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The views expressed herein are the views of the author exclusively and not necessarily the views of VNN, VNN authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, technicians or the Veterans Today Network and its assigns. Notices Posted by VNN on November 4, 2016, With 0 Reads, Filed under Civil Liberties , Corruption , Election 2016 , Foreign Lobbies , Foreign Policy , Government , Legislation , Police State , Politics . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 . You can leave a response or trackback to this entry FaceBook Comments | 0 |
By CHARLIE BAYLISS
The migrant, known only as Ghazia A, fled Syria last year along with his family.
He has since resettled in Germany with his four wives and 22 of his children. One of his daughters has since moved to Saudi Arabia where she has married.
The family could be receiving more than £320,000 a year in benefits according to a financial manager on the Employers’ Association website.
There is no official confirmation on this figure.
Under Islamic tradition, the 49-year-old can have up to four wives – as long as he can support them financially.
Germany does not legally recognise polygamy, meaning that Ghazia A was forced to choose a “main wife” so the rest of the family could claim benefits. The other three wives are categorised as “friends” of the Syrian migrant.
But a local official in the town of Montabaur described the situation as an “exemption”.
Ghazia A now lives with his “main” wife Twasif and their five children in Montabaur, in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate – while the other three wives and children have been moved into neighbouring communities up to 31 miles away.
The man used to work in a garage and car hire service in his homeland but has not worked since resettling in Germany.
He expressed an interest in working again but noted his commitments to his family made this difficult.
He told German | 0 |
10 Reasons to drink lemon water on an empty stomach
Wednesday, November 02, 2016 by: Amy Goodrich Tags: lemon water , detox , digestive health (NaturalNews) Fruit-infused water is extremely trendy right now. Celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Aniston, and Beyonce swear by lemon water first thing in the morning. There are even entire diets based on this fruit. According to some health advocates, drinking lemon water on an empty stomach takes you one step closer to optimal health.But does swapping your morning coffee for this fashionably healthy lifestyle choice offer any significant benefit? Or is this just another health fad? Let's take a closer look at ten incredible reasons why you should start your day with a glass of lemon water. 1. Nutrient powerhouse While low in calories, lemons are loaded with health-promoting essential nutrients, including vitamin C, B-complex vitamins, calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium, and fiber. 2. Boosts immune system Vitamin C plays a major role in our immune system, and lemons are loaded with it. A strong and healthy immune system will help you keep bacterial and viral infections at bay. 3. Digestion aid The citric acid in lemon interacts with enzymes and acids involved in digestion. It stimulates digestion and the secretion of gastric juice. Furthermore, lemon juice loosens toxins in the digestive tract and may help relieve symptoms of indigestion such as bloating, burping, and heartburn. 4. Detoxifies your body Every day, we are subjected to a wide variety of chemicals and toxins present in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. While our body has its own cleansing systems, it is a good idea to put less stress on your already overworked body and give these cleansing mechanisms a boost. Lemon juice stimulates the liver by enhancing its enzyme function, thus helping your body to flush out more waste materials and toxins . 5. Boosts heart and brain health Thanks to its high level of potassium, lemon juice aids in the proper functioning of the nervous system. Furthermore, it has been shown to lower blood pressure which is a major risk factor for a heart attack. 6. Promotes glowing skin Lemons are packed with antioxidants. These little free radical fighting substances help to decrease blemishes and wrinkles for a rejuvenated, radiant skin. When applied to the skin, lemons can also reduce the appearance of scar tissue and age spots. 7. Weight loss aid While lemon juice might not be a weight loss miracle on its own, its high levels of pectin fibers curb the appetite and will help you to eat less at main meals. 8. Fights inflammation Lemon water possesses strong anti-inflammatory properties to soothe a sore throat or inflamed tonsils. Additionally, it removes uric acid from the joints, which is one of the main contributors to chronic pain and inflammation. 9. Boosts energy levels Lemons energize the body and fight feelings of depression and anxiety. So instead of having a coffee in the morning why not try a glass of lemon juice instead? 10. Hydrates your body After a night of hard work, your body is dehydrated and in desperate need of water. Lemon juice provides your body with the much-needed water and electrolytes (potassium, calcium, and magnesium) to rehydrate body tissue and flush out more toxins and waste materials.While lemon water seems to be the perfect drink to prevent or cure a myriad of our daily aches and pains, not all that glitters is gold. Lemon juice can be hard on teeth enamel. Therefore, it's important to dilute it with water and rinse your mouth thoroughly with filtered water after drinking lemon juice. Sources for this article include: | 0 |
The Washington Post reported: Donald Trump’s hiring of pollster Tony Fabrizio in May was viewed as a sign that the real estate mogul was finally bringing seasoned operatives into his insurgent operation.
But the Republican presidential nominee appears to have taken issue with some of the services provided by the veteran GOP strategist, who has advised candidates from 1996 GOP nominee Bob Dole to Florida Gov. Rick Scott. The Trump campaign’s latest Federal Election Commission report shows that it is disputing nearly $767,000 that Fabrizio’s firm says it is still owed for polling.
Trump’s decision not to pay his pollster is the first of this type of story but given Trump’s history of not paying for services performed; it won’t be the last. It is astonishing that the party of supposed fiscal responsibility and conservativism would put someone forward as their presidential nominee who has made a career out of running up debt for personal gain.
Donald Trump’s mentality has always been to put himself first. Paying his debts never seems to have been a top priority for Trump. His businesses have been stiffing vendors and contractors for decades, so it isn’t surprising that he would bring this same mentality to the presidential campaign.
Anybody who works for the Trump campaign would be smart to get paid up front because Donald Trump’s version of making America great involves taking your money and putting it in his own pocket.
Trump Is Deadbeating On His Campaign Debts By Refusing To Pay His Own Pollster added by Jason Easley on Mon, Oct 31st, 2016 | 0 |
Email Meat noises today can’t hold a candle to these classics. 1. If you ask any meat eater to describe what it was like to be carnivorous in the ’90s, don’t be surprised if they reply with their best imitation of this iconic sizzle. 2. This. Sound. The original ’90s sizzle. The good ol’ days when this could be heard across every American grill. While it held enough broad appeal for child meat eaters to enjoy, it always had something a little naughty just for the parents to understand. No smartphones necessary to appreciate this classic griddle noise. 3. Meat eaters in the ’90s went wild when in the now-classic episode of Friends “The One Where Joey Ruins Labor Day,” Joey and Chandler fired up the grill, threw on some burgers and then…well, if you haven’t seen the episode, you won’t get it. 4. Keen listeners will know this one is straight from the summer of ’95, from the Johnson family’s burger barbecue in Orlando, FL. 5. If you’ve never woken up with this sound stuck in your head, it’s because you either weren’t around in the ’90s, weren’t eating meat then, or both. 6. The ’70s were all about hissing, and the ’80s featured their fair share of crackling. But when it came to the ’90s, sizzling was king, and no sizzling noise was more recognizable to meat eaters than this one. And we miss it every day. | 0 |
We Are Change
NEW: US military hackers have penetrated Russia’s electric grid, telecom network, Kremlin command systems, and are ready to hit back if the Russians try to disrupt Election Day, sources and top secret documents show. According to NBC News Corp.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — NBC News disclosed the penetration in a series of reports, explaining that US efforts parallel claims, also by US officials, that Russia, China and other nations have placed hidden malware on parts of US critical infrastructure.
The U.S. use of cyber attacks in the military context — or for covert action — is not without precedent.
During the 2003 Iraq invasion, U.S spies penetrated Iraqi networks and sent tailored messages to Iraqi generals, urging them to surrender, and temporarily cut electronic power in Baghdad.
In 2009 and 2010, the U.S., working with Israel, is believed to have helped deploy what became known as Stuxnet, a cyber weapon designed to destroy Iranian nuclear centrifuges.
Today, U.S. Cyber Command is engaged in cyber operations against the Islamic State, including using social media to expose the location of militants and sending spoof orders to sow confusion, current and former officials tell NBC News.
One problem, officials say, is that the doctrine around cyber conflict — what is espionage, what is theft, what is war — is not well developed.
The penetration by all sides appears to be in preparation for an all-out war in cyberspace, according to NBC News, which said it was briefed by a US intelligence official and given an opportunity to review highly classified documents. At the same time, the network downplayed the prospect of a cyber war, making it appear as if the leak was intended as a warning to US adversaries. NBC News then attempted to link its explosive report to Tuesday’s US presidential election, citing concerns of mischief by Russian hackers that would fall far short of the Armageddon-like scenario that the report implied. Instead, the network explained US election-related concerns as “cyber mischief,” which could involve releasing fake documents or creating bogus social media accounts to spread misinformation. The Obama administration has created a public, but unconfirmed narrative, that hackers controlled by the Russian government have stolen emails from the Democratic Party headquarters, a private computer used by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton while serving as secretary of State and computers used by Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta. According to the narrative, Russia stole the emails and gave the messages to WikiLeaks, which has flooded the internet with the material on a daily basis leading up to Tuesday’s election. Russia has denied any responsibility for the Clinton-related hacks and links between WikiLeaks and Russian intelligence have never been substantiated. Moreover, recent media reports in the United States indicate that Clinton’s private server she used for official business during her tenure as secretary of state had been penetrated by at least five foreign intelligence services. The emails have proved especially embarrassing for the Clinton campaign by disclosing decisions in the Clinton State Department that favored large donors to the Clinton Foundation in what appear to be “pay-for-play” schemes of selling access and influence. Moreover, the activity appears to coincide with lucrative speaking engagements for former President Bill Clinton. Earlier this week, Fox News cited two unnamed sources claiming that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is close to recommending that Hillary Clinton be indicted for corruption while she served as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.
The FBI has never publicly confirmed an investigation of Clinton Foundation fundraising links to the State Department.
Instead, the FBI has limited its comments to a separate probe of whether Clinton mishandled classified information by using a private server. FBI Director James Comey closed the latter investigation without an indictment of Clinton, only to reopen it last Friday, claiming agents had discovered new emails on a computer used by the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Former federal prosecutor and New York City Mayor Rudi Giuliani has said publicly that FBI agents are in open rebellion against the US Department of Justice for attempting to quash both Clinton criminal investigations.
Read more: https://sputniknews.com/us/201611051047089422-usa-penetration-russian-infrastructure/
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WASHINGTON — Pressure mounted on Sunday for a broader congressional investigation of Russian cyberattacks aimed at influencing the American election, even as a top aide to Donald J. Trump said there was no conclusive evidence of foreign interference. The effort was being led by a bipartisan group of senators, including John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate Democratic leader, who called on Sunday for the creation of a Senate select committee on cyberactivity to take the investigative lead on Capitol Hill. “Recent reports of Russian interference in our election should alarm every American,” the senators wrote on Sunday in a letter to Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, who has said a select committee is not necessary. “Cybersecurity is the ultimate challenge, and we must take a comprehensive approach to meet this challenge effectively. ” The developments served to deepen the fissures between lawmakers of both parties who see American intelligence reports implicating Russia as the basis for additional inquiries and Mr. Trump, who continues to reject the conclusions of those reports. But the developments also put new strain on Mr. McConnell. He now faces calls from Mr. McCain and Lindsey Graham, two Senate Republicans considered well versed on national security issues, to form a select committee. If he were to reject that appeal, he would be subject to criticism that he was trying to avoid a spotlight on an issue that senators in both parties believe is worthy of more focused scrutiny. Mr. McConnell said last week that while he respects the intelligence agencies’ conclusions, the Senate Intelligence Committee is “more than capable of conducting a complete review” itself. He also acknowledged that Mr. McCain could conduct an investigation on the Armed Services Committee, an option that remains open should Mr. McConnell decide against a select committee. Those divisions, coming as the Electoral College prepares to meet on Monday to ratify Mr. Trump’s election and the completes his cabinet choices, all but ensured that the issue would cloud the first months of Mr. Trump’s presidency, when he will be asking Congress to approve an aggressive legislative agenda. Several permanent congressional committees have already been tasked with examining various aspects of the Russian interference, which has been largely accepted as fact by most members of Congress. But in their letter on Sunday, the lawmakers argued the issue was too important and complicated for an existing committee to take on properly. “We share your respect for, and deference to, the regular order of the Senate, and we recognize that this is an extraordinary request,” the senators wrote to Mr. McConnell. “However, we believe it is justified by the extraordinary scope and scale of the cyber problem. ” In addition to undertaking a “comprehensive investigation of Russian interference,” the senators recommended that such a committee also develop “comprehensive recommendations and, as necessary, new legislation to modernize our nation’s laws, governmental organization, and related practices to meet this challenge. ” Select committees, which are typically created to examine a particular issue for a limited time, are rarely formed. The most prominent recent example is the House Select Committee on the attacks in 2012 on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, an inquiry that Democrats have denounced as unduly partisan. Speaker Paul D. Ryan said last week that the House Intelligence Committee would continue its own examination of Russian hacking. Mr. Schumer said in a news conference on Sunday that they intended to avoid such charges of partisanship. “We don’t want it to just be finger pointing at one person or another,” Mr. Schumer said. “We want to find out what the Russians are doing to our political system and what other foreign governments might do to our political system. And then figure out a way to stop it. ” A spokesman for Mr. McConnell, David Popp, referred to Mr. McConnell’s earlier comments and said the majority leader would be reviewing the latest letter. The letter was also signed by Mr. Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, two members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that Mr. McCain leads. It follows a signed statement from the lawmakers, released last week, warning that any congressional investigation into the hacks “cannot become a partisan issue. ” Mr. Trump, for his part, has sought to paint the intelligence community’s conclusions about the matter as just that — a partisan attack against him. He said last week that the reports were “just another excuse” by Democrats frustrated with the election results that might be used to try to undermine his victory. Asked on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday what information Mr. Trump had received that led him to reject intelligence assessments, Kellyanne Conway, one of Mr. Trump’s top advisers, insisted that the reports about the hacking were groundless. “Where is the evidence?” Ms. Conway asked, turning the question around. “Why, when C. I. A. officials were invited to a House intelligence briefing last week, did they refuse to go?” Robert M. Gates, the former defense secretary under President Obama and President George W. Bush who has offered counsel to Mr. Trump, speculated on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the “felt the way this information came out through newspaper stories and so on was somehow intended to delegitimize his victory in the election and that he’s reacting to that rather than ‘the facts on the ground,’ as it were. ” But Mr. Gates also said the Russian hacking was aimed at discrediting the American electoral process. “Whether or not it was intended to help one candidate or another, I don’t know,” said Mr. Gates, who also served as C. I. A. director under President George Bush. “But I think it clearly was aimed at discrediting our elections, and I think it was aimed certainly at weakening Mrs. Clinton. ” Mr. Obama, in a news conference on Friday, vowed that the United States would respond to the attack. He said that he was still weighing a mix of covert and public actions to retaliate before he leaves office. And lawmakers from both parties have proposed new sanctions to punish Russia. Speaking Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Mr. McCain sought to add urgency to the matter. “There’s no doubt they were interfering and no doubt that it was cyberattacks,” he said of the Russians. “The question now is how much and what damage and what should the United States of America do? And so far, we have been totally paralyzed. ” Mr. McCain said that he had faith that “reality is going to intercede at one point or another” on Mr. Trump, suggesting that the might come to agree about Russian influence. Asked on CBS about Mr. Obama’s pledge of retaliation, Ms. Conway said Mr. Trump “respects” Mr. Obama’s right to respond as he sees fit for the remainder of his presidency. But, she added, that “doesn’t mean that new President Trump will agree with it and continue it. ” “It does seem to be a political response at this point because it seems like the president is under pressure from Team Hillary, who can’t accept the election results,” she said. | 1 |
Share on Facebook “Everyone should know that most cancer research is largely a fraud, and that the major cancer research organisations are derelict in their duties to the people who support them.” The above quote comes from Linus Pauling, Ph.D, and two time Nobel Prize winner in chemistry (1901-1994). He is considered one of the most important scientists in history. He is one of the founders of quantum chemistry and molecular biology, who was also a well known peace activist. He was invited to be in charge of the Chemistry division of the Manhattan Project, but refused. He has also done a lot of work on military applications, and has pretty much done and seen it all when it comes to the world of science. A quick Google search will suffice if you'd like to learn more about him. This man has been around the block, and obviously knows a thing or two about this subject. And he's not the only expert from around the world expressing similar beliefs and voicing his opinion. Here is another great example of a hard hitting quote when it comes to scientific fraud and manipulation. It comes from Dr. Marcia Angell, a physician and long time Editor in Chief of the New England Medical Journal (NEMJ), which is considered to be one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals in the world. I apologize if you have seen it before in my articles, but it is quite the statement. “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine” ( source ) The list goes on and on. Dr. John Bailer, who spent 20 years on the staff of the National Cancer Institute and is also a former editor of its journal, publicly stated in a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that: “My overall assessment is that the national cancer program must be judged a qualified failure. Our whole cancer research in the past 20 years has been a total failure.” ( source ) He also alluded to the fact that cancer treatment, in general, has been a complete failure. Another interesting point is the fact that most of the money donated to cancer research is spent on animal research, which has been considered completely useless by many. For example, in 1981 Dr. Irwin Bross, the former director of the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Research Institute (largest cancer research institute in the world), said that: “The uselessness of most of the animal model studies is less well known. For example, the discovery of chemotherapeutic agents for the treatment of human cancer is widely-heralded as a triumph due to use of animal model systems. However, here again, these exaggerated claims are coming from or are endorsed by the same people who get the federal dollars for animal research. There is little, if any, factual evidence that would support these claims. Practically all of the chemotherapeutic agents which are of value in the treatment of human cancer were found in a clinical context rather than in animal studies.” ( source ) Today, treating illness and disease has a corporate side. It is an enormously profitable industry, but only when geared towards treatment, not preventative measures or cures, and that's an important point to consider. Another quote that relates to my point above was made by Dr. Dean Burk, an American biochemist and a senior chemist for the National Cancer Institute. His paper, “The Determination of Enzyme Dissociation Constants ( source ),” published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 1934, is one of the most frequently cited papers in the history of biochemistry. “When you have power you don't have to tell the truth. That's a rule that;s been working in this world for generations. And there are a great many people who don't tell the truth when they are in power in administrative positions.” ( source ) He also stated that: “Fluoride causes more human cancer deaths than any other chemical. It is some of the most conclusive scientific and biological evidence that I have come across in my 50 years in the field of cancer research.” ( source ) In the April 15th, 2015 edition of Lancet, the UK's leading medical journal, editor in chief Richard Horton stated: “The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Science has taken a turn toward darkness.” ( source ) n 2005 Dr. John P.A. Ioannidis , currently a professor in disease prevention at Stanford University, published the most widely accessed article in the history of the Public Library of Science (PLoS) entitled Why Most Published Research Findings Are False . In the report, he stated: “There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false.” In 2009, the University of Michigan's comprehensive cancer center published an analysis that revealed popular cancer studies are false, and that there were fabricated results arising due to conflicts of interest. They suggested that the fabricated results were a result of what would work best for drug companies. After all, a large portion of cancer research is funded directly by them. You can read more about that story here . There is so much information out there, and so much of it is coming from people who have been directly involved in these proceedings. There is really no shortage of credible sources willing to state that we live in a world of scientific fraud and manipulation. All of this can be attributed to the “corporatocracy” we live in today, where giant corporations owned by a select group of “elite” people have basically taken control over the planet and all of its resources. This is precisely why so many people are flocking towards alternative treatment, as well as focusing on cancer prevention. Much of what we surround ourselves with on a daily basis has been linked to cancer. Everything from pesticides, GMOs, multiple cosmetic products, certain “foods,” smoking, and much much more. This is something that is never really emphasized, we always seem to just assume that donating money to charities will make the problem go away, despite the fact that their business practices are highly questionable. That being said, so many people have had success with alternative treatments like cannabis oil – combined with a raw diet or even incorporated into their chemotherapy regimen – that we should not feel as though there is no hope for the future. The official stance on cannabis is a great example of the very practice of misinformation that I'm talking about. Its anti-tumoral properties have been demonstrated for decades, yet no clinical trials are taking place. I am going to leave you with this video, as I have done in previous articles. It provides a little food for thought. Ignorance is not the answer, although this information can be scary to consider, it’s nothing to turn a blind eye towards. Related: | 0 |
