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COLLUSION! Trump congratulates RUSSIAN hockey superstar Ovechkin for leading Washington Capitals to first-ever Stanley Cup win


RT
Fri, 08 Jun 2018 15:17 UTC
Donald Trump thumbs up
© Kevin Lamarque / Gary A. Vasquez / ReutersDonald Trump gives a thumbs up to supporters / Alex Ovechkin (8) hoists the Stanley Cup
US president Donald Trump has personally congratulated Washington Capitals' captain Alexander Ovechkin after the Russian led the caps to a historic first Stanley Cup win, branding 'Ovi' a "superstar".


Trump tweeted: "Congratulations to the Washington Capitals on their GREAT play and winning the Stanley Cup Championship. Alex Ovechkin, the team captain, was spectacular - a true Superstar! D.C. is popping, in many ways. What a time!"

The Caps defeated the Las Vegas Golden Knights 4-3 in game 5 of the NHL Stanley Cup Finals on Thursday. In doing so, Ovechkin became the first Russian-born player to captain a team to the most coveted prize in hockey.

Ovechkin
© Stephen R. Sylvanie -USA TODAY Sports / Reuters

Comment: Collusion! This time the Russians actually did it!

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Arrow Down

Australian woman in hiding after leaving Islam - sons "want her dead"

Reid Butler
nine.com.au
Tue, 05 Jun 2018 15:47 UTC
australian muslim
A Melbourne woman who told how she felt like an "animal" and a "slave" while practising Islam says she hopes she'll inspire other female Muslims to "free themselves" from the religion.

Nadia (last name with held) and her eldest daughter Allawea are now in hiding, after their family turned against them when the pair denounced Islam.

"It is in an honour for them to kill somebody whose turned away from Islam, and their own mother has turned away from Islam so I mean nothing to them," the 40-year-old told A Current Affair.

Things escalated in October last year, when Nadia's two eldest sons turned up at her former home in Melbourne's western suburbs, brutally bashing her new husband.

The young men fled when police arrived, with officers later allegedly finding several rifles in their possession.

Weapons charges were laid but the boys' whereabouts are unknown.
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Arrow Down

Arizona cops on leave after CCTV footage shows them beating unarmed man


RT
Thu, 07 Jun 2018 14:00 UTC
Mesa Police Department
© Mesa Police Department
Three Arizona police officers and one sergeant are on administrative leave after CCTV footage emerged allegedly showing them punching and kneeing an unarmed man.

Mesa police were called to a domestic dispute at an apartment complex just before midnight on May 23. A woman had reported that her ex-boyfriend was trying to break into her apartment and officers met two men exiting the building when they arrived.

One of the men was Erik Reyes, the caller's 20-year-old ex-boyfriend, who can be seen in the footage complying with officer's orders to sit on the floor. His friend, 33-year-old Robert Johnson, chooses not to sit down.

The three officers then appear to begin punching Johnson repeatedly in the face and head, even after he had been knocked unconscious.


At another point in the 15-minute footage an officer appears to be shoving Johnson's head into an elevator door after he was handcuffed and had his feet zip-tied. Near the end of the video one cop wraps a cloth around Johnson's face, covering his eyes, before three officers pick him up and carry him to the elevator.
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Attention

Medicare and Social Security are going broke much faster than we'd thought, and some still want to expand the programs

Guy Benson
Townhall
Wed, 06 Jun 2018 13:35 UTC
US national debt
It's the type of unsexy story that just glides past without much notice these days -- especially with so much excitement and speculation over historic summits, presidential self-pardons, and dramatic culture war skirmishes dominating headlines. But the federal government has dug our national finances into a frighteningly deep hole, having made tens of trillions of dollars' worth in unpaid-for promises (i.e. "unfunded liabilities"), on which tens of millions of people are relying. We've been sounding the alarm on this for years, over the course of two presidential administrations. The looming debt bomb is a predictable crisis, and yet virtually nothing is being done about it.

