Mediaboss Marketing

In the latest sign the Trump administration is looking to overturn Obama-era policy at home and abroad, the U.S. military is preparing to restart a long-running military exercise with Egypt after President Barack Obama cancelled it in 2013 to protest the killing of hundreds of protesters in Cairo.

The restart next month of the biannual Bright Star exercise, a bilateral effort now focused on counterterrorism operations, comes as Egypt struggles to contain a potent insurgency on the Sinai peninsula. Though Egypt may invite other countries such as Sudan as observers, only U.S. and Egyptian forces will take the field, U.S. defense officials said.

The renewal comes just months after Trump welcomed Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to the White House in April, showering him with praise for fighting extremists at home and and in North Africa. The Obama administration struggled to craft a coherent policy toward Egypt after the 2011 uprising there, abandoning longtime U.S. support for ousted president Hosni Mubarak, then warily embracing the democratically-elected Islamist leader Mohamed Morsi, then growing distant from Sisi after the military reasserted control in 2013.

Unlike in past years, however, Bright Star will feature a smaller U.S. military footprint, a U.S. official with knowledge of the planning told Foreign Policy,with several hundred personnel taking part, as opposed to the thousands that deployed from the early 1980s until it was called off.

In previous years, hundreds of U.S. airborne troops dropped into the Egyptian desert and Marines stormed the beaches; the largest Bright Star took place in 1999 and included about 70,000 troops from 11 nations.

But theres little need for that kind of show this time around, said David Schenker, director of the Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute. Cairo has no real peer threat in the region, but its borders with Libya and Sudan are increasingly causes for concern. Instead, battling Islamist terrorists who have gobbled up parts of the Sinai peninsula is Cairos main worry yet proving a tough task for Egypts traditionally-focused military.

The work next month will be focused primarily on counterterrorism, detecting and eliminating roadside bombs, and border security operations all tasks crucial to ending the years-long insurgency in the Sinai, which has seen the influx of Islamic State fighters and funding over the past two years. The largest group in the Sinai, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, is responsible for dozens of roadside bombs and other attacks, and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in late 2014. The group currently controls large swaths of the peninsula.

The Egyptian military has been fighting and losing an insurgency in the Sinai for the last several years, Schenker said, and has shown little interest in restructuring its large and lumbering military to fight an entrenched insurgency. A smaller exercise focused on these highly technical things is the best thing that Egypt could get.

The exercise was last held in 2009, as Cairo called off the 2011 event due to the Egyptian revolution that eventually ousted Mubarak, and president Obama halted the follow-on event in 2013 after Egyptian security forces killed hundreds of civilian protesters.

Obama is widely seen as having given al-Sisi the cold shoulder. But hed started to roll back some of the penalties imposed on Egypt well before Trump took office. In March 2015 he ended the freeze on $1.3 billion in U.S.military aid, resuming the shipment of F-16 fighter planes, Abrams tanks and Harpoon missiles, and other equipment.

Photo Credit: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

Twitter Facebook Google + Reddit

View original post here:
With Obama Gone, Trump Pentagon Resumes Major Egyptian War Game - Foreign Policy (blog)

The Clean Water Act is an important piece of legislation. When enacted in the 1970s, it solved a real water quality and pollution problem throughout the nation. Moreover, as its early enforcement unfolded, Congress and even the EPA were careful to include important provisions to protect the economy. Americas farmers, in particular, were assured that normal farming practices would be protected from federal micromanaging; amendments clarified that plowing to produce crops is not regulated by the Act, and other normal farming practices do not require permits.

Lawmakers understood that wed have a hard time feeding our nation if farmers had to go through the Clean Water Act permitting process, which is long and expensive, simply for the right to grow food.

But those protections are under unprecedented assault, through a groundbreaking federal prosecution launched during the Obama Administration that has somehow continued under the Trump Administration.

The target is my familys business, Duarte Nursery, Inc., and the 500 jobs of our employees. Career prosecutors at the Justice Department and entrenched bureaucrats at the Army Corps of Engineers are seeking devastating fines, all because we planted wheat in a field we own in Northern California.