A big life change does not come easily. That might seem a bit obvious, because if it were easy, chances are you would have made the big life change that’s on your list of changes you would really like to make. But you haven’t. So my question for you is this: Why not? What’s stopping you from just doing it? It might be money, family obligations, fear or just feeling stuck. If you’re at all like me, you see people doing something transformative, like going to medical school at 45, because they couldn’t imagine being an accountant for 20 more years. It seems magical, like one day they just decided to make it happen. For some people (a tiny few, I suspect) it might work that way. I have found, however, that most of the time, it’s much less magical. In truth, it’s a slog. It takes years of thinking and planning. But after plenty of practice, I think I’ve figured out how to streamline things a bit. You may want to try it yourself. First, embrace the uncertainty of life. As much as we don’t like to admit it, life is uncertain. We never know exactly where it will take us. If you doubt me, go back 10 years and ask yourself where you thought you’d be now. I doubt it looks exactly like you planned. So start by being O. K. with the truth in the old saying, “People make plans, and God laughs. ” Second, be open to possibilities. Many times, we know we want to do something, but we don’t know what “it” is. Explore a bit. Brainstorm. Journal. Allow things to come up and be open to new ideas. Then, once you settle on something, it’s time to plan a bit. At this point, obstacles start to show up, particularly around money. My family first explored the idea of spending a year living outside the United States more than a decade ago. At the time, there were a bunch of reasons it didn’t make sense. Money was just one of them, but it was a big obstacle. So we kept weighing options. For you, it might be as simple as setting aside an hour a week to consider ways to move forward. Ask people who have done the thing you want to do. Use a little of that time you spend on social media for research instead. Little by little, a plan might emerge. If it doesn’t, maybe it’s not time, or it’s not the right plan. As you reach different obstacles, make sure you spend time questioning your assumptions. Maybe something you always considered true is nothing more than someone else’s opinion. Or maybe looking at it from a slightly different angle will produce a different result. Finally, as paths open, head down them. Don’t worry if you experience false starts. I can tell you there will be plenty of those, and you may only need a quick course correction. Almost all of the stories readers shared with me about doing things involved changing plans, disappointment and lots of hard work. But almost all said that in the end, it was worth it. And one last thing. As you explore making big changes, please realize that maybe nothing needs to change. Sometimes, the permission we seek is to embrace what we have and accept that it brings us real happiness. It’s important to understand that there is nothing wrong with choosing not to change if that’s the right answer for you. | 1 |
A week ago, it would have seemed wildly unlikely to most people that Donald J. Trump, not Hillary Clinton, would be the candidate more likely to provoke a shift in how we think of and talk about sexual assault. But since the release on Friday of a recording in which Trump essentially admits he has a habit of sexually assaulting women, a series of stories involving the Republican nominee seems to be doing just that. Consider the story of the former People magazine reporter Natasha Stoynoff, whom Trump reportedly pushed up against a wall and kissed in 2005. Stoynoff chose to move on with her life rather than speak publicly about what she says Trump did to her. Even as a working woman, she writes that she still partly blamed herself for the assault well into this year, believing that at some level, she had surely somehow encouraged it. She could not shake the idea of her own culpability until the moment she heard Trump on tape saying he did this kind of thing as a matter of course. “I finally understood for sure that I was not to blame for his inappropriate behavior,” she wrote. Her choices and her thinking, all those years before she told her story — they sound familiar. Surely many women her age and older would still respond to those circumstances the way she did, with silence and shame. Certainly, Jessica Leeds, who spoke to The New York Times about an encounter in which she said Trump groped her on a plane, came of age at a time when women were taught, as she put it, “it was our fault. ” Trump’s own camp seems to be working hard to perpetuate the kind of thinking that blames the woman: Eric Trump said in August that a “strong, powerful woman” like his sister Ivanka wouldn’t allow sexual harassment to happen to her. This is not the first time that the subject of a man’s unwanted sexual overtures has emerged unexpectedly from the churning of the political process, and has then come to dominate it. Fourteen years before Stoynoff’s experience, the law professor Anita Hill testified, during Justice Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings, that Thomas had sexually harassed her when she worked for him at, of all places, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The following year, numbers of women swept into Congress — many of them, some have argued, supported by women repulsed not only by Hill’s story, but also by the sight of so many white men on the Senate Judiciary Committee grilling Hill, a black woman, about her motives and questioning her character. If Hill’s single story of sexual harassment had the ultimate effect of galvanizing women, imagine what might happen now that the issue is sexual assault — as numerous women have stepped forward to talk about the way Trump helped himself to their body parts. The message of Anita Hill’s experience was this: If you don’t think this is important, if you don’t think this happens to women every day, then you don’t get it. In the past few years, an insistence that women’s right to live free of sexual harassment or assault has picked up new energy, as women on campuses have fiercely taken up the cause. Last year, dozens of women stepped forward to tell their stories of being sexually assaulted by Bill Cosby, empowering other women to speak out about their own experiences, rather than remain silent for fear of being discredited. Hillary Clinton has said, using the words of current feminism, that every rape victim has “the right to be believed. ” (Trump’s supporters have used these words against her, revisiting her role as a defense lawyer in a 1975 case, even as they now deny the credibility of any of the women accusing Trump of molesting them.) But Stoynoff’s story speaks to the durability of ingrained, downright biblical ideas about women’s sinning, ways. It also testifies to the inevitable advantages conferred by power on those who have it. So what exactly would it take for more women to feel empowered, for more men’s consciousness to be raised on the subject? Maybe this presidential election, of all things, will be another milestone. Grueling and sordid or not, it has placed matters of sex, power and gender at the center of the national conversation, not off in the peripheral space typically reserved for women’s issues in media. It is one thing to be a passive reader of the news about Cosby, or the trials endured by young women on college campuses it is another for the public to consider their electoral choices in light of those kinds of issues. Oddly enough, there is, right now, outrage about the unwanted groping of women among both Republicans and Democrats — different men, different victims, but same idea. Is there any bipartisan issue more relevant, or more emotional, than this one? Perhaps Trump is the ultimate gift to feminists: a grabber and bragger who has focused the world’s attention on the outrages women quietly endure on a chronic basis without notice. And perhaps we can now see the response to Bill Clinton’s own accusers — subdued or defensive among liberals on account of his politics — as a near miss of an opportunity, a cultural shift that could have built on the momentum of Anita Hill, but never did. The stories emerging about Trump, as well as his own words, could give women a new way of seeing their own experiences with sexual assault going forward — as part of a pattern of male behavior that has been noted, flagged and loudly denigrated. | 1 |
AFP — Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who turns 93 on Tuesday, has no plans to give up power, saying he has no “acceptable” successor in place. [“The call to step down must come from my party, my party at congress, my party at central committee,” Mugabe said in excerpts from a radio broadcast that will air this week and that were printed in the Sunday Mail newspaper. “But then what do you see? It’s the opposite. They want me to stand for elections. ” “The majority of the people feel that there is no replacement, a successor who to them is acceptable, as acceptable as I am,” he added. Mugabe, who has kept an iron grip on power since Zimbabwe declared independence in 1980, has repeatedly denied reports of health problems, fuelled in part by frequent trips to Dubai and Singapore. He once quipped that he would rule until he turned 100. “Of course if I feel that I can´t do it any more, I will say so to my party so that they relieve me. But for now, I think I can´t say so,” he said. But Mugabe, long known for his fiery speeches, has appeared unusually subdued in recent public appearances, speaking slowly and keeping his addresses short. In September, he read a speech to parliament, apparently unaware that he had delivered the same address a month earlier. Zimbabwe’s economy has crumbled during Mugabe’s rule, and opponents of his regime are brutally repressed by security forces. Inflation is rampant, and in recent months the country has experienced cash shortages, with the government struggling to pay civil servants. In December, however, Mugabe’s party endorsed him once again as its candidate for 2018 elections, but rival factions in the party are already jostling to succeed him. He surprised many in the party in 2014 by naming his wife, Grace, head of its influential women’s wing, spurring rumours that she could be nursing her own presidential ambitions. And last week, Grace Mugabe, 51, appeared to dash any opponent’s hopes for succeeding him, saying voters would continue to back Mugabe even when he is dead. “One day when God decides that Mugabe dies, we will have his corpse appear as a candidate on the ballot paper,” she said. “You will see people voting for Mugabe as a corpse. ” In the broadcast, Mugabe applauded US President Donald Trump for promoting nationalist policies that he said echoed his “Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans” stance. “But he is a radical. I don’t know whether the construction of the wall between America and Mexico is feasible, a feasible proposal. It appears quite nasty. ” | 1 |
SAN FRANCISCO — Uber made a big splash in its hometown on Wednesday when it started offering car service to passengers here, making San Francisco the second city in the world where the company provides autonomous vehicles for public use. But California regulators made an even bigger splash late Wednesday when they told Uber to stop the service because it was illegal. The company, the officials said, did not have the necessary state permits for autonomous driving. “It is illegal for the company to operate its vehicles on public roads until it receives an autonomous vehicle testing permit,” Brian G. Soublet, deputy director of California’s Department of Motor Vehicles, said in a letter to Uber. “Any action by Uber to continue the operation of vehicles equipped with autonomous technology on public streets in California must cease until Uber complies. ” Uber did not return a request for comment about the letter. The development was an embarrassing twist for Uber, which had set up its San Francisco rollout as a big event, especially as it competes with other tech rivals to bring autonomous vehicles to consumers. The debut here, where Uber was founded and has its headquarters, was also a larger rollout in terms of size than in Pittsburgh, where the company introduced its first driverless service in September. Even before the service began in San Francisco, questions arose over whether Uber was allowed to test its driverless technology in the city. As of Dec. 8, the company’s name was not listed on the D. M. V. ’s website as having a permit to test the vehicles in the state. Companies like Google, Tesla and General Motors all hold permits to test autonomous vehicles in California. When asked, Uber said that it was compliant with all federal and state laws. In California, it said, the motor vehicle department defines autonomous vehicles as those that drive “without the active physical control or monitoring of a natural person. ” Uber said its cars, which require a person at the wheel to monitor or control them, did not fall under that strict definition. The dispute was a reminder that Uber has not expanded its service without regulatory hassles. As it has grown, it has run into battles with the authorities worldwide, with regulators often contending that Uber had a dearth of licensed drivers, among other issues. Uber began Wednesday with Anthony Levandowski, its vice president of technology, saying in a blog post that “the promise of is core to our mission of reliable transportation, everywhere for everyone. ” The new driverless car service here also coincided with the debut of the XC90 car, a Volvo sport utility vehicle outfitted with lidar — a kind of radar based on laser beams, wireless technology and seven cameras. It was produced with Uber’s Advanced Technologies Center, the company’s driverless tech division based in Pittsburgh. For a while on Wednesday, any San Francisco passenger who requested a ride from UberX, one of the service’s cheaper options, might have been picked up by an autonomous vehicle. They would have received a notification in the Uber app, and could accept or cancel and request a regular driver. An engineer behind the wheel in each vehicle could take over when needed. Three passengers were able to fit into the XC90 vehicles. Riders could use with a large touch screen that displayed the car’s route, as well as a rendered version of the environment the car saw through its cameras and laser guidance systems. Uber also let passengers take selfies from a camera facing the back seat, which they can email to themselves and share on social media. Uber wanted to use the expansion of the program to test routes and terrain beyond what it experienced in Pittsburgh. “We drove in the rain and other kinds of weather, and we’ve added capabilities since we started in September,” Mr. Levandowski said in an interview, adding that Uber has faced no major issues in its testing in Pennsylvania thus far. “Now we want to see how we operate in this new environment, especially with the giant hills that San Francisco has to offer. ” Uber may have gotten more than it bargained for. Shortly after the service began, one of its Volvo XC90s ran a red light, and was caught on camera. The episode raised questions about the safety of Uber’s technology. “This incident was due to human error,” Uber said in a statement about the video, which was posted to YouTube. “This vehicle was not part of the pilot and was not carrying customers. The driver involved has been suspended while we continue to investigate. ” | 1 |
This is no ‘new cold war’; it’s far worse than that By Eric Zuesse Posted on November 8, 2
It would end that way because any hot war between the two sides would terminate either in one side surrendering to the other, or else in at least one of the two sides (presumably to be started by the one that’s on the brink of defeat in the traditional hot war) nuclear-attacking the other (as being its only alternative to defeat). In other words, M.A.D. recognized and accepted the fact that for a nuclear power to attack a nuclear power with non-nuclear weaponry will almost certainly provoke a nuclear war at the moment when one of the two is losing (or about to lose) the conventional conflict to the other. Nuclear weapons are weapons of last resort, but they exist in order to prevent defeat. That is what they exist for. If Japan had had deliverable nuclear weapons, then the end of World War II would have been considerably delayed. Japan would have lost because it
But M.A.D. is not just a physical reality but equally importantly a mutually-shared belief-system, a belief-system that becomes no longer operative if one of the two sides switches to believe that a way exists actually to win a nuclear war—in other words, to believe that conquest of a nuclear power by another nuclear power is a real possibility. During the years prior to 2006, there was an increasing though unspoken belief at the top of the US aristocracy (the people who control the US government—or at least have controlled it since 1981 ), that the United States would be able to win a nuclear war against Russia; and, suddenly, in 2006, the belief was published, and virtually no one who possessed power or influence challenged it; and, from that time forward, M.A.D. was ended on the American side, and nuclear weapons became, in the US, strategized within a new framework (called “nuclear primacy”
After 1991, when the Warsaw Pact no longer existed, the US military alliance NATO invited into its membership all of the former states of the USSR except Russia (thereby indicating NATO’s continuing hostility toward that particular nation and the fraudulence of NATO’s peace with it), and also invited in all of the USSR’s former Warsaw Pact allies, and so NATO (a now clearly anti-Russian, no longer at all anti-communist, alliance) has come to extend right up to Rus
Consequently, in the current US-NATO operation on and near Russia’s borders , the Alliance is starting the buildup of its traditional invasion forces. This includes even some US allies that are not in NATO . The supposed ‘justification’ for this amassing of invasion-forces on Russia’s borders is to ‘defend’ against ‘Russia’s aggression’ when (in March 2014 just weeks after the bloody US coup in Ukraine ) Russia enabled the residents of Crimea to rejoin Crimea as part of Russia, of which Crimea had been until the Soviet dictator Khrushchev arbitrarily transferred Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 . That disagreement about Crimea is the supposed root-cause for NATO’s involvement, even though Ukraine still is not (and previously did not want to be) a member of the NATO alliance. Anyway: is the rationalization for NATO’s buildup toward what could become WW III.
Ever since 19 February 2016, the US has been storing tanks and artillery , sufficient “to support 15,000 Marines,” in undisclosed “confidential,” Norwegian caves. Norway has a 200-mile border with Russia. CNN’s news-report on that was accompanied by a video headlined “Russia Reveals Aggressive Military Plans” . It reported that Russia’s (democratically elected, though not mentioned as such) President, Vladimir Putin, was moving troops and weapons toward Norway’s border. (How would the US respond if Russia were to be storing invasion-equipment and troops in Mexico near the US border? Would the US be moving troops and weapons near the Mexican border to protect against an invasion of America; and, if so, then how accurate would it be if Russia’s media then headlined “America Reveals Aggressive Military Plans”? Hitler’s Germany used those sorts of media-tactics, but this time Obama’s America is doing that.) Marine Corps Times headlined on October 24 th , .
nd its greatly expanded NATO, thus now surrounds Russia not just with its tanks etc., but with its missiles and bombers, on and near Russia’s borders, and so the flight-time from launch to the nuclear-bombing (if the ground-invasion of Russia encounters defeat) will be less than ten minutes, sometimes even less than the time for Russia to get its own missiles launched in retaliation against ours; and so a US blitz nuclear attack against Russia could conceivably be an entirely one-sided war. Here is how that scenario—the end of physical M.A.D.—has actually become the objective sought by the US government (and the necessary backstory for America’s war-drills on Russia’s borders):
In 2006, the US aristocracy published in the journal Foreign Affairs, from their Council on Foreign Relations, the first article which said that the US goal should no longer be a continuation of M.A.D., but instead “The Rise of US Nuclear Primacy” , by which the US aristocracy meant the rise of America’s ability to win a nuclear war against Russia. It established this stunning goal merely by saying that such an objective could be achieved and that it should be achieved, and by the article’s being published by the US aristocracy itself (the people who control this country), and by furthermore the US aristocracy not condemning and rejecting and repudiating it but simply letting that article stand with little to no public discussion (and no public debate) about it, much less with the chorus of public condemnations of it in the US press, such as would have happened if America were a democracy—but this nation no longer is a democracy, it has become an aristocracy , and this aristocracy had now published the “Nuclear Primacy,” article. (By contras “The Fallacy of Nuclear Primacy” . That article had no impact.)
The Foreign Affairs article even was so bold as to assert that “US leaders have always aspired to this goal,” (nuclear primacy)—a wild and unsupported allegation that’s not much different from alleging that not only George W. Bush but all US Presidents after World War II were aspiring to have the ability to conquer Russia (and the authors were asserting that only now was this supposedly terrific ability coming within reach). It was explicit about G.W. Bush’s having this desire: “The intentional pursuit of nuclear primacy is, moreover, entirely consistent with the United States’ declared policy of expanding its global dominance. The Bush administration’ started the determined policy to achieve nuclear primacy) was so dangerous and harmful a President. His invasion of Iraq was merely a sympton of that deeper disease.
And, so, this article about “The Rise of US Nuclear Primacy,” and “The End of,” M.A.D., was now—since it was published by the CFR and not rejected by any influential group—accepted within the US as a goal, “Nuclear Primacy,” which the US government could and should strive for. That idea, of a winnable nuclear war (winnable by the US, of course), was no longer heretical, no longer viewed as repugnant. In fact, this article had been introduced and accepted by Harvard University simultaneously in its longer form and simultaneously published by their scholarly journal International Security, wh “The End of MAD?” . (The periods are customarily removed from the acronym “M.A.D.,” perhaps in order to associate the M.A.D. concept with the pejorative term, insanity.
destroy the world ).
US President Barack Obama is putting the goal of nuclear primacy into place, starting with implementation of Ronald Reagan’s proposed “Star Wars,” Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) defense system, now called the Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system, and technically called by the name of its current embodiment: Lockheed Martin’s, Boeing’s, and Raytheon’s, Aegis Ashore system, which Obama first made operational in Romania on 12 May 2016 . It’s designed so as to enable a surprise nuclear attack against Russia in which any missiles that Russia might be able to launch in retaliation will supposedly (if the system works 100%) be annihilated during their launch-phase.
Obama came into office criticizing the ABM plan and pretending not to be hostile toward Russia. He deceived Vladimir Putin into thinking that Obama sincerely wanted to pursue peace and cooperation with Russia. As soon as Obama became re-elected, his verbal smiling teeth immediately became actual glaring fangs. Then, soon after his regime overthrew in a bloody February 2014 coup the Moscow-friendly democratically elected President of Ukraine, bordering Russia , Russia started in the summer of 2014 to ignore the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, because for Washington the next step (beyond Ukraine) clearly now would be Moscow and so all bets were off. The installation of the Aegis Ashore in Romania , which is one important reason why Obama lies to say that all of the Aegis Ashore facilities will be targeted against Iran—and maybe also North Korea—but never against Russia.
The full Aegis Ashore system, which will require several such sites, is not yet operational. NATO’s PR-arm the Atlantic Council, has mentioned among the Aegis Ashore’s benefits, that for the next such site, in Poland, “Poland announced in late April that it would buy eight Patriot missile batteries from Virginia-based Raytheon Co. in a deal that could generate at least $2.5 billion in US export content.” The US government officials and their friends who have invested in Raytheon and the other ‘defense’ firms did not need to be informed of this by any PR person. They already knew of it from more reliable sources, and perhaps they even have invested in nuclear bunkers for themselves and their friends and their friends’ friends
Also in 2006, later in that year, specifically on 18 November 2006, was published at Global Research, which is an independent Canadian online international site dealing with geostrategy, a superb summary of the connection that this plan has to America’s string of invasions in the Middle East. It’s titled “Plans for Redrawing the Middle East: The Project for a ‘New Middle East,’”
It should be noted that in his book, “The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives,” Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former US National Security Advisor, alluded to the modern Middle East as a control lever of an area he, Brzezinski, calls the Eurasian Balkans. The Eurasian Balkans consists of the Caucasus (Georgia, the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Armenia) and Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan) and to some extent both Iran and Turkey. Iran and Turkey both form the northernmost tiers of the Middle East (excluding the Caucasus4) that edge into Europe and the former Soviet Union.
The Map of the “New Middle East”
A relatively unknown map of the Middle East, NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan, and Pakistan has been circulating around strategic, governmental, NATO, policy and military circles since mid-2006. It has been casually allowed to surface in public, maybe in an attempt to build consensus and to slowly prepare the general public for possible, maybe even cataclysmic, changes in the Middle East. This is a map of a redrawn and restructured Middle East identified as the “New Middle East.”
MAP OF THE NEW MIDDLE EAST
Note: The map was prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters. It was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006, Peters is a retired colonel of the US National War Academy. (Map Copyright Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters 2006).
Although the map does not officially reflect Pentagon doctrine, it has been used in a training program at NATO’s Defense College for senior military officers. This map, as well as other similar maps, has most probably been used at the National War Academy as well as in military planning circles.
Brzezinski’s advocacy of “American Primacy,” fits perfectly with the aristocracy’s support of “Nuclear Primacy,” and appeared eight years before it. His 1998 book was seminal also in many other ways. And, as that Nazemroaya article made clear, Brzezinski’s plan was already being put into effect by the US government, even before 2006.
However, the person who actually made the seminal decision behind all of this, the decision to conquer Russia, was US President George Herbert Walker Bush, on the night of 24 February 1990, just before the Soviet Union ended. He was the person who decided that after the USSR and its Warsaw Pact terminated, NATO would continue that cold war until Russia has been surrounded by US allies, who are Russia’s enemies, when Russia will ultimately either surrender or else be destroyed by the US and its friends.
Even if Russia assumes that any such nuclear war would be M.A.D., the government of the US no longer does. That’sRussia’s predicament—and the world’s .
However, military planners in the US and its vassal nations, do not include in their calculations the world: the impacts that such nuclear winter and all the rest will have if their dream of ‘nuclear primacy’ amounts to anything more than merely the vicious hoax that it is. This fact, of their ignoring the world, is scandalous—against our military planners. They are so obsessed with ‘victory,’ that they are willing to participate in this false and potentially mega-catastrophic dream, of ‘nuclear primacy.’
Unless and until nuclear weapons are totally eliminated (which might never happen), their constructive function, of preventing WW III, must continue, not end as a result of ‘nuclear primacy’ and other such lies and delusions. However, the ‘news’ media, especially in ‘The West,’ are not pointing out those lies and distortions, but instead reinforcing them.
If there is to be a WW III, it will end the world . That is the key fact, which is ignored by ‘The West’s’ military planners.
NATO needs to end now, just as the Warsaw Pact did in 1991—when an indecent, oligarchic , ‘The West’ continued the Cold War despite the Warsaw Pact’s end, and now is making it hot.
This article originally appeared in Strategic Culture Foundation on-line journal.
