Trump Has ‘Unearthed Some Demons’: US Hate Groups Hit Record High in 2018

A new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center highlights the steady growth of hate groups in the US, which it finds hit an all-time high number last year. The 1,020 hate groups cover a range of identities, from race to gender, sexuality, religion and political creed.

According to the SPLC report, titled "Rage Against Change," the number of organizations meeting its definition of hate group grew 7 percent in 2018, to its highest number ever: 1,020. That's just a bit more than the previous record of 1,018, set in 2011. Last year was the fourth year in a row that the number has risen.

Toward the end of Barack Obama's presidency, hate groups as well as hate crimes had been on the decline for three consecutive years, reaching a low of 784 in 2014. However, under US President Donald Trump, that number has ballooned by 30 percent.

"One of the main reasons for the rise of Donald Trump, the electoral success of his bigotry and our country's rising white supremacy is this: Trump has activated a growing fear in many white Americans who view their power as threatened by our country's rapidly changing demographics. He is taking advantage of their rage against change," the report says.

"The American population is moving toward a minority-majority future, a shift the Census Bureau predicts will occur sometime in the 2040s. Nativists, racists and our president are taking advantage of the browning of America, contrasting it with nostalgia for a perceived better, whiter past, and using that idea to activate citizens into white nationalist thinking."

"The numbers tell a striking story — that this president is not simply a polarizing figure but a radicalizing one," Heidi Beirich, director of the SPLC's Intelligence Project, says in the report. "Rather than trying to tamp down hate, as presidents of both parties have done, President Trump elevates it — with both his rhetoric and his policies. In doing so, he's given people across America the go-ahead to act on their worst instincts."

Trump has, as former Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC) said according to Reuters, "unearthed some demons."

https://sputniknews.com/us/201902201072604384-US-Hate-Groups-Record-High-2018/

Why was the biggest drug lord trial in U.S. history completely ignored by the mainstream media?

Mexico’s Former President Took $100 Million Bribe From Drug Lord — El Chapo Witness

Witness: ‘El Chapo’ Paid Ex-Mexican President Peña Nieto $100 Million Bribe

Accused Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman once paid a $100 million bribe to former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, an ex-Guzman associate testified on Tuesday that he previously told U.S. authorities.Alex Cifuentes, who has described himself as Guzman’s onetime right-hand man, discussed the alleged bribe under cross-examination by Jeffrey Lichtman, one of Guzman’s lawyers, in Brooklyn federal court. Asked if he told authorities in 2016 that Guzman arranged the bribe, he answered, “That’s right.”

Reuters could not immediately reach Peña Nieto or his former spokesman for comment. He has previously denied taking bribes.

His former chief of staff, however, took to social media to reject the accusation.

“The declarations of the Colombian drug trafficker in New York are false, defamatory and absurd,” wrote Francisco Guzman in a post on Twitter, adding that the Peña Nieto government “located, detained and extradited” the Mexican kingpin.

The allegations are among the most explosive to emerge from Guzman’s trial, which began in November and has so far featured testimony of lower-level corruption.

Guzman, 61, was extradited to the United States in 2017 to face charges of trafficking cocaine, heroin and other drugs into the country as leader of the Sinaloa Cartel.

Cifuentes testified that he had told U.S. prosecutors that Peña Nieto initially reached out to Guzman, asking for $250 million. Cifuentes told the prosecutors that the bribe was paid in October 2012, when Peña Nieto was president-elect, he testified.

Cifuentes also said testified that Guzman once told him he had received a message from Peña Nieto saying he did not have to live in hiding anymore.

Lichtman had promised jurors in his opening statement last November they would hear how Mexican drug kingpin Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada bribed Peña Nieto and another former president as part of a scheme to frame Guzman. He said Zambada was the real boss of the cartel.

Peña Nieto at the time called the claim “completely false and defamatory.”

U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan, however, refused to allow Guzman’s lawyers to question Zambada’s brother about the alleged bribes last year.

