Why These 3 Senators Are Standing up to Obama on Internet Freedom

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Three senators are fighting to keep the internet free for rest of the world, according to a letter recently sent to the Department of Commerce.

Last week senators Mike Lee (R-UT), Ted Cruz (R-TX) and James Lankford (R-OK) wrote to the Secretary of Commerce expressing their “deep concerns with a proposal submitted to the Department of Commerce and NTIA for review by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).” The proposal would be the culmination of a more than two-year push by the Obama administration to relinquish United States oversight of the internet to an international body, somewhat analogous in structure to the United Nations. Opponents of the measure have cited several problems with its implementation.

What is ICANN?

Originally chartered in 1998, ICANN’s job essentially is to handle the nuts and bolts of the internet’s basic operations. It’s a nonprofit body responsible for the maintenance and procedures of a lot of databases tied to internet domain names like ‘.com,’ ‘org,’ or ‘.net,’ performing technical maintenance work and traffic direction — as it is also responsible for ensuring that data goes from the correct places to the correct places — on the things that make the internet work stably and securely.

What is the current role of the United States?

A lot of the United States’ role in the current debate revolves around a department of ICANN known as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Under ICANN’s current structure, IANA is “responsible for coordinating some of the key elements that keep the Internet running smoothly,” according to its website. Currently, the department operates under a contract from the U.S. Department of Commerce, which means that the organization, and therefore the internet’s maintenance department, essentially answers to the American people, which makes some sense, seeing as the internet is an American invention. Simply put, IANA’s contract has historically functioned as a backstop and guarantee of oversight that would likely not otherwise be present.

Why does the administration want to turn it over?

Proponents, like the Obama administration, see the internet as a global engine of commerce in the administering of which more countries and corporations deserve a stake.

“All of us are stakeholders in a strong and vibrant, global Internet,” said Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker at an ICANN meeting in 2014.

The Internet has thrived precisely because citizens around the world have a voice in how the Internet is governed. That is why we — the United States government — support multistakeholder processes. This is our bedrock principle for Internet governance. Let me be clear about this. The United States will not allow the global Internet to be coopted by any person, entity, or nation seeking to substitute their parochial worldview for the collective wisdom of this community — you, the community of stakeholders represented so well here today.

We must make clear this approach is the best tool to secure the openness and the vibrancy of the Internet. We must ensure that ICANN can build on its efforts to strengthen the multistakeholder process and can become directly accountable to the customers of the IANA functions and to the broader Internet community.

Essentially, because the internet has become a global phenomenon, the administration contends, it requires more global oversight.

Why not turn it over?

As it turns out, there are lots of things problematic with the administration’s approach to doing this. Opponents find several problems with the specific implementation laid out by the Obama administration.

Since its development by researchers under United States contract, the Internet has become a fundamental important tool for connecting peoples and ideas across the globe. Secretary Pritzker was absolutely right when she argued that the preservation of a free and open Internet is far more important than any parochial or particular interests,” Sen. Lee said. “ICANN’s recent proposal endangers this freedom and transparency by paving the way for control by foreign governments to the detriment of all users, regardless of nation or ideology.

Foreign influence:

Among several other concerns, Lee, Lankford and Cruz mention international control, human rights, and the constitutional handling of United States property in the letter sent on May 19.

ICANN’s proposal significantly increases the power of foreign governments. Under the proposal, the foreign government body at ICANN known as the Government Advisory Committee (GAC), which consists of 162, will not only continue to have a special advisory power with ICANN’s Board of Directors, but the threshold for the board to reject GAC advice will increase from 50 percent to 60 percent. The inclusion of this provision directly contradicts an assurance ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade made to Senator Deb Fisher during a 2015 Senate Commerce Committee hearing in which he stated that increasing the margin that it would take to reject government-led proposals or advice would be “incongruent” with the stated goals of the IANA transition and that ‘[t]the board has looked at that matter and has pushed it back so that it’s off the table.’

Human rights:

Should regimes with terrible free speech records have a say in how information is made available? Not according to opponents of the administration’s proposal.

