Republican presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump tweeted a picture of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton featuring a pile of money and the words “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” inside a Star of David, on Saturday.
Speech bubbles are usually circular-shaped, hence the name.
But that is probably not the reason that the tweet was deleted and republished with the quote in a circle less than an hour after it was originally posted:
I don’t even know if it’s symbolism or stupidity (both?) at this point, but it’s been pointed out on Twitter that whoever redid the image didn’t even bother to delete the star, and merely covered it with the circle. If you look closely you can see the tip of the start still poking out.
When the chips are down, check to see if you’re in a building with Trump’s name on it and then for god’s sake get out of there (strategically).
Employees at the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City went on strike Friday morning after negotiations with management broke down Thursday night, the New York Timesreports.
The striking workers, members of the Unite Here Local 54 union, include all the resort’s waiters, cooks, bartenders, porters, room attendants, and dish washers. The casino floor remains open as Taj’s gaming staff are not members of Unite Here.
The employees are demanding a pay raise (a union spokesperson told the Times that workers at the Taj make less than $12 an hour on average) and healthcare benefits, which many of the workers lost when the casino filed for bankruptcy in 2014.
A New York Timesinvestigation, published last month, showed that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump made a whole bunch of money off the financial failure of his Atlantic City casino empire, now crumbling.
Trump opened the Taj in 1990 and no longer has a stake in the casino, as of the 2014 bankruptcy.
However, it seems that the Taj’s dismal working conditions are nothing new. Chuck Baker, who’s worked as a cook at the Taj since it opened 26 years ago, told the New York Times that his salary of $20 an hour has increased by 20 cents in the last 10 years.
Trump has thrown around the Taj’s new and current owner Carl Icahn’s name as a possible Treasury Department secretary, should his grandstanding gamble for the presidency pay off.
The FBI interviewed presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for three-and-a-half hours on Saturday morning as part of its investigation into whether her use of a private email server during her time as Secretary of State broke the law. The interview was conducted at FBI Headquarters in Washington D.C.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Friday that she would determine whether to bring charges against Clinton or her aides based in part on the recommendation of the FBI.
People on Twitter were quick to point out that a sit-down with the FBI isn’t casual just because you do it on a long weekend:
The Clinton camp described the interview as more of a friendly visit and insisted it’s the beginning of the end of Clinton’s email troubles. Nick Merrill, a Clinton campaign spokesperson, said in a statement:
Secretary Clinton gave a voluntary interview this morning about her email arrangements while she was secretary. She is pleased to have had the opportunity to assist the Department of Justice in bringing this review to a conclusion.
On Saturday, Donald Trump posted a meme on Twitter featuring his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s face superimposed on piles of $100 bills, with a Star of David next to her bearing the words “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” Charges of antisemitism ensued. Obviously. The post was subsequently removed and reposted with a circle instead of the star.
Well, it turns out that was the only creative choice Trump’s team made in regards to the meme, because they weren’t the ones who originally made it.
We still don’t know who made the meme, but Mic found that it was featured on the Politically Incorrect (/pol/) message board as early as June 22.
It’s not clear how a meme posted on a white supremacist, antisemitic, and fascistic message board made its way to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s Twitter account. Total mystery.
The original post has since been deleted but you can still view it here, in its Archive. is internet capsule (scroll about two-thirds of the way down the page).
Many on Twitter speculated, in the wake of the Trump’s tweet, that the Star of David was meant to be a police badge, symbolizing the FBI’s investigation into the private email server Clinton used while Secretary of State.
Former Trump campaign manager, now CNN shill, Corey Lewandowski, called the backlash to Trump’s tweet “political correctness run amok” in a CNN interview on Sunday.
A blast that went off near the location of a funeral for the Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel in New York City’s Central Park severed a man’s foot, the New York Daily News reports.
An eyewitness told CBS News they’d seen the vicim climbing a rock in the park when he stepped on something that “exploded.” Witnesses have suggested the man stepped on fireworks or some other device.
The NYPD bomb squad is investigating the area where the explosion went off, near 68th Street and 5th Avenue.
Fire officials described the situation to the New York Daily News as “an amputation incident.”