Theyre going after us because we didnt get a permit to plow, even though the Clean Water Act says no permit is needed and indeed no permit has ever been required or issued to a wheat farmer ever before; and we didnt avoid some small wet spots in our field, even though theyre similar to many others commonly farmed through by farmers all over the US (and those seasonal wetlands are still present on our property, as they were before our plowing).

From the beginning, the government put forward allegations that were grossly incorrect. A Corps of Engineers field agent accused us of deep ripping, three feet deep, permanently destroying more than 20 acres of wetlands. If true, this would have required a permit in many cases. But not only was this not true, the Corps agent avoided opportunities to find out what actually happened, and then destroyed documents in his file to prevent their disclosure to me and the public.

The governments own expert report admits that the plowing averaged four to seven inches, which does not require a permit. Undaunted, a government team of 12 experts and others had the run of the property for two weeks. They dug up 20 vernal pool wetlands, two-to-three feet deep, with a diesel excavator. At the end of their investigation, the government faced a failed theory of prosecutionthere was no deep ripping and the wetlands were all still present, even in a five year drought. But the prosecution team persisted, now with senseless metaphors: they argued that five inch plow furrows were really small mountain ranges and the plowing like a tornado. Sadly, a federal judge agreed with the government, holding us liable because our plowing moved soil back and forth and from side to side.

Now, the court is poised to hear the governments arguments to impose astonishing financial penalties. The proposed $2.8 million fine, coupled with a requirement that my business and myself personally fund over $30 million to a private wetland mitigation bank, is ruinous. It will destroy an important California family business and many jobs. It will also give the federal government unlimited power to extract wealth from family farms and rural communities nationwide.

Over the years, members of both parties in Congressin particular, but not limited to, representatives from rural areashave worked hard to sustain the farming safeguards in the law. It is widely recognized that the attack on my family business threatens those safeguards. House Judiciary Chairman Goodlatte and House Agricultural Committee Chair Conaway recently sent a strong letter to Attorney General Sessions asking him several important questions specific to this case. Iowa Senators Joni Ernst and Charles Grassley have spoken against this abusive prosecution. As stated by attorney Tony Francois of Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing my business without charge against the Corps., my case should alarm every farmer in America, and every family that values having food on their table. If the farming protection in the Clean Water Act is going to be plowed under, we may not have a lot of domestically grown food to eat.

President Trump recognized early in his campaign that the Obama Administrations illegal expansion of Clean Water Act jurisdiction, through an open-ended WOTUS rule, would be a threat to rural America. President Trumps move to repeal the Obama WOTUS rule was very important. Now we need the same attention to this prosecution against me, my family business, and, by extension, Americas farmers from coast to coast.

John Duarte is president of family owned Duarte Nursery, Inc., headquartered near Modesto.

View original post here:
Obama Is Gone, But Not His Administration's Crusade To Crush A Farmer - The Daily Caller

A campaign to identify the marchers spread on social media following the bloody right-wing rally in Charlottesville. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)

Updated 3:15 p.m.

A white nationalist who participated in the torch-lit march through the University of Virginias campus this weekendhas lost hisjob at a Berkeley, Calif., hot dog restaurant after Twitter users posted his photo and place of employment. The employee, Cole White, was identified online after he was photographed among a shouting and torch-wielding mobduring the march Friday night in Charlottesville.

After being inundated with inquiries, his former employer, Top Dog, in downtown Berkeley, posted a sign on its door that reads:Effective Saturday 12th August, Cole White no longer works at Top Dog. The actions of those in Charlottesville are not supported by Top Dog. We believe in individual freedom and voluntary association for everyone, multiple news outlets reported. The shop has a political bent of its own, as its well-known in Berkeley forthe libertarian stickers and articles posted on its walls, and website.