[T]he proposal insert into ICANN’s bylaws an undefined commitment to respect ‘internationally recognized human rights’ would open the door to the regulation of content. Inclusion of such a commitment would unquestionably be outside the historical mission of an organization whose functions are supposedly ‘very limited to the names and numbers and the protocol parameters which are way down in the plumbing of the internet.’

They are arguing that any addition to the bylaws implicitly also becomes part of the core mission of the organization, which becomes problematic for human rights/free speech/free press advocates when one takes a look at the track records of some of the “multistakeholders” involved, two of which mentioned by name are China and Iran.

“[W]e have uncovered that ICANN’s Beijing office is actually located within the same building as the Cyberspace Administration of China, which is the central agency within the Chinese government’s censorship regime,” reads the letter. According to the arguments made by the authors, allowing Beijing to house such a vital office so close to where it controls internet traffic for its own population would only serve to give the communist regime more leeway to contradict the above claims made by the Secretary of Commerce and further suppress free speech inside and about the Middle Kingdom.

“For the average Chinese citizen freedom of publication is actually nothing more than the freedom to submit,” reads a report from the United States Congressional-Executive Commission on China.

In meetings with Commission staff Chinese officials have stated that anyone wanting to publish their opinions may submit their article or book to a government-licensed publisher, but if they are unable to find a licensed publisher, then the only way they can legally exercise their constitutional right to freedom of publication is to ‘enjoy their works themselves, or give copies to friends and family.’
Currently, if an average person in China wants to publish their opinions to an audience broader than their voice can carry and they do not have a free speech elite patron or a willing government publishing house, the safest mechanism is via Internet bulletin board systems run by the government.
Iran has also made overtures against the United States’ current oversight of the world wide web.

During a recent CCWG-Accountability “Review of Draft Bylaws” meeting on April 11, 2016, a representative for Iran stated: “We should not take it granted that jurisdiction is already agreed to be totally based on U.S. law.” Iran was supported by representatives from Argentina and Brazil who suggested that jurisdiction should be a subject for work stream 2, which as previously discussed, will not be subjected to review by the administration or Congress.

Cue a report from the BBC last year, which claims that Islamist “hardliners” have turned up the heat on freedom of expression inside the Shia Regime.

“This year more than a dozen concerts, lectures and other cultural events have been called off after pressure from hardliners — despite being officially sanctioned by the authorities,” reads the story, published in May 2015. “It’s been happening across the country, at concert halls and on university campuses.”

Nor have such free speech violations been restricted to last year. Hila Sedighi, an Iranian poet who backed a reformist candidate in the country’s 2009 presidential election, was jailed in January of 2016 amidst an “apparent crackdown” on free speech and political dissent, according to Reuters.

Though not mentioned in the letter, Saudi Arabia also deserves an honorable mention in this section. Perhaps the most visible example of the Sunni Kingdom’s restriction of internet freedom is Raif Badawi, a blogger who was convicted of “insulting Islam” in 2014 and sentenced to jail time and no fewer than 1000 lashes. Two years prior, as Badawi sat in jail awaiting trial, the Sunni Kingdom, which currently ranks 165 out of 180 countries in press freedom, used its delegate status at ICANN to protest several domain names including ‘.gay’ and ‘.islam,’ mostly on cultural and religious grounds.

“Few tech media outlets are reporting the risks from the planned radical changes to Internet governance. Many tech reporters have simply accepted the Obama administration’s disingenuous claim that the U.S. role is merely ‘clerical,’” reads an op-ed by L. Gordon Crovitz in the Wall Street Journal. “It’s as clerical as the passage of the U.S. Navy in the South China Sea: The U.S. defends the open Internet by making sure no one else interferes, just as it dispatches ships to ensure that the sea lanes stay open.”

The Constitution:

Changing IANA’s contract without Congress’ authority could also create constitutional problems, depending on whether or not things created by the U.S. military actually belong to the U.S. government.

