From the Trenches World Report

ProPublica – by Conner Sheets

Shortly after Phil Sims became the sheriff of Marshall County, Alabama, at 12 a.m. on Jan. 14, he found a cardboard box in a storage closet containing five government-issued smartphones, each with multiple holes drilled clear through them.

It was the first time Sims had been allowed to enter the sheriff’s office, a red-brick building overlooking Lake Guntersville, a foggy bass-fishing mecca, since he defeated longtime Sheriff J. Scott Walls in the June primary election.  Continue reading “Wasted Funds, Destroyed Property: How Sheriffs Undermined Their Successors After Losing Reelection”

OZY – by Jamil Anderlini

Earlier this year, a U.S. congressional committee commissioned a report on China’s development of “smart cities,” with a particular focus on whether they were smarter than their American counterparts.

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission’s (USCC) request for submissions was revealing because it showed that, despite the hype, not much is known about the fruits of China’s efforts to build such cities. Smart cities are highly digitally connected and use the latest technology to manage services.  Continue reading “The Dark Side to China’s Smart Cities: Everyone’s Being Watched”

The Guardian – by Oliver Laughland, February 17, 2016

Yusef Salaam was 15 years old when Donald Trump demanded his execution for a crime he did not commit.

Nearly three decades before the rambunctious billionaire began his run for president – before he called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States, for the expulsion of all undocumented migrants, before he branded Mexicans as “rapists” and was accused of mocking the disabled – Trump called for the reinstatement of the death penalty in New York following a horrific rape case in which five teenagers were wrongly convicted. Continue reading “Donald Trump and the Central Park Five: the racially charged rise of a demagogue”

Press TV

US National Security Adviser John Bolton has blamed foreign countries and the mainstream media for the discord in the Donald Trump administration.

In an interview at The Wall Street Journal’s CFO Network event, moderator John Bussey asked Bolton to clarify the contradictory messages issued by the White House on North Korea and Iran in recent weeks amid reports of infighting in the Trump administration. Continue reading “Bolton blames foreign countries for discord in White House”

Gateway Pundit – by Joseph Curl

The National Park Service has quietly gotten rid of signs at Glacier National Park in Montana that warned visitors the beautiful ice fields they were beholding will “all be gone” by 2020.

The signs were installed during the administration of Barack Obama and told park goers that global warming was so dire that what they were seeing would soon be gone, melted away.  Continue reading “Glacier National Park Quietly Ditches Signs Saying Glaciers Will ‘All Be Gone’ By 2020”

KBTX TV 3

NAVASOTA, Tex. (KBTX) – The ongoing debate continues on a planned bullet train from Dallas to Houston. The legislative session in Austin recently wrapped up, and proposed legislation to fight the train ultimately didn’t pass.

Texas Central said their railroad plan is rolling along after a successful legislative session, despite those efforts to stop them. This year, more bills were filed than ever before. Continue reading “Texas Central, landowners, legislature react to Legislative session”

The Great Recession

A bump from Donald Trump’s thump on Mexico’s head is causing the US stock market to swell this week. Trump tariffied the market last week because his new threat against all things Mexican seemed to say Trump might use tariffs as leverage to get anything he wants. Agent Orange apparently got what he wanted — though it remains unclear whether he got anything that wasn’t already in the offing, but he says he did — so the market’s knock on the head is healing this week.  Continue reading “Breaking China Not as Easy as Toppling Tijuana”

Desert Peace – by Carolyn L. Karcher

“Do you think Judaism will ever recover from having been hijacked by Zionism?” a friend recently asked me.

I have wrestled with a similar question for many years: how can the ethical precepts of Judaism—pursue justice, love your neighbor, love the stranger, repair the world—be reconciled with Zionism? Any Judaism I can believe in is at odds with this nationalist ideology, which claims that only a state controlled by Jews and privileging them over non-Jews can protect them against anti-Semitism and the threat of another Holocaust.  Continue reading “Long past time to reclaim Judaism from Zionism”

Dallas News – by Lauren McGaughy

AUSTIN — Gov. Greg Abbott signed a new law Monday that clears up which CBD products are legal in Texas and will also allow local farmers to grow hemp as a crop.

The law, which received bipartisan support in the state Legislature, goes into effect immediately.  Continue reading “Gov. Greg Abbott signs law legalizing hemp production, CBD products in Texas”

Common Dreams – by Eoin Higgins

The latest scandal from the President Donald Trump administration involves secretive foreign investments in a company in which the president’s son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner has a stake.

As The Guardian reported Monday, real estate speculation corporation Cadre, which was co-founded by Kushner, has received at least $90 million in overseas capital since 2017.  Continue reading “‘Corruption in Plain Sight’: Jared Kushner Firm Took in $90 Million From Unnamed Foreign Entities Since 2017”

Mint Press News – by Whitney Webb

WASHINGTON — With nearly 6 million Americans unemployed and regular bouts of layoffs in the U.S. tech industry, major American tech companies like Google, Microsoft and Intel Corporation are nonetheless moving key operations, billions in investments, and thousands of jobs to Israel — a trend that has largely escaped media attention or concern from even “America first” politicians. The fact that this massive transfer of investment and jobs has been so overlooked is particularly striking given that it is largely the work of a single leading neoconservative Republican donor who has given millions of dollars to President Donald Trump.  Continue reading “How NeoCon Billionaire Paul Singer Is Driving the Outsourcing of US Tech Jobs to Israel”

AP

DETROIT (AP) — Hundreds of boxes. Millions of records. From Michigan to New Mexico this month, attorneys general are sifting through files on clergy sex abuse, seized through search warrants and subpoenas at dozens of archdioceses.

They’re looking to prosecute, and not just priests. If the boxes lining the hallways of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s offices contain enough evidence, she said, she is considering using state racketeering laws usually reserved for organized crime. Prosecutors in Michigan are even volunteering on weekends to get through all the documents as quickly as possible.  Continue reading “As bishops gather, prosecutors step up scrutiny of church”

Breitbart – by John Binder

Mass legal immigration is necessary to replace older Americans in the workforce, globalist-aligned business interests and the open borders lobby say.

Analysis from Axios this week noted that elected officials are in a “scare” over the nation’s aging population coupled with declining birth rates and no increased incentives for Americans to have children.  Continue reading “Globalist Front: Mass Immigration Necessary to Replace Dying Americans”

The College Fix – by Christian Schneider

In the wake of a recently filed lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana bias response team, The College Fix reviewed the 265 bias complaints the public university fielded during the last year. The lawsuit charges the university’s Bias Assessment Response Team (BART) with being a literal “speech police” force.  Continue reading “At University of Illinois, 265 bias complaints enforced by literal ‘speech police’”