Mueller decide to pursue criminal charges.

“For investigators attempting to determine whether Trump’s associates knowingly worked with Russia to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a defense claiming chaos and confusion might be the key difference between criminal behavior and incompetence.”

It might even be enough to satisfy Congressional investigators who’re looking into Kushner’s role in a June 2016 meeting organized by Donald Trump Jr. and UK publicist Ron Goldstone where the Trump was promised compromising material on Hillary Clinton, but instead received a pitch about repealing the Magnitsky Act. Kushner reportedly left the meeting after ten minutes, and claims he didn’t see the exchange about what Trump has described as an attempt to procure “opposition research” in an email chain forwarded to Kushner’s blackberry.

Kushner answered a question about Mueller’s investigation, though he appeared reluctant to speak in detail, essentially answering with a shrug.

“After his talk, Kushner answered questions from interns on issues including the investigation into the Trump campaign’s potential ties to Russia and his SF-86 clearance forms.

 

“We don’t know where it’s going,” he said, when asked about special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia.”

Kushner also played down the many absences in his foreign travel and contacts disclosure form while applying for a security clearance. Kushner has previously said that the omissions were caused by a miscommunication between himself and one of his assistants. Kushner has since updated those forms multiple times to include meetings that were highlighted in media accounts.

“’There are 127 pages on the SF-86, but there are only two you guys have to worry about,’ he said. ‘Make sure you guys keep track of where you travel.’

 

Kushner said he didn’t track contacts because he didn’t expect to get into politics, though he worked on his father-in-law’s campaign from the early stages.”

According to FP, Kushner also bragged about Trump’s freeing of an Egyptian-American nonprofit worker who was being held in Cairo. The worker, Aya Hijazi, was freed after Trump publicly embraced Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

“Kushner said they made a ‘great deal’ with Sisi, who had ‘basically destroyed the Muslim Brotherhood,” by taking him aside and asking for a better arrangement.’”

Ironically, the account of Kushner’s remarks was leaked even after the intern director warned those present not to leak the contents of the speech, was meant to be off the record. The director had apparently heard a rumor that some of the attendees wanted to hand over notes to their congressional offices, which may have leaked them to journalists.

“I’m a lot more comfortable talking to you guys today ’cause there isn’t any press,” Kushner said.

It’s truly unfortunate that Trump fired Anthony Scaramucci before he could clean house at the White House internship program.
 

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Stormy weather was unleashed in Tesla longsville today when the company’s veteran director of battery technology, Kurt Kelty, unexpectedly resigned to “explore new opportunities”, abruptly ending a tenure with the company that stretched for more than a decade, and comes at a critical time for Elon Musk: just as Tesla enters “production hell” days after it delivered its first Model 3 electric car to the general public with a dramatic production ramp up expected in the coming weeks. Kelty joined Tesla in 2006 and was one of the longest-serving executives at Tesla after Elon Musk.

Kurt Kelty is seen at the company’s new sales outlet in Osaka, Japan’s in August 2015

“We can confirm that Kurt Kelty has left the company to explore new opportunities and we want to thank him for everything he’s done for Tesla,” the company told Bloomberg in an emailed statement, adding that his responsibilities will be “distributed among Tesla’s existing teams.”

Ominously, Kelty previously worked for 14 years at Panasonic, Tesla’s critical partner on the battery-producing gigafactory in Reno, Nevada. Kelty led negotiations with Panasonic on that plant, according to  Bloomberg. Tesla remains so reliant on its battery technology, or lack thereof, that last month when Tesla failed to meet expected Q2 deliveries of its Model S and Model X cars, it blamed a “temporary shortage of 100 kWh battery packs.”

Tesla and Kelty’s previous employer Panasonic have had a close partnership, with the two in a supply agreement for 1.8 billion battery cells through 2017 for the Model S and Model X. For the Model 3, the companies jointly developed new, slightly larger cylindrical battery cells than those used in Tesla’s existing models.