The argument works this way, the root zone file, which is essentially the internet’s roadmap and establishes where everything goes in the virtual world, was developed by the Department of Defense with taxpayer funds, and is therefore very limited to the names and numbers and the protocol parameters which are way down in the plumbing of the internet.” Legal experts surrounding the case are still fuzzy on whether this means that the file is property of the United States government, but if it is, then it will literally take an act of Congress to relinquish control of ICANN.

Article IV, section 3 of the United States Constitution states, “The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States.” This means that the administration’s plan to internationalize control of the internet through the Department of Commerce could be an unconstitutional move if the root zone file is indeed determined to be property of the U.S. government.

“[N]either Congress nor the administration knows with absolute certainty if the IANA transition would include the transfer of government property,” reads the Cruz-Lee-Lankford letter. “This is despite the fact that Assistant Secretary Strickling testified before the United States Senate that “there is no Government property that is the subject of this contract… I think the GAO agrees with us as well based on a study they did back in 2000 when they looked at this question.”

“The 2000 GAO report was actually indeterminate on the property question and concluded that it was ‘unclear whether such a transition would involve a transfer of government property to a private entity.’”

What happens now?

As it stands, the handover was originally supposed to happen in September 2015, but was delayed for a year. Now, whether or not the administration hands over the keys to the web depends on whether Congress takes action against the move in the next few months.

How can this be stopped?

Congress has blocked funding for the transition under the last three appropriations bills, which it could very well do again. They could also prohibit the Department of Commerce’s authority to relinquish the contract, but this again depends on whether the contract constitutes property of the federal government.

“He who controls all IP addresses controls the Internet,” stated former Network Solutions, Inc. CEO Mike Daniels in the late 1990s. Whether or not the United States cedes its oversight of this control now lies almost completely with the United States Congress. (For more from the author of “Why These 3 Senators Are Standing up to Obama on Internet Freedom” please click HERE)

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Big Donor to Clinton Foundation Linked to ‘Blood Minerals’

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Leonardo DiCaprio once starred in Blood Diamond, a 2006 thriller that takes place during the Sierra Leone civil war in 1999. According to a synopsis on IMDB, “The film shows a country torn apart by the struggle between government soldiers and rebel forces. The film portrays many of the atrocities of that war …” Those atrocities were often committed in the fight over “blood diamonds” — precious stones whose mining and sales are used to fuel brutal conflicts.

While the Hollywood film reflects the real-life stories in the behind-closed-doors dealings of diamonds and minerals in war-torn areas, what it doesn’t portray are the deep-pocket corporations funding the front-door deals involving the extraction of those diamonds and precious minerals.

According to the Daily Caller, one of those corporations donated $100 million to the Clinton Foundation in 2007.

Richard Pollack writes, “When the Vancouver, Canada-based Lundin Group gave its $100 million commitment to the ‘Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative,’ the company had long been cutting deals with warlords, Marxist rebels, military strongmen and dictatorships in the war-torn African countries of Congo, Sudan and Ethiopia.”

The accusations that a donor company was engaged in the often bloody business of precious metal excavation may be of no consequence to the Clinton Foundation, but with the foundation raking in millions from foreign governments, and now corporations with shady business dealings, those questionable donations are now of concern to others, including watchdog groups and humanitarian organizations.

Adolf Lundin, who founded the Lundin Group, reportedly secured mineral rights from the Congo’s brutal dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1996 by allegedly donating to Mobutu’s campaign fund, although Lundin reportedly denies it. And in 1997, Pollack writes, the Lundin Group reportedly cut a deal “with Congolese Marxist warlord Laurent Kabila, with a $50 million down payment toward $250 million they would give to the rebels in exchange for mining rights, according to U.N. Inspector Jason K. Stearns. Lundin eventually won majority rights to one of the country’s richest mineral veins.”

Watchdog and humanitarian groups, including Swedwatch, Christian Aid, Enough.org and Human Rights Watch, have all decried abuses for which they say the Lundin Group is responsible. They cite the jailing of journalists, large-scale relocations of entire villages to make way for mining, and starvation of refugees as evidence the mining firm cares more about its business dealings than with humanity as a whole.