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of “They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910–2010,: This entry was posted in Analysis . Bookmark the permalink | 0 |
shorty By Danny Haiphong E ven as the Democrats and Republicans put forward the two least popular politicians in the country, the U.S. Left “is mired in confusion as to what political direction should be taken.” Many of those who claim to be leftists supported the wars against Libya and Syria. But the Green Party has “consistently stood up against endless war, austerity, and racist state repression and for universal healthcare, education, and peace.” “The Green Party is the only choice that possesses a truly social democratic agenda.” I consider myself a Marxist. However, the term “Marxist” is merely a label. Those who ascribe to the tenets of Marxist thought must place their political affiliations within the context of the current historical moment. Anti-communism and imperialist hegemony have set back the struggle for a classless society to the point where much of the US left is mired in confusion as to what political direction should be taken to confront the challenges before us. One of these challenges is the 2016 elections. The radical left should plan on voting Green this November and building a mass movement around the demands put forward by the Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka campaign. But the corporate assault on the left’s collective consciousness has indeed made it difficult for the Green Party to grab the attention of the masses in the midst of the two-party capitalist circus. I myself argued two summers ago that the left in the United States should not bother with engaging the charade and instead take up a boycott of the Presidential elections [3] . At that point, no movement had emerged to challenge the hegemony of the Democratic Party. The 2016 elections changed this dynamic. Suddenly, the forces in front of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Black Lives Matter movement agreed that both corporate candidates were unworthy of support. “Hillary Clinton has drawn the entire ruling class into the Democratic Party tent.” The energy of these movements was channeled into the Bernie Sanders campaign. Sanders ran as a Democrat. His domestic positions on education, healthcare, and income inequality were supported by masses of young voters. Sanders eventually betrayed his base in typical Democratic Party fashion, but not before it was revealed that the Democratic National Committee had worked diligently to undermine Sanders’ ability to win the nomination [4] . The majority of Sanders supporters and sympathizers have since indicated that they will not vote for Clinton when election day arrives [5] . So why vote for the Green Party in particular? The Green Party is the only choice that possesses a truly social democratic agenda. The Green Party is no Marxist vehicle and it doesn’t attempt to be. What the Green Party does possess are dedicated, principled forces whose positions on war and peace, healthcare, and predatory capitalism threaten the US imperialist apparatus. That is why the two-party corporate duopoly finances its own corporation [6] to bar the Green Party from entrance into the Presidential debates every four years. In the 2016 elections in particular, a real chance was present to organize the 15 percent of pollsters necessary for the Green Party to participate in the corporately controlled debates. The opportunity was squandered by a left that remains weak and fractured. In the past, attempts to organize an election boycott campaign or support a communist party’s Presidential nomination would have sufficed as election strategies to steer the disillusioned populace toward movement politics. However, the 2016 Presidential election is a watershed moment in US imperial history. Hillary Clinton has drawn the entire ruling class into the Democratic Party tent. This has occurred in the midst of the greatest crisis of legitimacy the US imperial state has ever faced. “Both corporate media and capitalist enterprise supported Clinton’s bid to steer the election in her favor.” Sanders and Trump shook the foundation of the two-party corporate duopoly. The rise of Sanders and Trump made the Clinton option desirable only to the ruling class and its minions. Both corporate media and capitalist enterprise supported Clinton’s bid to steer the election in her favor. Not only did the ruling class help her take out Sanders, but it also assisted Clinton in a cover up of the recent WikiLeaks email dump. In emails written by her campaign chair John Podesta, it was revealed that the Clinton campaign planned to use the Trump campaign as right-wing cannon fodder to present Clinton as more electable [7] . Furthermore, the emails also uncovered how Clinton holds a “ public” and “private” position [8] on matters of Social Security and free trade. If left up to Clinton, Social Security retirement benefits and federal regulations of corporate activity would be swept into the dustbin of history. Additionally, the corporate media and the Democratic Party have attempted to frame Donald Trump as a racist, misogynistic pig. According to the Democratic Party, Trump represents the “Worst of America [9] .” The slander of Trump has been an easy job. Trump himself provides all of the ammo. However, the condemnation of Trump is little more than a convenient distraction when it comes from the corporate Democrats. From Bill Clinton to Barack Obama, the Democratic Party has waged endless war, austerity, and racist state repression on behalf of its corporate masters. Hillary Clinton must resort to fear-mongering around Trump because neither her party nor her class has anything to offer the majority of the US electorate. Conditions are thus ripe for an alternative political party to make a strong showing in this and future Presidential elections. The Green Party’s success could inspire the millions of people disillusioned with both choices and show that a mass sentiment against the two-party corporate duopoly does indeed exist. It is the task of communists, radicals, and revolutionaries to organize the disaffected into a class conscious organization capable of stripping power from the ruling class. No such organization exists at the moment. The Green Party doesn’t profess to be this organization, but its demands and platform are surely helpful if utilized to create the conditions required for such an organization to emerge. “If left up to Clinton, Social Security retirement benefits and federal regulations of corporate activity would be swept into the dustbin of history.” So when self-identified leftists make the claim that the left deserves better than Jill Stein [10] , the urgent need for self-criticism becomes clear. One only needs to examine conditions in the US briefly to see that oppressed and working class people deserve better than the left. Of course, the left’s current state is a reflection of the conditions from which it exists and the deep imperialist assault on the consciousness of the oppressed. However, the left has made critical errors in recent years. Many so-called revolutionary organizations have, for example, supported imperialist war in Libya and promoted the notion of lesser evil voting as cover for the Democratic Party. Green Party candidates Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka have consistently stood up against endless war, austerity, and racist state repression and for universal healthcare, education, and peace. Yet there are some who want to claim that such a platform is not adequate or “revolutionary” enough. It is time to shed this sectarian way of thinking. Hillary Clinton will become the next President of the US. She will inherit the eight years of Obama rule which have further weakened the left. But the 2016 elections have revealed that the deep crisis of the imperialist system is beginning to intersect with popular opposition to its policy manifestations. So don’t fear Trump or organize resistance in a manner that gives the people a choice of either revolution or nothing at all. There is nothing counterrevolutionary about voting Green this November and organizing the movement on the streets around its core demands. As BAR’s Bruce Dixon noted last week, a five percent showing by the Green Party will put much needed federal funds into the control of movement organizers. A revolution is not a moment, it is a process. The crisis of imperialism will present many more moments to develop the revolutionary potential of the masses. The current opportunity to do so should not be allowed to dissipate, as the next moment could occur alongside a Hillary Clinton-led world war. Source URL: http://blackagendareport.com/why_i_will_vote_green | 0 |
On Friday’s Breitbart News Daily, author Ann Coulter praised the cadre of sharp advisers and feisty defenders assembled around President Donald Trump and said, “We need more of them. ”[“I mean, there are a hundred thousand on the other side,” she noted. She predicted President Trump would not get any pushback — and probably not the credit he will deserve — for bringing jobs back. “When he calls these companies and harangues them and makes them build their plants in America, makes them invest in America, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, they’re not going to come out and denounce Trump. They’ll say, ‘Oh, it was just a hundred thousand jobs. It was just three thousand jobs.’ Okay, if that’s your best argument, no problem. ” But when it comes to issues like immigration, Coulter predicted “every single entity” would strike out at Trump, and he’ll need stalwart political fighters to man the battlements. “The media and the Democrats most of all because, like I say, this is life or death for them, and idiot Republicans who seem to think that we owe Somalis, Guatemalans, and Mexicans for the legacy of slavery, it’s the damndest thing,” she remarked, surveying the forces that will line up against Trump on immigration reform. As an example of furious pushback, SiriusXM host Alex Marlow described MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, speaking as the voice of the centrist establishment, “going on a tear” against Marlow’s longtime friend Stephen Miller, who now serves as one of President Trump’s advisers. He characterized the attack on Miller as “dirty and dishonest. ” “I will give our opposition credit: they have figured out the most powerful nerve center, besides Trump himself, within the Trump White House,” Coulter said. “Yeah, it would be great for them to take out Trump. This is when we ought to be throwing a party for Stephen Miller and saying, ‘Congratulations! They can’t call you dumb they realize you’re a very important component. ’” “He’s brilliant,” she said of Miller. “You know, what I would like to do is go back to when you and he were growing up in L. A. and I don’t know, get ahold of the soil conditions or the water or something. The two of you — oh, my gosh! So patriotic, so smart. You love your country. ” “I was describing Steve Miller to some reporter recently. I was on a plane at the time, so I was writing out adjectives, and at the end of the sentence, I said, ‘I’m not just listing adjectives I’m actually pausing and thinking about each one. But the main ones are brilliant and patriotic,’” she recalled. “The same with you,” she told Marlow. “And to have that in these young kids, out of all places, Los Angeles! And then a few years later — well, I won’t even say her name, otherwise, she’ll just start being attacked, the opposition will figure out the other person they need to take out of the Trump White House. ” “But oh, my gosh. Thank God — not taking the Lord’s name in vain I mean it literally — that Stephen Miller is on our side,” Coulter said. Marlow proposed that Miller’s effectiveness at moving the “ Trumpian agenda” as the reason he has been taking so much fire, even when his critics cannot pinpoint anything he did wrong. “Yes, he’s very, very bright,” Coulter agreed. “It always struck me, especially kids from Los Angeles, the very epitome of coastal elites, how seriously and genuinely Stephen Miller cared about Americans. He’s such a perfect fit for Trump. It would just casually come up in conversation. It was driving him crazy that they were being screwed over. ” She said she did not see the Joe Scarborough rant against Miller herself but had received many emails about it. “I didn’t even know what it was about at first because they were just blistering, Tourette’ emails about how they were never going to watch Morning Joe again,” she said. “I don’t really understand it, other than I gather the opposition has figured out, ‘Danger, danger, person who loves America! ’” “I probably don’t need to worry because every time I do worry about something on Donald Trump’s behalf, it turns out I didn’t need to worry it’s Trump,” Coulter said. “But you know, there is the White House bubble. I was just thinking, I travel a lot, I know a lot of people, and a lot of people from different walks of life. Just this week, I’ve talked to a Hollywood producer, and a union executive, and lots of cab drivers in New York City, Los Angeles, and so on, an actress, a Broadway actress and singer — okay, I don’t need to list them all. But it’s been amazing to me how popular the the ban is, and how popular Donald Trump is, and in particular with — I’m not a liberal I don’t think immigrants’ opinions are more important than American opinions, but it’s interesting because it’s contrary to the media narrative. Lots of immigrants in this country [are] wild about Trump, wild about the Muslim ban. ” “I mean, out there in the middle of the country, he is more beloved than he was the day he was inaugurated. And, by the way, got a larger crowd than Obama. I don’t know if you’ve written much about that, but I have the briefing book. It was a much bigger crowd, and we should probably spend the rest of the radio interview allowing me to prove that. But I kind of think he needs a rally in Washington or someplace. Go out to America,” she advised. Ann Coulter is the author of numerous books, most recently In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome! Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. LISTEN: | 1 |
Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “Your World,” Sen. Mike Lee ( ) predicted the legislation scheduled for a vote Thursday that would begin the process of repealing Obamacare would fail because he argued it not only didn’t have the votes in the Senate but the House as well. “This bill is going to fail,” Lee said. “It is going to fail because it doesn’t have enough support in the House of Representatives and it doesn’t have enough support in the Senate. ” “I’ve talked to a whole lot of people — enough people that I know that it is going to fall short of a majority in the House and it’s going to fall short of a majority in the Senate,” he added. “Look, if they know something that I don’t, perhaps they’ll be smiling 24 hours from now. But if they’re so confident, they’re not going to need to worry about my vote, they’re not going to need to worry about the votes of a whole lot of other people in the House and in the Senate who are concerned that this bill doesn’t do what we promise to do, which was repeal Obamacare in its entirety. ” Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor | 1 |
Apologizing once again, this time for accidentally flying a customer to San Francisco instead of to her actual destination of France, United Airlines cannot seem to get out from under an avalanche of public relations disasters. [United customer Lucie Bahetoukilae had purchased a ticket to fly from Newark, New Jersey, to Paris, France, but instead, found herself landing in San Francisco, California, after she was allowed to board the wrong plane, according to Fox News. The woman, who only speaks French, told the media through a relative that the airline changed her flight’s gate at the last minute but did not inform customers via email or text, so she did not understand the announcement made over the loudspeaker system. She also said the gate change was announced only in English and not French, so she stayed at her original gate and boarded the plane that eventually arrived in California. Though her ticket said her final destination was Paris, attendants allowed her to board the plane for San Francisco, Bahetoukilae said. “If they would have made the announcement in French, she would have moved gates,” Bahetoukilae’s niece, Diane Miantsoko, told New York’s ABC 7. Even more vexing for the woman, when she boarded the plane, she found someone already sitting in the seat marked on her ticket. And when she showed her boarding pass to a flight attendant, she was simply put in an open seat, instead of being told she boarded the wrong plane. The mixup angered Bahetoukilae’s niece. “With everything going on this country people have to be more careful. They didn’t pay attention. My aunt could have been anyone. She could have been a terrorist and killed people on that flight,” she said. For its part, United issued an apology to the customer: “We deeply apologize to Ms. Bahetoukilae for this unacceptable experience,” United said in an emailed statement to Fox News. “When she arrived in San Francisco, we ensured she got on the next flight to Paris and refunded her ticket. Our customer care team has reached out to her directly to ensure we make this right. We are also working with our team in Newark to prevent this from happening again. ” United offered the customer a free flight and a full refund. The airline’s practices exploded in controversy in April after its treatment of passenger Dr. David Dao when police bodily dragged the man off a flight when he refused to give up his seat in an overbooking incident. The airline later settled with the passenger and made changes to its overbooking practices. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 1 |
At first glance, this was a controversy for the immediate boiling outrage of social media. United Airlines was besieged by an angry public after a gate agent refused to let two teenagers board a flight to Minneapolis at Denver International Airport on Sunday because they were wearing leggings. The outcry was swift and furious. The model Chrissy Teigen said she would fly topless the next time she flew United. The actor William Shatner snarked about pants he once wore on the set of “Star Trek. ” Calls for boycotts of United flooded social media sites. United wouldn’t back down, saying initially that the barring was justified because gate agents could ban anyone who was not “properly clothed. ” But this only fueled the bubbling controversy. Hours later, United issued a clarification, saying that the teenagers and their parents had been traveling with “pass riders,” tickets given to employees or their friends at a heavily discounted rate, and that with this comes the responsibility of a dress code. “When taking advantage of this benefit, all employees and pass riders are considered representatives of United,” read a statement that United posted late on Sunday evening. “And like most companies, we have a dress code that we ask employees and pass riders to follow. The passengers this morning were United pass riders and not in compliance with our dress code for company benefit travel. ” These are tickets that are typically left over, usable when there are empty seats on a plane. The regular paying passengers are known in the business as “revenue customers. ” While some details of this tale remain murky — as of right now, the family remains anonymous — dress codes for employees, their families and friends who are traveling on free or discounted passes have been in place for decades, although not all are strictly enforced. Both of Betty Horne’s parents, for example, worked in the aviation industry, and both for United. Her mother was a flight attendant and her father a flight engineer. Ms. Horne, 60, said she had started taking discounted flights thanks to her parents in the 1950s, and even then took great pains in the way she dressed. “As a small kid, there wasn’t that much of a problem because we were always in dresses,” Ms. Horne said. “That was just not an option. We always dressed up. In the late ’60s, early ’70s, that was when I was really concerned with whether I was meeting standards or not. ” United explicitly bans “ tops, pants and dresses,” along with “any attire that reveals a midriff,” “mini skirts,” “bare feet” and many others. Delta is far less specific, saying only this in its guide: “Just remember, Delta has a relaxed dress code for pass riders, but that doesn’t mean a sloppy appearance is acceptable. You should never wear unclean, revealing or lewd garments, or swimwear or sleepwear on a flight. ” In a statement, Delta said, “We ask our employees and their family and friends flying on pass privileges to use their best judgment when deciding what to wear on a flight. ” American Airlines says in its employee travel guide, “In general, if attire is appropriate and in good taste for our revenue customers, then it is acceptable for us as well. ” It goes on to specify that travelers are not to wear “torn, dirty or frayed clothing,” “clothing that is distracting or offensive to others” or “clothing that is vulgar or violates community standards of decency. ” It is up typically to gate agents to decide what is appropriate and what is not for those traveling on pass riders. “I have seen adults who have holes in jeans miss big international flights because the gate agent said, ‘Nope, you don’t meet our standards,’ which I thought was brutal,” said Mark Blacknell, 41, an attorney in Washington. Mr. Blacknell’s mother works for Delta, and he has taken advantage of numerous pass riders. But there is a reason for the strictness of United’s guidelines, a company spokesman said. They exist to take the decision out of the gate agent’s hands. “We have guidelines like this to help our gate agents, because we don’t want to put them in this position, to have to be making judgment calls about attire,” said the spokesman, Jonathan Guerin. “That’s what the policy is about. It’s designed to help our employees do their jobs and be efficient and get people on board. ” What seemed to be lost in the social media fury was that commercial passengers are not held to the same standard, as Delta mentioned on Twitter, ribbing its competitor. But whether this controversy will bring about a change by United remains to be seen. “We regularly review our guidelines,” Mr. Guerin said. | 1 |
Proof Hillary Clinton and her foundation are working with the Russians to destroy America Why isn't the FBI investigating Hillary's actual connections to the Russians? By Shepard Ambellas - November 1, 2016
Editor’s Note: This article was originally posted back in January and links Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation to the Russians. Now, seven days out from the U.S. Presidential Election, new rhetoric has surfaced in the media which shows that the FBI has investigated Donald Trump for possible Russian connections and of course has found no ties. But the real question to ask may be: Why isn’t the FBI investigating Hillary’s actual ties to the Russians which can be found herein this article? Please share this post everywhere, make it go viral!
Related: Rancher Dwight Hammond threatened with “bullet”: Exclusive Interview
PRINCETON, Ore. ( INTELLIHUB ) — As it turns out there’s a lot more to the story behind the Malheur Wildlife Refuge — a whole lot more–and this article is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
As you may or may not know, Intellihub reported on Jan. 4, that the Hammond’s ranch and other ranch-lands surrounding the refuge sit atop a vast swath of precious metals, minerals, and uranium that’s heavily desired by not only the federal government, but foreign entities as well.
However, at the time of the article’s publication the federal government’s full motive to seize the land was not yet known other than the fact that these elements do exist in the vicinity and are invaluable.
Now, after further investigation, more pieces of the puzzle have been put in place and you’re not going to believe what characters are involved.
I’ll give you a hint — one of them is currently being investigated by the FBI and is also running on the Democratic ticket in hopes of becoming the next President of the United States. That’s right, you guessed it–none other than Hillary Rodham Clinton of the notorious Clinton crime family .
Hillary and her foundation are implicated in the dastardly scheme along with the Russian State Nuclear Energy Corporation, Rosatom, and a few dubious Canadian elite, which is where the news gets really bad.
Rosatom is ranked #2 globally in uranium reserves and #1 globally for annual uranium extraction. The sheer power, strength, and size of the corporation is undeniable. Rostom is a major power-player in today’s world and didn’t become that way for no reason.
You see, Rosatom wanted to expand their operations into America and needed a way in. So, in 2013, Rosatom acquired a Canadian company named Uranium One as part of a sinister side deal which involved multiple parties. Ultimately the deal opened a typically secure and closed-door, thus allowing the Russians to salt their way into Continental United States as part of a vast and extensive plan to mine Uranium ore out of states like Wyoming and Oregon.
The deal was essentially brokered by Hillary and was ran through the Clinton Foundation using Canadian-backed contributions as a cover. With one swoop of a pen the bitch sold out the American people and one-fifth of America’s uranium resources to the Russians.
In April of 2015, two reporters for the New York Times boldly reported how the plan worked: At the heart of the tale are several men, leaders of the Canadian mining industry, who have been major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One. Beyond mines in Kazakhstan that are among the most lucrative in the world, the sale gave the Russians control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States. Since uranium is considered a strategic asset, with implications for national security, the deal had to be approved by a committee composed of representatives from a number of United States government agencies. Among the agencies that eventually signed off was the State Department, then headed by Mr. Clinton’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton . As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well. And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock. At the time, both Rosatom and the United States government made promises intended to ease concerns about ceding control of the company’s assets to the Russians. Those promises have been repeatedly broken, records show. […] Soon, Uranium One began to snap up companies with assets in the United States. In April 2007, it announced the purchase of a uranium mill in Utah and more than 38,000 acres of uranium exploration properties in four Western states , followed quickly by the acquisition of the Energy Metals Corporation and its uranium holdings in Wyoming, Texas and Utah. That deal made clear that Uranium One was intent on becoming “a powerhouse in the United States uranium sector with the potential to become the domestic supplier of choice for U.S. utilities,” the company declared. […] While the United States gets one-fifth of its electrical power from nuclear plants, it produces only around 20 percent of the uranium it needs, and most plants have only 18 to 36 months of reserves, according to Marin Katusa, author of “The Colder War: How the Global Energy Trade Slipped From America’s Grasp.” “The Russians are easily winning the uranium war, and nobody’s talking about it,” said Mr. Katusa, who explores the implications of the Uranium One deal in his book. “It’s not just a domestic issue but a foreign policy issue, too.” Yes, the Russians are winning the “uranium war,” thanks to Hillary. Additionally BLM documentation shows: In September 2011, a representative from Oregon Energy, L.L.C. (formally Uranium One), met with local citizens, and county and state officials, to discuss the possibility of opening a uranium oxide (“yellowcake”) mine in southern Malheur County in southeastern Oregon. Oregon Energy is interested in developing a 17-Claim parcel of land known as the Aurora Project through an open pit mining method. Besides the mine, there would be a mill for processing. The claim area occupies about 450 acres and is also referred to as the “New U” uranium claims. On May 7, 2012, Oregon Energy LLC made a presentation to the BLM outlining its plans for development for the mine. The Vale District has agreed to work with Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife on mitigation for the “New U” uranium claims, which are located in core sage grouse habitat. Although the lands encompassing the claims have been designated core, the area is frequented by rockhounds and hunters, and has a crisscrossing of off-highway vehicle (OHV) roads and other significant land disturbance from the defunct Bretz Mercury Mine, abandoned in the 1960s. However, by the fall of 2012 the company said that it was putting its plans for the mine on hold until the uncertainty surrounding sage grouse issues was resolved. Once again the Whore of Babylon , Hillary Clinton, her foundation, and other members of government, have literally been caught conducting illicit, illegal, and treasonous, activities right underneath the noses of the American people and are in no way being held accountable. Moreover she has the nerve to run for president! Are you kidding me? Now Oregon Governor Kate Brown has stepped in, calling for a ‘swift’ resolution to the armed occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, clearly shilling for the Dems, criminally assisting them with their master plan to sellout every last bit of America’s public lands to foreign entities like Uranium One, fully eviscerating whats left of the U.S. Constitution. So there you have it–rogue criminal factions of government are operating at all levels and are actually conspiring together to allow foreign corporations to invade and mine rich American resources, including uranium, from lands owned by the people. Uranium One’s slogan is: “Success through aggressive mine and land acquisition.”
