Brazil: 250K protest against govt corruption

By BRADLEY BROOKS 

SAO PAULO (AP) — More than 250,000 anti-government demonstrators again took to streets in several Brazilian cities Saturday and engaged police in some isolated, intense conflicts. Anger over political corruption emerged as the unifying issue for the demonstrators, who vowed to stay in the streets until concrete steps are taken to reform the political system.

Across Brazil, protesters gathered to denounce legislation, known as PEC 37, that would limit the power of federal prosecutors to investigate crimes — which many fear would hinder attempts to jail corrupt politicians.
Federal prosecutors were behind the investigation into the biggest corruption case in Brazil's history, the so-called "mensalao" cash-for-votes scheme that came to light in 2005 and involved top aides of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva buying off members of congress to vote for their legislation.
Last year, the supreme court condemned two dozen people in connection to the case, which was hailed as a watershed moment in Brazil's fight against corruption. However, those condemned have yet to be jailed because of appeals, a delay that has enraged Brazilians.

The protests continued despite a prime-time speech the night before from President Dilma Rousseff, a former leftist guerrilla who was tortured during Brazil's military dictatorship. She tried to appease demonstrators by reiterating that peaceful protests were a welcome, democratic action and emphasizing that she would not condone corruption in her government.

"Dilma is underestimating the resolve of the people on the corruption issue," said Mayara Fernandes, a medical student who took part in a march Saturday in Sao Paulo. "She talked and talked and said nothing. Nobody can take the corruption of this country anymore."

The wave of protests began as opposition to transportation fare hikes, then became a laundry list of causes including anger at high taxes, poor services and high World Cup spending, before coalescing around the issue of rampant government corruption. They have become the largest public demonstrations Latin America's biggest nation has seen in two decades.

Across Brazil, police estimated that about 60,000 demonstrators gathered in a central square in the city of Belo Horizonte, 30,000 shut down a main business avenue in Sao Paulo, and another 30,000 gathered in the city in southern Brazil where a nightclub fire killed over 240 mostly university students, deaths many argued could have been avoided with better government oversight of fire laws. Tens of thousands more protested in more than 100 Brazilian cities, bringing the nationwide total to 250,000, according to a police count published on the website of the Globo TV network, Brazil's largest. 

In Belo Horizonte, police used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters who tried to pass through a barrier and hurled rocks at a car dealership. Salvador also saw protests turn violent.
During her pre-recorded TV speech, Rousseff promised that she would always battle corruption and that she would meet with peaceful protesters, governors and the mayors of big cities to create a national plan to improve urban transportation and use oil royalties for investments in education.
Many Brazilians, shocked by a week of protests and violence, hoped that Rousseff's words after several days of silence from the leader would soothe tensions and help avoid more violence, but not all were convinced by her promises of action.
Victoria Villela, a 21-year-old university student in the Sao Paulo protest, said she was "frustrated and exhausted by the endless corruption of our government."
"It was good Dilma spoke, but this movement has moved too far, there was not much she could really say. All my friends were talking on Facebook about how she said nothing that satisfied them. I think the protests are going to continue for a long time and the crowds will still be huge."
Around her, fathers held young boys aloft on their shoulders, older women gathered in clusters with their faces bearing yellow and green stripes, the colors of Brazil's flag.

In the northeastern city of Salvador, where Brazil's national football team played Italy and won 4-2 in a Confederations Cup match, some 5,000 protesters gathered about 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the stadium, shouting demands for better schools and transportation and denouncing heavy spending on next year's World Cup.
They blocked a main road and clashed with riot police who moved in to clear the street. Protesters said police used rubber bullets and even tossed tear gas canisters from a helicopter hovering overhead. The protesters scattered and fled to a nearby shopping mall, where they tried to take shelter in an underground parking garage.
"We sat down and the police came and asked us to free up one lane for traffic. As we were organizing our group to do just that, the police lost their patience and began to shoot at us and throw (tear gas) canisters," said Rodrigo Dorado.
That was exactly the type of conflict Rousseff said needed to end, not just so Brazilians could begin a peaceful national discussion about corruption but because much of the violence is taking place in cities hosting foreign tourists attending the Confederations Cup.

Brazil's news media, which had blasted Rousseff in recent days for her lack of response to the protests, seemed largely unimpressed with her careful speech, but noted the difficult situation facing a government trying to understand a mass movement with no central leaders and a flood of demands.
With "no objective information about the nature of the organization of the protests," wrote Igor Gielow in a column for Brazil's biggest newspaper, Folha de S. Paulo, "Dilma resorted to an innocuous speech to cool down spirits."
At its height, some 1 million anti-government demonstrators took to the streets nationwide on Thursday night with grievances ranging from public services to the billions of dollars spent preparing for international sports events.

Outside the stadium in Belo Horizonte where Mexico and Japan met in a Confederations Cup game, Dadiana Gamaleliel, a 32-year-old physiotherapist, held up a banner that read: "Not against the games, in favor of the nation."

"I am protesting on behalf of the whole nation because this must be a nation where people have a voice ... we don't have a voice anymore," she said.
She said Rousseff's speech wouldn't "change anything."
"She spoke in a general way and didn't say what she would do," she said. "We will continue this until we are heard."

Associated press writers Tales Azzoni and Ricardo Zuniga in Salvador, Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo and Rob Harris in Belo Horizonte contributed to this report

Now it's Muslim lawyers demanding Obama's arrest

"SA is obliged to arrest him for war crimes that threaten us all ..."
wnd exclusive
President Obama has appointed Muslims to high U.S. government positions, once declared America no longer Christian, is working on direct talks with the Taliban and has plans to hand over weapons to Muslims in Syria.
He has also advocated for the “Arab Spring” movement that has put hard-line Islamic leaders in power in the Middle East.

None of that, however, is good enough for a Muslim Lawyers Association based in South Africa.
Members there are taking that nation’s National Prosecuting Authority to court for refusing to make plans to arrest Obama when he visits South Africa in a few weeks. The Africa trip is expected to cost U.S. taxpayers $60 million to $100 million

In a report by The Citizen, Muslim Lawyers Association attorney Yousha Tayob said, “We will ask the court to review the decision neither to investigate or prosecute and to order them to commence a full investigation.”
MLA officials believe Obama’s drone program, through which he has ordered the deaths of numerous suspects overseas, is reason enough for him to be “investigated, charged, arrested, and tried in a South African court for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.”
The Citizen said the allegations come through the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
“The [drone] program is responsible for extra-judicial killings of both innocent civilians as well as U.S. citizens abroad. The drone strike policy has continued unabated with total disregard for territorial sovereignty and this is cited as the primary reason that Obama should be investigated,” the MLA told the news outlet.
The National Prosecuting Authority said it had received the demands from the Muslims, but Tayob said the organization was not going to investigate.

Nor was it going to arrest Obama, the report said, a plan that had been endorsed by the Media Review Network.
Executive Director Iqbal Jassat told The Citizen that Obama’s visits will be protested because of his failure to halt the “occupation” of Muslim nations.
“We have rallied behind these actions. Levels of pressure developed by civil society would force the U.S. government to review the purpose of this visit and possibly lead to the cancellation,” Jassat told the news outlet.
“Obviously all his appeasement and accommodation of Muslims has won him no hearts or minds among the MLA of South Africa,” noted Islam expert Robert Spencer at JihadWatch.

                                                                             

Biden: ‘At Least’ Five Senators Have Flipped, Support Gun Control

oped: *Just SMH * Ok Joe calling your bluff...Post the names of those 5 Senators who have flipped...Let's see which direction their approval numbers go ! Get real Joe we all know you by now you have been in politics your whole adult life...if you really had 5 flip to your side you would be posting their names and gloating as usual! Take a nap Joe you need your beauty sleep!

On June 21 Vice President Joe Biden said “at least five Senators” have contacted him to say they want to change their vote on gun control.
They want to go from opposing expanded background checks to supporting them.
According to Politico, Biden was speaking to the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Las Vegas when he said the 45 Senators who opposed gun control have seen their approval numbers plummet. He said at least five of those Senators have called to him to ask, “Can we do something about this?”
Biden said:

The calculus has changed, and so we’re in an effort to try to work out how we can provide another opportunity for those who voted no to change their vote.

