Today's News: April 10, 2018

World News

The Latest: Saudis want action over Syria chemical attack
Washington Post – Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister says those responsible for a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria must be “held accountable.”
Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir would not say how or whether Saudi forces could join an eventual U.S.-French military operation in Syria in response.
Speaking on Tuesday to reporters in Paris, Al-Jubeir said Saudi Arabia is “greatly concerned” about the attack Saturday in Douma, adding, “we are discussing with our allies the steps to respond.”

US will act against ‘monster’ Assad with or without UN ? Haley
What Really Happened – The US will act against the Syrian government with or without a UN blessing, US envoy Nikki Haley told the Security Council, blaming Russian “obstructionism” for allowing the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria and beyond.
“We are beyond showing pictures of dead babies. We are beyond appeals to conscience. We have reached the moment when the world must see justice done,” Haley declared to the Security Council on Monday, accusing Russia of backing the “monster” [Bashar] Assad, who was murdering children with chemical weapons.
Haley, however, spoke of the attack as if it and the Syrian government’s culpability were proven facts. If the UN refused to follow Washington’s lead and intervene in Syria due to “Russia’s obstructionism,” Haley said, the US will go it alone.

Saudi Arabia to Remain a Defendant in 9/11 Lawsuit, U.S. Judge Rules
Judicial Watch – Days before Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman toured the U.S. this month a federal judge handed Saudi Arabia a blow by rejecting the Arab nation’s motion to be eliminated as defendant in a huge 9/11 lawsuit that’s gaining tremendous steam. The media has preferred to focus on the prince’s historic visit—a carefully planned jaunt aimed at mending his country’s image—with Hollywood heavyweights, billionaire philanthropists, President Donald Trump, top government officials and tech giants even though the lawsuit is just as newsworthy.

After China’s massive drill, US patrols disputed South China Sea
Reuters – In a span of 20 minutes, 20 F-18 fighter jets took off and landed on the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier, in a powerful display of military precision and efficiency.
The nuclear-powered warship, leading a carrier strike group, was conducting what the U.S. military called routine training in the disputed South China Sea on Tuesday, headed for a port call in the Philippines, a defence treaty ally.
The United States is not alone in carrying out naval patrols in the strategic waterway, where Chinese, Japanese and some Southeast Asian navies operate, possibly increasing tensions and risking accidents at sea.
China’s growing military presence in the waters has fuelled concern in the West about Beijing’s end game.
The United States has criticised China’s apparent militarisation of manmade islands and carried out regular air and naval patrols to assert its right to freedom of navigation in stretches of a sea China claims largely as its own.

U.S. News, Politics & Government

South Carolina Introduces Secession Bill In Response To Latest Attacks On Gun Owner Rights
Freedom Outpost – The US occupied state of South Carolina, at least that is what I call my home state, is once again presenting a front just as she did against the tyrant Abraham Lincoln before the War of Northern Aggression. Three House representatives introduced a bill that would allow for representatives to debate the issue of secession “if the federal government confiscates legally purchased firearms in this State.”
The bill was sponsored by Republican Representative Mike Pitts (Laurens) and was co-sponsored by Republican Representatives Jonathon Hill (Anderson) and Ashley Trantham (Greenville).
While Pitts acknowledges that the bill has no chance of passing this year, he referred to the issue of secession as a defense of the Bill of Rights.
“Without a Bill of Rights, our nation is not what it is,” Pitts said. “I see a lot of stuff where people even talk about totally repealing the Second Amendment, which separates us from the entire rest of the world.”

Sacramento police issue new directive on muting body cameras
Townhall – Sacramento police have issued their first written policy on when officers can turn off body cameras after two officers muted their microphones following the fatal shooting of an unarmed man in his grandparents’ backyard.
Deputy Chief Ken Bernard discussed the new memo Monday at a meeting of the Community Police Review Commission after it was issued to officers last week.
Body camera footage of the killing of 22-year-old Stephon Clark reveals that two officers were told to mute their microphones several minutes after the shooti

Tom Bossert, Trump’s homeland security adviser, resigns
NBC – President Donald Trump’s homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert, has resigned, the White House said Tuesday, making him the latest in a long line of senior officials to leave the administration.
On Monday night, Bossert was socializing with current and former U.S. Intelligence officials at a conference in Sea Island, Georgia, and a source close to him told NBC News that the adviser was unaware of any intention at the White House to seek his resignation, and that he had no plans to quit.
“New team,” the source said, without further explanation.

