All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Paul Manafort on Trial – Day 10

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (CN) – Said in earlier testimony to have helped Paul Manafort fraudulently secure loans, the next and potentially last witness slated to testify Monday is bank officer James Brennan.

On the stand last week, Federal Savings Bank senior vice president Dennis Raico told the jury that Brennan knowingly helped Manafort secure loans, even when it was evident that he lacked the assets to back them up.

Manafort’s control over the process was something he and other bank employees had never “seen [done] before,” Raico said.

At the Chicago-based bank, Brennan worked as a construction and commercial loan officer. Raico testified that he once urged Brennan in an email to “take a deep breath” before reviewing restructured terms for a $9.5 million loan that Manafort, their client, drew up himself.

The deal was being struck, Raico said, so that the bank’s chairman, Steve Calk, could land a spot inside the Trump administration, either as secretary of the Department of the Treasury or as secretary of the Army. Though Manafort resigned as chair of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign ahead of the election, his influence over the inaugural committee was addressed on the stand by Rick Gates, the government’s star witness.

In a brief this morning, prosecutors responded to a question by Judge Ellis about the materiality of any fraudulent representations that Manafort may have made to the Federal Savings Bank.

Ellis questioned specifically whether Calk’s intent to grant Manafort the loans in exchange for a spot in the Trump administration meant that Manafort could not have committed fraud.

Prosecutors say he could. “Even if Calk intended to approve Manafort’s loans for reasons relating to his personal interests, that would have no bearing on the materiality of Manafort’s false and fraudulent representations to the bank,” the brief states.

It is expected Brennan will testify on the nature of Manafort’s alleged tit-for-tat relationship with Calk, in addition to his role in the loan machinations. The witness is one of several whom Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team gave immunity to testify.

US puts new limits on foreign aid funded through the UN

The move comes as Trump’s administration is cutting UN funding in Iraq to redirect it to Christians and other minorities, and as it announces a new religious freedom initiative. Green has been directed by US Vice-President Mike Pence to prioritise earmarking for such causes. 611174.jpg?8mMg1zwcJMkFce6MPJ8Igkf6sUGZF
A bureaucratic manoeuvre at USAID is set to choke funding for UN agencies, while other Trump policies favour Christian causes

Neonazis a la caza de pañuelos verdes

In the video looks to three men from a neo-Nazi group hitting a group of teenagers, and feminist activists wearing green scarves in the plaza Santa Fe may 25. Images circulated on networks and came to the media. Since that day, the girls received threats through the…

The post neo-Nazis hunting for green scarves appeared first on harvest red.

En el video se ve a tres hombres de una agrupación neonazi pegándole a un grupo de adolescentes y activistas feministas que llevaban pañuelos verdes en la plaza 25 de Mayo de Santa Fe. Las imágenes circularon en redes y llegaron a los medios. Desde ese día las chicas recibieron amenazas a través de las…

The post Neonazis a la caza de pañuelos verdes appeared first on Cosecha Roja.

Trump aide Miller’s ancestor flunked naturalization test

This might look like “weaponizing genealogy,” Smolenyak says, but in fact she believes it is just the opposite. “The point is our commonality,” she says, “a reminder that this is everyone’s family.” Donald Trump’s grandfather, she noted, came here in part to avoid the draft in his native Bavaria while “his mother came here as a servant. Imagine if they tried to come today.”