Post continues: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/22/Biden-Claims-At-Least-Five-Senators-Want-To-Change-Vote-Support-Gun-Control

Uh-oh! Yahoo reports Obama born someplace else

oped: rofl...Yahoo...did a correction shortly after I posted their article on my blog....hmmm a Freudian slip~ posting what they actually knew but have covered up for 5+years?
 Friday, June 21, 2013
http://sharlaslabyrinth.blogspot.com/2013/06/white-house-doesnt-have-figure-on-costs.html


by: Drew Zahn 

In an article published online Friday, Rachel Rose Hartman of Yahoo! News lamented that President Obama’s upcoming trip to Africa would not include a stop in Kenya, “the country of his birth.”
Whoa. What?
The mainstream media for years has been lockstep behind the president in affirming his birth in Hawaii, even derisively labeling those who question the official story as “birthers.”
And in fact, Talking Points Memo reports that within 90 minutes of the story’s publication, Yahoo! News added the following: “Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the president’s birthplace.”
The wording of the story was then changed from referencing Kenya as “the country of his birth” to “his ancestral homeland.”

A screenshot of the original article (emphasis added) can be seen below:

A screenshot of the amended article can also be seen below:

Hartman’s article spoke of the Obama family’s upcoming visit to Africa, which is expected to take place from June 26-July 3, and planned stops in Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania.
Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes, however, told reporters Kenya wasn’t on the itinerary.
So was Hartman’s reporting that Obama was born in Kenya a slip-up or a sign of something more?
The answer may be impossible to discover. A spokesperson for Yahoo! News told the Washington Post there would be no comments available beyond the correction.
Social media monitor Twitchy, however, noted that many users of Twitter were quick to assume Hartman a “birther” and blasted her as racist while demanding she be fired.
Curiously, before Obama was elected, it was fairly common to find references in the media that referred to the former Illinois senator as born in Kenya.
The Kenyan government, as well, in 2009 commissioned a cultural museum in Kenya to “honour the birthplace of President Obama.”
Even Obama’s own literary agency billed him as “born in Kenya” as late as 2007 to promote the sale of his book, “Dreams from My Father.”

And while the White House released a purported copy of Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate April 27, 2011, the president’s refusal to release his childhood and college records, coupled with charges that the birth certificate is a forgery, as well as Barack Obama Sr.’s status as a foreign national, have led many so-called “birthers” to continue to question Obama’s birthplace and/or eligibility under the U.S. Constitution to serve as president.
Discover the most extensive archive of news reports on Obama’s eligibility anywhere!
As WND has reported, a special Cold Case Posse assembled by Maricopa, Ariz., County Sheriff Joe Arpaio was even assembled to look into the question at the request of Arpaio’s constituents, who were concerned they were being defrauded by having an ineligible candidate on the 2012 election ballot.
Last year, Arpaio held a press conference at which he and Cold Case Posse Chief Mike Zullo outlined their findings.
In an affidavit, since filed with the Alabama Supreme Court, Zullo explained, “At that time, we announced that we had concluded that there was probable cause that forgery and fraud had been committed in respect of two documents: 1) the long-form or original birth certificate computer image presented by Mr. Obama, which contained multiple errors and anomalies, many of them serious and: 2) the selective-service document for Mr. Obama, which contained a two-digit year-stamp. This was contrary to specifications issued by federal regulations to the effect that the year of issue should be expressed as four digits on the stamp, and also contrary to any other selective-service registration document that we had been able to examine.”

The result of the evidence, he said, is one conclusion.
“Accordingly, Sheriff Arpaio continues to recommend that the Congress of the United States open an immediate investigation, including the appointment of a select committee, as regards to the authenticity of Mr. Obama’s documentation, whether any crimes have been committed, and to determine Mr. Obama’s eligibility for the office of president of the United States,” he said.

Principal Remains on Job after Threatening to Blow Up Staff

by Dave Jolly 

Remember the boy who was on a school bus talking to his friends and said that he wishes he had a gun to protect them?  The bus driver over heard him and took back to the school, where the principal suspended him for just saying the word gun.
Or what about the six year old boy that pointed his finger at another kid and acted like he was shooting him?  He was suspended also.  Then there was the 5 year old girl that threatened to shoot another kindergartner with her Hello Kitty Bubble Gun when they got home from school.  She was also suspended.

In all of these cases, kids were instantly suspended for making threats, innocent playful threats, against other students.  The suspensions came before any investigation could be completed.
But there seems to be a difference justice for school administrators than there is for students.  Neifi Juan Acosta is the principal of New York Intermediate School 232.  He is a shining example for his students as he is known for his fiery temper and angry outbursts.
Last November, Acosta was conducting a meeting with his staff and faculty concerning what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School.  During the meeting Acosta went on a tirade, yelling at his staff and faculty about how much stress he is under and how frustrated he was.  He angrily told the attendees that they were in God’s seat of judgment.  One of the attendees reported:

“It got very fire and brimstone, very fundamentalist.”

Someone at the meeting asked Acosta if he was angry at the students or the faculty and he answered faculty.  Then Acosta was reported to have said:

“I know what I’ll do, I’ll call a conference in the cafeteria, and I’ll put on a vest like the terrorists do and I’m going to blow you all up.”

A number of the faculty that attended the meeting filed complaints against Acosta.  It took investigators until January to start investigating the complaints.  During the investigation, Acosta placed laminated posters with Bible verses on the classroom doors of faculty members that were scheduled to be interviewed by the investigators.
Six months after the angry threat was made, Acosta is still on the job.  He has not been placed on administrative leave nor has he been suspended.  How can the school board keep this man in his position of principal?  He cannot control his temper which is a very poor and dangerous example for his students.  If anyone anywhere in this country makes a threat to wear a vest full of explosives and blow up a bunch of people will instantly be arrested for making terrorist threats.
A 6 year old is suspended for playing and using his finger as a gun and this principal is not suspended for making a terrorist threat to his staff.  A 5 year old threatens to shoot another 5 year old with a toy gun that shoots bubbles when they got home and she is suspended, but Acosta threatens to kill his entire faculty and he’s still on the job.
While I believe all of the student suspensions are wrong and were handed down too hastily, but on the other hand, I don’t understand why Neifi Juan Acosta was not suspended or placed on administrated leave pending the investigation.  Obviously, justice is not equal for students and school administrators.

Biden: Time for ‘Unfettered Path’ to Citizenship

oped: Joe Biden really needs to retire from politics...this old drunk just rants and raves never makes any sense...Hey Joe retire...grab a fishing pole and a 'shotgun' and go enjoy the wonders of nature...hey maybe Bambi and 'Puff the Magic Dragon' would share a single malt scotch over a campfire and listen intently to your rediculous diatribes!


How soon til liberals just declare every person on the planet an American citizen?
Check it out:
On Thursday, Vice President Joe Biden told a predominantly Latino crowd that now is the time for a “fair, and firm and unfettered path for 11 million people” to become citizens. Biden was addressing the national convention for the League of United Latin American Citizens in Las Vegas. His remarks came as negotiators finalized a deal to move immigration legalization through the Senate.
The “Gang of 8″ Senate bill legalizes the 11-12 million illegal immigrants in the country six months after becoming law. It establishes separate tracks for the newly legalized immigrants to become citizens. The fastest track would provide citizenship in five years. These paths to citizenship would continue, even if the current or a future Administration fails to secure the border or enforce immigration law.
In other words, the Senate bill establishes an “unfettered” path to citizenship. There are certain requirements the recently illegal immigrants have to meet, but each of these can be waived by the Administration. Even a convicted member of a criminal gang can stay on the path to citizenship, as long as they promise no longer to be a member of a gang.

Continue Reading on www.breitbart.com ...

IRS Sent $46M in Refunds to 23K Illegals at 1 Atlanta Address

The incompetence of liberals at its finest. Waste, fraud, and abuse define liberalism.
Check it out:
The Internal Revenue Service sent 23,994 tax refunds worth a combined $46,378,040 to “unauthorized” alien workers who all used the same address in Atlanta, Ga., in 2011, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).
That was not the only Atlanta address theoretically occupied by thousands of “unauthorized” alien workers receiving millions in federal tax refunds in 2011. In fact, according to a TIGTA audit report published last year, four of the top ten addresses to which the IRS sent thousands of tax refunds to “unauthorized” aliens were in Atlanta.
The IRS sent 11,284 refunds worth a combined $2,164,976 to unauthorized alien workers at a second Atlanta address; 3,608 worth $2,691,448 to a third; and 2,386 worth $1,232,943 to a fourth.

Continue Reading on cnsnews.com ...

