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US Congress members weigh giving themselves a raise


RT
Sun, 17 Mar 2019 16:26 UTC
Capitol building
© Wikipedia
The United States Capitol Building, the seat of Congress, on the National Mall in Washington, DC.
Living in Washington DC is expensive. For US lawmakers, that means it's time to give themselves a pay raise. But with confidence in politics at a miserable low, selling a raise to the public could be an uphill battle.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) called for the raise on Wednesday, in remarks to the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress. A pay raise, he said would ensure that elected representatives who don't come from wealthy backgrounds can live comfortably in Washington DC.

"Americans ought to have our nation's diversity of economic backgrounds better reflected in this House," he said.

Members of Congress have had their salaries frozen since 2009, but still earn considerably more than the average American. Senators and Representatives take home $174,000 per year, with party leaders on both houses earning $193,000, and the Speaker of the House topping the scale at $223,500.
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USA

#YangGang: Online support for 2020 presidential candidate, Andrew Yang, grows


RT
Sun, 17 Mar 2019 16:15 UTC
Andrew Yang
© Reuters / Scott Morgan
Andrew Yang attends a campaign event in Iowa.
Andrew Yang is a name absent from most cable networks' 2020 discussions. However, the Democratic candidate and universal-income advocate has been steadily building an army of online supporters, including some unlikely names.

Kicking off his campaign in earnest with an appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast last month, Yang has since accumulated 65,000 donors, enough to participate in the Democratic National Committee's first two primary debates this summer.

However, even with the sudden surge in interest, Yang is still polling around one percent. CNN has excluded Yang entirely from its opaque 'Power Rankings,' despite featuring Washington Governor Jay Inslee, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro - all of whom come in behind Yang in the Monmouth University poll.

Yang's signature proposal is the 'Freedom Dividend' - an experiment in Universal Basic Income that would see every adult American given $1,000 per month. The dividend would be funded by increased taxes on tech companies and is intended as both an economic stimulus and a safeguard against automation, poised to wipe out 40 percent of the world's jobs by 2035, according to one expert.

The 44-year-old's anti-robot stance has given rise to his campaign's borderline-dystopian slogan: 'Humanity First.'

Comment: See also:

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TV

Serbia: Anti-government protestors storm TV station demanding to be put on air


RT
Sun, 17 Mar 2019 16:06 UTC
riot police
© AFP /Andrej ISAKOVIC
Riot police officers stand guard to prevent protesters demonstrating against Serbian President to burst inside state-run TV headquarters at the building's second entrance, on March 16, 2019 in Belgrade.
Scuffles broke out between opposition and riot police after protesters forced their way into the offices of a public broadcaster in Belgrade, demanding they be put on the air. Police resorted to force to evict the crowd.

Activists protesting against the government of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic stormed the headquarters of the country's public broadcaster, RTS, on Saturday evening. Tensions were running high early in the day when huge crowds of opposition activists swarmed the streets to march to the RTS offices to call for more press freedom.

The protesters initially planned to stage a two-hour sit-in in front of the building. However, the situation soon spiraled out of control. While they were chanting slogans outside, a group of protesters led by the leader of the right-wing Dveri party, Bosko Obradovic, and his ally, prominent opposition politician Dragan Djilas, stormed the officers, occupying several floors.

Comment: Vucic is a 'reformed' Westerner who now wishes to lead Serbia into the European Union.

For many Serbians, however, they remember that the EU/NATO bombed their country just 20 years ago.

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Attention

Houston: Registered child sex offender has been reading to children during Drag Queen Storytime

Lauren Talarico
KHOU 11
Wed, 13 Mar 2019 14:56 UTC
Tatiana Mala Nina/Alberto Garza

Alberto Garza aka Tatiana Mala Nina
A registered child sex offender has been reading to children at Houston Public Library as part of its Drag Queen Storytime.

A group called Mass Resistance, which has been trying to put an end to the program, contacted KHOU about the child sex offender.

Mass Resistance claims it had been asking the City of Houston for months to disclose information about the drag queens, and when requests went unanswered, they did their own digging and made the shocking link.

A media spokesperson for the library confirmed one of the program's drag queens, Tatiana Mala Nina, is Alberto Garza, a 32-year-old child sex offender. In 2008, he was convicted of assaulting an 8-year-old boy.

"Most parents would not allow that individual to sit in this library and be held up as a role model to our children. Shame on you, Mayor (Sylvester) Turner!" said Tracy Shannon with Mass Resistance.