The fact the Clinton Foundation received funds from Lundin Group even drew criticism from Washington. Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) who co-chairs the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, told the Daily Caller that “areas with high conflict over minerals are breeding grounds for human rights abuses on a massive scale, and when entities like the Clintons’ Foundation accept donations from these corrupt actors, they are sanctioning the exploitation.” (For more from the author of “Big Donor to Clinton Foundation Linked to ‘Blood Minerals'” please click HERE)

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Has the IRS Been Illegally Deleting Records?

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The Cause of Action Institute (CoA) filed a legal complaint against the Internal Revenue Service for illegally destroying records Tuesday, at the same time that IRS commissioner John Koskinen approaches an impeachment trial before Congress.

In the complaint, CoA alleges that the IRS and Koskinen refused to “capture and preserve” employees’ electronic communication dealing with official business, as the law requires.

Here’s a piece of the press release from CoA’s website:

“The IRS and Commissioner Koskinen have a legal obligation to preserve official work communications between employees. It appears that federal records are being deleted because the IRS, in a deal with its employee union, refuses to preserve certain types of electronic communications. This lawsuit seeks to ensure that IRS follows the law. No agreement with a union or any other party can supersede Americans right to know how the IRS makes decisions.”

Documents obtained by CoA Institute show that the IRS has a private agreement with its employee union stipulating that the agency will not save the instant message records of its employees. But the IRS cannot allow such an agreement to supersede its statutory obligations to preserve records. In addition, the IRS is violating the law by regularly deleting all employee text messages as a matter of convenience.

The IRS’s obligation to capture and preserve relevant records is drawn from the Federal Records Act (FRA). The complaint filed by CoA is intended to establish a court order requiring the IRS to create and implement guidelines for acquiring and keeping such information.

As reported by the Washington Post, commissioner Koskinen could become the first agency leader to be removed from office since 1876 when War Secretary William Belknap was facing corruption charges. The House Judiciary Committee is set to hold impeachment hearings next week. (For more from the author of “Has the IRS Been Illegally Deleting Records?” please click HERE)

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Infant Survives, Thrives After Being Born With No Skull on the Back of His Head

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After finding out they were pregnant, Ben and Alyssa Reidhead thought they were going to the doctor to find out the sex of their baby . . .

At 23 weeks, doctors told them their son’s brain was growing outside of his skull . . .

However, when she delivered by C-section last week at Primary Children’s Hospital, the couple was shocked . . .

Their little boy Will has defied the odds.

“He’s not hooked up to anything. He’s breathing fine. He’s lifting his head. He’s moving around. He’s pretty much acting like a completely normal baby,” Alyssa Reidhead said. (Read more from “Infant Survives, Thrives After Being Born With No Skull on the Back of His Head” HERE)

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Ask This 13-Year-Old Girl If Transgender Bathrooms Pose a Threat

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In the midst of outcries from the transgender community that women don’t face threats in public bathrooms, police in England are looking for a man who allegedly took photos of a 13-year-old girl while she used the bathroom at a McDonalds in Berkshire.

According to police reports, while using the bathroom in an individual stall, the girl heard a click over her head, looked up and saw someone hovering over the cubicle wall. Police say the girl was very upset by the incident, and her family is concerned about what’s going to happen to the photographs and where they might be published.

Police have released photos of the suspect in hopes that someone will be able to identify him. They have asked anyone who recognizes the man to contact them immediately.

This incident has occurred at the same time that transgender activists in America are saying there are no threats to women should transgendered women (i.e., men) be allowed in their bathrooms. The LGBT lobby has been releasing ads in North Carolina that voice opposition to the state’s law requiring people to use public restrooms that match their biological sex. HB2, as the law is known, was designed to help protect the privacy and security of women.

North Carolina has been boycotted by companies and celebrities, who have called the privacy and security law discriminatory against transgender people. Most recently, Elton John wrote an article for The Hill, admonishing N.C. Governor Pat McCrory for being insensitive to transgender people.

