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Uganda’s “Kill The Gays” Bill Appears To Be Dead

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Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” bill, internationally-denounced legislation that would have prescribed all Ugandan gays to be put in jail for life, would have required reporting to the government anyone suspected of being homosexual within 24 hours, and possibly would have demanded the death penalty for the “crime” of homosexuality, appears to be dead.

A government subcommittee reportedly told reporters that the law duplicated other laws in Uganda, one of 83 countries where homosexuality is already illegal. David Bahati, an MP in Uganda’s Parliament and the chief proponent of the “Kill the Gays” bill, said of the two year-old bill’s apparent demise, “I think that the government is aware that 95 percent of Ugandans do not condone homosexuality,” according to a translation of a Spanish-language news report.

Box Turtle Bulletin’s Jim Burroway also writes, “Uganda’s Information Minister was reportedly shown on television explaining that the bill will not be passed because other laws already exist which criminalize homosexuality. However, some parts of the bill may be attached to the Sexual Offenses Act. Which parts, we don’t know. Our source writes, “Bahati was panicked and tried to look defiant.”

The infamous bill received world-wide attention, especially for the portions that would have made the death penalty the punishment for “aggravated homosexuality.” Seven other countries already make homosexuality punishable by death.

While it remains unclear what prompted this change, it was widely-expected the bill would be debated and voted upon this week. Earlier this week, ahead of the Ugandan bill and thanks to a U.S.-led move at the United Nations, the international body voted to condemn violence against the LGBT community.

Read: “UN Gay Rights Vote Result Of Growing Global Support for LGBT Rights

Ugandan gay and human rights activist David Kato was brutally murdered on January 26 of this year as he worked to defeat the “Kill the Gays” bill. News of his death prompted statements of condolence around the world, including from President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton, as well as a renewed focus on the “Kill the Gays” bill. The U.S. Secretary of State was widely-credited for this week’s successful UN vote.

Kato’s killer or killers have yet to be charged, and the government had claimed at one point Kato’s murder was the result of self-defense because Kato had sex with his suspected murderer. These claims have been denounced as baseless.

Read: “David Kato’s Death Result Of Hatred Planted By U.S. Evangelicals”

Last year, a Ugandan newspaper, Rolling Stone, (unrelated to the U.S. magazine) itself became the focus of news around the world for several front-page anti-gay stories it published, which included names, addresses, and photographs of prominent homosexuals, while urging readers to “hang them.”

Bahati, who earlier had said of the “Kill the Gays” bill, “It is popular here,” also has made a name for himself internationally, amid reports he is connected to “The Family,” also known as “The Fellowship,” an American clandestine political and religious group based in the now-infamous “C Street House.” Bahati in 2009 said homosexuality “is a behaviour that is learned and it can be unlearned,” and, “Homosexuality it is not a human right. It is not in-born.”

Bahati also has ties to mega-church pastor Rick Warren, who in late 2009 finally (somewhat) came out against the “Kill the Gays” bill.

The “Kill the Gays” bill is widely-believed to be the brainchild, or at least created based on the teachings of American Evangelicals, including Scott Lively.

This is a developing story. Stay tuned for updates.

(h/t Blabbeando)

(image: Ugandan PM David Bahati)

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‘Inexperienced, Loyalist Clowns’: National Security Expert Slams Possible Trump CIA Picks

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A top national security specialist with expertise on Russia and nuclear weapons is warning about two individuals reportedly being considered for the role of Director of the Central Intelligence Agency under President-elect Donald Trump.

Richard Grenell, the former Trump acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and U.S. Ambassador to Germany, has been “suggested for a role such as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, where he may be urged by Trump to unearth the so-called ‘deep state,'” CNN reported Thursday.

Also in the running for Director of CIA is Kash Patel, CNN reports, “a former Trump national security official who is helping organize the next administration’s transition.”

“Patel himself has told associates that he wants to be CIA director, people briefed on the matter say. It would be a triumph after Trump contemplated in his final months in office putting Patel in key jobs at FBI or CIA. That idea was blocked by opposition from then CIA Director Gina Haspel and [Attorney General Bill] Barr.”

READ MORE: ‘Someone’s Got to Run the Deportation Camps’: Prison Stocks Soar as Trump Agenda Unfolds

“Patel and Trump,” CNN adds, “are both vowing to oust officials who played any role in investigations of Trump and his supporters. Trump has vowed to fire Christopher Wray, who Trump appointed in 2017 after firing James Comey, and whose 10-year term has more than two years remaining.”

