Russian investigators said Metrojet Flight 7K9268 broke up in midair, though they did not specify whether it was an explosion caused by a terror attack or a mechanical problem.
Another report said on-board recordings indicated that a sudden emergency arose on the stricken jet.
“Judging by the recording, a situation on board developed suddenly and unexpectedly for the crew, and as a result the pilots did not manage to send a distress signal,” a source said.
When Barack Obama first seized the White House back in 2009, his website promised "the most transparent administration in history."
In 2013, the Democrat announced: "This is the most transparent administration in history." And if you like your doctor.....
Now comes the Congressional Research Service to document that, well, that's just another Obama promise/claim.
The CRS just published a detailed look at what are called Federal Advisory Committees. Yes, yes, it sounds arcane. That's how the Washington bureaucracy gets away with so much stuff. Make it sound as boring as humanly possible, like a Joe Biden speech on Scranton. And the people will leave you alone, tune out.
But don't you dare. For one thing, you're shelling out a third of a billion dollars for these things. And you don't even know what they do. That's $915,000 every single day.
Congress -- yes, those folks again -- created the Federal Advisory Committee Act in 1972. Like many Washington ideas, it sounds like a swell one going in. Allow the feds to tap into the experience and knowledge of experts outside government. Consolidate all those unregulated advisory committees and boards that were, well, allegedly advising the federal government. They'd have to report who was on them, what they got paid, what if anything they did. All that.
The cool thing is anybody can create a FAC -- Congress, a president and any of his agencies. According to the Research Service's new report, during the 2014 fiscal year, of the 989 existing Federal Advisory Committees with 68,179 appointed members 825 of those committees held 7,173 meetings that cost $334 million.
It's quite an honor to be on these things. Prestigious line on a resume. You get expenses paid to meetings and government folks appear to listen. Health and Human Services has the most advisory committees, 264. Agriculture is second with 166. Homeland Security is down near the bottom with just 27 because it knows pretty much everything already.
The number of committees has been pretty steady during the last fiscal decade at around 980. However, there was a real spurt in 2011 up to 1,029 committees. That was when Obama was organizing his reelection campaign. But that's probably coincidence.
Here's what we've been leading up to: In the 2013 and 2014 fiscal years only 23% of the committee meetings were open to the public, as they're supposed to be without compelling reason. To put it another way, 77% of all the advisory committee meetings were closed to the people paying for them. Thanks. Now get out.
Coincidentally, those increased secret meetings occurred after Obama's reelection when voters lost all leverage on this guy.
As our astute colleague Chuck Ross over at the Daily Caller points out, "Overall, the ratio of open meetings was higher during the George W. Bush years than during the Obama years."
But wait! That would mean the current administration can't possibly be the most transparent administration in history. And that, in turn, means that Barack Obama has been wrong every time he made that claim. We need a Federal Advisory Committee to explain how that could be?
Lawmakers in both houses of Congress filed legislation on Tuesday that would formally designate the Muslim Brotherhood a sanctioned terrorist organization, according to an advance copy of the legislation obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The legislation outlines the Brotherhood’s long history of sponsoring terrorism and outlines congressional support for it to be designated a global terrorist outfit. The bill also would force Secretary of State John Kerry to explain why the Obama administration has been hesitant to label the Brotherhood a terrorist group.
The Brotherhood’s political wing has been banned in Egypt, where affiliates of the organization overthrew the government and then violently cracked down on its opposition, the United States has avoided labeling the organization a sponsor of terrorism.
Should the State Department refuse to move forward with the designation, the bill would require it to provide a justification for this policy, according to the bill.
Multiple House lawmakers spearheaded a similar effort last year, but the bill failed to become law.
This time around, Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) is heading the legislation in the Senate, while Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R., Fla.) is handling the House version of the bill, sources said.
“We have to stop pretending that the Brotherhood are not responsible for the terrorism they advocate and finance,” Cruz told the Free Beacon. “We have to see it for what it is: a key international organization dedicated to waging violent jihad. Since the Obama administration refuses to utter the words'”radical Islamic terrorism,’ and Congress owes it to the American people to tell them the truth about this threat.”
The bill also helps combat the notion that Brotherhood is a peaceful political group, Cruz said.
“This bill puts the lie to the notion that the Muslim Brotherhood is a peaceful political organization that can be a legitimate partner for America,” the lawmaker said. “In 2008 the Justice Department successfully prosecuted the largest terrorism-financing trial in American history arguing that the Muslim Brotherhood directed U.S. affiliates such as the Holy Land Foundation to provide ‘media, money and men’ to Hamas. That support was used for terrorist attacks against Americans and our allies in the Middle East. When they are capable they will try to do the same thing here.”
