Meet the ‘Merchant of Death’ Freed
by the Biden Administration
Posted By: Dreadnought, 12/8/2022 3:02:05 PM
After months of negotiation, the Biden administration on Thursday freed convicted notorious arms trafficker Viktor Bout in exchange for U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner, who has been detained in Russia on drug charges. Bout had been serving a 25-year prison sentence in the U.S. In April 2012, he was found guilty of conspiring to kill Americans and U.S. officials, acquiring and exporting anti-aircraft missiles, and aiding a terrorist organization. For his illegal weapons exploits, the notorious criminal earned the moniker “Merchant of Death,” inspiring the Hollywood film Lord of War, starring Nic Cage.
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First on Fox: Democratic leadership on the House Oversight and Reform Committee abruptly canceled an upcoming hearing to investigate the spread of "climate disinformation" on social media platforms.
On Nov. 18, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee on Environment, wrote letters to four social media executives asking them to attend the hearing that had been slated for Dec. 14, according to documents obtained by Fox News Digital. Khanna invited new Twitter CEO Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and executives of TikTok and YouTube to testify.
Committee Democrats blamed the hearing cancellation Thursday on a miscommunication.
Twitter executives decided to ban then-President Donald Trump from their social media platform after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, while maintaining regular check-ins with the FBI and other federal authorities as they decided what postings should be targeted for censorship, the latest report from new company CEO Elon Musk reveals.
In one of a series of tweets Friday evening, independent journalist Matt Taibbi said internal company messages showed how Twitter’s internal standards eroded during the months leading up to Jan. 6, with high-ranking executives violating their own policies while interacting with various federal agencies.
Bari Weiss released the Twitter Files Part II on Thursday, which revealed “secret blacklists” and the shadow banning of conservatives including Dan Bongino, Charlie Kirk, and Libs of TikTok. The blacklisting also included people who were saying things against the liberal narrative on things like COVID, including Stanford professor of medicine, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, because he criticized things like school closures. Elon dropped another tantalizing tidbit about election interference and who else might have been blacklisted. He was asked if any candidate running for election had been shadowbanned.
Washington Post Joins List of News Companies
in Economic Straits After Denying a Bad Economy 11 replies
in Economic Straits After Denying a Bad Economy 11 replies
After blowing smoke about the condition of Biden’s economy, many news outlets are suffering losses.
On Thursday, close to 1,100 New York Times workers staged a strike, of sorts. The effort appears rather neutered considering it was only a 24-hour walkout, and the desperation was evident as they attempted to get readers to also join in by not consuming any Times content for the day. (Their position was further weakened as they realized the biggest challenge in this attempt was not concerning their work but in getting people to stop playing Wordle!) This barely recognized quit-snit was possibly met with shrugs based on one of the core complaints
Federal Court Blocks Biden Mandate Forcing
Religious Hospitals to Facilitate Gender Transitions 6 replies
Religious Hospitals to Facilitate Gender Transitions 6 replies
A federal court on Friday blocked a Biden administration mandate that would force religious hospitals and doctors to facilitate gender transitions against their sincerely held moral convictions.
The Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s decision to block enforcement of the rule on the grounds that “intrusion upon the Catholic Plaintiffs’ exercise of religion is sufficient to show irreparable harm,” the filing reads.
Catholic nuns, clinics, a university, and hospitals were among the plaintiffs in the case, represented by the Becket Fund. The plaintiffs all provide medical care for transgender patients but refuse to provide gender-transition surgeries
Saudi Arabia and China have reaffirmed their cooperation on the global oil market and the principle of non-interference in internal affairs during a visit aimed at deepening strategic relations, at a time when Washington’s ties with Riyadh appear increasingly frayed.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Saudi King Salman signed a series of strategic deals, including one involving Chinese tech giant Huawei, since the official state visit began on Wednesday. In a joint statement on Friday, the two sides said they “exchanged views regarding ways to reinforce and develop comprehensive strategic partnership relations between the Kingdom and China”.
The prosecutor who put Bernie Madoff in federal prison for running a Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors of billions of dollars said Friday it’s “highly unusual” for Sam Bankman-Fried to be speaking publicly about the November collapse of his crypto platform FTX amid widespread allegations of fraud.
“It’s highly unusual for a subject of a high-profile criminal investigation to be conducting media interviews and public appearances during which he discusses the conduct being investigated,”//snip//Bankman-Fried agreed Friday morning to testify next week before the House Financial Services Committee after giving numerous high-profile media interviews that the panel deemed “sufficient for testimony.”
Brittney Griner arrives in the US after
being released from Russian custody in
a prisoner exchange 26 replies
being released from Russian custody in
a prisoner exchange 26 replies
San Antonio - Brittney Griner, the American basketball star detained by Russian authorities in February, has safely returned to the United States after being released from custody in a prisoner exchange.