Comment: Is it any wonder that in the over-sexualized drag queen scene that there would be sex offenders among them? Not a shocker at all. Hopefully, this situation will force some supporters of acceptance and inclusion to wake the hell up.

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Hardhat

Man up, Hollywood, and stop making boys into wimps

Larissa Nolan
The Sunday Times
Sun, 17 Mar 2019 00:01 UTC
boy with father
Males are weak, females are cool and powerful - that's real fantasy, Disney.

The other day I praised my son for being "manly". He'd handled a situation with a maturity beyond his nine years, showing honour, courage and responsibility. It seemed a fitting compliment. Yet he looked shocked. "I don't want to be that," he told me. "That's a bad thing." I reminded him of his school motto, right there on the crest of his uniform: "Viriliter Age", meaning act manly. It was sad, as a mother, to have to reassure a boy his innate being is, in fact, a good trait. Not something to feel ashamed of, or guilty about.

That any child should feel bad about their gender identity is particularly rotten in a supposedly progressive society. Yet it wasn't wholly a surprise, considering the cultural brainwashing from a radical left agenda that is being force-fed to younger generations in the form of cinema.

It seems impossible to go to a kids' movie nowadays without being lectured on Hollywood's twin pillars of liberalism: political correctness and identity politics. I just want to bring them out for an afternoon of innocence and pleasure, not ideology and propaganda. Instead it's like being at mass.

Comment: It's not just Hollywood - even the American Psychological Association apparently thinks men acting like men is inherently toxic. Painting boys behaviors as something bad, and encouraging them to act more like girls will inevitably lead to a lost generation of men.

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Handcuffs

More than 100 Yellow Vest protesters arrested following Macron's grand debate


RT
Sun, 17 Mar 2019 14:00 UTC
yellow vest protest
© Reuters / Philippe Wojazer
A protester stands in front of burning barricade during a demonstration by the "yellow vests" movement in Paris, France, March 16, 2019.
Clashes between Yellow Vest demonstrators and police broke out as rallies intensified on the 18th consecutive weekend of protests. President Emmanuel Macron's "grand debate" aimed at pacifying the protests ended on Friday.

Saturday's rally saw thousands of people flooding the streets of downtown Paris, with many wearing black balaclavas and holding French flags.

Violence erupted on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, where protesters congregated to take part in the weekly march which began in November. According to the Associated Press, Paris mobilized more police than in previous weeks in an attempt to stave off unrest. More than 100 demonstrators were arrested by Saturday evening.

"From 7,000 to 8,000 people are currently rallying in Paris, and out of them around 1,500 people are ultraviolent, and they have come to destroy and to attack," French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner told broadcaster BFMTV. The Interior Ministry later upped the turnout to 10,000 protesters in Paris and 14,500 nationwide.
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Star of David

Debunking the myth that anti-Zionism equates to antisemitism

Peter Beinart
The Guardian
Thu, 07 Mar 2019 00:33 UTC
BDS demonstration New York
© Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images
Protesters in New York City call for a boycott of Israel in 2016.
All over the world, it is an alarming time to be Jewish - but conflating anti-Zionism with Jew-hatred is a tragic mistake

It is a bewildering and alarming time to be a Jew, both because antisemitism is rising and because so many politicians are responding to it not by protecting Jews but by victimising Palestinians.

On 16 February, members of France's yellow vest protest movement hurled antisemitic insults at the distinguished French Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut. On 19 February, swastikas were found on 80 gravestones in Alsace. Two days later, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, after announcing that Europe was "facing a resurgence of antisemitism unseen since World War II", unveiled new measures to fight it.

Among them was a new official definition of antisemitism. That definition, produced by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 2016, includes among its "contemporary examples" of antisemitism "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination". In other words, anti-Zionism is Jew hatred. In so doing, Macron joined Germany, Britain, the United States and roughly 30 other governments. And like them, he made a tragic mistake.
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Heart - Black

Dozens of Jewish settlers storm Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem


Sputnik News
Sun, 17 Mar 2019 00:00 UTC
East Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque complex
© AP Photo / Lefteris Pitarakis
On Thursday, around 150 Jewish settlers, backed by at least 30 Israeli policemen, stormed East Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque complex, according to Palestinian officials.

"About 150 Jewish settlers - backed by at least 30 policemen - have forced their way into the mosque compound since morning," Firas al-Dibs, a spokesman for Jerusalem's Religious Endowments Authority, told Anadolu Agency, also adding that some of the settlers tried to perform Talmudic rituals before exiting the site. The Talmud is the main text of Rabbinic Judaism.