To Obama, there’s no such thing as ‘citizenship’

Liberals just want us to be one happy world.
Check it out:
Reflecting on the untimely death of Sopranos star James Gandolfini, Dr. Savage mused about America’s endless fascination with Mafia culture.
“I’m on the side of the lawman, not the bad man,” Savage said. “But the truth is, we know that police and judges and politicians can be corrupted. That’s why there’s a part of us that sometimes wishes there was a ‘godfather’ we could go to, like the one in the movie, who could get us some justice another way.”
Savage also mocked the president’s use of the phrase “American persons” to describe those who supposedly don’t have to worry about being spied on by the NSA.
“Notice he didn’t say, ‘If you’re an America citizen,’” Savage pointed out. “To Obama, a man of the world, there is no such thing as citizenship. He said, ‘If you’re a U.S. person,’ but what he really meant was, ‘If you’re a U.S. number.’”

Continue Reading on www.wnd.com ...

America’s Top Cop Holder B*tch Slaps Congress…Again

By Marilyn Assenheim 
Eric Holder, like the rest of The Lyin’ King’s administration, prefers to communicate in writing when on the record. He crafts statements, attempting to weasel out of criminal actions, once he’s been caught. He was at it again, Thursday, before the House Judiciary Committee.
Holder, no slouch when it comes to deceit and bending the law like a green twig, stated that the investigation against FOX reporter James Rosen was “appropriate” and that the Committee “might have misinterpreted (his) remarks.” Ain’t that always the way? Whenever The Lyin’ King or anyone in his regime is caught committing a questionable act, then lying about it, their actions and comments are constantly “misinterpreted.”

One would think they’d have figured out how to communicate with the dunces in Congress after almost five years of experience but, no. What is really going on is that liberals always squirm like worms on hooks, changing stories and seeking to escape their own culpability. The method of choice is to deflect attention to a small, irrelevant point. And Congress always lets them get away with it. Letters help to slow things down. Congress complains. But they keep allowing it.
Holder’s new letter follows the House Judiciary Committee’s dissatisfaction with his previous letter. Holder apparently did not answer questions asked of him. So, of course, Holder sends Congress another letter. The Politico reports, in an excerpt from the new letter:

I do not agree that characterizations establishing probable cause for a search warrant for materials from a member of the news media during an ongoing investigation constitute an intent to prosecute that member of the news media. I do believe that a thorough investigation of the disclosure of classified information that threatened national security was necessary and appropriate.

“I do not agree”, “I do believe”. Squirming. Holder states that he was not fibbing to Congress; he never intended to prosecute Rosen (we have his word on that). Holder accused Rosen of co-conspiracy merely to establish probable cause so that a judge would grant a search warrant. He signed off on the order. If he didn’t lie to Congress, he lied to the judge. Unless he is being misinterpreted again.

Politico reports that Holder graciously agreed to meet with the Judiciary Committee’s leaders but said that “due to ongoing investigations, (he) would not testify again and he could not provide any more detail to Congress.” If not him, who? Congress responded. Crime subcommittee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner (R. WI) and Congressman Goodlatte (R. VA) thanked Holder for his answers but found some of his comments “troubling.” “…Department of Justice regulations do not explicitly cover the procedures for gathering emails belonging to members of the media and the department’s interpretation of the Privacy Protection Act of 1980. We intend to discuss both of these matters with Mr. Holder when he comes to Capitol Hill in the coming days to meet with us.”
A meeting isn’t testimony.
One wonders what they intend to discuss in that meeting. Will they discuss contempt of Congress? Why Holder gets to choose whether to testify or not? The paralyzing effect his precedent-setting, dictatorial actions have had on press sources (AP reports 6/19)? Why Holder isn’t already wearing an orange jumpsuit and doing time? It’s a safe bet they won’t discuss how Holder gets away with it.
Holder sings, Congress dances. Congress has rolled over, once again. Holder and the rest of the jackals can feast on them at will. This means they can feast on us.

No Free Speech in France: French Leader Could Face Trial for Slamming Islam

oped: It would be in Frances best interest to remove itself from the European Union and all treaties and membership in the U.N....as a matter of fact it would be in  the interest of all democratic freedom loving countries to remove themselves from the United Nations et al any New World Order organizations . Keeping ones country sovereign is the quality of having independent authority over a geographic area, such as a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make laws that rests on the citizens not a outside entity with a world agenda!


French extreme right-wing leader Marine Le Pen faces potential prosecution for branding Muslims in France as ‘like a Nazi occupation’.
The National Front chief risks being put on trial after members of the European Parliament’s judicial committee in Brussels voted to lift her legal immunity as an MEP.
Ms Le Pen sparked uproar among in France after a speech at a party rally in December 2012 when she denounced Muslims praying in the street in areas where there are no mosques.
France has a population of around five million Muslims, the highest of any European country.
Le Pen told supporters: ‘For those who like to talk about World War II, to talk about occupation, we could talk about, for once, the occupation of our territory.
‘There are no armoured vehicles, no soldiers, but it is an occupation all the same and it weighs on people.’

Read more: dailymail.co.uk

Congressman: Ad 'racist' because Most Wanted Terrorists all Muslim

oped: Imagine it's 1946 ... the FBI, trying to track down Nazi war criminals who might be in the U.S., posts their pictures on the sides of buses to elicit the public's help in tracking down these evil men and women. Wait just a minute, says a member of Congress. That's racist ... they're all German ... you're offending Germans.Silly, you say? Something like that couldn't happen, right?We wish that was the case. Here's the latest insanity from Washington ...

 
by: Art Moore
SEATTLE – An ad on Seattle buses placed by the FBI that shows the faces of 16 wanted terrorists is racist, because all of the men appear to be Muslim, charges Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash.
McDermott is known to some critics on the right as “Baghdad Jim” for stating on Iraqi soil in the run-up to the war that he essentially trusted dictator Saddam Hussein more than President Bush, whom he called a liar. The trip later was discovered to be financed by Saddam’s intelligence agency. When Saddam was captured, the congressman accused the administration of having waited until the opportune time politically to seize the Iraqi leader.

The Seattle Weekly reports McDermott sent a letter to the FBI requesting that the agency remove an ad that shows 16 faces of Most Wanted Terrorists, who all appear to be Muslim.
McDermott, whose district covers much of the Seattle area, calls the ad “offensive to Muslims and ethnic minorities,” contending it “encourages racial and religious profiling.”
He argues the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list includes people of other races and “associations with other religions and causes.”
“But their faces are missing from this campaign,” he writes.
Thirty of the 32 people listed on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list appear to be Muslim. The two non-Muslims are a member of the revolutionary Black Liberation Army who escaped from prison after being sentenced in 1973 and an animal-rights extremist wanted for a 2003 bombing.
The congressman, who has served Washington’s 7th District for 24 years, asserts the ad will “likely only serve to exacerbate the disturbing trend against Middle Eastern, South Asian and Muslim Americans.”

The ad by the Puget Sound Joint Terrorism Task Force is part of the U.S. Department of State’s Rewards for Justice Program announced June 4, which offers up to $25 million for information that helps stop terrorism.
The task force is an initiative of the FBI that employs the resources and skills of local law enforcement to prevent acts of terrorism and to solve terrorism cases.
A joint news release of the FBI and the State Department about the rewards program said members of Seattle’s community “have time and time again shown themselves to be concerned about protecting their families, their neighbors, and their freedom.”
“Many despicable plots from illicit drug trafficking to violent acts of terrorism have come to the FBI’s attention because vigilant Seattleites came forward with a tip,” the statement says.

Trusting Saddam
McDermott traveled in 2002 to Baghdad with then-Rep. David Bonior, D-Mich., and Rep. Mike Thompson, Calif., to argue against the U.S. going to war to oust Saddam.

Democratic Reps. David Bonior and Jim McDermott interviewed by ABC News in Baghdad in 2002.

With a Baghdad mosque in the background, the Democrat told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in a television interview through a satellite link that Americans “have to take the Iraqis on their face value.”
Stephanopolous, the former top presidential aide to Bill Clinton, asked McDermott: “Before you left for Baghdad, you said the president of the United States will lie to the American people in order to get us into this war. Do you really believe that?”
At the end of a long reply, McDermott concluded: “I think the president would mislead the American people.”
Oklahoma Sen. Don Nickles, the No. 2 ranking Republican at the time, said the congressmen  “sound somewhat like spokespersons for the Iraqi government.”