John writes:

Forcing transgender people to use the bathroom of a gender with which they don’t identify isn’t just inconvenient or impractical. For many, especially young students still grappling with their transition, it can be traumatic, and at worse, un safe. The failure of McCrory and other lawmakers to see this is a failure of compassion, a failure to recognize the difficult and frequently unwelcoming world transgender people must navigate every day, stigmatized by the fear and ignorance of others.

John says McCrory and others who oppose letting people use the bathroom according to their perceived, not actual, gender “need a lesson in compassion.” If only they could get to know transgender people on a personal level, they would understand, John says.

Those who support privacy and security laws “need to recognize the existence of trans people,” John writes, “and they need to acknowledge that all people have a fundamental desire — and a fundamental right — to be treated fairly.”

Here’s the thing. Does the 13-year-old girl in England have a fundamental right to privacy? Do all the girls in America who don’t want to shower with boys and men or have them in their bathrooms desire the fundamental right to privacy and security as well? Or do only the desires of mentally ill people, who suffer from a dissonance between their mental state and their physical reality, take precedence over 99.7 percent of the population who aren’t confused about their genitalia?

John and others say laws that require people to use public bathrooms that match their biological sex are somehow unfair. How? Everyone has a bathroom to use that correlates with their biology — the parts that are relevant when using a bathroom. There is no such thing as a third sex. Despite this fact, HB2 takes the compassionate step to accommodate those who are confused about their gender, allowing public agencies to create a third bathroom or shower for this tiny minority.

Clearly, the ones who are compassionate in this scenario are those who are supporting laws like HB2 — laws that won’t make it easier for perverts like the one in England to have free rein in women’s restrooms. Yes, this kind of thing obviously happens even with bathrooms being separated by sex, but what will happen if we throw open the doors to these perverts who make up a larger percentage of the population than transgender people?

Media outlets like the Charlotte Observer have tried to make the case that there have been no statistics of sexual predators benefiting from transgender bathroom policies, but this is nonsensical because the practice hasn’t been in effect for very long. It also flies in the face of common sense that there are predators out there — predators like the one in England — who do prey on women and young girls. Why do we want to put them at greater risk?

The law in Charlotte that forced the North Carolina General Assembly to step in and enact HB2 forced all organizations — public and private — to open their bathrooms to men. A man doesn’t have to dress like a woman or even have surgery to make him externally a woman; all he has to do is “identify as a woman” to use the showers, locker rooms, and restrooms reserved for women.

HB2 says that if someone has had an actual sex change and it’s recorded on their birth certificate, then they can use the bathroom that matches that sex. The original Charlotte law just threw open the bathrooms to everyone, whether they’ve actually had a change or not.

In addition, HB2 does not impose its will on private entities, allowing them to decide for themselves what they want to do with their own bathrooms. Those who oppose the North Carolina law want to dictate to private citizens what they can and cannot do with their bathrooms, threatening lawsuits if they don’t comply.

Elton John and other celebrities are presenting themselves as the truly “compassionate” ones, but this is hardly the case. Compassion extends to private entities that have the right to exercise freedom of choice — a choice people like John want to take away. Compassion also extends to women and girls who don’t want their privacy violated or boundaries removed so predators can take advantage of transgender policies.

I would also like to point out that when it comes to transgender people themselves, the compassionate approach is to refuse to accommodate their body dysphoria and delusions. The help they really need is psychological, not legal or political.

If you want to show transgender people compassion, stand by their side as they work through the difficult journey of treating hormone and neuro-chemical dysfunctions as well as psychological disorders that lead to a crisis of identity. Don’t put other people at risk, infringe on their freedoms, or violate the privacy of young girls and women just to advance a political agenda that really does nothing to help gender-confused people in the long run. That’s the opposite of compassion. That’s cruel. (For more from the author of “Ask This 13-Year-Old Girl If Transgender Bathrooms Pose a Threat” please click HERE)

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Who’s the Real Anti-Gun Radical Running for President?