Adding to Tesla’s headache, Tesla hopes to make 20,000 Model 3 cars per month by December, a ramp-up plan that Musk described to employees as “production hell.”

Kelty is the latest in a long-list of Tesla executives to have departed the company, with at least 20 names counted in just the past 12 months in the following list of TSLA executive departures compiled by @WallStCynic. While the real reason for Kelty’s departure remains unknown, judging by the list below, shortsville may just end up having the final laugh.

Tesla reports Q2 earnings tomorrow after the bell: the circumstances around Kelty’s departure will be one of the key questions asked.

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One month ago, President Trump vowed to “send in the Feds” after Chicago’s murder rate continued to track roughly in-line with 2016, the most violent year for the city in nearly two decades.

Crime and killings in Chicago have reached such epidemic proportions that I am sending in Federal help. 1714 shootings in Chicago this year!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 30, 2017

 

Alas, with the month of July now over, the ‘Feds’ don’t seem to be helping.

With 77 people killed in July alone, murders are up 4% year-over-year despite the federal assistance.  Moreover, those killed as the result of gun violence is up 9%.

Meanwhile, the month of July also recorded one of the city’s most violent Fourth of July holidays in history, with more than 100 people shot over the four-day weekend. That’s compared to 66 people shot over the holiday in 2016.

According to Chicago police, there have been 417 murders in the city so far this year on a total of 2,202 shootings.

Data Source: HeyJackAss!

As NBC points out, the soaring violence in 2017 comes despite the fact that 5,000 guns have been taken off the streets and gun arrests are up 30% YoY.

Chicago police reported last month that they have removed more than 5,000 guns this year off Chicago streets. The department has also rolled out several initiatives this year, including a high-tech ballistics van that was sent as part of the partnership with the ATF. That same partnership also sent 20 permanent ATF agents to the city, along with federal prosecutors, with the purpose of “prioritizing prosecutions to reduce gun violence, and working with our law enforcement partners to stop the lawlessness.”

 

“One of the things that I think people miss about this whole violence reduction is the fact that CPD – we’ve recovered over 5,000 guns this year, we’re up 30 percent in overall gun arrests – but the communities being affected, I don’t think they recognize the power that they have in the communities, their voices, to reduce this gun violence,” Johnson said.

 

Not surprisingly, the majority of the violence remains concentrated in a few South and West side neighborhoods.

 

And, with 7 months of 2017 officially in the record books, here is how Chicago’s 2017 murders are stacking up against recent years.

 

Of course, it’s not just Chicago where violent crime is surging as the Midwestern neighbors of Milwaukee, St. Louis and Cleveland have also experienced a 68%, 18% and 33% increase in murders, respectively, compared to 2014.

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Pragmatic top-down policy or anxious bottom-up babysitting?

Deep in the background of an AP report on the decision to replace Anthony Scaramucci with  John Kelly, The Hill reports that two of President Trump's top advisers reportedly agreed in the early days of the administration that they would not leave the United States at the same time, in order to ensure they could monitor orders coming from the White House.

The pact, revealed to The AP by an anonymous official close to Mattis and Kelly, seems to hint at the nature of the Trump administration's internal relations.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis and then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly also agreed in the earliest weeks of Trump's presidency that one of them should remain in the United States at all times to keep tabs on the orders rapidly emerging from the White House, according to a person familiar with the discussions. The official insisted on anonymity in order to discuss the administration's internal dynamics.

Both Mattis and Kelly have been active in providing clarification of executive orders released by the White House.

With Kelly now Trump's right hand, we suspect the 'control' will improve (though the tweets haven't slowed down yet). Citi was very positive on Kelly's appointment.

From a markets perspective, I see this as exceedingly positive – Kelly's appointment should lead to a tighter message, far less drama (and the accompanying headline risk) and a focus on passing Trump's business-friendly agenda. 

 

As an American, I am cautiously optimistic, trying to believe this transition as “bouncing off the bottom” following a difficult week for the administration. 

