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Obama “Pushed Boycott of Jerusalem, Biblical Territories”

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Photo Credit: WNDA European Union boycott of financial dealings with Jews in the biblical West Bank, Golan Heights and eastern Jerusalem was fully coordinated with the Obama administration, a senior Palestinian negotiator told WND.

“Without the U.S. support, the EU wouldn’t have taken such measures,” the negotiator said.

On Friday, the EU published guidelines forbidding its 28 members from having any financial dealings with what it calls Jewish settlements or territories that have been “occupied” by Israel since 1967.

The preface to the guidelines states “the EU does not recognize Israel’s sovereignty over … the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including east Jerusalem … and does not consider them to be part of Israel’s territory, irrespective of their legal status under domestic law.”

“Only Israeli entities having their place of establishment within Israel’s pre-1967 borders will be considered eligible as final recipients” of funding such as “grants, prizes and financial instruments.”

Read more from this story HERE.

If a Person Cannot ‘Stand His Ground,’ What Can He Do?

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By Bruce Johnson. Per the Florida Statute, Use of force in defense of person. 776.012

“A person is justified in using force, except deadly force, against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to defend himself or herself or another against the other’s imminent use of unlawful force. However, a person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if:

He or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent (1) death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony; ..”

If you have no opportunity to retreat, you can stand your ground. If that is “bad law,” please provide, Mr. Holder, the “good law.”

Are we to pull out a rule book if we are pinned to the ground, or may we defend ourselves against someone who is in the process of rearranging your brain cells against the concrete?

If a Black Panther comes at you with a billy club at a polling place, and you defend yourself, in the Holder world, have you done something wrong? Probably. Read more from this story HERE.

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Obama co-sponsored bill strengthening Illinois stand-your-ground law in 2004

By Thomas Lifson. Now we have proof that the current Obama-Holder campaign against stand-your-ground laws is nothing more than a pose intended to distract from their political problems, having whipped up a racialist fury and pushed prosecution of George Zimmerman. Although State Senator Barack Obama could boast of few legislative accomplishments, one thing he did do was co-sponsor a bill strengthening the Illionois stand-your-ground law. The Illinois Review writes:

The Obama-sponsored bill (SB 2386) enlarged the state’s 1961 law by shielding the person who was attacked from being sued in civil court by perpetrators or their estates when a “stand your ground” defense is used in protecting his or her person, dwelling or other property…

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Donors Keep Sending Those Checks Months After the Election

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Photo Credit: APThey send checks, a hundred dollars at a time, to President Barack Obama’s reelection bid — and they’re not stopping just because the election is over.

Some want to stick it to conservatives. Some are dedicated volunteers who didn’t realize Obama’s new tax-exempt group Organizing for Action took over fundraising from Obama for America.

And some didn’t remember sending Obama money at all.

Obama — who is scheduled to speak to his most loyal volunteers, donors and supporters on Monday at an Organizing for Action event — is having a rough time in Washington: Gun control is dead; immigration reform is stalled; Edward Snowden is still on the loose in a Moscow airport. But there’s a handful of die-hards so supportive of the president and his agenda that they continue to mail unsolicited donations to a campaign that now exists only on paper.

Many who spoke with POLITICO are seniors who don’t get their campaign news online and reflexively send checks through the mail when they feel Obama needs their support.

Read more from this story HERE.

Black Caucus Member: Blacks Worth Less Than Whites in America

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Photo Credit: APBy Pete Kasperowicz. A member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) said Monday night that the Trayvon Martin trial is the latest evidence that America does not value the lives of blacks and whites equally.

“The tragic death of our young man, Trayvon Martin, followed by the acquittal of the man who pursued him and killed him, has reminded us that although it may seem as if African Americans and other minorities have achieved full equality in our civil society, we are still victims of racial profiling in violation of our laws and our morals,” Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) said on the House floor Monday night.

“The lives of black men and women are not accorded the same value as the lives of white Americans,” she said. “This is a reality for far too many black Americans.”

Clarke was one of many members of the CBC who spoke on the floor in reaction to last week’s decision by a jury that George Zimmerman was not guilty of murder or manslaughter after shooting Martin earlier this year.

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) acknowledged violence in black neighborhoods, but implied that the way to solve this is to ensure equal opportunity for all. Read more from this story HERE.

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For blacks, empathy trumps the economy

By Niall Stanage. To African-Americans, President Obama just gets it.

Obama’s notably personal comments on Friday about the verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman, and on race in America, struck a chord. They vividly underlined the fact that, for the first time, the person in the Oval Office has lived an African-American experience.

To black supporters, that is more important than Obama’s inability to narrow racial inequalities during his four and a half years in office, something that has frustrated members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), a former head of the black caucus, was in the middle of a phone interview with The Hill when Obama appeared at the White House briefing room podium to address the raw feelings exposed by the “not guilty” verdict on the man who had fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager.