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When Trump says “The Second Amendment is on the ballot in November,” he is right.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is not a fan of the Bill of Rights provision that protects Americans’ natural right of self-defense.

She has campaigned to the left of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and hammered him for protecting the rights of gun owners in his home state of Vermont. If elected, it is clear that she will claim to support the Second Amendment while will taking actions to roll back those rights as far as a president can.

Donald Trump hammered Hillary for her stance on gun control when he argued over the weekend that “Crooked Hillary Clinton is the most anti-gun anti-Second Amendment ever to run for office.” He is spot on.

Hillary gave a gun control speech last week in which she rolled out her anti-gun agenda. In the past, she has called for Supreme Court justices to overturn two Supreme Court cases that protect the right to keep and bear arms. She merely pretends to support the Second Amendment while her campaign promises betray an intent to make that provision of the Constitution a dead letter of law.

Here are the facts:

According to Politifacts.com, Hillary has argued for the overturning one of the most important Second Amendment protection cases in our history:

Clinton said she disagrees with the the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller. In a 5-4 decision, the Court struck down Washington’s handgun ban and recognized that the Second Amendment applies to the individual’s right to bear arms.

‘The Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment,’ she said in a leaked recording of a private fundraiser.

That case stands for the simple proposition that the Second Amendment is an individual right rather than a collective one. Although Politifacts.com ruled Donald Trump’s statement that “Hillary Clinton wants to abolish the Second Amendment” false, her position regarding Heller shows that she would effectively ignore the core meaning of the natural right of self-defense.

Hillary also endorsed a compulsory buyback program implemented in Australia. She said, “Australia is a good example.” That program would not pass constitutional scrutiny in the United States.

It is ironic that the fact checkers fall all over themselves to defend Hillary because she pays lip service to protecting the Second Amendment, yet she has never mapped out a plan to protect it. Hillary will follow President Obama’s lead in trying to pack the Supreme Court with nominees overtly hostile to gun rights while claiming that she supports the Second Amendment — don’t believe it.

According to her own website, Hillary has rolled out a number of proposals that will chip away at gun rights:

A proposal to shut down gun shows by forcing background checks to accompany sales between private citizens;

A proposal to allow trial lawyers to sue the gun industry into submission;

A reinstatement of the so called “assault weapons ban”;

Use of the error-filled terrorist watch list to disenfranchise law-abiding citizens who were put on the list by mistake and cannot get their names removed.

None of these proposals have a chance of passing if Congress stays in Republican hands. Democrats would be reluctant to go down the road of gun control if they take over for fear of being booted out of office in 2018. The Left rolls out polls that indicate support for some of these measures, yet voters have a say and they tend to vote against candidates who support gun control.

If Hillary is so supportive of the Second Amendment, where are her proposals to protect gun rights? She has none. In stark contrast, Donald Trump has a number of ideas to expand gun rights. Now some on the Right will look skeptically at Trump’s proposals, because he was a one-time supporter of some gun control ideas. Yet he is clearly superior on the issue to the overtly-hostile Hillary Clinton.

According to NBC News, Trump has proposed ideas to expand gun rights:

Throughout his campaign, Trump has called gun bans ‘a total failure,’ opposed an expansion of background checks and called for concealed carry permits to be valid across all 50 states.

Trump has voiced opposition to any weapons bans and has rolled out a list of Supreme Court nominees who are not hostile to the Second Amendment. Merrick Garland, President Obama’s pick, has a history of support for gun control. In 2000, Judge Garland supported the Clinton administration’s proposal to store gun-buyers’ records and tried to get the D.C. Circuit to reconsider the Heller case as it wound through the federal courts.

For those who treasure Second Amendment rights and don’t want to be playing defense for the next four years on Supreme Court nominees and gun control legislation, this fall’s election will have a significant impact on the government’s respect for the Bill of Rights. (For more from the author of “Who’s the Real Anti-Gun Radical Running for President?” please click HERE)

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Sheriff: ‘Picking Apart Constitution to Fit’ Leftist Agenda Leads to Tyranny [+video]

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Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke told an audience at the National Rifle Association-Institute for Legislative Action’s (NRA-ILA) Leadership Forum in Louisville, Ky., on Friday that when the Constitution is picked apart to fit a “leftist political agenda,” we are headed toward “government tyranny.”