Republicans passed a number of budget resolutions during the Obama years that called for the implementation of Paul Ryan's desperately-needed Medicare reforms, but those had zero chance of becoming law. The Obama administration was committed to fiscal denialism and demagoguery, infamously responding to the bleak math with literally no plan to corral it. Then Donald Trump secured the GOP nomination and the presidency while pledging -- for political reasons -- not to touch the two biggest drivers of our long-term debt, discarding years of hard work Paul Ryan and his allies had undertaken to prove that pursuing entitlement reform was not a lethal third rail. Then, in February, both parties teamed up to pass an awful omnibus spending bill that blew through even the modest constraints the GOP opposition had secured during the Obama era. The US government's spending trajectory remains pointed inexorably and recklessly northward, with no fiscal responsibility in sight. And as of yesterday, we know that the unfunded liabilities problem is worse than ever:

Comment: Social Security and Medicare to go belly-up sooner than expected

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Gold Seal

WikiLeaks' Julian Assange should be getting Nobel Peace Prize and a pardon, not confinement

Souraya Faas
RT
Fri, 08 Jun 2018 14:39 UTC
Assange supporter
© Toby Melville / ReutersA supporter holds up a poster of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange outside the Ecuadorian embassy, London, February 5, 2016.
Western countries speak of the need for democracy and free speech around the world while restricting citizens' access to information and silencing the messengers.

Nowadays the media is a form of education for many, especially when it comes to understanding politics. Therefore, people believe what they see and hear even if it's only half the truth. I have always stated that the media is the fourth branch of government because it moves public opinion and every day we see more proof of that. US society, as well as British society, has made choices about which kinds of speech to permit and which to forbid in an attempt to silence discussion on specific topics.

In 2010 Hillary Clinton cited President Obama during her speech stating that "the more freely information flows, the stronger societies become". She then went on to say that "information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable."

What she didn't expect was that information networks such as WikiLeaks would uncover incriminating information that not only compromised her credibility but also that of many others. First Amendment to the US constitution guarantees the rights of free expression and action that are fundamental to democratic government. These rights include freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech.

The First Amendment prohibits Congress from restricting the press or the rights of individuals to speak freely. The First Amendment should be able to protect a right to publish information on unlawful government programs especially when the existence of a particular program is a matter of significant public concern. Because of the Espionage Act, there's no way for third party to "lawfully" acquire classified national security information that they are unauthorized to possess.

Comment: See also:

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People

Populist Doug Ford to become premier of Ontario

Ashifa Kassam
The Guardian
Fri, 08 Jun 2018 13:43 UTC
Doug Ford supporter
© Carlo Allegri/ReutersA Doug Ford supporter celebrates the Ontario election results giving a majority to his Progressive Conservative party.
Doug Ford - the brother of controversial former Toronto mayor Rob Ford - is the new leader of Canada's most populous province, winning a majority government in a local show of strength for the divisive wedge politics that have rattled much of the world.

Ontario's Conservatives, led by Ford, won 76 of the 124 seats in the province, with 99% of the polls reporting. Buoyed by promises that included slashing income taxes, reducing the price of gasoline, boosting spending on healthcare and transit and repealing carbon pricing, the Conservatives won 41% of the vote, bringing an end to 15 years of Liberal rule in the province.

"This victory belongs to the people," Ford told supporters on Thursday. "Together we made history. We have taken back Ontario, we have delivered a government that is for the people."

Ford - a businessman who rails against the elite and regularly peppers his speeches and interviews with boasts and falsehoods - is the brother of the late Rob Ford, the former Toronto mayor who made headlines around the world after he admitted to smoking crack cocaine while in office.

In his victory speech, Ford thanked his brother. "I know my brother Rob is looking down from heaven. I'm just getting chills talking about him right now," he said. "I know Rob is celebrating with us tonight. We owe so much to Rob's legacy."

Comment: "MOGA" just doesn't quite have the same ring to it...