Pausing to listen to an office television for several minutes, Rangel said: “I don’t see how a person not-of-color could possibly do the job that he’s doing.” Read more from this story HERE.

President Seeking Credit for Tiny Economic Uptick

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Photo Credit: APBy Justin Sink. President Obama will grab credit for an improving economy in a series of speeches this week that the White House hopes will increase his political clout.

The messaging effort is intended to portray Obama as focused on jobs, which voters repeatedly say is the most pressing issue facing Washington, according to the White House.

Democratic allies argue it will allow Obama to go on offense after months in which he has been dragged down by political controversies that have dogged his second term and injured him in the polls.

“We have to keep focused on these issues, even as we all are buffeted about by, you know, the variety of things that confront us … fake scandals or things like that,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said Monday at his daily briefing.

“We have to keep focused on the North Star here, the issues that the American people want us to be focused on,” he added. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APPressure mounts on Obama as he REFUSES to pay his interns (while campaigning to raise the minimum wage)

By Hayley Peterson. As President Obama campaigns to increase the minimum wage, his own interns aren’t getting paid a cent to work a minimum of 45 hours a week.

White House interns are expected to show up to work ‘at least’ Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., according to the administration’s website. Housing and commuting assistance aren’t provided either, so the White House encourages applicants to petition nonprofits for help funding their living expenses.

Just this summer alone, the White House ‘hired’ 147 interns, saving the administration roughly half a million dollars if it had otherwise paid each intern minimum wage for 45 hours of work per week. The internship program, which lasts 11 weeks in the summer, runs year-round.

Unpaid internships are widespread in Washington. It’s estimated that the federal government uses as many as 30,000 uncompensated interns every summer.

But with Obama calling for an increase to the minimum wage – which is set at $7.25 an hour – activist Mikey Franklin says it’s particularly disdainful for the White House to be relying on free labor. Read more from this story HERE.

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Obama approval rating drops for second straight quarter

By Rick Moran. Gallup tracking poll shows the decline in President Obama’s approval numbers over the last 3 quarters.

The Hill:

Obama averaged a 47.9 percent approval rating for his 18th quarter in office, running from April 20 to July 19. That’s down from 49.7 percent in the first quarter of Obama’s second term in office, and down from 51.9 in the 16th quarter, when he was reelected.

The president got a slight boost in the early stages of the 18th quarter after the Boston Marathon bombings, but declined steadily from there and has not topped the 50 percent mark in almost a month.

According to Gallup, Obama’s average for the quarter is typical for second term presidents. The president comes in well below former presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, well above Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, and is near in approval to Harry Truman and George W. Bush.

Read more from this story HERE.

How Secrecy Erodes Democracy

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Photo Credit: ReutersIn early June, leaked documents revealed that the U.S. government was collecting the details — if not the content — of virtually every call that every American made. President Barack Obama claimed that the PATRIOT Act gave him the authority to know whom we called, when and how long we talked.

This claim came from the same man who, as a senator, wrote, “We believe the government should be required to convince a judge that the records they are seeking have some connection to a suspected terrorist or spy.”

It appears the president now believes we are all connected to terrorists. It’s as if he’s playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with our civil liberties.

Congress passed the PATRIOT Act in 2001 after a vociferous public debate. To protect against abuses, the act was scheduled to sunset — it would expire if Congress did not renew it after five years.

When it was reauthorized in 2006, Congress sought to limit the government’s warrantless access to records. Under the revised law, the government can obtain records if a court determines they are relevant to an authorized investigation into international terrorism or foreign spying.

Read more from this story HERE.

Your Place in the Database

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Photo Credit: American ThinkerRegarding the American surveillance state, it seems that the truth comes out a little at a time. We learned about the FBI’s Carnivore in the 1990s, which the copied internet data of people whom the agency deemed “reasonably suspicious.” In September 2001, we saw the worst attacks on America since Pearl Harbor. September 11 left a unified country in its wake, but unfortunately, it was also a country more acquiescent than ever to big government. The PATRIOT Act was quickly shuttled through the lawmaking process, and life went on. We found out about NSA domestic wiretapping from a brave AT&T whistleblower in 2006. The program was given the formality of legality (though not constitutionality) in 2007. Would it have been had no one blown the whistle?

The surveillance state became even more unsettling with the Change of 2009, no less after political campaigning by the victor against domestic spying. We found out in 2009 that returning veterans were being targeted as possible extremists by the “Vigilant Eagle” program, a name positively Orwellian in its irony. The floodgates opened in 2013 once Obama’s re-election was secured. We found out that our government scans all domestic cell phone metadata (phone numbers, recipients, times), all letter and package labels are scanned and saved, and the NSA has agreements with every major internet provider to provide backdoor access to customers’ information (see PRISM). Even our credit card activity is analyzed. Of course, those are just high points. The entire last decade we have heard warnings from whistleblowers such as William Binney, as well as periodic admissions from U.S. officials of intelligence oversteps, which they falsely claim are immediately corrected.