 

Trump, a graduate of adolescent military school, is expected to embrace the new, disciplined WH culture that should allow him to focus on his agenda as opposed to bouncing from controversy to tweet to controversy to tweet.

But we still wonder – as we did at the start – are Mattis and Kelly staying close to Trump by the president's pragmatic leadership demanding his highest ranking generals are close… or did they decide unilaterally that Trump should not be left alone?

And if so – what are they so afraid of?

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Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

The noose is tightening…

Ben Rhodes, former aide to President Obama, is a “person of interest” in the House Intel Committee’s unmasking investigation, according to Sara Carter of Circa News.

Former Obama White House National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes is now an emerging as a person of interest in the House Intelligence Committee’s unmasking investigation, according to a letter sent Tuesday by the committee to the National Security Agency (NSA). This adds Rhodes to the growing list of top Obama government officials who may have improperly unmasked Americans in communications intercepted overseas by the NSA, Circa has confirmed.

House Intel Committee chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) reportedly sent a letter to the NSA requesting information on the number of ‘unmasking’ requests Rhodes made between Jan 1, 2016 and Jan 20, 2017, and have requested that the information be made available to the committee no later than August 21.

All Rhodes lead to jail?

If the unmasking rumors are true, Rhodes – a former deputy national security advisor under Obama, is in deep shit – joining a list of Obama admin officials included in the House Intel Committee probe, along with former CIA director John Brennan, Susan Rice, and former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power. A letter sent last week from Nunes to Trump’s director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, suggested that hundreds of unmasking requests were made during the 2016 presidential elections.

Per Circa:

The story, which was first reported by The Hill last week, stated that the requests were made without specific justifications as to why the unmasking was necessary. Rice and Brennan have confirmed they sought the unredacted names of Americans in NSA-sourced intelligence reports but insisted their requests were routine parts of their work and had no nefarious intentions.

Power also has legal authority to unmask officials, though the practice has not reportedly been common for someone in her position.

Last week, the Washington Examiner reported that Ben Rhodes sat down with the House Intelligence Committee, the same day Jared Kushner apparently dazzled them with his performance.

It was already known that Jared Kushner, top adviser and son-in-law to President Trump, on Tuesday spoke with members of the panel, which is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible ties to the Trump campaign. CNN’s Manu Raju tweeted Tuesday evening that the network’s chief political analyst Gloria Borger had learned that Rhodes also spoke to the committee.

The Intelligence Committee is investigating intelligence leaks, and Rhodes has become a person of interest for certain Republicans as someone who may be playing a role in the leaking of classified information from the Trump administration to reporters.

This news follows a report that Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) named Ben Rhodes as the creator of an ‘in-house echo chamber’ meant to mislead reporters and the public about President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, stating “Any Obama holdover at any of these agencies, you’ve got to get them out of there because clearly they’re not on the same team and particularly on the [White House] National Security Council,” adding “I think Congress and some members of the Intelligence Committee can call Ben Rhodes to testify . . . He may be able to invoke executive privilege from when Obama was president but he definitely can’t do that in any interactions he’s had since then.” –Washington Free Beacon

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Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Kamala Harris’ coming out party as the person chosen to be manufactured as a puppet for the rich and powerful going into 2020 became obvious last month with the publication of an article in The New York Post titled, Dems’ Rising Star Meets With Clinton Inner Circle in Hamptons. Here are a few excerpts:

The Democrats’ “Great Freshman Hope,” Sen. Kamala Harris, is heading to the Hamptons to meet with Hillary Clinton’s biggest backers.

 

The California senator is being fêted in Bridgehampton on Saturday at the home of MWWPR guru Michael Kempner, a staunch Clinton supporter who was one of her national-finance co-chairs and a led fund-raiser for her 2008 bid for the presidency. He was also listed as one of the top “bundlers” for Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, having raised $3 million.

 

Guests there to greet Harris are expected to include Margo Alexander, a member of Clinton’s inner circle; Dennis Mehiel, a Democratic donor who is the chairman of the Battery Park City Authority, even though he lives between a sprawling Westchester estate and an Upper East Side pad; designer Steven Gambrel and Democratic National Committee member Robert Zimmerman.