It’s not immediately clear whether the explosion is connected in any way to Wiesel’s funeral being held nearby.
This is a developing story and will be updated when more information become available.
It’s not quite 30 tons of trash, but a sizable mess was made, yet again, at a Kenny Chesney concert.
Officials told the Associated Press that 25 people suffering from being too drunk, injured or both were transported from a Chesney concert in Pittsburgh to local hospitals early Sunday morning.
Several other people were arrested on charges including ticket robbery, simple assault, trespassing and public intoxication, according to police. A few dozen people were cited for underage drinking, and a cop reportedly injured his thumb amidst all the commotion.
Israel’s Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan accused Facebook and its chief executive Mark Zuckerberg of being partially responsible for violence in the West Bank, including the murder of a 13-year old Israeli girl last Thursday. Eredan claims that Facebook failed to remove extremist content that incited violence and hampered the work of Israeli police.
About three dozen Israelis and more than 200 Palestinians have been killed in the regional conflict since October, according to Bloomberg.
Erdan said in a Saturday newscast:
Some of the victims’ blood is on Zuckerberg’s hands. Facebook has turned into a monster. The younger generation in the Palestinian Authority runs its entire discourse of incitement and lies and finally goes out to commit murderous acts on Facebook’s platform.
Israeli politician and entrepreneur Erel Margalit agreed with Erdan’s assertion that Facebook has become a threat to the Israeli poeple, telling Haaretz, “The next terror attack is hiding among the thousands of likes and shares that terrorists get these days.”
Facebook did not respond directly to Erdan’s comments, but released a statement indicating they are more than willing to cooperating with the Israeli government:
We work regularly with safety organizations and policymakers around the world, including Israel, to ensure that people know how to make safe use of Facebook. There is no room for content that promotes violence, direct threats, terrorists or hate speeches on our platform….We have a set of community standards designed to help people understand what’s allowed on Facebook, and we call on people to use our report if they find content they believe violates these rules, so that we can examine each case and take quick action.
Reuters reported last week that several of the world’s largest Internet companies, including Facebook, have been quietly deploying systems that censor videos containing extremist content amidst pressure from President Obama and European leaders, who fear such content could lead to terror attacks.
The United Arab Emirates warned citizens against wearing traditional garb abroad on Saturday after an Emirati man wearing a robe and headdress was falsely accused of “pledging allegiance to ISIS” and briefly detained in Ohio, Al Jazeera reports.
41-year-old Ahmed al-Menhali says he was in the Cleveland area for medical care when he entered an Avon, Ohio, hotel on Wednesday looking for a room. According to WEWS-TV, the hotel clerk’s sister then called 911 to report a man “in full head dress with multiple disposable phones pledging his allegiance to ISIS.”
A video later released by police shows officers arriving at the scene with guns drawn and ordering al-Menhali to the ground. After handcuffing al-Menhali and speaking with the hotel clerk, officers found that he “did not, in fact, make any statements related to ISIS,” WEWS-TV reports.
After the incident, Avon’s mayor and police chief personally apologized to al-Menhali and the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweeted a warning urging “citizens traveling outside the state to not to wear uniforms when traveling, especially in public places in order to preserve their safety.”
“There was nothing to give you cause to think [I’m] a ‘terrorist’,” al-Menhali told Al Jazeera. “They told the police that I was pledging allegiance to ISIS, but [said] nothing about weapons. The police responded as if there were weapons.”
According to WEWS-TV, the woman who falsely accused al-Menhali could face criminal charges.
At least 126 people—including an estimated 25 children—were killed in two separate bombings in Baghdad over the weekend, and the Islamic State has already claimed responsibility for the carnage.
The first explosion occurred on Saturday night, ripping through a popular shopping district in Karrada. According to CNN:
Families had gathered there to break the Ramadan fast and watch the Euro 2016 soccer tournament in a cafe when a suicide car bomb exploded, ripping through a multi-level building that also housed stores and a gym.
At least 147 were injured.
A second bomb exploded Sunday at an outdoor market in the Shaab neighborhood of southeastern Baghdad, killing one person and wounding five others, police said.
The bombings came on the heels of the murder of 20 hostages in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, and a few days after more than 40 were killed by bombs in Turkey’s main airport.
