Dan Rather | In the End, Justice Will Prevail Once More

06 October 18 It's Live on the HomePage Now: Reader Supported News Dan Rather | In the End, Justice Will Prevail Once More  Dan Rather, Dan Rather's Facebook Page Rather writes: "I feel the anxiety, the uncertainty, the fear, and the determination..." READ MORE Deborah Ramirez, a Yale classmate of Brett Kavanaugh's, has described a dormitory party gone awry and a drunken incident that she wants the F.B.I. to investigate. (photo: Benjamin Rasmussen/The New Yorker) ALSO SEE: Less Than 1% of Rapes Lead to Felony Convictions 'This Is How Victims Are Isolated and Silenced': Debbie Ramirez on the Kavanaugh Confirmation Vote Amanda Michelle Gomez, ThinkProgress Gomez writes: "Debbie Ramirez, who attended Yale with Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, said the Senate's treatment of her was reminiscent of when the judge first assaulted her 35 years ago." READ MORE Devin Nunes. (photo: CNN) Nunes Buried Evidence on Russian Meddling to Protect Trump. I Know Because I'm on the Committee Rep. Eric Swalwell, The Fresno Bee Swalwell writes: "No one really expected President Donald Trump, who benefited from Russia's 2016 election interference, to counter that hostile regime's active measures: Russia wanted him to win, and when they hacked, he invited them to hack more." READ MORE Protesters march during a rally at Public Square in Cleveland following the fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice by a Cleveland police officer. (photo: David Maxwell/EPA) Another Ohio Police Department Hires the Cop Who Killed Tamir Rice David Boddiger, Splinter News Boddiger writes: "Timothy Loehmann, the former Cleveland police officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014, will soon have another badge and gun. The village of Bellaire, OH, hired Loehmann as a part-time officer, The Intelligencer reported." READ MORE Linelle Jones-McKinney speaks to reporters. (photo: E.A. Crunden/ThinkProgress) Flint Residents Eye Innovative Solutions for the Future as They Try to Move Beyond the Water Crisis E.A. Crunden, ThinkProgress Crunden writes: "The north side of Flint is largely a food desert, the result of a steady decline in jobs and economic security compounded by the city's enduring water crisis. But Mark Baldwin wants to change that." READ MORE Rodney Sieh was freed after four months following an international outcry. (photo: Greg Stemm/BBC) Letter From Liberia: Why I Was Sentenced to 5,000 Years in Jail BBC Excerpt: "My claim to infamy was being sentenced to 5,000 years in prison for failing to pay libel damages of $1.6m (£1.2m) won by a former minister who sued my paper after we published the findings of a government audit." READ MORE Single-use plastic containers are 'the biggest source of trash' found near waterways and beaches. (photo: Dimitar Dilkoff/Getty Images) US Plastic Waste Is Causing Environmental Problems at Home and Abroad Joe Sandler Clarke and Emma Howard, Unearthed Excerpt: "US plastic waste exports to developing countries in south-east Asia rose dramatically in the first six months of this year, as the international fallout from China's decision to shut its doors to 'foreign trash' continues." READ MORE Contribute to RSN Become a Fan of RSN on Facebook and Twitter Update My Monthly Donation

RSN: It's Not About Bernie, It's About Us, The Hidden Costs of US Air War, The Story Behind Prince's Low-Profile Generosity to Green Causes

Corporate Media PROPAGANDA MACHINES and Fox News = Fake News = CULT have betrayed Americans by not reporting the War Crimes being committed by the US as it escalates bombing, killing civilians, destroying homes and infrastructure, creating more terrorists,  a foreign policy supported by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for a pipeline.  

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Scott Galindez | It's Not About Bernie, It's About Us 
 
Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News 
Galindez writes: "Win or lose, the Sanders campaign has awakened a movement that will live long past July or even November." 
READ MORE

Cleveland Police Send Shocking Letter to Tamir Rice's Family 
teleSUR 
Excerpt: "The Cleveland police sent a letter to the family saying part of the settlement from the city should be used for teaching kids against using fake guns." 
READ MORE

The Hidden Costs of US Air War 
Nicolas J. S. Davies, Consortium News 
Davies writes: "At the very least, U.S. air strikes have killed hundreds of civilians in Mosul, as well as destroying much of the civilian infrastructure that people depend on for their lives in already dire conditions. And yet this is, by all accounts, only the beginning of the U.S.-Iraqi campaign to retake Mosul." 
READ MORE

When Russian air strikes kill civilians in Syria, it is big news in U.S. newspapers, but there is near-total silence when U.S. bombs kill civilians in Iraq or Syria, a human rights dilemma addressed by Nicolas J S Davies.