 

Washington lobbyist Liz Robbins is also hosting a separate Hamptons lunch for Harris.

 

Despite being less than seven months into her new job as senator, Harris is already said to be the Democrats’ top fund-raiser and is being talked about as a 2020 presidential hopeful.

 

Harris has denied having “national aspirations,” but this Hamptons trip proves it isn’t far from her mind.

 

A Democratic insider said, ­“Kamala is the big Democratic star right now, at a time when they badly need a star. She’s coming to the Hamptons to meet key people as she takes a national stage, and expands her influence and ambitions.”

If the “key people” to your campaign are Hamptons power players, you can rest assured that the candidate in question will be an advocate for donors and not the public. Of course, it’s not surprising that a “Democratic insider” would consider the Hamptons the center of the universe when it comes to people that matter.

The fact that the power players within the Democratic Party think this sort of thing is somehow still acceptable tells you all you need to know.

Indeed, as Ross Barken so perfectly put it in a recent Guardian op-ed:

Kamala Harris, the California senator and new darling of the left, did what all liberal darlings do when their stars begin to burn bright: she went east, way east, to the Hamptons.

 

In the old world, before a democratic socialist and a reality show nativist upended politics as we know it, the narrative would write itself. A little-known possible presidential candidate with a compelling backstory and a buzzy turn in the spotlight visits the millionaire and billionaire donors who decide who can run and who can’t.

 

The gatekeepers, cloistered in their estates, beckon the candidates, who promise – if they’re Democrats at least – to be the acceptable sort of progressives, those who hit all the right notes without rocking the boat too much.

 

Maybe Harris has what it takes and will surge ahead of the pack in a few years to win the right to dethrone Donald Trump. It’s too early to tell. But her Hamptons gallivant with Clinton plutocrats is a dispiriting reminder that the Democratic party thinks all can be as it once was, and the status quo isn’t worth being ruffled. Donors can still vet candidates and propel them forward in the press. Anyone beyond the upper crust isn’t a serious agenda setter.

 

What’s strange about living in the year 1 AT (After Trump) is how Democrats continue to disregard the phenomenon in their wake. If 2016 was Trump’s story, it was also the year of Bernie Sanders, one that taught us a candidate once considered a fringe player can raise tremendous amounts of money from small donors on a policy platform alone.

For political journalists and operatives inside the Beltway carapace, the siren call of centrism will always have appeal. It promises pain-free bipartisanship, a return to the way things used to be. It stands for little, so it can’t court too much controversy. For anyone who knows bad policy can mean the difference between life and death – the poorest and the invisible, the sufferers on the margins – it offers nothing. And it never will.

Despite the above, as well as Hillary’s embarrassing loss to Trump, Clinton dead-enders are out in full force trying to shame people into liking Harris. As former spokesman for Hillary Clinton, Brian Fallon tweeted:

Well if you put it that way, Brian.

Yes I know, the problem is us. Why can’t we simply accept Kamala as a divine heroine sent from the Golden State to save the planet from Trump as well as all those uppity progressive peasants. Call me crazy, but perhaps the problem might actually be…her.

Let’s take a look at a little bit of her history, and start with how she let Trump Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin off the hook following the financial crisis. As David Dayen wrote in his hugely important piece published last year.

Onewest Bank, which Donald Trump’s nominee for treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, ran from 2009 to 2015, repeatedly broke California’s foreclosure laws during that period, according to a previously undisclosed 2013 memo from top prosecutors in the state attorney general’s office.

 

The memo obtained by The Intercept alleges that OneWest rushed delinquent homeowners out of their homes by violating notice and waiting period statutes, illegally backdated key documents, and effectively gamed foreclosure auctions.

