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This Year’s Hottest Destination for GOP Candidates Is the Mexican Border

by LutherCKAF Posted on March 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will visit the US-Mexico border on Friday with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Walker, who is considering a run for president, is aiming to bolster his credentials as a critic of President Obama’s immigration policies. A photo wouldn’t hurt either.

The Mexican border is now an almost mandatory pit stop for Republican politicians (especially presidential aspirants) looking for the aura of on-the-ground experience on immigration. Sure, talking to a rancher, staring across a river, and visiting a detention facility in McAllen for 30 minutes might not offer much of a big-picture perspective. But that hasn’t stopped lawmakers from surveying the region in gunboats, ATVs, helicopters, and jeeps—invariably with camera crews in tow. Here’s a roundup:

Former Gov. Rick Perry: As governor of Texas for 14 years, Perry had plenty of opportunities to work on his border game face, and it shows:

I’m on a boat. Rick Perry/Flickr

That’s some electric-fence-with-alligator-moat level intimidation. Let’s zoom in:

Rick Perry/Flickr

Here’s Perry on that same trip with Fox News host Sean Hannity on the set of Rambo on the Rio Grande last summer:

Sen. Marco Rubio: The Florida senator may take a hit from some conservatives for his support for a path to citizenship for some undocumented residents, but he demonstrated his ability to look stern while gazing into the great unknown on this visit to El Paso in 2011:

Sen. Marco Rubio

Gov. Bobby Jindal: Last November, Louisiana’s chief executive toured the Mexican border by boat and helicopter in the hopes of better understanding the child migrant crisis, which by that point had already subsided. Jindal’s entourage didn’t come away empty-handed: “In at least three locations, we saw where people were trying to make their way into Texas in an unimpeded manner,” boasted one member of Jindal’s group.

Gov. Bobby Jindal/Facebook

Sen. Ted Cruz: Texas’ junior senator has made more visits to Iowa than he has to South Texas, his state’s poorest region (much to locals’ chagrin). But last year, as media interest in the child migrant crisis peaked, he took the time to visit the border and tour a migrant processing facility in McAllen with former Fox News personality Glenn Beck:

Toured the border and spent time with Glenn Beck, @sentedcruz and @replouiegohmert over the weekend. Learned and saw a lot. We must secure our border. #AmericaFirst

A photo posted by Randy Weber (@txrandy14) on Jul 21, 2014 at 6:30am PDT

For now, the rest of the field is playing catch-up. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee visited the border in Texas during his 2008 campaign (joined at the Rio Grande by action star Chuck Norris) but has not been back since. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has not visited the border, although he did propose building a fence along New Hampshire’s southern border to keep out people from Massachusetts. Acclaimed pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson recently visited the Israeli border, where he mistook construction equipment for machine gun fire.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie may be the only potential candidate who has avoided the border on principle. Although he visited Mexico City on a trade mission in 2014, he balked at extending his trip to the Rio Grande—which is very far from both Mexico City and New Jersey. “This is silliness,” he told NJ.com. “If I went down there and looked at it, what steps am I supposed to take exactly? Send the New Jersey National Guard there?”

It’s not just potential Republican candidates getting in on the action. In recent years, the Rio Grande has been a frequent destination for DC’s finest. In 2013, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)—who is not running for president—watched law enforcement apprehend a woman who had scaled the 18-foot border fence in Nogales. That same year, while aboard a speed boat with two Republican colleagues, Rep. Leonard Lance (R-N.J.) found a body floating in the Rio Grande. (“It was a vivid reminder that we have to secure our border and do it as quickly as possible,” he told Roll Call.) Last year, Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) traveled to McAllen accompanied by writer (and birther) Jerome Corsi and a film crew from conspiracy website WorldNetDaily. The crew showed up unannounced at a DHS detention center at midnight and was not allowed in.

Still, Walker is smart to get his border-fence photo-op out of the way early—it may not be there much longer. If elected president, real-estate mogul Donald Trump (who has not visited the border) has pledged to personally supervise the construction of a new barrier along the southern border that will permanently end illegal immigration. “A wall,” he told Iowa voters last week. “A real wall…not a wall that people walk over.”

President Trump’s 2020 challengers may have to visit the Canadian border instead.