Griner, 32, “arrived at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, Texas early Friday … and was taken to Brooke Army Medical Center for a routine evaluation,” a State Department official told CNN.
US officials who met Griner said she was “in good spirits” and “incredibly gracious,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told CNN. Griner stepped off the plane shortly after 5:30 a.m. ET at Kelly Field.
Exclusive: The treasurer of one of the largest state pension funds in the U.S. is urging BlackRock CEO Larry Fink to resign from the investment firm over its environment, social, and governance (ESG) policies.
North Carolina State Treasurer Dale Folwell sent a letter to BlackRock's board of directors calling for Fink to step aside because the CEO's "pursuit of a political agenda has gotten in the way of BlackRock's same fiduciary duty" to its investors. "A focus on ESG is not a focus on returns and could potentially force us to violate our fiduciary duty," Folwell wrote.
"Shark Tank" investor Kevin O'Leary, while discussing fallout from crypto exchange platform FTX's bankruptcy, explained how he went from calling crypto "garbage" to it causing the "murder" of his money.
"Fact changed," he said Thursday.
After the governments of Canada, Switzerland and Australia all got behind cryptocurrency, O’Leary said he saw an opportunity.
"Wait a second," he said. The "world’s changing. I got to be an investor."
O’Leary said he felt that "getting involved" in FTX would give him "an inside seat" in the company.
The "Shark Tank" star also revealed that he lost millions after FTX collapsed. His most recent comments came just weeks after
Senator Kyrsten Sinema, formerly one of the two Democratic swing votes in the chamber, announced Friday that she is leaving the party to register as an independent.
“Everyday Americans are increasingly left behind by national parties’ rigid partisanship, which has hardened in recent years. Pressures in both parties pull leaders to the edges, allowing the loudest, most extreme voices to determine their respective parties’ priorities and expecting the rest of us to fall in line,” the moderate wrote in an op-ed for the Arizona Republic.
“This is a huge victory for Moscow over Washington,” former national security director John Bolton declared this morning on CBS. “It endangers other Americans in the future, who can be grabbed and used by bargaining chips,” he said of the swap of Brittney Griner for Viktor Bout, one of the world’s most dangerous men before his arrest and conviction.
Bolton also revealed in this clip that the Trump administration had an offer to trade Paul Whelan for Bout two years ago. They passed, and as Bolton says, “for very good reasons” (via Caleb Howe at Mediaite):
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Joe Biden: Brittney Griner an ‘Incomparable
Athlete,’ Who ‘Represents the Best
of America’ 47 replies
Athlete,’ Who ‘Represents the Best
of America’ 47 replies
President Joe Biden on Thursday celebrated the news that his administration had successfully secured the release of WNBA basketball player Brittney Griner, who was detained in Russia.
“Brittney is an incomparable athlete,” Biden said, noting she was a two-time Olympic Gold medalist for the United States.
Griner was arrested in February at a Moscow airport by Russian officials for possession of cannabis vape cartridges.
“She represents the best about America — just across the board, everything about her,” Biden said.(Photo) The Biden administration secured Griner’s release after they agreed to exchange her freedom for the release of Viktor Bout, a convicted international weapons dealer.
Former WNBA star Brittney Griner was reportedly released by Russia in a prisoner swap for a notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, according to a US official.
In February, Griner, a two-time Olympic basketball champion, was arrested by Russia and pleaded guilty to possession of cannabis vape cartridges at an airport near Moscow.
Possessing seven grams or more carries criminal penalties in Russia. Those can include up to two years of “corrective labor.” Yet Griner was charged with smuggling cannabis into Russia, which holds a prison sentence of five to 10 years. Griner was sentenced to nine
Why Does the GOP Elite Hate Its Own Base?
30 replies
It is one of the most bitter and tragic ironies of our contemporary politics that the leadership of one of America’s two major political parties, the Republican Party, utterly despises that party’s very own voting base.
The GOP elite’s scorn for its own voters has, at this point, been a long time in the making. The trend accelerated during the 2009-2011 rise of the Tea Party, a grassroots movement fueled by constitutionalism and anti-elite populism. The crustier elements of the Republican establishment ran as far away as possible from the Tea Party, and the 2012 presidential coronation of private equity plutocrat Mitt Romney effectively killed the movement.
Team Trump has sometimes compared former President Donald Trump's current quest for a non-sequential second term to two-term President Grover Cleveland's similar three election bids.
Cleveland remains our only elected president (1884) to have lost a reelection bid (1888) -- in a disputed vote -- only to be reelected four years later in 1892.
Yet Trump seems determined instead to follow a different, and bullheaded, Teddy Roosevelt model.