Mark Zuckerberg Testimony: A Critical Test for Facebook
New York Times – Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has arrived on Capitol Hill for his much-anticipated appearance before members of Congress starting Tuesday afternoon. In two days of hearings, he will face tough questions on how and why the company failed to protect the delicate data of many millions of its users.
This is Mr. Zuckerberg’s first appearance before Congress and his performance will be critical to the company’s future. His responses about the company’s ability to protect its users will be closely scrutinized by lawmakers and regulators as well as competitors, Facebook employees and the billions of people who use the platform across the globe.

The Slippery Slope To A Constitution-Free America
John Whitehead – “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”—Benjamin Franklin
The ease with which Americans are prepared to welcome boots on the ground, regional lockdowns, routine invasions of their privacy, and the dismantling of every constitutional right intended to serve as a bulwark against government abuses is beyond unnerving.
I am referring at this particular moment in time to President Trump’s decision to deploy military forces to the border in a supposed bid to protect the country from invading bands of illegal immigrants.
This latest attempt to bamboozle the citizenry into relinquishing even more of their rights is commonly referred to as letting the wolves guard the henhouse.
Never mind that using the U.S. military as a police force constitutes a direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. Never mind that America’s police have already been transformed into a standing army. Never mind that the borders have always been porous—a fact that the government and its corporate partners profit from greatly when convenient. Never mind that Trump’s infatuation with heavy-handed military and police power could pave the way for far greater threats to our liberties than a few underfed, unemployed migrants entering the country.
We are long past the stage where the government—at any level—abides by restrictions on its powers.
What we are dealing with is a run-away government hyped up on its own power, whose policies are dictated more by paranoia than need.

POTUS Trump FURIOUS After Finding Out Rosenstein Signed Off on FBI Raid of Michael Cohen “Attorney-Client Privilege is Dead!”
Gateway Pundit – FBI agents raided the office of one of Trump’s personal lawyers Michael Cohen on Monday at the request of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
They were looking for dirt on Stormy Daniels and seized attorney-client privileged communications between Trump and Cohen.
According to the Washington Post, FBI agents took Cohen’s computer, phone and personal financial records as part of the search of his office at Rockefeller Center.
Also, according to the New York Times, a special team of agents will be reviewing documents because conversations between lawyers and clients are protected in majority of cases.
President Trump immediately blasted AWOL AG Sessions and said the FBI raid is “an attack on our country” to a pool of reporters.

Parallels Between The Civil Rights Movement And Denials Of Self-Determination Regarding Vaccines
Activist Post – April 4, 2018 was the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., a true and steadfast civil rights activist. Others also have made various sacrifices for equality of rights—also known as “civil rights”—for minorities and people of color.
There are definite parallels between the civil rights movement of the blacks in order to attain their civil rights and the current vaccine safety issues due to suppressive/tyrannical mandates applied to self-determination regarding one’s health, especially the inalienable right to refuse neurotoxic chemicals and poisons injected with vaccines/vaccinations, which scientifically have been proven to cause autoimmune diseases, Autism Spectrum Disorder, but have not been proven to be safe nor effective in not causing cancers; not interfering with fertility; nor being teratogenic—candid statements which appear in vaccine package inserts.
During all those years slavery was practiced in colonial days and until the Civil War, blacks were abused just as innocent infants, toddlers, teens, adults and senior citizens are abused from health harms vaccine manufacturers caution against as contraindications and adverse reactions in vaccine package inserts, and which are verified as happening in the CDC’s VAERS reports by the hundreds of thousands, and the almost $4 BILLION paid to vaccinees for vaccine damages and/or deaths.
However, federal, state and local health agencies ignore those documented health harms, just as slave masters continued to abuse blacks, while blacks were denied their civil rights for a hundred years after the Civil War ended until Dr. King launched the Civil Rights movement.
Just as blacks were physically, emotionally and legally abused, so does the administration of toxic vaccines mandate what amounts to assault and battery for those who do not want to partake of toxic vaccinations for themselves and/or their children, or are legally prosecuted, especially when their right to self-determination is stipulated as a civil and political right.