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This Year’s Hottest Destination for GOP Candidates Is the Mexican Border

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EPA to Obama: You gotta reject Keystone

by MAQReginavpus Posted on February 3, 2015

EPA to Obama: You gotta reject Keystone

By on 3 Feb 2015commentsShare

Extracting tar-sands oil from Canada would lead to “a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions,” says the U.S. EPA.

Since the Keystone XL pipeline would facilitate tar-sands extraction, and President Obama said he would only approve the proposed pipeline if it “does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution,” the EPA is in effect saying to the president, “Reject it!”

Right now the pipeline project is being reviewed by the State Department, which will make a recommendation to Obama on whether to give it an OK or a KO. State asked eight other federal agencies, including EPA, to offer their views on the project by yesterday. EPA did so, arguing as it has before that the pipeline would have major environmental and climate impacts. The EPA’s use of the word “significant” is, well, significant, as that’s the same word Obama used in laying out his criteria for making a decision.

Says climate activist (and Grist board member) Bill McKibben, “In a city where bureaucrats rarely say things right out loud, the EPA has come pretty close. Its knife-sharp comments make clear that despite the State Department’s relentless spin, Keystone is a climate disaster by any realistic assessment.”

The EPA has been unenthusiastic about Keystone for years, but it’s even more skeptical now that oil prices are so low. Fuel Fix explains:

In a letter to the State Department released Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency said plummeting crude prices could make the proposed pipeline vital to Canadian oil sands developers who face higher costs to ship their crude by rail.

An earlier State Department analysis of the project found that Alberta, Canada’s oil sands likely would be developed with or without Keystone XL. But the EPA noted that “this conclusion was based in large part on projections of the global price of oil.”

With domestic West Texas Intermediate crude hovering around $50, it’s important to revisit that analysis, said EPA Assistant Administrator for Enforcement Cynthia Giles.

Says the Natural Resources Defense Council, “There should be no more doubt that President Obama must reject the proposed pipeline once and for all.”

Now we just have to wait to see if Obama agrees.

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EPA to Obama: You gotta reject Keystone

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Obama Sounds Like He’s About to Reject the Keystone Pipeline

by LoganCrookes Posted on December 20, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the Grist website and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Speaking at his end-of-the-year press conference on Friday afternoon, President Obama sounded very much like he’s poised to reject the Keystone XL pipeline. He gave his sharpest assessment to date of its potential costs and benefits—lots of costs and few benefits.

Climate hawks rejoiced, not only because of Obama’s implied opposition to Keystone, but because he finally confronted American ignorance of how the oil market works, and attempted to reorient our energy policy around reality.

At the press conference, Obama took a question from The Washington Post‘s Juliet Eilperin on what he will do about the Keystone XL pipeline, which congressional Republicans plan to try to ram through in January. Eilperin said Obama has in past comments “minimized some of the benefits” of Keystone. Obama responded that he has merely accurately characterized the benefits, which are objectively minimal, and walked Eilperin through a lesson in macroeconomics.

Here are the highlights:

I don’t think I’ve minimized the benefits, I think I’ve described the benefits.

At issue on Keystone is not American oil, it is Canadian oil that is drawn out of tar sands in Canada. That oil currently is being shipped through rail or trucks, and it would save Canadian oil companies and the Canadian oil industry an enormous amount of money if they could simply pipe it all the way through the United State down to the Gulf. Once that oil gets to the Gulf, it is then entering into the world market and it would be sold all around the world… There is very little impact, nominal impact, on US gas prices, what the average American consumer cares about, by having this pipeline come through.

And sometimes the way this gets sold is, let’s get this oil and it’s going to come here and the implication is that’s gonna lower oil prices here in the US It’s not. There’s a global oil market. It’s very good for Canadian oil companies and it’s good for the Canadian oil industry, but it’s not going to be a huge benefit to US consumers. It’s not even going to be a nominal benefit to US consumers.

And video of Obama’s whole answer:

It has been a source of aggravation to climate hawks that Obama has often pandered to the economic ignorance of the American public when it comes to gas prices. Obama’s “all of the above” energy strategy falsely asserts that increased domestic production of oil will reduce “our dependence on foreign oil,” as if there really were any such thing. Oil is a global commodity. Prices are set by global supply and global demand. Whether the oil we buy happens to be drilled in the US, Canada, Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, or Libya makes no difference. We are subsidizing our adversaries who produce oil as long as we are filling our gas-guzzlers with it. More oil production in the US, or oil importation from Canada, will not inoculate us against the price shocks caused by supply disruptions in the Middle East or elsewhere.