SA Today reported on April 19 that U.S. air forces bombing Syria and Iraq have been operating under new, looser rules of engagement since last fall. The war commander, Lt Gen Sean McFarland, now orders air strikes that are expected to kill up to 10 civilians without prior approval from U.S. Central Command, and U.S. officials made it clear to USA Today that U.S. air strikes are killing more civilians as a result of the new rules.

Under these new rules of engagement, the U.S. has conducted a major escalation of its bombing campaign against Mosul, an Iraqi city of about 1.5 million people, which has been occupied by Islamic State since 2014. Reports of hundreds of civilians killed in U.S. air strikes reveal some of the human cost of the U.S. air war and the new rules of engagement.

Previous statements by U.S. officials have absurdly claimed that over 40,000 U.S. air strikes in Iraq and Syria have killed as few as 26 civilians. Speaking to USA Today, a senior Pentagon official who is briefed daily on the air war dismissed such claims, noting that heavier civilian casualties were inevitable in an air war that has destroyed 6,000 buildings with over 40,000 bombs and missiles.

Professor Souad Al-Azzawi, the award-winning Iraqi environmental scientist from Mosul who conducted the first studies of the health effects of depleted uranium after the First Gulf War, has compiled a partial list of air strikes that have killed civilians and destroyed civilian infrastructure in Mosul, most of them since the new U.S. rules of engagement went into effect. The list is based on reports by Mosul Eye,Nineveh Reporters Network, Al Maalomah News Network, other local media and contacts in Mosul and is not intended as a complete list of civilian casualties or civilian infrastructure destroyed.

Missing a Crisis

As I reported for ConsortiumNews in January, this kind of “passive reporting” from war zones can only capture a fraction of actual civilian casualties, and an even smaller fraction in areas outside government control and beyond the reach of conventional media:

-Many government buildings have been destroyed. As U.S. officials told USA Today, such attacks are often conducted at night to minimize civilian casualties, but they have killed night-time security guards and civilians in neighboring buildings.

-Telephone exchanges have been systematically bombed and destroyed.

-Two large dairies were bombed, killing 100 civilians and wounding 200 more, including local people lining up outside to buy milk and dairy products.

-Multiple daytime air strikes on Mosul University on March 19 and 20 (the 13^th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq) killed 92 civilians and wounded 135, mostly faculty, staff, families and students. Targets included the main administration building, classroom buildings, a women’s dormitory and a faculty family apartment building from which only one child survived.

-50 civilians (including entire families) were killed and 100 wounded by air strikes on two apartment buildings, Al Hadbaa and Al Khadraa.

-A mother and her four children were killed in an air strike on a house in the Hay al Dhubat district in East Mosul on April 20, next door to a house used by Islamic State that was undamaged.

-22 civilians were killed (including 11 members of one family) in an air strike on houses in front of theMosul Medical College.

-20 civilians were killed and 70 wounded by air strikes on the Sunni Waquf building and surrounding houses and shops.

-The Nineveh Plains water treatment plant was bombed in October 2014, and another water treatment plant and a hospital were shut down by an air strike on a power station in northeast Mosul in July 2015.

-Flour mills, a pharmaceutical factory, auto repair shops and other workshops have been bombed, with civilian casualties, all over Mosul.

-The Central Bank of Mosul in Ghazi Street and the main and local branches of two other banks, Rafidain and Rasheed, have been bombed, with heavy damage and civilian casualties in the areas surrounding each of them. After the first bank was struck, all the cash was removed from the others before they were bombed a few weeks later.

-Three workers were killed and 12 wounded in an air strike on the former Pepsi bottling plant.

-The Governor’s residence and guest houses and the Turkish consulate were hit by air strikes.

-An air strike on a fuel depot in an industrial area ignited an inferno that caused 150 casualties on April 18.

-Urban planning and engineering planning offices were bombed in Hay Al Maliyah.

-Air strikes targeted a food warehouse, power plants and electric sub-stations across West Mosul.

-The Al Hurairah Bridge was destroyed by air strikes.

