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Newt Gingrich, Michael Flynn Asked To Testify In Georgia Election Interference Probe https://digitalalaskanews.com/newt-gingrich-michael-flynn-asked-to-testify-in-georgia-election-interference-probe/ A Georgia prosecutor investigating potential 2020 election interference sought testimony from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Donald Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn. According to paperwork filed on Friday, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis brought petitions seeking testimony next month from Gingrich and Flynn, as well as former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann.  Other Trump allies who have faced or could face the special grand jury include lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro, former chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who is currency challenging a subpoena in court. Neither Gingrich, Flynn, nor Herschmann has commented on the petitions. The petition seeking Gingrich’s testimony hinges on “information made publicly available” by the January 6 committee, regarding the former House Speaker’s involvement in planning to run ads that perpetuated the false 2020 election fraud claims. The petition also states that Gingrich had a hand in the fake electors scheme. The petition seeking Flynn’s testimony said the former national security adviser was at the infamous December 18, 2020 White House meeting—along Powell, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Trump—to discuss the ideas of seizing voting machines and appointing Powell to lead the legal efforts to contest the presidential election results. “The meeting has been called unhinged, not normal, and the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said, describing the gathering during the January 6 hearings. On November 25, 2020, then-president Trump pardoned Flynn, after he pleaded guilty—not once, but twice—to lying to the F.B.I. about his conversations with a Russian ambassador. (He was the only member of the Trump administration to be charged in the Mueller investigation.) The petition seeking Herschmann’s testimony said that the former White House lawyer and senior adviser had “multiple conversations” with Eastman, Giuliani, Powell “and others known to be associated with the Trump Campaign, related to their efforts to influence the results of the November 2020 elections in Georgia and elsewhere.”  Willis said that she will be taking a hiatus from public activity around the case until after the midterm elections next month, according to the Associated Press. Read More Here

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H https://digitalalaskanews.com/h-9/ HBCU football schedules and how to watch in Week 6 of the 2022 season. SWAC Schedule in Week 6 Florida A&M at South Carolina State, 1 PM CT, Orangeburg, S.C. Grambling State at Alabama A&M, 1 PM CT, Huntsville, AL | HBCU GO Texas Southern at Arkansas-Pine Bluff, 2 PM CT, Pine Bluff, AK | UAPB Network Jackson State at Alabama State 2 PM CT, Montgomery, AL | ESPN3 Southern at Prairie View A&M 4 PM CT, Prairie View, TX | ESPN+ Bethune-Cookman at Tennessee State 5 PM CT, Nashville, TN | ESPN+ Alcorn State at Mississippi Valley State 6 PM CT, Itta Bena, MS | ESPN+ DL Jason Dumas, Southern; Credit: Fred Green, Southern AthleticsPrairie View Panthers Football Team; Credit: PVAMU Athletics SWAC Game of the Week Southern at Prairie View A&M  Prairie View is No. 3 in the conference for total team defense, allowing 310.6 yards per game behind No. 2 Southern, surrendering 296 yards per game. In the total offense category, the Jaguars sit at No. 2 behind Jackson State with 444 yards per game. The Panthers are No. 10 in the SWAC at 323.8 yards per game. Rushing the football is Prairie View’s strength, with running back Ahmad Antoine ranked third in the SWAC, averaging 79.2 rushing yards per contest. Southern’s QB Besean McCray (74.8 yards/gm) and RB Kendric Rhymes (51.5 yards/gm) are a dangerous tandem of rushers. But the dual-threat McCray poses the most significant problems for Prairie View. Prediction: Prairie View 34, Southern 30 MEAC Schedule in Week 6 Florida A&M vs. South Carolina State at 2 PM ET, Orangeburg, SC | TV: ESPN+, MEAC Digital Network Norfolk State vs. Morgan State at 1 PM ET, Baltimore, MD | ESPN+, MEAC Digital Network Scroll to Continue MEAC Game of the Week Norfolk State (0-5) at Morgan State (2-2) MEAC conference action begins. The Spartans desperately need a win over the Bears to stay in MEAC contention.   Damon Wilson seems to have MSU headed in the right direction after two-straight wins at home. Credit: Virginia Union Athletics CIAA Schedule in Week 6 Elizabeth City State vs. Virginia Union, 12 PM ET, Richmond, VA Chowan vs. Lincoln (PA), 1 PM ET, Lincoln, PA | TV: HBCU GO Winston-Salem State vs. Livingstone, 1 PM ET, Salsibury, NC Shaw vs. Johnson C. Smith, 1 PM ET, Charlotte, NC St. Augustine’s vs. Fayetteville State, 2 PM ET, Fayetteville, NC CIAA Game of the Week in Week 6 Bowie State at Virginia State, 4 PM ET, Ettrick, VA SIAC Schedule in Week 6 Kentucky State at Lane College 2 PM ET, Jackson, TN Fort Valley State at Central State, 1 PM ET Wilberforce, OH Virginia University of Lynchburg at Savannah State 3 PM ET, Savannah, GA Miles College at Benedict College, 3 PM ET, Columbia, S.C. Clark Atlanta at Allen University, 6 PM ET, Blythewood, S.C. Albany State at Edward Waters, 6 PM ET, Jacksonville, Fla. Morehouse at Tuskegee University, 7 PM ET, Birmingham, AL | ESPN+ and Tuskegee Digital Network on Facebook SIAC Game of the Week Morehouse (0-5, 0-2 SIAC) at Tuskegee University (3-2, 2-0 SIAC) The 86th Morehouse-Tuskegee Classic will be aired on ESPN+ and Tuskegee Digital Network on Facebook. The Maroon Tigers have not notched a win this season. Tuskegee is ranked No. 9 in the HBCU BOXTOROW DII Poll. 7 PM CT Birmingham, AL at Legion Field HBCU Legends’ Recent Articles: SWAC Game of the Week: McDowell Confident Panthers Can Defeat Jaguars HBCU Football Coaches Seats Starting to Get Warm Alabama State’s ‘Ugly Win’ Over TSU was ‘Beautiful’ to Eddie Robinson Jr. TSU-ASU Halftime Report HBCU Football: Featured Games of Week 5 CIAA Receives $10K Donation from HBCU All-Star Game, CBS Sports SWAC Football Schedule, How to Watch, Predictions | Week 5 Deion Sanders, Shedeur Sanders Challenge ‘The Level of Competition’ Theory Shedeur Sanders, PLBSE Announce NIL Partnership; Launches ‘#2 BBQ Sauce’ Stillman College, Wiley College Set for Inaugural Pittsburgh HBCU Baseball Classic Is Shedeur Sanders a Legitimate Heisman Candidate? Read More Here

I https://digitalalaskanews.com/i-7/ Protests in Iran were sparked by the killing of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died in custody after being arrested by Iran’s “morality police.” There have been mass arrests of students, journalists, activists, artists, sports figures and celebrities. USA TODAY communicated with Iranian protesters over an encrypted channel. This story publishes their testimony in their own words. Three weeks into nationwide protests triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman who was in custody after being arrested by Iran’s “morality police,” authorities continue to violently crack down on anti-regime demonstrators. Amini was allegedly detained and beaten to death for not conforming to Iran’s strict Islamic dress code, which includes, for women, a head covering known as a hijab.  As the uprisings have spread to dozens of cities, the government has blocked internet connectivity in Iran. There have been mass arrests of students, journalists, activists, artists, sports figures and celebrities who have, at great personal risk, expressed a range of social, economic and political grievances with Iran’s hard-line government.  Official government tallies claim fewer than 20 people have been killed in the unrest, but human rights and opposition groups say the true figure is probably in the hundreds. In recent days, Iranian authorities have come under pressure to explain the death of Nika Shahkarami, a 16-year-old from Tehran who was followed by security agents and then disappeared after she posted images on Instagram of herself burning her headscarf.  Iran has seen large-scale anti-government protests before, but they have fizzled amid overwhelming brute force from Iran’s security services. Still, many analysts and participants say these protests feel different, that dissenters have appeared more willing to brave beatings, arrest and even death as they demand justice and an end not only to mandatory hijab wearing but also to Iran’s oppressive clerical regime.  Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has blamed foreign influences for the protests, a common tactic in a country where the economy has been crippled by waves of U.S. sanctions.  ‘Sad part about this’: What we know about Iran’s response to protests over Mahsa Amini’s death Inside Iran: America’s contentious history in Iran leads to mix of anger, wonderment and weariness USA TODAY interviewed protesters on an encrypted communications channel to hear directly about their demands and to understand how they have experienced the protests. Edited extracts of those interviews follow. For their safety, and to preserve anonymity, the last names of those interviewed have been withheld. Vida, age 27 Female English teacher, Tehran “I have been working for nine years and yet I haven’t been able to save any money even though I’m not a spender. Many educated hardworking people, whether younger or older than me, have the same issue in my country. They have been working hard for several years and yet they cannot afford the basics. At the same time, we have never had freedom of speech or choice for the simplest things like what clothes we want to wear. “The Islamic Republic has been killing innocent people asking for their rights for more than 30 years. All of this has led to rage and anger. We are tired of discrimination, of the security forces and the murders. This is why we are protesting. We want to live with freedom. We want to be able to speak our minds freely and not be shot dead for doing so. We don’t want innocent people dying because of a hijab, like Mahsa Amini. We are all sick of being treated like prisoners in our own home country. “People, specially young ones and women, have shown bravery, and they deserve to be heard. We deserve the change we want. We deserve life and freedom.” Pari, age 28 Female hair stylist and beauty blogger, Tehran
 “‘Hair’ and ‘women’ are two inseparable parts of my day-to-day work. The burdens that this government applies to me affects me every single day, from what I can post online to the services I can offer my customers. These days I feel paralyzed. Just a few days ago, I was sitting in my car waiting for my friend to join me. Then suddenly white smoke surrounded the alley my car was in. After a few minutes I heard loud shouts and then suddenly about 20 undercover police were pointing at me with lasers. I was in shock. All I could do was watch the incident unfold. In fact, the police were not after me but a few teenagers who were protesting in the street nearby and had run into this alley. I snapped back to attention when I realized my eyes were burning from tear gas. All I could do in that moment was to knock on the first door and ask for help. “After this incident my mind was full of questions: Should I stay and live in my country, or can I have a better life if I flee abroad? Why should I have to sacrifice the right to be with my parents, friends and family for a better life overseas? What would happen to the years of work I have done here, to what I’ve built with all the years of my youth!? Then again, here I can get killed by a random bullet, or just for my hair.” Mahan, age 21 Male law student, Mazandaran Province “I was in the protests, both at my university and outside in the streets. I have a sister who is younger than me. She is a high school student. As long as I can remember my family used to tell us how to dress. My sister was of course more under pressure for this. My sister and I always talked about why we can’t choose what to wear without fighting with our parents. Once my mom went out with my sister and the ‘morality police’ followed and cautioned my sister. My sister was very scared. My mother was also upset. ‘If you had listened to me, this would not have happened,’ she told her. “I participated in these protests because I don’t want anyone to dictate how we should live. I participated because I think my sister should not feel uncomfortable. What is the reason for our behavior to be controlled everywhere, all the time? If my sister becomes a student, how much trouble will she have to suffer? Even though I am a man in Iran, I too cannot always behave the way I want to. I believe everyone deserves respect, but I am tired of all these old-fashioned and outdated values forcefully imposed on us.” Column: Iran’s Gen Z is fed up. The protests aren’t just about hijab, they’re about regime change. Negar, age 25 Female college student, Gilan Province “This Islamic regime has forced its ideology onto every aspect of my private and public life. I have been forced to cover my hair and my entire body since the moment I turned 7. It instilled in me, as a child, the idea that girls and women were inferior, emotional beings who had to be controlled or else they would bring sin to men. “As a little girl, I had nightmares about what would happen to me if I didn’t comply with the dress codes and strict rules. Every time I am outside, I am afraid of being caught by the so-called morality police for the simple act of dressing in the way I want. On more than one occasion, I had to change my usual commuting routes to avoid them, missing important appointments and paying extra money as a result. “By the Islamic Republic’s standards, my friends and I are criminals because of doing things that are crimes (in few other places) in the world: partying, drinking, not wearing a headscarf, having partners without being married. Can you imagine not being able to eat or drink anything, even water, on the street for a month every year? That is how Ramadan (a holy month of fasting in Islam) is in Iran. Drinking water can get you arrested and whipped during that month. I am protesting because I’ve had enough. Mahsa Amini’s brutal murder by state police was a wake-up call for every single one of us living under the shadow of this oppressive regime. “As a protester, what I want, first and foremost, is for the Islamic regime and the mullahs to be gone from my country. I am tired of being punished for exercising my basic human rights. What I fight for is summarized in three simple but significant words, which is our most important motto: ‘Woman, life, liberty,’ all of which the Islamic regime has attempted to oppress and destroy over the past 40 years.” Nima, age 28 Male graduate student, Mazandaran Province  “This is not the first time that I participate in anti-government protests in Iran. I took part in these protests because I want freedom for women and the recognition of their basic rights. I hope that freedom for women can help destroy the wall of the fascist regime of the Islamic Republic and make freedom possible in other areas, too. “I was arrested even though I was not carrying any kind of sign or shouting a slogan. Families with small children were sitting nearby. Security services forced me into a car, took off my shirt and wrapped it around my head, a blindfold, so I couldn’t see where I was being taken. I was interrogated. I was hit in the head, neck, side and back. Using a stun gun, they shocked the left side of my body, left hand and left ribs. They cursed and humiliated my family. During the interrogation, they wanted me to admit certain things. When I refused, they beat me. I could hear other voices coming from other rooms and understood that others were also being beaten in the same place.  “My interrogation lasted around three hours. During this time my family had no idea where I was. Around midnight I was released on bail.”  Samaneh, age 27 Female teacher, Tehran  “I live with my sick mother who has worked for more than 30 years. It is almost impossible for me and my mother to afford medical and living expenses. We have always been fighting for our lives, have always been disregarded, have never been taken seriously because of our gender. These recent protests have given me courage to fight even more to pave the way to gain basi...