Top Dogissued a statement to the Washington Post that read, in part:

Colechose to voluntarily resign his employmentwith Top Dogand we acceptedhisresignation.There have been reports that he was terminated.Those reports are false.There have been reports that top dog knowingly employs racists and promotes racist theology.Thattoois false.Individual freedomand voluntaryexchangearecore to the philosophy of Top Dog.We look forward to cooking the same great food forat leastanother50 years.

Another part of the statement noted: Wedorespect our employees rightto theiropinions. They are free to make their own choicesbutmust accept the responsibilities of those choices.

When asked by The Post if White would have been permitted to keep his job had he not resigned, the shop declined to comment further.

White wasin Charlottesville for the Unite the Right rally, which turned deadly on Saturday.James Alex Fields Jr., 20, who was described as a Nazi sympathizer by one of hishigh school teachers,is accused of ramminghis car into a group of counterprotesters, injuring 19 and killingHeather Heyer,32.Two Virginia state troopers H. Jay Cullen, 48, and Berke Bates, 40 were killed while doing surveillance work during Saturdays rally when their helicopter crashed.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) on Aug. 13 said Charlottesville is "stronger" a day after violence erupted in the city. The organizer of a white nationalist rally said clashes occurred because police declined "to do their job." (Whitney Leaming,Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

[Discomfort food: Using dinners to talk about race, violence and America]

The mostly male crowd that participated in Friday nights tiki-torch-lit rally did not cover their faces, and they were widely photographed. A Twitter account,@YesYoureRacist, began posting photographs of participants and uncovering their identities. White was among the first itnamed.The account would soon identify students enrolled at the University of Nevada and Washington State University, leading both of the schools to issue statements condemning racism.

Top Dog, a Berkeley campus fixture, isnt shy about its libertarian values. The walls are covered with libertarian bumper stickers, yellowed newspaper articles urging the privatization of the postal service, and hand-lettered signs with statements like, Beware the leader and Theres no government like no government,' wrote SF Weeklyin 1996.

A section of the restaurants website is dedicated to Propergander, posting articles about sanctuary cities, nuclear war and diversity.A recent article about an anti-diversity memo circulating at Google read, in part, Jim Crow is long gone, but it seems that Progressives (which gave us Jim Crow in the first place) now are imposing what essentially is a new form of segregation, that being ideological and religious segregation that is more reminiscent of how the former USSR treated dissidents than anything we have seen in private enterprise. The website was down for a time after the weekends incidents but was online as of Monday afternoon.

[In good hands: How immigrants craft your favorite restaurant dishes]

The restaurant wrote to one Twitter user that it had been overwhelmed with inquiries about White:

The restaurants Facebook page has been deluged with complaints about White, and its Yelp page is under active cleanup alert, due to the high number of people posting negative comments about him (Yelps note says it tries to remove comments related more to news events than users experience with the business). One sample review: Great place for Neo-Nazis. For people who arent Neo-Nazis? Not so much. A hot dog is a hot dog, but a hot dog place thatnot only employs Neo-Nazis but posts alt-right screeds on their webpage is a place that makes me want to vomit. But if you hate minorities, you might have a friend in Berkeleys Top Dog.

By the way, the hot dogs arekosher-style.

Charlottesville residents respond to the violence that erupted in their city Aug. 12. (Elyse Samuels,Zoeann Murphy/The Washington Post)

More from Food:

The new political battleground: Your restaurant receipt

Restaurants show diners what a day without immigrants tastes like

Discomfort food: Using dinners to talk about race, violence and America

See the article here:
Charlottesville white nationalist demonstrator loses job at libertarian hot dog shop - Washington Post

The Libertarian Party is in full damage control mode after sparking backlash by praising North Korea as an example of more freedom than the United States for its marijuana laws.

In a now-deleted Aug. 7 tweet, the party wrote: Its sad that we can look to #NorthKorea for an example of more freedom than the United States. The tweet linked to a Business Insider article that actually undercuts the argument that North Korea has laxer marijuana laws than the United States.

Screenshot/Twitter

After a wave of criticism online, the party deleted the tweet Sunday night after leaving it up for almost an entire week and issued an apology (although the apology tweet now appears to have been deleted as well.)