The whole American debate around energy policy has been perverted by the public’s failure to understand this basic concept. Republicans, of course, eagerly fan the flames of economic illiteracy. Obama’s approach has usually been to try to split the difference between this foolishness and smart energy policy by promising to increase domestic production of both renewables and fossil fuels. But now Obama has confronted these public misperceptions and tried to educate the public so that energy policy can be decided on a more rational basis.

As for Keystone, Obama went on to observe that the other supposed benefit, construction jobs, is real but small and temporary. Meanwhile, our transportation and clean water infrastructure crumbles and Republicans refuse to appropriate money to fix and improve it, which would create more jobs and lasting economic effects than construction of any pipeline. “When you consider what we could be doing if we were rebuilding our roads and bridges around the country, something that Congress could authorize, we could probably create hundreds of thousands of jobs, or a million jobs,” he said. (In fairness, Obama has refused to propose raising the gasoline tax to fund more transportation investment.)

And Obama mentioned the cost of climate change and the possibility that Keystone would exacerbate it. “If we’ve got more flooding, more wildfires, more drought, there are direct economic impacts on that,” he said.

The main Keystone drawback Obama neglected to mention is the local environmental risk to the communities the pipeline would pass through due to possible leaks.

Nonetheless, green groups were overjoyed. NextGen Climate, the organization funded by Tom Steyer, immediately sent out video of Obama’s answer with the subject line, “KEYSTONE XL GETS THE PRESIDENTIAL SEAL OF DISAPPROVAL.” We don’t actually know that, yet, but it’s looking likely.

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Obama Sounds Like He’s About to Reject the Keystone Pipeline

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This Glimpse Into Mexican Fruit and Vegetable Farms Is Heartbreaking

by ThaddeuDobbie Posted on December 15, 2014

Mother Jones

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The ongoing LA Times investigation of conditions on the Mexican farms that grow much of our produce (latest installment here) got me digging around for more information. That’s how I how I found the above short documentary, Paying the Price: Migrant Workers in the Toxic Fields of Sinaloa, by the Mexico-based Tlachinollan Human Rights Center, a MacArthur-funded group that “defends the rights of the indigenous and poor people living in the mountain and Costa Chica regions of Guerrero, Mexico.”

Paying the Price traces the movements of a group of workers from a tiny village called Ayotzinapa, in the southern state of Guerrero, north to a large produce farm in the ag-heavy state of Sinaloa, which churns out huge amounts of food for export to the US. (Ayotzinapa recently gained infamy after 43 students from a rural teachers college based there were kidnapped and probably massacred, under circumstances that are shaking the foundations of the Mexican state.)

The film—about 36 minutes long, subtitled in English—is extraordinary, because it includes in-depth interviews from a variety of players on a big farm that grows vegetables for the US and Canadian markets: everyone from the farm owner to several workers to the labor contractors that bring them together. The farm owner claims the workers get a good a good deal; the workers complain bitterly of pay so low that they leave the several-month stint of hard labor with little to show. Two highlights:

• Starting about at the 18-minute mark, there’s a detailed and sensitive exploration of child labor. The LA Times piece reported that child labor has been “largely eradicated” at the mega-farms that directly supply huge US retailers like Walmart, but that it’s still common on mid-sized farms, some of whose produce “makes its way to the US through middlemen.” That’s the case with the operation depicted in this video. The farm owner basically throws his hands up on the topic, claiming that the workers insist on having their children toil in the fields. By the end of the section, though, you realize that people wouldn’t choose to commit their children to hours of hard labor if they weren’t living in poverty and desperately trying to earn enough to survive.

• Starting about 25:50, there’s a chilling section on pesticide use. We see crop dusters roaring over fields amid chemical clouds; men whose faces are covered in in little more than rags operating backpack sprayers; women complaining that nearly all the children in the camps are sick, some of it possibly linked linked to pesticide exposure, and that medical services are woefully inadequate; and worker advocates claiming that regulation of pesticide use is weak and enforcement nearly nonexistent.

In all, Paying the Price is essential viewing for anyone who wants to know what life is like for the people who grow our food.

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This Glimpse Into Mexican Fruit and Vegetable Farms Is Heartbreaking

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Obama disses Keystone XL on the Colbert Report

by RickLitchfield Posted on December 9, 2014

Obama disses Keystone XL on the Colbert Report

By on 9 Dec 2014commentsShare

President Obama appeared on The Colbert Report last night to talk health care, jaded young voters, and the recent job report. And — good news for those young voters — while Obama didn’t say whether he’d block Keystone XL, he spoke of the tar-sands pipeline in dismissive terms.

