90 Miles From Tyranny

Thursday, November 15, 2018

The Left Are Disgusting..

Venezuela Is Implementing China's Orwellian, Totalitarian, "Social Credit" System...

Chinese telecoms giant ZTE is helping Venezuela build a system that monitors citizen behavior through a new identification card. The "fatherland card," already used by the government to track voting, worries many in Venezuela and beyond.

In April 2008, former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez dispatched Justice Ministry officials to visit counterparts in the Chinese technology hub of Shenzhen. Their mission, according to a member of the Venezuela delegation, was to learn the workings of China’s national identity card program.

Chávez, a decade into his self-styled socialist revolution, wanted help to provide ID credentials to the millions of Venezuelans who still lacked basic documentation needed for tasks like voting or opening a bank account. Once in Shenzhen, though, the Venezuelans realized a card could do far more than just identify the recipient.

There, at the headquarters of Chinese telecom giant ZTE Corp, they learned how China, using smart cards, was developing a system that would help Beijing track social, political and economic behavior. Using vast databases to store information gathered with the card’s use, a government could monitor everything from a citizen’s personal finances to medical history and voting activity.

“What we saw in China changed everything,” said the member of the Venezuelan delegation, technical advisor Anthony Daquin. His initial amazement, he said, gradually turned to fear that such a system could lead to abuses of privacy by Venezuela’s government. “They were looking to have citizen control.”

The following year, when he raised concerns with Venezuelan officials, Daquin told Reuters, he was detained, beaten and extorted by intelligence agents. They knocked several teeth out with a handgun and accused him of treasonous behavior, Daquin said, prompting him to flee the country. Government spokespeople had no comment on Daquin’s account.

The project languished. But 10 years after the Shenzhen trip, Venezuela is rolling out a new, smart-card ID known as the “carnet de la patria,” or “fatherland card.” The ID transmits data about cardholders to computer servers. The card is increasingly linked by the government to subsidized food, health and other social programs most Venezuelans rely on to survive.

And ZTE, whose role in the fatherland project is detailed here for the first time, is...

You'll never Find A More Wretched Hive Of Scum And Villainy...

Another day another gang rape: Woman raped in Swedish playground by three Africans

A 25-year-old woman has been gang raped by Africans in a playground in central Stockholm. The woman contacted the police herself on Friday, who then arrested the three men the same evening.

The arrest warrants show that the men are 18, 20 and 29 years old. Two are citizens of Somalia and the third in Eritrea. One of them needs interpreting in Somali and another in Arabic. Which means that they most likely are newly arrived migrants.

Two of them are previously convicted. The 18-year-old has committed assaults and drug offences. The 20-year-old is convicted of several cases of theft and drug offences.

One of them is also suspected of a rape that took place in February. After the gang rape, they robbed the woman of her belongings, for which they were also arrested.

They have admitted that all three had sex with the woman but argue that this was done voluntarily. Therefore denying the crimes. If the robbery was voluntary or not the story does not reveal....

6 Big Election Hits by Marc Elias, Democrats’ Recount King

Marc Elias has a history of turning Democrats who lost on election night into winners after recounts.

The lawyer representing Sen. Bill Nelson in the recount of Florida’s contest for Senate has been at the center of nearly every major election controversy for the past decade.

Elias is chairman of Perkins Coie’s Political Law Group, which was behind the opposition research document that fueled the Trump-Russia investigation. Before that, he was highly instrumental in getting Al Franken into the U.S. Senate.

Nelson, the incumbent Democrat, trails by less than half a percentage point behind Gov. Rick Scott, his Republican challenger. That’s close enough to trigger a recount in Florida, but the deficit of over 10,000 votes is more than than any previous recount has overcome.

Nevertheless, Elias has predicted victory, and he has a winning record at his back in high-profile races.

“I have a pretty good track record on that prediction elsewhere,” Elias told reporters on a conference call last week.

The results of the governor’s race to succeed Scott as Florida governor also qualified for a recount.

Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., leads Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, a Democrat, by more than 30,000 votes statewide, though, so the DeSantis win is less likely to be overturned.