In 2008, a federal indictment unsealed in Detroit charged that Saddam’s intelligence agency secretly financed a trip to Iraq for three U.S. lawmakers. The indictment didn’t name the lawmakers, but the dates correspond to the trip by McDermott and his two Democrat colleagues.
Muthanna Al-Hanooti, a member of a Michigan nonprofit group, was charged with arranging the trip at the behest of Saddam’s regime and paying for it through an intermediary.
“Obviously we didn’t know it at the time,” McDermott spokesman Michael DeCesare told the Associated Press. “The trip was to see the plight of the Iraqi children. That’s the only reason we went.”
McDermott was accompanied on the Baghdad trip by an Iraqi-American businessman who admitted to financial ties with Saddam’s regime. In 2004, McDermott returned a $5,000 contribution the Iraqi made to the congressman’s campaign fund.
Former FBI officials told WND in 2003 that Bonior previously hampered FBI efforts to investigate terrorist suspects in Detroit, which became a hotbed for al-Qaida sympathizers and cells.

‘Bush timed Saddam capture for political advantage’
In December 2003, after American forces captured Saddam, McDermott told a Seattle radio interviewer that the U.S. could have captured the Iraqi dictator “a long time ago if they wanted.”
KIRO radio’s Dave Ross asked McDermott whether the capture was timed to help President Bush.
“Yeah. Oh, yeah. There’s too much by happenstance for it to be just a coincidental thing,” McDermott said.
Ross, who made an unsuccessful run for Congress as a Democrat, pressed further to be sure he understood McDermott’s point.
“I don’t know that it was definitely planned on this weekend,” the congressman said, “but I know they’ve been in contact with people all along who knew basically where he was. It was just a matter of time till they’d find him.
“It’s funny, when they’re having all this trouble,” he said, “suddenly they have to roll out something.”

COWABUNGA: Colorado Recalls Anti-Gun Senator

Colorado sent a strong message to anti-gun politicians today: If you try and take away our rights, we will vote you out of office. John Morse, the anti-gun state senator led a recent initiative to pass multiple gun control laws, has been recalled after a committee obtained the required signatures.
The pro-gun group obtained over 16,000 signatures to the secretary of state for verification. Of the signatures, 7,178 needed to be verified in order to officially begin a recall election. Over 10,000 were found to be verified—with Colorado’s secretary of state signing off yesterday.


The Washington Times has more details:

Meanwhile, Mr. Morse, a Colorado Springs Democrat, released a statement Monday on his Facebook page asking for out-of-state help from those in traditionally liberal cities to help fight the recall effort.
“We can get phone lists to you and things like that and have you help from Boston, Massachusetts, or San Francisco, California,” said Mr. Morse in a video message. “So thanks for all that you’ve done and thanks for all that you’re going to do as we move forward to take on this tiger.”
Mr. Morse has 15 days to challenge the signatures, but if his protest fails, the governor will be charged with setting a recall election date between 45 and 75 days from the end of the protest period.

Read more: bearingarms.com

CONTROL FREAKS: The Forced Depopulation of America’s Rural Areas

I know that this will come as a shock to many reading this article because they did not learn of these events from FOX or CNN. However, in actuality, the process of moving the United States towards a complete Agenda 21 style of total urbanization has already commenced and it began nearly 20 years ago.
In 1994, the US became official participants in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which was a ‘liberalized’ trade agreement between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. Under NAFTA, farmers’ income in all three countries has plummeted and millions of small farmers have lost their land, while agribusiness corporations (i.e. large government subsidized corporate farms) have reaped huge profits.
NAFTA has had three dramatic effects on farmers in North America and all three effects further the cause dense urbanization as outlined in Agenda 21 documents.

The Roots of Illegal Immigration

“Damn NAFTA!”

The first notable effect of NAFTA is that it immediately bankrupted over three million farmers in northern Mexico and this group became the vanguard of millions of Mexicans illegally entering the US in search for subsistence work of any type.
Depopulating Rural Areas By Bankrupting US Farmers
The second dramatic impact of NAFTA lies in the fact that it has had catastrophic consequences for US farmers as a record number of small farmers have lost their farms and have gone through foreclosure while the government subsidized corporate farms have thrived.Since NAFTA,the average annual growth of the US trade deficit has been 45% higher.Since NAFTA took effect, about 170,000 small family farms have gone bankrupt which represents a decline of 21% of family farms in the US. The 21% of America small farmers who have been bankrupted since the advent of NAFTA, represents a higher percentage of displaced American farmers than what is happening with forced relocation of Chinese farmers to the ghost cities.And what happens to American small farmers who have lost their livelihood? They either work on their former competitors corporate farms as hired hands, or they relocate to urban areas in search of employment.
American Farmers: Death By a Thousand Cuts
If it is not the EPA enforcing its Agenda 21 wetlands regulations with devastating consequences on farmers, it is the FDA harassing farmers for pursuing time-honored farm related industries such as the raw milk industry. Congress is plotting new attacks on the US farmer as I write these words. Even Amish farmers have felt the wrath of the federal government. Average, everyday Americans are being arrested for merely growing their own food.

Whether it is China or the US, Agenda 21 urbanization policies are designed for the purpose of herding people into dense urban areas for reasons of control and the primary method of control has to do with controlling food production.
The US Government Is Gaining Control Over All Food
The Chinese government is working towards to the control over all food in order to control the people. On an ever increasing basis, NAFTA is providing the US government with the exact same ability. Therefore, the third draconian impact of NAFTA is that it has led to even more nefarious free trade agreements which led to the loss of control for local communities over its own food supply.
Underlying the World Trade Organization, the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), and the Central American Free Trade Agreement is the philosophy that all food (i.e. from basic grains, meat, fruits and vegetables) should be exclusively produced for international export. This is a drastic departure from the time honored practice where each country produced the majority of food its citizens needed on local, small farms and only traded in certain products that could not be successfully grown locally. If anyone wonders where this is headed, we only have to look to Africa for the answer. The very first great wave of a NAFTA style of globalization in agriculture took place in Africa, Asia, and Latin America as global corporations forced local farmers to give up local food production, and shifted production to plantations using enslaved Indigenous and African labor to grow the luxury crops of coffee, sugar, bananas, and cocoa for export to the colonizing countries.
The lesson here is, if the government controls the food, the government controls the people.
Read more: thecommonsenseshow.com

FREDOs: An Open Letter to GOP’s Dynamic Duo Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio

By Luke Hamilton 

As an American conservative, who has frequently voted for Republican candidates, I am feeling a lot like Michael Corleone these days. No, not Michael Corleone from the end of the first film, smiling at the baptism of my child while my enemies are getting whacked like moles. More like Michael Corleone mid-way through the 2nd film when there’s a familiar face in my rubbish bin and today is garbage day. It’s like I’m in the lake house, staring at my older brother who just can’t get with the program.
There must be something in the water which feeds into the Washington, D.C. metro area because these representatives whom we send there seem to be impervious to logic or the sentiment of their constituents. We have given these folks the opportunity to translate our views and beliefs to the federal government. They said all the right things to convince us that they were the right person for this job. Then they got to Washington and decided they didn’t like the task for which they were sent. They opted to do things their way. They wanted a little something for themselves…

So instead of the two “rising stars” of the Republican Party, we have two more Big Government Republicans in Congress. Instead of finding two heirs to the legacy of folks like Jim DeMint and Ron Paul, we’ve found heirs to the legacies of John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Arlen Specter.
Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio have demonstrated over the past few weeks that they have lost all shred of respectability when it comes to conservative principles. They have thrown their support behind bills which would provide amnesty for what is estimated to be around 11.5 million illegal immigrants in this country.
And they aren’t simply playing footsie with these bills in the Senate and House. Marco Rubio continued his support of the 1,500-page Senate bill even when it became so unpalatable that GOP establishment shill Bill Kristol suggested that he “walk away from it”. On Tuesday, he was one of only 5 Republican Senators to vote against a border fence to secure our borders.
Paul Ryan’s support for the House’s version has not wavered, even after Nancy Pelosi insisted that these illegal immigrants should receive access to Obamacare upon their wholesale absorption into the legal framework of this great nation. This from a man who pretends to care about fiscal restraint and sanity.
I suppose we shouldn’t be all that surprised about you, Paulie-boy. You have been a thinly-disguised Progressive from the beginning. You talk a great fiscal-restraint game, but your voting record demonstrates that it’s all talk. Are we supposed to take you seriously after your votes for funding TARP, the Auto-Bailout, the Medicare expansion, a bill which would make the Patriot Act permanent, your support for gay adoption and internet taxation? You continue to justify voting for increasing the size (and spending) of the federal government supposedly in order to avoid an even bigger government down the road. This is a shell game as old as government itself. We are not going to fall for it anymore.