In 2022, Grenell was accused by Olivia Troye, a national security expert with decades of experience, of having “tried to get Mike Pence to attend a white supremacist gathering during one of his overseas trips.” Troye served in the Trump White House as Homeland Security and Counterterrorism advisor to Vice President Pence. Her remark was in response to a comment by U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), who had said Grenell “used to hang out with Nazis when he was supposed to be representing us in Germany.”

NCRM has not confirmed the allegations.

“Grenell has been acting as a kind of shadow secretary of state, meeting with far-right leaders and movements, pledging Trump’s support and, at times, working against the current administration’s policies,” along with “attacking President Biden,” The Washington Post reported  in March. It also reported Trump had been calling Grenell, “my envoy.”

The paper detailed Grenell had “arrived in Guatemala in January, days before the new president was to be sworn in — and threw his support behind a right-wing campaign to undermine the election.”

“Grenell met with a hard-line group that sued to block the inauguration,” and, “defended Guatemalan officials who had seized ballot boxes in an effort to overturn a vote declared ‘free and fair’ by the United States and international observers, and he attacked the U.S. State Department’s sanctions against hundreds of anti-democratic actors.”

READ MORE: ‘Under Attack’: Newsom Preps to Protect California From Trump

“They are trying to intimidate conservatives in Guatemala,” Grenell said. “This is all wrapped into this kind of phony concern about democracy.”

The Post also reported that “Grenell’s globe-trotting has sparked deep concern among career national security officials and diplomats, who warn that he emboldens bad actors and jeopardizes U.S. interests in service of Trump’s personal agenda. In the process, Grenell is openly charting a foreign policy road map for a Republican presidential nominee who has found common cause with authoritarian leaders and threatened to blow up partnerships with democratic allies.”

In 2020, when Grenell was serving as Trump’s acting Director of National Intelligence, ProPublica reported, “Richard Grenell’s past clients could raise concerns about his access to state secrets, according to his own office’s rules.”

Grenell had “worked as a paid publicist for a foundation funded by Hungary’s increasingly authoritarian government — his second former client to prompt scrutiny because Grenell did not disclose the work.”

“In 2016, the Magyar Foundation of North America paid Grenell’s consulting firm, Capitol Media Partners, $103,750 for ‘public relations’ services, according to the foundation’s tax filing. The foundation was funded and supervised by Hungary’s government, according to records obtained by the Hungarian nonprofit news organization Atlatszo. The foundation’s director, Jo Anne Barnhart, had been a registered lobbyist for Prime Minister Viktor Orban,” ProPublica revealed.

“Grenell, however, did not register, even though public relations work on behalf of a foreign government falls squarely under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, according to lawyers specializing in the matter. FARA is the same law that Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and former deputy campaign manager, Rick Gates, were convicted of violating.”

Tom Nichols, the retired Naval War College professor who has a PhD in government from Georgetown University and is now a writer at The Atlantic, on Thursday weighed in on news Grenell and Patel are potential picks to head the Central Intelligence Agency.

“During a crisis – say, a nuclear crisis – the DCIA [Director of the Central Intelligence Agency] is supposed to be one of the key people with a firm grip on data and solid judgment to advise the President on what to do next. Appointing inexperienced, loyalist clowns is not a big deal at some agencies. Not this one.”

Asked, what “Defcon level are we at now?” Nichols replied, “Well, I referred to this time as a national emergency, just as the last Trump administration was.”

Dr. Norman Ornstein, Emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and a contributing editor at The Atlantic, responded to Nichols: “Not just inexperienced and clowns, people who cannot be trusted with secrets, especially our most significant ones.”

READ MORE: The List of Who Donald Trump Has ‘Pledged to Punish,’ According to One of His Targets

 

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‘Someone’s Got to Run the Deportation Camps’: Prison Stocks Soar as Trump Agenda Unfolds

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Several private prison stocks have been skyrocketing since Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election. Trump has vowed mass deportations, and his campaign spokesperson on Wednesday said “millions” would be deported on day one.

“One HUGE winner from Trump’s win: Private prison companies GEO Group Inc. and CoreCivic Inc.,” observed Bloomberg News reporter Steven Dennis on Wednesday. “Their stocks, which could benefit from Trump’s plans for rounding up millions of immigrants, rocketed higher today 41% and 29% respectively.”