Additionally, President Obama has signed executive orders allowing the Department of the Interior to grab publicly owned lands. Update 1:29 p.m.: World Net daily published an article back in 1998 titled “Federal Land Grab Called ‘Political’.” In the article he author points out how Utah Republican Jame Hansen authored a bill at the time known as the “Utah Schools and Lands Exchange Act of 1998.” According to the report, this bill passed in June of 1998, and gave “Utah 139,000 acres of federally held land, certain mineral rights, and $50 million in exchange for all of Utah’s claims to lands within national parks, monuments, forests and federal areas” under then U.S. President Bill Clinton’s orders, further demonstration how the Clinton Crime Family has been using their vast political influence to loot some of the best assets from the Corporation of the United States, selling them for pennies on the dollar to private foreign corporations and one world bodies like the United Nations. Additionally we find this whole animal goes back the the Ronald Regan era–and possibly further. HCN.org reported back in 2004: […] President Ronald Reagan and his advisors looked across the West’s public lands and saw dollar signs. Money was something they desperately needed in 1982, as the national deficit hit $128 billion. So James Watt, then U.S. secretary of the Interior, and John R. Block, the secretary of Agriculture, earmarked 35 million acres, or 5 percent of the nation’s public lands (excluding Alaska), for the auction block. The plan to privatize public lands was met with outrage and skepticism, not only from Western liberals such as Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt, but also from conservatives like Sen. James McClure, R-Idaho, who objected because the states were cut out of the deal. Watt eventually withdrew Interior lands from the sale; shortly thereafter, the Forest Service’s sale lost steam, too. However unpopular the proposed sales were, they weren’t illegal. And the idea didn’t go away. The framework for selling public lands has inched forward since the Clinton administration, and now the Interior Department wants to give it a higher priority. The 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) required the Bureau of Land Management to identify lands that were “uneconomical to manage,” or that stood in the way of a community’s development. But the BLM lacked a strong incentive to identify such sellable lands: Under FLPMA, any money received from their sale would go directly into the U.S. Treasury, rather than into the agency’s own coffers. Then, in 2000, Congress and the Clinton administration passed the Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act (FLTFA), which changed how profits from BLM land sales were distributed. Twenty percent of any land-sale revenue would go toward the BLM’s administration costs, while the other 80 percent had to be used to buy private inholdings within BLM lands that contained “exceptional resources.” The act was based on a land disposal and acquisition mechanism in the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act of 1998, which was crafted to accommodate Las Vegas’ rapid expansion onto neighboring public lands. But FLTFA’s profit scheme applied only to sellable lands identified before July 25, 2000. At that time, the BLM estimated it had 3.3 million acres of sellable land, but thanks to better inventories, its estimate has since shrunk to as low as 330,000 acres. From 2001 to 2003, the BLM sold almost 11,000 acres under FLTFA. Note: We know some of the land acquired by Uranium One is in Oregon and we know there are precious metals on and near the Hammond Ranch. Put two and two together. Stay tuned for more updates and confirmation as it is becoming increasingly clear that other companies and government entities are most likely also involved. The government, alongside private companies (including foreign-owned), are in the middle of a massive criminal land grab which the mainstream media is largely ignoring, instead opting to paint those in Oregon as crazy anti-government extremists. In other words, members of the mainstream media are directly responsible for helping to allow this takeover to happen. Other Sources: Uranium prospecting in Oregon, 1956 — State of Oregon
What is that I spy east of I-17? BLM acquires more land for monument, prevents development — Daily Courier
From Russia with no love for Colorado uranium mining climate — Colorado Independent
All Oregon Dockets — USGS
Presidential Memorandum — America’s Great Outdoors — WhiteHouse.gov
Public Versus Private Property Rights — BLM.gov
About Uranium One — Uranium1.com
What was the Whitewater scandal? — Investopedia
Shepard Ambellas is an opinion journalist, filmmaker , radio talk show host and the founder and editor-in-chief of Intellihub News & Politics. Established in 2013, Intellihub.com is ranked in the upper 1% traffic tier on the World Wide Web. Read more from Shep’s World . Get the Podcast . Follow Shep on Facebook and Twitter . Image: aphrodite-in-nyc/Flickr | 0 |
Broadway shows often fold their tents at the end of the year, fearing the winter blues at the box office. But this year a few shows of note are holding on, at least for a week or two. You’ve got a few more days to catch Stephen Karam’s gorgeous “The Humans,” last season’s Tony winner for best play (ending on Jan. 15) and even fewer to jump on the exhilarating emotional roller coaster that is the sublime revival of the musical “Falsettos” (ending on Sunday). Looking further ahead, here are other notable shows and events I’d put at the top of my list. The first of the majestic cycle of plays written by the great August Wilson, this drama set in the 1970s (and written in 1979) was, until now, the only piece of the cycle not to be produced on Broadway. A classic Wilson ensemble drama, about a group of gypsy cab drivers in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, the new Manhattan Theater Club production is directed by Ruben who has both appeared in and directed Wilson’s plays — notably the superb recent revival of “The Piano Lesson” from the Signature Theater. (In previews for a Jan. 19 opening at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater.) Normally I frown on theater as a rarefied form of stargazing. But with a star as luminous as Cate Blanchett, I will grant an exception. And, of course, Ms. Blanchett, who graces this new adaptation of “Platonov,” an early Chekhov play, is not merely a movie star burnishing her reputation with a Broadway debut. During the past decade she has made regular, acclaimed appearances on the New York stage, in productions imported from the Sydney Theater Company (as is this one). An unwieldy drama about the familiar Chekhovian concerns — lives full of regret, stomachs bloated with vodka — the play has been moved from Russia in the 19th century to Russia in the late 20th century for this version by Andrew Upton, Ms. Blanchett’s husband. The esteemed Australian actor Richard Roxburgh is Platonov. (In previews for a Sunday opening at the Barrymore Theater.) I have been saving this lovable classic as a cure for the blues. The small but enterprising Irish Rep first produced this delicious musical whimsy, with a glorious, multihued score by Burton Lane and E. Y. Harburg, a dozen years ago, with Melissa Errico as the ingénue, Sharon (she who wonders “How Are Things in Glocca Morra? ”). The seemingly ageless Ms. Errico, I am delighted to report, is unfurling her silvery soprano once again in this revival, directed by the company’s artistic director, Charlotte Moore. (Through Jan. 29 at the Irish Repertory Theater.) [Read the review] This is not a single show (as downtown theatergoers will, of course, know) but a whole feast of international theater, presented by the Public Theater at its home base and elsewhere. Along with P. S. 122’s Coil and other festivals, it has come to make January a dizzying smorgasbord of experimental theater. Highlights this year include a new production from one of my favorite companies, the imaginative 600 Highwaymen, presenting “The Fever,” which is said to be “performed in complete collaboration with the audience. ” Bring your tap shoes — or at least a willingness to blast your way through the fourth wall on a regular basis. (Various locations, .) Martin McDonagh’s was the first of his trilogy of plays set in the impoverished Irish village of the title. It returns in a production from the Druid Theater, the company that first made a splash internationally with a pungent production that ultimately moved to Broadway. Once again the company’s longtime chief, Garry Hynes, directs. And Marie Mullen, who won a Tony Award as the embittered daughter of a manipulative terror of a mother, with the aptly monstrous name Mag, now takes on that formidable role. (Begins performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Jan. 11.) | 1 |
David Rives About | | Archive David Rives is known for his presentation "The Heavens Declare the Glory of God" and as host of TBN's "Creation in the 21st Century." His GPS observatory-class telescope allows David to share his passion for the heavens with others through astro-photography and astronomical events. THE HEAVENS DECLARE: Yes, creationists can be real scientists, too Exclusive: David Rives offers testable hypotheses supported by data from Bible-believers ...more | 0 |
Reuters reports: A Revolutionary Guards commander said on Saturday that Iran would use its missiles against enemies of the Islamic Republic if they threaten the country’s security. [“We are working day and night to protect Iran’s security. If we see smallest misstep from the enemies, our roaring missiles will fall on their heads,” head of Revolutionary Guards’ aerospace unit, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency. Earlier Iran said it was carrying out a military exercise to test its missile and radar systems, a day after US President Donald Trump’s administration imposed sanctions on Tehran for a recent ballistic missile test. Read the full story here. | 1 |
Chart Of The Day: Flows To Passive Funds Booby-Trapping Stock and Bond Markets By David Stockman. Posted On Sunday, October 30th, 2016
David Stockman's Contra Corner is the only place where mainstream delusions and cant about the Warfare State, the Bailout State, Bubble Finance and Beltway Banditry are ripped, refuted and rebuked. Subscribe now to receive David Stockman’s latest posts by email each day as well as his model portfolio, Lee Adler’s Daily Data Dive and David’s personally curated insights and analysis from leading contrarian thinkers. | 0 |
Donald J. Trump’s Twitter post last week that the United States must “greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability” provoked confusion and anxiety that intensified the next day when he added, in a television interview, “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all. ” Largely unspoken in the tumult, but running just below the surface, was a deep uncertainty about the future of a cornerstone of America’s nuclear policy: its program to safeguard the nation’s atomic stockpile. A central mission of the nation’s weapons laboratories is to ensure that the country’s nuclear weapons still work if needed. To do that, the government has long relied on a program that avoids the need for underground testing, instead using data from supercomputers and laboratory experiments and inspecting the warheads. But some nuclear analysts say that the Trump administration is likely to face decisions that could upend the bomb program, leading to a resumption of testing and perhaps a new global arms race if they are mishandled. Adding to the concern is Mr. Trump’s choice of a politician with no expertise in nuclear or technical matters, former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, to lead the Energy Department, which runs the nation’s labs and the safeguards program. Mr. Perry, who will follow two highly accomplished physicists if confirmed, is far more familiar with issues involving the oil and gas industry. But weapons programs account for more than half of the Energy Department’s $30 billion budget. The United States has not conducted a nuclear test since 1992, and some weapons experts believe that it has lost ground to Russia and China as they ambitiously improve their arsenals and delivery systems. Mr. Perry is certain to receive pressure to resume underground tests to ensure that existing weapons will function, and to help create new bomb designs, which have been in the Obama administration. How Mr. Perry responds to that pressure could define his tenure. “Support from outside the Trump administration for testing will be robust,” said John Harvey, who from 1995 to 2013 held senior positions overseeing nuclear weapons programs in the Energy and Defense departments. “I don’t think they will be compelling in changing minds, absent a serious problem that we uncover in the stockpile,” he said. But Mr. Harvey, who does not believe testing is needed for now, fears that those influences could break the bipartisan compromise in Congress that produced the nuclear “modernization” program: an expensive effort to upgrade nuclear delivery systems — bombers, missiles and submarines — and refurbish existing weapons in the arsenal. This program ensures both that the weapons can strike an enemy if necessary and that they work as designed. “I think a strong push to do nuclear testing could upset the consensus,” he said. Since 1998, when India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests, provoking global condemnation, only North Korea is known to have undertaken tests. Some experts fear that if the United States began testing again, it would risk a new arms race by opening the door to testing for many other countries that want to improve or develop nuclear arsenals. For that reason, testing would face opposition on many fronts. “It would be unbelievably stupid of us to start testing again,” said Burton Richter, a physics Nobel laureate and emeritus professor at Stanford who has advised presidential administrations since the 1970s. Absent testing, the arsenal today is something like a 1967 Chevy that sits for decades without being driven, said Thomas Karako, a senior fellow in the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “You have to have the confidence that if you have to crank the engine, it will turn on,” Mr. Karako said. Still, people with intimate knowledge of the agency and the bomb program say that technical savvy alone will not make or break Mr. Perry’s ability to keep the stockpile in a state of readiness. Among those people is Steven Chu, who won the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics and led the agency from 2009 to 2013. “Everybody has a shot,” Mr. Chu said of Mr. Perry’s chance of success. Most important, Mr. Chu said, will be the willingness of Mr. Perry and his close technical advisers to press the weapons designers and stewards to explain their plans in plain enough terms to let the secretary make good decisions. “If people are talking to a nonscientist, there might be a temptation to BS him,” Mr. Chu said. One advantage of being a scientist in those meetings, he said, was that “I refuse to be BS’ed. ” A spokesman for Mr. Perry referred questions about the former governor’s qualifications to his onetime chief of staff, Ray Sullivan. “As a former military officer and politician and governor, he dealt with a myriad of significant challenges that in many cases included unexpected or technical challenges,” Mr. Sullivan said. “At its heart,” he added, “it seems to me that this job is about managing and leading a very complicated organization and having the leadership qualities and ability to build a good team and to question that team, but lead it to a successful outcome. ” Mr. Trump and Mr. Perry attended the football game together on Dec. 10, and Mr. Trump announced his nomination several days later. The former governor’s positions on nuclear issues remain a mystery. Mr. Richter said he had questioned “technically oriented” members of the Republican hierarchy on where Mr. Perry stands. “Is he going in with a lot of fixed ideas?” Mr. Richter said. “They say they simply don’t know about Perry. ” Mr. Perry’s spokesman, Marc Palazzo, said that the Energy nominee was “deferring addressing specific policy issues until his Senate confirmation hearings. ” The current Energy secretary, Ernest Moniz, is a highly regarded physicist who succeeded Mr. Chu. But most other secretaries have not had such credentials. Bill Richardson, whose term has generally been praised, had been a congressman from New Mexico, and United States ambassador to the United Nations and James D. Watkins was a retired admiral. James B. Edwards was a dentist turned politician who, when he resumed his practice, memorably said that he wanted to “get my hands in the saliva again. ” Then President Ronald Reagan made him Energy secretary. Some analysts say fears that Mr. Perry could fumble the nuclear program are overblown because that program is contained within the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semiautonomous agency inside the Energy Department that has its own director. Franklin Miller, a principal at the Scowcroft Group who has warned that the Russians have started a new Cold War, said that dedication to the agency’s mission had always been more important than technical expertise at the top. Still, the agency has changed since the days of “shaking the desert” with underground tests in Nevada, New Mexico and elsewhere. The current way of certifying the stockpile, called stockpile stewardship, is not only costly but also enormously complex, said John Pike, the director of the think tank GlobalSecurity. org and one of the most experienced security analysts in the field. “There’s no end of mischief they could cause for the stockpile,” Mr. Pike said, referring to Mr. Trump and Mr. Perry, and pointing to the confusion and concern that followed the Twitter post by the . Mr. Pike was withering in his criticism of Mr. Perry’s ability to act as a knowledgeable counterweight to Mr. Trump. “Perry’s got no idea which end the bullet comes out of,” he said. “He’s not somebody who’s going to say no to the president. ” In a yearly report, the heads of the weapons labs have certified that the stockpile is sound since the program began in the 1990s. Those certifications have all been made without underground testing. “We don’t need it now,” said Steven E. Koonin, who was Mr. Chu’s under secretary for science and now serves on the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board. He added, “That’s not to say we might not need it at some point in the future. ” Mr. Koonin said he had not detected any disagreement on the issue from senior officials in the Obama administration. But the next administration will be pressed for changes on nearly every element of policy involving nuclear weapons. Some will not call for an immediate resumption of testing, but could lead down that path. Others believe that the approach, without testing, should be immediately . “It’s been horrifically expensive, and I don’t think we really know for sure that our weapons are as reliable as they were when there was testing,” said Kathleen Bailey, a senior associate at the National Institute for Public Policy, a group in Washington. There was always skepticism among some bomb designers and senior lab officials that the purely approach would suffice. But C. Paul Robinson, who directed Sandia National Laboratory from 1995 to 2005, said the labs fell into line once the policy decision was made. As for Mr. Perry, he was once involved in helping set up a technology transfer program between Sandia and the University of Texas, said Mr. Robinson, who worked with him on the effort and called him “a smart guy. ” “He’s a competent guy,” Mr. Robinson said. He added that “this one gaffe that the papers keep writing about” — when Mr. Perry proposed eliminating the Energy Department but could not recall its name during a 2011 Republican presidential debate — “is certainly an aberration. ” Mr. Chu said that no judgment on the former governor’s ability to handle technical matters could be made until he had spent some time on the job. “I want Rick Perry to succeed,” Mr. Chu said. Asked if he could recall a moment when his science background had helped him make a decision as Energy Secretary, Mr. Chu did not hesitate. “All the time,” he said. | 1 |
DENVER — Uranium mines around the Grand Canyon. Oil drilling rigs studding the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. New coal and timber leases in the national forests. States divvying up millions of acres of federal land to dispose of as they wish. To environmental groups, it would be a nightmare. To miners, loggers, ranchers and conservative politicians in areas, it would be about time. Either way, Donald J. Trump’s election presages huge potential change on America’s 640 million acres of federal public lands, from the deep seas east of Maine to the volcanic coasts of Hawaii. “Into a new world,” said Bruce Babbitt, who ran the Interior Department under President Bill Clinton. In Western states, where about half of all land is controlled by federal agencies, Mr. Trump’s supporters hope the pendulum swings back from what they say are overbearing Obama administration regulations that put sage grouse and owls ahead of economic growth. Environmental groups are urging President Obama to push through preservation projects, such as naming a new national monument in the Bears Ears area of southern Utah. And they are already preparing for battles over Mr. Trump’s campaign promise to “unleash” coal, oil and gas production — much of it on public land. But the unknowns and political variables are huge, too. Mr. Trump himself, while promising to push resource extraction, has also at times spoken about preserving public lands for future generations. History also suggests that changing lands policy is not so easy. President George W. Bush, a Republican, tried to change direction with new agency rules, only to be blocked by federal appeals court decisions. Automation in the timber industry means that even an expanded license to cut trees in the national forests might not restore old mill towns to their glory. And the cost of managing federal lands, especially in fighting wildfires — $2. 1 billion last year, a record total, matched by the most acres burned in at least 30 years — continues to soar, threatening communities even as many of them look for new direction from the White House in how those lands are managed. “We have a huge and growing inventory of timber in the forests, and they’re going to decompose or burn, and nobody has addressed that,” said Robert H. Nelson, a professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland and a former economic analyst for the Interior Department. “There’s bipartisan consensus that the federal lands system is dysfunctional,” he said. But the hopes, and the fears, about how that system might now change are boundless. “My big hope is that people would be able to go back to work in San Juan County and these rural areas,” said Phil Lyman, a county commissioner in southern Utah, where antigovernment feelings run as deep as the slot canyons. “You just feel like everything has been stifled with regulations. ” At the Western Watersheds Project, a conservation group focusing on the Rocky Mountain region, legal teams are on deck and ready to fight back. “We’re getting ready for an onslaught of policy, and we’re arming up to litigate,” said Erik Molvar, the group’s executive director. “The Trump administration is going to find it very difficult to take away all of the federal laws which have been adopted over the past 40 years. ” In the struggle for control of America’s public lands, the Obama years were a flush time for conservation groups. The administration imposed moratoriums on uranium drilling near the Grand Canyon and blocked new coal leases. Public lands were also adapted for new uses on Mr. Obama’s watch, notably a wave of national monuments based around cultural or historical significance, and a big expansion of solar energy on federal lands in Nevada. Conservatives who loathed those regulations — or new uses — are now hoping Mr. Trump shifts the balance decisively in their favor. Republicans in Congress have proposed bills weakening federal laws that protect wilderness, water quality, endangered species or that allow presidents to unilaterally name new national monuments. Some conservatives hope Mr. Trump will support their efforts to hand federal land over to states, which could sell it off or speed up drilling approvals. To see where change may come the quickest, look to the edges of Glacier National Park in Montana, at a quilt of rocky peaks and wetlands held sacred by the Blackfeet tribe. In March, the Obama administration capped a fight over oil and gas drilling in the area, called the Medicine, by canceling a Louisiana energy company’s lease on 6, 000 acres. The company, Solenex, sued. A lawyer for the company, William Perry Pendley of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, said the incoming Trump administration could simply decide that canceling the lease had been wrong. “All it would take,” he said, “is for the Justice Department to enter the case and say, ‘We’ve . We will lift the suspension and we’ll permit the drilling to go forward. ’” This week, the Interior Department announced that a separate energy company with oil and gas leases on 32, 000 acres in the same area had voluntarily canceled them. Blackfeet tribal leaders called it a victory for cooperation among industry, conservation activists and the government. Proponents of two major oil pipeline projects are also optimistic. Mr. Trump has said he would move quickly to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which Mr. Obama blocked. The chief executive of the Texas company building the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota said he believed that project would sail through under Mr. Trump. To see where things get more tangled, head into the damp woods of the Cascade Range in central Oregon, and the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State, where a long economic decline began in the late 1980s as international trade shifted timber markets to places like Canada, and automated mills eliminated tens of thousands of jobs. Those mills are not going away even if more logs start arriving. “We really don’t have a clear and easy path to go back to the good old days when natural resource extraction was driving our economy,” said Sean Stevens, the executive director of Oregon Wild, a conservation group. “It is not as easy as just logging more,” he said. Logging industry officials said that employment could grow, but that changes at the federal level would have to be profound to make a difference. The first step, they said, would be to increase the budgets of federal land agencies like the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, something that conservative congressional representatives — many of them bent on budget cuts — might not want to hear. “Yes it’s going to cost us money, but in the long term it will save us money because we face a federal forest crisis, with millions of acres that are diseased, and overstocked,” said Travis Joseph, the president of the American Forest Resource Council, which represents wood product companies from the Northern Rockies to California. “We have got to educate Congress and inform them that this is about an investment. ” Davis Filfred, a Navajo Nation council delegate, said he felt that time was running out for the stretches of piñon pine and red sandstone known as the Bears Ears area in southern Utah. It is rich with Native American artifacts, and tribal groups and conservationists have been urging Mr. Obama to name it as a new, perhaps final, national monument before he leaves office. Mr. Filfred drove up to Bears Ears from his home in Aneth, Utah, over Veterans Day weekend with his two sons and other members of Western tribes, and reflected on how much had already been lost there to irresponsible visitors. “They’re taking bones, they’re taking pottery,” he said. “They’re desecrating and damaging the writing on the walls. They’re tearing up the ground with their ATVs and motorcycles. It’s heartbreaking to me when I see that. That’s why I want it protected. ” | 1 |
