From i24news:
Reports: Norway Suspends New Arms Exports To NATO Ally Turkey
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Also here its a terrific link giving us more insight into Erdogan, which you probably already knew.
Stockholm Center for Freedon
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Current Updates On Syrian Disaster:
From CNN:
Live Updates
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And of course, the Impeachment Updates.....
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| Lev & Igor:: More Trump Gangsters. Hell, they even look like gangsters. Oh right, they look like gangsters because they are gangsters. |
~ From 12 News:
Florida Men Tied To Guiliana Arrested On Campaign Finance Charges
AP: Biesecker, Balosamos, Butler & Tucker - 10/10/19
- Update/edit 10/11:
10/11 Latest Updates from CNN:
Live Updates
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~ Yes, Juan Cole Absolutely Nails It with Links To Jon Schwarz & Lee Fang of The Intercept:
~ From Informed Comment : (with bonus video)
How The Roberts Court's 'Citizens United' Allowed Parnas And Fruman To Buy Influence In America
by, Juan Cole - 10/11/19
" Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – As I pointed out last week, the most powerful intervention in US politics allowing foreign influence in US elections, which contributed to Trump’s victory in 2016, was the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, (2010) decision. Like Michaelangelo’s God creating Adam with a pointing finger, SCOTUS created out of thin air a doctrine that corporations are persons. They added to this ridiculous conclusion their previous creatio ex nihilo, the terminally stupid argument that money is speech and so money in politics can’t be regulated. The result is that corporations can now donate on their own to Super-Pacs. Since corporations are often opaque as to ownership and since foreigners can be prominent on their boards, SCOTUS has allowed foreigners to donate to and influence US elections.
Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, associates of Rudy Giuliani, were arrested attempting to leave the US with one-way tickets to Austria, after they had been subpoenaed to testify before the House.
One of the charges on which they were arrested was that they set up a dummy corporation, represented as a gas and oil enterprise but which did not actually exist, calling it Global Energy Producers. GEP then made a donation of $325,000 to America First Action, a pro-Trump political action committee, in May of 2018.
They donated big sums to other PACs via their corporate personhood, funneling money from the Ukraine and $1 million from one Russian businessman alone. Citizens United allowed them to operate anonymously and to give as much as they liked (or as their foreign patrons liked).
They also used GEF to influence Republican congressman Pete Sessions to write a letter to secretary of state Mike Pompeo, demanding that he fire the US ambassador to the Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch.
They also did illegal fundraisers for Florida governor Ron DeSantis, helping him win the governorship.
I wrote last week:
“A series of pro-corporation Supreme Court decisions and the latter’s disingenuous equation of money with speech, including “Citizens United”, have turned the United States from a democracy to a plutocracy. It is not even a transparent plutocracy, since black money (of unknown provenance) has been allowed by SCOTUS to flood into elections. These developments are not only deadly to democracy, they threaten US security. It is increasingly difficult to exclude foreign money from US political donations. We not only come to be ruled by the billionaires, but even by foreign billionaires with foreign rather than American interests at heart.”
At The Intercept, Jon Schwarz and Lee Fang explained that Citizens United (2010) changed everything, allowing corporations to contribute their own money to Super-PACs, with the only restriction that they not directly coordinate with the candidates’ campaigns (a vague restriction, the contravention of which is almost impossible to prove).
Citizens United, by bestowing political personhood on corporations, opened US elections to foreign money in several ways, they point out.
Ghost corporations, the ownership of which is opaque, can be set up precisely for the purpose of contributing to super-PACs. The FEC is underfunded and castrated and lacks the resources and the will to look into the actual owners of the ghost corporations.
Further, some 25% of securities in US corporations are owned by foreign nationals, and it is absolutely impossible to squester foreign and US interests within these corporations or the super-PACs they support.
Non-profit foundations can also contribute to super-PACs. They write,
“Want an example? Consider, for instance, that the American Petroleum Institute is partially financed by the U.S. subsidiary of Aramco, the state-owned Saudi oil company. In the 2010 midterm elections, API was one of the funders behind attack ads that helped the Republican Party take back the House of Representatives from the Democrats and stop most of Obama’s plans in their tracks.”