The combined assaults amount to the deadliest attack in Baghdad so far this year, and the first act of violence since Iraq retook Falluja from the Islamic State in late June. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi visited the site of the bombing on Sunday morning, and was promptly pelted with rocks and shoes by the country’s enraged citizenry. As the Timesreports:
Ali Ahmed, 25, who owns a shop close to where the attack happened, said he had carried the bodies of children out of the rubble. He voiced anger at the security forces for failing to stop the bomber, and questioned why the street, which had been closed off earlier in the evening, was reopened around midnight.
“Thank God I managed to hit Abadi with stones to take revenge for the kids,” he said.
The White House issued a statement following the attacks, saying that “We remain united with the Iraqi people and government in our combined efforts to destroy Isil,” using a different term for the group.
This post will be updated as more information becomes available.
During an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union this weekend, Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson said Donald Trump is “clearly” racist, citing Trump’s history of “incendiary” racial comments.
“He has said 100 things that would disqualify anyone else from running for president but doesn’t seem to affect him,” said Johnson on Sunday. “That statement in and of itself—it’s racist.”
After Johnson named several other examples of Trump’s disqualifying speech, Keilar pressed Johnson on whether he believed the presumptive Republican nominee was himself racist.
“Based on his statements, clearly,” said Johnson. “If the statements are being made is that not reflective? I mean if you look up the definition of racism, calling a U.S.-born Hispanic ‘Mexican’ and [questioning] his inability to judge others?”
“I think I’m now semi-quoting Paul Ryan,” added Johnson, referencing the House Speaker who condemned Trump’s comments as “textbook” racist while somehow still endorsing the man who made them.
Earlier this month, the Calgary City Council voted 10 to 5 in favor of lifting a decades-old ban on backyard skate ramps, earning praise from both skate and boarding advocates across the city. The mood on the ground, however, was unclear until CTV sent reporter Jamie Mauracher to interview an area teen.
“I’m so stoked, my dudes,” announced the unidentified teen, adding, “Skrrrt.”
Nigel Farage, the man who lead the charge for Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, has resigned as leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), the country’s far-right political faction
Speaking at a press conference in Westminster on Monday, Farage, who was first elected to Parliament in 1999, said, “I have never been, and I have never wanted to be, a career politician. my aim in being in politics was to get Britain out of the European Union.”
Britain’s decision to leave the EU in a referendum last month was roundly criticized as a choice made by an older generation of Brits, motivated by racism and anti-immigration evangelism, which has already precipitated economic fallout and even more visible xenophobia across Britain.
On the eve of Farage’s announcement that had stepped down as head of the UKIP, he reportedly attended a garden party attended by the likes of Rupert Murdoch and Evgeny Lebedev. English singer Lily Allen’s broke the story on her Twitter:
At his press conference this morning, Farage appeared thrilled to leave the national spotlight: “What I’m saying today is, ‘I want my life back,’ and it begins right now.”
Good on you, Farage, it’s never too late to get it all back. Too bad the same can’t be said of Great Britain.
Trump finally responded to allegations of antisemitism that followed the presumptive GOP presidential nominee tweeting out a picture of Hillary Clinton, piles of money, and a six-sided star on Saturday.
On Monday morning Trump insisted that the star was meant to represent a sheriff’s badge (a nod to the ongoing FBI investigation into Clinton’s old private email server) or a “plain star” and not a Star of David.
Trump took to Twitter, again, this time in his own defense:
Trump’s campaign adviser Ed Brookover was peddling the same line over at CNN Monday morning, saying that there was, “never any intention of anti-Semitism” and that Trump had denounced antisemitism in the past.
Today, Ivanka Trump, daughter of GOP presumptive nominee and melted Claymation villain Donald Trump, made an interesting claim. “My father is a feminist,” she told London’s Sunday Times. Oh, cool.
Trump, who yesterday tweeted a photo of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton together with a Star of David and a pile of Benjamins, does not, at first, second, or 500th glance seem especially concerned with women’s rights. For starters, his campaign staff, which is 75 percent male, pays its female staffers significantly less than its male ones. And amidst his bloviating, Trumples has made some pretty despicable remarks about women too.