Punishing Civilians

At the very least, U.S. air strikes have killed hundreds of civilians in Mosul, as well as destroying much of the civilian infrastructure that people depend on for their lives in already dire conditions. And yet this is, by all accounts, only the beginning of the U.S.-Iraqi campaign to retake Mosul.

One and a half million civilians are trapped in the city, 30 times the United Nation’s estimate of the number of civilians in Fallujah before the November 2004 assault by U.S. Marines that killed 4,000 to 6,000 people, mostly civilians.  Meanwhile Islamic State (also known as ISIS,ISIL and Daesh) is preventing civilians from evacuating the city, believing that their presence protects its forces from even heavier bombardment.

International humanitarian law is absolutely clear that military attacks on civilians, civilian areas and civilian infrastructure are strictly prohibited. The presence of several thousand ISIS militants in a city of 1.5 million people does not justify indiscriminate bombing or attacks on civilian targets.

As the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq warned U.S. officials in a Human Rights Report in 2007, “The presence of individual combatants among a great number of civilians does not alter the civilian nature of an area.”

Bombing food warehouses, flour mills and water treatment plants is also a war crime.

As Jean Ziegler, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, protested in 2005, as U.S. forces besieged other cities in Iraq, “A drama is taking place in total silence in Iraq, where the coalition’s occupying forces are using hunger and deprivation of food and water as a weapon of war.” He called this, “a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.”

The controlled leak of the new rules of engagement to USA Today appears to be an “information operation” to provide political cover for air strikes that violate the laws of war and are killing large numbers of civilians, as the U.S. escalates its air strikes against Mosul and other cities occupied by Islamic State.

Controlling Information

Post-Cold War U.S. military strategists have theorized that sophisticated U.S. “information warfare” can shape public perceptions to remove political constraints on the use of U.S. military force.

As Major Ralph Peters, an officer responsible for “future warfare” in the office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, wrote in a 1997 military journal article, “We are already masters of information warfare … we will be writing the scripts, producing (the videos) and collecting the royalties.”

Peters also predicted that U.S forces would “do a fair amount of killing … to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault.”

On the domestic front, the U.S.’s information warfare has proven so effective that most Americans know almost nothing of the real impacts of U.S. military operations. The median response to a 2007 AP-Ipsos poll that asked Americans how many Iraqis had died as a result of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq was 9,890, or 1.5 percent of the total revealed in 2006 by a comprehensive mortality study. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Victory of ‘Perception Management.’”]

But internationally, the wartime conditions now afflicting people from Afghanistan to Nigeria to Ukraine have created new realities that render Western narratives increasingly suspect and drive an urgent quest for other ones that can better explain the violent and chaotic world in which more and more people are forced to live.

The presumption that U.S. information warfare could brainwash the world to provide political cover and impunity for systematic U.S. aggression and other war crimes is collapsing under the real-world impacts of U.S. policy.

Spreading Extremism

Wahhabi jihadism is thriving in the new reality born of the U.S. government’s hubris and aggression. The fundamental contradiction of the militarized “war on terror” has always been that U.S. aggression and other war crimes only reinforce the narratives of jihadi groups who see themselves as a bulwark against foreign aggression and neocolonialism in the Muslim world.

Meanwhile U.S. wars and covert operations against secular enemies like Hussein, Gaddafi and Assad keep creating new zones of chaos where the jihadis can set up shop.

U.S. officials, not least President Barack Obama, have acknowledged publicly that there is therefore“no military solution” to jihadism. But successive U.S. administrations have proven unable to resist the lure of military expansion and escalation at each new stage of the crisis, unleashing wars that have killed about 2 million people, plunged a dozen countries into complete chaos and exploded Wahhabi jihadism from its original safe havens in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan to countries across the world.

In 2014, as I wrote at the time, the mostly Sunni Arab people of northern and western Iraq had been tortured, terrorized and murdered by U.S.- and Iranian-backed death squads for ten years and accepted the rule of Islamic State as the lesser of two evils.

If the U.S. and its Iraqi allies now follow through with their threatened assault on Mosul, the resulting massacre will join Fallujah, Guantanamo and Obama’s drone wars as a new, powerful symbol and catalyst for the next mutation of Wahhabi jihadism, which is likely to be more globalized and unified.