​The complex is known in Judaism as the Temple Mount and in Islam as the the Noble Sanctuary.

Comment: See also:

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Dollar

Witch-hunting Southern Poverty Law Center hoarding half billion in assets including $121m in offshore accounts

Joe Schoffstall
Washington Free Beacon
Tue, 12 Mar 2019 17:59 UTC
Richard Cohen Southern Poverty Law Center SPLC
© Getty Images
Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a far-left nonprofit known for its "hate group" designations, has surpassed a half billion dollars in total assets and now has $121 million parked offshore, according to the group's most recent financial statements.

The SPLC, which is based in Montgomery, Ala., has not publicly posted its most recent financial statements on its website. However, the organization applied for renewal in the state of California days ago and submitted a number of documents pertaining to its financial standing including its most recent audited statement and tax forms for calendar year 2018, which covers Nov. 1, 2017 to Oct. 31, 2018.

According to the filings submitted to California's Office of Attorney General, the group reported total assets of $518 million from November 2017 to the Oct. 31, 2018, an increase of $41 million from the $477 million in total assets it reported on its previous year's tax forms.

Comment: The lawsuits are moving forward. Russia Insider reports:
RICO and Defamation Lawsuits

It might just come to pass that SPLC needs every penny in that big pile of coins.

The group that lays the "hate" or "racist" label on anyone with whom it disagrees, a label that led to a terror attack at the headquarters of the Family Research Council, faces at least three lawsuits alleging mail fraud, defamation, tortious interference, and violations of the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.

The plaintiffs are all victims of the SPLC's capricious labeling of those with whom it disagrees.

The latest plaintiff to file suit against the hard-left smear group is Gavin McInnes, founder of the Proud Boys, a drinking club that SPLC labeled a hate group. McInnes alleges defamation and tortious interference not only because he isn't a racist, he says, but also because the SPLC's smear was so thorough that he lost his job, can't find another, and was "deplatformed" from social media, which prevents him from defending himself effectively. Neighbors have even harassed him and tried to drive McInnes and his family out of their home.

The Center for Immigration Studies sued SPLC in January. CIS accuses SPLC's top two officials of an "ongoing conspiracy" to defame CIS with the "hate" label. That lawsuit alleges mail fraud and a violation of the RICO Act. By SPLC's own criteria, the lawsuit argues, CIS is not a hate group.

Another SPLC victim is Glenn K. Allen, a lawyer who worked for Baltimore City until SPLC called him a "neo-Nazi" who had "infiltrated" the city's legal department. Of course, the city fired him after SPLC leveled the false and defamatory claim. Like McInnes, Allen accuses SPLC of defamation and tortious interference. Like CIS, he alleges mail fraud and RICO violations. The lawsuit also attacks SPLC's tax-exempt status.

To defend that one, SPLC hired a top defamation attorney.

SPLC recently paid more than $3 million to Maajid Nawaz's Quilliam Foundation after SPLC included them in its "Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists." That settlement included a humiliating video apology.



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No Entry

Global recycling crisis shows West can't use poorer countries as dumping grounds


RT
Sat, 16 Mar 2019 14:42 UTC
Garbage
© Global Look Press / Grant Falvey
India has followed China's lead and banned imports of solid plastic waste from in an effort to tackle its own environmental crisis - but the move has added to an ever-growing global recycling and plastics crisis.

One year ago, the Chinese government implemented its 'National Sword' policy, which put a stop to the massive flow of recyclable plastic waste from Western countries. Plastic imports to China were down 99 percent in the first year since the new import restriction came into force.

Until the Chinese ban, the US, UK, Germany and Japan were among the biggest exporters of plastic to China. The new rules forced them to look elsewhere to send their plastic recyclables. UK exports to Malaysia nearly tripled, while exports to Thailand were 50 times greater. The US is the biggest plastic exporter to Malaysia, sending 195,444 tonnes between January and July 2018.

But the Chinese and Indian bans have shown that exporting plastic waste is unsustainable - and Thailand and Malaysia, too, have announced bans, not wanting to continue on as the dumping ground for the world's plastic waste. While the short-term solution to the problem for Western countries has been to find alternative markets, the long-term solution, in the words of UK environment secretary Michael Gove, is to "stop offshoring our dirt."

Comment: See also: Every animal pulled from the deepest part of the ocean had plastic in its gut

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