One must wonder how the people of this nation would have reacted had all of this come out at once. Perhaps it is wishful thinking to hope that we would have shown a tenth the gumption of the Egyptians, who in July 2013 unceremoniously flung their Islamist government to the side. They took to the streets in outrage against tyrants at just the time we learned of the sickening scope of our national government’s spying. We meekly sat by. As each little bit of this diabolical system is leaked, it is palatable enough to warrant only a minor outrage, and then life goes on, albeit with a new normal. Tiny violations of our 4th-Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure, and our 5th-Amendment right against self-incrimination, keep piling up, until it seems that those rights have bled to death from a thousand cuts. If Americans are the proverbial frog in the pot of water, the temperature has been ratcheted to a near-boil.

The Relational Database

For me, the most stomach-churning signpost on our nation’s road to tyranny has been the completion of the Utah Data Center. The center holds data on the scale of yottabytes. One yottabyte could account for 30 million gigabytes per U.S. man, woman, and child. It’s a staggering capacity. Now, for Americans, the camera is always rolling, creating a record of our every digital move. It reminds one of The Truman Show, a movie in which Jim Carrey’s entire life was filmed and broadcast as entertainment without him knowing it.

Because of the power of relational databases, and the laws governing internet service provider record-keeping, anything stored in the data centers (there are many across the nation, the Utah Center being the largest and most recent) can be tied to us directly. When tied to other sources of government data, it’s a more complete picture of our life than most of us could even provide about ourselves. The websites we browse, the comments we make, the e-mails we send, the phone calls to friends, the internet purchases, the Facebook associations, and most everything else you can think of are easily tied together.

Read more from this story HERE.

How the Media Has Distorted a Tragedy (+MUST SEE video)

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Photo Credit: Allison HargerA week after George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the fatal shooting of black teenager Trayvon Martin, the backlash continues, with nationwide protests and calls to boycott Florida. President Obama spoke some undeniable truths when he noted that the African-American community’s reaction must be seen in the context of a long, terrible history of racism. But there is another context too: that of an ideology-based, media-driven false narrative that has distorted a tragedy into a racist outrage.

This narrative has transformed Zimmerman, a man of racially mixed heritage that included white, Hispanic and black roots (a grandmother who helped raise him had an Afro-Peruvian father), into an honorary white male steeped in white privilege. It has cast him as a virulent racist even though he once had a black business partner, mentored African-American kids, lived in a neighborhood about 20 percent black, and participated in complaints about a white police lieutenant’s son getting away with beating a homeless black man.

This narrative has perpetuated the lie that Zimmerman’s history of calls to the police indicates obsessive racial paranoia. Thus, discussing the verdict on the PBS NewsHour, University of Connecticut professor and New Yorker contributor Jelani Cobb asserted that “Zimmerman had called the police 46 times in previous six years, only for African-Americans, only for African-American men.” Actually, only six calls—two of them about Trayvon Martin—had to do with African-American men. At least three involved complaints about whites; others were about such issues as a fire alarm going off, a reckless driver of unknown race, or an aggressive dog.

In this narrative, even Zimmerman’s concern for a black child—a 2011 call to report a young African-American boy walking unsupervised on a busy street, on which the police record notes, “compl[ainant] concerned for well-being”—has been twisted into crazed racism. Writing on the website of The New Republic, Stanford University law professor Richard Thompson Ford describes Zimmerman as “an edgy basket case” who called 911 about “the suspicious activities of a seven year old black boy.” This slander turns up in other left-of-center sources, such as ThinkProgress.org.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Deploying Drones Around U.S.

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Photo Credit: WNDBy Steve Peacock. The deployment of federal drones in and around U.S. shores represents one of the Obama administration’s next steps in the nation’s expanded use of unmanned aircraft systems for surveillance purposes.

The Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, or ONMS, recently acquired Puma UAS – a type of drone that the U.S. Navy also uses – for operations off the coast of Los Angeles.

ONMS now is enlisting contractor support in expanding UAS use in California, Hawaii, Florida, and Washington state. Vendors experienced in working with law enforcement and military personnel are needed for this endeavor, according to a solicitation that WND located through routine database research.

The Puma drones – which are small enough to launch by hand – will be used by ONMS to enforce federal regulations, the document says.