But although Al Qaeda and Islamic State have proven adept at manipulating U.S. leaders into ever-escalating cycles of violence, the jihadis cannot directly order American pilots to bomb civilians. Only our leaders can do that. So our leaders bear the moral and legal responsibility for these atrocities, just as Islamic State’s leaders bear the responsibility for theirs.

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Nicolas J S Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. He also wrote the chapters on “Obama at War” in Grading the 44th President: a Report Card on Barack Obama’s First Term as a Progressive Leader.''

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/265-34/36555-the-hidden-costs-of-us-air-war

A Year After the Baltimore Uprising, the Real Work Is Just Beginning 
Alice Speri, The Intercept 
Speri writes: "There is no question that the black youth who took to the streets of Baltimore last year are political. The question is whether they can be successfully engaged in a political system whose impact has largely excluded them." 
READ MORE

Want to Hire a Worker-Owned Co-op? There's an App for That 
Michelle Stearn, Yes! Magazine 
Stearn writes: "Coopify wants to bring a sense of community to the app-based booking world by connecting worker-owned cooperatives and other low-income task workers directly with consumers." 
READ MORE

Thousands of Protesters Threaten to Storm Iraq's Parliament 
Loveday Morris and Mustafa Salim, The Washington Post 
Excerpt: "The demonstrators, answering a call from the outspoken Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, had gathered at the gates of Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, where parliament is located, demanding a new government." 
READ MORE

The Story Behind Prince's Low-Profile Generosity to Green Causes 
Katie Herzog, Grist 
Herzog writes: "Prince supported Green For All, a group working to fight climate change and bring green jobs to underprivileged populations." 
READ MORE

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CLG: Flint water treatment plant foreman found dead; Flint lawsuit filer shot and killed, Thousands of Germans rally against 'trade' deals on eve of Obama's visit, Public support for TTIP in U.S. plunges to 18% - survey

 News Updates from CLG
26 April 2016

http://www.legitgov.org/
All links are here:http://www.legitgov.org/#breaking_news

 

Previous edition: Trump, Clinton cruise to New York wins; Cruz must rely on contested convention

 

Is Rick Snyder killing off witnesses? Part 1: Flint water treatment plant foreman was found dead days before three of his colleagues were charged over the city's contaminated water crisis --Autopsy was conducted but did not determine immediate cause of death | 21 April 2016 | The death of a Water Treatment Plant foreman, who was found dead at his home on April 16 by a friend who went to visit him, comes amid charges against three men involved in the city's water crisis. Flint Mayor Karen Weaver announced the sudden death of foreman, Matthew McFarland on Thursday. A friend discovered the 43-year-old's body when he went to visit him at his Otter Lake home last Saturday, according to MLive. His death comes as Flint's water plant deals with the attorney general's announcement of three men facing criminal charges in connection with the city's water crisis.

 

Part 2: Flint woman suing over poisoned water crisis found shot to death in home | 22 April 2016 | A woman involved in a lawsuit over the lead-contaminated water crisis in Flint, Michigan was reportedly found shot to death in her home along with another individual. On Tuesday, police found the bodies of two women inside of a townhouse, where they also found a one-year-old who was unharmed. Both women were shot, and have been identified as Sasha Bell and Sacorya Reed. Police are treating the deaths as homicides and have a suspect in custody, but no charges have been filed. Notably, the Flint Journal reports that Sasha Bell was one of the first individuals to file a lawsuit over the water crisis in Flint, which saw city water become contaminated with lead after officials chose to switch to the Flint River as its main drinking source.

 

Activists warn against potential outsourcing of Flint water plant | 21 April 2016 | A group of activists and union supporters protested against the outsourcing of the operation of the Flint water treatment plant on Thursday...Protesters held signs and shouted chants against Gov. Rick Snyder. "Today, as the city of Flint hosts a meeting with potential bidders for a study of the water system -- local and national labor and social justice organizations called on the city council and the mayor to reject any deal with a water privatizing company that could use that study as a foot in the door to take over the operating and management of this system," said Flint resident Melissa Mays, founder of Water You Fighting For.

Obama plans 250 more U.S. troops for Syria, boosting force to 300 | 24 April 2016 | President Barack Obama will announce on Monday he plans to send as many as 250 additional U.S. troops to Syria, a sharp increase in the American presence working with local Syrian forces fighting Islamic State militants, U.S. officials said. The deployment will increase U.S. forces in Syria to about 300...Obama will explain his decision in a speech at 11:25 a.m. (0925 GMT) in Hanover, where he discussed the Syria crisis with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday. 

