TDB Top 5 International Stories: Sunday 23rd October 2016

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5: Chicago Cops Who Broke “Code of Silence” to Report Police Drug Gang Face Deadly Retaliation

Two Chicago police officers say they have faced retaliation and suffered from PTSD since they blew the whistle on a gang of their fellow cops who were demanding bribes from drug dealers in the housing projects of Chicago. We speak with one of the whistleblowers, Shannon Spalding, and with reporter Jamie Kalven, who documented their ordeal in a major investigation for The Intercept called “Code of Silence.”

Democracy Now

 

4: Get Ready to Ignore Donald Trump Starting on November 9, or He’ll Never Go Away

DONALD TRUMP’S TRUE gift is his uncanny ability to capture the attention of the news media.

His declaration during Wednesday night’s third and final presidential debate that he may not accept defeat in three weeks captured global headlines, once again making him the lead story in the world, even as his chances of winning are essentially vanishing.

But this is nothing new. There are countless other examples of successful attention-getting in Trump’s past, including his crusade against the Central Park Five in 2005, and the six weeks in 2011 where he monopolized TV news with his quest to find Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

In fact, one way to look at Trump’s run for the presidency is as an attention-getting, brand-building exercise from start to finish. And in that context, this latest twist makes even more sense: It turns his otherwise sputtering campaign into a sort of dystopian season of “The Apprentice” where viewers watch for the cliffhanger: Will Trump bow out gracefully, or will he rally his supporters to declare his loss the result of a grand conspiracy?

Not coincidentally, a half hour before the start of Wednesday’s debate, his campaign launched #TrumpTV, a livestream on his Facebook featuring Trump surrogates — leading to speculation that this served as a sort of a beta test for a rumored Trump-helmed television network. With that network, Trump could seek to monetize a panicked support base.

On November 9, when Trump likely loses the presidential election in a big way, the news media will face a moment of truth: Will they continue to obsessively cover him and his post-election antics? Or will they ignore him?

The Intercept

 

3: Sulphur cloud from torched plant kills two Iraqis

At least two Iraqi civilians have died and nearly a 1,000 are being treated for breathing problems from toxic fumes released from a burning sulphur plant near Mosul, as fighting around the key city continued for a sixth day.

ISIL fighters are accused of setting the sulphur plant ablaze on Thursday during fighting around al-Mishraq, which is south of Mosul, accoring to US officials and local residents.

Hundreds of people were admitted to the nearby Qayyara central hospital with respiratory problems since Friday, hospital director Abdul Salam Jabbouri told Reuters news agency. No deaths had been reported at the hospital.

Aljazeera

2: An Expert Explains What Would Happen if Trump Lost the Election and Didn’t Concede

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

During the final presidential debate on Wednesday, Donald Trump told moderator Chris Wallace that he wouldn’t necessarily concede if he lost the race. “”I’ll keep you in suspense, OK?” he said, as a million journalists started writing their debate recaps.

As Wallace told Trump, losing graciously and respecting the results of elections is a long tradition in America. Losers always make noises about how important and great the process is—even if they suffer a controversial or close defeat, a la Al Gore, and even if they sympathize with Dick Tuck (seriously that was his name), who after losing the 1966 race for California State Senate quipped, “The voters have spoken, the bastards.”

Has anyone ever flat-out refused to concede, and what would happen if someone did? To answer these questions, I called up James McCann, a political scientist at Purdue University who specializes in concession speeches and comparative politics. Here’s what he told me:

Vice News

1: Trump uses Gettysburg address to threaten to sue sex assault accusers

In what was billed as a policy speech to lay out his vision for the first 100 days of his administration, as part of a grand new “Contract for the American Voter”, Donald Trump first pledged to sue every woman who has accused him of sexual assault.

In response, a spokeswoman for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said the speech was “rambling, unfocused, full of conspiracy theories and attacks on the media”.

Speaking on Saturday near the site where Abraham Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address in 1863, Trump did not speak as the 16th president did in his second inaugural: “with malice toward none, with charity for all”.

Instead the Republican nominee proclaimed to an invitation-only crowd: “Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign, total fabrication. The events never happened, all of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”

Trump added that “it was probably the [Democratic National Committee] and the Clinton campaign that put forward these liars with these fabricated stories”.

“We’ll find out at a later date through litigation,” he said, “and I look so forward to it.”

Ten women have accused Trump of sexual assault since the leak two weeks ago of a 2005 Access Hollywood recording, in which the Republican nominee boasted of attempting to “fuck” a married woman and grabbing women’s genitalia without their consent.

The lawyer Gloria Allred planned a press conference for Saturday afternoon at which she said she would introduce a new accuser.

At Gettysburg, the Republican presidential candidate also railed against the media, singling out the corporate owners of NBC, CNN and the Washington Post, all outlets he has complained about during his campaign, for special scrutiny under a Trump administration.

The Guardian

 

 

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