But you, Marco, should be ashamed of yourself. You were the golden boy of the new Congressional class of conservatives. You ran on a foundation of solid social conservatism and you’re demonstrating that this foundation was nothing but an election prop.
This is an embarrassment to the family, gentlemen. We’ve always taken care of you. We set you up with gigs and made sure that you had enough to wet your beak. But you’ve deliberately crossed the family in public. You’ve put your own woeful ideas ahead of the ideology of those who put you where you are today. You’ve abandoned conservative principles in favor of progressivism and we will not forget it. You’ve actively plotted our demise and worked to undermine the livelihood and security of the nation you pledged to serve.
You’re nothing to me now. You’re not my Representative or my Senator. I don’t want to know you or what you do. I don’t want to see you at the conventions. I don’t want you on my TV. When you pay lip service to our country, I want to know two days in advance, so I can take my blood pressure medicine and avoid watching television. I can’t even call you RINOs because that name isn’t descriptive enough. I have no choice but to label you both FREDOs: Feckless RINOs at Every Damn Opportunity.
Now get out of my office and go fishing with Al Neri.

Child-rape suspect: She 'seduced' me

oped: Have y'all had enough of  Barack Obama pushing Islam and Sharia Law on us as he trashes  Christianity? I for one certainly have...time for congress to act and pass a law making the practice of Sharia Law illegal within the United States !


via:wnd
A University of Washington neurobiology student charged with child rape after being accused of picking up a 12-year-old girl from the Seattle streets and taking her to his apartment has been identified as a volunteer with a leading Islamic activist organization.
And he’s blaming the child for the alleged assault.

According to Pamela Geller, editor and publisher of Atlas Shrugs.com and president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, suspect Omar Abdelbadie is a volunteer with the Washington state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
The Answering Muslims apologetics website said Abdelbadie was born in Egypt but has lived in the U.S.  for the past eight years. In addition to volunteering with CAIR-Washington, he promotes interfaith unity as vice-president of Bridges, the University of Washington’s interfaith council.

According to SeattlePI.com, Abdelbadie claimed the child “seduced” him after he brought her to his apartment.
The digital paper said Abdelbadie told police the girl was dressed “provocatively” when he met her on the university district’s main thoroughfare. He allegedly admitted he ‘hooked up’ with the girl, but would not say whether he knew her true age, SeattlePI.com reported.
“There are many, many cases all the time of sexual predators taking advantage of underage girls,” wrote Geller. “This one, however, has two elements that show traces of the effects that Islamic supremacism can have on a human mind. Abdelbadie claims that this 12-year-old girl ‘seduced’ him – an idea that might occur easily to someone who, following Muhammad’s example, sees girls as young as nine as sex objects. Also, he claims she was dressed ‘provocatively.’”
Geller noted many Muslim clerics have justified sexual abuse of women by saying that they brought it on themselves with their immodest dress.
“Muslim men in Islamic cultures have no obligation to control themselves,” she wrote. “Women have to make sure they don’t get attacked by not ‘provoking’ the men. This little girl was a victim of that mentality.”

Geller, author of “The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America,” said it’s the “same modus operandi behind the scores of Muslim child sex trafficking gangs in Europe.”
“Vulnerable preteen plied with drugs and alcohol. Sex jihad …. this is how it starts.”
SeattlePI.com said according to the girl’s account, Abedelbadie approached her and started talking to her, then asked her to smoke marijuana with him.
Abdelbadie, 22, a University of Washington senior, was described by prosecutors as a threat to community safety, despite his lack of a criminal record, SeattlePI.com said.

No, You Do Not Have to Be a Christian to Be Conservative

Zo answers critics who think that he is advocating for conservatives to be Christian. You don’t have to be. Hear why on this ZoNation.

http://youtu.be/EwEkmR3sBzQ

Ray Stevens: The Obama Budget Plan is A Disaster

Musician/Comedian Ray Stevens has so pointed lyrics for Obama regarding his budget plan.

http://youtu.be/BmVKEJifRLg 

Democrats Vs Republicans on the Issue of Civil Rights Since 1789

by Geoffrey G. Fisher
POSTING ON FACEBOOK BY MY COLLEGE ROOMMATE
“Let’s rename the Democratic party the Progressive party, and the Republican party the Regressive party.”
Dear Bob:
Let’s review the facts of your Democratic Party:
1789-1865: Nickname of the Democratic Party, THE SLAVE PARTY
1861-1865: Majority of the Democratic Party engages in open rebellion and therefore treason against the United States.
The Republican Party supports preserving the union and fights the insurrection and wins the American Civil War.
1864 Election: Republican Abraham Lincoln wins re-election and proposes and gains the passage of the 13th amendment, granting freedom to all black Americans held in bondage. His opponent was disgraced former union George Brinton McClellan who runs repudiating the PEACE DEMOCRATS. His party was ready to give the south their independence while at the same time, giving southern blacks perpetual enslavement.

1866-Today: Democrats organized a social club of former Confederates officers known as the Ku Klux Klan. “As a secret vigilante group, the Klan targeted freedmen and their allies; it sought to restore white supremacy by threats and violence, including murder, against black and white Republicans.”
1915: Birth of a Nation is released as a tribute to the KKK. D.W. Griffith’s aggressive promotion of the Klan was praised by Democrat Woodrow Wilson as a great triumph. “Under President Woodrow Wilson, it was the first motion picture to be shown at the White House.”
1964-65: Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson cannot pass the civil rights bill even though Democrats control both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. The president turns to Senator Everett Dirksen and his Republican caucus for the needed votes to carry the bill over the finish line.

Summer of 1964: Democratic President Lyndon Johnson misleads the American public vis-à-vis the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and launches America into a bloody war that kills 56,000 Americans. By 1975, the North Vietnamese renege on the Peace Treaty negotiated by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in 1973. The Democratic majorities of both Houses refused to enforce the treaty and the south is invaded again and crushed.
In 1975 the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia – it was formed in 1968 as an offshoot of the Vietnam People’s Army from North Vietnam. It was the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot…(t)he organization is remembered especially for orchestrating the Cambodian Genocide…(b)y 1979, the Khmer Rouge had fled the country…(t)he U.S. State Department-funded Yale Cambodian Genocide Project estimates approximately 1.7 million…” Cambodians died from the rule of the Khmer Rouge that is, from the instability of Southeast Asia caused by the refusal of Democrats in Congress to enforce the Peace treaty between the United States and North Vietnam.
I could go on regarding how Democratic social policies have obliterated the black family in America to the point that today 72% of black children are born illegitimately. The results of that fact are seen everywhere – in education, the prison systems et cetera. Today, the Democrats now own a $17 trillion debt. Bob, I think I’ve made my point – stop inhaling canisters of “Reddi Wip” and try to treat your opposition with a semblance of respect.

White House doesn’t have ‘figure on costs’ of Africa trip

By Rachel Rose Hartman 

***President Barack Obama makes the first extended trip to Africa of his presidency next week—but he won't be stopping in the country of his birth.***

Obama's weeklong trip—June 26-July 3—which he's taking with his wife, Michelle, and daughters Sasha and Malia, as well as with members of his economic and trade team, is to signal America's interest in trade, democracy and economic development in Africa. He will visit Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania.
"We see Africa as one of the most important emerging regions in the world," deputy national security adviser for strategic communications Ben Rhodes told reporters on a conference call Friday. He added that the administration sees "growing economic opportunities [in the continent] for increased trade and investment" by U.S. businesses.

The trip will also focus on "democracy and democratic institution-building," Rhodes said.
Rhodes acknowledged the president's "deep personal and familial connections" to Kenya and noted that Obama has visited the country as a private citizen and as a senator. But Rhodes said it "wasn’t the best time for the president to travel to Kenya" given the recent election of President Uhuru Kenyatta and Vice President William Ruto, who both face charges of crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court.
The trip has drawn some controversy at home related to its projected costs, which have varied in multiple news reports.
Rhodes said on Friday the White House can't confirm the cost because it's not being determined by the White House.
"We don't have the exact figure on costs—frankly we don't own or control those numbers," he said. "The security requirements, which make up the bulk of the cost, are determined by the Secret Service, and they don't publicly release the breakdown of the costs for these types of trips." Rhodes added that the Secret Service and White House military office determine the security costs for overseas trips of this nature.

