monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

North Korea has reportedly threatened to cancel the much anticipated Trump-Kim summit over the South Korea-US military drills.

According to South Koran news agency, Yonhap News North Korea said has said it is canceling high-level talks planned for later in the day

"The North's Korean Central News Agency said the Max Thunder drills between the South Korean and US air forces are a rehearsal for invasion of the North and a provocation amid warming inter-Korean ties," the site reports.

"The high-level talks were meant to take place on the southern side of the truce village of Panmunjom to discuss follow-up measures to the two Korean leaders' summit last month."

Extremely dubious.

Video of Guy Mocking Small Jewish Kid Goes Viral (Updated)

The Twitter user who uploaded the video claims they took it down, but I do not believe them. Furthermore, they did not apologize, and in fact have attacked those who took exception to the video being uploaded in the first place.

Also disturbing was the amount of people reacting to this video with laughter and mockery of their own.

Imagine for a second it was a Muslim child. Or an African-American child. There would be an uproar – and rightly so.

North Korea has said it may pull out of a summit with US President Donald Trump if the US unilaterally insists it gives up its nuclear weapons.

The highly anticipated meeting between Mr Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong-un is due to take place on 12 June.

But in an angry statement, North Korea's vice-foreign minister accused the US of making reckless statements and of harbouring sinister intentions.

He points the finger squarely at US National Security Adviser John Bolton.

"We shed light on the quality of Bolton already in the past, and we do not hide our feeling of repugnance towards him," said Kim Kye-gwan.

A Louisiana coroner has ruled the death of an unarmed black man during his arrest was likely a "homicide" and he had suffered "compressional asphyxia".

Preliminary post-mortem examination results found that Keeven Robinson, 22, "sustained significant traumatic injuries" to his neck.

Jefferson Parish Sheriff's officials had initially said he died due to his chronic asthma after a police chase.

More than 250 people marched on Monday night in Robinson's New Orleans suburb.

Protesters in Shrewsbury held signs saying "Justice 4 Keeven", "Enuf is Enough", " and "Stop Police Brutality" while singing the gospel hymn Amazing Grace.

"For me it means unity, coming together and pretty much just supporting the family," protester Regina Hollins told WWL-News.

The march came only hours after the autopsy results were released by Jefferson Parish Coroner Gerry Cvitanovich.

Mr Cvitanovich said the injuries were "consistent with compressional asphyxia", but complete results, which includes toxicology reports and examining microscopic evidence of Robin's lungs, would take weeks.

US director Spike Lee has called on the world to "wake up" at an incendiary press conference that saw him repeatedly lambast President Trump.

Trump, he said, had been wrong not to denounce last year's far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia at which a female counter-protester died.

Lee is at Cannes with BlacKkKlansman, the true story of a black detective who infiltrated the KKK.

"I hope this film shakes people from their slumber," he told reporters.

"We've been walking around in a daze," he added.

Footage of the moment a white nationalist driver ploughed his car into the crowd is shown at the end of Lee's film, which received a standing ovation at its Cannes premiere on Monday night.

Lee said President Trump, whom he refused to name, had had a chance after the incident "to talk about love, not hate".

Instead the US president claimed "both sides" had been to blame for the violence that erupted last August.

"We look our leaders to give us direction and make moral decisions," said Lee, adding that he wanted his 1970s-set film to be thought of in "global terms".

"This right-wing [expletive] is happening all over the world," he declared. "We have to wake up and we can't be silent."

n BlacKkKlansman, a black police detective from Colorado Springs calls the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan and persuades them to make him a member.

Face-to-face meetings are conducted on his behalf by a white colleague, played by Adam Driver - who is welcomed into the organisation even though he is actually Jewish.

David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, is shown in the film falling for the elaborate and unorthodox subterfuge.

Lee said the film would be released in the US to coincide with the first anniversary of the Charlottesville tragedy, which he said was "an ugly blemish" on his country.

Actor Topher Grace, who plays Duke in the film, said he had found much of his racist rhetoric hard to utter.

"I rarely get affected by the characters I play, but there were times I was in a really bad place," he said.

"There are zero other directors I would play David Duke for," continued the former star of That '70s show.

Ron Stallworth, the detective at the centre of the story, is played by John David Washington, whose father Denzel has been directed by Lee in several films.