The bill, which includes a lengthy history of the Brotherhood’s links to radical terrorist leaders and violent incidents, concludes that “the Muslim Brotherhood meets the criteria for designation as a foreign terrorist organization.”
It would require the State Department and other agencies to determine whether the Brotherhood officially meets the requirements to be designated under U.S. law as a terrorist organization.
However, “if the Secretary of State determines that the Muslim Brotherhood does not meet the criteria,” it must submit to Congress “a detailed justification as to which criteria have not been met,” according to the bill.
Muslim Brotherhood affiliates as well as the group’s members have been listed as sponsors of terrorism in the past by the U.S. government.
The terrorist group Hamas, a longtime Brotherhood affiliate, has been sanctioned for some time.
The organization garnered international headlines after its rise to power following a coup in Egypt that took down its longtime former leader. While in power, the Brotherhood cracked down on opponents and waged violent campaigns against Christians and others who opposed the group’s radical ideology.
Five countries—Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Russia—already consider the Brotherhood a terrorist organization.
Israel, Canada, and the United Kingdom are examining the possibility of designating it a terrorist organization as well.
Lawmakers such as Cruz maintain that the Brotherhood poses a direct threat to U.S. national security, though the Obama administration has held meetings with the organization’s representatives.
A senior member of the Brotherhood was hosted at the White Houselast year, while other representatives of the group have been granted entrance to the United States.
Senior U.S. officials have warned in the past that the Brotherhood both in the United States and overseas have backed terrorist acts.
“I can say at the outset that elements of the Muslim Brotherhood both here and overseas have supported terrorism,” said Robert Mueller, the former director of the FBI, during testimony in 2011.
Intelligence officials have established that elements of the Brotherhood run terrorist financing operations in the United States. Much of this information, however, remains classified.
Other officials have explained that terror groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and al Qaeda can all trace their roots back to the Muslim Brotherhood and its leaders.
Cruz has also led congressional efforts to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps an official state sponsor of terrorism.
That bill, submitted at the end of September, would likely mitigate the impact of sanctions relief provided to Iran under the recently inked nuclear deal.
“Branches of the [Revolutionary Guard Corps] have murdered hundreds of Americans,” Cruz said in a statement at the time. “They have attacked our allies, notably Israel. They have provided material support for other designated terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah and Hamas. Yet for years the United States has sanctioned [Revolutionary Guard Corps] entities while leaving the organization itself untouched.”
President Barack Obama said he did not believe evidence supported the idea that the Black Lives Matter movement has put a chilling effect on law enforcement throughout the country which in turn has resulted in some crime spikes.
“NBC Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt asked the president about the so-called “Ferguson effect” in an interview that aired Tuesday.
“Your own FBI director has raised this idea of the ‘Ferguson effect.’ That police officers may be laying back a bit — they don’t want to end up on somebody’s camcorder — and as a result, we are seeing a spike in homicides in some cities. Do you fear that could undermine, derail what you are trying to do right now?” Holt asked.
“Well, what is absolutely true is we have seen some spikes in violent crime in some cities,” Obama replied. “Overall, the violent crime rate is still near the historic lows. We saw an extraordinary drop over the last 20 years. Last year was the lowest ever. We’ve seen a spike in some cities this year, but it’s still close to the historic lows.
The president added that he has told Attorney General Loretta Lynch that when a spike in violent crime is observed, the federal government needs to do what it can to “get on top of this.”
Holt, seemingly not entirely satisfied with Obama’s answer, pressed him further.
“But is it something that you think it’s chilled, that police officers are feeling?” he asked.
“You know, we have not seen any evidence of that,” Obama responded. “And I think the FBI director would be the first to say that he’s heard antidotal suggestions that it may be happening in selective sites, but we don’t know.”
Holt’s questions were in reference to a recent comment FBI Director James Comey made last month during a speech in which he suggested crime was spiking in part because there has been a “chill wind blowing through American law enforcement over the last year.”
A Florida middle school girl was reportedly given detention after she gave her friends a hug before the bell rang for classes to begin for the day.
The Jackson Heights Middle School eighth-grader told WKMG Tuesday the hug lasted “literally for a second.” The disputed contact has the girl’s parents questioning the Oviedo school’s policies.