Heads up! Project Mercury: Foreign 'dirty bomb' responders will start training in Nevada | 24 April 2016 | In a few months, the Center for Radiological/Nuclear Training will enter a new, international dimension as police officers from eastern Europe and elsewhere outside the U.S. descend on a one-of-a-kind training facility in Area 1 at the Nevada National Security Site, 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas...The first wave of foreign students is expected to arrive in September for Project Mercury, a $500,000 pilot program that will bring first responders from Interpol, the world's largest international police organization. While the cost of the security site's 'counterterrorism' effort is 22 million funded annually by the Department of Homeland Security, the 500,000 for the inaugural Project Mercury trial course comes from the Department of Defense, a Pentagon official said Friday. The official, a spokesman for the office of the Secretary of Defense, added that future funding avenues exist in "several programs that build partner capacity to deal with the full range of threats associated with" weapons of mass destruction. One, he said, focuses on teaming with other nations to ensure there will be safe and successful responses to nuclear incidents [aka US false flags].

Justice Department won't block CIA torture suit | 21 April 2016 | The Justice Department has signaled that it won't try to block a lawsuit arising from the CIA's harsh interrogation torture techniques, leaving the door open for a court challenge over tactics that have since been discontinued and widely discredited. Lawyers call the government's stance unprecedented, but also a recognition that a once-secret program is now largely out in the open. They say it's the first time the Justice Department has not sought, as its first step, to dismiss a lawsuit over the interrogation program by arguing that its mere existence is too secret to discuss in court...The lawsuit at issue, pending in federal court in Washington state, accuses the two Air Force psychologists who designed the interrogation program of endorsing and teaching torture tactics under the guise of science.

 

'Terrorism investigation' court lets NSA collect telephone records data | 21 April 2016 | In its first ruling regarding phone records since the passage of the USA Freedom Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court granted the National Security Agency the powers it requested. Much of the court order was redacted, however. The court order, which was released on Tuesday, does not reveal the identities of any of the telecom providers with which the National Security Agency (NSA) is working nor whom the agency is targeting, according to Reuters.

Two GTA men arrested on fear they will commit terrorism | 21 April 2016 | The RCMP is seeking to restrict the movements of two [Greater Toronto Area] GTA men they fear will commit acts of terrorism. Samuel Augustin Aviles of Whitby, and Kadir Abdul of Toronto appeared in a Brampton court Thursday morning after being arrested on peace bonds. According to court documents, the RCMP fears Abdulmay participate in an activity of a terrorist group, travel to participate in an activity of a terrorist group, or facilitate terrorist activity. They fear Aviles may travel to participate in an activity of a terrorist group. The RCMP is seeking to restrict their movements for one year because of these fears. #PreCrimeUnit

Police charge Australian teenager with planning ANZAC terror attack | 24 April 2106 | Australian police have arrested and charged a teenager with a terrorism offense related to planning an attack at Monday's commemorations of the ANZAC landings at Gallipoli during World War One. The 16-year-old boy was arrested near his Sydney home on Sunday and will appear before a children's court on Monday, police said. The offense carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. ANZAC Day, April 25, is a major annual holiday in Australia and New Zealand marking the date of the first Gallipoli landings in 1915, in which large numbers of Australian and New Zealand troops fought and died.

Connecticut man made threat on Twitter to bomb Trump rally | 24 April 2016 | A 20-year-old Connecticut man was arrested after being accused of sending threats on Twitter to bomb a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, authorities said on Sunday. Sean Morkys of Waterbury, Connecticut, was charged with threatening, inciting injury and breach of peace. The U.S. Secret Service, which is responsible for the safety of presidential candidates, alerted the Connecticut State Police's counterterrorism office on Saturday afternoon that a Twitter user had posted, "Is someone going to bomb the trump rally or am I going to have to?" A second post warned a friend to tell relatives to leave the rally in Waterbury to avoid being harmed, state police said.

Man arrested for allegedly threatening to bomb Trump rally in Connecticut | 24 April 2016 | A man is under arrest after he allegedly threatened to bomb Donald Trump's campaign rally in Connecticut Saturday. The Connecticut State Police arrested 20-year-old Sean Morkys in Waterbury. They say he posted on Twitter that he was going to detonate a bomb at Trump's Waterbury rally. Authorities tracked the tweets to a Waterbury home, where they found Morkys. After determining he didn't pose an immediate threat, he was taken into custody and released on 25,000 bond.