Six Palestinians Arrested In Jerusalem During Religious Muslim March https://digitalalaskanews.com/six-palestinians-arrested-in-jerusalem-during-religious-muslim-march/ Haaretz | Israel News During the march commemorating the birth of the Prophet Mohammed, Israeli police says that protesters taunted them and threw rocks and bottles at them Oct 8, 2022 7:01 pm IDT Palestinian scouts take part in celebrations marking the birth of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed, known in Arabic as the “Mawlid al-Nabawi” holiday, at the Damascus Gate of the old city of Jerusalem, on Saturday.Credit: AHMAD GHARABLI – AFP Oct 8, 2022 7:01 pm IDT Israeli police arrested six Palestinians on Saturday suspected of attacking officers during a religious Muslim procession in East Jerusalem. The police said that participants threw stones and bottles at them, lightly injuring one officer at Damascus Gate. The Palestinian Red Crescent reported that five marchers were also lightly injured. The procession, which held thousands of participants according to organizers, celebrated Mawlid al-Nabi, the Muslim festival marking the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed. The annual march is conducted with prior police approval along a route that is set in advance, beginning on Saladin Street in East Jerusalem and ends at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. According to Palestinian sources in Jerusalem, Mawlid al-Nabi has in recent years served to demonstrate the Palestinian presence in the city, particularly following the 2017 decision by then-U.S. President Donald Trump to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Israel decides on two-day West Bank, Gaza closure for Sukkot holiday 18-year-old Palestinian killed by Israeli forces Jerusalem’s Rehavia celebrates a century – and fears for its future Many Palestinians turned out for this year’s march due to the recent tensions in the West Bank between Israeli security forces and Palestinians. On Saturday, the Palestinian Health Ministry reported that two Palestinian men, one 19 and the other 18, were killed earlier in the day in the West Bank city of Jenin by Israeli troops. According to the Israeli army, on Saturday morning it carried out an operation in the Jenin refugee camp to arrest a 25-year-old suspected of terrorist activity and Israeli troops came under attack with weapons fire and Molotov cocktails. SUBSCRIBERS JOIN THE CONVERSATION FASTER Automatic approval of subscriber comments. From $1 for the first month SUBSCRIBE Already signed up? LOG IN ICYMI Ken Burns’ Brilliant ‘The U.S. and the Holocaust’ Has Only One Problem Facing Rapid Rise in Sea Levels, Israel Could Lose Large Parts of Its Coastline by 2050 Lapid to Haaretz: ‘I Have Learned to Respect the Left’ The Mossad’s Fateful 48 Hours Before the Yom Kippur War As Israel Reins in Its Cyberarms Industry, an Ex-intel Officer Is Building a New Empire How the Queen’s Death Changes British Jewry’s Most Distinctive Prayer Read More Here

Trump Wanted To Swap Mar-A-Lago Documents For Russia Investigation Files: Report https://digitalalaskanews.com/trump-wanted-to-swap-mar-a-lago-documents-for-russia-investigation-files-report/ October 08, 2022 12:00 PM Former President Donald Trump tried to cut a deal with the National Archives and Records Administration to exchange boxes of material held at Mar-a-Lago for documents related to the FBI’s investigation of his ties to Russia, according to a report. Although they never pursued it, Trump floated an idea to aides to try trading Mar-a-Lago documents later raided by the authorities for confidential documents he thought would exonerate him on Russia, per New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Michael Schmidt. BEN SASSE AND THE BATTLE OVER WHAT KIND OF CONSERVATIVE LEADS THE GOP Trump was reportedly angry with the National Archives for its unwillingness to hand over the sensitive documents related to his 2016 campaign, hatching the exchange idea. The former president formed a habit of bringing documents to his White House bedroom in the early days of his term, the New York Times reports, eventually leading to headaches about tracking which materials were located where in the executive mansion. That eventually culminated in the raid that brought Trump back to the forefront of American politics. Despite the high-profile document seizure and the ensuing legal battle between Trump’s team and the Department of Justice, federal officials reportedly believe the former president has not returned all documents in his possession upon leaving the White House. Trump has asked the Supreme Court to reverse an appeals court ruling that halted a decision to permit a special master to examine documents marked as classified that were obtained during the raid of Mar-a-Lago in a search for privileged materials. The high court has asked the Justice Department to respond to Trump’s request by Tuesday at 5 p.m. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE IN THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER Unsealed court filings revealed that Trump is being investigated under the Espionage Act, as well as related to laws regarding obstruction of justice. Trump has denied any wrongdoing. Read More Here

Senate Control Could Come Down To These Long-Shot Races https://digitalalaskanews.com/senate-control-could-come-down-to-these-long-shot-races/ Washington’s Patty Murray is a very long-shot target for Republicans in November. Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images As we draw closer to the end of the 2022 midterms cycle, the battleground for control of the U.S. Senate is becoming reasonably clear. To seize the majority, Republicans need to protect their vulnerable seats in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and pick off a Democratic seat in Georgia or Nevada. You will notice the disparate number of must-win states: It’s a big part of why Democrats are currently favored to maintain control. (They are also helped, of course, by the sudden crisis threatening to overcome the campaign of Georgia Republican Herschel Walker). Obviously, some other Senate races are in play, or could be if things get tight in the weeks just ahead. Right now, the RealClearPolitics polling averages for an open seat in North Carolina show favored Republican Ted Budd only leading Democrat Cheri Beasley by 1.5 percent with Budd well under 50 percent. As the Washington Post’s Paul Kane reports, national Democrats are conflicted on this race: Senate Majority, the super PAC aligned with Democratic leaders, has been on air boosting Beasley since late August. The DSCC has been helping the Beasley campaign, but its advertising unit has not jumped into North Carolina with a multimillion-dollar campaign. Veterans of past campaigns know how tough the state is. In 2020, 2016 and 2014, Democrats poured tens of millions into North Carolina, only to lose close races each time, their candidates never receiving more than 47 percent. Democrats narrowly lost the last three presidential elections there as well, never getting higher than 48 percent. It should be observed that this is exactly how Democrats used to think about Georgia until their candidates suddenly flipped two Senate seats and the entire chamber in the 2020 cycle (actually winning both in a January 5, 2021, general-election runoff). Objectively speaking, an even tougher race is in Florida, where the RCP averages show incumbent Republican Marco Rubio leading Democratic congresswoman Val Demings by four percent. The state, moreover, has been trending red. But Demings’s quality as a candidate and fundraiser, and the possibility of pulling off an upset in the home state of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, has kept online funds and media attention flowing toward the Democrat. A longer shot for Democrats — so long that the national party committee has kept its distance — is in Iowa, where 89-year-old Republican Chuck Grassley is running for an eighth term. What keeps Democrats intrigued, aside from Democrat Mike Franken’s fundraising prowess, is that polls keep showing Grassley at under 50 percent, always a perilous position for a universally known incumbent as Iowa’s veteran ace pollster Ann Selzer’s numbers show: Grassley leads 47% to 39% against Franken, a retired U.S. Navy admiral, in the latest poll, conducted July 10–13 by Selzer & Co. Another 7% of likely voters say they would vote for someone else, 2% say they would not vote and 5% say they are not sure. While Grassley leads Franken, the margin is narrower than in any Iowa Poll matchup involving Grassley since he was first elected to the U.S. Senate. Grassley has not polled below 50% in a head-to-head contest since October 1980, before he went on to defeat incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. John Culver. Grassley may have been saved from a possible upset, though, by an allegation from a former Franken campaign staffer that the candidate assaulted her (forcibly kissing her without consent) while she was working for him. But the race still bears watching. Iowa has been trending heavily Republican since 2014. But another state where Republicans haven’t lost a statewide race since 1980 could theoretically produce the most audacious Senate upset in the 2022 Democratic playbook. Two-term Utah Republican Mike Lee is in an uncomfortably close race with Independent Evan McMullin, who is running with Democratic backing. McMullin is best known for running for president as a conservative Independent in 2016, representing Republicans who couldn’t stomach Trump (especially numerous among morally rigorous Latter-Day Saints). He won 22 percent of the vote in Utah, finishing just five points behind Hillary Clinton; McMullin and Clinton together held Trump to the lowest percentage any Republican presidential nominee had received in Utah since Barry Goldwater lost the state in 1964. Thanks to a combination of Democratic and Never Trump Republican support, McMullin has consistently held Lee to a single-digit lead in the polls. A September survey published by the Deseret News showed the incumbent leading McMullin by a mere 3 percent (37 percent to 34 percent) among likely voters with 16 percent undecided and the rest scattered among minor-party candidates. Typically non-major-party candidates fade down the stretch in general elections. But Lee is not in a particularly strong position, particularly after his Senate colleague Mitt Romney declared neutrality in the race. An added wrinkle is that Trump has endorsed Lee, even though in 2016 Lee voted against the 45th president and for Evan McMullin. With only 14 Democratic Senate seats up this year as opposed to 21 currently held by Republicans, the GOP has fewer long-shot targets. But there are two that could become iffy if the once imposing, then vanishing GOP wave reappears between now and November 8. The most logical long-shot is in Colorado, where incumbent Democrat Michael Bennet won only 48 percent of the vote in 2010 and just barely 50 percent in 2016, before running a highly unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2020. Republicans, moreover, got lucky when self-funding novice candidate Joe O’Dea, the rare Republican who generally favors the right to an abortion, won the nomination to face Bennet. The incumbent leads by 8.3 percent in the RCP polling averages but regularly falls short of 50 percent. A less logical target is five-term Democratic incumbent Patty Murray of Washington. In that state’s nonpartisan top-two primary in August, Murray beat top Republican Tiffany Smiley by a 52-34 margin. In the recent past, Washington primary results have been highly predictive of general-election results. Most of the general-election polls show Murray comfortably ahead of Smiley. But Trafalgar Group has two surveys out showing Smiley within two points of Murray, so Republicans still can envision a miracle. One final race in which Republicans have dim but undistinguished hopes is in New Hampshire, where Democratic incumbent Maggie Hassan was considered very vulnerable going into the midterm cycle. But then the preferred Republican challenger, Governor Chris Sununu, took a pass on the race, and the GOP eventually got stuck with retired general and all-around extremist Don Bolduc. Hassan leads Bolduc by 6.6 percent in the RCP polling averages, but Republicans haven’t given up on the race. It’s likely that both parties’ long shots will remain just that, but there are enough former one-in-a-million candidates in the Senate to keep hope alive for not only a clean win, but for a governing majority next year. Blake Masters Tries Out Election Denial Lite Woman Alleges Herschel Walker Wanted Her to Have a Second Abortion What Biden Privately Thinks About the Midterms See All Senate Control Could Come Down to These Long-Shot Races Read More Here

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How To Watch Donald Trump https://digitalalaskanews.com/how-to-watch-donald-trump/ Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to appear at a “Save America” rally Saturday night in Nevada to back his endorsed candidates Adam Laxalt and Joe Lombardo as both Republicans gear up for the midterm elections that are one month away. The rally is set to take place in Minden, Nevada, at 7 p.m. PDT at Minden-Tahoe Airport. The former president is expected to show his support for Clark County Sheriff Lombardo, the GOP candidate who is running for Nevada governor against incumbent Democratic Governor Steve Sisolak. Trump’s busy weekend also includes another rally in Mesa, Arizona, on Sunday to show support for the GOP gubernatorial candidate for Arizona, Kari Lake, Senate hopeful Blake Masters, and Republican candidate for secretary of state, Representative Mark Finchem. The rallies come amid an ongoing investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents which the FBI retrieved from his Mar-a-Lago residence in August. Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in regard to the documents, and said that any classified documents that he took from the White House when he left last year had been declassified. Above, former President Donald Trump speaks during a “Save America” rally on October 1 in Warren, Michigan. Trump is scheduled to appear at a “Save America” rally Saturday night in Nevada to back his endorsed candidates Adam Laxalt and Joe Lombardo as both Republicans gear up for the midterm elections, which are exactly one month away. Photo by Emily Elconin/Getty Images Still, Trump’s rallies this weekend are a continued effort by the former president’s “unprecedented effort to advance the MAGA agenda by energizing voters and highlighting America First candidates and causes,” according to a statement by the “Save America” super political action committee. How to Watch the Minden, Nevada, Rally Rally coverage can be watched on Newsmax starting at 9 p.m. ET, with the conservative news outlet vowing to provide a livestream of the event. “Former President Trump wants to continue his support of candidates and causes that further the MAGA agenda and accomplishments of his presidency,” Newsmax said on its website. “Most major cable news channels including Fox News have restricted or censored live coverage of these Trump rallies. Newsmax will air these rallies live!” Guest speakers, including Lombardo and Laxalt, are expected to deliver speeches at 4 p.m. PDT, while Trump is set to deliver remarks at 7 p.m. PDT, according to the “Save America” event agenda. What Polls Show A poll, which was carried out by WPA Intelligence for the pro-Republican Club for Growth PAC from June 4 to 6, revealed that Lombardo, who won Nevada’s GOP primary in June following a Trump endorsement, has a slim lead of 1 percent in the upcoming race. The GOP candidate came in at 48 percent support from Nevadans compared to 47 percent who back Sisolak. The survey included 502 likely voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percent. The former president is also expected to show support for Laxalt, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Nevada who is running against incumbent Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto. One recent poll, conducted by SSRS for CNN, showed that Cortez Masto is ahead of her Republican rival with the support of 47 percent of registered voters compared to 44 percent to Laxalt. The survey was carried out between September 26 and October 2 “using a combination of online and telephone interviews,” with 926 voters in the state. The survey has a margin of sampling error for total registered voters of plus or minus 4.7 percent. Newsweek reached out to Trump’s media office, and Lombardo’s and Laxalt’s campaigns for comment. Read More Here

Laxalt Leads In NV Senate Race Against Dem Senator In New Poll: 'Nevadans Are Fed Up With Cortez Masto' https://digitalalaskanews.com/laxalt-leads-in-nv-senate-race-against-dem-senator-in-new-poll-nevadans-are-fed-up-with-cortez-masto/ Former Attorney General Adam Laxalt claims that his newfound lead in the Nevada Senate race is due to voters being “fed up with Cortez Masto” amid soaring gas prices, the border crisis and rising crime. A new CNN poll found that Laxalt, the Trump-backed nominee running in the state’s Senate race, has a two-point edge over Democrat Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, 48% to 46%. Laxalt is also leading among likely independent voters, receiving 47% of the party’s support over Masto, who is gripping onto her seat with 42% support. Despite trailing among likely votes, Cortez Masto was the more favorable candidate than her GOP opponent, 45% to 39%.  “These polls capture what we are seeing on the ground here in Nevada,” Laxalt told Fox News Digital Friday. “Between surging inflation, rising violent crime, the effects of an open border, and record-high gas prices, Nevadans are fed up with Cortez Masto being a 95% rubber stamp vote for Joe Biden. PAIN AT THE PUMP COULD SHIFT MIDTERM OUTCOME: ‘THIS ELECTION IS LIKELY WON OR LOST AT THE PUMP’ “I’m a former Navy and Iraq veteran and law enforcement-endorsed top cop of the state. Nevadans of all political parties are backing my race, because they know I will always put them first. We look forward to Cortez Masto’s campaign conceding defeat in November.” Former Nevada attorney general Adam Laxalt is the GOP nominee running to unseat incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto. (Adam Laxalt Campaign) The poll is in line with the Real Clear Politics average of polls in the race, which show Laxalt in the lead by about 2 percenatge points. Cortez Masto did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on the new polling data.  The economy and inflation were the most important issues to 44% Nevadans, while only 14% felt abortion was the issue of top concern, despite Cortez Masto using the topic as a focal point of her campaign and releasing several ads blasting her pro-life challenger. DEMOCRATS’ MIDTERM TROUBLES IN NEVADA COULD MIRROR NATIONWIDE ISSUES AS ECONOMY BOLSTERS GOP: NEW YORK TIMES Economic issues were of top importance to 43% of likely independent voters and 64% of Republicans but only were of concern to 26% of Democrats. According to the poll, 57% of Nevadans think the economy is getting worse. According to the CNN poll, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., is trailing behind her GOP opponent in Nevada’s Senate race. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc) The poll found that 47% of likely voters said that the country would be better off if Republicans were to win control of Congress in the midterm elections. President Joe Biden received an approval rating of 41%, compared to former GOP president Donald Trump, who received an approval rating of 49% at the same point in his presidency, just before the 2018 midterm elections. Among independent voters, 68% disapprove of Biden’s handling of the presidency. GOP nominee Joe Lombardo has a two-point lead of 48% in Nevada’s gubernatorial race, over his Democrat opponent, Gov. Steve Sisolak, who secured 46% support. The Republican is also leading among independents voters by 7 percentage points, 47% to 40%. Republican candidate for Nevada governor, Joe Lombardo, center, is a former Clark County Sheriff.  (John Locher) The Republicans lead over Democrats among likely independents voters after several recent polls revealed independent voters in key midterm states are more aligned with Republicans in terms of midterm priorities. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP The CNN survey was conducted among voters in Nevada from Sept. 26 – Oct. 2, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.7 percentage points. Aubrie Spady is a Freelance Production Assistant for Fox News Digital. Read More Here