The Seminole County School District’s policy bans “inappropriate touching” but leaves the decision to reprimand students for breaking the code up to principals, according to WKMG. Jackson Heights bans any kind of hugging.
The district told the station that detentions are only given out for repeated offenses. Kathy Fishbough, the girl’s mother, said her daughter was given a warning after previously hugging the same boy. Fishbough said the warning came after the boy put her hand on her head.
“If administration can’t tell the difference between a friendly, ‘How are you doing?’ hug and an inappropriate hug, then I think we have a big problem,” she said.
When Fishbough asked district officials if her daughter would get in trouble if she wanted to console her cousin over something, the officials replied, “Yes ma’am.”
WKMG reports that most of the policies have been in place for nearly a decade and some of them were approved by parent-teacher committees.
The girl is expected to serve her detention on Friday, according to the Washington Post. But now she’s afraid to even touch anyone at her school.
Telecom giant known for trying to block news on the internet
A news radio station in New York reports that the broadband and telecommunications company Verizon is now scanning customer email.
If email contains a hyperlink to a website, the email is rejected and not sent to the recipient, according to 95.1 FM in New York City.
After a customer complained about the policy the corporation told him there isn’t a way to op-put of the program.
“Verizon scans the digital signatures of all inbound and outbound email messages to reduce the overall volume of spam on our network” and all email containing a hyperlink will be considered spam.
“So if a business person needs to get information to a colleague, or a student needs to get research to a fellow student, or if a wife wants to share an interesting recipe with a friend . . . all those emails will be rejected by Verizon!” the radio station website explains.
In October Matt Drudge told the Alex Jones Showthe very foundation of the free internet is under severe threat from copyright laws that could ban independent media outlets. Drudge said he was told directly by a Supreme Court Justice, “It’s over for me.”
The move by Verizon follows a previous effort by the broadband giant to dictate news on the internet.
In a 2012 legal brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Verizon argued the Constitution gives the phone company the right to control everyone’s online information.
“Just as a newspaper is entitled to decide which content to publish and where, broadband providers may feature some content over others.”
In other words, Verizon believes it has “editorial discretion” over what news and information its customers may access.
The following year the company went before the appeals court and said it has the right to block content that cannot or will not pay a toll.
In 2007 Verizon Wireless blocked text messages it deemed “controversial or unsavory.”
“This is right at the heart of the problem,” said Susan Crawford, a visiting professor at theUniversity of Michigan law school, told The New York Times. “The fact that wireless companies can choose to discriminate is very troubling.”
Additionally, Verizon works with the NSA to monitor and collect the metadata of tens of millions of phone users.
Office of Civil Rights says disguised boy has right to shower with girls By Ed Straker The Department of Education's office of civil rights says that a disguised boy has been discriminated against because he is not
allowed to shower naked with girls.
Federal education authorities, staking out their firmest position yet on an increasingly contentious issue, found
Monday that an Illinois school district violated anti-discrimination laws when it did not allow a transgender
student who identifies as a girl and participates on a girls’ sports team to change and shower in the girls’ locker
room without restrictions.
The Education Department gave 30 days to the officials of Township High School District 211 to reach a solution
or face enforcement, which could include administrative law proceedings or a Justice Department court action.
The district could lose some or all of its Title IX funding.
In a letter sent Monday, the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education told the Palatine district that
requiring a transgender student to use private changing and showering facilities was a violation of that student’s
rights under Title IX, a federal law that bans sex discrimination. The student, who identifies as female but was
born male, should be given unfettered access to girls’ facilities, the letter said.
The boy should be given unfettered access to naked girls. What's confusing about that?
The district said she was allowed to change inside the girls’ locker room, but only behind a curtain. The student,
who has not been publicly identified, has said she would probably use that curtain to change. But she and the
federal government have insisted that she be allowed to make that decision voluntarily, and not because of
requirements by the district.
That's right! The boy should decide whether he gets to see the other girls naked and show them his private parts.
“What our client wants is not hard to understand:She wants to be accepted for who she is and to be treated with
dignity and respect — like any other student,” said John Knight, director of the L.G.B.T. and H.I.V. Project of
the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois[.]
The boy just wants a little dignity and respect – just like any other boy who wants to see girls naked in close quarters!
All kidding aside, this is sick, and this is perverted, and this perversion is being coercively pushed by the highest levels of
government. This is not about the "dignity" of this arrogant, perverted boy, who was given his own changing room. He demands
to see naked girls and for naked girls to see his male body, and he doesn't care about anyone's "dignity" or "respect" but his own.