The Libertarian Partys official New Hampshire arm sent the exact same tweet praising North Korea on August 7. That tweet has not been deleted and remains on Twitter.

Contrary to widespread rumors online, the Business Insider article stated that marijuana appears to be illegal in North Korea.

The Libertarian Party has struggled to establish itself as a credible third party.

The party convention last summer turned into a spectacle after a candidate for party chairman stripped down to a thong during his two-minute speech.

WATCH:

Read the original here:
Libertarian Party In Damage Control Mode After Praising North Korea As Example Of Freedom - The Daily Caller

Augustus Invictus, a former Libertarian Party candidate for U.S. Senate from Orlando most famous for saying he sacrificed a goat and drank its blood, had an important role in the white nationalist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on Saturday.

Invictus, 34, was listed as a featured marcher for the Saturday event, which was roundly condemned after marchers carried Nazi flags, performed Hitler salutes and chanted white supremacist and anti-Semitic sayings while carrying torches. He could not be reached for comment Monday.

Invictus lost the 2016 Libertarian primary for U.S. Senate in Florida to Paul Stanton, but not before state Chairman Adrian Wyllie resigned in protest. The Libertarian Party of Seminole County also disbanded and its chair, Don Menzel, resigned in protest of his candidacy. Wyllie alleged at the time Invictus wanted to lead a civil war in the country, recruit neo-Nazis to the party and supported a eugenics program.

Invictus denied he had white supremacist sympathies at the time, but the Tampa Bay Times reported Monday white nationalist leader Richard Spencer credited Invictus with writing a first draft of the Charlottesville Statement.

The statement, according to the Times, has tenets including, Jews are an ethno-religious people distinct from Europeans ... whites alone defined America as a European society and political order .. [and] the so-called 'refugee crisis' is an invasion, a war without bullets, taking place on the fields of race, religion, sex and morality.

Spencer is hoping to speak at the University of Florida on Sept. 12, according to student newspaper The Daily Alligator. UF President Kent Fuchs wrote in an email the university has a First Amendment obligation to let him do so.

Invictus, a former attorney who voluntarily gave up his eligibility to practice law in March, has been active on the political scene in Central Florida this year. In May, he spoke before the Orlando City Council meeting in May against removing the Confederate Johnny Reb monument. The statue was ultimately moved to a cemetery.

In a YouTube video posted in July, Invictus revealed he was leaving the Libertarian party and registering as a Republican.

Countless millions of Americans are beginning to lament the leftward shift in their homeland, and the great awakening is upon us, he said in his video. Let us aim our rifles in the right direction, let us fight beside each other rather than against each other. Let us unite the right wing of American politics at long last, in order to secure our country and its civilization.

In Charlottesville, a counterprotester, Heather Heyer, was killed and others injured Saturday after a car ran into them following the rally. An Ohio man has been charged with second-degree murder and other charges.

President Donald Trump was criticized, including by members of the Republican Party, for not specifically condemning white supremacists and neo-Nazis by name. But on Monday, Trump specifically denounced those groups, saying, We condemn in the strongest possible terms, this display of hatred, bigotry, and violence."

In 2015, Invictus said he had walked from Central Florida to the Mojave Desert two years earlier and spent a week fasting and praying. In a pagan ritual to give thanks when he returned home, he said he killed a goat and drank its blood.

I did sacrifice a goat. I know that's probably a quibble in the mind of most Americans, he said at the time. I sacrificed an animal to the god of the wilderness ... Yes, I drank the goat's blood.

He also contended he had been investigated by the FBI and other law enforcement because of his political views. He renounced his citizenship in one of his posted writings, and in another he prophesied a great war, saying he would wander into the wilderness and return bearing revolution.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. slemongello@orlandosentinel.com, 407-418-5920 or @stevelemongello

White nationalist Richard Spencer scheduled to speak at UF next month

See original here:
Goat-blood drinking Orlando man had key billing for Charlottesville rally - Orlando Sentinel