‘Winter Is Here’: Chess Champion Kasparov Warns That Ukraine War Is A Test For Democracies – Kansas Reflector https://digitalalaskanews.com/winter-is-here-chess-champion-kasparov-warns-that-ukraine-war-is-a-test-for-democracies-kansas-reflector/ Politics + Government Kasparov follows in footsteps of Churchill with Fulton speech calling for hard line against Putin and dictators around the world FULTON, Mo. — The invasion of Ukraine awakened free countries to the threat posed by Russia and Vladimir Putin, but whether they will sustain that resistance to dictators is an open question, former world chess champion Garry Kasparov said Friday during a speech at Westminster College. On the Missouri campus where Winston Churchill warned in 1946 that the Soviet Union was cementing its hold on Eastern Europe behind an “Iron Curtain,” Kasparov said it is again time to confront the evil of authoritarianism. Churchill’s speech, “The Sinews of Peace,” helped inspire President Harry Truman’s policies of containment and the creation of NATO. Kasparov, a long-time critic of Putin, said a “grand alliance” of democracies can show dictators that freedom, and not profits, will define their future relations. In 2015, Kasparov wrote a book titled “Winter is Coming” warning that the weak international response to Russia’s invasion of the Crimea would embolden Putin. “Today there is a clear and present danger,” Kasparov said. “Winter is here. It is still unclear if the free world is willing and able to meet this challenge.” Kasparov, who left Russia in 2013 as his political activity made life there more and more uncertain, made his remarks as he gave the Enid and R. Crosby Kemper Lecture during the 39th International Churchill Conference sponsored by Westminster. He delivered his half-hour talk in the restored St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury, Church, bombed in London by the Nazis in World War II and moved to Fulton to house the National Churchill Museum. Former world chess champion and Russian dissident Garry Kasparov warns Friday that democracies must continue opposition to Vladimir Putin’s aggression against Ukraine. (Madeline Carter/Missouri Independent) As he began his speech, Kasparov recognized other dissidents who accompanied him and who are fighting for freedom in their home countries, including Syria, Venezuela and Iran. In Iran, women have taken to the streets in protest of strict Islamic controls on their lives. Russians should be in the streets protesting Putin, Kasparov said. “If only Russian men were as brave as Iranian women,” he said. Kasparov grew up under communism in the Soviet Union and became the youngest world chess champion in 1985 at the age of 22. He was the world’s highest rated player when he retired in 2005. He became involved in politics after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. “It was a glorious day, a day of celebration  and a huge step forward for global freedom,” Kasparov said. “The problem was the next day.” Unlike Churchill and President Harry Truman, who brought Churchill to his home state for the 1946 speech, world leaders did not act to preserve the freedom won at the end of the Cold War, he said. “In 1991, unlike in 1946, we had managers instead of leaders,” Kasparov said. He’s been warning about the rise of Putin since 2001, Kasparov said. But Western Europe and the United States were more interested in accommodation, seeking profit in the revived Russian economy and ignoring the increasing repression. In the 1930s, he noted, the appeasers of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler in Britain and France were seeking peace at any cost. “It was a brutal lesson to learn how high that cost was,” Kasparov said. Now, he said, Ukraine is paying the price of appeasing Putin. “The Ukrainians have reminded us what it looks like to fight for your land, your freedom, your family,” he said. Speaking to reporters after the speech, Kasparov said U.S. administrations of both parties are to blame for not being tougher with Putin. But he said President Joe Biden’s administration is doing the right things to support Ukraine. He is concerned that former President Donald Trump will win another term in 2024 and cut off support for Ukraine. Trump’s supporters in Congress vote against aid to Ukraine and his cheerleaders on Fox News, especially Tucker Carlson, are telling Trump supporters that Putin is justified in the war. Garry Kasparov speaks to reporters Friday after delivering a speech for the 39th Churchill Conference at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. (Madeline Carter/Missouri Independent) “I couldn’t believe I would hear Russian propaganda talking points on American television,” Kasparov said. “I am still waiting for the true followers of Ronald Reagan to take their party back.” Kasparov joins a distinguished list of international leaders who have used Westminster as their venue in honor of Churchill, including Reagan, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and former Polish President Lech Walesa. Kasparov made his homage to Churchill in the title of his speech, calling it “The New Sinews of Peace,” and made several references to the inspirational British war time leader. Few people outside, and many inside, Britain held out hope for victory over Hitler after the defeat of France in 1940. But Churchill rallied his nation and held out until the Soviet Union and the United States were drawn into the war. On June 4, 1940, in a speech to Parliament, Churchill promised that “we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be.” In February, when Russia invaded Ukraine, many expected a quick defeat and the U.S. offered to fly President Volodymyr Zelensky to safety. Zelensky gave the modern equivalent of Churchill’s words, Kasparov said. “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride,” Zelensky told the U.S., according to the embassy in Kyiv. Churchill’s great-grandson Jack Churchill, who attended the speech, said he is “100%” in agreement with Kasparov on the need to confront Putin and for the democracies to band together as they did after the 1946 speech. “I am very proud that my great-grandfather is an inspiration to the next generation of people fighting for freedom and democracy,” Churchill said. It is vital that the U.S. not diminish its support for Ukraine, Kasparov said in his speech. The United States, the “arsenal of democracy” in World War II, has assumed that role for Ukraine. “An America that does not defend liberty everywhere will see decay at home, a process that is already happening,” Kasparov said. The weapons being provided in aid and the extra costs for consumers because the war has disrupted energy supplies is a bargain, Kasparov said. “Who are we to complain about the price of gas,” he said, “when Ukranians are paying in blood for our sins?” Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our web site. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of photos and graphics. Read More Here

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Steelers GameDay Cheat Sheet: Week 5 Vs The Buffalo Bills – Steel City Underground https://digitalalaskanews.com/steelers-gameday-cheat-sheet-week-5-vs-the-buffalo-bills-steel-city-underground/ Photo: steelers.com Steelers GameDay Cheat Sheet is a weekly series featuring a quick glance at the upcoming Steelers game, including odds, records, things to watch for, and how to watch/listen to the game. Series Notes All-Time Steelers lead, 17-11 Last: Steelers Win, 23-16 (Sept. 12, 2021) Home Steelers lead, 10-3 Last: Bills Win, 17-10 (Dec. 15, 2019) Away Bills lead, 8-7 Last: Steelers Win, 23-16 (Sept. 12, 2021) Streaks: Bills have won 2 of last 3 The Coaches Steelers: Mike Tomlin At Franchise: 155-88-2 (16) Overall: 155-88-2 (16) Versus Opponent: 5-2 Bills: Sean McDermott At Franchise: 52-33 (6) Overall: 52-33 (6) Versus Opponent: 2-1 Gameday Information Date: Sunday, October 9th Time: 1:00 p.m. EDT Location: Highmark Stadium Orchard Park, NY Capacity 71,608 // Natural Grass TV: CBS/Paramount Plus (KDKA-TV plus other local affiliates – see regional coverage below) Jim Nantz (play-by-play) Tony Romo (analysis) Tracy Wolfson (sideline) Satellite Radio Steelers: Sirius 82, XM/SXM 227, Internet 803 Bills: Sirius 134, XM/SXM 385, Internet 826 Radio: Steelers Radio Network (48 affiliates – see below) Bill Hillgrove (play-by-play) Craig Wolfley (analysis) Missi Matthews (sideline) Max Starks (sideline) National Radio: Sports USA John Ahlers (play-by-play) Brandon Noble (analysis) Referee: John Hussey Sportsbook Info Check out Picks for Tonight for their NFL computer picks each game is simulated 10,000 time to predict a winner. Here are their picks for this week’s game! (Picks for Tonight picks in bold.) Point Spread: Steelers +14 / Bills -14 Over/Under: 47 (Under 47) Moneyline: Steelers +610 / Bills -890 (Odds updated 10/7. For up-to-date lines please visit https://www.picksfortonight.com/nfl-picks/) Game Capsule Steelers Notes QB KENNY PICKETT (rookie) made NFL debut last week & became 1st QB ever with 2 rush TDs in 1st-career game. RB NAJEE HARRIS had season-high 74 rush yards last week. Aims for his 3rd in row on road with TD. Needs 83 scrimmage yards to become 3rd Pit. RB ever with 2,000+ scrimmage yards in 1st 2 seasons (Le’Veon Bell & HOFer Franco Harris). WR DIONTAE JOHNSON had 5 catches in 2 of 3 career games vs. Buf. & had rec. TD in last meeting. Aims for his 10th in row on road with 5+ catches & 50+ rec. yards. WR GEORGE PICKENS (rookie) led team with career highs in catches (6) & rec. yards (102) last week. TE PAT FREIERMUTH had 7 catches for career-high 85 yards in Week 4. Has 50+ rec. yards in 2 of his past 3 on road. S MINKAH FITZPATRICK tied for team lead with 8 tackles & had season-high 2 PD & INT last week. Is 1 of 3 in NFL (Eddie Jackson & Jordan Poyer) with INT in 3 games this season. Has 10 tackles in last meeting & aims for his 3rd in row vs. Buf. with 6+ tackles. Has PD in 6 of his past 7 on road. CB CAMERON SUTTON had 2nd INT of season in Week 4. Aims for his 6th in row with PD. Had 2 TFL & 2 PD in last meeting. LB ALEX HIGHSMITH aims for 3rd in row with sack. Ranks 2nd in NFL with 5.5 sacks this season. Aims for 3rd in row on road with 2+ TFL. LB MYLES JACK aims for his 12th in row with 5+ tackles & 5th in row with 8+ tackles. DT CAMERON HEYWARD had 2 PD, sack, FF & FR in last meeting. Aims for his 7th in row on road with TFL. Bills Notes QB JOSH ALLEN passed for 213 yards & TD vs. INT & had season-high 70 rush yards & rush TD last week. Has 45+ rush yards in 3 of 4 games this season. Passed for 270 yards & TD vs. 0 INTs in last meeting. Aims for his 3rd in row at home with 2+ TD passes & 0 INTs. RB DEVIN SINGLETARY had season-high 96 scrimmage yards (49 rush, 47 rec.) last week. Aims for 3rd in row with 90+ scrimmage yards. Rushed for 72 yards in last meeting. Has 95+ scrimmage yards & rush TD in 3 of his past 4 at home. WR STEFON DIGGS ranks 2nd in NFL with 406 rec. yards & is 1 of 3 (A.J. Brown & Christian Kirk) with 60+ rec. yards in each of 1st 4 weeks. Has 19 catches for 199 yards (99.5 per game) in his past 2 vs. Pit. Aims for his 3rd in row at home with 9+ catches, 80+ rec. yards & TD catch. WR ISAIAH MCKENZIE had 10th-career TD catch last week & is 1 of 2 AFC WRs (Davante Adams) with rec. TD in 3 games this season. WR GABE DAVIS has TD catch in each of 2 career games vs. Pit. S JORDAN POYER had 3 PD & career-high 2 INTs in Week 4. Has INT in each of his 3 games this season & leads NFL with 4 INTs. Had sack in last meeting. LB VON MILLER had 3rd sack of season last week. Has PD in 2 of past 3. LB MATT MILANO tied career high with 13 tackles & had 2 TFL in Week 4. Has PD in 2 of past 3. Had 2 TFL & PD in last meeting. LB TREMAINE EDMUNDS had 9 tackles & 2 TFL last week. Has 2 TFL in 2 of past 3. Had PD in last meeting. Aims for 3rd in row at home with TFL & PD. DE GREG ROUSSEAU aims for 5th in row with 0.5+ sacks. Steelers TV & Radio Coverage This week’s game will be broadcast locally on Pittsburgh CBS outlet KDKA channel 2, and other local affiliates. Regional broadcast image courtesy of 506sports.com – Steelers coverage in RED. Steelers TV Affiliates (NFL on CBS broadcasts only. Subject to regional coverage/blackouts) KDKA (CBS/2 – Pittsburgh) WTAJ (CBS/10 – Altoona) WHP (CBS/21 – Harrisburg) WOLF (FOX/56 – Scranton) WFXP (FOX/66 – Erie) WCMH (NBC/4 – Columbus OH) WKBN (CBS/27 – Youngstown OH) WTOV (FOX/9.2 – Wheeling WV) WQCW (CW/30 – Charleston WV) WWCW (CW/21-27 – Roanoke VA) KYUR (ABC/13 – Anchorage AK) KATN (ABC/2 – Fairbanks AK) Steelers Radio Network Flagship Stations WDVE-FM (102.5) WBGG-AM (970) Pennsylvania Affiliates Altoona-WVAM (1430) Altoona-WRKY (104.9) Beaver Falls-WBVP (1230) Beaver Falls-WMBA (1460) Bedford-WBVE (107.5) Butler-WISR (680) Chambersburg-WCHA (800) Clarendon-WKNB (104.3) Clarion-WCCR (92.7) Cooperstown-WUUZ (107.7) DuBois-WIFT (102.1) DuBois-WKFT (101.3) Erie-WRKT (104.9) Johnstown-WNTJ (1490) Johnstown-WRKW (99.1) Latrobe-WCNS (1480) Milton-WVLY (100.9) Saegertown-WUZZ (94.3) Somerset-WNTI (990) Starview-WONN (92.7) State College-WQWK (1450) Uniontown-WMBS (590) Washington-WJPA (1450) Williamsport-WCXR (99.3) Williamsport-WZXR (103.7) Maryland Affiliates Cumberland-WRQE (106.1) Hagerstown-WHAG (1410) Ohio Affiliates Fremont-WOHF (92.1) Marietta-WJAW (630) Youngstown-WNIO (1390) Virginia Affiliates Vienna-WDMX (100.1) West Virginia Affiliates Fairmont-WRLF (94.3) Fairmont-WMMN (920) New Martinsville-WXCR (92.3) Statistics and game information courtesy of the Pittsburgh Steelers and/or National Football League. 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Loud And Clear: New Justice Jackson Speaks Volumes At Bench https://digitalalaskanews.com/loud-and-clear-new-justice-jackson-speaks-volumes-at-bench/ WASHINGTON (AP) — Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on the Supreme Court and its newest justice, said before the term began that she was “ready to work.” She made that clear during arguments in the opening cases. The tally: 4,568 words spoken over nearly six hours this past week, about 50% more than any of the eight other justices, according to Adam Feldman, the creator of the Empirical SCOTUS blog. The justices as a whole are generally a talkative bunch, questioning lawyers in rapid succession. For now, Jackson’s approach seems less like Justice Clarence Thomas, who once went 10 years without asking a question, and more like Justice Neil Gorsuch, who in his first year was one of the more active questioners. On Tuesday, in a case that could weaken the landmark Voting Rights Act, which sought to bar racial discrimination in voting, Jackson was particularly vocal. At one point, she spoke uninterrupted for more than three and a half minutes to lay out her understanding of the history of the post-Civil War 14th Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing formerly enslaved people equal rights. Jackson’s statement ran three transcript pages, the longest Feldman could remember ever seeing. “I can’t think of a time where you’ve seen a junior justice take hold of the arguments” to the same extent, Feldman said using the court’s shorthand title for the newest justice. A jurist with a liberal record, Jackson joined a court where conservatives hold a 6-3 advantage, so in many of the most most contentious cases her vote likely does not matter to the outcome. But her performance during arguments seemed to show she intends to make herself heard. “I have a seat at the table now and I’m ready to work,” she said last week at an appearance at the Library of Congress following her ceremonial investiture at the high court. In three of the four cases the court heard this past week, she was the most active speaker among the justices. Feldman said new justices usually sit back and take things in but “poke their heads up occasionally” to ask a question. “This was a different approach,” he said. Monday was the court’s opening day and Jackson’s first on the Supreme Court bench. The justices were about five minutes into their questioning in what turned out to be a nearly two-hour argument in a dispute over the nation’s main anti-water pollution law when Jackson asked her first question; she was the fourth justice to do so. By the end of arguments, she had probed the meaning of the word “adjacent,” asked whether a marsh in a 1985 case was “visually indistinguishable from the abutting creek” and prefaced another question by saying: “Let me try to bring some enlightenment to it by asking it this way.” Jackson was confirmed in April but did not take her seat until the court began its summer recess in June, giving her months to study cases the court had granted. Other justices spent some of that time finalizing opinions in cases that included decisions overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights case and expanding gun rights. Speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in early April, days before Jackson was confirmed, Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted “fortunately there will be some lead time” for the new justice to ease into her role. Barrett, in contrast, heard her first arguments a week after she was confirmed. Justice Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in on a Saturday and heard his first argument the following Tuesday. Justices themselves have acknowledged it takes time to get used to sitting on the highest court in the land. Justice Elena Kagan once compared starting the job to “ drinking out of a fire hose ” with a learning curve that “is extremely steep, sometimes it seems vertical.” Some justices have said it takes five years to feel really comfortable in the role. In her Library of Congress appearance, Jackson talked about the attention on her as the first Black woman to be a justice. People approach her with “what I can only describe as a profound sense of pride and what feels to me like renewed ownership,” she said. Their message to her is “in essence, ‘You go, girl,”’ Jackson said. “They’re saying ‘Invisible no more. We see you and we are with you.’” ___ Follow AP’s coverage of the Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court Read More Here