Man who landed gyrocopter at U.S. Capitol gets 120 days in prison | 21 April 2016 | A former Florida mail carrier who flew a gyrocopter onto the U.S. Capitol grounds to publicize the need for campaign finance reform was sentenced to 120 days in jail on Thursday, a spokesman for prosecutors said. Douglas Hughes, 62, of Ruskin, Florida, also was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to a year of supervised release after he gets out of prison, the spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office said. Hughes pleaded guilty in November to a felony charge of flying an aircraft without a license in the April 2015 stunt.

Solar-powered plane lands at Moffett Field | 24 April 2016 | (Mountain View, CA) After a 56-hour flight from Hawaii, his every word webcast live from the skies, the pilot of a solar-powered plane on an around-the-world journey reached the San Francisco Bay late Saturday afternoon, enthralled and inspired by the stunning scene below. "Right now, I am crossing the coastline of California entering into the continent, and exactly in front of me is the Golden Gate," pilot Bertrand Piccard told colleagues tracking his travels on the Internet. Over "the centuries, all these ships were coming like this" through the Golden Gate, "and now it's a solar-powered airplane." Piccard landed the Solar Impulse 2 in Mountain View at 11:45 p.m.

8 shot dead in Ohio 'execution-style killings,' shooter or shooters may still be at large | 22 April 2016 | One or more shooters could still be on the loose as Ohio officials confirm seven adults and one male juvenile, all members of the same family, were killed at four different Pike County residences Friday. An initial statement from Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said they were "execution-style killings." The attorney general stated that authorities believe the individual or individuals responsible for the killings are still at large and should be considered armed and extremely dangerous. The Chillicothe Gazette reported there were multiple crime scenes, citing deputies on the scene.

 

Thousands of Germans rally against 'trade' deals on eve of Obama's visit --A mock coffin lay on the ground emblazoned with the words 'Democracy killed by money' and 'Here lies democracy'. | 23 April 2016 | Thousands of opponents of a proposed transatlantic trade corporate takeover deal poured onto German streets today on the eve of a visit by US President Barack Obama. The Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has run into major opposition, not least in Europe's top economy Germany, where its foes have raised the spectre of eroding ecological and labour market standards and condemned secrecy shrouding the talks. A loose coalition of trade unions, environmentalists and consumer protection groups gathered a crowd of about 16,000 in front of Hanover's opera house ahead of a march through the city centre expected to draw around 50,000.

 

Public support for TTIP in U.S. plunges to 18% - survey | 21 April 2016 | Support for the transatlantic trade deal known as TTIP has fallen sharply in Germany and the United States, a survey showed on Thursday, days before Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Barack Obama meet to try to breathe new life into the pact. The survey, conducted by YouGov for the Bertelsmann Foundation, showed that only 17 percent of Germans believe the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is a good thing, down from 55 percent two years ago. In the United States, only 18 percent support the deal compared to 53 percent in 2014.

 

Republicans Cruz, Kasich conspire to reach 'stop-Trump' deal | 24 April 2016 | Republican White House rivals Ted Cruz [Zodiac Ted] and John Kasich announced a deal on Sunday to stay out of each other's way in some upcoming state primaries in hopes of blocking front-runner Donald Trump from winning the party's presidential nomination. Cruz's campaign said in a statement he would focus on the Indiana and give Kasich a clearer shot in Oregon and New Mexico, states where the Ohio governor expects to do well. Kasich, in turn, agreed to shift resources west and away from Indiana...Dan Scavino, Trump's social media director tweeted: "Two losing candidates joining in an attempt to stop @realdonaldtrump. Americans are so tired of you POLITICIANS!!!"

 

Trump relentlessly mocks Kasich: 'I have never seen a human being eat in such a disgusting fashion' | 25 April 2016 | Donald Trump relentlessly mocked Ohio Gov. John Kasich's campaign-trail eating habits on Monday. During a rally in Rhode Island, the Republican presidential front-runner said that the Ohio governor should learn from Trump's children, whom Trump has urged to eat modest portions of food. "Did you see him? He has a news conference all the time when he's eating. I have never seen a human being eat in such a disgusting fashion," Trump said of Kasich. He continued: "I'd say, 'Children, small, little bites.' This guy takes a pancake and he's shoving it in his mouth. It's disgusting. Do you want this guy for your president?" [LOL! See also: Donald Trump Explains How John Kasich Eats Pancakes [Hilarious] (Video) 25 April 2016.]