Nor is there any prospect of this situation improving. When Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed on the Supreme Court, I wrote,
“Big Money Dominating Politics. Citizens United (2010) and other recent Supreme Court cases allowing the super-rich to saturate the airwaves with advertising for the candidate they back, with full knowledge that they thereby ingratiate themselves with the candidate and can expect to call in favors– all this has made money king in the American electoral system. It isn’t that most Congressmen are personally bribed. It is their campaigns that receive the money. But a big war chest is job security for congressmen and senators. Richard L. Hasen explains that “Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the Supreme Court in 2010 in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission,” rejected the idea that it is corruption for large donors to the campaign of a politician is corruption. Rather, the donor receives only “Ingratiation and access” which is permissible. In a case decided in 2014, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, Chief Justice John Roberts went even further, celebrating the idea of politicians responding to the wishes of big donors and spenders. Not only are “ingratiation and access” afforded those making large campaign contributions not corruption, Roberts explained. Donors “embody a central feature of democracy — that constituents support candidates who share their beliefs and interests, and candidates who are elected can be expected to be responsive to those concerns.” In a democracy, Roberts tells us, we should want politicians to be responsive to big donors.Citizens United was … a fragile 5-4 decision that could have been weakened or ultimately overturned. Now, it is 6-3 and likely become set in stone to the vast detriment of our democracy.”
So arguably if you’re upset about soliciting or permitting foreign interference in US elections, John Roberts is somebody you should look at impeaching.
I think I nailed it."
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Yes you nailed it and thank you Prof Juan Cole, wow., WOW And wow.
end edit. wow.
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~ From CNN:
Live Updates
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Back to Syria:
Must read this one re "Normandy": from yesterday:
~ From Common Dreams: (latest news & headlines on sidebar of report)
Now Trump Is Whining the Kurds Didn't Help US at Normandy and They and We Are Doomed
by, Abby Zimet
LMAO, Abby is completely out of sight !
~ Adding this one from the Washington Post via MSNBC:
Actually, President Trump, Some Kurds did fight In World War II
by, Siobhan O'Grady
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Gunfire at or around SADM???
Back home in Indiana, I mean SADM . The kittens have been running me ragged. The mother, Susan, has basically left them on their own (which is normal for feral cats) so now I'm feeding them three times a day, but still they want their mom. I'm, going through about 1/2 gallon of organic grass milk every other day and 24 cans of cat food a day, but they are so fucking cute. The problem is when Susan shows up really late for a snack - at around 2:30 am she calls out for them even though she no longer is nursing them and they come running including running in the house which Paris does not like.
I'm finding if I feed them then, or around about 3:00am they settle down and go back to sleep. Three nights ago when I was putting this 3:00am feeding out, I distinctly thought I heard a rash of firecrackers - and of course the kittens just ran.
The next day, our neighbor William told Mike that he heard machine gun fire and contacted the guards who told him the sound of gunfire was coming from Real Del Mar. I thought it was fireworks, but I was really tired.
The next night at exactly ten minutes after 3:00 am there was more loud gunfire which even woke Mike up. I hid under the blankets. For sure these shots were coming from behind us I believe, across the highway. Last night, there was no gunfire.
Mike thinks that the shots - and machine gunfire were the fishermen who are trawling for squid or shrimp in front of us, either killing or scaring away any seals. The boats come in really close at high tides, almost to shore.
The problem with his theory is that William, and the guards and I swear the shots were coming from behind us. Three against one.
The other problem is that the ocean water in front of us is contaminated to the max, you can still smell the raw untreated sewage. Would someone actually be trawling for squid/shrimp in these waters? Well, yes. Just a few months ago boats were trawling for commercial shrimp or squid and I could not believe it !
Let's put it this way, I love calamari & shrimp but I am avoiding it locally down here. Gross !
And BTW, I did not hear or see any fishing boats. They are loud, you cannot miss them and they have bright lights which they shine into the water to attract the squid. Also, these boats only come in to trawl on a high tide, tides have been low here at that time in the morning. As far as seals, we haven't had any in years here due to the contamination.
Over and out for now, I'm swamped here.