Bill Maher Says Americans Are Now So Tribal We've Lost Our Ability To Mingle https://digitalalaskanews.com/bill-maher-says-americans-are-now-so-tribal-weve-lost-our-ability-to-mingle/ Bill Maher Americans Live Like We’re in Prison Gangs … You Don’t Agree with Me, Then f**k You!!! 10/8/2022 6:14 AM PT Bill Maher cut to the chase Friday night … calling out intolerance Americans now have for those with whom they disagree … intolerance that has led us to stop mingling with anyone who is not like-minded. The “Real Time” host said what’s simply true … lots of Americans will only f**k with people whose views align with theirs, and they just can’t believe any right-thinking person could embrace opinions contrary to theirs. Bill goes down the road with an example — Arizona’s Republican Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem, who not only believes Trump won the 2020 election, he “can’t find anyone who voted for Joe Biden.” In other words, dude’s living in a Trump bubble, and does not associate with anyone outside of it. He literally knows no one who voted for Biden. Of course, Maher then swings to the left, and says the same is true there. His example is hilarious, so we’ll spoil it. He invited someone to a party at his house and that person declined the invite because another guest supported Trump, saying he/she wouldn’t “breathe the same air” with a Trumper. Bill said there’s a word for such people — ASSHOLES!!! The point being … we have become so tribal … both sides have fundamentally different realities, and that paves the way for hatred and contempt. As he said earlier in the show, even watching the news — especially cable news — has become downright dangerous … the “realities” portrayed on both sides are so skewed, it’s impossible for viewers to believe any sane person can have an opposing belief. That is not to say people can’t draw a line — cutting out racists, homophobes, xenophobes from their lives, but contrarians often automatically get lumped into those buckets. Read More Here

Schrödinger’s Brat: What Is Happening To Hunter Biden Is Both Good And Bad – WhoWhatWhy https://digitalalaskanews.com/schrodingers-brat-what-is-happening-to-hunter-biden-is-both-good-and-bad-whowhatwhy/ Listen To This Story When the Washington Post published a story Thursday with the headline “Federal agents see chargeable tax, gun-purchase case against Hunter Biden,” our reaction was: “Awesome!” On balance, this is great for the country. First, let’s look at all of the positives… and there are plenty. Most importantly, after former President Donald Trump spent four years trying to weaponize the Department of Justice (DOJ), charging the son of a sitting president would show that this time of interference is over. It would also shut up the people who are justifying Trump’s behavior by claiming his successor is doing the same thing. That never made much sense, but it is a popular right-wing talking point. Granted, it would be replaced by another right-wing talking point, i.e., that Hunter Biden is a criminal, but at least that one would be deserved. Of course, there is still the presumption of innocence and all that stuff, but Hunter seems to be a grifter and, pardon our French, quite the fudge up. So, if he did the thing, he should be prosecuted and convicted. And once the Feds are done with him, they can move on to all of the other rich crooks and tax cheats, starting with Donald Trump and his spawn (as well as his spawn-in-law). As a rule, Americans should be excited about millionaires being investigated for and charged with tax evasion. In fact, the whole country would be better off if authorities scrutinized the tax records of the one percent the way they seem to be doing here. That being said, every now and then, a news article comes along that is packed so full of issues that it takes some time to untangle all of them. This is that story, so let’s get to it. First of all, the Post decided to publish this exclusive in its “National Security” section, which seems odd. Hunter has no role in government (as opposed to, for example, the aforementioned Trump brood), so what gives, Washington Post?  We have no idea how the paper’s editors make decisions on what to publish where, but it seems that this story would have been a better fit for the “Health” section because it is certain to cure any erectile dysfunction issues among Fox “News” executives and hosts who will now get to talk about Hunter forever – or at least until the election. That brings us to the next issue. While we strongly believe that nobody is above the law, especially not privileged white men, and that prosecuting Hunter would have benefits that go way beyond punishing another white-collar tax cheat, there are some issues with this article. For one, it is an excellent example of the media allowing itself to be used. The timing of this leak is obvious, as is how Fox and others will spin this news. Granted, this is a bit tricky. Journalists should report on stories that are genuinely newsworthy, and the no-good son of a president being in legal trouble certainly is.   However, knowing that it would get lots of clicks, the Post made too much of it. In addition, and this is more important, a closer look at the “meat” of the article shows that it is much less of a story than it may seem to be. Let’s look at the first sentence: Federal agents investigating President Biden’s son Hunter have gathered what they believe is sufficient evidence to charge him with tax crimes and a false statement related to a gun purchase, according to people familiar with the case. Basically, the story says that cops believe they have enough evidence to put away a bad guy. Well, whoop dee doo. That’s probably how most investigators feel who have been gathering evidence for a couple of years. What the story does not say is whether Hunter will actually be charged. And, again, if there is enough evidence of a crime (and we have no reason to believe there isn’t), then he should be. But this leak is designed to get Hunter Biden’s name in the news ahead of an election. Essentially, this story is more clickbait than news. Now people might ask how we can have a problem with this well-timed leak and not, for example, the one involving Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker (R). Earlier this week, the Daily Beast reported that the avowed Christian, pro-lifer, and serial impregnator of women to whom he is not married paid for the abortion of one of those women. Clearly, this leak was also timed to damage Walker ahead of the election. The big difference, of course, is that Hunter Biden is not running for anything (apart, maybe, for “worst son”). He did not choose to be a public figure. Walker, on the other hand, is running for Senate on a conservative platform in a swing state. There is another thing that is worth mentioning. Here is the Post again: Initially, the investigation centered around Hunter Biden’s finances related to overseas business ties and consulting work. Over time, investigators with multiple agencies focused closely on whether he did not report all of his income, and whether he lied on gun purchase paperwork in 2018, according to the people familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing case. The investigation was initiated in 2018, i.e., during a time in which Trump tried to weaponize his Department of Justice — along with various other federal agencies. By this account, it then apparently turned into a fishing expedition that eventually seems to have come up with something. Again, and we can’t stress this enough — we are all for rich white people being investigated for crimes like tax evasion.  However, it should not be done selectively. It’s also not ideal to start investigating people for one thing and then charge them with something completely different. For example, it would also be problematic if the FBI went looking for stolen classified materials at Mar-a-Lago, didn’t find any, but then began investigating Trump for some unrelated extortion scheme that they found evidence for. So, if you want to put Hunter Biden under this microscope, that’s great. But please do the same with Trump’s kids and every other millionaire in the country. Finally, per the article, one of the issues investigators are looking into is whether the president’s son made a false statement on a federal form when purchasing a gun. Specifically, at a time when Hunter Biden admitted to using drugs, he answered “no” on a question of whether he did so. It will be interesting to see whether the National Rifle Association comes to his rescue. After all, the Second Amendment says Hunter’s right to bear arms shall not be infringed. We’re not holding our breath on that last one, though. Klaus Marre is a writer, editor, and former congressional reporter. Follow him on Twitter @KlausMarre. View all posts Read More Here

3rd District Candidates Kent, Perez Weigh In On Vote-By-Mail https://digitalalaskanews.com/3rd-district-candidates-kent-perez-weigh-in-on-vote-by-mail/ Perez defends vote-by-mail; Kent seeks its end Published: October 8, 2022, 6:07am Election board worker Chuck Perine prepares ballots to be recounted at the Clark County Elections Office on Nov. 29, 2021. (Amanda Cowan/The Columbian files) Southwest Washington’s 3rd Congressional District candidates believe America’s democracy is under threat. Both nod to conversations surrounding mail-in voting as the harbinger of this danger. After Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump, claims that the election wasn’t legitimate pervaded both local and national politics. Although exhaustive analyses have debunked the claims of election fraud, the theory persists. Two years later, Republican candidate Joe Kent is among those continuing to breathe life into the Big Lie — the theory that former President Donald Trump won the election — by questioning the legitimacy of mail-in voting and ballot counting. In an interview with The Columbian, the candidate said he does not believe Biden won the election. Kent said he has more questions than answers surrounding Biden’s success. “I think the big threat to democracy is people not trusting the election system. It’s a big issue,” Kent said, later touching on his support for election audits. He said he welcomes future analyses for Washington’s 3rd Congressional District race in November. In Kent’s eyes, the perfect solution is to dissolve mail-in voting and, instead, establish two federal holidays so people can vote in person. He said he also wants tighter standards to verify voters’ identity and citizenship. Editor’s note This story was prompted by Clark Asks, The Columbian’s reader-guided reporting project. Readers submitted questions for us to ask of congressional candidates, including questions about mail-in voting and the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. To submit your own question, visit The Columbian’s Clark Asks feature at Columbian.com/Clark-Asks. On the other hand, Democratic candidate Marie Gluesenkamp Perez asserts that this rhetoric serves as the fabric of the threat being discussed. “This is a guy who wants to dismantle mail-in voting, which — let’s be very clear — is the most safe and secure safeguard in our democracy,” she said. “There has been no credible evidence of any significant fraud in our elections.” Perez rallied behind voting by mail, calling it the gold standard in election security and engagement. Without this means of casting one’s vote, she said, those who live in rural areas or can’t afford to take time off work would be excluded from the polls. Kent remains firmly skeptical. If people’s election security qualms go unaddressed, he said, they will act to make their voice heard. “If we disenfranchise people, people think, ‘Hey, my government is not going to hear me at the ballot box, so I have to make my government hear me or express my grievances,’ ” Kent said, while rejecting violence. He was one of the 34 plaintiffs named in a lawsuit filed by the Washington Election Integrity Coalition United against Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey, which was dismissed Sept. 30 by a federal court judge. The nonprofit group has filed a series of election fraud lawsuits in multiple counties related to the 2020 general election. No election deception Washington election laws have been developed for more than 30 years to create a secure, transparent and accountable vote-by-mail election, Kimsey said. “Voters in Clark County should have a very high level of confidence in the integrity of the election administration process,” he said. Washington is one of eight states that currently uses universal mail-in voting, meaning ballots are automatically mailed to all registered voters. Many other states allow voters to request an absentee ballot if they wish to vote by mail. There is no evidence that mail-in balloting increases fraud in elections, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit law and policy institute at New York University. There are numerous security measures to prevent fraud from occurring, which are found in all its components — from the ballot envelope itself to secure drop-box locations. A majority of Washington voters trust this voting system, too. A 2022 SurveyUSA poll found that 71 percent of voters within the state said they have a high or moderate trust in Washington’s voting system. But it may vary on their political ideology. Participants who identified as conservative were three times likelier to distrust voting by mail, according to the poll. The primary protection featured on a ballot envelope is found within its signature box, Kimsey said. Trained individuals carefully compare signatures on the envelope to the signature on record for that voter; however, as long as there are humans voting in and administering elections, there will be errors. Most often, these errors relate to signature discrepancies or voters not properly marking their ballot. Boxes may be circled or ticked instead of being filled in correctly, and marks may be made with something other than a blue or black pen. But there is an adjudication process that can correct this. As a “voter intent” state, Washington employs efforts to ensure votes count regardless of whether a ballot is marked in a way that doesn’t correspond with provided directions. For example, if someone forgets to sign their ballot or the signature does not match voter registration records, an Elections Office worker will contact the voter and tell them how the issue can be resolved, Kimsey said. Ballot processing is only done by trained employees at the Elections Office. The League of Women Voters and the Democratic and Republican parties provide volunteers to observe ballot collection and processing. There are also members of the public who assume this role, which has made some voters uncomfortable, Kimsey said. If any activity at ballot drop boxes makes voters uneasy, they should contact law enforcement or the Elections Office. For any questions related to Clark County’s election processes, contact Kimsey at 564-397-2078 or greg.kimsey@clark.wa.gov. Read More Here