 

In the memo, the leaders of the state attorney general’s Consumer Law Section said they had “uncovered evidence suggestive of widespread misconduct” in a yearlong investigation. In a detailed 22-page request, they identified over a thousand legal violations in the small subsection of OneWest loans they were able to examine, and they recommended that Attorney General Kamala Harris file a civil enforcement action against the Pasadena-based bank. They even wrote up a sample legal complaint, seeking injunctive relief and millions of dollars in penalties.

 

But Harris’s office, without any explanation, declined to prosecute the case.

That’s not all. Harris was also coincidentally the only Democrat Steven Mnuchin donated to in 2016. As The Sacramento Bee reported:

Donald Trump, promising to drain the swamp, picked former Goldman Sachs executive and Hollywood financier Steven Mnuchin to be his Treasury secretary, fitting because Mnuchin helped fatten Trump’s campaign treasury as his campaign finance chairman. Mnuchin donated $592,600 to Republicans in 2016, including $430,000 to Trump, Federal Election Commission records show. A onetime Hillary Clinton donor, Mnuchin gave one donation this year to a Democrat, $2,000 to help elect Attorney General Kamala Harris to the U.S. Senate.

Thanks for keeping me out of prison Kamala!
– xoxo, Steven Mnuchin.

Yet this is just the start. The more layers we peel off the Kamala Harris onion, the more it begins to stink. The Observer mentioned several in a comprehensive post today, but let me highlight a few.

First, there’s civil asset forfeiture. The barbaric practice where cops are permitted to steal cash and other possessions from American citizens without them even being charged with a crime. Kamala Harris has been a staunch supporter of the inhumane practice.

As a report from DrugPolicy.org outlined:

Subsequently there have been efforts to limit the use of equitable sharing to circumvent California’s forfeiture law.

 

In 2000, the California Assembly and Senate approved such a bill (SB 1866). But in the face of widespread opposition from law enforcement organizations, Governor Gray Davis vetoed it. Eleven years later, Orange County Republican State Representative Chris Norby introduced a similar bill (AB 639). It overwhelmingly passed the Assembly, before running into the opposition of every statewide law enforcement organization as well as California Attorney General Kamala Harris. Law enforcement argued that it would discourage cooperation on drug enforcement between federal and state and local police. The bill failed to make it out of the Senate.

But there’s more. She sponsored an asset forfeiture bill as recently as 2015. The Monterey County Herald covered this fact in the article, Luis Alejo, Kamala Harris Back Asset Seizure Before Criminal Charges:

In an effort to fight criminal organizations, a newly proposed bill could give prosecutors the power to freeze illicit profits before filing criminal charges.

 

From drug-selling rings in Salinas’ Chinatown to corruption scandals with more than $10,000 at stake, the Assembly bill introduced Monday would allow prosecutors to seize assets before initiating criminal proceedings — a power only available at the federal-level — if there is a “substantial probability” they will file a criminal complaint.

 

The bill comes a month after U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder sharply limited a civil asset forfeiture program that had come under bipartisan scrutiny. A number of ideologically opposed groups, including American Civil Liberties Union, The Institute for Justice and Americans for Tax Reform, have all criticized forfeiture programs, particularly when no criminal charges are filed.

 

The bill is being sponsored by Attorney General Kamala Harris, who has focused on battling transnational criminal organizations. Harris said those groups have made California the biggest point of entry for methamphetamine trafficking into the United States, adding that this bill could equip local and state law enforcement with tools to “dismantle these dangerous organizations.”

 

“Transnational criminal organizations rely on a steady flow of billions of dollars in laundered money to support their operations,” Harris said in a statement. “The legislation I am sponsoring will equip local and state law enforcement with more tools to target their illicit profits and dismantle these dangerous organizations.”

But yes, Brian Fallon, the problem is us.

Then there’s this bit about how lawyers from her office felt about the release of nonviolent prisoners from California’s overcrowded jails back in 2014. As the LA Times reported:

Federal judges on Friday ordered California to launch a new parole program that could free more prisoners early, ruling the state had failed to fully implement an order last February intended to reduce unconstitutional crowding.