 

Trump tells Connecticut voters he's 'not toning it down' | 23 April 2016 | A confident Donald Trump told supporters on Saturday that he’s not changing his pitch to voters, a day after his chief adviser assured Republican officials their party’s front-runner would show more restraint while campaigning. "You know, being presidential's easy -- much easier than what I have to do," he told thousands at a rally in Bridgeport, Conn. "Here, I have to rant and rave. I have to keep you people going. Otherwise you’re going to fall asleep on me, right?" Trump declared to the crowd that he has no intention of reversing any of his provocative policy plans, including building a wall along the length of the southern border. 

 

Board of Elections: Chief Clerk Suspended After Brooklyn Voter Purge | 21 April 2016 | A New York City Board of Elections official was suspended without pay after more than 125,000 people werepurged from the voter rolls in Brooklyn, according to the agency. Chief Clerk Diane Haslett-Rudianoaccidentally kicked active voters off the list after doing a routine update to eliminate people who have died or moved, the New York Daily News first reported...The New York State Attorney General's Office is also investigating the Board of Elections after it received more than 1,000 complaints during primary day.

 

Eric Garner's Daughter, 126,000 Others, Could Not Vote in NYC | 20 April 2016 | Eric Garner's daughter, a Bernie Sanders campaign advocate, did not vote in the New York primaries, along with 126,000 other independent voters, including Donald Trump's children. New York has a closed primary system, meaning that only voters registered with a party can vote, and the deadline to register with a party was back in October, 2015. This makes New York the hardest state in which to vote for unaffiliated voters, who are expected to prepare 193 days before voting begins.

 

Charles Koch: 'Possible' Clinton could be better than GOP nominee | 24 April 2016 | Oil tycoon and conservative mega-donor Charles Koch had kind words for both Bill and Hillary Clinton in an interview Sunday, saying there was an outside chance he could support her in November. "We would have to believe her actions would be quite different than her rhetoric. Let me put it that way," he said on ABC's "This Week" Sunday. "But on some of the Republican candidates we would -- before we could support them, we'd have to believe their actions will be quite different than the rhetoric we've heard so far."

 

Hillary Clinton's Campaign, Cautious but Confident, Begins Considering Running Mates | 23 April 2016 | Hillary Clinton's advisers and allies have begun extensive discussions about who should be her running mate, seeking to compile a list of 15 to 20 potential picks for her team to start vetting by late spring...Among the names under discussion by Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Clinton and campaign advisers: Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, former governors from the key state of Virginia; Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who represents both a more liberal wing of the party and a swing state; former Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, a prominent African-American Democrat; and Thomas E. Perez, President Obama's labor secretary and a Hispanic civil rights lawyer. But Mrs. Clinton is also open to a woman, campaign advisers said.

 

Federal judge upholds North Carolina voter ID law said to be discriminatory | 25 April 2016 | Lawsuits challenging changes to North Carolina’s election law failed to show it hampered the ability of minority voters to exercise political power, a federal judge ruled Monday in dismissing the cases. US district judge Thomas Schroeder ruled against the US Justice Department, the North Carolina NAACP chapter and named voters, who claimed the law was passed to discriminate against poor and minority voters in violation of the Constitution and Voting Rights Act. While North Carolina had a sordid history of freezing black voters out of the political process, Schroeder said, the plaintiffs did not show that the law hampered the ability of minority voters to exercise electoral politics.

 

Cleveland agrees to pay Tamir Rice family $6m over police shooting | 25 April 1206 | The city of Cleveland, Ohio, has agreed to pay 6m to the family of Tamir Rice to settle a lawsuit over the 12-year-old's fatal shooting by a police officer. The payment will avert a federal civil rights case brought against city authorities by Tamir’s relatives over the death of "a young boy with his entire life ahead of him, full of potential and promise", their attorneys said on Monday. The details of the settlement were contained in a filing by judge Solomon Oliver to federal court in Cleveland on Monday morning.

 

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CLG Editor-in-Chief: Lori Price. Copyright © 2016, Citizens for Legitimate Government ® All rights reserved.