'Malicious And Targeted' Sabotage Halts Rail Traffic In Northern Germany https://digitalalaskanews.com/malicious-and-targeted-sabotage-halts-rail-traffic-in-northern-germany/ BERLIN, Oct 8 (Reuters) – Attackers cut cables vital for the rail network in two places causing a near three-hour halt to all rail traffic in northern Germany on Saturday morning, in what authorities called an act of sabotage without identifying who might be responsible. The federal police has launched an investigation into the incident, Transport Minister Volker Wissing told a news conference. “It is clear that this was a targeted and malicious action,” he said. The disruption immediately raised alarm bells after NATO and the European Union last month stressed the need to protect critical infrastructure after what they called acts of “sabotage” on the Nord Stream gas pipelines. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com “We can’t say much at the moment, it is too early,” said a security source who declined to be named. The source said an intensive investigation into the incident had begun and a there were a variety of possible reasons for it, ranging from simple cable theft – which was frequent at the moment – to a targeted attack. Neither the federal police or the interior ministry immediately replied to requests for comment. State rail operator Deutsche Bahn (DB) said in a statement: “Due to sabotage on cables that are indispensable for rail traffic, Deutsche Bahn had to stop rail traffic in the north this morning for nearly three hours.” DB had earlier given the cause of the network disruption as a technical problem with radio communications. Rail traffic was still patchy on Saturday afternoon after being restored, it said, warning of train cancellations and delays. The disruptions affected rail services through the states of Lower Saxony and Schlewsig-Holstein as well as the city states of Bremen and Hamburg, with a knock-on effect to international rail journeys to Denmark and the Netherlands. Queues rapidly built up at mainline stations including Berlin and Hanover as departure boards showed many services being delayed or canceled. Station staff were seen attempting to give advice to passengers as the delays lengthened. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Reporting by Sarah Marsh; Additional reporting by Andreas Rinke and Christian Ruettger; Editing by Catherine Evans and David Holmes Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. Read More Here

A Broke Marching Band Parades On Capitol Hill To Practice. Magic Ensues. https://digitalalaskanews.com/a-broke-marching-band-parades-on-capitol-hill-to-practice-magic-ensues/ The mostly low-income kids in the Eastern High School Marching Band are beloved by the mostly affluent D.C. homeowners who witness their practices October 8, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. EDT Eastern High School band director James Perry, right, gives direction to the students as they march through Capitol Hill neighborhood to prepare for homecoming and the 100th anniversary of the school. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post) Rush hour traffic slammed to a halt as the high school band director walked backward into the busy Capitol Hill intersection, followed by a line of teens gripping trombones, trumpets, french horns and flutes. The thunk-thunk-thunk of bass drums reverberated in the damp October air. “Straight ahead, band, you got to be lookin’ straight ahead,” James Perry, director of the Eastern High School Marching Band, shouted at the students through his megaphone. “Hey, hey, hey, hey!” they chanted back. Eastern High’s homecoming and a celebration of the school’s 100th anniversary were just days away, and the 65-member band — known as “The Blue and White Marching Machine” — was practicing for a performance Saturday that would draw hundreds of Eastern students, parents and alumni. Now, they followed a familiar path, down A Street NE toward Lincoln Park, delighting neighbors and anyone else who stumbled upon them. Practically everyone pulled out their cellphone to record the band as it passed. With four students across, they took up the entire road. Eastern High School marching band practiced their performance ahead of their homecoming in Capitol Hill on Oct. 6. (Video: Lizzie Johnson/The Washington Post) People cheered and shouted encouragement from their front stoops, car windows and the small tables set up outside the local coffee shop, Wine & Butter. Children chased the teens down the block. Sometimes passing patrol cars would flick on their lights and block oncoming traffic so the students could safely pass. Only the dogs weren’t fans. They lunged at the ends of their leashes or cowered behind their owners, uncertain. But Perry, 41, who also works as an attendance counselor at Eastern, didn’t take it personally. He chalked it up to the drums. As the students high-stepped down the street, over wet leaves and under a sky of sagging rain clouds, the driver of a black Toyota Camry rolled down his window and peered out. A woman smoking a cigarette, blue handbag slung over one shoulder, stopped on the sidewalk, gawking. “Hey band?” Perry shouted. “What?” “Hey band?” “E-H-S!” they yelled. They passed million-dollar rowhouses decorated for Halloween, with pumpkins heaped on porch steps and ghosts of stiff gauze frozen on lawns. A toddler pressed against the front door of one home, his breath fogging the glass. Nearby, Katie Telligman, 42, put on a warm jacket and stepped outside her home to better hear the music. “This has been one of the greatest things we’ve discovered since moving to this street five years ago,” said Telligman, who works in communications and has lived on Capitol Hill since 2002. For a while, the pandemic had disrupted these impromptu parades. Now the neighborhood valued them even more. “We’ve watched some of the kids grow up,” Telligman said. “It’s so unique and brings joy to people’s lives. They don’t put this on the real estate listings for the street, but they should. Where else in D.C. can you find this?” ‘The Pride of Capitol Hill’ In Room W01, Perry aimed to give his students something they couldn’t always find elsewhere at Eastern High — a place to dream. Eastern’s 735 students, nearly all Black and most from poor families, face obstacles the affluent residents surrounding the school rarely do. Eastern has long struggled with low test scores, high absenteeism and teacher burnout. But in the band room, the teens felt like they had a chance to aspire for more. “The main thing is family and new opportunities,” explained Marckelle Hodge, 17, a senior trombonist. “It’s more than I would’ve had in other programs. I want to get good grades, go to college, and make it out of my neighborhood. I’m thinking Texas Southern.” Perry, who played alto saxophone in Norfolk State University’s band, knows that such a thing is possible. Recent graduates of Eastern’s program have received full-ride scholarships to Columbia, Florida A&M, Mississippi State and other universities — places he tries to take the students for band competitions to show them what’s possible. What isn’t covered by a student’s scholarship is augmented by care packages from their musical alma mater. The boxes from the band arrive stuffed with laundry detergent, socks and underwear, towels, deodorant and other college kid essentials. Many of Perry’s students “come from tough backgrounds and deal with a lot at home,” he said. For 15 years, he’s directed the program, which includes younger students from nearby middle schools that lack music programs. Perry raises money for the band program by charging booking fees for their performances in the community. It costs $750 — plus transportation — for an appearance from the drum line. The entire band costs $1,500. It takes about two performances to pay for a competition, he said, usually in the Washington region but sometimes as far away as Atlanta. The buses are the most expensive part. In 2019, Perry said he donated his own money to the band by selling his car so the teens could travel and afford new warm-up uniforms. He now walks to work, he said. The Capitol Hill Community Foundation also gave the band a $20,000 grant to repair and replace instruments and announced plans to raise $90,000 more. The band kids have always been scrappy. They used to play at Metro stations to raise money. They washed their threadbare uniforms at the laundromat because they couldn’t afford dry-cleaning, hand mending them as needed. But the band’s motto — “The Pride of Capitol Hill” — has proved true time after time. The community, Perry said, “has really just adopted them.” In 2008, when the band needed $3,000 for the bus ride to a performance in Ohio, neighbors raised the money. And in 2015, when the band needed another $4,000 to get to Virginia, the community stepped up again. The students practice three times a day, before, during and after school, usually finishing at 7 p.m. Perry often reminds them that their reputation as “the city’s premiere band” means everything. The band room reflects their success. The piano and lockers are topped with colorful trophies and other awards. They’ve performed in four NFL halftime shows, three presidential inauguration parades and the opening ceremony for the FIFA World Cup Games. When The Washington Post moved out its old building in Northwest D.C., Eastern’s band marched through the newsroom. Anything but excellence, Perry tells the kids, is “bad for the brand.” When students talk over each other or fail to listen, he makes them do push-ups, calling it “character building.” He doesn’t tolerate misbehavior. “It’s Homecoming week!” Perry yelled into his megaphone Tuesday afternoon as they started practice. The students were clustered on the football field — hoods cinched around their faces to wield off the rain — preparing for their foray around Capitol Hill. “The performance is on Saturday, y’all,” he continued. “Do we give up? Or do we maintain our energy? Y’all understand?” “Yes sir!” they shouted back. Davon Richardson, a 15-year-old sophomore who plays the trumpet, peppered Perry with questions, eager to get going. He was in a thin shirt, despite the 53-degree weather, and jumped from foot to foot to stay warm. He liked parading through neighborhood, he said. The residential streets they marched down reflected a different reality than their school — the homeowners were predominantly White — but the students loved it. “People cheering out their houses and listening to and enjoying us,” Richardson said. “I like hearing them yell.” “Yeah, it feels like I’m making people’s day,” added Tobias Johnson, 16, a junior who also plays the trumpet. “I see them smile, and it makes me so happy.” Their instruments might be old and their uniforms worn. Their section might be short two trumpets. But they knew they had an unparalleled capacity to spark joy. The strains of “Just Got Paid” by Johnny Kemp thundered down the street. It was one of the band’s favorites, along with “I Would Die For You” by Prince. The teens continued high-stepping — all knobby knees and twirling drumsticks — as they ventured deeper into the neighborhood. In house after house, heads popped out front doors. The music was the only lure that could prompt them outside on a drizzling afternoon. “Go band, go band!” yelled Adrianne Marsh, 44, a political consultant, who bobbed and swayed to the beat with her two young daughters. On the sidewalk, a blonde girl in a school backpack shimmied her shoulders. Her younger brother leaned back in their mother’s arms to see better. Just then, two girls in pink shoes darted past them, hand-in-hand, chasing after the band. One of them was Bahman Koosha’s 6-year-old daughter, Nikki Koosha, who said her favorite instrument is the drum because it makes her “feel happy.” “I like that the band is noisy,” she said. “Almost every other day, we come and watch,” said Koosha, 41, an engineer. “As soon as the kids hear them, we have to go out,” agreed Filip Medic, 42, a director at a nonprofit. He paused, watching as his 3-year-old, Tessa Medic, took off running again with Nikki. At the end of the block, the band paused. Perry blew into his whistle. The teens quieted, and he gave a few pointers over the megaphone. “My fingers are freezing,” a flutist whispered to her classmate. “They’re going to fall off.” A few moments later, they turned and resumed march...

Bangladesh Doesn’t Need Advice From Outside: Momen | UNB https://digitalalaskanews.com/bangladesh-doesnt-need-advice-from-outside-momen-unb/ Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen has said Bangladesh does not seek any suggestions from outside, noting that Bangladesh is a nation which gave blood to establish democracy and justice ensuring people’s rights. “I would say – let them (foreign critics) see their own faces in the mirror first before talking about others. We don’t want that much suggestion,” he said while talking to reporters on Saturday after laying the foundation stone for the development of Saheber Bazar High School and College in Sylhet Sadar Upazila. Momen said Bangladesh Awami League came to power again and again through “transparent and credible” elections. “We remain very transparent.”  Without mentioning any country’s name, he said many of them, who are giving lectures on human rights and democracy, were not beside Bangladesh when the nation fought for independence and struggled for establishing democracy, justice and human rights and when the people’s voices were denied. Momen said the tendency of showing hegemony has increased when Bangladesh is walking towards a better position and doing better on the economic front. He said the government never indulges in any extrajudicial killings and does not want to see anyone gets disappeared, but accidents happen in all the countries. Read: Global food crisis won’t seriously harm Bangladesh: Momen “We are very serious so that such accidents do not happen,” Momen said, adding that Sheikh Hasina’s government stands ready to take steps as per the law against those responsible. The foreign minister expressed displeasure over a section of the media mentioning that the media people go to foreigners to ask questions on Bangladesh’s internal issues. He referred to the killings in the malls and schools (in some countries) and said these are their problems to address. Earlier, he spoke at a discussion as the chief guest when he said people of Sylhet are going abroad but Sylhet is far behind in education. “We should pay attention to that. If you study and go abroad then our economy will improve. So, we should all focus on education.” Momen said whenever the Awami League government came to power; there has been great development in the education sector. Bangabandhu’s daughter Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is working to fulfill Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s dream of building a Golden Bangla, he said, adding that the current Awami League government is a government of development. “To build an illiterate-free and happy and rich Sonar Bangla, we need well-educated citizens. The current government is working to create well-educated citizens,” Momen said. Read: We won’t fall prey to Myanmar provocations: Momen Shafikur Rahman Chowdhury, President of Governing Body of Saheber Bazar High School and College and acting President of Sylhet District Awami League, presided over the discussion meeting. General Secretary of Sylhet District Awami League Advocate Nasir Uddin Khan, Chairman of Sylhet Sadar Upazila Parishad and Vice President of Sylhet District Awami League Ashfaq Ahmad, General Secretary of Sylhet Sadar Upazila Awami League Md Nizam Uddin spoke as special guests. Read More Here

YouTube Star MrBeast Says He Doesn't 'really Need Money' Because He Only Cares About Making Videos: 'In The Last 20 Days I've Only Left The Studio Once' https://digitalalaskanews.com/youtube-star-mrbeast-says-he-doesnt-really-need-money-because-he-only-cares-about-making-videos-in-the-last-20-days-ive-only-left-the-studio-once/ America’s biggest YouTuber MrBeast said he doesn’t “really need money” for personal spending.  The YouTuber said he spends most of his money on making videos and barely leaves his studio. Donaldson has previously stated that he lives in his North Carolina filming studio.  Loading Something is loading. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you’re on the go. Jimmy Donaldson, America’s biggest YouTuber, shared his thoughts on money in an interview posted on September 27.  Speaking to Graham Stephan, the host of YouTube podcast “The Iced Coffee Hour,” Donaldson said he reinvests the ad revenue made from his elaborate videos into producing new content, instead of accumulating the earnings in a personal bank account.  “I live in the studio right over there so I’m not worried about paying for a mansion. I don’t drive a Lamborghini. I’d purposely have a really dumbed-down lifestyle because it gives you freedom,” he said. Donaldson previously said he lives in his filming studio, which is located in his hometown in Greenville, North Carolina A post shared by MrBeast (@mrbeast) Donaldson continued,”I like money because I can hire more people and grow a business but not so I can increase my lifestyle, or whatever,” adding that, “In the last 20 days I’ve only left this studio once, I just live here, I don’t really need money for other things.” The YouTuber said that he is able to “pull money” from the channel for personal use at any time, for example if he were invited to a poker game with a $50,000 buy-in.  “I’m just gonna pull 50 grand out and go play in it. So it’s not like I don’t have access to capital if I need it,” he said.  Donaldson told Stephan he is driven by “making the best videos possible,” adding, “everything I do stems from that.”  Donaldson is one of the most popular and highest-paid creators on YouTube. In July, he hit 100 million subscribers on his main channel and livestreamed his reaction for viewers. He is currently the second-most subscribed individual creator on YouTube, behind Pewdiepie.  The YouTuber has developed a reputation among fans for giving away large sums of money to viewers. He rose to fame in 2018 by donating thousands of dollars to small Twitch streamers and YouTubers. More recently, he has filmed elaborate competitions where fans take part in videos with the chance to win large prizes. Last year, he recreated the Netflix show “Squid Game” for a competition involving 456 supporters, and in June, he gave away $500,000 to a fan in a competition inspired by “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.” For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider’s Digital Culture team here. Read More Here