“My father is a feminist. He’s a big reason I am the woman I am today. People talk about gender equality. He has lived it, he has employed women at the highest levels of the Trump Organization for decades, so I think it’s a great testament to how capable he thinks women are and has shown that his whole life.”
“Lived” gender equality, huh? A white man with enough money to give Scrooge McDuck an aneurism would be, I suspect, more inclined to “live” absurd privilege than equality of any kind. But hold on — Ivanka Trump has more to say:
“[My father] always told me and showed me I could do anything I set my mind to if I married vision and passion with work ethic. He’s also surrounded me with strong female role models who have done just that since I was a little girl.”
One recent role model might be Kellyanne Conway, who Trump recently hired to teach him about women. Conway has famously argued for “femininity, not feminism,” referring to the latter as “gloom and doom.”
And yet, it’s true that Trump has been frank in his admiration for Ivanka. Specifically, he’s been frank in his admiration for her body, as when he asked another woman, “Don’t you think my daughter’s hot?” Ivanka was 16 at the time.
A state-associated Saudi news site reported an explosion went off outside a building overlooking the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, according to the Associated Press.
The Prophet’s Mosque, the burial site of the Prophet Muhammad, is visited by millions of Muslims every year during pilgrimages to Mecca. With Ramadan ending this week, Mecca is especially teeming with travelers.
Witnesses posted photos of smoke from the blast blowing across the holy site:
Al Jazeera reported four people have been killed in explosion. The AP is still reporting that it’s, “not immediately clear if anyone was killed or wounded.”
According to the BBC, al-Arabiya TV said the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber who detonated his device as security guards were breaking their Ramadan fast.
This story is developing and will be updated as more information becomes available.
People may joke that others spend too much time on the internet, but this intricate series of tubes has become an important part of everyday life—so much so that it’s become a human rights violation to take it away.
That’s according to the United Nations Human Rights Council, which passed a non-binding resolution in June that condemns countries that intentionally take away or disrupt its citizens’ internet access.
The resolution was passed last Friday, but was opposed by countries including Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and India. The issue was with the passage that “condemns unequivocally measures to intentionally prevent or disrupt access to our dissemination of information online.”More than 70 states supported the resolutions, according to a statement released by Article 19, a British organization that works to promote freedom of expression and information. Thomas Hughes, the executive director of Article 19, wrote:
“We are disappointed that democracies like South Africa, Indonesia, and India voted in favour of these hostile amendments to weaken protections for freedom of expression online...A human rights based approach to providing and expanding Internet access, based on states’ existing international human rights obligations, is essential to achieving the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, and no state should be seeking to slow this down.”
The resolution notes what many of us already know: It’s important to increase access to the internet, as it “facilitates vast opportunities for affordable and inclusive education globally,” or provides other resources for education, especially across the digital divide. In accordance with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the organization also recognized that the spread of technology has the “great potential to accelerate human progress.”
It’s all here: your news organizations, your job-hunting resources, and your credit card statements. It’s become impossible to live without basic internet access.
Other countries have already stressed the importance of open access, including President Barack Obama, who in 2015 said that “today, high speed broadband is not a luxury, it’s a necessity.”
The resolution also highlights a number of issues that need to be addressed, including that the issue of freedom of expression on the internet. Also among the points presented were statements:
Calling upon all states to address security concerns in “a way that ensures freedom and security on the Internet,”
Ensuring accountability for all human rights violations and abuses committed against persons for exercising their human rights,
Recognizing that privacy online is important,
Stressing the importance of education for women and girls in relevant technology fields.
The UN can’t enforce resolutions legally. Rather, they’re issued to provide guidelines for participating nations and to put pressure on any that may have dissenting views. These are just general statements on how governments should shape laws when it comes to the internet. It’s nice to see, even if it does little beyond filling a few pieces of digital paper.
The next step is for those countries to start actively addressing problems, including laws pertaining to freedom of expression and how those rights can be abused to spread violence, terrorist ideals, and harassment. The more we discuss the problems that come along with the free reign of the internet, the closer we’ll get to Valhalla (or so I’ve heard).
Now, there’s a lot going on here, so let’s break this down bit-by-bit.
