MPs in South Africa have adopted a report on a proposed change to the constitution, which would allow land to be seized from white owners without compensation. An attempt to stop it in court failed last week.
On Tuesday, South African parliament approved a report which recommends changing the national constitution to allow the state to take privately-owned land without compensation as long as it is justified by public interest. Redistribution of land, supporters believe, would be beneficial to the South African public.
President Cyril Ramaphosa, who came to power in February, has made it a priority for the ruling African National Congress (ANC) to adopt a racially-loaded amendment to the country’s constitution. A small white minority owns most of the farmland in the former colony, and ANC insists that it’s a historic injustice that needs rectifying.
This is just one step in a lengthy legal process of changing the nation’s foundational law in accordance with Ramaphosa’s vision. The next would be drafting a bill enacting the constitutional amendment, followed by a period of public feedback before it can be put to a vote. Both chambers of the Parliament will then have to approve the bill before it is sent to the president for signing into law.
The main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) and some rights groups are critical of the plans, saying they would scare off international investors and potentially damage the national economy. DA said ahead of the Tuesday parliament debate that it may go to court to stop the proposed reform.
But last week’s decision by South African High Court may be an indicator that such a challenge may not be successful. Last Friday the court rejected a challenge brought by AfriForum, a group representing mainly white Afrikaners, requesting the judiciary to overturn the parliamentary report and thus stop the reform process.
The group argued that the committee broke the rules when it appointed an external service provider to compile the report. It also said the MPs failed to consider over 100,000 submissions opposing the constitutional change.
Afriforum, which mostly consists of Afrikaners, the descendants of South African white colonist farmers, said it will continue to fight the reform, including through legal action.
Ironically the racially-sensitive issue was raised a day before South Africa commemorated the anniversary of the death of Nelson Mandela, the former president of the ANC and the country itself, who is credited for destroying the apartheid regime.
As “urban warfare” grips the streets of Paris a photograph of a woman in a Burger King, who is incongruously grinning from ear to ear while tear gas swirls outside, is being hailed as the perfect encapsulation of modern times.
The French capital has seen a wave of protests, riots and looting in recent days after Yellow Vest demonstrations against tax hikes turned violent.
CRS riot police used water cannons and tear gas in a bid to quell, what the head of the Alliance police union, Frederic Lagache, called “insurrectional climate.”
However, all of that appeared to be of little concern to the woman who was snapped happily surveying the scene from inside the fast-food outlet while seemingly taking pictures on her smartphone.
Clouds of teargas, the masked man, the Burger King signage and the woman’s toothy smile give the striking scene a baroque feel and it has clearly struck a chord with many as the photo garnered more than 120,000 Reddit upvotes and nearly 4,000 comments in one day.
The moment was captured by Russian journalist and photographer Ilya Varlamov. “Rarely does a photo so accurately capture the spirit of an era,” the viral Reddit post reads.
Burger King has now been the backdrop for at least two viral incidents during the unrest in Paris. Riot police were also filmed using a considerable amount of force on several Yellow Vests who were in a branch of the restaurant in the French capital.
“The demonstrators obviously forced the entrance, because the Burger King was closed, and the door was damaged when we entered,” a photographer who witnessed the incident said to Liberation.
“We enter the Burger King with about fifteen Yellow Vests, everyone suffocates, I vomit almost, so the air was loaded with tear gas. The manager passes us bottles of water so that we can rinse the face. The time to catch our breath, we see the CRS surround the Burger King. We lift our press card in the air.
They took out the protesters one by one through the entrance of the Burger King, and we saw the CRS beat all those who went out.
Sanders’s private jet use comes despite the senator’s hard-line stance on climate change, which he has consistently called “the single greatest threat facing our planet.”
By Peter Hasson
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s re-election campaign spent just under $300,000 on private jet use in October, Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show.
The Sanders campaign, which is funded primarily by small-dollar donors, paid Apollo Jets $297,685.50 on Oct. 10, FEC records reveal. The payment was marked for “transportation.”
“This expense was for transportation for the senator’s 9-day, 9-state tour to support Democratic candidates up and down the ballot ahead of Election Day,” campaign spokeswoman Arianna Jones told local website VtDigger.com, which first reported on the jet expenses.
“This cost covered the entirety of the tour from Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, South Carolina, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, California, and back to Vermont,” Jones said.
Sanders’s private jet use comes despite the senator’s hard-line stance on climate change, which he has consistently called “the single greatest threat facing our planet.”
“The campaign purchased carbon offsets from NativeEnergy to support renewable energy projects and invest in carbon reduction projects to balance out the emissions produced on the trip,” Jones told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
The same day his campaign cut a check to the private jet company, Sanders called climate change a “planetary crisis.”