Kanye West Reveals The Reason Why He Like Donald Trump https://digitalalaskanews.com/kanye-west-reveals-the-reason-why-he-like-donald-trump/ Kanye West likes Donald Trump In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, the 45-year-old rapper explained why he liked the former US President. When you visited the White House, my approval rating among Black people increased by 40%. “ The rapper made headlines by endorsing Trump in the 2017 presidential contest. In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, the 45-year-old rapper explained why he liked the former US President. West said to Tucker Carlson, “Even Trump, somebody I’d consider a friend, isn’t immune to having a radicalized viewpoint. He told me various things, like, “Kanye, you’re my friend.” When you visited the White House, my approval rating among Black people increased by 40%. “Black folks are only worth their approval rating to politicians. Democrats hold the opinion that they owe us nothing. Republicans also believe they owe us nothing. Blacks never asked for anything in exchange for their vote. Why am I a fan of Trump? The conservative ideals just align on all fronts. Hey, man, Trump is crap. He owns his own structures “finished Kanye. The rapper made headlines by endorsing Trump in the 2017 presidential contest. Also Read Margot Robbie’s response to Lady Gaga’s portrayal of Harley Quinn in “Joker 2” According to Margot Robbie, she is “glad” to hand over the Harley… Read More News On End of Article BOL Stories of the day Ministry: Rapper Oxxxymiron is deemed a “foreign agent” by Russia Kanye West says Gigi Hadid is a zombie and a spoiled Karen Amber Heard flaunts meaningful tattoo amid her vacation in Mallorca Harry Styles delays concert in Chicago due to a crew member’s illness Deadpool 3: T.J. Miller talks about the reason why he’s not returning Stray Kids reaches 1.3 million album sales with ‘MAXIDENT’ In The Spotlight Advertisement Popular From Pakistan Advertisement Entertainment News Read More Here

Machine (Gun) Politics https://digitalalaskanews.com/machine-gun-politics/ “The Supreme Court said Monday it won’t take up two cases that involved challenges to a ban enacted during the Trump administration on bump stocks . . ” — The Associated Press So the negative of the negative is a positive? Or something? See, the issue was a problem. So the Trump administration de-problemed it. And the U.S. Supreme Court did not un-de-problem it. Let’s put it a little plainer than our friends in the legal reporting business: The Supreme Court has confirmed that bump stocks are no good. And that government can ban them. That’s it, in a nutshell, and nut graph. And that should be that, unless one day the Supreme Court decides to hear a similar case. Bump stocks are mechanisms that — not to go into too much detail — use a rifle’s recoil energy to load another shell for automatic firing. It happens so quickly, and only takes one pull of the trigger to empty a magazine, that the rifle is turned into a de facto machine gun. Making it forbidden by common sense. And now by legal ruling. It’s a good bet that most Americans, even gun owners, never heard of “bump stocks” before the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas. The gunman used rifles to fire more than 1,000 rounds into a crowd at a concert, shooting down on victims from his high-rise hotel room. Sixty people were killed and more than 850 injured. And most of the gunman’s rifles were fitted with those bump stocks. After the massacre, the Trump administration decided to ban bump stocks at the federal level. And now that the court has ruled — and unless it rules otherwise in the future — bump stocks will be verboten. Machine guns aren’t completely illegal. But it takes so much paperwork and background checks and general license requirements that most people don’t bother. Apparently the country likes it that way, and has since the 1930s when Tommy guns (Thompson machine guns) were used by the syndicates to enforce their bloody rules. These bump stocks gave certain folks fully automatic weapons without all those checks, licenses and inspections. In some cases with murderous results. Now that the court has ruled, or at least now that the court has not taken up challenges to the ban, the nation can move on as before, with at least one rule to limit the mayhem in the streets. There now. This one issue is no longer a problem. Read More Here

How Democracy Died In Weimar https://digitalalaskanews.com/how-democracy-died-in-weimar/ The short-lived Weimar Republic—which spanned the years after Germany’s defeat in World War I until 1933, when Hitler came to power—has become a paradigmatic example of democratic collapse. That has brought it renewed attention at this moment in America, when democracy is under threat from illiberal, would-be-authoritarian forces. We should rightly be suspicious of facile comparisons, especially the casual use of fascism as an imprecise epithet, yet Weimar’s fate provides us with some instructive parallels and important warning signals. During its first four years, Weimar was under constant attack—above all, from the Big Lie that the republic was a totally illegitimate government because it owed its genesis to a “stab in the back” delivered on the home front. According to this Big Lie, the German army had not been defeated on the battlefield in 1918—when in fact General Erich Ludendorff’s spring offensive was a gamble that ended in military disaster. Instead, the myth went, a cabal of “November criminals”—Jews, Marxists, democrats, and internationalists—had betrayed the country, subverted the war effort, driven out the kaiser, signed the shameful Treaty of Versailles, and imposed an un-German democracy. Not just Hitler and the Nazis but the entire German right latched on to this message and promoted it. Two factors distinguished Hitler from the rest of the German right. First was his self-awareness and cool calculation in deploying the Big Lie. In Mein Kampf, published in 1925–26, he explained that “the masses … more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a little one,” and that even a propaganda claim “so impudent that people thought it insane” could ultimately prevail. Essential to the “stab in the back” conspiracy theory’s effectiveness were a simple appeal to the emotions, not the intellect, and its endless repetition without concession to contrary evidence. Commitment to the Big Lie, he realized, had to be total and uncompromising. The second factor was Hitler’s decision to make the conspiracy theory the justification for violent action, moving rapidly from merely denigrating Weimar democracy to staging an outright insurrection. In November 1923, he instigated the Beer Hall Putsch, an attempted local coup d’état in the Bavarian capital of Munich. Hitler hoped—and expected—that this would set off a chain reaction causing the Weimar Republic to implode; an authoritarian government could then take over. The coup failed. Hitler was arrested and put on trial for treason. His defense strategy was to use the trial as a platform to amplify the Big Lie. In a spectacular example of shameless historical inversion, he claimed that the founders of Weimar democracy, not he, were the real traitors, the November criminals. The insurrectionist on trial was the true patriot. Bavaria’s conservative judicial system was sympathetic; Hitler served just nine months in prison, where he held court and received more than 330 visitors. Most important, what both conservative politicians and a conservative judiciary in Bavaria failed to do was rid themselves of this dangerous agitator by expelling him from the country as an unwelcome convicted felon of Austrian citizenship. Instead, they—and eventually the old-guard establishment right throughout Germany—enabled his improbable political comeback. From the February 1944 issue: Rebuilding the Reichswehr Hitler’s lesson from the failed putsch was that he needed to pursue revolution through “the politics of legality” rather than storm Munich City Hall. The Nazis would use the electoral process of democracy to destroy democracy. As Hitler’s associate Joseph Goebbels said, the Nazis would come to the Reichstag, or Parliament, as wolves to the sheep pen. By 1929, the press empire of Alfred Hugenberg had embraced and even financed Hitler as a right-wing spokesperson, giving him nationwide exposure and recognition. Then the Great Depression and the political discontent that followed opened the way for a Nazi surge. First, in 1930, the party achieved an electoral breakthrough that made it the second-largest group in Parliament. Less than two years later, it became the largest party in Germany, winning a plurality of votes (about 37 percent) by vacuuming up those of virtually everyone who had previously backed one of several center and right-wing parties. Despite this electoral triumph, the Nazis were blocked from an absolute majority in the Reichstag because voters for the Social Democratic, Communist, and Catholic Center parties did not, for the most part, succumb to Nazi blandishments. This time Hitler attempted no coup, but he would not be denied what the German historian Karl Dietrich Bracher later dubbed a “legal revolution.” By January 1933, Germany’s old guard saw that they were not remotely competitive in any election without the Nazi base, and opted to have Hitler legally appointed chancellor (or first minister). But because non-Nazi conservatives still held eight of 11 cabinet positions in the new government, they persisted in their delusion that they could control him—or, as some might say in today’s parlance, that they could preserve the “guardrails” that would contain him. As Franz von Papen, the new vice chancellor and President Paul von Hindenburg’s favorite, smugly boasted that, far from being controlled by Hitler, “We’ve hired him.” Weimar has bequeathed three distinct cautions for the political right of any era about what not to do in comparable situations: join in disseminating a Big Lie; take inadequate action and impose an inadequate penalty after a treasonous uprising; and cement an alliance between traditional conservatives and fascists. The next stage of the Nazis’ legal revolution of course had its unique characteristics and circumstances, yet the way Hitler’s faction benefited from the conservative establishment’s support, exploited constitutional vulnerabilities, and undermined political norms to subvert German democracy suggests some portents for American politics today. The parallel may seem less direct, but is nonetheless ominous. Hitler was installed as chancellor without a majority in the Reichstag by the exemplar of the old guard, von Hindenburg. To do so, von Hindenburg exercised one of the emergency powers granted to him under the Weimar constitution (in this case, the power to appoint a minority chancellor when political polarization and gridlock meant that no majority government could form). The appointment gave Hitler the opportunity to transform the German political system from within. Read: Seeing Hitler everywhere Hitler soon prevailed on von Hindenburg to use other powers entrusted to the president. In short order, the freedoms of speech, press, and assembly were suspended. An extrajudicial power to arrest and detain people without trial voided normal due process, and this provided a legal basis for the Nazi concentration-camp system. In addition, non-Nazi state governments were deposed, and full legislative powers were vested in the chancellor instead of the Reichstag—in effect allowing rule by fiat. That enabled Hitler to disband labor unions, purge the civil service, and outlaw, one by one, opposing political parties. Within five months, Germany was a one-party dictatorship and a police state. No such scenario looms in the U.S., although the speed of Weimar’s collapse is sobering. In 21st-century America, the threat of a “legal revolution” gutting democracy is visible only in a far more protracted and incremental manner, and on a variety of fronts. If U.S. democracy should fail, its ultimate successor will not be a Nazi-like dictatorship, nor will its leader be a Hitler-like dictator. Any post-democratic American future would reflect not only the nation’s specific past but also its sensibilities of this century—a very different time and place from interwar Europe. Unlike interwar fascism, which openly condemned parliamentary democracy, the current wave of ethnonationalist authoritarian populism in the West—dubbed “illiberal democracy” by the new darling of the American right, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán—prefers to preserve elections as a legitimizing mechanism. The aim of this illiberalism is a “managed democracy” unchecked by an independent judiciary and untrammeled by the inconvenience of real democratic accountability that comes through the hazard of electoral defeat and alternating parties in government. The American political system has some built-in vulnerabilities to illiberal, antidemocratic actors—flaws that the Republican Party exploited even before Donald Trump took it over. Since 1992, Republicans have won the popular vote in a presidential election only once. But the U.S. Constitution has provided them with intrinsic advantages in the forms of the Electoral College and the Senate: Both bodies overrepresent parts of the country where Republicans are strong (less-populated states and areas) and underrepresent more Democratic-leaning localities (populous states and urban areas). As a result, the Democrats have to win the popular vote by a disproportionately large margin to prevail in either the Electoral College or the Senate. Ruth Ben-Ghiat: The return of fascism in Italy The post-2010 gerrymandering of state legislature and U.S. House redistricting—executed with unprecedented precision through sophisticated data processing—has hugely exacerbated the problem. (Democrats are guilty of the practice too, but Republicans are unrivaled in the ruthlessness they’ve brought to the task.) The only electoral suspense in what should be toss-up states such as North Carolina and Wisconsin is whether Republicans can attain veto-proof supermajorities in state legislatures based on roughly half the popular vote. Supreme Court decisions gutting crucial parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 have cleared the way for a host of voter-supp...

Tudor Dixon Slammed For Posting Pics Of Elderly Trump-Supporting Couple's Home And Car Vandalized By 'Antifa' https://digitalalaskanews.com/tudor-dixon-slammed-for-posting-pics-of-elderly-trump-supporting-couples-home-and-car-vandalized-by-antifa/ ‘Whenever these events happen it’s invariably the person themselves who did it, also, no one says Antifa except the GOP,’ a user wrote Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon has faced backlash for saying ‘Antifa’ vandalized an old pair’s home and vehicle (Bill Pugliano/Getty Images and Twitter/@TudorDixon) LANSING, MICHIGAN: Republican Party’s nominee for Governor of Michigan, Tudor Dixon, has faced condemnation online after she shared photos online claiming that the house and the car of a Trump-supporting retired pair have been ravaged by “the tolerant people of ANTIFA.” Taking to Twitter, the 45-year-old posted four photos that showed messages, like “TRUMP NAZI SCUM” and “GOP Terrorist” written over the car and the front of the house. Dixon captioned the images as, “A retired couple in Lansing had their cars and property vandalized by the tolerant people of ANTIFA because the couple supports President Trump. Another example of the radical left’s “fight like hell” tactics, courtesy of Gretchen Whitmer.” But people online did not seem to agree with her and accused her of staging the apparent vandalism. ADVERTISEMENT ALSO READ Spring break teens vandalize Florida shops, Internet calls them ‘entitled brats’ Nancy Mace’s house vandalized with Antifa symbols on Memorial Day, but Internet calls attack ‘staged’ ADVERTISEMENT A retired couple in Lansing had their cars and property vandalized by the tolerant people of ANTIFA because the couple supports President Trump. Another example of the radical left’s “fight like hell” tactics, courtesy of Gretchen Whitmer. pic.twitter.com/z23H44WBbN — Tudor Dixon (@TudorDixon) October 7, 2022 A user wrote, “Let me see…white paint on the red vehicle, and red paint on the white driveway. Hmmm, well thought out slogans…planned to be photographed? That vehicle and driveway are just crisis actors.” The second user said, “Whenever these events happen it’s invariably the person themselves who did it. Also, no one says Antifa except the GOP. So…expect to see the follow up news story on this where it’s revealed a GOP did it. Also. where’s the original news story, Tudor Dixon?” ADVERTISEMENT Let me see…white paint on the red vehicle, and red paint on the white driveway.Hmmm, well thought out slogans…planned to be photographed?That vehicle and driveway are just crisis actors. — Brad #StandWithUkraine (@Brad_of_Kauai) October 8, 2022 Whenever these events happen it’s invariably the person themselves who did it. Also, no one says Antifa except the GOP. So…expect to see the follow up news story on this where it’s revealed a GOP did it. Also. where’s the original news story, Tudor Dixon? — Victoria Brownworth (@VABVOX) October 7, 2022 ADVERTISEMENT The fact that they actually signed it antifa makes it pretty obvious this was done by conservatives looking to smear others.Not falling for it.. — My lawn, get off it.. (@chewybowen) October 8, 2022 “The fact that they actually signed it antifa makes it pretty obvious this was done by conservatives looking to smear others. Not falling for it..” the third one tweeted. The fourth user shared, “There is no organization or group called Antifa. It means anti-fascist, and every American should be anti-fascist. Cracks me up that the GOP thinks it is an organization.” ADVERTISEMENT There is no organization or group called Antifa. It means anti-fascist, and every American should be anti-fascist. Cracks me up that the GOP thinks it is an organization. — Lynn Nichols (@lynnmg) October 8, 2022 Exactly. Are they seriously trying to say someone sprayed “ ANTIFA REVENGE?” That’s like spraying “STEVEN STOLE THE CAR.” and claiming it was Steven who sprayed the message. — Democracy 4 All (@goodbye56789) October 8, 2022 ADVERTISEMENT That’s exactly what I was thinking too, the GOP are always claiming they’ve been attacked, just like how as Christians they act as if Liberals are trying to kill them off, like they’re the ones being mistreated, not all those they target with their horrible laws! — Clara Johnson (@claramjAnnaTorv) October 8, 2022 “Exactly. Are they seriously trying to say someone sprayed ‘ANTIFA REVENGE?’ That’s like spraying ‘STEVEN STOLE THE CAR.’ and claiming it was Steven who sprayed the message,” a person sarcastically said. Another person stated: “That’s exactly what I was thinking too, the GOP are always claiming they’ve been attacked, just like how as Christians they act as if Liberals are trying to kill them off, like they’re the ones being mistreated, not all those they target with their horrible laws!” ADVERTISEMENT How much you wanna bet they are going to have a GoFundMe shortly and it turns out their neighbor had a Ring camera across the street that recorded them doing it themselves? — AskAubry (@ask_aubry) October 8, 2022 Pretty sure this turned out to be a case of damaging cars themselves and trying to collect money from insurance- they did the property too…. I mean, WHO TF writes “Nazi scum”? — L. N. #stopputin #helpukraine (@Lttlwmnbigmth) October 8, 2022 ADVERTISEMENT This was never done. If it was real spray paint on the sides of the car, you’d be able to see where it ran. But it’s the license plate that gives it away. Couldn’t be done that neatly, except w/ spray paint PHOTOSHOP program which “painted” pictures of the cars. This is F-A-K-E. — Jukesgrrl, standing with Ukraine! (@jukesgrrl) October 8, 2022 A tweet referring to the couple whose property was “vandalized” read: “How much you wanna bet they are going to have a GoFundMe shortly and it turns out their neighbor had a Ring camera across the street that recorded them doing it themselves?” “Pretty sure this turned out to be a case of damaging cars themselves and trying to collect money from insurance- they did the property too…. I mean,  WHO TF writes ‘Nazi scum’?” another tweet stated. “This was never done. If it was real spray paint on the sides of the car, you’d be able to see where it ran. But it’s the license plate that gives it away. Couldn’t be done that neatly, except w/ spray paint PHOTOSHOP program which ‘painted’ pictures of the cars. This is F-A-K-E,” a comment asserted. ADVERTISEMENT This article contains remarks made on the Internet by individual people and organizations. MEAWW cannot confirm them independently and does not support claims or opinions being made online. Read More Here