Here’s what he had to say after Colbert asked about Keystone:

[I]f we look at this objectively, we’ve got to make sure that it’s not adding to the problem of carbon and climate change, because these young people are going to have to live in a world where we already know temps are going up. And Keystone is a potential contributor of that — we have to examine that, and we have to weigh that against the amount of jobs that it’s actually going to create, which aren’t a lot.

Essentially there’s Canadian oil passing through the United States to be sold on the world market. It’s not going to push down gas prices here in the United States.

It’s good for Canada. It could create a couple of thousand jobs in the initial construction of the pipeline. But we’ve got to measure that against whether or not it is going to contribute to an overall warming of the planet that could be disastrous.

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Obama disses Keystone XL on the Colbert Report

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Big Oil doesn’t even need Keystone — all the more reason to kill it

by MayraWorthy Posted on November 17, 2014

Big Oil doesn’t even need Keystone — all the more reason to kill it

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17 Nov 2014 6:16 PM

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Big Oil doesn’t even need Keystone — all the more reason to kill it

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A day before the Senate is expected to vote to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline, Bloomberg hits us with the (not shocking) news that the oil industry doesn’t need the much-fought-over pipeline anyway.

Turns out, the industry wasn’t holding its breath in expectation of a quick Keystone approval in the first place. Instead, Big Oil went to work finding other ways to get its product to market: According to Canadian analyst Patrick Kenny, railroads will soon be capable of transporting around 700,000 barrels of Alberta tar sands per day (a scary thought), and the industry is planning new and expanded pipelines to carry far more of the goop than the 830,000 barrels-per-day Keystone is designed to handle.

But the fight over Keystone is about more than just oil. Ever since James Hansen, then of NASA, wrote that building the tar-sands pipeline would be “essentially game over” for the stable climate, the (debatable) factuality of that statement ceased to matter. The issue became fiercely political: It was climate activists versus Big Oil.

And while some have questioned the wisdom of that fight, there are many good reasons beyond climate change to fight against the planned pipeline: Last week, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota announced that authorizing the pipeline would tantamount to an act of war.

Perhaps most importantly, the Keystone XL fight has built a climate movement where there was previously none. And symbolic or otherwise, the people in that movement want to win this one.

Clearly, Keystone’s supporters are thinking the same way: The U.S. energy industry doesn’t need Keystone so much anymore, and early claims of prodigious job creation have proven largely inaccurate – yet Republicans remain committed to ramming the project down Americans’ throats.

The good news for climate hawks is that President Obama has hinted that even if the Senate approves the pipeline, he will veto it. A veto would provide further proof that he is committed to the climate, while sending the oil-stained GOP a clear message that it is on the wrong side of this debate — and the wrong side of history.

Source:
Keystone Is ‘Kind of Old News’ for Oil Industry

, Bloomberg.

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Big Oil doesn’t even need Keystone — all the more reason to kill it

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Sexts from Scarlett O’Hara

by FelicitRooney Posted on November 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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For many people who grow up with their noses in books, meeting their favorite character is the ultimate fantasy. Mallory Ortberg isn’t one of those readers.

“They’re such assholes,” the co-founder of feminist website The Toast says when I ask her who in the Western canon she’d most want as a texting buddy. “I don’t know that I would want any of them to have my phone number, because they would all feel very free to text me at 2:00 in the morning just screaming.”

Ortberg has put a lot of thought into the phone etiquette of literary personalities. Her book Texts from Jane Eyre, published November 4, features imagined exchanges between characters both classic and modern. From Hamlet whining about the relish on his tuna fish sandwich to Scarlett O’Hara sexting Ashley, the conversations are both LOL-worthy and true to the spirit of the works they parody.

Mother Jones: Where’d you get the inspiration for your first “Texts From” piece?

Mallory Ortberg: This is actually one of the only projects I’ve ever done where I can 100 percent pinpoint where it got started. It was back on The Awl when The Toast co-founder Nicole Cliffe was doing her Classic Trash series, and she was talking about Gone With the Wind, and somebody in the comments said, “I’m from the South and it’s actually exactly like this now, except everybody has cell phones.”

