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THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION kicks off today with a one-two punch of law-and-order tough-talk, and Donald Trump’s wife playing character witness as the bombastic mogul seeks to lock up his presidential nomination.
Melania Trump, a Slovenian-born former model, will headline the opening night of the 2016 convention in Cleveland, Ohio, which takes place against a backdrop of fear over racial violence and unrest abroad.
The convention will go on for four days, with a host of speakers from UFC president Dana White to Trump himself.
Trump will speak on Thursday, when he is expected to be officially nominated as the party’s candidate.
A spate of race-tinged shootings – including the killing of three police officers in Louisiana yesterday – has put the country on edge.
Terror attacks overseas, most recently in Nice, and an attempted coup in Turkey, have only stoked a sense of global unrest.
President Barack Obama has urged Americans to temper their words and show stronger common resolve, but Trump is instead highlighting divisions.
“We are TRYING to fight ISIS, and now our own people are killing our police,” Trump tweeted shortly after the Baton Rogue shooting, referring to the Islamic State group.
“Our country is divided and out of control. The world is watching.”
Trump has portrayed himself as a sheriff who can fix things.
He believes that the presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton should be jailed for using a private email server to handle sensitive government documents, something the FBI said was careless but not a criminal.
Later today, Trump will also call on retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn and tough-talking Senator Joni Ernst as convention speakers to back up his point.
Internal affairs
Of more immediate concern for Trump however is a split among Republicans.
The reality TV star’s unorthodox style and hard-right message have left the party more divided than it has been in a generation.
Melania Trump, along with the candidate’s son and daughters, will all be rolled out at the convention in an attempt to humanise The Donald.
Melania will give the key speech this evening, in keeping with the tradition that the spouse of the nominee speaks on the opening night.
Polls show that Trump struggles badly with moderate voters, and his campaign will want to project a more positive image to the general electorate.
Trump’s choice of Indiana governor Mike Pence as his vice-presidential running mate could help shore up his position among conservatives, although the real estate billionaire seemed tepid about his decision.
In a remarkable first joint appearance on Saturday, Trump eventually got around to talking about Pence and explained why he was picked, in less than enthusiastic terms.
One of the reasons is party unity, so many people have said, ‘party unity.’ Because I’m an outsider.
Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort insisted that there was unity. “This is a Trump convention. The party is united,” he said.
It’s a few people who are holding up and they don’t reflect anything other than their personal opinion.
Inside the halls it remains to be seen if the “Never Trump” camp will make themselves heard.
Outside, however, law enforcement is bracing for a wave of protests.
Roads in the Ohio city are lined with concrete barriers and helicopters buzz overhead.
Cleveland, a Midwestern city of nearly 400,000, has taken out $50 million in protest insurance.
Ohio’s open-carry law, which allows people with proper permits to carry a loaded weapon on the streets, is adding to fears of violence.
“We have policies in place for mass arrests through our prosecutor’s office, our clerk’s office and our court system,” Cleveland police chief Calvin Williams told reporters.
- © AFP, 2016 With Cormac Fitzgerald
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40% of people who live in the USA are suffering from a chronic illness of one sort or another. Think on that. That’s nearly half of the population of the USA. Pesticides, unlabled GMO foods, food riven with additives, growth hormones, ammonia, have a huge bearing on that figure of 40%. When Monsanto can place its people in the Supreme Court, and on the board of the FDA there will never be any chance of that number of 40% decreasing. The number will only rise.
@Dave Doyle: Sedentary lifestyles and too much calorie-laden, salty processed food is the cause of those problems.
Glyphosate is used just as widely in Europe as it is in the US, so there’s very little basis for your above post wrt. pesticides.
@Dave Doyle: Likely nothing to do with Monsanto or Glyphosate but to do with the adulteration of the food chain with sulphite preservatives & sulphite colorants.
Sulphur dioxide & sulphites are the only one of 14 allergens that can be legally HIDDEN in food if the levels are below 10mg/kg or 10ml/l. Imagine if same rules applied to peanuts.
The sulphites are driving chronic inflammation which we suspect is exacerbating a newly defined disease called Mast Cell Activation Syndrome that may already be an epidemic in developed nations even Ireland. The disease is an immune disease likely triggered by environmental factors such as smog, diesel exhaust, of gassing polyurethane plastics and other household chemicals we assume are safe WD40, 3 in 1 oil, deodorant propellants….very long list.
Once the genie is out of the bottle, Mast Cells within the immune system start to misidentify threats and one threat it mis-identifies are sulphites in food which are now ubiquitous. Sulphites are used to cheat on shelf life and cheat on colour.
Acute exposure by thousands of personnel to vast amounts of known sensitizer chemicals at the Air Corps at Baldonnel has left a medical trail that will be very valuable to any scientist looking to get to the bottom of this problem. Young men suffered MCAS symptoms in late teens/early 20s when the measured profile of the illness in the USA is confined 80% to middle aged women.
Monsanto is a convenient bogie man but the answer is likely simpler and happening every time we eat breakfast, dinner and tea as well as nibbles and a glass of wine.
@Chemical Brothers: A well researched, reasonable and balanced response but you’re dealing with Journal prejudice where everybody goes off pushing their own little barrow.
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is the primary agency of the European Union for risk assessments regarding food safety.
In October 2015, EFSA concluded that ‘glyphosate is unlikely to pose a hazard to humans and the evidence does not support classification with regard to its carcinogenic potential’.
@James Brady: Study after study has shown that is does cancer -Common weed killer glyphosate increases cancer risk by 41%, study says https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/14/health/us-glyphosate-cancer-study-scli-intl/index.html
Weedkiller glyphosate a ‘substantial’ cancer factor
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47633086
2 recent cases in US have been win by people who sued and win.
Have you ever wondered why cancer is skyrocketing why bees are dying etc
@GO GREEN: Jury Rules Against Bayer in California Glyphosate and Cancer Trial https://www.agriculture.com/news/crops/jury-rules-against-bayer-in-california-glyphosate-and-cancer-trial
@James Brady: that conlusion only came after the heavyweight German corporations got involved. The WHO has been compromised for a good few years now.
@Cormac Ó Braonáin: actually, the WHO considers that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic”, inline with findings from the IARC. It’s the EFSA, completely unrelated to the WHO, that is compromised.
@GO GREEN: But the resurges agreed that the findings are limited. Also it is unlikely to cause cancer when handling in a proper way. Everything can be harmful if not proper used.
“The plaintiff’s assumed technical knowledge does not excuse the lack of information on the product and its harmful effects – a farmer is not a chemist.”
French judges appear to show sense. The State Claims Agency has managed to successfully argue in an Irish Court that military aircraft mechanics in the Irish Air Corps with ZERO medical training were able to diagnose themselves with chemical injure thus starting the statute clock.
SCA have argued that an Air Corps technician going to an doctor asking did chemicals harm me and doctor saying maybe or maybe not means the technician had “knowledge” that the chemicals had harmed him.
Like I said the French judge appears to have displayed common sense against a formidable corporate foe.
have your say