 

The judges, for a second time, ordered that all nonviolent second-strike offenders be eligible for parole after serving half their sentence. They told corrections officials to submit new plans for that parole process by Dec. 1, and to implement them beginning January.

 

But the federal judicial panel did not take action on other steps it had ordered California to take last February. Those include increasing the sentence reductions minimum-custody inmates can earn for good behavior and participation in rehabilitation and education programs.

 

Most of those prisoners now work as groundskeepers, janitors and in prison kitchens, with wages that range from 8 cents to 37 cents per hour. Lawyers for Attorney General Kamala Harris had argued in court that if forced to release these inmates early, prisons would lose an important labor pool.

Oh.

To her credit, she came out afterwards and said she was against this idea of prison labor, but it’s troubling that lawyers from her office argued that way, particularly in light of her kid glove treatment of Mnuchin and support of asset forfeiture.

Finally, take a look at this takedown as Harris attempted to rebrand herself on Twitter.

Expect a lot more tweets like the one above from Kamala as her high paid consultants spring into action trying to create a product slick enough to attract the support of low information voters. My personal advice remains unchanged from what I wrote last week in the post, Politics of the Next 4 Years – Part 2 (Last Chance for the Democrats):

What are you supposed to do if you’re a left-leaning American who doesn’t want to be played for a fool for the thousandth time? I have some simple advice, and it consists of focusing on the donors. Any politician who claims to be for the people yet takes massive amounts of money from Wall Street, assorted billionaires and other special interests is entirely full of shit and should not receive a vote or any support whatsoever.

 

If Bernie Sanders can fund his campaign with small donations, others can do it too. There’s enough demand from the public for politicians to stick it to corrupt oligarchs, and if a politician isn’t funded by the people, he or she will not work for the people. It’s that simple.

 

Just take a look at how aggressively Hillary donors are rallying around Kamala Harris for 2020. This is no accident. They’re already mobilizing their media mouthpieces to propagandize this puppet all the way to winning the Democratic nomination. This merely proves the point I made earlier. Unless you deal with the donor problem, you will never, ever take control of this party.

Words mean nothing. Follow the money. A donor funded candidate will represent donors. I don’t know much, but I know that.

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Rigged… for your own good!

 

Source: Townhall.com

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Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

The Italian mafia may have teamed up with the Islamic State to smuggle crude oil from the Middle East into Italy, an ongoing police investigation has suggested, according to The Times who cited a report by La Repubblica.

The Italian daily noted that the police had found substantial amounts of Libyan and Syrian crude that were greater than some local refineries’ inventories, with sources connected with the investigation saying that crude, “should not have been there.”

Yet the police have no evidence that the oil came from IS, or whether it came from another non-extremist group of traffickers, because the cargoes passed through intermediaries, which helped the original senders mask their tracks.

The way the mafia smuggles oil into Italy is by setting up shale companies abroad that act as oil exporters. They sell crude directly to gas station operators at much lower prices, and then close the shell companies. The mafia uses the scheme to avoid VAT payments and to launder money.

The logistics involve tankers rendezvousing with smaller vessels out of Turkey and Libya in the middle of the Mediterranean.

The smugglers transfer the oil from the smaller vessels to the larger ones, and then return the small vessels to their country of origin while the bigger tankers set sail for the southern Italian ports. 

It seems that the IS-mafia hypothesis has emerged because of the terrorist group’s heavy reliance on revenues from oil contraband, but recently IS has lost most of the territories it controlled in Syria and Iraq, so its access to oil to smuggle has also declined sharply.

Experts who spoke to La Repubblica were skeptical of such a connection, but last month, journalist Francesca Astorri reported on a propaganda e-book titled Black Flags from Rome, in which the Islamic State said support from the mafia was crucial for its penetration in Italy.

The question remains whether the two organizations are rivals or partners. Their revenue-generating activities are similar, including drug trafficking, goods smuggling, and kidnappings, but the mafia would hardly be well-disposed to a group that essentially wants to encroach on its territory.

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