As soon as I saw that I was just like, “Oh God, the idea of Scarlett O’Hara with the ability to get in touch with all of her friends at any time and ask them for favors is horrific and vivid and amazing.” And I immediately wrote “Texts from Scarlett O’Hara” in like 10 minutes. So weirdly something good has come out of Internet comments—I got a book deal from it.

MJ: Would you say your own texting style is similar to the way the book is written?

MO: As a medium, texting is a really great way to get out of stuff when you know that you’re wrong, but you want to minimize having to make eye contact with someone as you bail on them or tell them that you fucked up. So I have definitely in my in life used a text to be like, “Oh hey, dude, I’m sorry, turns out I can’t make it after all!” like five minutes before I’m supposed to be somewhere.

Texts from Scarlett The Hairpin

MJ: When did you realize that you were funny?

MO: Oh man. I’ve always thought that I was funny. The world has not always agreed, but…I’ve always just been like, “Yes, absolutely, let’s do this! I will make jokes come hell or high water! Even if no one laughs.”

There were a lot of different influences on me. I started reading P.G. Wodehouse when I was about twelve, and that was huge for me. And certainly the classics like Monty Python, The Kids in the Hall, A Bit of Fry and Laurie, very dry British humor. But also like Robert Benchley and James Thurber, your mid-century American humorists. And then I remember when I was a little kid my brother and I would stay up and watch Comedy Central specials and we saw Maria Bamford together. It must’ve been her first standup special, because I think it was 1999—she was a kid. And I just remember being captivated that someone could be that weird in a way that felt so universal.

Henry Holt & Company

MJ: Was the process of coming up with jokes for this book similar to how you come up with stuff you’ve done at The Toast? If you’re working on, say, Women in Western Art History, is that just you sitting in front of Google Images looking at old paintings until something comes to you?

MO: Often it is, yeah. I love the art history ones because it’s so little work for me. There’s so many paintings that when I look at them, the look on the lady’s face is like so clear and her body language and her posture or their physical situation is so immediately recognizable. Anyone who’s been in a conversation they didn’t want to have, or been getting harangued by a little kid they didn’t want to pay attention to or been tired and wanted to go to bed is just like, “Yes, of course.” You can instantly see in this person’s face the universal sense of “Oh God, please leave me alone.”

MJ: How did you know there would be an audience for something like that?

MO: It was really a calculated risk. At the time that we started it, Nicole was coming off about a year or a year and a half as co-editor of The Hairpin, and I had been working as the weekend editor for Gawker and also a place called The Gloss. So by the time we started The Toast it wasn’t a complete leap in the dark. We weren’t completely unknown. The time felt right enough that we were like, “Let’s give this a year, and if it turns out to be the kind of thing that six people love and adore and nobody else cares about, we’ll say that we had a fun time trying something new and we’ll call it quits.” But it was kind of—it wasn’t a shock, but it was a really pleasant surprise that within the first couple of weeks it was clear to us that there were people who felt like The Toast was home for them.

MJ: Do you have a favorite thing that The Toast has published so far?

MO: I have a lot of favorites. We had a woman who wrote a piece about her first name. It was also about her Muslim-American identity and being the daughter of immigrants, and it was just thoughtful and stirring and profound, and it really moved me. That’s definitely up there for me. I also love Nicole’s blind items from Ontario. That’s so weird. That’s so Canadian. Just the blind items about, like, who was late to the potluck and what person was growing medical marijuana. I just love everything Nicole writes.

MJ: So, you’re from the Bay Area—how do you feel about artisanal toast?

MO: You know, when I hear “artisan,” I think of being in social studies and learning about the old classes and the rise of merchants during the late Middle Ages. So that’s what I think of—I picture an old-timey guy at a fucking loom, maybe like trading with some Dutchmen.

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Sexts from Scarlett O’Hara

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Here’s What’s Happening With the Shooting at the Canadian Parliament

by HeatherBurchfie Posted on October 22, 2014

Mother Jones

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Click here for the latest updates.

Downtown Ottawa is under lockdown as police investigate reports of shootings in two locations: the National War Memorial and Parliament Hill. Police have confirmed that, contrary to earlier reports, no shooting incidents occurred at the Rideau Centre shopping mall. Police have confirmed reports that an unknown gunman shot and killed a soldier, Corporal Nathan Cirillo, standing guard by Canada’s National War Memorial with a rifle, then moved on to Canada’s Parliament Hill and Centre Block and opened fire, resulting in the ongoing lockdown at Canada’s Parliament building. A shooter wounded a security guard near Parliament Hill before he was shot, according to the CBC. Canadian Parliament member Tony Clement tweeted that at least 30 shots were fired just before 10 a.m. during a caucus meeting where most MPs were located; Clement and two colleagues, Mark Strahl and Kyle Seeback, remained inside the building under lockdown. The prime minister, Stephen Harper, was rushed out of the building.