If you click through to the comment section of the Times article, you will see that even most liberals are horrified by this. Most
people hate this kind of extreme leftism, with girls staging walkouts rather than letting disguised boys watch them undress.
This is an enormous opening for Republicans. Who is waging the "war on women" now? It is radical Democrats pushing for
girls to be exposed to naked men. Now Hillary Clinton has become a born-again transvestite supporter. Would it really be hard
for a Republican in a debate to turn to her and say, "Mrs. Clinton, do you really want girls to be forced to expose themselves to
boys in locker rooms?"
It's indefensible. It sounds like a small issue compared to illegal immigration and the debt, but I think a candidate who focuses
on this could destroy Clinton's credibility. Unfortunately, while this topic has been much in the news, most of the Republican
candidates have been quiet about it. I wonder why.
This article was written by Ed Straker, senior writer of NewsMachete.com, the conservative news site.
Billionaire investor George Soros has confirmed he wants to bring down Europe’s borders, following the accusation made last week by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Last week, Mr Orban accused Mr Soros – who was born in Hungary – of deliberately encouraging the migrant crisis.
“This invasion is driven, on the one hand, by people smugglers, and on the other by those (human rights) activists who support everything that weakens the nation-state,” Mr Orban said.
“This Western mindset and this activist network is perhaps best represented by George Soros.”
Mr Soros has now issued an email statement to Bloomberg Business, claiming his foundations help “uphold European values”, while Mr Oban’s actions in strengthening the Hungarian border and stopping a huge migrant influx “undermine those values.”
“His plan treats the protection of national borders as the objective and the refugees as an obstacle,” Mr Soros added. “Our plan treats the protection of refugees as the objective and national borders as the obstacle.”
Last month, Mr Orban accused pro-immigration non-governmental organisations (NGOs) of “drawing a living from the immigration crisis,” singling out those funded by Mr Soros.
George Soros is a firm backer of transnational bodies such as the European Union, and his Open Society Foundation (OSF) provides assistance for pro-migration activists. He is well-known for his support for “progressive” causes such as the Centre for American Progress, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
The OSF website explains: “We believe that migration and asylum policy should be grounded in economic and demographic realities, not driven by temporary political considerations or popular misconceptions.
“In Europe, many of our civil society partners are raising their voices demanding a common European approach in line with international human rights commitments.”
Mr Orban said in an interview last month that immigration and multiculturalism are endangering Europe’s “Christian roots” and creating “parallel societies”.
Europeans, he said, should “stick to our Christian values” and “Europe can be saved,” but only if they “take seriously the traditions, the Christian roots and all the values that are the basis of the civilisation of Europe.”
Two senior officials from the Department of Veterans Affairs have pleaded the Fifth Amendment in front of a House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing on relocation bonus corruption.
Philadelphia and Wilmington VA regional offices director Diana Rubens and St. Paul VA regional office director Kimberly Graves pleaded the Fifth and refused to answer any of the numerous questions put forward by HVAC chairman GOP Rep. Jeff Miller “Sir, I’ve been advised by counsel not to answer that question to protect my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution,” Rubens repeated multiple times.
The five employees from the VA involved in the incident appeared Monday evening before HVAC under subpoena. The subpoena to appear — the first ever issued in the committee’s history — was deemed necessary because the VA did not allow the witnesses to show up to the first hearing on the subject. (RELATED: VA Officials Refuse To Appear Before Committee, Get Hit With Subpoena)
“I want to make it clear that requiring these individuals or any individual to appear before us today is not done to embarrass them as some have asserted,” Miller said Monday at the hearing. “They are here before us today because they are the subjects of this damning report, which was completed at this committee’s request.”
“This hearing is not a joke, and Ms. Rubens, despite what you reportedly told some of your employees, this is not a show,” Miller added, referring to one of the senior officials named in the report as an abuser of taxpayer funds.
Despite endless promises, the department refused to release testimony to the committee members in advance of the hearing, but on the day of the hearing, the department gave a two-sentence summary, leaving Miller furious and “sick and tired” of the department’s lack of cooperation.
An inspector general report from Sept. 28 found that two VA officials abused the relocation program to the tune of hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars. To successfully take advantage of the program and receive extra money during a time of salary caps in the department, the two officials pushed subordinates out from their positions and subsequently applied for those newly open positions, so that they could then receive generous expense accounts during the move, in addition to bonus incentive funds.