Obama will pay tribute to former South African President and anti-apartheid revolutionary Nelson Mandela while in Africa, and he has planned a visit to Robben Island, where Mandela was imprisoned.
But as for a visit with the former president, Rhodes confirmed on Friday that the White House will allow the Mandela family to lead on that front due to Mandela's health issues. He is currently hospitalized with a lung infection.

Syrian 'rebels' behead man, execute 2 women

by: Jerome R. Corsi 
Libyan expatriate sources proven to be credible have posted a gruesome video on YouTube showing a group of Syrian “rebels” brutally beheading a man and shooting two women and tossing their bodies down a hole in the ground.
The Libyan expatriates forwarded the video to WND to make bolster their claim that the “rebel forces” about to be armed by the Obama administration are made up of radical Islamic terrorist groups with international ties to al-Qaida.

graphic video:
http://youtu.be/g6R29cEGF08 




Reliable sources have identified the Syrian Islamic terrorists in the video as members of Syria’s al-Nusra Front, a group of radical Islamic terrorists that are allied with al-Qaida in Iraq. Several of the terrorists in the video have been identified as European and are thought to be recruits to Syria from radical Islamic groups in Kosovo.
These same sources explained to WND the man beheaded in the video and the two women shot were most likely supporters of the Syrian regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and/or secular Muslims who did not embrace the goal of the al-Nursa Front to establish a religious government in Syria after deposing the Assad regime.
In June, Real Clear Politics reported that radical Islamic Jihadists from Europe and across the Middle East have streamed to Syria to obtain valuable battleground experiences.
The report also said the so-called “moderate” Syrian Free Army, composed primarily of defectors from the Syrian army, have decided to cooperate with al-Nursa fighters to destroy the Assad regime.

The incident in the video occurred in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, near the northern border with Turkey.
In May, the United Nations Security Council voted to blacklist Syria’s al-Nusra front in a decision that subjected the group to sanctions, including an arms embargo and travel bans.
The U.S. State Department designated al-Nusra as a terrorist organization last December.
Reports from Syria http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/05/24/192185/despite-word-of-split-over-al.html#.UcIpVT5AR4E indicate that among the so-called “rebel forces” fighting to topple the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the al-Nursa Front has been one of the most effective fighting groups, exerting an increasing influence over rebel tactics.
“Jabhat al-Nusra (JN) is a Syrian jihadist group fighting against Bashar Al-Assad’s Ba’athist regime, with the aim of establishing an Islamist state in Syria,” according to a strategic briefing prepared by >a href=”http://www.quilliamfoundation.org/about/”>the Quilliam Foundation, a London-based thinktank.
“With approximately 5000 members JN is by no means the largest group fighting in the conflict, although it has often been described as the most effective. There are a number of similarities between JN and al-Qaeda In Iraq (AQI), which serves as evidence of their shared history beginning in the early 2000s. The short-term strategy of JN is primarily military focused, although preparations are being made for long-term sustainability of the group, including the organization of a humanitarian support group and the procurement of heavy weaponry.

In May, Al-Jazeera reported that Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani has stated in a YouTube video posted on April 10, that: “The sons of al-Nursa Front pledge allegiance to Sheik Ayman al-Zawahiri, the former right-hand man of Osama bin Laden, currently identified as the acting head of al-Qaida.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in an interview Feb. 26, 2012, with CBS, acknowledged that Zawahiri and al-Qaida were supporting the opposition to Assad in Syria.
The Obama administration has yet to explain how weapons shipped to supply Syrian rebels will be kept out of the hands of al-Nursa and al-Qaida.
A report published by the New York Times in March documented how the CIA was already providing arms to the Syrian rebels by supplying weapons in a secret airlift involving Turkey, Jordan, and Qatar.
According to the New York Times, the secret weapons airlift had by March of this year grown to 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi, and Qatari military cargo flights landing at Esenboga Airport near Ankara, Turkey, and to a lesser degree, at other Turkish and Jordanian airports, with the weapons aimed for delivery to the rebels fighting Assad in Syria.
 

1M Brazilians fill streets with protest, violence

By JENNY BARCHFIELD 

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — More than a million Brazilians poured into the streets of at least 80 cities Thursday in this week's largest anti-government demonstrations yet, protests that saw violent clashes break out in several cities as people demanding improved public services and an end to corruption faced tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets.

At least one protester was killed in Sao Paulo state after a car rammed into a crowd of demonstrators, the driver apparently angered about being unable to drive along a street.
In Rio de Janeiro, where an estimated 300,000 demonstrators swarmed into the seaside city's central area, running clashes played out between riot police and clusters of mostly young men, their T-shirts wrapped around their faces. But several peaceful protesters were up in the crackdown, too, as police fired tear gas canisters into their midst and at times indiscriminately used pepper spray.

Thundering booms echoed off stately colonial buildings as rubber bullets and the gas were fired at fleeing crowds.
At least 40 people were injured in Rio, including protesters like Michele Menezes, a wisp of a woman whose youthful face and braces belie her 26 years. Bleeding and with her hair singed from the explosion of a tear gas canister, she said that she and others took refuge from the violence in an open bar, only to have a police officer toss the canister inside.
It exploded on top of Menezes, tore through her jeans and dug out two quarter-sized holes on the back of her thighs while also perforating a rash of small holes in her upper arm.
"I was leaving a peaceful protest and it's not the thugs that attack me but the police themselves," said Menezes, removing her wire-rim glasses to wipe her bloodshot eyes.
She later took refuge in a hotel along with about two dozen youths, families and others said they had been repeatedly hit with pepper spray by motorcycle police as they too took refuge inside a bar.
Despite the crackdown, protesters said they would not back down.
"I saw some pretty scary things, but they're not going to shake me. There's another march on the 22nd and I'm going to be there," said 19-year-old university student Fernanda Szuster.

Asked whether her parents knew that she was taking part in the protests, Szuster said that "they know and they're proud. They also protested when they were young. So they think it's great."
She added, though, that she wouldn't tell her father the details of the police violence she was a victim of. "If he knew, he would never let me leave the house again."
By Thursday evening, the number of protesters had swelled to 1 million, according local police estimates from cities across Brazil.
In Brasilia, police struggled to keep hundreds of protesters from invading the Foreign Ministry, outside of which protesters lit a small fire. Other government buildings were attacked around the capital's central esplanade. There, too, police resorted to tear gas and rubber bullets in attempts to scatter the crowds.
Clashes were also reported in the Amazon jungle city of Belem, in Porto Alegre in the south, in the university town Campinas north of Sao Paulo and in the northeastern Brazilian city of Salvador.
"This was meant to be a peaceful demonstration and it is," said artist Wanderlei Costa, 33, in Brasilia. "It's a shame some people cause trouble when there is a much bigger message behind this movement. Brazil needs to change, not only on the government level, but also on the grass roots level. We have to learn to demonstrate without violence."

The protests took place one week after a violent police crackdown on a much smaller protests in Sao Paulo galvanized Brazilians to take to the streets.
The unrest is hitting the nation as it hosts the Confederations Cup football tournament with tens of thousands of foreign visitors in attendance. It also comes one month before Pope Francis is scheduled to visit the nation, and ahead of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, raising concerns about how Brazilian officials will provide security.
Mass protests are rare in this 190 million-person country, with demonstrations generally attracting small numbers of politicized participants. The ongoing, growing marches have caught Brazilian governments by surprise, but have delighted many citizens.
"I think we desperately need this, that we've been needing this for a very, very long time," said Paulo Roberto Rodrigues da Cunha, a 63-year-old clothing store salesman in Rio.
In Salvador, police shot tear gas canisters and rubber bullets to disperse a small crowd of protesters trying to break through a police barrier blocking one of the city's streets. One woman was injured in her foot.
Elsewhere in Salvador some 5,000 protesters gathered in Campo Grand Square.
"We pay a lot of money in taxes, for electricity, for services, and we want to know where that money is," said Italo Santos, a 25-year old student as he walked with friends toward the square.