The ONMS drone project will focus on Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary located northwest of LA. However, the contractor also will assist Puma UAS operations at Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument Midway in Hawaii, Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, and Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary in Washington. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: LA TimesJudge torn over lawsuit in drone strike that killed Americans

By Michael Doyle. Courts cannot second-guess drone strikes that kill U.S. citizens overseas, an Obama administration lawyer argued Friday.

A Republican-appointed judge sounded dubious about the expansive claim, saying she was “really troubled” by assertions that courts are completely shut out of the drone strike debate. But for other legal reasons, the judge also sounded hesitant about a lawsuit targeted at top military and intelligence officials for violating the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens blown up in foreign lands.

“There are instances where wrongs are done, but for one reason or another they cannot be remedied in a civil suit,” U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary M. Collyer said.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights, representing a family member, have sued former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other former officials over the two separate drone strikes that killed three U.S. citizens in Yemen. The Obama administration wants the lawsuit dismissed.

The lawsuit is the latest challenge to the administration’s secretive war-fighting practices that have mobilized skeptics on both the right and the left. ERad more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: U.S. Air ForceU.S. military drone surveillance is expanding to hot spots beyond declared combat zones

By Craig Whitlock. The steel-gray U.S. Air Force Predator drone plunged from the sky, shattering on mountainous terrain near the Iraq-Turkey border. For Kurdish guerrillas hiding nearby, it was an unexpected gift from the propaganda gods.

Fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, filmed the charred wreckage on Sept. 18 and posted a video on YouTube. A narrator bragged unconvincingly that the group had shot down the drone. But for anyone who might doubt that the flying robot was really American, the video zoomed in on mangled parts stamped in English and bearing the label of the manufacturer, San Diego-based General Atomics.

For a brief moment, the crash drew back the curtain on Operation Nomad Shadow, a secretive U.S. military surveillance program. Since November 2011, the U.S. Air Force has been flying unarmed drones from Incirlik Air Base in Turkey in an attempt to suppress a long-simmering regional conflict. The camera-equipped Predators hover above the rugged border with Iraq and beam high-resolution imagery to the Turkish armed forces, helping them pursue PKK rebels as they slip back and forth across the mountains.

As the Obama administration dials back the number of drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, the U.S. military is shifting its huge fleet of unmanned aircraft to other hot spots around the world. This next phase of drone warfare is focused more on spying than killing and will extend the Pentagon’s robust surveillance networks far beyond traditional, declared combat zones.

Over the past decade, the Pentagon has amassed more than 400 Predators, Reapers, Hunters, Gray Eagles and other high-altitude drones that have revolutionized counterterrorism operations. Some of the unmanned aircraft will return home with U.S. troops when they leave Afghanistan. But many of the drones will redeploy to fresh frontiers, where they will spy on a melange of armed groups, drug runners, pirates and other targets that worry U.S. officials. Read more from this story HERE.

Secret Obama Plan Forfeits Temple Mount to Palestinians

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Photo Credit: WNDBy Aaron Klein. The Obama administration has quietly presented a plan in which the Palestinian Authority and Jordan will receive sovereignty over the Temple Mount while Israel will retain the land below the Western Wall, according to a senior PA negotiator speaking to WND.

The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism.

The proposed plan is part of the basis for U.S.-brokered talks that are set to resume in Washington next week after Secretary of State John Kerry announced that both Israel and PA President Mahmoud Abbas have agreed to open negotiations aimed at creating a Palestinian state.

Israel has not agreed to the U.S. plan over the Temple Mount, with details still open for discussion, stated the PA negotiator.

The negotiator, who is one of the main Palestinian figures leading the Arab side of the talks, further divulged Kerry’s proposed outline for a Palestinian state as presented orally to Israel and the PA. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Uriel Sinai/APIsraeli-Palestinian peace talks’ resumption put in doubt by both sides

By Harriet Sherwood. Moves towards a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks were mired in rumours, rebuttals, criticism and confusion on Sunday in an indication of the political and diplomatic swamp facing key negotiators and their mediator, the US secretary of state, John Kerry.

In a high-profile dismissal of the embryonic process, Israel’s former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, wrote on Facebook that there was “no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, at least not in the coming years, and what’s possible and important to do is conflict-management”.

Naftali Bennett, economics minister, insisted construction on Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem would continue, regardless of talks.

The comments by two crucial partners in the Israeli coalition are a sign of deep hostility within the government over the agreement for preliminary talks forged by Kerry on Friday.

Meanwhile, a veteran Palestinian negotiator, Yasser Abed Rabbo, denied that a firm decision had been taken to enter talks, saying further clarification was needed on a framework and the Palestinians were still discussing terms with Kerry. According to a Palestinian source, Kerry had written a letter giving a US assurance that the basis of territorial talks would be the pre-1967 border, but it was not clear whether the letter had been delivered. Read more from this story HERE.