“Climate change is a planetary crisis. Our task is clear. We must take on the fossil fuel industry that’s largely responsible for global emissions and accelerate our transition toward energy efficiency and sustainable energy sources,” Sanders wrote in an Oct. 10 tweet.
Jones said the payment of $4,980 to NativeEnergy will be reflected in the campaign’s Dec. 6 filing, which covers activities after Oct. 17.
Kareem Hunt, who was released by the Kansas City Chiefs last week after a video emerged of him pushing and kicking a woman in February, appears to have been involved in another nightclub confrontation earlier this year.
The video, shot last January and obtained by TMZ, shows the star running back engaged in a heated confrontation with other patrons in a Kansas City nightclub. A police report obtained by the same outlet states that former NFL running back George Atkinson, along with others including Hunt, became involved in a violent incident with another man.
The man would later claim that he became involved in the confrontation when Atkinson pushed a friend of his, later telling police that he was treated in a Kansas City-area hospital for a broken rib, a broken nose and numerous contusions.
TMZ reports that Atkinson didn’t pursue charges against Atkinson or Hunt. The woman who was pushed and kicked by Hunt in the video which caused the player’s release from the Chiefs organization also did not press charges.
Hunt was also reported as having punched a man in a separate incident in Ohio in June of this year and, much like the other incidents, he also did not pursue police involvement.
Hunt, who was a central figure to Kansas City’s push for the Super Bowl this season, was released from the franchise after officials determined that he had not been truthful with them in their initial investigations into the January assault.
He was subsequently placed on NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s Exempt List, meaning that he is not currently permitted to play, train or even attend NFL games. The full extent of Hunt’s punishment is not yet clear but he passed Monday’s waiver deadline, meaning that none of the remaining 31 NFL teams opted to claim his services.
In his first public comments since his release last week, Hunt told ESPN that he believes he deserved to be forgiven for his role in the January incident.
“I’m asking for forgiveness and I definitely believe I deserve forgiveness,” Hunt told ESPN. “Everything is really happening fast right now, and I just want everybody to forgive me.
“I know it’s going to be hard. I made a bad choice and I’m not going to let this bring me down.”
A media group that does support for ISIS is calling for attacks on New York City this New Year — urging terrorists to use package bombs, silencers and mail bombs to “horrify and terrify.”
The latest call to action follows multiple threats from Jihadists for New Year’s Day.
According to a report from PJ Media, a poster began circulating in mid-November showing a masked jihadist holding a bloody knife over a collage of images from the Berlin Christmas market attack in 2016. It said that “New Year’s Day is the date of retribution.”
“Shortly after that, an ISIS-backing media group released an image of a demolished cityscape with multiple fires, warning, ‘Soon, Allah willing, the disbelievers will see the very thing they feared: 1-1-2019,’” PJ Media reports. “That same group just released an image of an armed jihadist overlooking New York, stating the city named with a blood-splashed 1/1/2019.”
The text on the latest image quotes the late ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani urging his fellow terrorists to “hit them with the explosive belts and vehicle bomb, and shock them with adhesive explosives and packages, and harvest them with silencers and snipers, horrify and terrify them with the intrusions.”
Another ISIS supporting organization released an image of ISIS flags flying above the Vatican along with several jihadists on Via Della Conciliazione, PJ Media’s report says. The image was released shortly after another group of ISIS supporters, Al-Abd Al-Faqir, issued two assassination threats against Pope Francis.
In June, a 27-year-old California man, Everitt Aaron Jameson, pleaded guilty to plotting a Christmas Day bombing and shooting in San Francisco on behalf of ISIS. He was caught after discussing his plan to use pipe bombs to funnel people onto Pier 39 and shoot them en masse with undercover FBI agents who he believed were fellow Jihadis.
When Jameson’s home was raided, authorities found a handwritten letter that said: “you’ve allowed Donald Trump to give Al Quds away to the Jews,” seemingly referencing President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Jameson, a former US Marine, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the plot.
In what was supposedly a “comedy” act to close out the latest episode of NBC’s Saturday Night Live, the female cast members got together to sing their rendition of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You”.
But the person they had their eye on was Special Counsel Robert Mueller, or, at least a report that would put Trump in jail. Because, according to the SNL cast, “the only other option is a coup. Straight Africa.”
Aside from comedian Leslie Jones saying she was going to bake “rophies into cookies because this year, I’m going to get [Santa]” (What happened to #MeToo?), the song was comprised of the deranged ramblings of loony liberals.
“This needs to be done by Christmas. I need a fricking ounce of cheer. I just really want my life back. Oh my god, it’s been two years,” the group sang, switching back and forth between them.