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/mexico-pena-nieto-el-chapo-bribe/2019/01/16/id/898408/

Regime Change We Can Believe In: The U.S. Agenda in Venezuela, Haiti, and Egypt

The Trump administration has set a deadline of February 23 for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to bow down to the U.S. This week on Intercepted: U.S. military aircraft have landed in Colombia under the pretext of delivering humanitarian aid, as Trump vows to overthrow the government in Caracas. Venezuela scholar George Ciccariello-Maher and journalist Kim Ives discuss recent developments and examine the massive protests rocking Haiti’s U.S.-backed president. The Intercept’s Jon Schwarz details the bloody and murderous career of Elliott Abrams, the man now in charge of U.S.-Venezuela operations. And journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous explains the failed revolution in Egypt and outlines U.S.-backed dictator Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s plot to make himself president for life.

Transcript coming soon.

https://theintercept.com/2019/02/20/regime-change-we-can-believe-in-the-u-s-agenda-in-venezuela-haiti-and-egypt/

Extremist party that backs booting non-Jews seen by PM as vital for his victory

Jewish Home leaders had been wary of scaring off moderate supporters by merging with the Kahanist Otzma Yehudit, but PM’s warning of ‘leftist’ threat appears to have won them over

When Meir Kahane served in the Knesset in the mid 1980s, fellow lawmakers made a habit of leaving the chamber when the far-right activist-rabbi rose to address the plenum.

Among those protesting were Knesset members from Likud and the National Religious Party (a precursor to today’s Jewish Home). Members of those right-wing factions were also among those who voted in favor of modifying a Basic Law in 1985, which was used to bar Kahane’s Kach party from running in the subsequent elections.

Fast forward nearly 35 years to Wednesday when a faction of leaders presenting themselves as disciples of that very same Kahane announced that they had reached an agreement to join Jewish Home in an alliance that Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spent immense efforts trying to bring about.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/extremist-party-viewed-as-linchpin-to-keeping-netanyahus-government-afloat/

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Netanyahu’s despicable push to bring racists into Israel’s political mainstream

The PM has persuaded the religious-Zionist Jewish Home to partner with the Kahanists of Otzma Yehudit. It makes cynical political sense for his interests, but what of Israel’s?

The Jewish Home party, the current iteration of what used to be Israel’s National Religious Party, on Wednesday night voted in favor of a pre-election alliance with Otzma Yehudit, a racist successor to the banned Kach party of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane.

Kahane, who won a seat in the Knesset 35 years ago on a platform of revoking citizenship from Arab Israelis and a pledge to “transfer” out of the country those who would not accept this status, and who sought to outlaw sex and marriage between Jews and non-Jews, was banned as a racist from seeking re-election four years later.

The platform of his disciples in Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) — “Kach” and a subsequent iteration, “Kahane Chai,” are banned in Israel (and the US) as terrorist organizations — envisages Israel not as a Jewish state and a democracy, but rather what it calls a “Jewish democracy.” The Land of Israel’s sovereign borders will extend from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River — that is, throughout the territory that was captured by Israel in the 1967 war. “Enemies of Israel” anywhere within those expanded borders — West Bank Palestinians, Arab Israeli citizens, et al — will be resettled elsewhere in the Arab world. Jewish sovereignty will be “restored” to the Temple Mount — where Israel already claims sovereignty, but where Muslim authorities maintain religious control, Muslims pray, and Jews do not.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahus-despicable-push-to-bring-racists-into-israels-political-mainstream/

Netanyahu condemns antisemitism in conversation with Macron

The phone call came a day after nearly 100 graves were defaced with swastikas near Strasbourg, and thousands of people marched in Paris and other French cities chanting "no to antisemitism."

https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Netanyahu-condemns-antisemitism-in-conversation-with-Macron-581262

Labour infected with antisemitism says 8th MP to quit UK party

Antisemitism charges against Labour are Goebbels-like tactic, says infamous anti-Zionist former MP Galloway,

UK Labour MP Joan Ryan has become the eighth member to resign from the party due to antisemitism in its ranks and its policies on Brexit.

Ryan said that Labour has become “infected” with antisemitism and that its leader, Jeremy Corbyn is unfit to lead the country.On Monday, seven Labour MPs resigned from the party in protest of the party’s failure to deal with its antisemitism problem, which they said has changed Labour’s character, and due to their frustration with its bumbling policy on Brexit, which is the central political issue in the UK today.

https://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Eighth-lawmaker-quits-Britains-Labour-Party-581161

If you believe antisemitism is a thing I have a great land deal for you in Nigeria!

SerialBrain2: Trump’s msg from the battlefield: I took our money back. Next move coming.