Even if this week’s in Syria quickly collapses — as most analysts expect it to — it could have a lasting impact on the conflict. Political science research shows that change more than just conditions on the ground: They alter how a war’s participants weigh the benefits of fighting versus talking. can create something like a virtuous cycle, studies have found, making future pauses more likely. Each one has a better chance of lasting longer, discouraging violations, isolating bad actors and building trust among adversaries. This cycle is not always as visible or politically urgent as the question of who is dropping bombs where on a particular day. But, over time, it can shift the participants’ calculus in ways that build conditions for peace. Page Fortna, a Columbia University professor and leading scholar on peace negotiations, says that “piecemeal” deals, though modest and rarely successful, can eventually align the incentives of groups whose demands at the moment are unreconcilable. But there is a flip side. Sometimes can create a vicious cycle instead of a virtuous one. Distrust can deepen, the parties can move further apart, and incentives can shift to make peace even less attractive. Whether the diplomats who arranged the current pause in Syria know it or not, they are making a gamble. Two Notre Dame political scientists, Madhav Joshi and J. Michael Quinn, last year published a study examining 196 and peace deals from 1975 to 2011. They found something surprising: One of the best predictors of a peace agreement’s success is simply whether the parties had prior agreements, even if those earlier failed. Not even a war’s duration or its intensity can so reliably predict a peace deal’s outcome. Neither does the poverty or ethnic diversity of the combatants. “Failures pave the way for better agreements down the road,” Professor Quinn said. Over time, participants see as less risky. If all sides come out feeling that they at least broke even, they grow more willing to make another deal. In Syria, with the status quo so terrible, breaking even doesn’t require much. “These items could be as simple as a request that Assad refrain from calling opposition members terrorists in the press,” Professors Joshi and Quinn wrote in a Foreign Affairs article summarizing their research. “As soon as one party reciprocates, a peace process is underway. And with each successful round, just enough trust and good will may be generated to move on to the next item. ” This is trust not in the colloquial sense of proving personal integrity, but in the political science sense: Negotiators believe they understand one another’s incentives and can predict their behavior. Each side becomes more willing to make concessions, believing the other side will deliver on its end. Take, for example, Yugoslavia, where there were 91 mediated truces or from 1989 to 2000. Of those, 35 percent lasted less than a week and 13 percent lasted exactly a week. Though each appeared to be a catastrophic failure, they culminated in the 1995 Dayton Accords, which ended the Bosnian war that was a subset of the larger conflict, as well as later deals. We are already seeing possible hints of this in Syria. The tempo of is increasing, with the terms expanding and the outside actors investing more political capital. Those gains are slight and the process of building trust is still fragile, so it remains unclear whether the cycle will catch. Stephen B. Long, a professor at the University of Richmond, found in a 2014 paper looking at hundreds of cases from 1948 to 1998, that if violations are consistently punished with some form of retaliation — strong enough to hurt, but not to escalate — then everyone learns he is better off complying. Eventually all sides have less reason to fear they’ll be betrayed, and grow more confident entering otherwise risky or peace talks. This is among the reasons that the Korean Peninsula, though still in a formal state of war, has not had fighting in decades. Each side has proved, in countless exchanges, that it will punish any transgression by the other side, freezing a conflict that had killed a million people. The virtuous cycle takes hold when, after enough rounds, each side concludes that its adversaries will probably follow the terms of any agreement. Everyone profits if the terms of the are carried out, so everyone acts to enforce it. This was often how multiparty wars like Syria’s broke from the cycle of conflict, Professor Fortna said. This can take years. One paper suggested that the cycle does not truly take hold until a lasts for eight weeks that is a bar that Syria has yet to clear. But research papers that describe the dynamic are peppered with examples — Burundi, Nepal, the Philippines, Northern Ireland — that seemed unsolvable until they were suddenly solved. If the great hope is that Syria’s warriors can learn to trust and cooperate, then the great danger is that they will instead learn to distrust and reject. If violations are punished inconsistently, combatants perceive cheating as less risky. So while every transgression does not need to be punished, it’s important that all sides be held to a similar standard for what will provoke retaliation, and how severe. If groups believe that everyone else is likely to cheat, they have a strong incentive to cheat as well. By the same token, if groups come to see the other side as unreliable or unpredictable, they have little reason to enter into any deal. Over successive rounds, each side could bring less to the table or be less willing to follow through on its promises — further convincing one another that talks are not worthwhile. This happened in Angola, where a civil war killed half a million people from 1976 to 2002. The United States and the Soviet Union saw it as a Cold War battleground, and both intervened. They pushed their Angolan proxies to keep fighting, which destroyed trust on the ground — a worrying lesson as Washington and Moscow now find themselves on opposite sides in Syria. Whether Syria slips into a virtuous cycle or vicious one, Professor Fortna said, depends in large part on the United States and Russia. Civil wars are much likelier to end in peace if they have a mediator, often a powerful outside country, according to research by the political scientist Donald Rothchild. That mediator can impose stopgaps, such as temporary that open up space for negotiation. And the mediator makes both sides more willing to take risks for peace, because they trust that the other side will be punished if it fails to keep its word. The state of war between Israel and Egypt, for example, ended only when the United States brokered the 1978 Camp David accords. President Jimmy Carter offered billions in aid to both countries, altering their strategic calculus to make peace more attractive — and implicitly threatening Washington disapproval if either party backed out. Mediation can take subtler forms, such as Norway’s role in hosting the 1990s talks: The neutral setting reduced the political costs. Syria has no such mediator because the only two viable candidates — the United States and Russia — are engaged in the war. Nor is either likely to allow another party, such as the United Nations, to get in the middle. Professor Fortna argued that interim United agreements like this week’s could eventually move them into a sort of role. Though this is politically distasteful in Washington for appearing to put Moscow on equal strategic and moral footings, it is probably necessary. But this would require both powers to demonstrate something they have yet been unable to: the ability to extract concessions from their allies on the ground in Syria. Only then could the United States and Russia trust each other’s ability to follow through on their most important promises. That would surely take multiple rounds to accomplish, and would be only a step toward peace. This can look like failure because it is so incremental. And the success stories often take a decade or more. “There’s not a lot of incentive to give the other guy the benefit of the doubt, which is why wars are hard to end,” Professor Fortna said. “But they do end,” she added. | 1 |
The youngest son of former vice presidential candidate and Virginia Senator Tim Kaine was arrested in Minnesota last weekend for his alleged role in an organized riot against Donald Trump and his policies. [Authorities discovered that Linwood Michael Kaine, 24, had planned his participation in a in St. Paul, Minnesota, against a rally in a clash that led to scuffles and the arrest of six people: WATCH: ’March 4 Trump’ participants and counterprotesters engage in dueling chants at MN Capitol rotunda https: . — KSTP (@KSTP) March 4, 2017, According to St. Paul police spokesman Steve Linders, Kaine, who goes by the name Woody, “turned around and squared up to fight with the officer” as police tried to detain him. “The officer was able to place Mr. Kaine under arrest and take him to the Ramsey County jail for booking,” the police spokesperson confirmed: Tim Kaine’s son arrested after allegedly disrupting rally https: . pic. twitter. — CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) March 8, 2017, During the rally, which approximately 400 people and 50 attended, a Plymouth woman was hit in the head by a moving object, although she remained unharmed. In a statement, Sen. Tim Kaine ( ) who grew up in St. Paul, did not condemn his son’s actions. “We love that our three children have their own views and concerns about current political issues. They fully understand the responsibility to express those concerns peacefully,” Kaine said. The rally in Minnesota was one of many rallies to take place nationwide, as people expressed their support for Trump and his administration’s agenda. Despite inaccurate media reports that the riots were an outgrowth of the protests themselves, the majority of rallies were peaceful. However, violence did break out in Berkeley, California, after activists disrupted the rally. Ten people were arrested while an elderly man lay in agony after being . You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com. | 1 |
Adam Andrzejewski, the founder and CEO of OpenTheBooks. com, joined Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Tuesday to discuss his recent Forbes article, “Mapping $27 Billion in Federal Funding of America’s Sanctuary Cities. ”[In Forbes, Andrzejewski writes, “The threat of losing nearly $27 billion in federal funding seems to be having an effect on some cities. In fact, Miami already reversed their sanctuary city policy. ” But Andrzejewski admits the legality of sanctuary cities is an open question the courts will likely settle. “The sanctuary city experiment,” he said, “is the supreme test of the rule of law. ” Andrzejewski asked, “Can public figures, can public governments, violate federal law with no consequences and no penalties?” His organization’s research breaks the spending down to a granular level and allows anyone to see the real and potential economic implications of sanctuary cities on a basis. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. | 1 |
Zenit 2 2 0 0 9 3 6
Dundalk 2 1 1 0 2 1 4
Alkmaar 2 0 1 1 1 6 1
Maccabi 2 0 0 2 3 5 0
FK Austria 0 Vienna Plzen 0
Roma 4 Astra Giurgiu 0
Roma 2 1 1 0 5 1 4
FK Austria Vienna 2 1 1 0 3 2 4
Plzen 2 0 2 0 1 1 2
Astra Giurgiu 2 0 0 2 2 7 0
Athletic Bilbao 1 Rapid Vienna 0
Genk 3 Sassuolo 1
Genk 2 1 0 1 5 4 3
Sassuolo 2 1 0 1 4 3 3
Rapid Vienna 2 1 0 1 3 3 3
Athletic Bilbao 2 1 0 1 1 3 3
Ajax 1 Standard Liège 0
Celta Vigo 2 Panathinaikos 0
Ajax 2 2 0 0 3 1 6
Celta Vigo 2 1 1 0 3 1 4
Standard Liège 2 0 1 1 1 2 1
Panathinaikos 2 0 0 2 1 4 0
KAA Gent 2 Konyaspor 0
Shakhtar Donetsk 2 Sporting Braga 0
Shakhtar Donetsk 2 2 0 0 3 0 6
KAA Gent 2 1 1 0 3 1 4
Sporting Braga 2 0 1 1 1 3 1
Konyaspor 2 0 0 2 0 3 0
Schalke 3 R. Salzburg 1
Krasnodar 5 Nice 2
Krasnodar 2 2 0 0 6 2 6
Schalke 2 2 0 0 4 1 6
R. Salzburg 2 0 0 2 1 4 0
Nice 2 0 0 2 2 6 0 | 0 |
TORONTO — As the Toronto Raptors assembled their lead in the third quarter, Air Canada Centre began to fill with an unmistakable sense that this team was not merely overpowering the Miami Heat. No, the Raptors were also escaping their past. All the exits. All the blown chances. All the disappointments. On Sunday afternoon, the Raptors turned the most significant basketball game in franchise history into a citywide celebration, defeating the Heat, in Game 7 of the teams’ Eastern Conference semifinals. Kyle Lowry scored 35 points with a sore elbow, and DeMar DeRozan added 28 with a sprained thumb. “I know one thing,” Coach Dwane Casey said. “Our guys compete. ” Nothing about this game was easy for the Raptors — not against the likes of Dwyane Wade, not after seven games, not with so many bodies. But for the first time in the team’s existence, the Raptors are bound for the conference finals. Their series with the Cleveland Cavaliers will start Tuesday night at Quicken Loans Arena. “We ain’t satisfied,” Lowry said. “That’s just our mentality. ” The Raptors erupted in the third quarter, building their lead possession by possession. To 11 when DeMarre Carroll sank a . To 14 when Bismack Biyombo got inside for a dunk. To 16 when Lowry drove to the rim for layup. The Heat trailed by as many as 28 in the fourth. “They wore us down,” Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra said. “Toronto beat us, fair and square. ” Wade and Goran Dragic scored 16 points each for the Heat, who were greeted by light snowfall when they left their hotel for the game. About a before tipoff, flurries gave way to hail. It was springtime in Canada, and the conditions — at least symbolically — favored the Raptors. (For the record, it did not snow in Miami for Game 6.) Thousands of fans filed into Jurassic Park, an outdoor viewing party on a block next to the arena. If people here were excited about the game, about this national event, then they were also opening themselves up to the possibility of more frustration, more misery, more sadness. The ghosts of postseasons past have haunted this franchise. Seven previous trips to the playoffs. Six flameouts. It has been particularly impossible for Toronto to forget 2001, when it came within seconds of advancing to the conference finals. But Vince Carter, after attending his college graduation ceremony that morning, missed a shot at the buzzer, and the Philadelphia 76ers escaped with a Game 7 win in the conference semifinals. That was 15 years ago. The Raptors finally seized another opportunity. “This organization deserves it,” DeRozan said. This was a physical series that featured nearly as many injuries as missed shots. Both teams had long ago lost their starting centers — the Raptors’ Jonas Valanciunas to a sprained right ankle, the Heat’s Hassan Whiteside to a sprained right knee. Others played on, through jammed thumbs and bruised wrists, through the toll of a series that manifested itself in bandages and braces. In Game 6, with his team hoping to extend the series, Spoelstra went small by starting Justise Winslow, a forward, at center. Spoelstra sought to generate more offense, and he instructed Winslow to set screen after screen along the perimeter, drawing Biyombo, his primary defender, away from the basket. The Heat ran away with the win. Ahead of Game 7, Casey expressed cautious optimism that his players would make the necessary adjustments. He wanted his defenders to focus on the ball, to contain Wade and Dragic and at least slow their dribble penetration. Casey advised his players to stop worrying so much about the coming screen. “Too many times, we’re looking to see where the screens are coming from,” Casey said, adding, “We have to do a good job of locking into the basketball. ” The arena practically shook when DeRozan scored the first points of the game on a midrange jumper. The crowd roared when Wade picked up his second foul and took an early seat. Neither team was particularly efficient, however, and this surprised no one after two weeks of turnovers and empty possessions. On Sunday, the Raptors and the Heat combined to miss nine of their first 10 attempts. DeRozan, though, was assertive. He scored 11 points on 12 attempts in the first quarter. Toronto took a lead into the second half. As the game wore on, others emerged for the Raptors. Biyombo finished with 17 points, and Patrick Patterson had 11 points and 11 rebounds. “I thought tonight we played big,” Casey said. “If you’re going to do that, you’ve got to make sure you plant your feet in the lane and do what you do. ” Late in the fourth quarter, with the final seconds melting away on the Heat’s season, a happy mob formed in front of the Raptors’ bench. Coaches embraced. Players exchanged . But back in the locker room, a dose of reality awaited: scouting reports on the Cavaliers, one for every player. “It’s another step for us,” Casey said. “But we’re not there yet. ” | 1 |
STORRS, Conn. — One year ago, on the night after Super Bowl Sunday, Geno Auriemma sat alongside three stalwart seniors and momentarily imagined a coaching life without them. “I start to blink because I look out there and start to think that these three are not going to be there next year,” Auriemma, coach of the Connecticut women’s basketball powerhouse, said after a solid road victory over and South Carolina. He also appeared to be blinking away a tear or two at the thought of losing those three players: Breanna Stewart, Moriah Jefferson and Morgan Tuck. That moment of emotional reflection for Auriemma, who is better known for biting sarcasm, came after a 60th consecutive victory, to which the Huskies predictably added 15 more on the way to their fourth straight (and 11th overall) national championship. Not many, including Auriemma, would have bet the mortgage on the streaks — both in games and titles — lasting much longer. But on Monday night, in a and expectant Gampel Pavilion, the Huskies made it an even 100 straight victories, swarming that same South Carolina team, to cross the threshold. The Huskies did it behind their forwards, Gabby Williams and Napheesa Collier. Williams scored 26 points and grabbed 14 rebounds while Collier added 18 and 9. “Continuing what they’ve done for so many years,” said Williams, referring to past iconic Huskies, several of whom, Stewart included, watched from the stands. It starts to sound ridiculous, but the Huskies, this season, have not lost since November 2014 (in overtime at Stanford). If not for that loss, they’d be working on a streak of 148 straight. Even Auriemma sounded at a loss to explain this. He settled on “it was meant to be” after weeks of insisting that he and his players never talked about No. 100. Against the and No. 6 Gamecocks, the subject was unavoidable. And after 12 successive blowouts in an American Athletic Conference in which the Huskies have gone since its formation, the prospect of stiffer competition was preferable. With an eye on bigger game, the N. C. A. A. tournament, Auriemma said: “The streak isn’t all theirs. They carried the streak across the finish line. But if they win the national championship, it’s all theirs. ” It’s not as if the act of breaking records is new to his program. A previous record winning streak (surpassing the U. C. L. A. men’s record established from 1971 to 1974) was bested by the current run last month. There is no doubt that a potential fifth straight national title, and 12th over all, are numbers more appealing to Auriemma. But triple digits in consecutive wins represents another symbolic groundbreaking and powerful statement in the continued and collective excellence of a women’s sports team. Only once had Auriemma’s program come this close to 100 — a winning streak that stood at 99 when an upstart St. John’s team won at Gampel in February 2012, before Connecticut’s departure from what was then a highly competitive Big East Conference. “Senior night, packed house at Gampel, as always,” Kim Barnes Arico — then the St. John’s coach, now in her fifth season at Michigan, where she has built a team — said in a telephone interview. With St. John’s trailing by 2 points in the final seconds, Barnes Arico decided during a timeout to try for the win rather than overtime in such a challenging environment. Shenneika Smith — “she hadn’t made a 3 in weeks” — sank the winning shot. On the bus ride home, Barnes Arico’s cellphone rang. “It’s Geno, calling to congratulate me after what had to be a crushing loss,” Barnes Arico said. Auriemma had been supportive of her efforts to elevate the St. John’s program, which is why, she said, “I can’t help but applaud what he’s doing there, going for 100 straight, just incredible. ” That said, she was “holding off” on reaching out, or rooting for either side on Monday, given her ties to South Carolina Coach Dawn Staley. Barnes Arico has coached and U. S. A. Basketball teams with Staley, a Olympian and, like Auriemma, a Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame member. “Either way, such a great story,” Barnes Arico said. Staley’s team — as have most ranked teams — presented Connecticut with its usual handicap of a size disadvantage, with their star, A’ja Wilson, and the center Alaina Coates. But the Huskies countered with Williams, only and Collier, — both quick jumpers who play bigger than they are. After Wilson helped keep the Gamecocks within at the half, the Huskies limited her to 5 points. They took control late in the third quarter and were never threatened in the fourth. “You can’t let your guard down — UConn is going to make you pay every time,” Staley said. In surmounting every obstacle on a schedule with opponents, Auriemma rapidly developed a cohesive Core Four to replace the Big Three of Stewart, Jefferson and Tuck, who were the top three picks in last year’s W. N. B. A. draft. “We have no preseason but we have four really good players, and every time we need something, one of them comes up with something,” Auriemma said, referring to the juniors Williams and Kia Nurse, and the sophomores Katie Lou Samuelson and Collier. If this wasn’t supposed to be a season of extended dominance, the question entering Monday night had evolved. Would the Huskies ever lose? “It’s not if,” Auriemma said, “it’s just when. ” But if not Monday night, or sometime this season, just when? Next season, Connecticut is planning to suit up Azura Stevens, a transfer from Duke who many believe would have been UConn’s best player this season. The Huskies will add Megan Walker, rated by some as the nation’s No. 1 high school recruit. They will return six of their seven rotation players, the exception being Saniya Chong, who shares the position with the freshman Crystal Dangerfield. With no formidable opponent left on the conference schedule, and victories over many of the teams already recorded, an inquiring mind wants to wonder whether the Huskies might in a couple of years be on the doorstep of 200. | 1 |
The assistant principal of a Pennsylvania high school has resigned after a video of him berating student activists went viral.[ Assistant principal Zach Ruff, who was filmed berating and cursing at activists, resigned the day after a petition defending Ruff circulated online with more than 50, 000 signatures. Ruff was placed on administrative leave on April 21 after the video of his interaction with the young activists went viral. “You can go to hell where they are too,” he said pointing at pictures of aborted children. “They’re not children! They’re cells!” “Listen here, son, alright? I am as gay as the day is long, and twice as sunny. I don’t give a fuck what you think Jesus tells me about what I should and should not be doing,” Ruff barked. “You’re acting very immaturely. I’m 16 and you’re yelling at me,” one of the teens responded. The school said Ruff resigned from his position in a news release. “Dr. Ruff has acknowledged that the demonstrators had a right to be on a public sidewalk,” the news release said. “He acknowledged that his conduct cannot be defended or condoned, and he deeply regretted his actions as displayed on the video. This school district will not interfere with the rights of anyone to express themselves. ” “In reviewing the video Dr. Ruff knew that the conduct he displayed was not representative of who he is and was not representative of the kind of educational leader he prided himself on being,” the news release added. Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart. com | 1 |
November 14, 2016
Meteorologists were today said to be ‘cautiously optimistic’ that the skies over much of Britain would tonight be the gloomiest in living memory. ‘You might think a grey sky is a grey sky is a grey sky,’ said weather watcher Ron Webster. ‘But I assure you there are grey skies and there are grey skies. Tonight will be a real eye opener, not that that will make a lot of difference.’
Called a ‘Supergloom’, the phenomenon occurs whenever there’s something worth seeing in the night skies over England. ‘A good view of the ISS, a meteor shower, a comet, some planets in alignment. You can guarantee that if there’s anything remotely interesting happening above our heads, atmospheric conditions will combine to create this impenetrable blanket of murk.’
Sure enough, tonight’s sky-full of dull coincides with a full moon that would have appeared slightly larger and brighter than usual, had anyone not in an aircraft been able to see it. (Keen photographers wishing to record the spectacle have been advised to download a shot of any full moon and ‘blow it up a bit’.)
But for fans of the overcast like Ron Webster, tonight’s damp, dismal and funereal sky will be something to behold. ‘I’m literally over the moon,’ he said, ‘and any other celestial phenomena.’ Share this story...
Posted: Nov 14th, 2016 by Bravenewmalden Click for more article by Bravenewmalden .. | 0 |
By Sarah Jones on Tue, Nov 1st, 2016 at 11:48 am A "veteran" spy is alleging that Russia is cultivating, supporting and assisting Donald Trump and has been for at least five years. The spy said the response from the FBI was "shock and horror." Share on Twitter Print This Post
A “veteran” spy is alleging that Russia is cultivating, supporting and assisting Donald Trump and has been for at least five years. The spy said the response from the FBI was “shock and horror.”
The report alleges that Trump and his “inner circle” have accepted a regular “flow of intelligence from the Kremlin and that Russian intelligence claims to have “compromised” Trump on his visits and could “blackmail him”.
David Corn at Mother Jones reported:
Mother Jones has reviewed that report and other memos this former spy wrote. The first memo, based on the former intelligence officer’s conversations with Russian sources, noted, “Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance.” It maintained that Trump “and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals.” It claimed that Russian intelligence had “compromised” Trump during his visits to Moscow and could “blackmail him.” It also reported that Russian intelligence had compiled a dossier on Hillary Clinton based on “bugged conversations she had on various visits to Russia and intercepted phone calls.”
The former intelligence officer says the response from the FBI was “shock and horror.” The FBI, after receiving the first memo, did not immediately request additional material, according to the former intelligence officer and his American associates. Yet in August, they say, the FBI asked him for all information in his possession and for him to explain how the material had been gathered and to identify his sources. The former spy forwarded to the bureau several memos—some of which referred to members of Trump’s inner circle. After that point, he continued to share information with the FBI. “It’s quite clear there was or is a pretty substantial inquiry going on,” he says.
In August, Corn reports, the FBI asked the spy for all information related to his findings and he “continued to share information with the FBI” which he says made it clear there was a “pretty substantial inquiry going on.”
If this report is accurate, the spy’s information confirms what Senator Harry Reid says intelligence experts and FBI Director James Comey already shared with him regarding “explosive information” regarding ties and coordination between Donald Trump and Russia.
This report also rings true given report about the Trump server repeatedly being connected to Russia, including Trump’s server possibly communicating with a Russian bank.
It also makes sense given the many ties to Russia within Trump’s own campaign and indeed Trump’s own rhetoric regarding NATO and Russia. Trump changed the Republican Party platform’s pro-Ukraine proposals and talked about weakening NATO, both of which mirrored Putin’s wish list. NBC reported Monday evening that the FBI is in the preliminary stages of investigating Trump’s ex-campaign manager’s connection to Russia.
Donald Trump has already been busted for reading Russian propaganda at his rallies, as Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald uncovered an instance of Trump reading propaganda directly from Putin at a rally in Pennsylvania.
Eichenwald pointed out something vital and that is that the Russians have been hacking into American emails and then falsifying them in hopes of impacting the presidential election, “The Russians have been obtaining American emails and now are presenting complete misrepresentations of them—falsifying them—in hopes of setting off a cascade of events that might change the outcome of the presidential election. The big question, of course, is why are the Russians working so hard to damage Clinton and, in the process, aid Donald Trump?”
The answer to why Putin is trying so hard to defeat Clinton might be in multiple reports that he fears her. Unlike Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton is no pushover. According to former U.S. officials, Putin sees Clinton as a “forceful proponent of ‘regime change’ policies that the Russian leader considers a grave threat to his own survival.”
Trump has been acting like someone already groomed by the Kremlin. He’s been a willing puppet for their dangerous goal of destroying western democracy, he is easily flattered and easily manipulated. It’s also easy to see how they could have gotten something on him with which to blackmail him – see the Billy Bush bus tape of Trump bragging about sexual assault. Trump is easy bait.
The fact that the FBI Director felt compelled to announce something about Hillary’s emails that turned out to not be about her emails but about her aide’s emails and even then he wasn’t sure what they said or even if they were duplicates, but he chose to keep this explosive information about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia under wraps is very disturbing.
This isn’t a matter of partisan disagreement about the rules the FBI follows about ongoing investigations. This is a matter of national security at this point if all of these reports from different sources are accurate. But the fact that they come from different sources and that Trump willingly staffed his own campaign with Russian ties and he is advocating for their dream positions and he reads their propaganda straight from the vault so to speak — these facts add up to what looks like a terrifying fire of epic proportions. | 0 |
It was, in Gary Johnson’s own words, another “Aleppo moment. ” During a town interview on MSNBC on Wednesday night, Mr. Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president, was asked by the host Chris Matthews to name his favorite foreign leader. Mr. Johnson, appearing flustered, was at a loss to come up with a name. He grasped at a former president of Mexico, Vicente Fox, who has been critical of Donald J. Trump, but was unable to remember his name without help — or the name of any sitting leader of a foreign country. “I guess I’m having an Aleppo moment,” he said. Mr. Johnson was referring to a remarkably similar episode earlier this month when, during another interview on MSNBC, he was asked how he would deal with the continuing situation in Aleppo, the ravaged Syrian city at the center of that country’s refugee crisis. “What is Aleppo?” Mr. Johnson said at the time. Mr. Matthews, who was interviewing Mr. Johnson and former Gov. William F. Weld of Massachusetts, his running mate, live at the University of New Hampshire, appeared to stall to give Mr. Johnson more time after the candidate repeated the initial question, looking slightly panicked. “Any one of the continents, any country, name one foreign leader that you respect and look up to, anybody,” Mr. Matthews said. Mr. Johnson exhaled loudly. “Mine was Shimon Peres,” Mr. Weld interjected. Mr. Matthews clarified that he was looking for someone who was still alive. He then named various countries and continents — Canada, Mexico, Europe, Asia — in an apparent attempt to jog Mr. Johnson’s memory. Mr. Johnson then made the “Aleppo moment” comment, indicating that he was having trouble coming up with Mr. Fox’s name. “But I’m giving you the whole world!” Mr. Matthews shouted, interrupting him. Mr. Weld eventually supplied Mr. Fox’s last name to Mr. Johnson, and Mr. Matthews, apparently having given up on the presidential candidate, asked the eager Mr. Weld to name his own favorite foreign leader, looking to conclude a painful exchange that felt significantly longer than the 50 seconds or so that it lasted. Mr. Weld paused for half a second. “Um, Merkel?” he said, referring to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. “Can’t argue with that,” Mr. Matthews said, as the crowd applauded. | 1 |
Trump To Host Facebook Live Nightly Show Until Election Day
But her opinion of Sulzberger wasn’t very high: “But Arthur is a pretty big wuss so he’s not going to do a lot more than that. Hillary would have to be the one to call.”