Letters To The Editor For Saturday, October 8, 2022 https://digitalalaskanews.com/letters-to-the-editor-for-saturday-october-8-2022/ Letter writers  |  Fort Myers News-Press Paradise interrupted Everyone called this a slice of paradise. From the funky vibe of Fort Myers Beach to the palatial homes in Naples and everything in between. Sanibel and Captiva were a slice of Florida’s Caribbean islands. We live just east of I-75 and were spared the resident-killing storm surge, just intense winds, rain and repairable damages. Thousands lost everything and many lost their lives. But as Americans do, we pull together. It will take months and years to rebuild from the ravages of climate change and a future for the new Southwest Florida. In addition to the efforts of fire, police, EMTs, linemen/women, we have seen the churches step up to minister and feed the multitudes of the afflicted. It’s still paradise, just interrupted not lost. Laurence Jacks, Estero Jude Richvale for Bonita council I recently moved back to Southwest Florida from the country of Estonia with the promise of a job as chief maintenance engineer at The Sanibel Inn. After two weeks on the job, the Sanibel Causeway was destroyed by Ian. I was lucky to reconnect with my friend Jude Richvale after I heard that his wife and my good friend Kathy Walters recently passed away. Jude was kind enough to offer me a place in his home and assistance in finding work as a handyman helping some of his friends repair storm damages. Since then, I have read Jude’s Water Plan for Bonita (News-Press 2/2/2022). It is clearly an effective ways to reduce flooding and red tide. Storing sweet summer storm water in ASR Wells before it goes out to sea is a winner. Retrieving that water in winter and saving us about $400 yearly on BSU bills is a no brainer. Another one of Jude’s articles “A New Vision for Old 41” (on jude4bonita.org) is creative and insightful and would inspire businessmen to create an organic, popular and quaint downtown. Jude has given much thought to the issues in Bonita and that shows a deep love for the people and for nature. His opponent issues platitudes like “I am for clean water” and a “safe city” but offers no plans. Jude has my vote for the Bonita District 5 Council seat. For all of our sake’s, I hope he has yours too. Peter Madisson, Bonita Springs Mouth soap for president and mayor The hot mics of President Biden and Fort Myers Beach Mayor Ray Murphy blowing out filthy and ungodly words reminded me of my southeast Alabama 1971 smoky pool hall that shot out obscenity nonstop. Unrealistic and unbelievable that the pool shooter “Fast Eddy” of “The Hustler” 1961 movie never used Biden and Murphy’s foul language. What about a boatload of “mother’s soap” for the wanna-be tough Biden and Murphy?  Mike Sawyer (former Florida foster dad for over 60 kids), Denver, CO Silence gives consent In recent days, Mr. Trump, the leader of the Republican Party, has openly issued two veiled threats of violence against those who oppose him and in effect against the principles of law and order in this country. Mr. Trump told a radio host that there would be problems like this country has never seen if he is indicted for illegally taking and mishandling national security documents from the White House. I say if Mr. Trump has indeed willfully broken the law, he should be punished under the law and any problems that produces will be dealt with legally as well.  More recently, Mr. Trump stated that Mitch McConnell has a “death wish” for supporting election reform in Congress and, never missing an opportunity to appeal to that part of his base animated by racial animosity, attributed it to McConnell’s “China loving wife, Coco Chow.” McConnell’s wife, real name Elaine Chow was, by the way, appointed by Mr. Trump as his own Transportation Secretary. This style of slash and burn leadership and governing is now part of the approach favored by Republican leaders and which brought us “that little elf” comment in reference to a person who saved millions of lives from the AIDS epidemic.  Meanwhile, Mr. Biden, agree with his policies or not, is busy speaking the plain truth to the American people and governing, without fanfare, and without wasting taxpayer dollars to punish those who did not vote for him. It is either naivete or willful ignorance to think that policies do not flow from the character of the person making them. A vengeful, petty, thin-skinned insecure character will sooner or later resort to form and produce vengeful, petty, self-serving policies. We have seen this in gerrymandering, voter suppression, “don’t say gay,” elimination of non-existent CRT and the “by any means necessary” approach to achieve and maintain power. Every citizen should familiarize themselves with the Marine adage that says when one hears that an artillery round or bombing run is being plotted into their position and remains silent, “silence gives consent.” None of us should be silent when “leaders” openly issue veiled threats against those who oppose them. That’s fully expected in a dictatorship, not in a democracy. Thomas Minor, Bonita Springs Obama/Biden the real oppressors The editorial, “You Can’t Build Roads Without Oil” of 10/06/22, speaks to how illogical the “climate-control” advocates in the Biden administration policies are. Jacob R. Borden speak truth (to power). The real truth is, the Biden administration is trying everything possible to destroy America, including what is unconstitutional. By wasting our tax dollars on climate control, there is little left for infrastructure, military defense, medical research, or safe borders. Climate control, along with WOKE ideology, are the major ways in which the Obama/Biden administration is tearing down America’s economy, America’s defense, and America’s freedoms by turning America into an impoverished weak country. Democrats seem to believe that once America is impoverished, it will be easy to create their Marxist dictatorship. Impoverished people have little to no power to stop them. The Obama/Biden legacies will be: These two presidents abolished America’s freedom and liberty for all in exchange for their dictatorship of equity, transgender mutilations, CRT, and 1619 Project of a false history taught to our youth so that they will be easy to control. The poem “Ozymandias” comes to mind: Words on the lifeless remains state, “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.” This could be America’s future if the Democrats remain in power. Think about who the real “oppressors” are and who the real “victims” are. The Obama/Biden governments are the real oppressors and the American people, regardless of race, color, socio-economic class, or religion, are the real victims. Dionne M. Schwartz, Naples Authoritarian Republican threat Some Americans who are rightly appalled by Trump’s Republican Party have been making hopeful noises in the media lately. They’re saying that power hungry, “win at any cost” Republicans have gone too far and will pay a stiff political price for their cynical, unprincipled, un-American behaviors — somewhere down the line. “Somewhere down the line!” They have to be kidding me. If this current iteration of the Republican Party is not roundly defeated in ’22 and ’24, there will be no “down the line” for America as a small “d” democratic republic. The American experiment in government of, by and for the people will be effectively over, and our beloved country will look more like Putin’s Russia than Lincoln’s ideal. This is it, people. It’s now or never. A vote for this particular brand of Republican is a vote for an authoritarian future dressed up as a democracy. If they get their hands on the levers of government, they will make hollow shells of the very mechanisms the founders created as hedges against consolidated, authoritarian rule. It’s time to choose. There will be no next time. “Somewhere down the line” is now. Geremy Spampinato, Naples Memories of communist country As someone who grew up under and escaped from a Soviet-type communist country, there are certain memories that one never forgets. These are memories of only one undisputed ruling party and one candidate to vote for, that political dissent is not to be tolerated, that those espousing such contrarian ideas would likely end up in a gulag, or worse, and the nightmares of middle-of-the-night secret police tearing down doors to arrest “enemies of the people” who — authorities remind everyone — hide behind every bush and every wall, and yet the authorities knew full well who those threatening the “people’s freedom” were and where they hid.   There are also memories that “even the walls have ears,” that parents, children, best friends and others so dear to you may and are, in fact, encouraged to report any transgression of thought or speech, that the secret police and the military are an extension of the authority’s long arm, and the constant and repeated all-reassuring government reminders of its best intentions and its commitment to “uniting people.”  Yet not all was so dark then; there was the comfort that the country was safe and secure as its borders were well protected and guarded by attack dogs and fully armed military personnel with orders to shoot to kill — but not at those who would want to enter this paradise on earth, but those who would want to leave it.  Why would anyone want to leave? Interesting how those memories are resonating more frequently and more vividly in recent times. Frank Sterdjevich, North Naples What Biden has accomplished A letter writer recently complained about President Biden. Here are some of his accomplishments: Despite some bad press, he inherited a broken economy with the daily death toll from the global pandemic at an all-time high. Here are just a few examples of what h...

From Serbia To Roger Stone, Oath Keepers Trial Traces Threads Of Alleged Jan. 6 Plot https://digitalalaskanews.com/from-serbia-to-roger-stone-oath-keepers-trial-traces-threads-of-alleged-jan-6-plot/ At the first U.S. seditious conspiracy trial in a decade, federal prosecutors have drawn a direct link over and over again between lead defendant Stewart Rhodes, accused of conspiring by force to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election culminating in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, and longtime Donald Trump political confidant Roger Stone Minutes after news networks declared Joe Biden the election’s winner on Nov. 7, 2020, an FBI agent testified this week, Rhodes wrote Stone and others on a “Friends of Stone” encrypted chat group set up to plot Trump’s defiant post-election strategy: “What’s the plan? We need to roll ASAP.” Rhodes included his own proposal — inspired by a Serbian academic’s call for Americans to fill the streets and storm Congress — whose “parallels to what these defendants actually tried to accomplish is stunning,” U.S. prosecutor Jeffrey Nestler told jurors. Stone has consistently denied any knowledge of or involvement in illegal acts at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and his ties to the right-wing extremist group Rhodes founded — the Oath Keepers — were no secret, as several members of the group guarded him in Washington that morning before joining the riot. However, by raising his name repeatedly in the trial of Rhodes and four others, U.S. prosecutors in court have made clear Stone and others remain objects of inquiry. The Justice Department and the FBI have long been interested in any role high-profile right-wing figures such as Stone may have played in events, whether anyone who may have influenced rioters bears enough responsibility to justify potential criminal charges or not, analysts said. “It seems like the prosecution is treating Stone as an unindicted co-conspirator,” said Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor who teaches law at George Washington University. A “one-way transmission” from Rhodes does not establish that Stone or any other Trump advisers were part of any conspiracy, said former federal prosecutor and University of Michigan law professor Barbara McQuade. But if Rhodes testifies as his defense attorney has promised later in the projected six-week trial, McQuade said she expects prosecutors will ask him questions that could provide those links, such as why he sent the plan to Stone, whether they had prior conversations about attacking the Capitol and who told Rhodes that Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act to mobilize private militias, which Rhodes has asserted as a defense. More details may emerge in coming days from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, which has subpoenaed footage of Stone for a hearing Thursday. An earlier witness, Trump administration aide Cassidy Hutchinson, recalled discussions of both the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys in the White House during the Jan. 6 planning and testified that Trump wanted to reach out to Stone on Jan. 5. U.S. prosecutors on Monday said Rhodes relayed to Oath Keepers followers and the Friends of Stone group a “step-by-step” action plan that he had discussed with Aleksandar Savic. The Serbian academic on Nov. 6 posted a viral online video of himself in an office addressing a camera, urging Americans to follow the lead of a U.S.-backed uprising that began in 1999 against former Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic: swarm the streets, fight the police until they switch sides and storm parliament. Savic could not be reached, but in January told Talking Points Memo that shortly afterward he contacted Rhodes to thank the Oath Keepers for sharing his video and “recapitulated” his views therein, but declined to share with TPM his emails with Rhodes, citing privacy. But Savic “denied his video played any role in the actions that the Oath Keepers later took,” according to story. Rhodes’s eagerness to share the Serbian link provides a window into his thinking at a moment during the 2020 post-election struggle when, after years of bombastic and apocalyptic rhetoric, he seemingly took a fateful step toward militant action, in prosecutors’ telling. “So will you step up and push Trump to FINALLY take decisive action?” Rhodes asked the Stone group the day networks called the election for Biden, according to a text played in court. “That’s what we must do now. And then if he still refuses to do his duty, we will still have to do ours and we will.” Whether Stone read those messages and if so, what he made of them remains unknown. “I think we’ll have to wait and see if other evidence comes out that ties them all together,” Eliason said. “But it may be less about Stone himself and just about the fact that they were all sharing a plan that involved a similar uprising and storming the parliament in Serbia. I think that would be important evidence for a seditious conspiracy charge regardless of who was involved in sharing the plan — Stone or someone else. The Washington Post has reported that Stone told aides to keep tabs on his chat conversation, which included the longtime leader of another far-right group, the Proud Boys’ Henry “Enrique” Tarrio. Stone remained in contact with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Florida and in Washington in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 attack, coordinating post-election protests and privately strategizing with figures such as former national security adviser Michael Flynn and “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander. Prosecutors have laid out evidence that Rhodes had a pattern of issuing similar communications simultaneously to both the Friends of Stone chat group and to a chat group including charged Oath Keepers members and co-defendants. Days before the riot, Rhodes told leaders in the Oath Keepers that he was “busy on back channel working groups trying to advise the president,” according to the messages played in court. Asked for comment, a representative for Stone pointed to a statement he has previously provided The Post: “Any claim, assertion or implication that I knew about, was involved in or condoned the illegal acts at the Capitol on Jan. 6 is categorically false and there is no witness or document that proves otherwise.” Extremism analysts said there were too many forces feeding into Jan. 6 to say that Savic’s video played a driving role, although it did go viral among Trump “Stop the Steal” organizers, QAnon conspiracy theorists and right-wing figures such as Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward. Still, Rhodes’s adoption and re-circulation of it had an important practical and legal impact, said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. “Savic’s violent narrative shared with the Oath Keepers helped refine a widely shared vision among hardened election deniers into something more detailed and tactical,” said Levin. “Savic provided the coaching details on a play that Rhodes had already assigned himself to quarterback.” Vuk Vuksanovic, senior researcher at the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy, a Serbian think tank, said that it was “paradoxical” that Savic’s model for Trump was an uprising backed by a Democratic administration when Biden led Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Vuksanovic, who formerly worked at Serbia’s foreign ministry, said he had never heard of Savic, whose views seemed “chaotic” and driven by grievance over personal setbacks, adding, “I can’t say the Oath Keepers are particularly sophisticated ideologically if they found inspiration in something like this.” Stone’s connection to the Oath Keepers dates back at least as far as the 2016 election, when the group answered his call to monitor polling places for signs of Democratic fraud. The election fraud campaign led to accusations of voter intimidation but was rendered moot by Trump’s victory. In 2020, Stone revived the organization he had used to claim fraud four years earlier: “Stop the Steal.” Previously unseen documentary footage shows how longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone tried to overturn the 2020 election. Reporter Jon Swaine explains more. (Video: Casey Silvestri/The Washington Post) Again, Stone and Rhodes were in sync. Stone said on Alex Jones’ show in September 2020 that if Biden won, Trump should consider invoking the Insurrection Act, a call taken up by Rhodes after the election. “People keep saying invoking the Insurrection Act is a ‘last resort.’ Trump cannot wait til after Jan 6 to expose all the traitors,” Rhodes texted the Stone group on Dec. 15. “He must do it NOW.” That proposed course of action disturbed some members of the group, including one leader from West Virginia who testified this week that he was concerned enough to secretly record an internal meeting and share it with the FBI. “The more I listened to the call, it sounded like we were going to war against the United States government, so I just recorded it,” said Abdullah Rasheed. He said he tried to warn other law enforcement agencies, writing U.S. Capitol Police that Rhodes was “a friggin’ wacko,” but that the FBI ignored his tip until after the Capitol attack, according to the testimony. Michael Adams, who helped organize Oath Keepers in Florida in 2020, testified that he was also alienated by Rhodes’s insistence that the election was stolen and claim that if Trump “didn’t declare the Insurrection Act and call up the militias, then we would have to do that.” Adams called Rhodes’s rhetoric “unchained,” telling jurors, “I didn’t feel like I was part of ‘we.’ That’s not my ideology. I didn’t want to be associated with that.” Jacqueline Alemany and Tom Jackman contributed to this report. Read More Here