Readers should note that breaking news stories often contain inaccuracies. Many details of the attack remain unclear, and even initial information from law enforcement sources in this type of situation can be wrong. Check back for updates. (Also see how Canadian TV news coverage has put American cable news coverage to shame.)

The Globe and Mail‘s Josh Wingrove captured live footage of the shootings inside the Parliament building:

Wingrove described the scene in a firsthand account: “Once police were halfway down the hallway, gunfire erupted again—an estimated two dozen shots that ended with a motionless body falling from a doorway just in front of the library. It was unclear who the person was. Guards briefly appeared to check for a pulse before beginning a search of the rest of the building.”

According to reporters on the scene, the atmosphere calmed down around 10:30 a.m., but the Parliament building remained on lockdown and those inside were being told to stay away from the windows. Many fled the building after hearing shots in multiple corridors, some escaping down scaffolding being used for renovations, according to the Telegram. A helicopter arrived on scene just before 11:30 a.m., according to CBC reporter Stu Mills.

The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board told parents not to come to schools to pick up their children, who were also on lockdown in their classrooms. Some reporters claimed that cellphone signal is going in and out of service. Police said they suspect that two other shooters might be on the loose, and police reportedly are going door-to-door searching for a suspect. (Reports of additional shooters in these sorts of situations are often wrong.)

CBC News reporter Andrew Davidson posted this map of the Canadian Parliament and National War Memorial Area at 11:15 a.m.

And CNN posted this map of the area where the attacks have been reported:

UPDATE 1, Wednesday, Oct 22, 2:28 p.m. EST: Ottawa police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have released this statement:

(Ottawa)—The Ottawa Police Service and Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) responded to reports of shooting incidents this morning in the downtown area. Police can now confirm that incidents occurred at the National War Memorial and on Parliament Hill.

Contrary to earlier reports no incident occurred near the Rideau Centre.

One shooting victim succumbed to injuries. He was a member of the Canadian Forces. Our thoughts and prayers are with him and his loved ones.

Next of kin notification is underway and as such, the victim’s identification will not be released.

One male suspect has also been confirmed deceased. There is no further update on injuries at this time.

This is an ongoing joint police operation and there is no one in custody at this time.

Ottawa residents are asked to stay away from the downtown area while the investigation continues. If you work in one of the downtown buildings, follow the instructions from the building management you are in.

A number of RCMP and Federal government buildings are also closed to the public; as is Ottawa City Hall and all Ottawa Police stations.

UPDATE 2, Wednesday, Oct 22, 2:55 p.m. EST: Ottawa police chief Charles Bordeleau speaks to the public:

UPDATE 3, Wednesday, Oct 22, 3:46 p.m. EST: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have created a website for potential witnesses to Wednesday’s shootings to upload photos and videos. Additionally, President Barack Obama spoke with Prime Minister Harper, and the National Security Council tweeted the conversation.

UPDATE 4, Wednesday, Oct 22, 5:04 p.m. EST: CBC News reports that the soldier killed outside the National War Memorial today was 24 year-old Corporal Nathan Cirillo.

Source – 

Here’s What’s Happening With the Shooting at the Canadian Parliament

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ISIS Magazine Promotes Slavery, Rape, and Murder of Civilians in God’s Name

by TraceyTearle Posted on October 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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ISIS, the self-proclaimed Islamic state that’s attempting to establish a caliphate across large areas of Iraq and Syria, publishes a glossy English-language propaganda magazine called Dabiq, complete with slick graphics and high-quality photos. Dabiq is one of the group’s recruitment tools, coupled with its strong social media presence. The magazine, whose name references the location of Islam’s mythical Armageddon (a town in northern Syria), bills itself as an “informative” source for the activities of ISIS fighters, while preaching on holy topics and issuing decrees. Its producers claim that Allah approves the message: ISIS has “not a mustard seed of doubt regarding this.”

In any case, the fourth issue of Dabiq just came out, and it justifies all sorts of terrible things ISIS and its fighters may do in the name of Allah. Here are 10 of the worst examples, with quotations:

1. Sack other people’s cities

“We will come to your homeland by Allah’s permission.”