The social media graphic used this weekend was not created by the campaign nor was it sourced from an anti-Semitic site. It was lifted from an anti-Hillary Twitter user where countless images appear.
Not sourced from an anti-Semitic site, you say? While the user who originally tweeted the image has since deleted his or her account, some people have managed to save @FishBoneHead1's prior work for posterity.
Perhaps that shape was simply conducive to getting the most out of the Hillary’s many heads. Weird coincidence!
Moving on:
The sheriff’s badge—which is available under Microsoft’s “shapes”—fit with the theme of corrupt Hillary and that is why I selected it.
What? You just said you had nothing to do with the creation of the image. And though it’s besides the point, a quick look at the apparently Nazi-sympathetic “shapes” tab in Microsoft Word shows no such star [*see update below].
There is, however, a triangle which can be used to create a six-pointed star—so maybe Dan was getting creative.
And lastly:
As the Social Media Director for the campaign, I would never offend anyone and therefore chose to remove the image.
To be fair, Dan Scavino did remove the image. After tweeting a new, less offensive version while still inexplicably leaving the original up for several hours.
In other words, Dan Scavino’s statement tells us everything we already knew and answers none of our actual questions. Questions like why a presidential campaign is swiping content from random, white supremacist Twitter accounts instead of creating its own images that don’t risk signaling solidarity with neo-Nazis, for instance. Since the Trump campaign refuses to answer Gawker’s emails, I’d ask Dan Scavino himself on Twitter, but he has me blocked.
Still, if anything, this little episode proves that, despite our fears, the Trump campaign has no intention of legitimizing itself any time soon. Rest easy.
Update 10:38 p.m.: Some versions of Microsoft’s products do, in fact, carry the star. Dan, I would love to apologize to you personally. Please unblock me.
Four people were killed Monday in a suicide bombing near the Prophet’s Mosque, Islam’s second-holiest site after Mecca, in the Saudi city of Medina. There were also bombings in the Saudi cities of Jeddah and Qatif.
The Prophet’s Mosque (Al-Masjid an-Nabawī) was built by Muhammad and is where he is buried—militant attacks on Medina are unprecedented. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz, who also serves as the Saudi interior minister, visited those injured in the Jeddah bombing.
“I know that terrorist operations are not a simple thing, and the minor impacts that you feel now will go away, God willing,” Prince Mohammed said, according to Reuters. “I had been through this in the past and feel what you feel.” The crown prince, who is credited with ending am al Qaeda bombing campaign in Saudi between 2003 and 2006, survived a suicide bombing in his office in 2009.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks, although the Islamic State—whose spokesman, Abu Mohamed al-Adnani, urged supporters to carry out lone wolf attacks during Ramadan—is widely considered the primary suspect. “It’s an attempt to actually embarrass the Saudi government, because it boasts of protecting the pilgrims and the holy places,” Middle East expert Madhawi al-Rasheed told Agence France-Presse. The trifecta of bombings seems indicative of an “organised effort by the perpetrators to coordinate their work,” she continued.
The Saudi Interior Ministry identified the man behind the Jeddah bombing as 34-year-old Abdullah Qalzar Khan, a Pakistani man who had been living in the kingdom for over a decade. In a statement, the ministry said Khan lived in the Jeddah, a port city, “with his wife and her parents.” The Associated Press reports:
In that attack, the bomber detonated his explosives after two security guards approached him, killing himself and lightly wounding the two guards, the Interior Ministry said. No consular staff were hurt.
Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Nafees Zakaria said authorities in Islamabad were working to get more details about the man. He condemned the attacks and expressed solidarity with Saudi Arabia, saying the kingdom valued the contributions of Pakistani guest workers.
“Terrorism is a global phenomenon and is not country- or people-specific,” Zakaria said.
The attacks drew condemnation from governments across the Middle East, AFP reports, and across Islam’s theological divide. “This crime, which causes goosebumps, could not have been perpetrated by someone who had an atom of belief in his heart,” the Grand Mufti, Abdullah al-Sheikh, said.
“There are no more red lines left for terrorists to cross,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Twitter. “Sunnis, Shiites will both remain victims unless we stand united as one.”