Sherwood Man Sentenced To 2 1/2 Years For Role In Shootout That Led To Brother’s Death https://digitalalaskanews.com/sherwood-man-sentenced-to-2-1-2-years-for-role-in-shootout-that-led-to-brothers-death/ A 22-year-old Sherwood man accused of participating in a College Station shootout in which his brother was killed has accepted a 2½-year prison sentence. Corenthia Chef “Peanut” Davie of Sherwood, a 32-year-old father of two, was killed by gunshots to his face and shoulder during the March 2020 incident, which began as a fight between Davie’s sister and another woman at the basketball court at 4200 Frazier Pike, according to authorities. Davie’s brother, Steve Cokley III of Sherwood, pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in exchange for the 30-month term imposed by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Karen Whatley, sentencing papers filed on Monday show. He faced up to six years on the Class D felony charge. Under the conditions of his plea agreement, negotiated by deputy prosecutor Hannah Johnston and defense attorney Will James, his prison sentence will run concurrently with a 35-month federal sentence Cokley received in November after pleading guilty to possession of an unregistered firearm, a rifle with a sawed-off barrel that Cabot police seized from him in a September 2020 encounter. Investigators believe the fatal violence grew out of a fight between 31-year-old Charity Unique Duckett, a sister of Davie and Cokley, and another woman, although the nature of the dispute was not made clear. A crowd had gathered to watch the fight. A woman who tried to stop the fight was struck from behind by Cokley, who was in turn knocked to the ground by part of the crowd that opposed Duckett, according to arrest reports. Three people tried to hold Cokley down, but 33-year-old Carrington Akins of Sherwood, another brother to Davie and Cokley, intervened and Cokley was able to regain his footing and start shooting, authorities said. Court records show that Pulaski County sheriff’s deputies obtained a cellphone video of the shooting that showed Davie standing in the middle of the court holding what appears to be an AK-47 before a shirtless man walks up behind him and points a gun at him, court filings show. The recording then shows Cokley firing at a crowd of people running away before shifting back to the basketball court where Davie’s body can be seen. Witnesses identified the shirtless man as 20-year-old Derek Jermaine Parks of Little Rock. He was arrested on a first-degree murder count but prosecutors declined to charge him. Davie was killed about 20 months after his mother was killed at the family’s home in Sherwood in a shootout that police said involved Cokley. Authorities say 46-year-old Regina Annice Jackson, a mother of six, was killed by 22-year-old Zereak Zernell Oliver of Little Rock while he tried to steal a Ruger AR-556 rifle from Cokley. According to Sherwood police, Oliver and another man had gone to the house to buy the AR-15-style rifle from Cokley. Police said that Oliver, trying to take the weapon by force, fired a pistol into the home with Cokley returning fire with the gun, known on the street as a “chopper.” Authorities said Oliver and the other man fled the home in Oliver’s car, which led to a high-speed police chase into Little Rock. During the pursuit, someone in the vehicle threw out a backpack containing a 9 mm pistol, which matched a spent shell casing found in front of Jackson’s home, according to police. Oliver is currently awaiting trial on charges of first-degree murder, committing a terroristic act, fleeing and evidence tampering. Read More Here

Explosion Destroys Part Of Crimea Bridge Crucial To Russian War Effort https://digitalalaskanews.com/explosion-destroys-part-of-crimea-bridge-crucial-to-russian-war-effort/ LONDON, Oct 8 (Reuters) – A blast on the strategic road-and-rail bridge linking Russia and the Crimean peninsula on Saturday brought down sections of road taking traffic in one direction, damaging a crucial supply route for Russian forces in Ukraine. The blast on the Kerch bridge, for which Russia did not immediately assign blame, prompted gleeful messages from Ukrainian officials but no direct claim of responsibility. Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and the 19-km (12-mile) bridge linking it to Russia’s transport network was opened with great fanfare four years later by President Vladimir Putin himself. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com It now represents a major supply route for the Russian forces who have taken control of most of southern Ukraine’s Kherson region, and for the naval port of Sevastopol, whose governor told locals: “Keep calm. Don’t panic.” It was not yet clear if the blast was a deliberate attack or an accident but the damage to such high-profile infrastructure came at a time when Russia has suffered several battlefield defeats and could further cloud the Kremlin’s messages of reassurance to the wider Russian public that the conflict is going to plan. It also took place a day after Putin’s 70th birthday. The head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, Oleksiy Danilov, posted a video of the burning bridge on social media alongside a video of Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy birthday, Mr President”. Since the start of the invasion on Feb. 24, Ukrainian officials have made regular allusions to their desire to destroy the Kerch bridge, seen in Ukraine as a symbol of Russia’s occupation of Crimea. Ukraine’s postal service said on Saturday it would print a special stamp to commemorate the blast. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Kyiv’s reaction to the destruction of civilian infrastructure “testifies to its terrorist nature”. The Russian National Anti-Terrorism Committee said a freight truck had blown up on the bridge’s roadway at 6:07 a.m. (0307 GMT), causing seven fuel tanker wagons to catch fire on a train heading for the peninsula on the bridge’s upper level. It said two spans of road bridge had partially collapsed, but that the arch spanning the Kerch Strait, the waterway through which ships travel between the Black Sea and Azov Sea, was not damaged. Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian governor of Crimea, said on social media that the road bridge was still intact in one direction, although traffic was suspended while the damage was assessed. Images posted on social media showed one half of the roadway blown away, and the other half still attached, but cracked, while a train on the upper bridge was engulfed in flames. The images could not immediately be verified. Others taken from a distance showed thick smoke pouring from part of the bridge. ‘THE BEGINNING’ An adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy posted a message on Twitter saying the incident was just “the beginning” but stopped short of saying Ukrainian forces were responsible for the blast. “Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything that is stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled,” Mykhailo Podolyak wrote. Moscow has presented largely Russian-speaking Crimea as a historic and cherished part of Russia and, especially this year, one where Russians could holiday in large numbers, supposedly safe from the war. Kirill Stremousov, the Russian-installed deputy administrator of the Kherson region, said the bridge incident “will not affect the army supply very much”. “But there will be problems with logistics for Crimea,” he added in a post on social media. Mykola Bielieskov of the Ukrainian Institute of Strategic Studies, which advises the presidency in Kyiv, said the Kerch bridge was irreplaceable for Russia’s invasion forces, and if it were severed, “the whole Russian southern front will crumble quickly and easily”. Although Moscow’s forces have seized a stretch of coastal Ukraine linking the Kherson region and Crimea to Russia, Bielieskov said the transport connections there were poor, and that Russia had preferred to send reinforcements to Kherson along the more circuitous route of the bridge into Crimea. Russian Railways said trains heading for Crimea would be subject to extra checks, and that it was working with the government to find the “best way to deliver goods to the peninsula”. In a video message Aksyonov, the Crimea governor, said he wanted to “assure Crimeans that the Republic of Crimea is fully provided with fuel and food. We have more than a month’s worth of fuel, and more than two months’ worth of food”. The Russian governor of Sevastopol, which has separate territorial status in Crimea as home to the Black Sea fleet, also sought to reassure locals. “We are not cut off from the mainland!” Mikhail Razvozzhayev posted on Telegram. “Keep calm. Don’t panic.” Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Reporting by Reuters Editing by Kevin Liffey and Frances Kerry Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. Read More Here

OPEC+ Oil Output Cut Shows Widening Rift Between Biden And Saudi Royals https://digitalalaskanews.com/opec-oil-output-cut-shows-widening-rift-between-biden-and-saudi-royals/ WASHINGTON/LONDON, Oct 8 (Reuters) – The OPEC+ organization’s decision this week to cut oil production despite stiff U.S. opposition has further strained already tense relations between President Joe Biden’s White House and Saudi Arabia’s royal family, once one of Washington’s staunchest Middle East allies, according to interviews with about a dozen government officials and experts in Washington and the Gulf. The White House pushed hard to prevent the OPEC output cut, these sources said. Biden hopes to keep U.S. gasoline prices from spiking again ahead of midterm elections in which his Democratic party is struggling to maintain control of the U.S. Congress. Washington also wants to limit Russia’s energy revenue during the Ukraine war. The U.S. administration lobbied OPEC+ for weeks. In recent days, senior U.S. officials from energy, foreign policy and economic teams urged their foreign counterparts to vote against an output cut, according to two sources familiar with the discussions. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Amos Hochstein, Biden’s top energy envoy, along with national security official Brett McGurk and the administration’s special envoy to Yemen Tim Lenderking, traveled to Saudi Arabia last month to discuss energy issues, including the OPEC+ decision. They failed to prevent an output cut, just as Biden did after his own July visit. US officials “tried to position it as ‘us versus Russia,'” said one source briefed on the discussions, telling Saudi officials they needed to make a choice. That argument failed, the source said, adding that the Saudis said that if the United States wanted more oil on the markets, it should start producing more of its own. The United States is the world’s No. 1 oil producer and also its top consumer, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The Saudi government media office CIC did not respond to Reuters emailed requests for comment about the discussions. “We are concerned first and foremost with the interests of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and then the interests of the countries that trusted us and are members of OPEC and the OPEC + alliance,” Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz told Saudi TV Wednesday. OPEC weighs its interests with “those of the world because we have an interest in supporting the growth of the global economy and providing energy supplies in the best way,” he said. Washington’s handling of the Iran nuclear deal and withdrawal of support for a Saudi-led coalition’s offensive military operations in Yemen have upset Saudi officials, as have actions against Russia after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. A U.S. push for a price cap on Russian oil is causing uncertainty, Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told Bloomberg TV after the OPEC cut, noting the “lack of details and the lack of clarity” about how it will be implemented. A source briefed by Saudi officials said the kingdom views it as “a non-market price-control mechanism, that could be used by a cartel of consumers against producers.” A Biden-directed sale of 180 million barrels of oil in March from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve put downward pressure on oil prices. In March, OPEC+ said it would stop using data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), a Western oil watchdog, due to Saudi-led concerns the United States had too much influence. On Thursday, Biden called the Saudi decision “a disappointment”, adding Washington could take further action in the oil market. “Look it’s clear that OPEC Plus is aligning with Russia,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Wednesday. She would not elaborate on how the output cut would affect U.S.-Saudi relations. In the U.S. Congress, Biden’s Democrats called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia and spoke about taking back weapons. “I thought the whole point of selling arms to the Gulf States despite their human rights abuses, nonsensical Yemen War, working against US interests in Libya, Sudan etc, was that when an international crisis came, the Gulf could choose America over Russia/China,” Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat, said on Twitter. Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs Adel Al-Jubeir, said in remarks to Fox News on Friday when asked about the U.S. criticism: “Saudi Arabia does not politicize oil or oil decisions.” “With due respect, the reason you have high prices in the United States is because you have a refining shortage that has been in existence for more than 20 years,” he added. CROWN PRINCE AND BIDEN Weeks after Biden took office as president, Washington released a report tying the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The prince, son of King Salman, 86, has denied ordering the killing but acknowledged it took place “under my watch”. The prince became prime minister last month and his lawyers have been arguing in a U.S. court that this makes him immune from prosecution in the Khashoggi death. Biden’s trip to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in July for a Gulf summit was aimed at patching up relations, but he also levied harsh criticism of bin Salman over Khashoggi’s murder. Ben Cahill, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the Saudis hope the production cuts will give OPEC+ control over oil prices and ensure enough oil revenue to protect their country from a recession. “The macroeconomic risk is getting worse all the time, so they have to respond,” Cahill said. “They are aware that a cut will irritate Washington, but they are managing the market.” Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Reporting By Steve Holland, Timothy Gardner and Jarrett Renshaw in Washington; Dmitry Zhdannikov in London, Aziz El Yaakoubi in Riyadh, Ghaida Ghantous in Dubai and Ahmed Tolba in Cairo. Editing by Heather Timmons, David Gregorio and Jane Merriman Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. Read More Here