The 33-year-old said the real Stallworth had been "very generous" with his time and that working on the film has been a "blessed" experience.

Lee did not hold back during the Cannes press conference, regaling his audience with almost as much profanity as can be heard in the film.

"Please excuse my profane words, but the [expletive] going on makes me want to curse," he said.

The confrontational film-maker was also unapologetic about the repeated use of racial and homophobic epithets used in his film, which comes out in the UK later this year.

"Words can be hateful and harmful but that was how the Klan talked," he said.

"They don't speak lovingly of blacks and Jews. I wanted the hate to be verbalised."

Rolling Stones star Keith Richards says he can't be bothered to get angry any more - but the last time he did was nearly 30 years ago with Donald Trump.

"He [Trump] was the promoter for us in Atlantic City [during 1989's Steel Wheels Tour]," he told the BBC.

"[It was billed as] 'Donald Trump presents the Rolling Stones' [with the band's name written in miniature]."

"I got out my trusty blade, stuck it in the table and said: 'You have to get rid of this man!'"

He joked: "Now America has to get rid of him. Don't say I didn't warn you!"

This is silly. All politicians lie without consequences.

In 2012 Obama expressed open contempt for the idea that Russia was still a danger to the west, and promised Putin that he'd be a lot softer on Russia after the election was over.

That's not how I remember it. I recall liberals trying to undermine the US and help the USSR destroy us.

Actually Trump strengthened those sanctions and started giving weapons to Ukraine. Obama only gave them nonlethal aid.

He [Jeff Sessions] didn't lie.

Clearly, Trump was the Manchurian Candidate and has stocked his Administration with people who will do Putin's bidding. What a disgrace.

Even if that were actually true, it wouldn't matter.

What's important is that Trump protects the Second Amendment.

The massacre by Israeli soldiers of dozens of Palestinians in Gaza this week has prompted a new round of protests by progressive Jewish-American groups who object to the relocation of the US embassy to Jerusalem – and who lump the Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu administrations together as enemies of peace in the region.

Groups such as IfNotNow, Jewish Voice for Peace, J Street, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and others began to step up protest activity – marches, vigils and community meet-ups – in late March, when Israeli forces killed 17 Palestinians and wounded at least 1,400 in Gaza.

The protest activity has been echoed by influential voices such as the actor Natalie Portman – who last month canceled a planned trip to Israel to accept the Genesis Prize, saying through a spokesperson that “recent events in Israel have been extremely distressing to her” – and the comedian Sarah Silverman, who tweeted:



The Israeli foreign ministry has said it was “protecting its citizens from thousands of violent rioters from Gaza, who have been trying to break the fence and cross into Israel, with the goal of killing or kidnapping Israelis.”

That rationalization was repeated and amplified on Tuesday by UN ambassador Nikki Haley and by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Anti-Defamation League and other influential US-based institutions.

But those organizations are increasingly being taken to task by groups with younger members and different views on what it means to support the Jewish state.

“The violence that is being committed in our name, the massacre of 50-plus Palestinian protesters Monday in Gaza – we’re not going to sit idly by as that’s committed,” said Ethan Miller, a spokesman for IfNotNow.

“We’re actually going to be taking action and building a movement within our communities to make sure that we’re no longer part of supporting the occupation, and our community is actively working against it.”

Rebecca Vilkomerson, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, blasted the juxtaposition of the celebratory US embassy opening, attended by Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, and the killing of Palestinians.

“Monday I thought was one of the most disgraceful days in the history of the Israeli relationship to Palestinians, with the celebration of annexation – even as Palestinians, the vast majority of whom are refugees, were being gunned down, just for protesting their basic rights to live in dignity and freedom,” Vilkomerson said.

“The idea that this is being done in our name, or being justified in our name, is absolutely unacceptable.”
... ... ...

Rebecca Vilkomerson, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, blasted the juxtaposition of the celebratory US embassy opening, attended by Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, and the killing of Palestinians.

“Monday I thought was one of the most disgraceful days in the history of the Israeli relationship to Palestinians, with the celebration of annexation – even as Palestinians, the vast majority of whom are refugees, were being gunned down, just for protesting their basic rights to live in dignity and freedom,” Vilkomerson said.

“The idea that this is being done in our name, or being justified in our name, is absolutely unacceptable.”