“The Constitution does not come a la carte. It is all inclusive. When we start down that road of picking apart the Constitution to fit a certain leftist political agenda, we are headed toward a very dark place called government tyranny,” Clarke said.

“Why is the second amendment treated like the bastard of the Bill of Rights by academia, the liberal mainstream media, and liberals in the political establishment? It’s not about reducing mass murders, suicides, or street-level violence. Heck, it isn’t really even about gun control. Folks, it’s about power, political power. It’s all about government control over our lives,” Clarke said.

“These anti-gun bigots on the left realize that in order to grow a more centralized government, they have to defeat several powerful citizen-based organizations. These anti-gun zealots realize that to win a political argument, you need two things: You need a common enemy and a common language,” he added.

“To the anti-gun left, the common enemy is the National Rifle Association and you, its freedom loving members,” he said. ““Well the common language of the AGI – you know who the AGI is, right? The anti-gun idiots. (Read more from “Sheriff: ‘Picking Apart Constitution to Fit’ Leftist Agenda Leads to Tyranny” HERE)

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Iran Threatens to Destroy Israel in ‘Less Than Eight Minutes’

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A top Iranian commander has claimed that the Islamic Republic had the ability to destroy Israel “in less than eight minutes,” according to comments offered on the same day that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei declared that Iran would continue to build its ballistic missile arsenal in defiance of U.S. demands.

“If the Supreme Leader’s orders [are] to be executed, with the abilities and the equipment at our disposal, we will raze the Zionist regime in less than eight minutes,” Ahmad Karimpour, a senior adviser to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp’s al-Quds Force, was quoted as stating, according to regional reports.

The threat comes as Khamenei declared in a speech Monday that U.S. “cries” over Iran’s ballistic missile program will not alter the regime’s behavior.

“They [the U.S.] have engaged in a lot of hue and cry over Iran’s missile capabilities, but they should know that this ballyhoo does not have any influence and they cannot do a damn thing,” Khamenei was quoted as saying during a speech Monday in Tehran, according to Iran’s state-controlled media.

“Jihad still exists,” Khamenei added “Great Jihad means not abiding by the enemy whom we are fighting; not abiding by enemy in economy, politics, culture and art is the great Jihad.” (Read more from “Iran Threatens to Destroy Israel in ‘Less Than Eight Minutes'” HERE)

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Trump Slams Hillary Clinton for Not ‘Protecting Women’ in Video Featuring Voices of Bill’s Sex-Assault and Rape Accusers

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By David Martosko. Donald Trump’s latest effort to saddle Hillary Clinton with her husband’s sexual indiscretions hit Instagram like a bomb on Monday.

‘Is Hillary really protecting women?’ Trump tweeted, along with a link to a short video featuring the voices of two of Bill’s sexual-assault accusers, Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey.

The 15-second video also includes a reference to Clinton’s former White House intern paramour Monica Lewinsky, in the form of a stogie clenched between the former president’s teeth.

Independent Counsel Ken Star wrote in his bombshell report on the Clinton impeachment saga that the then-president sexually pleasured Lewinsky, then in her early twenties, with a cigar.

Broaddrick accused Clinton of raping her in a hotel room when he was the attorney general of Arkansas. Willey has charged that he groped and fondled her against her will in the Oval Office. (Read more from “Trump Slams Hillary Clinton for Not ‘Protecting Women’ in Video Featuring Voices of Bill’s Sex-Assault and Rape Accusers” HERE)

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Leftist Salon: Donald Trump Is Going to Win; This Is Why Hillary Clinton Can’t Defeat What Trump Represents

By Anis Shivani. The neofascist reaction, the force behind Trump, has come about because of the extreme disembeddedness of the economy from social relations. The neoliberal economy has become pure abstraction; as has the market, as has the state, there is no reality to any of these things the way we have classically understood them. Americans, like people everywhere rising up against neoliberal globalization (in Britain, for example, this takes the form of Brexit, or exit from the European Union), want a return of social relations, or embeddedness, to the economy.