Tanden believed that Clinton also needed to get more minority and women reporters in her corner to keep her campaign afloat. Advertisement - story continues below
“He also thinks the brown and women pundits can shame the times and others on social media,” she concluded. “So cultivating Joan Walsh, Yglesias, Allen, perry bacon, Greg Sargent, to defend her is helpful. They can be emboldened. Fwiw – I pushed pir to do this a yr ago.”
I’m not positive it’s acceptable to refer to pundits (or anyone) as “brown” anymore.
But maybe it worked. After all, schulzburger the wuss did endorse Clinton last month. | 0 |
DUBLIN — An assembly of Irish citizens convened by Parliament is considering changes to one of the most divisive policies in the country: the ban on abortions, which has been enshrined in Ireland’s Constitution since 1983. The group, a Citizens’ Assembly led by Mary Laffoy, a Supreme Court judge, does not have the power to change the law. But its mandate from Parliament — to examine the full range of medical, legal and ethical issues surrounding abortion — suggests a willingness to revisit the ban, one of the most stringent in the Western world. Over the last three months, the assembly has received more than 13, 500 comments from the public — more than 1, 000 of which have been published online so far. It pored over these submissions at the Grand Hotel Malahide over the weekend, along with testimony from experts, and is scheduled to issue a report later this year. Abortion was already illegal in Ireland before 1983, but the Eighth Amendment gave “the right to life of the unborn” equal status to “the right to life of the mother” under the Constitution. The amendment was enacted through a voter referendum, and can be altered — or abandoned — only via another referendum. Several highly publicized cases since then have contributed to and reflected a shift in the public’s mood, however. In 2012, a woman, Savita Halappanavar, died from septic shock while having a miscarriage, after a hospital denied her an abortion that might have saved her life. And last year, a United Nations committee ruled that Ireland had violated a woman’s rights by forcing her to travel abroad for an abortion even though severe congenital defects had been diagnosed in the fetus. Legal uncertainty over how to define “the unborn” has long dogged the amendment, and the assembly was seen as one response to the panel’s criticisms. It is common for women in Ireland to travel to countries such as Britain and the Netherlands for abortions. Figures from Britain’s National Health Service showed that more than 3, 400 women gave Irish addresses to British abortions clinics in 2015. That said, Ireland remains a conservative society, and the Roman Catholic Church opposes any change in the law. “We believe that every unborn child, irrespective of his or her medical condition or the circumstances of his or her birth, has the right to be treated equally before the law,” the bishops’ conference said in a statement. Submissions posted online expressed a wide range of views, with many of them offering deeply personal perspectives. Leslie Spillane, a woman in her 20s from Cork, in southwestern Ireland, wrote that several of her friends had traveled abroad to terminate their pregnancies. “These friends of mine are also the lucky ones, they have been able to borrow the money for the travel, and they have had friends they could tell,” she wrote. “Abortions happen, everyday. Making them illegal doesn’t stop woman needing, or wanting them, or inflicting them on themselves — there will always be coat hangers, broken bottles, painkillers, stairs to fall down, fists to hit, medicines to swallow. ” In a phone interview, she said that “even if you don’t agree with abortion, it’s not morally acceptable to force your views onto others. ” Defenders of the law were equally adamant. “Abortion, in our firm belief, is the taking of human life irrespective of the stage of pregnancy,” wrote Kathleen Gleeson and her husband, Raymond Gleeson, from County Kerry, in southwestern Ireland. Valerie Marjoram, a woman in her 30s in County Kildare, just west of Dublin, described herself as a feminist who opposed abortion on religious grounds. “I find it appalling that a certain brand of feminism would put more effort into obtaining the legal sanction of murdering one’s own child than fighting for the right to carry a child to term without losing one’s pay, career path, promotion, college place,” she said in a phone interview. “The fact that abortion is legal in any country has led to a culture of selfishness where even life can be rescheduled if it happens at the ‘wrong time. ’” The Eighth Amendment has been subject to legal and political challenges over the years. In 1992, Ireland’s highest court upheld the right to an abortion if the mother’s life is at risk, including from suicide, but how to interpret that right remains in dispute. In 1992, voters approved an amendment to the Constitution to allow women to travel abroad for abortions and to receive information about abortion services abroad. And in that year, and again in 2002, voters rejected amendments that would have removed the threat of suicide as grounds for a legal abortion. Conor O’Mahony, a lecturer in law at University College Cork, says the continued contentiousness reveals problems with the wording of the ban. “The Eighth Amendment doesn’t work as a means of regulating abortion, whether you are coming from the or abortion rights perspective,” he said in a phone interview. “And the evidence I would give you is that neither side has ever been happy with how that amendment has been interpreted and applied over the years. ” He said that public opinion had been gradually shifting in favor of legalizing abortion — particularly in cases involving severe fetal abnormalities or rape — but predicted that the debate would continue for years even if a referendum was to take place in the near future. Gerard Whyte, a professor of law at Trinity College Dublin, said in a phone interview that it would be unwise to simply repeal the amendment, as some advocates seek. “If there is no constitutional protection for the unborn, then there is a problem and we’re into uncharted territory,” he said. “I’m simply warning about a situation whereby people decide to repeal the Eighth but don’t add anything else. ” | 1 |
Dispatches from Wolf Country –Sitting in my cave, watching the spider spin ‹ › Professor and Attorney Rahul Manchanda worked for one of the largest law firms in Manhattan where he focused on asbestos litigation. At the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (“UNCITRAL”) in Vienna, Austria, Mr. Manchanda was exposed to international trade law, arbitration, alternative dispute resolution, and comparisons of the American common law with European civil law. He later worked for one of the largest multi-national law firms in Paris France, Coudert Frères, where he focused primarily on international arbitration, arbitration agreements, the enforcement of foreign arbitration awards against multinational parent corporations, piercing the corporate veil, arbitration venue choice, and foreign policy. In Paris, Mr. Manchanda analyzed and compared the American legal system with its British, French, Russian, German, and Chinese counterparts. Mr. Manchanda also has extensive technical experience in Federal Patent Prosecution and Intellectual Property issues working for Milde Hoffberg & Macklin LLP and Moses & Singer LLP, and has contributed to the issuing of patents in the areas of biotechnology, organic chemistry, biopharmaceuticals, electrical and mechanical engineering, computer software and technology, and internet business methods. He was recently the Keynote Address Speaker for Hamline University School of International Law on the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, as well as a Chief Speaker for the Civil Rights Litigation Update Seminar on Balancing Inalienable Civil Rights and National Security in the Post-911 Era. Professor Manchanda is also a Faculty Member for LawLine.com, an online Continuing Legal Education (“CLE”) program designed to educate Attorneys all across the country on cutting edge issues of Immigration Law and Deportation and Removal Defense Litigation as well as a second CLE on the Foundations of International Law, as well as 5 different Immigration Law/Deportation Defense Seminars for Rossdale CLE. Click here to watch a portion of his 2 hour lecture on Immigration and Deportation and Removal Defense Litigation or The Foundations of International Law. You can also watch some of his many appearances on FoxNews, CNN, CourtTV, NBC, and other major media networks on some of the most notable cases in global history, here. He has also given multiple lectures as one of the first pioneering immigration law practitioners who merged Criminal Defense Law and Immigration/Deportation Defense Law in such lectures with other immigration law luminaries in LexisNexis Presents a Complimentary Webinar: Criminal Law and Immigration Intersection 101 and Immigration Reform and the Workplace: An Overview of Legal and Legislative Developments. At Boston University, Mr. Manchanda received a Bachelors degree in Biology, where he distinguished himself in the chemical and biological sciences, doing extensive research in organic chemistry, in both field and laboratory work relating to organic synthesis and isolation, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, structure determination, and production of synthetic bio-active natural products. At BU, Mr. Manchanda also was on the BU Shotokan Karate Team as well as a Lead Tenor with the Marsh Chapel Choir, also finding time to be a Teaching Fellow in Molecular Cell Biology, Organic Chemistry, and a private tutor in Calculus based Physics and Organic Chemistry. He also attended Yale University where he studied Molecular Cell and Evolutionary Biology. He served on the Pace University School of Law’s Mentor Program where he received his Juris Doctor degree. Attorney Manchanda graduated from the Wooster Prep School in Danbury Connecticut where he was a Varsity Letterman in Soccer, Wrestling, Tennis, and Lacrosse, as well as Lead in the Drama Program. For more than 14 years, his internationally recognized law firm has a formidable presence in Federal and State Criminal, Civil, International, and Immigration Courts throughout the United States pertaining to Master, Individual, and Final Hearings, Naturalization Interviews, Writs of Habeas Corpus, Writs of Corum Nobis, Marriage Cases, U.S. Embassy and Consular Processing, American Citizen Services, United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Department of State liaison, 440 Motions to Vacate, Amend, or Expunge Criminal Convictions, Aggravated Felonies, Drug Smuggling Cases, Stokes Hearings, Political Asylum, Taxation, Hardship, Removal of Condition Hearings, National Security, and Adjustment of Status Interviews. He served as an American Immigration Lawyer Association (“AILA“) Committee Member for the Congressional/Advocacy Committee, the Department of Labor (“DOL“) Committee, and the Executive Office for Immigration Review (“EOIR“)/District Counsel/Political Asylum Committee. Attorney Manchanda also proudly served on the New York State Bar Association Empire State Counsel Program, which is a small group of Attorneys who serve the poor without charge, helping people who otherwise could not afford legal counsel to achieve justice. Attorney Manchanda also proudly serves as a Member of the American Bar Association Advisory Panel, a group of Attorneys that informs the ABA’s priorities and decisions by providing opinions about the direction of the ABA and issues facing the profession. Attorney Rahul Manchanda of Manchanda Law Office PLLC has also traveled extensively throughout the world where he has fought for peace and mutual understanding by and between the United States and different countries overseas. His work, observations, and travels have been published and been received to make foreign policy decisions by the International Atomic Energy Agency (“IAEA”), the US RAHUL MANCHANDA IN TEHRAN IRANCongress, US Senate, US Executive Branch, as well as countless other think-tanks, foreign and domestic governmental agencies, NGOs, foreign and domestic policy institutions, such as can be found here. Attorney Rahul Manchanda’s ceaseless and tireless work advocating peace, universal human and civil rights, and the avoidance of war and conflict has truly transformed the world, perhaps even helping to stop World War 3, for which he has been viciously attacked online and personally by warmongers, enemies of global peace, and religious extremists. In addition to Mr. Manchanda’s extensive international litigation practice in Federal and State Criminal Defense Law, Immigration Law, Deportation and Removal Defense Litigation, Family Law, International Law, and Civil Litigation, he has advised on, been consulted on, prepared, and filed tens of thousands of Arraignments, Trials, Hearings, Non-Immigrant and Immigrant Visa Petitions including, but not limited to: H-1B1, B, C, D, E, L, O, P, H-3, J, K, M, R, S, T, and U Visas, as well as I-130 and I-140 Immigrant Petitions with accompanying Adjustment of Status (I-485), Extraordinary Ability Petitions, EB-1, EB-2, EB-3, EB-5, Investment Based Visas, PERM, RIR, and Regular Labor Certification Applications with the Department of Labor, Political Asylum, Marriage Cases, Stokes Interviews, Naturalization/Citizenship, Agricultural, 245(I), CSS/Lulac/Zambrano, LIFE Act, Removal of Conditions, Criminal and Overstay Waivers, and Aggravated Felony and CMT Defense. Attorney Manchanda has succeeded for his Clients in Deportation and Removal Proceedings, Asylum, Employment Based Visa Petitions including PERM/Labor Certification, Business Immigration Visas, and Family Based Immigration Petitions, for tens of thousands of people, for more than 14 years. He taught Immigration Law at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice for the City University of New York located in Manhattan New York. He has also successfully advised on and appeared in Criminal Court throughout New York for many different types of State and Federal Criminal Defense Matters. He was sworn in and admitted to practice in the highest courts in New York State as well as in the Federal United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, the Federal United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, the Federal United States District Court for the Northern District of New York, the United States District Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, the United States District Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, and the United States District Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He has been an active member of the American Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association, the New York County Lawyers Association, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, Phi Alpha Delta International, the Global Interdependence Center (“GIC”), the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, Network 20/20, and the Asia Society. He regularly participated in conferences with the House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate, Capitol Hill, the Center For Strategic and International Studies (“CSIS”), and the Council on Foreign Relations (“CFR”) in Washington, D.C. pertaining to counter-terrorism and foreign policy in South Asia, as well as completing counter-terrorism training with Security Solutions International (“SSI”). He served on a New York Committee on State Regulation of Immigration Law in front of the New York State Senate. He served on the Board of Directors and Sponsor of the US-India Institute (“USINI”), a non-partisan foreign policy advisory board and think tank located in Washington, D.C. focusing on critical geo-strategic issues of national security, defense and economic relations between the U.S. and India, informing and educating key policy makers in the U.S. and India on issues of common interest, and advocating the importance of achieving and maintaining peace through Rahul Manchanda Attorneystrength and economic freedom. He served as the U.S.-India Political Action Committee (“USINPAC“) Co-Chairman for New York where he impacted U.S. Foreign Policy on issues of concern to the Indian American community in the United States, providing bipartisan support to candidates for Federal, State and Local office who supported the issues that were important to the Indian American community, including research, support, and advocacy towards the successful passage of the United States-India Nuclear Cooperation Approval and Non-Proliferation Enhancement Act, signed into law on October 8, 2008 after more than three years of contentious bi-partisan and bi-lateral negotiations. Recently Attorney Manchanda was awarded the prestigious Hind Rattan Award for his outstanding services, achievements, and contributions in his field for “keeping the flag of India high” as an NRI/PIO by the NRI Welfare Society of India, an award bestowed on only 30 “eminent” NRIs/PIOs around the globe every year, and for making contributions in strengthening India’s economy. Attorney Manchanda was also Knighted by the Sovereign Order of the Knights of Justice of London England, given the appellation and nobility of Sir Rahul Manchanda. Attorney Manchanda also served on the Paris Conference Presidential Desk of the European Association of Lawyers (“AEA“), a highly selective network of international law firms with a presence in most of the world’s countries. He is also a member of the Indian American Lawyers Association of Manhattan New York as well as the Manhattan Committee on Foreign Relations, which is a private organization that promotes foreign policy and international affairs dialogue between policy makers, researchers, and other high level analysts and the Committee’s membership. Attorney Manchanda is also on the Advisory Council for the Republican National Lawyers Association. Attorney Rahul Manchanda is also a Member of the Queens District Attorney’s Office Defense Attorney Database for new cases assigned to Assistant District Attorneys and a Member of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce. Additionally Rahul Manchanda is the founder of the India Anti-Defamation Committee Ltd which is a premier civil rights organization dedicated to fighting and eradicating racism, discrimination, and hatred directed towards people from the Indian subcontinent. Rahul Manchanda is also a Freemason. Mr. Manchanda has appeared as International Law Expert regularly on major media television program channels such as Fox News, CNN, Court TV, and NBC on such television programs as Dayside, Studio B with Shephard Smith, Fox and Friends, Heartland with John Kasich, Live from CNN with Kyra Phillips, the Live Desk with Martha McCallum, Anderson Cooper 360°, the O’Reilly Factor, Nancy Grace, Banfield & Ford Courtside, Best Defense with Jami Floyd, Justice with Jeanine Pirro, and the Catherine Crier Show on the most publicized and globally newsworthy of international legal issues and cases. You can watch many of these appearances here. He is also featured in Newsweek Magazine‘s Top Attorneys in the United States of America in 2013, and Top Immigration Lawyers in the United States of America in 2012 Showcases. His in depth expertise in International Affairs, State and Federal Criminal Defense Litigation, Consular Processing Issues, Immigration Law, Foreign Affairs, Customs Law, and High-Level Scientific Training has enabled Attorney Manchanda to secure solutions for his Clients in a quick, efficient, and accurate manner for more than 13 years. Mr. Manchanda is fluent in French, English, Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi. He has also studied Russian, Latin, and Hebrew. His hobbies include Politics, International Affairs, and Soccer. In his spare time, he enjoys Chess and Classical Music. | 0 |
galleries are making their debut at Art Basel Miami Beach on Thursday, out of some 600 dealers who applied for the fair and 269 who were accepted. The lineup is determined after much debate on the merit of each and how individual galleries contribute to the overall balance of the show. The New York Times asked Noah Horowitz, the fair’s director, to highlight several newcomers. The sprawling fair is divided into multiple sectors, which can help visitors make sense of its size. Galleries is the main event, intended for top dealers from around the world. Nova is for works done in the last three years. Positions displays projects and is intended to be an incubator for new talent. Survey tackles historical projects, while Public stages outdoor sculptures and installations in Collins Park. Owned by Mara McCarthy, the daughter of the noted contemporary artist Paul McCarthy, this is one of the galleries fueling the rapid ascension of the Los Angeles art scene. Its program, strong in artists of the 1960s and ’70s, is part of a trend, Mr. Horowitz said: “Younger galleries looking at the past. ” The Box is focusing on Barbara T. Smith, 85, an important feminist figure on the West Coast who pioneered and sexuality related performance art. The collective gallery she and her fellow artists founded in the early 1970s, was the site of “Shoot,” the notorious Chris Burden performance piece in which he had himself shot in the arm with a rifle. “Barbara Smith is a legend, and her work has great resonance,” Mr. Horowitz said, though he added that she perhaps was not a household name for collectors. “This is what Survey does so well, provide a place for rediscovery. ” The gallery will show video and sculptures related to her work “Field Piece” ( ). For the original installation, a field of tall resin forms, Ms. Smith asked participants to experience the work naked. Founded by Emmanuel Di Donna, a former Sotheby’s executive, the Upper East Side dealer specializes in Surrealist and Modern art, as well as other postwar works. Not only is this Di Donna’s first showing at Art Basel Miami Beach, it is the gallery’s first art fair. “He’s a great example of a young but superserious, dealer,” Mr. Horowitz said, using the industry term for works that have been previously bought and sold. “He does formidable research on these shows. He’s someone we think will be on the scene for many years to come. ” The mix of works includes “La Joconde” (1967) an bronze by the Belgian Surrealist René Magritte, and “Femme, oiseau, étoiles” (1942) a work in gouache, charcoal and pastel by the Catalan Surrealist Joan Miró. Also on hand is a sculpture by the Italian Fausto Melotti, “La rivoluzione dogmatica” (1969) made of brass and fabric. art is always a strong component of Art Basel Miami Beach, given the fair’s proximity to Central and South America and Miami’s distinct Latin flavor. “We try to emphasize great projects coming from the region,” Mr. Horowitz said, and there are 31 galleries exhibiting this year. Simões de Assis Galeria de Arte was founded in 1984 by the architect Waldir Simões de Assis Filho, who has an unusual family connection to the fair: His son, Guilherme S. de Assis, participated in the Positions sector last year with his SIM Galeria. The father’s gallery, participating in its first international art fair, has made a specialty of secondary market work by South American artists, and this year will feature 16 works made from the 1930s to the 1950s by the Uruguayan artist Carmelo Arden Quin ( ). Quin, who lived in Paris for much of his life, made geometric works, often on irregularly shaped canvases, and is considered an influential modern painter of the type Survey highlights. Vigo is a gallery in London’s West End, founded by Toby Clarke and Thomas Williams, that shows a variety of contemporary artists, including Derrick Adams and Leonardo Drew. For the Miami Beach fair, the gallery is exhibiting more than two dozen drawings and paintings by the Sudanese artist Ibrahim including the ink on paper “Study of a Boy’s Head” (1960) and “Illustration no. 2 for Tayeb Salih’s novel Maryoud” (1977). Mr. known for a gestural approach to works often done in a limited palette of black and white, is a former politician and diplomat who was imprisoned without charges in Sudan in 1975 and has taken inspiration from his time in jail. Two years ago, Mr. became the first African artist to have a retrospective at Tate Modern in London, a show that featured more than 100 works. “He’s having an amazing moment of discovery,” Mr. Horowitz said. “Now he’s really in the international consciousness. ” And the match of dealer and painter is significant, he said. “A London gallery showing an African artist demonstrates that Survey is quite the global program. ” The city of Bologna does not have a big presence on the international fair scene — that tends to be a role filled by Milan or Rome — but Galleria d’Arte Maggiore has developed a strong reputation for showing masterworks across a wide spectrum, from Paul Klee to Basquiat. It was founded in 1978 by Franco and Roberta Calarota and it is now being run by their daughter, Alessia. “It’s a real family affair,” Mr. Horowitz said. For its first Miami Beach appearance, the gallery is focusing exclusively on the Italian painter Giorgio Morandi (1890 — 1964) who became an icon largely after his death for his paintings of deceptively simple tabletop scenes. He imbued clusters of vases and bottles with metaphysical heft. A solo show of his work was presented at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2008. “Anything to do with the Morandi estate, it starts and ends with Maggiore,” Mr. Horowitz said. “They have access to an extraordinary cache of material. ” Given the sometimes cacophonous nature of contemporary art, the Maggiore booth may provide a respite for visitors to the fair. Four of the paintings in the booth have the title “Natura morta” (“still life”) and were done between 1940 and 1960. “It’ll be a beautiful slow presentation in a hectic fair,” Mr. Horowitz said. This is a young gallery showing new works. The show’s title, “Shanghai: A New Ballardian Vision,” has a literary slant and refers to the dystopian urban vision of English novelist J. G. Ballard ( “Empire of the Sun”) who grew up in the Chinese city. The installation will include works by Aaajiao (the nom d’art of the new media artist Xu Wenkai) the painter Cui Jie, and Liu Shiyuan, who works in photography among other media. Ms. Cui’s fantastical oil paintings of imagined buildings, including “Building of Eagles” (2014) are among the works on display. Mr. Horowitz said the gallery’s founder, Leo Xu, a curator and writer, had“risen to the fore of the next generation of Chinese gallerists,” noting that he had exhibited at Art Basel Hong Kong show since it began. (Leo Xu Projects has also participated in Frieze New York and other international fairs.) “It’s a wonderful example of how our presence in Hong Kong has helped us cultivate relations with these Asian galleries,” Mr. Horowitz said. “We don’t take them for geographic reasons — it’s just that great things are being done in China right now. ” Hong Kong is known for being a hub of the art trade, but not so much its production or display. Edouard Malingue Gallery has been participating in Art Basel Hong Kong, and for its first Miami Beach outing is mounting a show of the video artist Wong Ping. Mr. Wong is known for animations that touch on what the gallery’s website calls “repressed sexuality, personal sentiments and political limitations. ” Mr. Wong is also a Hong Kong native. “It’s nice to see a Hong Kong artist,” Mr. Horowitz said. “There’s not an infinite pool of them. A local scene is developing there that goes beyond merely the commercial aspect of a market center. ” Of “Jungle of Desire” (2015) the main work in this solo presentation, Mr. Horowitz said, “Our committee totally loved this video. ” The gallery is also exhibiting a work in the Public sector, which is displayed outdoors in Collins Park, in front of the Bass Museum of Art. Eric Baudart’s “Atmosphère” (2016) is a tank filled with peanut oil that, powered by a fan, will ripple and move. “It’s great to see a new gallery not only do a booth, but contribute an ambitious project to another sector, too,” Mr. Horowitz said. | 1 |
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There was recently an attempt on Trump’s life in Nevada, where the Republican was immediately rushed off the stage by secret service agents on that strange Saturday evening in Reno, Nevada. It was unclear at the time what caused the agents to act in that manner, but it immediately came clear.