Thomson Reuters Foundation journalist Avi Asher-Schapiro also on Wednesday, posted the stock’s performance over the past five days, which shows it jumped over 26%. He writes: “Private prison giant Geo Group —which already has over a billion dollars in ICE contracts to manage immigration detention facilities—sees its stock soar on Trump’s win.”

Pointing to an earnings call transcript from August, he notes the company “also administers the ‘Intensive Supervision Appearance Program’ which is GPS monitoring of migrants.”

READ MORE: ‘Under Attack’: Newsom Preps to Protect California From Trump

“Now, it’s 175,000 people. If the GOP-backed House Bill becomes law, that could expand to 7 million.”

Ohio Capitol Journal Editor-in-Chief David DeWitt noted, “To deport 20 million people [a number Trump has claimed], they need to build massive camps – deportation, detention…camps where people are concentrated… to handle such massive numbers. Brokers are speculating a nice windfall for a private prison giant on the backs of millions of families being put in camps”

At Thompson Reuters’ Context, Asher-Schapiro co-wrote an article last week explaining how Geo has donated over a half-million dollars to support Trump’s re-election efforts.

“GEO Group’s political action committee moved early this year to donate a maximum $5,000 to the Trump campaign, in addition to a $500,000 donation from a GEO subsidiary to a pro-Trump group, according to an analysis from CREW’s [Robert] Maguire and Lauren White.”

CREW is the government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

READ MORE: The List of Who Donald Trump Has ‘Pledged to Punish,’ According to One of His Targets

“The company also not only donated to his 2017 inauguration, but moved its annual corporate event to one of his properties, White said.”

“They have not only been fuelling Trump’s political aspirations, but they have been putting money directly in Trump’s pocket by using his businesses in a pretty conspicuous way,” White also said.

The Atlantic’s David Frum is a Never-Trump Republican who announced Wednesday he “De-registered as a Republican today.”

Responding to the chart of Geo Group’s stock skyrocketing, he remarked sardonically: “Someone’s got to run the deportation camps.”

On Wednesday, NBC News explored how Trump may execute his deportation plan, and highlight one of his recent quotes about immigrants: “We’re like a garbage can for the world.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Dire Implications’: Trump’s Possible Vaccine Ban Could Spark US, Global Health Crisis

 

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‘Under Attack’: Newsom Preps to Protect California From Trump

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California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom is preparing on multiple fronts to protect his state from the impending Donald Trump presidency.

“The freedoms we hold dear in California are under attack — and we won’t sit idle,” Newsom said in a statement, the LA Times reports. “California has faced this challenge before, and we know how to respond. We are prepared to fight in the courts, and we will do everything necessary to ensure Californians have the support and resources they need to thrive.”

“California is ready to fight,” Newsom added, via social media. “Whether it be our fundamental civil rights, reproductive freedom, or climate action — we refuse to turn back the clock and allow our values and laws to be attacked.”

The 57-year old with reported presidential aspirations has called the state legislature back into session to provide additional funding for litigation against the Trump administration.

READ MORE: Marco Rubio to State? Ken Paxton to DOJ? Trump Administration Contenders Emerge

“California anticipates that Trump could seek to limit access to abortion, dismantle environmental protections and withhold federal disaster response funding,” The Times adds, along with repealing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

“The new special session provides an early look at the governor’s plan to wage an aggressive and highly visible campaign to shield California from the Trump White House.”

The governor sees the need “to increase legal funding to defend civil rights, climate change, access to abortion, disaster funding and other California policies from a conservative federal agenda before the inauguration in January.”

“Newsom’s preemptive strike signals the return of the hostile relationship between Democratic-controlled California and the Trump administration that was a hallmark of the Republican’s first term.”

RELATED: Day One: Trump Planning ‘Largest Mass Deportation Operation’

The governor’s additional preparations for the impending Trump presidency include having performed an analysis of Project 2025, the extremist playbook created by the far-right Heritage Foundation, and a review of the more than 100 lawsuits California filed against the first Trump administration.

Ezra Levin, who co-founded the progressive organization Indivisible in response to the first Trump presidency, commented on Newsom’s actions: “This is a good move and Dem leaders in trifecta states across the country should be taking similar action. If you’re a leader in this moment, go lead.”

READ MORE: The List of Who Donald Trump Has ‘Pledged to Punish,’ According to One of His Targets

Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license

 

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