The Trump alliance desires to remake the world in their own image, just as the class representing neoliberal globalization has insisted on doing so. The difference couldn’t be starker. Capitalism today is placeless, locationless, nameless, faceless, while Trump is talking about hauling corporations back to where they belong, in their home countries, fix them in place by means of rewards and retribution, like one handles a recalcitrant child.

Trump is a businessman, while Mitt Romney was a businessman too, yet I predict victory for the former while the latter obviously lost miserably. What is the difference? While Trump “builds” things (literal buildings), in places like Manhattan and Atlantic City, places one can recognize and identify with, and while Trump’s entire life has been orchestrated around building luxury and ostentatiousness, again things one can tangibly grasp and hold on to (the Trump steaks!), Romney is the personification of a placeless corporation, making his quarter billion dollars from consulting, i.e., representing economic abstraction at its purest, serving as a high priest of the transnational capitalist class.(Read more from “Donald Trump Is Going to Win: This Is Why Hillary Clinton Can’t Defeat What Trump Represents” HERE)

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Killing of Taliban Leader in Pakistan Demonstrates Shift in US Strategy

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U.S. officials say they are confident that a drone strike carried out in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province on Saturday killed top Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour.

The strike is a bold move by the U.S. that represents a long overdue shift in strategy toward the Taliban.

Over the last year the U.S. has focused its diplomatic attention on pursuing peace talks with the Taliban. Hopes were raised last summer when Pakistan played host to face-to-face talks between the Afghan government and Taliban officials in early July.

However, weeks later just before a second round of talks was scheduled to be held, reports surfaced that Taliban Supreme leader Mullah Omar had died two years previously, causing disarray within the Taliban movement.

Pakistan helped install Akhtar Mansour as Mullah Omar’s successor, although Mansour initially had trouble consolidating his control over the group. Pakistan also helped engineer the placement of Sirajuddin Haqqani as Mansour’s deputy, thus cementing ties between the Taliban and the deadly Haqqani network, responsible for some of the fiercest attacks against Afghan and coalition forces.

Over the last eighteen months, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has gone out of his way to try to reach out to Pakistan to encourage it to use its influence to bring the Taliban to the peace table.

However, escalating Taliban violence in the country, which culminated in a major truck bombing that killed nearly 65 people in Kabul on April 19th, prompted Ghani to shift his strategy.

Ghani told a joint session of the Afghan parliament on April 25th that pursuing peace through negotiations with the Taliban was no longer a priority, and that Afghan security forces would destroy the “terrorists” through relentless air and ground operations.

The killing of Akhtar Mansour on Pakistani territory shows the U.S. also is making welcome changes to its Afghan strategy. It is unlikely the U.S. coordinated the drone strike with Pakistani officials, given Pakistan’s close links with Mansour. Pakistan has not yet officially responded to the strike, which almost certainly came as a major surprise.

The U.S. has sought to take advantage of possible openings for a Taliban reconciliation process but the wildcard has always been whether Pakistan would be willing to pressure Taliban leaders that shelter on its territory.

Without Pakistani willingness to crack down on Taliban elements on its side of the border, there is little reason to believe a reconciliation process is possible.

Only when the Taliban are under military pressure in both Afghanistan and Pakistan will there be any realistic hope for a peace settlement.

U.S.-Pakistan relations have recently soured over U.S. Congressional moves to block U.S. funding for additional F-16 aircraft for Pakistan and to enforce conditions on other U.S. military aid because of Pakistan’s failure to crack down on the Haqqani network.

The killing of the Taliban Supremo on Pakistani territory is likely to deepen those tensions. (For more from the author of “Killing of Taliban Leader in Pakistan Demonstrates Shift in US Strategy” please click HERE)

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