Economy & Business

China’s Xi renews vow to open economy, cut tariffs as U.S. trade row deepens
Reuters – Chinese President Xi Jinping promised on Tuesday to open the country’s economy further and lower import tariffs on products like cars, in a speech seen as an attempt to defuse an escalating trade dispute with the United States.

Science & Technology

Facebook Launches ‘Data Abuse Bounty’ Program To Have Community Help Nab Potential Bad Actors
Daily Caller – Facebook is launching a data abuse bounty program, meaning it will pay average users who can prove they found any evidence of others misusing the platform for political influence purposes, the company announced Tuesday.
While the tech giant has a pre-existing bug bounty program, a fairly popular cybersecurity mechanism, the new one tailored toward platform manipulation appears to be an arguably novel idea.

Frankenstein experiments combine human and animal DNA in the name of “science”
NaturalNews – There are not too many subjects which remain controversial in modern society. It seems like everywhere you look there is a person or group pushing for the right to do pretty much what they want. And yet, there remains one subject which is highly controversial and will elicit very strong feelings one way or the other from pretty much anyone who is asked: The genetic engineering of animals in the name of science.
Now they have gone a step further, however, creating embryos that are both human and animal, and this has taken the debate about whether or not genetic engineering is ethical to a whole new level.
Scientific teams around the world, including in Japan and the United States, are attempting to “grow” human organs in farm animals for transplanting into sick people who desperately need them.

Health

New way of defining Alzheimer’s aims to find disease sooner
The Wichita Eagle – Government and other scientists are proposing a new way to define Alzheimer’s disease — basing it on biological signs, such as brain changes, rather than memory loss and other symptoms of dementia that are used today.
The move is aimed at improving research, by using more objective criteria like brain scans to pick patients for studies and enroll them sooner in the course of their illness, when treatments may have more chance to help.

Cancer radiation “treatment” claims proven FALSE: New study proves higher doses do not improve survival in prostate cancer patients
NaturalNews – Radiation therapy isn’t anybody’s idea of a good time, but each year, thousands of people undergo the treatment in hopes of curing their cancer. If it can save your life, the side effects are worth it, right? Unfortunately, there’s one small problem with this line of reasoning: Radiation does not always improve a person’s chances of survival, which makes you wonder why it is being given in the first place in some cases.
Even in cases where radiation might be helpful, more is not necessarily better. Indeed, a newly released study indicates that higher doses of radiation do not improve the survival rate for many prostate cancer patients over standard radiation treatment. Researchers from the Washington University of Medicine looked at 104 radiation therapy oncology groups in North America. The study involved around 1,500 patients total who fall into the prostate cancer category of intermediate risk, which is the most common classification.
It took the researchers ten years to enroll enough patients into the trial. This is the first study that is considered big enough to determine whether the improvement measurements caused by higher radiation doses that have been found in past studies – such as lower levels of the prostate-specific antigen and slower tumor growth – actually have any impact on patients’ survival.
n addition, those who were given the higher doses experienced more side effects, like rectal bleeding and urinary irritation, even years after their treatment had ended.

A year after D.C. passed its controversial assisted suicide law, not a single patient has used it
Washington Post – Nearly a year after the District enacted a law allowing terminally ill patients to end their lives — over the objections of congressional Republicans, religious groups and advocates for the disabled — not a single patient has used it.
And just two of the approximately 11,000 physicians licensed to practice in the District have registered to help patients exercise their rights under the law. Only one hospital has cleared doctors to participate.
Mary Klein, a D.C. resident in the final stages of cancer who became the public face of the movement, says she hasn’t been able to find a willing doctor.
“They don’t want to be known as the doctor who gives out death prescriptions,” said Omega Silva, a retired physician in the District and a Compassion and Choices volunteer.
The group has been talking to local health officials about revisiting these rules, and D.C. Council members are considering changes.