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Wedding Rings

First Africa-China security and defense forum to be hosted by China in June-July


Sputnik
Fri, 08 Jun 2018 14:12 UTC
China Africa Djibouti Ismail Omar Guelleh Xi Jinping
© AP Photo/ Ng Han GuanDjibouti's President Ismail Omar Guelleh, second from left walks with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a welcome ceremony held outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
China will host the first-ever China-Africa security and defense forum later this month, a Chinese military spokesperson said last Thursday. The move signals deepening ties between the world's most rapidly developing country and a number of nations in the developing world.

Ren Guoqiang, spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of National Defense, said at a press briefing Thursday that the African participants will visit the Chinese armed forces, including the army, navy and air force. The forum itself will focus on regional security issues and the development of Africa's own security capacities, in addition to mutual cooperation, Xinhua News Agency reported.

The inaugural summit comes at a time of increasing political and economic cooperation between China and a number of African nations, marked by growing diplomatic relations and broadening infrastructure investments.

Comment: Yet another sign that we are indeed moving into a multipolar world order, just as Putin said.

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Hardhat

Sweden reluctantly approves construction of Russia's Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Northern Europe


RT
Fri, 08 Jun 2018 13:41 UTC
pipeline
© Christian Charisius / Reuters
The Swedish government has granted a permit for the construction of Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in its territorial waters, despite reservations.

The 9.5 billion euro ($11.17 billion) project is set to bring Russian gas to Germany under the Baltic Sea. It is a joint venture of Russian energy giant Gazprom with French Engie, Austrian OMV AG, UK-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell, and German Uniper and Wintershall. The capacity of the pipeline will be 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year.

"The government gives permission to Nord Stream 2 to lay a gas pipeline in the economic zone of Sweden in the Baltic Sea. Sweden has no choice of saying 'no' to the project," the Minister for Enterprise and Innovation, Mikael Damberg told reporters at a press conference.


Comment: Europe's American masters will not be happy:

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Boat

Imperial hubris takes its toll: US Navy finds most new officers struggle with handling ship collisions


Sputnik
Fri, 08 Jun 2018 13:28 UTC
USS Fitzgerald US Navy collision
© AP Photo/ Eugene Hoshiko
Nearly 85 percent of junior officers in the United States Navy present "some concern" or "significant concern" with regard to their ability to handle a crisis involving a collision with another ship, according to a recent internal assessment that reviewed 164 officers.

Following the lethal collisions in 2017 between commercial ships and US naval vessels the USS Fitzgerald and USS John S McCain, the Navy conducted a three-month review to determine how prepared sailors were for the immediate risk of colliding with another ship, Defense News reported Tuesday.

The two tragedies together claimed 17 lives from the ranks of US Navy personnel.

Comment: That's embarrassing. And that's how they want to intimidate the Russian and Chinese militaries into submission?

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Star of David

Who's still defending Israel's barbarity?

Steven Salaita
Mondoweiss
Fri, 08 Jun 2018 12:53 UTC
Nikki Haley
© UnknownUS Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley
Those empathetic to Palestinians toil in unhappy corners of the internet, fending off trolls eager to dazzle with age-old vitriol. But decorated professionals recite the same discourses throughout corporate media, the veneer of respectability making them even more grotesque. Anti-Arab racism underlies defense of Israel. The racism isn't marginal, either; it's the lingua franca of American punditry.

Many of the people who defend Israel are consciously racist (clearly), but others dehumanize Arabs and Muslims by reproducing unexamined assumptions about Israel's moral or civilizational superiority. Anyway, I'm less concerned with intent than with consequences. Anti-Arab racism is normalized to the point of common sense, largely because defending Israel requires dehumanization of Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrians (and often Muslims more generally).

Because we spend so much time debating when (or if) criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, we rarely get around to assessing how pro-Israel narratives exhibit anti-Arab racism. It seems important to rectify this problem. The following list is my humble contribution to the effort:

Comment: Further reading: Apartheid state: Israeli lawmakers kill 'equality for all citizens' bill before it is even introduced

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