The inspector general referred criminal charges for Rubens Graves to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Columbia.
Rubens and Graves received more than $400,000 taxpayer dollars for relocation expenses.
A reporter from Project Veritas covertly filmed administrators at Vassar College agreeing to shred the Constitution.
Other profs. at Oberlin are shown in the video seemingly agreeing that the Constitution is "oppressive" and "causes people pain."
Administrators at Vassar College and Oberlin College agreed to personally shred a pocket Constitution after an undercover reporter posing as a student complained that she felt “triggered” by its distribution on campus.
The video was produced by Project Veritas, a non-profit established by conservative journalist James O’Keefe, and employs a similar style to the undercover ACORN videos that first brought him to prominence.
“Honestly, can we just like destroy... is there a shredder or something? I think it might be really therapeutic." Tweet This
“Last week something kinda happened on campus that kind of really upset me and I ended up having a panic attack,” the reporter tells Vassar College Assistant Director of Equal Opportunity Kelly Grab. “It’s just I’ve been kind of hiding out in my room ever since kind of scared, so, finally somebody told me I should maybe come talk to you about it and see if there’s anything that can happen or anything … They were handing the Constitution out on campus.”
“Oh, CATO Institute,” Grab murmurs while looking the booklet over.
“They were handing it out and as soon as I saw it you know I started to not be able to breathe, hyperventilating,” the reporter elaborated. “My vision went blurry and I just—kind of just lost control.”
After establishing that the reaction was triggered merely by the offering of copies of the Constitution and not by anything the group had said, Grab offers her sympathies to the reporter.
“And so what I think you’re sharing with me is that your interaction in receiving this was harming, right?” Grab confirms. “And that’s what we certainly want to avoid; we don’t want to limit people in exchanging ideas or having opposing viewpoints, but when it’s disruptive or causing harm…”
“Yeah, which I think the Constitution does,” the reporter interjects. “I mean, it’s not just me, it’s—I mean I thought that Vassar wanted to create like a safe place here, you know a place that … where students could walk around and not be scared of seeing discriminating things on campus.”
Noting that “I’m sure there are also some people who, who maybe don’t understand the impact that this might have on folks,” Grab asks the reporter whether there is anything that can be done to create an “educational moment” regarding the issue.
“Yeah, I guess, maybe,” the reporter responds, suggesting that “maybe the Constitution should be removed from campus permanently.”
Grab stops short of endorsing that idea, but asks the reporter if there is anything she can do with the copy of the Constitution that was brought into the office.
“Honestly, can we just like destroy—like is there a shredder or something? Like I think it might be really therapeutic,” the reporter offers.
“Cathartic … Yes, I think we have a shredder in the front office there,” Grab replies. “Did you want to do it with me?”
The video then show Grab and the reporter enter another office, where Grab proceeds to shred the entire Constitution, page by page.
“Thank you, that made me feel better,” the reporter says, to which Grab replies, “[g]ood.”
A narrator then asserts that when the reporter tried the same story at Oberlin College, several professors made similarly shocking statements.
When the complaint was brought to Wendy Kozol, Professor/Chair of Comparative American Studies at Oberlin, she agreed after a long pause that “[t]he Constitution in everyday life causes people pain,” adding that she rarely discusses the Constitution in class, and that when she does she tends to focus on specific amendments.
After some prompting from the reporter, she concedes that her hesitancy reflects her belief that the document is flawed, and suggests working with student groups to host a dialogue concerning “the ways in which the Constitution in everyday life causes people pain.”
“So, obviously my end goal is I want the Constitution to not have such a central part here at Oberlin—I would like people to see how discriminating it is and how racist it is,” the reporter tells Kozol. “Do you think that’s a reasonable goal that we could get to?”
“Absolutely,” Kozol says. “I think there are a lot of people who will immediately agree with you and join the conversation and think about ways to limit, confine, or talk back; maybe you just want to talk back to the Constitution.”
Carol Lasser, Professor of History and Director of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Oberlin, likewise concurred that “[t]he Constitution is an oppressive document” because it intentionally makes change a slow process.
“I think birthright citizenship is right,” she whispers. “And you know that if that was up for a vote today we would lose it under the craziness of Trump and his seven dwarves.”
She then observes that “[t]he Constitution is not a sacred document in that sense,” citing the Second Amendment as an example and asking, “[w]hat could be clearer than, I mean at least from my point of view, that the founders never envisioned giving people carte blanche to own assault rifles?”