Source: Trump aide Miller’s ancestor flunked naturalization test

Trump aide Miller’s ancestor flunked naturalization test

Most interesting to Smolenyak is that this research “is so easy. You don’t have to go very far back.” It’s startling, she says, “how many of the people who are virulently anti-immigration are children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren of immigrants. We should have to work a lot harder for these stories, but there they are, on the lowest, easiest branches.” She originally expected that such views would be held by people whose stories go further back on the American timeline, but former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and his daughter, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, whose roots begin in the 1600s, are the exception. “Most of the rest of the time you think you’re going to have to really dig in and go very far back, you don’t,” she says. “Why are the children and grandchildren of immigrants so eager to keep immigrants out?” It’s the desire to make that point — “to point out to people who are being needlessly mean and spreading misinformation that they are conveniently forgetting their own family, which in turn means forgetting our national commonality” — that keeps Smolenyak and others in this fight. It’s why, when Miller said earlier this year that “we favor

Source: Trump aide Miller’s ancestor flunked naturalization test

Aretha Franklin, Queen of Soul, is gravely ill

This is exclusive, and heart breaking for me and for the family and friends of the great Aretha Franklin. She is gravely ill in Detroit. The family is asking for prayers and privacy.

Originally diagnosed with cancer in 2010, Aretha, who turned 76 in March, bravely battled back and refused to be knocked out by illness. Her last performance as on November 2, 2017 for the Elton John AIDS Foundation in New York. Her final public performance was at Philadelphia’s Mann Center in August 2017. It was a miraculous show as Aretha was already then fighting exhaustion and dehydration.

Aretha is surrounded by family and people close to her. She will be so missed as a mother, sister, friend, cousin. But her legacy is larger than life. It’s not just that Rolling Stone called her the number 1 singer of all time, or that she is the Queen of Soul.

Long live the Queen…

Home Office stopped author from speaking at UK festival, says publisher

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Visa refusals mean Palestinian Nayrouz Qarmout unlikely to get to Edinburgh book festival

The publisher of a Palestinian author denied a visa to appear at the Edinburgh book festival this year says the Home Office has effectively stopped her from speaking, despite reversing its decision.

Nayrouz Qarmout, who is also a TV journalist, was one of a dozen Middle Eastern and African writers and illustrators who had their applications for visitor visas refused, sometimes multiple times, ahead of this year’s festival, which began on Saturday.

Continue reading…

The bizarre spat with Canada shows Mohammed bin Salman’s true colours | Nesrine Malik | Opinion | The Guardian

Under Mohammed bin Salman, the country has so far been involved in spats with Canada, Germany and Sweden, and embroiled itself in conflict with Yemen, Qatar and Lebanon. There is no “top-down” Arab spring here. Just a taste of what volatile princes, humoured by a gullible west, are capable of in a world where the old rules no longer apply.

Source: The bizarre spat with Canada shows Mohammed bin Salman’s true colours | Nesrine Malik | Opinion | The Guardian

Netanyahu: The ceasefire will not end with a single blow

Makes it clear that his next move will be to expel non-Jews from Israel, regardless of their citizenship.

JERUSALEM/PNN/

Netanyahu claimed that the Israeli Army is in the midst of a comprehensive military confrontation with the Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip.

He also said the demonstration by the Arab Monitoring Committee against the Nation-State Law is conclusive proof of the challenges facing Israel.

“I will not reveal the operational plans of the army,” Netanyahu said during Sunday’s session of Likud ministers. “But I can confirm the plans are ready and present for any scenario.”

“With the escalation on the southern front, there is an exchange of blows and it will not end in a single blow,” Netanyahu continued. “Our demand is clear, a complete ceasefire and we will not accept less.”

Encouraging incitement among the Arab masses in the country, Netanyahu talked about the demonstrations to remove the Nation-State Law, saying that the protestors want to turn Israel into a Palestinian State.

“Flags of the Palestine Liberation Organization have been raised in the heart of Tel Aviv and we have heard calls. ‘in blood and fire we need you, Palestine.’ Now it is clearer than ever that the Nation-State Law is necessary to ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish state.”

Netanyahu’s remarks came before the cabinet meeting on security and political affairs, which will be held this afternoon. The meeting is in order to discuss military escalation on the southern front and to discuss the ceasefire proposal for the Palestinian factions in Gaza.

The Israeli Defense Force recommended that the Israeli army continue its military operations and stand ready for any emergency on the southern front, in addition to the continued assault on “cells” that fire kites and balloons at the Gaza envelope.