Despite the energy on the street, many protesters said they were unsure how the movement would win real political concessions. People in the protests have held up signs asking for everything from education reforms to free bus fare while denouncing the billions of public dollars spent on stadiums in advance of the World Cup and the Olympics.
"It's sort of a Catch-22," Rodrigues da Cunha said. "On the one hand we need some sort of leadership, on the other we don't want this to be compromised by being affiliated with any political party."
Earlier Thursday, the protests took on the feel of a party, especially in Sao Paulo and Rio.
People of all ages, many of them draped in flags, gathered in front of the majestic domed Candelaria church in downtown Rio, while groups elsewhere pounded out Carnival rhythms or chanted slogans targeting Rio state's governor.
At one point, a police helicopter flew over the crowd, which booed and pointed green lasers at the craft.
When shirtless youths, many of them with T-shirts wrapped round their faces, pushed and jostled their way through the crowd, people spontaneously broke out into a chant of "Without violence!"
But as has been the pattern earlier this week, the clashes began once night fell.

Several city leaders have already accepted protester demands to revoke an increase in bus and subway fares in the hopes that anti-government anger cools. In Sao Paulo, where demonstrators blocked Paulista Avenue, organizers said they would turn their demonstration into a party celebrating the lower transit fares.
But many believe the protests are no longer just about bus fares and have become larger cries for systemic changes.
President Dilma Rousseff called an emergency meeting with top advisers for Friday morning. Rousseff has been largely absent since the demonstrations broke out, making just one public statement but offering no speeches or grand gestures in an attempt to calm the situation.
"This is the start of a structural change in Brazil," said Aline Campos, a 29 year old publicist in Brasilia. "People now want to make sure their money is well spent, that it's not wasted through corruption."
___
Associated Press writers Marco Sibaja in Brasilia, Bradley Brooks and Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo and Ricardo Zuniga in Salvador contributed to this report.

More evidence of slain U.S. ambassador's secret activities

by: Aaron Klein 

JERUSALEM – A Libyan weapons dealer from a group hired to provide security to the U.S. mission in Benghazi told Reuters he has helped ship weapons from Benghazi to the rebels fighting in Syria.
The detailed account may provide more circumstantial evidence the U.S. Benghazi mission was secretly involved in procuring and shipping weapons to the Syrian opposition before the deadly attack last September that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.

According to informed Middle Eastern security officials speaking to WND on multiple occasions, the Benghazi mission was a planning headquarters for coordinating aid, including weapons distribution, to the jihadist-led rebels.
After the fall of Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi, the arming efforts shifted focus to aiding the insurgency targeting President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.
Two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack, WND broke the story that murdered U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens himself played a central role in arming rebels and recruiting jihadists to fight Assad, according to Egyptian security officials.
In November 2012, Middle Eastern security sources further described both the U.S. mission and nearby CIA annex in Benghazi as the main intelligence and planning center for U.S. aid to the rebels, which was being coordinated with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Many rebel fighters are openly members of terrorist organizations, including al-Qaida.
The information may help determine what motivated the deadly attacks in Benghazi.

In an interview with Reuters published Tuesday, Libyan warlord Abdul Basit Haroun declared he is behind some of the biggest shipments of weapons from Libya to Syria. Most of the weapons were sent to Turkey, where they were then smuggled into neighboring Syria, he said.
Haroun explained he sent a massive weapons shipment from the port in Benghazi in August 2012, days before the attack on the U.S. compound. The weapons were smuggled into Syria aboard a Libyan ship that landed in Turkey purportedly to deliver humanitarian aid.
Ismail Salabi, a commander of the February 17 Brigade, told Reuters that Haroun was a member of the Brigade until he quit to form his own brigade.
The February 17 Brigade provided external security to the attacked Benghazi U.S. compound, including the villa where Stevens lived when he was in Benghazi. Stevens held his last meeting with a Turkish diplomat in the compound and ultimately died there in the attack.
The February 17 Brigade is part of the al-Qaida-linked Ansar Al-Sharia, a militia that advocates the strict implementation of Islamic law in Libya and elsewhere.

Ansar al-Sharia initially used Internet forums and social media to claim responsibility for the Benghazi attack. Later, a spokesman for the group denied it was behind the attack.
Witnesses told reporters they saw vehicles with the group’s logo at the scene of the Sept. 11 attack and that gunmen fighting at the compound had stated they were part of Ansar al-Sharia.
Some witnesses said they saw Ahmed Abu Khattala, a commander of Ansar al-Sharia, leading the attack. Contacted by news media, Khattala denied that he was at the scene.
Meanwhile, a Libyan official speaking to Reuters said he had allowed weapons to leave the port of Benghazi for Syria.

MANPADS
Haroun told Reuters he runs the weapons smuggling operation with an associate, who helps him coordinate about a dozen people in Libyan cities collecting weapons for Syria.
Last month, WND reported the U.S. Benghazi compound was involved in weapons collection efforts.
In a largely unnoticed speech to a think tank seven months before the Benghazi attack, a top State Department official described an unprecedented multi-million-dollar U.S. effort to secure anti-aircraft weapons in Libya after the fall of Gadhafi’s regime.
The official, Andrew J. Shapiro, assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, said U.S. experts were fully coordinating the collection efforts with the Libyan opposition.
He said the efforts were taking place in Benghazi, where a leading U.S. expert was deployed.
In January, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confirmed the efforts when she told Congress the CIA was leading a “concerted effort to try to track down and find and recover … MANPADS” looted from Gadhafi’s stockpiles.
Haroun did not mention any U.S. involvement in his weapons dealings.
However, last March the New York Times reported the CIA had worked with rebel commanders to coordinate the shipment of arms to the Syrian rebels since early 2012. 

Last year, Business Insider alleged a connection between Stevens and a reported September shipment of SA-7 MANPADS and rocket-propelled grenades from Benghazi to Syria through Turkey.
Syrian rebels then reportedly began shooting down Syrian military helicopters with SA-7s.
Stevens’ last meeting on the night of the Benghazi attack was with Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin.
One source told Fox News that Stevens was in Benghazi “to negotiate a weapons transfer in an effort to get SA-7 missiles out of the hands of Libya-based extremists.”
‘Largest weapons shipment’
Fox News may find another one of its exclusive reports vindicated.
In October 2012, Fox News reported the Libyan-flagged vessel Al Entisar, which means “The Victory,” was received in the Turkish port of Iskenderun, 35 miles from the Syrian border, just five days before Stevens was killed.

The shipment, disguised as humanitarian aid, was described as the largest consignment of weapons headed for Syria’s rebels.
Fox News reported the shipment “may have some link to the Sept. 11 terror attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.”
That shipment seems to be the one described by Haroun in his Reuters article.
Both Haroun and his associate described an August 2012 shipment with weapons hidden among about 460 metric tons of aid destined for Syrian refugees.
A recent U.N. report appears to confirm that weapons were hidden in the Al Entisar.
A U.N. Panel found that the loading port for the shipment was Benghazi, that the exporter was “a relief organization based in Benghazi” and the consignee was the same Islamic foundation based in Turkey that Haroun told Reuters had helped with documentation.
Clinton misled?
Meanwhile, earlier this month Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told CNN: “I’ve actually always suspected that, although I have no evidence, that maybe we were facilitating arms leaving Libya going through Turkey into Syria. … Were they trying to obscure that there was an arms operation going on at the CIA annex? I’m not sure exactly what was going on, but I think questions ought to be asked and answered.”

In January, in the Benghazi hearings, Paul asked Clinton about weapons shipments to Turkey, as WND reported.
Paul asked Clinton: “Is the U. S. involved with any procuring of weapons, transfer of weapons, buying, selling, anyhow transferring weapons to Turkey out of Libya?
“To Turkey?” Clinton asked. “I will have to take that question for the record. Nobody has ever raised that with me.”
Continued Paul: “It’s been in news reports that ships have been leaving from Libya and that may have weapons, and what I’d like to know is the annex that was close by, were they involved with procuring, buying, selling, obtaining weapons, and were any of these weapons being transferred to other countries, any countries, Turkey included?”
Clinton replied, “Well, senator, you’ll have to direct that question to the agency that ran the annex. I will see what information is available.”
“You’re saying you don’t know?” asked Paul.
“I do not know,” Clinton said. “I don’t have any information on that.”
With additional research by Joshua Klein.