Elias, who isn’t involved in the DeSantis-Gillum contest, didn’t respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment for this report.

Both The Washington Post and CQ Roll Call referred to Elias as the “go-to” lawyer for Democrats. In addition to representing the presidential campaigns of Democrats Hillary Clinton in 2016 and John Kerry in 2004, Elias has represented the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Governors Association, and former Attorney General Eric Holder’s group, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.

He also did work for the fundraising organizations Priorities USA, Senate Majority PAC, House Majority PAC, and the pro-choice EMILY’s List.

Here’s a look at high-profile political controversies where Elias played a central role:

The booming U.S. economy, jump-started by the 2017 GOP tax cut, has created 878,000 more millionaires in just the last 12 months, according to an international wealth report from Credit Suisse.

"Looking at the number of millionaires, we see that there are 42.2 million millionaires worldwide, which is up 2.3 million over the previous 12 months. Our research indicates that the United States added 878,000 new millionaires — representing around 40 percent of the global increase — to its already sizable stock," the bank said.

The report showed that U.S. wealth grew at 6.5 percent, higher than the world average of 4.6 percent, and has extended a pattern that started during former President Barack Obama's administration.

“Another prominent feature of the world wealth outlook this year is the seemingly relentless rise in household wealth in the United States,” said the report.

It tried to suggest that the Trump economy is too hot to continue, but conceded that there is no end in sight.

Said the report:

“Total wealth and wealth per adult in the United States have grown every year since 2008, even when total global wealth suffered a reversal in 2014 and 2015. The United States has accounted for 40 percent of all increments to world wealth since 2008, and 58 percent of the rise since 2013. While...

.@JudicialWatch exposed the Clinton email scandal – changing the course of history. But she hasn’t been prosecuted yet & the American people still want Hillary Clinton held accountable. And that's what JW is doing. In fact, we were again in court today... pic.twitter.com/5PwPwQaV5j
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) November 15, 2018

‘Bigoted’ Trump Picks Kavanaugh’s Replacement. Goes With Indian-American Woman

Neomi Rao is the kind of person that Democrats and the liberal media want American voters to think President Donald Trump doesn’t like.

She’s a woman. She’s a racial minority. But now, she’s also Trump’s nominee to fill the seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit left open by now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Trump upended liberal arguments on Tuesday by announcing Rao, who is now the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is his next high-profile choice for the federal judiciary.

Trump made the announcement at a White House event marking the Hindu celebration of Diwali, or “festival of lights.”

Rao, the daughter of Indian immigrants, was present to celebrate.

“I just nominated Neomi to be on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the seat of Justice Brett Kavanaugh,” Trump announced.

“We were going to announce that tomorrow, then I said, ‘You know, here we are, Neomi, we’re never going to do better than this, right?’ I thought it was an appropriate place,” Trump said.

Rao has been an ally of Trump in fighting unnecessary regulations as the Trump administration’s regulation czar since 2017.

Last month, Rao praised the Trump administration’s deregulation efforts and historically low unemployment rates in a commentary piece for The Washington Post.

“Eliminating unnecessary and duplicative red tape has helped the Trump administration achieve the lowest unemployment rates in nearly 50 years and dramatic economic growth for our country,” she wrote.

As expected, Trump’s pick is already under attack by liberals.

“Just when you think it can’t get any worse,” Playboy writer and self-described feminist Amee Vanderpool wrote on Twitter. “Trump announced he will nominate Neomi Rao, the lawyer spearheading his administration’s deregulation push, for Brett Kavanaugh’s former seat on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.”

It’s strange that liberals will characterize Trump as a “racist” for disagreeing with a black reporter, but they are trying to stop Trump from nominating an Indian-American woman to the D.C. Circuit.

If we were going by the left’s own logic, that would mean everyone opposing Rao’s nomination is racist.

Of course, the left is used to ignoring its own standards and attacking conservative minorities.

Liberals never shy away from using racially charged rhetoric when it suits their interests, and they’ll probably try to use the same tactics against Rao because there is little to actually criticize about Trump’s pick, at least from the point of view of...