Getting more vindictive, they continued, saying: “I don’t need a full impeachment. But we just need a little fun. Please tell us we aren’t crazy. At least indict his oldest son.”“Please tell us we aren’t crazy”… Um, you’re singing a song to a special counsel to indict and lock up a sitting U.S. president. Sorry to break it to you, but you’re already there.
As they went, the group sang about how they were tired of getting “tiny nibbles” and wanted a “true entrée”, possibly talking about the many indictments not connected directly to Trump or collusion. “You better prove that Trump colluded. Or that he kidnapped JonBenet.” And they want to be told they’re not crazy.
Despite the recent cases of politically motivated violence, including last year’s mass assassination attempt of GOP lawmakers at a Congressional baseball practice, the SNL cast seemed to “joke” about overthrowing Trump in a bloody African-style coup: “We don’t need a long-ass doc, just a single page that stocks. Mueller, please come through because the only other option is a coup. Straight Africa.”
“Oh, I got the whole case laid out on my kitchen floor. And if you can’t lock Trump up, at least prove he’s super poor,” they huffed.
As they were nearing the end of the song (and the show), the women made their final plea to Mueller to finish the investigation soon:
Oh, I don’t need a lot for Christmas. Just a perfect magic spell that solves the whole world’s problems and put the white guy in a cell. I just want to sleep at night. Please make sure your case is tight. And make our wish come true. Because, Mueller, all we want for Christmas is you.
Then Kate McKinnon admitted that “unless the report has like zero new information, because then we would rather it never come out.”“Yeah, yeah, because it is our last shred of hope and I’ve already drunk all the wine,” Cecily Strong exclaimed.
This song was from the same show that wept and sang “Hallelujah” when Hillary Clinton lost to Trump. The argument can be made that this Christmas song was funny, but probably not in the way the cast and the writers anticipated. Their attempt to attack Trump wasn’t funny, but it was pathetic. Them showing off their Trump Derangement Syndrome was hysterical.
The transcript is below, click “expand” to read:
NBC’s Saturday Night Live
December 2, 2018
12:53:56 a.m. Eastern
VOICEOVER: And now a holiday message from the women of SNL.
CECILY STRONG: You know Christmas is right around the corner.
KATE MCKINNON: And people are making lists of what they want from Santa.
LESLIE JONES: And this year, I’m baking rophies into cookies because this year, I’m going to get him.
AIDY BRYANT: We have so much to be thankful for: friends, family.
MCKINNON: And good things money can’t buy.
STRONG: So this year.
SONG LYRICS: I don’t want a lot for Christmas. There is just one thing I need. I don’t care about the presents underneath the Christmas tree. I just want a simple thing and the joy that it will bring. The report is finally due. Mueller, all I want for Christmas is you.
You, baby. This needs to be done by Christmas. I need a fricking ounce of cheer. I just really want my life back. Oh, my god it’s been two years.
I don’t need a full impeachment. But we just need a little fun. Please tell us we aren’t crazy. At least indict his oldest son. I’m sick of breaking news. And Giuliani’s interviews. Our balls are fully blue. Mueller, all I want for Christmas is you. Hurry baby.
We are sick of tiny nibbles. We need us a true entrée. You better prove that Trump colluded. And that he kidnapped JonBenet. We won’t ask for much this Christmas, but at least throw us a bone. Tell us what the hell is happening and who the F is Roger Stone.
We don’t need a long-ass doc, just a single page that stocks. Mueller, please come through because the only other option is a coup. Straight Africa.
Oh, I got the whole case laid out on my kitchen floor. And if you can’t lock Trump up, least prove he’s super poor. Can all the crooks be gone? Remember Alex Van Der Zwan.
STRONG: Mueller won’t you bring us a sense of normalcy where everything doesn’t feel so completely upside down and out of control, because I can’t take anymore anxiety medication! They won’t let me!
What about Ivanka’s e-mails?!
JONES: Girl, this song ain’t about that, baby.
STRONG: I know, sorry about that.
SONG LYRICS: Oh, I don’t need a lot for Christmas. Just a perfect magic spell that solves the whole world’s problems and put the white guy in a cell. I just want to sleep at night. Please make sure your case is tight. And make our wish come true. Because, Mueller, all we want for Christmas is you.
MCKINNON: Unless– Unless the report has like zero new information, because then we would rather it never come out.
STRONG: Yeah, yeah, because it is our last shred of hope and I’ve already drunk all the wine.
JONES: And if it is, I would like to catch Bigfoot.
MCKINNON: I think you mean Santa.
JONES: Man, I can’t keep up with all of these dudes.
In this video Luke is on the ground at one of the shelter encampments in Tijuana on the border. As the caravan carrying thousands has reached the border the situation will only get worse.
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