“We will conquer your Rome.”

“We will not rest from our jihÄ&#129;d until we are under the olive trees of Rome, after we destroy the filthy house called the White House.”

2. Condemn other people’s beliefs

“We will…break your crosses.”

“And those who have disbelieved—unto Hell they will be gathered.” (Although, to be fair, some Christians believe the same thing.)

“You are the best people for people. You bring them with chains around their necks, until they enter Islam.”

3. Enslave people, in some cases to save ISIS’s men from temptation

“We will…enslave your women, by the permission of Allah, the Exalted. This is His promise to us…”

“Our children and grandchildren…will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market.”

“The desertion of slavery had led to an increase in fÄ&#129;hishah adultery, fornication, because the shar’Ä« alternative to marriage is not available, so a man who cannot afford marriage to a free woman finds himself surrounded by temptation towards sin.”

4. Threaten and kill people

“You will not feel secure even in your bedrooms.”

“You will pay the price when your sons are sent to wage war against us, and they return to you as disabled amputees, or inside coffins, or mentally ill.”

“You must strike the soldiers, patrons, and troops of the tawÄ&#129;ghÄ«t unbelievers. Strike their police, security, and intelligence members, as well as their treacherous agents. Destroy their beds. Embitter their lives for them and busy them with themselves. If you can kill a disbelieving American or European—especially the spiteful and filthy French—or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be.”

5. Turn women and children into sex slaves and concubines—those you don’t kill

Yazidi “women could be enslaved unlike female apostates who the majority of the fuqahÄ&#129;’ jurists say cannot be enslaved and can only be given an ultimatum to repent or face the sword. After capture, the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to the SharÄ«’ah amongst the fighters of the Islamic State who participated in the Sinjar operations, after one fifth of the slaves were transferred to the Islamic State’s authority to be divided as khums taxes.”

“One should remember that enslaving the families of the kuffÄ&#129;r unbelievers and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the SharÄ«’ah that if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Qur’Ä&#129;n and the narrations of the Prophet.”

6. Plunder

“His provision becomes what Allah has given him of spoils from the property of His enemy,” because “wealth” was only sent to earth to create prayer and “people with obedience to Allah are more deserving of wealth.”

“Send them very much, for it will end up as war booty in our hands by Allah’s permission. You will spend it, then it will be a source of regret for you, then you will be defeated. Look at your armored vehicles, machinery, weaponry, and equipment. It is in our hands.”

Allah “legalized war booty” for Muhammad and his ummah nation. “War booty is more lawful than other income for a number of reasons.”

7. Murder civilians

Americans—”die in your rage.”

“Kill the disbeliever whether he is civilian or military, for they have the same ruling.”

“We did not come as farmers, rather we came to kill the farmers and eat their crops.”

8. Ethnically cleanse

“It has become necessary for a trial to come, expel the filth, and purify the ranks.”

9. Use suicide as a weapon

Muslims “are a people who through the ages have not known defeat. The outcome of their battles is concluded before they begin. Being killed—according to their account—is a victory. This is where the secret lies. You fight a people who can never be defeated.”

10. Purport to help people even as you commit horrible atrocities

Dabiq

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ISIS Magazine Promotes Slavery, Rape, and Murder of Civilians in God’s Name

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How Hillary Clinton’s State Department Sold Fracking to the World

by ReinaPalmerston Posted on September 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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One icy morning in February 2012, Hillary Clinton’s plane touched down in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, which was just digging out from a fierce blizzard. Wrapped in a thick coat, the secretary of state descended the stairs to the snow-covered tarmac, where she and her aides piled into a motorcade bound for the presidential palace. That afternoon, they huddled with Bulgarian leaders, including Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, discussing everything from Syria’s bloody civil war to their joint search for loose nukes. But the focus of the talks was fracking. The previous year, Bulgaria had signed a five-year, $68 million deal, granting US oil giant Chevron millions of acres in shale gas concessions. Bulgarians were outraged. Shortly before Clinton arrived, tens of thousands of protesters poured into the streets carrying placards that read “Stop fracking with our water” and “Chevron go home.” Bulgaria’s parliament responded by voting overwhelmingly for a fracking moratorium.

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How Hillary Clinton’s State Department Sold Fracking to the World

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How Hillary Clinton’s State Department Sold Fracking to the World