Breitbart – by John Hayward

China’s efforts to exert political and cultural influence in Australia produced a major scandal with the fall of Senator Sam Dastyari, who took money from a billionaire linked to the Chinese government and ended up parroting Beijing’s propaganda line on the South China Sea.

The United States Senate recently convened a bipartisan commission to study Chinese influence efforts, which include meddling in Western higher education as well as politics. Now the Economist warns that China’s “sharp power” is cutting into Europe as well.   Continue reading “China’s ‘Sharp Power’ Cuts into Western Societies from Australia to America”

ABC News

Republican Roy Moore filed a lawsuit to try to stop Alabama from certifying Democrat Doug Jones as the winner of the U.S. Senate race.

The court filing occurred about 14 hours ahead of Thursday’s meeting of a state canvassing board to officially declare Jones the winner of the Dec. 12 special election. Jones defeated Moore by about 20,000 votes.   Continue reading “Roy Moore files lawsuit to block Alabama Senate result”

RT

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday’s blast in a St. Petersburg store was a terrorist attack. Thirteen people were injured when an improvised explosive device went off in the busy supermarket.

Six people are still in hospital after the explosion in St. Petersburg, the city’s deputy governor Anna Mityanina tweeted on Thursday. The condition of five of the eight victims is of intermediate severity, and the rest are said to be in a satisfactory condition.  Continue reading “Putin: Wednesday’s blast in St. Petersburg store a terrorist attack”

Mail.com

PINE VALLEY, Calif. (AP) — California legalizes marijuana for recreational use Monday, but that won’t stop federal agents from seizing the drug — even in tiny amounts — on busy freeways and backcountry highways.

Marijuana possession still will be prohibited at eight Border Patrol checkpoints in California, a reminder that state and federal laws collide when it comes to pot. The U.S. government classifies marijuana as a controlled substance, like heroin and LSD.  Continue reading “As California legalizes pot, laws collide at US checkpoints”

Mail.com

ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — Goodhearted neighbors heartbroken over the rising number of homeless in their communities are feeding and showering those in need, hoping to make a difference. But some question whether they’re doing more harm than good by helping the homeless get some of their most basic needs met outdoors.

The debate over how to help is raging up and down communities on the West Coast that are grappling with a rise in homelessness. In California’s Orange County, neighbors say they believe the assistance is drawing more homeless to a riverbed encampment in Anaheim and a nightly meal for the poor at a state beach in Dana Point.  Continue reading “Food, showers, tents: Does the help help the homeless?”

Mail.com

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma, a state with one of the busiest death chambers in the country in recent decades, will enter its third year without an execution in 2018 while prison officials and state attorneys fine tune its procedure for putting condemned inmates to death.

Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter said last week he was planning to meet with top prison officials and that he expected more clarity on the state’s new lethal injection protocols “in the next two or three weeks.”   Continue reading “Once busy Oklahoma death chamber stays quiet into 3rd year”

Fox News

A U.S. Border Patrol agent was wounded after being struck by a bullet fired from Mexico, authorities said Wednesday.

The agent, whose name was not released, was shot from the Mexican side of the Rio Grande River near Brownsville where he was assigned to patrol it by boat, according to the Brownsville Herald.   Continue reading “Border Patrol agent wounded from bullet shot from Mexican side, agency says”

Yahoo News

PHOENIX (Reuters) – Sam Kazemi stood over the old man’s corpse. Nearby lay pliers, a scalpel and a motorized saw designed to cut drywall and pipe.

On a busy day, Kazemi might harvest body parts from five or six people who had donated their bodies to science. On this day in November 2013, the corpse before Kazemi typified the donors who gave their remains to his employer, Biological Resource Center.  Continue reading “Special Report: A business where human bodies were butchered, packaged and sold”

Natural News – by JD Heyes

As initially reported by The Gateway Pundit, an Antifa thug-wannabe was mowed down by a pickup truck on Saturday as he/she fled a group of patriotic Americans who were confronting members of a group whose activities our own Department of Homeland Security has designated as domestic terrorist violence.