Roosevelt left the presidency in 1908, sat out four years, and then lost a reelection bid in 1912, split and alienated the Republican Party, and ensured the election of the progressive Woodrow Wilson.
The Georgia runoff is over. Raphael Warnock came out on top (as expected). And Republicans are once again running the “quality candidate” canard as the reason for Herschel Walker’s loss (in addition to the overblown, overused, Trump scapegoat). Yet despite the fact Walker was outspent by Warnock nearly 3 to 1 (Warnock spent $126,232,942 to Walker’s $48,455,356), Walker performed remarkably well, netting 48.6 percent of the vote to Warnock’s 51.4 percent.
This as Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp only came out in full force for Walker after he coasted to reelection in November (loaning his field organizing team to the Senate Leadership Fund — the GOP’s Senate super PAC which backed Walker).
Monday, Service Employees Internation Union Local 87 in San Francisco went out on strike. Ordinarily, a janitor’s union local striking wouldn’t make national news, but this local provides cleaning services for Twitter headquarters.
It started last week when 20 cleaning crew members were told that Friday would be the last day they were needed at Twitter headquarters. Twitter headquarters is serviced by a company called Flagship Maintenance Solutions. As expected, this company devotes part of its website to its role in mitigating climate change (huh? w*f?) and its inclusion and equity program.
From the various accounts, it seems like Twitter had opted not to renew its contract with Flagship
Grocery bills are too expensive for the average American and customers are changing their shopping habits, according to a survey released Wednesday.
The True Cost of a Grocery Shop survey conducted by Swiftly, a retail technologies company, was given to a random pool of 1,500 participants. Results measured the habits of consumers and how they navigate inflation as it drives up grocery costs.
The survey found that more than two-thirds of consumers are struggling to afford groceries. About 83% of respondents said they rely on coupons or some form of customer rewards when they shop.
Brittney Griner arrives in the US after
being released from Russian custody in
a prisoner exchange 26 replies
being released from Russian custody in
a prisoner exchange 26 replies
San Antonio - Brittney Griner, the American basketball star detained by Russian authorities in February, has safely returned to the United States after being released from custody in a prisoner exchange.
Griner, 32, “arrived at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, Texas early Friday … and was taken to Brooke Army Medical Center for a routine evaluation,” a State Department official told CNN.
US officials who met Griner said she was “in good spirits” and “incredibly gracious,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told CNN. Griner stepped off the plane shortly after 5:30 a.m. ET at Kelly Field.
Christmas canceled: Parents and media
go after holiday traditions, 'It’s getting annoying' 25 replies
go after holiday traditions, 'It’s getting annoying' 25 replies
With the holidays quickly approaching, parents, media figures and the entertainment industry are criticizing many of the traditions behind Christmas.
Even Santa himself has come under fire. Some Gen Z parents aren’t allowing their children to believe he is real, as evidenced by the hashtag #santaisntreal which has received nearly 19M views on TikTok. Many parents cite concerns that once their children find out Santa’s magic is a myth, they’ll be "traumatized."
Mother Sierra McKenzie went viral for a video she posted to TikTok stating she wouldn’t be "lying to them [her kids] about Santa,"
The first member of Generation Z to become a congressman-elect has reportedly been denied a Washington, DC, apartment due to “really bad” credit.
Democrat Maxwell Alejandro Frost will soon replace Rep. Val Demings (D) for her seat in Florida’s 10th U.S. Congressional District next month, but he will have some difficulty finding a place to hang his hat near Capitol Hill after a potential landlord denied him an apartment because of his credit score.
“Just applied to an apartment in DC where I told the guy that my credit was really bad. He said I’d be fine. Got denied, lost the apartment, and the application fee. This ain’t meant for people
President Joe Biden spoke at the 10th Annual National Gun Control Vigil Wednesday night and assured attendees he is still pushing to “limit the number of bullets than can be in a cartridge.”
Biden said this after mentioning the gun control legislation he signed into law in mid-summer 2022. After Biden mentioned his gun control legislation, he quickly added, “It’s still not enough,” and vigil attendees broke into applause. He then said, “Our work continues to limit the number of bullets that can be in a cartridge, type of weapons that can be purchased and sold, attempt to ban ‘assault weapons,’ a whole range of things that are just commonsense.”
Under a bill signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2020, California is looking into possible ways to provide restitution to Black Americans who experienced the generational effects of slavery—and the state's reparations plan might potentially benefit White-identifying individuals, some analysts have said. A nine-member Reparations Task Force was deployed to to travel across the state and develop reparation recommendations and propose solutions to its findings, which take into account the harms that Black people suffered. In a March 2022 report, the task force said that those eligible for reparations should be descendants of enslaved African Americans or of a