Colleen Cohen, Faculty Director of Affirmative Action and a Professor of Anthropology at Vassar, is even more indulgent of the reporter’s complaint, saying, “[i]t’s horrible that this is something that has caused you such pain,” and despairing that “unless the people are from off campus,” there is nothing the college can do to prevent the Constitution from being distributed.
“Can I destroy this?” she asks the reporter, referring to the Constitution. “Or did you want to hold on to it?”
“Well, could you destroy it?” the reporter says. “Maybe it will feel, you know, therapeutic for me.”
“I’ll put it through a shredder,” Cohen offers. “Yeah, I’ll put it in a shredder.”
Subsequently, Cohen hangs up her office phone and informs the reporter that she will not have access to the shredder until her secretary returns, but promises to destroy the document at that point.
O’Keefe also makes sporadic appearances in the video as he hands out pocket Constitutions while dressed in a comical Constitution costume.
“When this idea came up in our newsroom about campus administrators shredding the Constitution because it’s a trigger against students, we didn’t think people would actually fall for it,” he says at one point. “We underestimated just how stupid and politically correct these people are.”
“We were amazed and disappointed,” the narrator intones at the end of the film. “Political correctness and cultural sensitivity run amok.”
Jeffrey Kosmacher, Director of Media Relations and Public Affairs at Vassar College, told Campus Reform that nobody from Vassar would have any comment on this story.
Campus Reform likewise reached out to Professors Kozol, Lasser, and Cohen, but none had responded by press time.
PUBLISHED: 01:28 EST, 3 November 2015 | UPDATED: 04:03 EST, 3 November 2015
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Women loyal to President Assad in a besieged region of Damascus are being paraded in metal cages in the hope of preventing further air-strikes raining down on a stricken suburb of the Syrian capital.
Almost 500 Alawites - male and female - have been rounded up by Army of Islam militants and are now being held captive in the cubed jails mounted on the back of flat-bed trucks and pick-ups.
The city of Douma has been pulverised by daily attacks by Russian and Syrian bombing raids.
Hundreds of women locked in cages to act as human shields
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Women loyal to President Assad in a besieged region of Damascus are being paraded in metal cages to prevent further air-strikes raining down on a stricken Syrian suburb
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Almost 500 Alawites - male and female - have been rounded up by Army of Islam militants and are now being held captive in the cubed jails mounted on the back of flat-bed trucks and pick
However, the locals see this extreme retaliation as the only way of ensuring the airborne attacks are ended - as it would mean President Assad targeting his own supporters.
At least 100 cages are now being used to ferry the hostages around the city, in the Eastern Ehouta region.
Videos of the trucks have been shared on YouTube and clearly show terrified women helpless inside the thick metal fencing.
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Local rebel groups see this extreme retaliation as the only way of ensuring the airborne attacks are ended - as it would mean President Assad targeting his own supporters
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At least 100 cages are now being used to ferry the hostages around the city, in the Eastern Ehouta region
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Videos of the trucks have been shared on YouTube and clearly show terrified women helpless inside the thick metal fencing
Panicked men are also seen asking to be released from their enclosures.
However, the rebel groups continue to parade the trapped hostages, driving through streets where dozens of buildings have been reduced to rubble by bombing campaigns.
One woman, Mervat Ali, from Qardaha, can be heard saying: 'We wish that the Russian warplanes never shell civilians again.
'We are experiencing fear here with the people.'
Humanitarian group Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) have confirmed that at least 70 people were killed and 500 injured in a series of horrific air-strikes against Douma on Friday.
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Panicked men are also seen asking to be released from their enclosures, with up to ten squeezed in to each of the cages at a time
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Men held hostage in one of the cages hold on to its sides to keep their balance as they're driven through the near demolished city of Douma
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Human Rights Watch slammed the latest action by rebels on the ground, alleging that similar caging tactics were used in the Shia village of Fue, in the north of the country, last month
The group's principal hospital was also hit in the attack, with a further six people killed by shelling on Monday.
Strikes against Douma killed 550 people during their peak in August. More than 120 of those who died were children.
Human Rights Watch slammed the latest action by rebels on the ground, alleging that similar caging tactics were used in the Shia village of Fue, in the north of the country, last month.
Middle East director Nadim Houry told The Times: 'Two wrongs do not make a right.
'You can't protect civilians by endangering other civilians.'
He added: 'There has to be real action by international actors.'
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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