Trump was peering into the crowd just before his speech was interrupted.
We have the video from the moment of attack:
Clinton mafia want to stop him by any means!
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People, this is just a reminder that even now, with Trump as our President, he is the target of fanatical liberals or, maybe even Democrats. | 0 |
Report claims that NBC anchor Tamron Hall turned down generous offers to stay on the network’s morning show “Today” because incoming star Megyn Kelly bumped her current show off the air. [From Page Six: “Tamron was offered a multiyear, deal to stay at the ‘Today’ show and she turned it down,” the insider said. “People inside NBC were shocked. They expected her to stay,” a source said. Hall’s relationship with NBC soured when the network canceled her morning show “Today’s Take,” which she with Al Roker, to create a slot for Kelly. Hall found out she was being ousted minutes before she went on air last Friday. “She was devastated to get the news. It was almost an Ann Curry moment live again on TV. It was surreal,” another insider told us. Staffers have been buzzing about Andy Lack’s decision to replace “Today’s” first black female anchor with Kelly. “Tamron doesn’t know Megyn, but of course it’s insulting. Her show was beating Kelly Ripa and ‘Nightly News’ would rate well when she would fill in for Lester Holt. It was a very tense few days for everyone. There was a lot of crying,” the source added. “Tamron never wanted this fight, but she was ready for it. No deal would stop her from standing up after Roker posted their successful ratings [on Twitter]. ” Read the rest of the story here. | 1 |
A lot of different things could happen in the N. F. L. conference championship games on Sunday. But oddsmakers are pretty sure what is likely to happen. The New England Patriots will beat the Pittsburgh Steelers by about 6, and the Atlanta Falcons will defeat the Green Bay Packers by 4 or 5 in a affair. One of the truisms of gambling is that it is difficult for a team to be a great bet week in and week out. That’s because the more a team wins and covers the spread, the higher its spread will be the next week and the week after that. Eventually, most teams congregate close to . 500 against the spread for the season. That makes this season for the Patriots all the more remarkable. Despite being favored in 15 of 16 games by as many as 17 points, the Patriots finished against the spread, earning a tidy profit for those who bet them blindly. That was the best record in the league. It seems hard to remember, but in Week 1, the Patriots were underdogs to an Arizona Cardinals team that had impressed last season. Part of that gap was no doubt attributable to the status of quarterback Tom Brady, who was sitting out the first game of his suspension for his role in the scandal involving the deflation of footballs. The unheralded backup Jimmy Garoppolo was up to the task, though, and the Patriots won in an “upset” that later events proved wasn’t so much of one. The Cardinals finished . Favored in every game for the rest of the season, the Patriots won 14 of 16 games and covered the spread in 13 of them. The only time they did not was in Week 12, at the Jets, when the spread was 9½ and they won by 5. The Patriots more than made up for that four weeks later when they faced the Jets at home and were stuck with their biggest spread of the season, 17 points. Bettors reluctant to lay so many points were burned when the Patriots romped to a win. By the time of the playoffs, the bookmakers were well aware of the Patriots’ tremendous record and posted a huge number, 16 ½, for their game against the Houston Texans. The line seemed somewhat insulting to Houston, which, after all, had won its division and beat the Oakland Raiders in the round. But the Patriots covered again, winning by 18. Before you mortgage your house to bet on every Patriots game next season, be aware that trends like these seldom last more than a year. Last season’s best team against the spread, the Minnesota Vikings, at did post a winning record again this season, at . But the Cincinnati Bengals, who were in 2015, staggered to a record against the lines this season. N. F. L. games this season averaged a total of 45. 6 points scored. So the bookmakers’ of 51 on the Patriots game indicates they expect it to be somewhat high scoring. But it should be nothing compared with the game, which has a whopping of 61 points. That’s the highest ever for a playoff game, Bookmaker. eu reports. The previous high was 59. 5, for the round between the New Orleans Saints and the Detroit Lions. (They scored 73 and went over.) The highest total came in 2000 between the Rams and the San Francisco 49ers. That total closed at 61. 5, and the teams combined for 58 points, just going under. “Bettors perceive these teams as two of the most potent, teams in the league, and they witnessed them score 65 points in a Week 8 shootout,” Scott Cooley of Bookmaker. eu said. He also noted that “football rules have changed to enable more scoring. ” He added: “The quarterbacks and pass catchers are protected in a way they weren’t in the past. We are also seeing more pass interference calls with the new rules that cater to the offense. ” Big totals are often not big enough. OddsShark reports that of the 10 highest totals in history, eight ended up going over. In general, totals for college and N. F. L. games have been creeping up every year as offenses increasingly dominate. The Falcons led the league in scoring at 33. 8 points per game, and the Packers were fourth at 27. 0. The two teams have gone over in all three of their playoff games this season. If the game ends regardless of who wins, we’ll have the biggest surprise of the season. | 1 |
Several people were victorious after Tuesday’s election – Donald Trump, the Republicans of America, and apparently Vladimir Putin. It appears that the president of Russia is ecstatic to work alongside business mogul turned statesman Mr. Trump.
Via ViralThread
It’s well known that American-Russian relations are pretty grim right now. Within the past few months, Russia has practiced nuclear evacuation drills and launched airstrikes on the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo. It seems as if we’re entering a second Cold War, however president-elect Trump is hoping to change all of that.
President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton also hoped to repair the relationship between the two old foes. Sadly however the conflicting ideologies between the Putin and Obama Administrations got in the way. Putin has previously pleaded Obama to come together with Russia. On Independence Day, he claimed: “The history of Russian-American relations shows that when we act as equal partners and respect each other’s lawful interests we are able to successfully resolve the most complex international issues for the benefit of both countries’ peoples and all of humanity.” Try as he might though, Obama hasn’t budged.
Just a few month ago, Obama claimed: “I’m not confident that we can trust the Russians or Vladimir Putin, which is why we have to have to test whether or not we can get an actual cessation of hostilities that includes an end to the kinds of aerial bombing and civilian death and destruction that we have seen carried out by the Assad regime.”
Difficulty surrounding stances on Ukraine and Syria are the main culprits for this distrust. So when Putin learned that he may have another shot at a healthy relationship with America (and Trump), he decided to celebrate.
Putin celebrated Donald Trump’s win in the election with the hope of a stable relationship with America. Trump spoke about repairing the relationship with Russia in his campaign, something Putin took note of. In the clip below, it’s clear that Trump will deal with Putin in a completely different way than Obama.
At a foreign ambassadors meeting in Moscow, Putin expressed his satisfaction with the election, where he congratulated both the American people and president-elect Trump. Putin also told the ambassadors that he was hopeful for future prospects between the two superpowers, America and Russia, especially when it comes to efforts in Syria.
Following his speech, Putin clinked glasses of champagne with the ambassadors in celebration. With the tensions between America and Russia growing at an alarming rate, the world has a watchful eye on what actions Mr. Trump will take when he finally enters the Oval Office.
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Over half of the people who made it onto Forbes‘ list of “America’s Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40,” released in early December, live in California’s Bay Area. [Of the 40 people selected, 25 of them live in San Francisco or Silicon Valley, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, 32, who tops the list with a net worth of $50 billion. Other Bay Area millionaires and billionaires include individuals who earned their wealth from startups and platforms like Airbnb, Snapchat, Instagram, Dropbox, Pinterest, Stripe, and Dropbox. The San Francisco Chronicle points out: … although many of the occupants of Forbes’ roundup are right here in the area, neither the youngest to land on the list, Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey, nor the oldest, Mayweather, live here. Rather, the millionaires and billionaires in the running are largely founders of investment companies, social media networks, and financial services. Forbes notes that president of Irish technology company Stipe, John Collison, is the world’s youngest billionaire. He is two months younger than Snapchat cofounder and CEO Evan Spiegel, who is also 26. Further, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, 28, and Snapchat cofounder Bobby Murphy, 28, are reportedly the only other billionaires in the world under the age of 30. Others who made the list include — in chronological order based on wealth — basketball player and venture capitalist Kobe Bryant, 38 actress and the Honest Company’s Jessica Alba, 35 boxer and entrepreneur Floyd Mayweather, 39 entertainer and Parkwood Entertainment founder Beyoncé Knowles, 35 and basketball player LeBron James, 32. Six of the people listed had made at least some of, their wealth from Facebook. Forbes notes that in order to be be eligible for this list, individuals had to be under age 40 as of December 12, “reside in the U. S. and substantially have made their own fortunes in this country. ” Follow Adelle Nazarian on Twitter and Periscope @AdelleNaz | 1 |
Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Senate Intelligence Committee member Sen. Joe Manchin ( ) said that he had seen no evidence of collusion “whatsoever” between the Trump campaign and Russian during their investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential election. When asked about “collusion” by host George Stephanopoulos, Manchin said, “You know, we haven’t seen any of that whatsoever, George, we’ve been looking and showing everything that they possibly have. That has not led to that. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
This post was originally published on this site
In the week leading up to last Tuesday’s election the press was busy writing obituaries for the Republican Party. This continued even after Donald Trump’s “surprising” victory – which, like the 2008 bank-fraud crash, “nobody could have expected.” The pretense is that Trump saw what no other politician saw: that the economy has not recovered since 2008.
Democrats still seem amazed that voters are more concerned about economic conditions and resentment against Wall Street (no bankers jailed, few junk mortgages written down). It is a sign of their wrong path that party strategists are holding onto the same identity politics they have used since the 1960s to divide Americans into hyphenated special-interest groups.
Obviously, the bottom 95 Percent realize that their incomes and net worth have declined, not recovered. National Income and Federal Reserve statistics show that all growth has accrued to just 5 percent of the population. Hillary is said to have spent $1 billion on polling, TV advertising and high-salaried staff members, but managed not to foresee the political reaction to this polarization. She and her coterie ignored economic policy as soon as Bernie was shoved out of the way and his followers all but told to join a third party. Her campaign speech tried to convince voters that they were better off than they were eight years ago. They knew better!
So the question now is whether Donald Trump will really a maverick and shake up the Republican Party. There seems to be a fight going on for Donald’s soul – or at least the personnel he appoints to his cabinet. Thursday and Friday saw corporate lobbyists in the Republican leadership love-bombing him like the Moonies or Hari Krishna cults welcoming a new potential recruit. Will he simply surrender now and pass on the real work of government to the Republican apparatchiks?
The stock market thinks so! On Wednesday it soared almost by 300 points, and repeated this gain on Thursday, setting a DJIA record! Pharmaceuticals are way up, as higher drug prices loom for Medicaid and Medicare. Stocks of the pipelines and major environmental polluters are soaring, from oil and gas to coal, mining and forestry, expecting U.S. environmental leadership to be as dead under Trump as it was under Obama and his push for the TPP and TTIP (with its fines for any government daring to impose standards that cost these companies money). On the bright side, these “trade” agreements to enable corporations to block public laws protecting the environment, consumers and society at large are now presumably dead.
For now, personalities are policy. A problem with this is that anyone who runs for president is in it partly for applause. That was Carter’s weak point, leading him to cave into Democratic apparatchiks in 1974. It looks like Trump may be a similar susceptibility. He wants to be loved, and the Republican lobbyists are offering plenty of applause if only he will turn to them and break his campaign promises in the way that Obama did in 2008. It would undo his hope to be a great president and champion of the working class that was his image leading up to November 8.
The fight for the Democratic Party’s future (dare I say “soul”?)
In her Wednesday morning post mortem speech, Hillary made a bizarre request for young people (especially young women) to become politically active as Democrats after her own model. What made this so strange is that the Democratic National Committee has done everything it can to discourage millennials from running. There are few young candidates – except for corporate and Wall Street Republicans running as Blue Dog Democrats. The left has not been welcome in the party for a decade – unless it confines itself only to rhetoric and demagogy, not actual content. For Hillary’s DNC coterie the problem with millennials is that they are not shills for Wall Street. The treatment of Bernie Sanders is exemplary. The DNC threw down the gauntlet.
Instead of a love fest within the Democratic Party’s ranks, the blame game is burning. The Democrats raised a reported $182 million dollars running up to the election. But when from Russ Feingold in Wisconsin and other candidates in Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania asked for help. Hillary monopolized it all for TV ads, leaving these candidates in the lurch. The election seemed to be all about her, about personality and identity politics, not about the economic issues paramount in most voters’ minds.
Six months ago the polls showed her $1 billion spent on data polling, TV ads and immense staff of sycophants to have been a vast exercise in GIGO. From May to June the Democratic National Committee (DNC) saw polls showing Bernie Sanders beating Trump, but Hillary losing. Did the Democratic leadership really prefer to lose with Hillary than win behind him and his social democratic reformers.
Hillary doesn’t learn. Over the weekend she claimed that her analysis showed that FBI director Comey’s reports “rais[ing] doubts that were groundless, baseless,” stopped her momentum. This was on a par with the New York Times analysis that had showed her with an 84 percent probability of winning last Tuesday. She still hasn’t admitted that here analysis was inaccurate.
What is the Democratic Party’s former constituency of labor and progressive reformers to do? Are they to stand by and let the party be captured in Hillary’s wake by Robert Rubin’s Goldman Sachs-Citigroup gang that backed her and Obama?
If the party is to be recaptured, now is the moment to move. The 2016 election sounded the death knell for the identity politics. Its aim was to persuade voters not to think of their identity in economic terms, but to think of themselves as women or as racial and ethnic groups first and foremost, not as having common economic interests. This strategy to distract voters from economic policies has obviously failed.
It did not work with women. In Florida, only 51 percent of white women are estimated to have voted for Hillary. It didn’t even work very well in ethnic Hispanic precincts. They too were more concerned about their own job opportunities.
The ethnic card did work with the blacks (although not so strongly; fewer blacks voted for Hillary than had showed up for Obama). Under the Obama administration for the past eight years, blacks have done worse in terms of income and net worth than any other grouping, according to the Federal Reserve Board’s statistics. But black voters were distracted from their economic interests by the Democrats’ ethnic-identity politics.
This election showed that voters have a sense of when they’re being lied to. After eight years of Obama’s demagogy, pretending to support the people but delivering his constituency to his financial backers on Wall Street. “Identity politics” has given way to the stronger force of economic distress. Mobilizing identity politics behind a Wall Street program will no longer work.
If we are indeed experiencing a revival of economic class consciousness, who should lead the fight to clean up the Democratic Party Wall Street leadership? Will it be the Wall Street wing, or can Bernie and perhaps Elizabeth Warren make their move?
There is only one way to rescue the Democrats from the Clintons and Rubin’s gang. That is to save the Democratic Party from being tarred irreversibly as the party of Wall Street and neocon brinkmanship. It is necessary to tell the Clintons and the Rubin gang from Wall Street to leave now . And take Evan Bayh with them.
The danger of not taking this opportunity to clean out the party now
The Democratic Party can save itself only by focusing on economic issues – in a way that reverses its neoliberal stance under Obama, and indeed going back to Bill Clinton’s pro-Wall Street administration. The Democrats need to do what Britain’s Labour Party did by cleaning out Tony Blair’s Thatcherites. As Paul Craig Roberts wrote over the weekend: “Change cannot occur if the displaced ruling class is left intact after a revolution against them. We have proof of this throughout South America. Every revolution by the indigenous people has left unmolested the Spanish ruling class, and every revolution has been overthrown by collusion between the ruling class and Washington.” [1] Otherwise the Democrats will be left as an empty shell.
Now is the time for Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and the few other progressives who have not been kept out of office by the DNC to make their move and appointing their own nominees to the DNC. If they fail, the Democratic Party is dead.
An indication of how hard the present Democratic Party leadership will fight against this change of allegiance is reflected in their long fight against Bernie Sanders and other progressives going back to Dennis Kucinich. The past five days of MoveOn demonstrations sponsored by Hillary’s backer George Soros may be an attempt to preempt the expected push by Bernie’s supporters, by backing Howard Dean for head of the DNC while organizing groups to be called on for what may be an American “Maidan Spring.”
Perhaps some leading Democrats preferred to lose with their Wall Street candidate Hillary than win with a reformer who would have edged them out of their right-wing positions. But the main problem was hubris. Hillary’s coterie thought they could make their own reality. They believed that hundreds of millions of dollars of TV and other advertising could sway voters. But eight years of Obama’s rescue of Wall Street instead of the economy was enough for most voters to see how deceptive his promises had been. And they distrusted Hillary’s pretended embrace of Bernie’s opposition to TPP.
The Rust Belt swing states that shifted away from backing Obama for the last two terms are not racist states. They voted for Obama twice, after all. But seeing his support Wall Street, they had lost faith in her credibility – and were won by Bernie in his primaries against Hillary.
Donald Trump is thus Obama’s legacy. Last week’s vote was a backlash. Hillary thought that getting Barack and Michelle Obama to campaign as her surrogates would help, but it turned out to be the kiss of death. Obama egged her on by urging voters to “save his legacy” by supporting her as his Third Term. But voters did not want his legacy of giveaways to the banks, the pharmaceutical and health-insurance monopolies.
Most of all, it was Hillary’s asking voters to ignore her economic loyalty to Wall Street simply to elect a woman, and her McCarthy-like accusations that Trump was “Putin’s candidate” (duly echoed by Paul Krugman). On Wednesday, Obama’s former Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul tweeted that “Putin intervened in our elections and succeeded.” It was as if the Republicans and even the FBI were a kind of fifth column for the KGB. Her receptiveness to cutting back Social Security and steering wage withholding into the stock market did not help – especially her hedge fund campaign contributors. Compulsory health-insurance fees continue to rise for healthy young people rise as the main profit center that Obamacare has offered the health-insurance monopoly.
The anti-Trump rallies mobilized by George Soros and MoveOn look like a preemptive attempt to capture the potential socialist left for the old Clinton divide-and-conquer strategy. The group was defeated five years ago when it tried to capture Occupy Wall Street to make it part of the Democratic Party. It’s attempt to make a comeback right now should be heard as an urgent call to Bernie’s supporters and other “real” Democrats that they need to create an alternative pretty quickly so as not to let “socialism” be captured by the Soros and his apparatchiks carried over from the Clinton campaign.
Notes.