Supreme Court's authority faces stunning challenge

by: Bob Unruh 

A coalition of Christian organizations is warning that the U.S. Supreme Court does not have the power to redefine the institution of marriage, which predates government, churches and even religion.
The statement comes just as the court is expected to release its ruling on the Proposition 8 case in California and the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

In the Proposition 8 case, a homosexual judge in California ruled that the state’s voters did not have the right to limit marriage to one man and one woman. Voters approved an amendment in 2008 defining marriage only months after the state Supreme Court established same-sex marriage.
DOMA, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton, states that for federal purposes, only marriage between one man and one woman is recognized. Homosexual activists challenged the law, and President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder announced that they simply would refuse to defend it, even though it is the law of the land and they are charged with enforcing it.
The coalition today released a statement that left no doubt about the intention of its members should the Supreme Court step rule against traditional marriage.
“As Christians united together in defense of marriage, we pray that this will not happen. But, make no mistake about our resolve. While there are many things we can endure, redefining marriage is so fundamental to the natural order and the true common good that this is the line we must draw and one we cannot and will not cross,” they say.
The group includes Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant clergy and leaders.

The statement was drafted by Deacon Keith Fournier, editor of Catholic Online, and chairman of Common Good Alliance, as well as Mat Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel Action.
It was approved by pastors and other leaders who collectively represent tens of millions of Christians.
While the church leaders candidly admit they have differences on matters of doctrine and practice, they proclaimed solidarity on the issue of marriage.
“Marriage and family have been inscribed by the Divine Architect into the order of creation. Marriage is ontologically between one man and one woman, ordered toward the union of the spouses, open to children and formative of family. Family is the first vital cell of society; the first church, first school, first hospital, first economy, first government and first mediating institution of our social order. The future of a free and healthy society passes through marriage and the family,” it states.
The statement says that the since marriage “predates government,” it cannot be redefined by civil institutions, “including the United States Supreme Court.”

“Redefining the very institution of marriage is improper and outside the authority of the state,” it says. “The Supreme Court has no authority to redefine marriage.”
Cited is a 1992 Supreme Court opinion regarding abortion, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which Justice Sandra O’Connor candidly admitted as much.
Noting that while the legislative branch has authority over spending, and the executive branch controls the military, the Supreme Court’s source of authority rests only on the legitimacy of its decisions in the eyes of the people.
“If the Supreme Court were to issue a decision that redefined marriage or provided a precedent on which to build an argument to redefine marriage, the Supreme Court will thereby undermine its legitimacy,” the opinion said. “The court will significantly decrease its credibility and impair the role it has assumed for itself as a moral authority. It will be acting beyond its proper constitutional role and contrary to the natural moral law which transcends religions, culture, and time.”
The Christian leaders’ statement emphasizes marriage is “fundamental to human existence.”
“Like other natural laws or laws of physics that govern our lives, marriage predates government, and civil institutions have no authority to redefine marriage,” they say. “Marriage cannot be redefined into something it is incapable of being.”

The leaders say any attempt to do so “will result in the loss of authentic human freedom, particularly religious freedom, and will harm children and society.”
They argue marriage “as existing solely between one man and one woman was not an idea manufactured by the Christian church.”
“It precedes Christianity,” they say. “Though affirmed, fulfilled, and elevated by Christian teaching, the truth that marriage can exist only between one man and one woman is not based on religion or revelation alone, but on the natural moral law, written on the human heart and discernible through the exercise of reason.”
“They warn that experience and history “have shown us that if the government redefines marriage to grant a legal equivalency to same-sex couples, that same government will then enforce such an action with the police power of the state.”
“This will bring about an inevitable collision with religious freedom and conscience rights and does not serve the common good of society,” they say.
Church leaders such as former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey have warned lawmakers that a redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couples would lead to other less-desired results, such as polygamy and incest.
The comments from Carey were reported recently by the London Daily Mail, which said Carey told Prime Minister David Cameron that an “equal marriage” proposal would produce unwanted results.

Carey said that under the redefinition of marriage proposed by lawmakers, there would be no reason to exclude two sisters living together who want to be married, and polygamy would have to be supported.
Carey, one of the most prominent campaigners against same-sex marriage since Cameron announced his plans for it two years ago, was echoing a warning by a California Supreme Court Justice Marvin Baxter in a minority opinion when the court approved same-sex marriage.
The decision later was overruled by voters, who adopted a state constitutional amendment, Proposition 8, defining marriage as only between one man and one woman.
However, homosexuals appealed to a homosexual judge, who struck down the constitutional amendment.
Baxter wrote that the bans on incestuous and polygamous marriages “are ancient and deeprooted, and, as the majority suggests, they are supported by strong considerations of social policy.”
“Our society abhors such relationships, and the notion that our laws could not forever prohibit them seems preposterous,” he said.
“Yet here, the majority overturns, in abrupt fashion, an initiative statute confirming the equally deeprooted assumption that marriage is a union of partners of the opposite sex. The majority does so by relying on its own assessment of contemporary community values, and by inserting in our Constitution an expanded definition of the right to marry that contravenes express statutory law.”

His warning?
“Who can say that, in 10, 15 or 20 years, an activist court might not rely on the majority’s analysis to conclude, on the basis of a perceived evolution in community values, that the laws prohibiting polygamous and incestuous marriages were no longer constitutionally justified?”
In California it was Vaughn Walker who heard the Prop 8 case and was accused of pursuing a political agenda and having a conflict of interest.
In his ruling advancing same-sex marriage, Walker arrived at the following highly controversial legal findings:

• “Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians.”
• “Rather, the exclusion exists as an artifact of a time when the genders were seen as having distinct roles in society and in marriage. That time has passed.”
• “The gender of a child’s parent is not a factor in a child’s adjustment.”
• “The evidence shows beyond any doubt that parents’ genders are irrelevant to children’s developmental outcomes.”
• “Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage; marriage under law is a union of equals.”
• “Many of the purported interests identified by proponents are nothing more than a fear or unarticulated dislike of same-sex couples.” 

Staver also has warned that the “nullification” of DOMA instituted by Obama is itself a major threat.
By striking DOMA, he said, “It would set the precedent that the president can pick and choose which laws he wants to enforce and which ones he does not.”
That, he said, would make a president an “autocratic dictator” by default, as he no longer would be bound by his oath of office to enforce all laws. The possibilities? If a president didn’t like the tax code, he simply could order federal agents not to enforce it.
Staver also warned that a governmental endorsement of such alternative sexual lifestyles would create unsolvable clashes between those who want to pursue those lifestyles and the religious rights of the rest of society.
“We saw what happened in Massachusetts, and it’s just one of many, many examples of where same-sex marriage and same-sex unions come into play. Catholic charities have had to get out of the adoption ministry because they’re not going to violate their religious beliefs and place children in homes with same-sex couples. You see that with people who run bed and breakfasts, wedding photographers, cake decorators and it goes on and on and on, where you’re going to have to choose between your profession or same-sex agendas,” he said.

“Then you look at the public schools. Parental rights will be undermined. Children as young as kindergarten will be forced to have information fed to them about, not just tolerance and alternative families which is bad enough with regards to re-definition of the family, but that same-sex, aberrant sexual behavior is normative, good and healthy. That’s the kind of thing that you’re going to see in the public schools, and we’re seeing it already in some of these states like Massachusetts that have adopted same-sex marriage,” Staver said.
“This would be on a nationwide basis. It would be catastrophic. I think it would ultimately be the beginning of the end of the United States of America as we know it.”

Among the signatories of the Christian leaders’ letter:

• Mathew Staver, Liberty Counsel Action
• Deacon Keith Fournier, Common Good Alliance
• Samuel Rodriguez, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference
• James Robison, LIFE Outreach
• Father Paul Schenck, Catholics United for Life
• Kenneth Blackwell, former U.S. Ambassador to U.N. on Human Rights
• Anita Staver, Liberty Counsel
• Tony Perkins, Family Research Council
• James Dobson, Family Talk Action
• William Boykin, Kingdom Warriors Ministries
• Erwin Lutzer, Moody Church
• Colin Hanna, Let Freedom Ring
• Che Ahn, HROCK Church
• Carlos Campo, Regent University
• Richard Land, Southern Evangelical Seminary
• Paige Patterson, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
• Randolph Sly, Common Good Foundation
• Frank Pavone, Priests for Life 
• Johannes Jacobse, American Orthodox Institute
• Benjamin Carson, Pediatric Neurosurgeon
• Ron Luce, Teen Mania
• Bill Donohue, Catholic League
• Betty Robison, LIFE Today
• Jack Hayford, King’s University
• Rick Joyner, Oak Initiative
• Rick Scarborough, Vision America Action
• Carl Herbster, Advance USA
• Alveda King, Alveda King Ministries
• Star Parker, CURE
• Ruth Graham, Ruth Graham Ministries
• And hundreds more.