After running willy-nilly into the truck’s lane — the driver had no time whatsoever to stop, as you’ll see in the video — it was discovered that the Antifa thug was armed with a knife. (In the video, Patriot Prayer members were heard informing others that he/she had a weapon.)   Continue reading “Armed Antifa nut job runs into oncoming traffic, gets plowed by a pickup truck, then BLAMES Trump supporters for his own stupidity”

Washington Times

The woman Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee accused of racism is a celebrated photojournalist who helped document human-rights abuses in war-torn Guatemala during the 1980s.

Jean-Marie Simon, whose first-class seat on a United Airlines flight was given to Ms. Jackson Lee, Texas Democrat, lived and worked in Guatemala during the turbulent decade that saw the military seize control of the government in a coup. Hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans were killed or “disappeared” during the conflict.   Continue reading “Woman accused of racism by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee is human-rights activist”

Here’s one woman’s very positive perspective that lays low some of the beliefs of feminism:

“One of the foundational beliefs of feminists is patriarchy. … The motivations behind that system were about survival for both sexes and in particular children and society’s. They were not systems of oppression that singled out women, that gave men all of the power in society and where men privileged themselves and men that they had never even met at the expense of their own wives, daughters, sisters, mothers. And this is really the foundation of feminist belief: is that men and men alone constructed a society that operates to subjugate, subordinate, and oppress women for the benefit of all men. Continue reading “Karen Straughan, In Defense of Men”

True Pundit

The Congresswoman should focus more on U.S. history instead of the first class seat she is going to swipe on her next flight.

You wonder how clowns like this get elected to Congress.   Continue reading “Congressional First-Class-Airline-Seat Hijacker Sheila Jackson Lee Claims the U.S. Constitution is 400 Years Old”

Of Two Minds – by Charles Hugh Smith

The wrong people–rebels, outsiders, nerds and techies– got on the cryptocurrency boat while their insider/rentier “betters” blew it and are now raging bitterly onshore.

But money and wealth are nothing but more sedate reflections of the same dynamics that drive speculative manias. Much has been written about cognitive biases and thinking fast and slow, but these explorations do not exhaust the psychology underpinning money, wealth and speculative manias.   Continue reading “Is One Reason Why the Status Quo Disdains Bitcoin Is the “Wrong People Are Getting Rich”?”

LA Times – by Kate Morrissey

So many people fleeing persecution in their home countries have asked for help in San Ysidro in recent weeks that federal officials have not been able to process all of them, leaving some stranded and running out of money while they wait in Tijuana.

U.S. border officials are trying to work through the backlog, but they can go only as fast as migrants can be processed and moved from temporary holding cells to immigration detention.   Continue reading “San Diego border crossings overwhelmed by asylum seekers: ‘We can’t give up’”

Zero Hedge – by Tyler Durden

The Trump Administration quietly issued an Executive Order (EO) last Thursday which allows for the freezing of US-housed assets belonging to foreign individuals or entities deemed “serious human rights abusers,” along with government officials andexecutives of foreign corporations (current or former) found to have engaged in corruption – which includes the misappropriation of state assets, the expropriation of private assets for personal gain, and corruption related to government contracts or the extraction of natural resources.   Continue reading “New Trump Executive Order Targets Clinton-Linked Individuals, Lobbyists And Perhaps Uranium One”

Fox 9 News

(KMSP) – International Falls, Minnesota woke up to a temperature of -36F at 6 a.m. Wednesday morning breaking the previous record low for Dec. 27 of -32F set in 1924, according to the National Weather Service office in Duluth. That -36 is the actual temperature, not a wind chill!

According to state records, the -36 morning in International Falls is only about halfway to the state record low temperature of -60 in Tower, Minnesota on Feb. 2, 1996. The all-time record low for International Falls is -55F, set in January 1909.   Continue reading “International Falls, Minnesota drops to record low -36F”

Natural News – by JD Heyes

The ‘Happiest Place on Earth’ isn’t really so happy for everyone, including some children — if you can believe that — which is ironic as can be, given that the entire Disney franchise began as a wondrous, child-based, family-oriented enterprise offering clean, wholesome, traditional values-based entertainment.

That’s why it shocked so many people when they learned recently that Disney exec, Jon Heely, was suspended without pay by the entertainment giant after being arrested on felony child sex abuse charges.   Continue reading “DISNEY executive charged with felony child sex abuse … The empire of Disney has always had a child exploitation secret”