[1] Paul Craig Roberts, “The Anti-Trump Protesters Are Tools of the Oligarchy,” November 11, 2016. Related | 0 |
She was all there, all the time: exuberant in describing her mania, savage and tender when recalling her despair. And for decades, she gracefully wore the legacy of her legendary role as Princess Leia, worshiped by a generation of teenage girls as the lone female warrior amid the galactic male cast of the “Star Wars” trilogy. In her long, openhearted life, the actress and author Carrie Fisher brought the subject of bipolar disorder into the popular culture with such humor and detail that her death on Tuesday triggered a wave of affection on social media and elsewhere, from both fans and fellow bipolar travelers, whose emotional language she knew and enriched. She channeled the spirit of people like Patty Duke, who wrote about her own bipolar illness, and Kitty Dukakis, who wrote about depression and alcoholism, and turned it into performance art. Ms. Fisher’s career coincided with the growing interest in bipolar disorder itself, a mood disorder characterized by alternating highs and lows, paralyzing depressions punctuated by flights of exuberant energy. Her success fed a longstanding debate on the relationship between mental turmoil and creativity. And her writing and speaking helped usher in a confessional era in which mental disorders have entered the pop culture with a life of their own: Bipolar is now a prominent trait of another famous Carrie, Claire Danes’s character Carrie Mathison in the Showtime television series “Homeland. ” “She was so important to the public because she was telling the truth about bipolar disorder, not putting on airs or pontificating, just sharing who she is in an way,” said Judith Schlesinger, a psychologist and author of “The Insanity Hoax: Exposing the Myth of the Mad Genius. ” In a characteristic riff, answering a question about the disorder from the audience at the Indiana last year, Ms. Fisher said: “It is a kind of virus of the brain that makes you go very fast or very sad. Or both. Those are fun days. So judgment isn’t, like, one of my big good things. But I have a good voice. I can write well. I’m not a good bicycle rider. So, just like anybody else, only louder and faster and sleeps more. ” She then grabbed the mike and sang, in voice, “Oh manic depression … oh how I love you. ” That last line is a reminder too, that in Ms. Fisher’s lifetime, even the name of the condition had evolved, to bipolar from what was once more commonly known as manic depression. Ms. Fisher has said that she was first given a diagnosis of bipolar disorder at age 24 but did not accept it until five years later. In time, she spoke often about her lifelong struggles with both addiction and bipolar disorder and her desire to erase the stigma of mental illness. She wrote her 1987 novel, “Postcards From the Edge,” after a stint in rehab after a drug overdose. It was during her autobiographical stage show, “Wishful Drinking,” that she first posited the idea for “Bipolar Pride Day. ” Like the disorder itself, the wave of attention that occurred during Ms. Fisher’s life had its excesses. Through the 1990s, research scientists — many of them supported by drugmakers — expanded the definition of the disorder, describing “ ” and permutations like bipolar II and “hypomania. ” By the 2000s, doctors were diagnosing the condition in groups of people who had never been identified before, mostly young children — leading to thousands of children being unnecessarily treated with strong psychiatric drugs. In recent years, that overheated enthusiasm has finally begun to run its course. “I remember being at a psychiatric association event where Carrie Fisher was interviewed, and people were beginning to talk about the imperialism of bipolar,” how the diagnosis was expanding beyond its bounds, said David Miklowitz, a professor of psychiatry at the Semel Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. He added, “I think doctors are much more careful now, in being sure they’re diagnosing the real thing. ” The American Psychiatric Association’s latest diagnostic manual discourages applying the label to young children. Ms. Fisher’s vivid prose, wicked humor and striking performances inevitably led many people, including herself, to wonder whether bipolar mania fuels creativity. “My experience is that it does spur creativity and insights and the ability to express connections you see but could not otherwise express,” said Terri Cheney, author of the memoir “Manic. ” “But normalcy is so much preferable, being able to remember what I did — I tend to forget manic episodes. ” Scientists, scholars and writers have speculated for years about the connection between madness, and in particular mania, and artistic wizardry. The painters Edvard Munch and Vincent van Gogh, among many others, have been posthumously diagnosed with bipolar disorder. “There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness and terror involved in this kind of madness,” wrote the psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison, a prominent proponent of this connection. “When you’re high, it’s tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones. ” But the debate remains contentious, and given the vagueness of so many diagnoses, not to mention the devastating effect of depression or psychosis on discipline and concentration, it is unlikely to be settled anytime soon. “The case has really been built on sand,” Dr. Schlesinger said. “It’s been oversold. ” She added, “Every course of bipolar is different, there is no one progression, no one symptomology, no one cure, so the effects are very individual. ” All the more reason that one particularly outspoken, charismatic and large personality could project so much toughness and vulnerability at the same time. Ms. Fisher learned to live a public life at a very early age, as the child of celebrities and with her early stardom. In an interview with CBS this year, she said she liked being Princess Leia, understanding that “it’s a great role for women. ” But, she added: “I’m not really one of those actresses like Meryl Streep. Those actresses travel outside themselves and play characters. And I’m more of an archaeologist. I play what I am. ” Ms. Fisher’s advocacy, visibility and public was made for the era of online . For good and bad, in part because of Ms. Fisher’s example, the language of bipolar and mental disorders has swept into the shared popular culture, seeding online support groups, punctuating texted exchanges — “so OCD” — and becoming featured in dimensions of movies and TV shows like “Monk” and “Homeland. ” Paul Cumming, a longtime advocate in San Diego who works for a company that helps people with mental disorders find housing, said, “The power of celebrity was best shown by Carrie that by being public, and funny, she demystified our diagnosis and showed by example we can live well and thrive. ” | 1 |
Sen. Joe Manchin — who has claimed in the past to be — appears now to be supporting abortion industry giant Planned Parenthood. [Thank you for standing with Planned Parenthood, @Sen_JoeManchin! #StandWithPP pic. twitter. — PP South Atlantic WV (@PPSATWV) April 19, 2017, The West Virginia Democrat appeared in a photo, tweeted by Planned Parenthood South Atlantic West Virginia, standing behind a poster that states, “I stand with Planned Parenthood. ” The tweet immediately drew the ire of national leaders who in the past have counted Manchin among members of Congress who support the rights of the unborn. “Sen. Manchin used to call himself but this is the last straw,” said Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser, adding that her organization “will work tirelessly in the months ahead to make sure West Virginians know of this profound betrayal of the unborn and their mothers. ” The national director of Priests for Life, Father Frank Pavone, also reacted, telling Breitbart News: “Would that Sen. Manchin spoke plainly about what ‘standing by Planned Parenthood’ means! Instead of following the bad example of his Democratic colleagues, who want to support abortion without talking about abortion, Sen. Manchin should stay on the path and tell his constituents what Planned Parenthood actually does and doesn’t do. ” Pavone added that his organization’s StopAbortionNow. org campaign would inform West Virginians of Manchin’s change in position. “West Virginians supported President Trump last November and will face a choice next year as to whether to Sen. Manchin,” Pavone continued. “We have already communicated through Priests for Life to all the churches of West Virginia that Planned Parenthood needs to be defunded and that they need to let Sen. Manchin know where they stand on this before they make their voting decisions in the midterm elections. ” As a candidate for the presidency, Republican Donald Trump outlined four policy commitments in a letter to leaders: As the Charleston reported, Manchin has raised about $235, 000 for his 2018 campaign in the first quarter of the year, but only $7, 900 is derived from sources within his home state. “Sen. Joe Manchin, . Va. has received more money from individual donors in Texas ($95, 600) Washington D. C. ($33, 000) New York ($32, 300) Massachusetts ($22, 500) Virginia ($19, 700) Maryland ($10, 700) and Connecticut ($10, 400) than West Virginia,” states the report. Dannenfelser observed that Planned Parenthood is “the nation’s largest abortion business. ” “It is an enormous mistake both morally and politically for Sen. Manchin to side with Planned Parenthood,” she added, continuing, “In more than nine times out of ten, Planned Parenthood resolves pregnancy with abortion. They are clearly an business — yet taxpayers are forced to fork over nearly $554 million each year to their coffers. Where does Sen. Manchin stand on this injustice? Last month, he voted to force states to fund the abortion giant through Title X grants. That was only a day after new footage was released showing a former Planned Parenthood abortionist describe the force needed to dismember a unborn child struggling to survive in the womb. ” Planned Parenthood performs at least 300, 000 abortions every year. The group has been using political muscle to bolster its image in the wake of videos released that led to allegations it sells the body parts of aborted babies for a profit. The allegations led to multiple congressional investigations. Ultimately, the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Select Investigative Panel have referred Planned Parenthood Federation of America, several of the largest Planned Parenthood affiliates in the country, and three of their business associates in the fetal tissue procurement industry, to the FBI and U. S. Department of Justice for criminal prosecution. “The Democratic Party is, no doubt, putting pressure here on a senator who has in many instances been an exception to the rule and has taken positions,” Pavone said. “I urge him to resist this pressure, to be honest with himself and his constituents,” he added, “and to let the people of West Virginia know the facts about Planned Parenthood so that they, in turn, can let him know whether they think he should support this criminal, enterprise, which is more a political machine than a health organization. ” A recent Marist poll found that 61 percent of Americans oppose taxpayer funding of abortion, including 40 percent of those who say they are “ ” and 41 percent of Democrats. | 1 |
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Friday that he would file a lawsuit against the American Health Care Act to protect abortion rights. [“I hope the Senate will stop it, it’s bad public policy,” Schneiderman said in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett. “It doesn’t protect people with conditions it’ll cost millions of people healthcare. ” “But, if they pass the bill in the form the House passed it,” he said, “it is unconstitutional. It includes an unconstitutional attack on women’s rights to reproductive health services, including abortion. ” Schneiderman called the AHCA “bad public policy” and “unconstitutional” in its current state after the House passed it Thursday. “In a tricky way, [it] tries to wipe out Planned Parenthood,” he said. “It’s an effort to kill off Planned Parenthood, which would impose an undue burden on women’s rights. ” “We are beseeching the Senate to make sure this never becomes the law of the land,” Schneiderman added. Several Republican Senators warned that they would not pass the AHCA in its current state and would instead write their own bill. “We cannot pull the rug out from under states like Nevada that expanded Medicaid, and we need assurances that people with conditions will be protected,” Sen. Dean Heller ( ) said in a statement. President Trump, however, says he is “so confident” that the Senate will pass the AHCA even before the Congressional Budget Office releases their analysis estimating the law’s cost and impact on the nation. | 1 |
Officials at a Maryland high school were alarmed when students began to receive threats on social media apparently from a member of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). But now, police are saying the threats came from another black student at the school. [Students were frightened after receiving a tweet from what appeared to be a KKK Twitter account from a user named “KoolkidsKlanKkk” that warned, “We’re planning to attack tomorrow. ” Arundel High School officials reported the tweets to the Anne Arundel County Police Department and also noted that the language of the tweet was reminiscent of language used on a racial petition signed by “Kool Kids Klan” that had previously been passed around the school. Police computer teams reportedly tracked the account to a student at the school. The girl was apprehended and slapped with a juvenile citation for disruption of school activities. She was then released into her parents’ custody, according to CBS Baltimore. After the initial fright, parents expressed gratitude to authorities for identifying the threat so quickly. Anne Arundel County Public Schools Superintendent George Arlotto released a statement after the arrest: I want to thank Police Chief Tim Altomare, State’s Attorney Wes Adams, County Executive Steve Schuh, and their staffs for their thorough and expeditious work to identify a suspect in the online post that threatened violence at Arundel High School this week. The anonymity of the internet provides a murky and complex disguise for many who want to threaten the safety and security of our communities. Our partners in the Police Department and county government peeled back that disguise quickly in this case, in the process reassuring parents, students, and staff that our schools are safe places in which to educate our children. After the incident was settled, school officials said they discussed a social media policy but decided not to make any changes or announce any new ideas just yet. “Our teenagers in our society … live on electronic devices,” School system spokesman Bob Mosier said. “That electronic device use has many, many, many positive ramifications to it. ” Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 1 |
Get short URL 0 4 0 0 NCI Information Systems has been awarded a $63 million contract to provide engineering and integration services to the US Army’s Garrison Humphreys in South Korea, the company stated in a press release Wednesday.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The work will require NCI to relocate technical equipment and staff for the United Nations Command and US Forces Korea from Yongsan in the Seoul metropolitan area to areas north of the South Korean capital, the release added.
It noted that Army Garrison Humphreys is projected to grow from 9,000 to 44,000 soldiers, civilians and family members. “NCI will provide services for command, control, communications, computers and intelligence/information technology (C4I/IT) infrastructure and systems within sensitive compartmented information facilities,: the release said. "The work will be performed at four facilities currently under construction at Camp Humphreys, including the Communications Center, Battle Command Training Center, US Forces Korea Operations Center and US Army 2nd Infantry Division." ... | 0 |
Truth Is The Enemy Of The State By Bob Livingston
November 10, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Personal Liberty " - There is a saw that comes from Shakespeares The Merchant of Venice that the truth will out. But not if government has its way.
Thats because truth is the enemy of the state. The state, meaning the apparatus of government, is the system that controls the American people.
Most people believe they control the political system through elections. Little do they know that the government and the corporate state own and control the state and the people. In other words, the system is rigged, as Donald Trump says . The system must keep this information invisible and it does so through constant conditioning of the public mind.
Now consider what has happened and is happening to Julian Assange. Consider Edward Snowden.
Assange created WikiLeaks in 2006, exposing, among other things, malfeasance in the conduct of Bush the Lessers War on Terror. Progressive Democrats loved Assange then.
But by 2010, with George W. Bush out of power and Barack Obama continuing old wars and starting new ones, the truths that were being outed by WikiLeaks were hitting too close to home. WikiLeaks got its hands on a treasure trove of State Department and Pentagon emails and documents being dispatched across the globe.
I wrote at the time in A war on the truth , that what WikiLeaks was revealing was:
the result of a secretive, unaccountable and over-powerful government; a perfidious empire that seeks to rule the world by guile, cunning or force, if necessary. And the response by the United States government and by authorities in some of the U.S.s puppet states like Great Britain, which arrested Assange, and Sweden, which brought spurious charges of rape against him demonstrate the length the ruling elites will go to suppress the truth.
Truth is the enemy of a totalitarian regime. Fooling, lying, spying: That is the way of the totalitarian regime. Fooling, lying to and spying on friends and enemies, and even worse, its own citizens.
Just before I wrote that, we now know, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was contemplating various ways to shut WikiLeaks down. During a November meeting, sources say, Clinton suddenly blurted out, Cant we just drone this guy?
According to sources present at the meeting:
The statement drew laughter from the room which quickly died off when the Secretary kept talking in a terse manner, sources said. Clinton said Assange, after all, was a relatively soft target, walking around freely and thumbing his nose without any fear of reprisals from the United States. Clinton was upset about Assanges previous 2010 records releases, divulging secret U.S. documents about the war in Afghanistan in July and the war in Iraq just a month earlier in October, sources said. At that time in 2010, Assange was relatively free and not living cloistered in in the embassy of Ecuador in London. Prior to 2010, Assange focused Wikileaks efforts on countries outside the United States but now under Clinton and Obama, Assange was hammering America with an unparalleled third sweeping Wikileaks document dump in five months. Clinton was fuming, sources said, as each State Department cable dispatched during the Obama administration was signed by her.
Clinton and other top administration officials knew the compromising materials warehoused in the CableGate stash would provide critics and foreign enemies with a treasure trove of counterintelligence. Bureaucratic fears about the CableGate release ultimately proved to be well founded by Clinton, her inner circle and her boss in the White House.
Efforts to shut down WikiLeaks included an American intelligence-initiated operation to entrap Assange in a phony rape charge. The U.S. government also pressured PayPal, VISA and MasterCard to shut down donations to WikiLeaks. The Swedish bank handling Assanges legal defense fund was pressured by the U.S. government to freeze the account. The firm hosting WikiLeaks website was pressured to shut the site the down.
Now WikiLeaks is revealing widespread corruption, vote rigging, media manipulation and other damning evidence against the Democrat Party, Hillary Clinton and her minions. WikiLeaks and Assange are prying the lid off the propaganda machine and exposing the corrupt system.
In response, U.S. intelligence (an oxymoron) initiated another effort to entrap Assange in a sex-related scandal; this time by connecting him with a phony dating site and alleging he solicited sex with an 8-year-old girl.
John Kerrys State Department pressured Ecuador to cut off Assanges internet connection. There is a new move afoot to figure a way to pry him out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and turn him over to U.S. authorities, where he will no doubt disappear into the bowels of indefinite detention.
Only the power of propaganda keeps the people from overthrowing the U.S. government by force. So truth is the enemy of the state and the state will do everything it can to suppress it.
Thats not surprising. What is surprising is the vast number of people on both sides of the political spectrum outside of government who see truth seekers and truth disseminators like Assange, Snowden and Bradley Manning as enemies rather than friends of liberty. | 0 |
Tuesday 8 November 2016 by Lucas Wilde Many Americans still trying to decide on shiniest turd
Millions of American voters are still stuck as to which piece of shit they should plump for.
America usually has a nationwide election of some kind every four years but, instead, this year marks the first ever Shiny Turd Competition.
“I just can’t decide,” said American fence-sitter, Simon Williams.
“One of the turds has an okayish record in public office but did some fairly dodgy stuff regarding emails, and the other turd represents the frustrations of the people but is also in the habit of wiping itself on women.
“I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place or, more literally, one turd and another turd.”
Fellow voter, Elizabeth King, said, “I’m concerned about the effect that each turd will have on America’s relationship with Russia.
“One of the turds wants to essentially merge with Russia’s shiniest turd in order to make some kind of mega-bastard-turd, and the other turd wants to put on some kind of firework display where it and Russia essentially fight each other until they blow up the earth.
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When will you stop putting up with an invasion of barbarians? | 0 |
Good morning. Here’s what you need to know: • Tensions between China and Donald J. Trump are escalating even before the takes office. A editorial in the overseas edition of People’s Daily, the official organ of the Communist Party of China, denounced Mr. Trump for speaking with Taiwan’s president, while Mr. Trump posted messages on Twitter that stepped up pressure on Beijing. The Taiwanese appear to be cautiously embracing his attention. _____ • Mr. Trump is meeting with a broadened range of candidates for secretary of state, including a former ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman. Top NATO officials begin two days of meetings today in Brussels, their last before Mr. Trump, who has expressed ambivalence about the organization, takes office. Mr. Trump added a former rival to his Cabinet, naming the retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, above, to oversee efforts to lift American cities. Here’s the latest on the transition, including former Vice President Al Gore’s meeting with Mr. Trump and an effort by hundreds of scientists to persuade Mr. Trump that climate change is real. _____ • “We must never repeat the horror of war. ” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s announcement that he will visit Pearl Harbor, the Hawaiian naval base Japan attacked in World War II, effectively reciprocates President Obama’s May trip to the Japanese city of Hiroshima, where the U. S. dropped a nuclear bomb to end the war. Ashton Carter, the U. S. defense secretary, is in Japan to meet with Defense Minister Tomomi Inada and Mr. Abe. _____ • Rebels who have lost much of their grip in the Syrian city of Aleppo must withdraw completely or be killed as “terrorists,” Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said. He also said that the American secretary of state, John Kerry, had already submitted a proposal for the routes and timing of the fighters’ departure, and that Russia and the United States would opens talks in Geneva almost immediately. _____ • movements across Europe are among the winners after a constitutional referendum in Italy failed and the country’s prime minister, Matteo Renzi, resigned. Britain’s Supreme Court began what is expected to be four days of hearings on the government’s efforts to retain a free hand in organizing the exit from the European Union. The verdict is expected later in January. • Europe’s political disruptions have created new potential for volatility, but in the short term markets are up. Oil rose to its highest level since July 2015, and the Dow Jones industrial average reached a record high. • Masayoshi Son, the Japanese investor who bought Sprint in 2013, has made two ambitious moves in a bid to make his SoftBank Group the future’s most important technology business. • Shares in Duet Group rose on news of an offer of about $5. 4 billion from Li the Hong Kong billionaire whose proposed deals in Australia have raised concerns about foreign investors. • Uber is getting serious about artificial intelligence, acquiring Geometric Intelligence, an A. I. company, and launching an lab for A. I. research. The company wants a hand in how the computers behind vehicles think and make decisions on the road. • Japan will release October wage data, seen as crucial in judging the progress of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s economic programs. • Here’s a snapshot of global markets. • Thousands mourned in India after J Jayalalitha, the influential chief minister of southern Tamil Nadu state, died after suffering a heart attack on Sunday night. [BBC] • Pakistan honored Abdus Salam, a Nobel laureate who belonged to the persecuted Ahmadi minority, by naming a top physics department after him two decades after his death. [The New York Times] • Rohingya Muslims face chronic discrimination in access to medical care in Myanmar, a study shows. [The New York Times] • John Key, who abruptly resigned as New Zealand prime minister, did not have the support of some prominent citizens. [Stuff. co. nz] • The death toll in the “Ghost Ship” warehouse fire in Oakland, Calif. rose to 36 and could climb still higher. [The New York Times] • In a test of Bhutan’s press freedom, a journalist has been accused of libel for sharing a Facebook post that hints at corruption within the country’s elite. [The New York Times] • North Koreans shopping in Dandong, a Chinese border city, seem to favor tiny memory cards and teddy bears. [Reuters] • Japan’s top golfer, Hideki Matsuyama, 24, has put together a streak that calls to mind Tiger Woods at the same age: three consecutive tournament titles, and four in his past five starts. • Bob Dylan sent the Nobel Prize committee a speech to be read on his behalf when he is awarded the literature prize in Stockholm on Saturday. Patti Smith, the musician and writer, will perform his “A Hard Rain’s Fall,” as a tribute. • New studies show that men and women in their 60s and 70s who trained with weights developed muscles on a par with an average . • Government officials in Japan say they are alarmed by a stark disregard for environmental issues among young people. • A mystery man who stole a bucket filled with 86 pounds of scrap gold (worth $1. 6 million) from an armored truck in Midtown Manhattan two months ago has still not been identified, despite security video of him waddling across town. Children aren’t the only fans of St. Nicholas, that is, Santa Claus. He’s a hit with pawnbrokers, too. His feast day is celebrated today across Europe with reminders of his legend of leaving gold coins in shoes for boys and girls. He’s the pawnbrokers’ patron saint . The business of offering quick cash for personal items has been criticized for exploiting the poor. But some say the spheres that hang outside pawn shops are meant to symbolize St. Nick’s generosity, evoking the bags of gold he is said to have used to save three sisters from being sold into slavery. Another theory is that the spheres originated with the Medicis, the powerful Italian bankers who sponsored artists during the Renaissance. Golden circles appear on their family crest. That may explain how New York City’s power brokers came to admire St. Nick. “The religion the world wants today,” a guest at a banquet devoted to the saint said in 1900, “is a religion like that of St. Nicholas, that lays the hands of brotherly love upon the crying needs of our helpless brethren. ” Kenneth R. Rosen contributed reporting. _____ Photographs may appear out of order for some readers. Viewing this version of the briefing should help. Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings. What would you like to see here? Contact us at asiabriefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
Aide lays out how the former president raked in tens of millions of dollars through a series of deals while Hillary was Secretary of State in a memo unearthed by Wikileaks By Khaleda Rahman Daily Mail October 28, 2016 The latest hacked email released by WikiLeaks details how one of Bill Clinton’s closest aides helped rake in tens of millions for the former president while his wife was serving as Secretary of State. The 12-page memo was sent by Clinton’s former aide Doug Band in 2011 to him, his daughter Chelsea, several board members of the Clinton Foundation and its lawyers as well as it’s then special advisor John Podesta. Published on Wednesday by Wikileaks, after a hack of thousands of emails from Podesta’s account, it details how Band helped run what he called ‘Bill Clinton Inc.’ Band and another aide helped secure $66million from ventures, including speaking fees, according to the memo.
He wrote that using his role as the president of his own consulting firm Teneo, Band worked to raise funds for the Foundation and Clinton personally. Band also wrote that he helped obtain ‘in-kind services for the President and his family – for personal, travel, hospital, vacation and the like.’ ‘Throughout the past almost 11 years since President Clinton left office, I have sought to leverage my activities, including my partner role at Teneo to support and raise funds for the Foundation,’ Band wrote. ‘This memorandum strives to set forth how I have endeavored to support the Clinton Foundation and President Clinton personally.’ Under a section called ‘For-Profit Activity of President Clinton (i.e. Bill Clinton, Inc)’ Brand said he and another aide, Justin Cooper brought Clinton all four of his advisory arrangements at the time. These yielded more than $30million in personal income – with a further $66million to be paid out over the next nine years should he continue with them. One of these roles was serving as honorary Chairman of Laureate International Universities, a chain of for-profit colleges, which paid Clinton $3.5million a year from 2010 until 2015 when the contract ended and his wife started her run for president. Band also mentioned that neither he nor Cooper was compensated for the work. They were not paid a fee or percentage of the income, but only received their Foundation salaries. Band also said that Teneo was responsible for negotiating a number of speaking fees for Clinton, including $1.15million from Ericson and $900,000 from UBS. | 0 |
Chart Of The Day: French Auto Production Down 45% Since 2000 | 0 |
This article is part of a series aimed at helping you navigate life’s opportunities and challenges. What else should we write about? Contact us: smarterliving@nytimes. com. Acne can be an embarrassing problem that seemingly no amount of expensive creams and ointments can resolve. But research suggests that in some cases, what you put in your mouth may be as important as what you put on your skin. “I’ve had a lot of patients who get their acne under control just by changing their diet,” said Dr. Daniel J. Aires, a researcher and dermatologist at the University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City. Dr. Aires said that over the years there have been many studies on the link between various foods and acne, and the strongest evidence can be summarized in three takeaways: ■ Avoid sugary and starchy foods that have a high glycemic index, meaning they cause blood sugar levels to rise rapidly. ■ If you eat dairy products, avoid dairy varieties. ■ Eat plenty of very colorful plants and produce. Some of the most compelling evidence comes from research looking at the relationship between acne and high glycemic foods like sugar, white bread, white rice, pasta and other simple carbohydrates. Highly processed and refined carbohydrates tend to have little or no fiber and generally cause blood sugar levels to spike. (Related: How to form healthy habits in your 20s) Dr. Aires pointed to a study published in July in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology that found that diets containing a lot of high glycemic foods were strongly linked to acne. Some small clinical trials have found that cutting back on these foods can help to reduce acne lesions in teenagers and young adults. Scientists aren’t sure why, but one reason may be that high glycemic foods not only cause blood sugar levels to rise but also prompt the release of various hormones, such as insulin, and growth hormone, which can exacerbate acne. Other research has pointed to a link between dairy products and acne development. But multiple studies have found that it is dairy in particular that causes problems. Dr. Aires said the underlying reason might also be hormones. “Milk has a lot of growth factors in it which, in general, may be promoting acne,” he said. “My guess is that those get more concentrated when you take out the fat. ” He tells his patients who eat dairy products to avoid the options. “If you’re going to eat cheese, eat the regular cheese,” he said. Finally, Dr. Aires, who is also the director of the dermatology division at the University of Kansas Medical Center, also recommends that people eat foods with high levels of polyphenols, which are plant compounds that help to lower inflammation. Polyphenols tend to be found in deeply colored foods like berries, green tea, olive oil, herbs, dark chocolate, green vegetables and red wine. So in summary, eat a diet full of real, whole foods without too much sugar or refined carbohydrates — and eat plenty of plants and vegetables, Dr. Aires said. “Lots and lots of vegetables,” he added. Want more? You might also like: • Ask Well: A cure for rosacea? • The 8 health habits experts say you need in your 20s • Are you ready for mask bingeing? | 1 |
European and North African countries met in Rome Monday to discuss the migrant crisis, which saw more than 150, 000 migrants land on Italian shores in 2016 and thousands killed in dangerous conditions on the Mediterranian Sea. [The European Union already backs Libya’s government with €200 million worth of support to tackle people smugglers — who provide the unseaworthy craft which carry thousands of migrants north into the waiting arms of European coastguards and volunteer ‘rescue’ missions — but now the country is requesting more. Libya’s fragile, “unity government” has now asked for an additional €800 million worth of equipment for their patrol efforts including ships, helicopters, vehicles, and radar. The Italian government is already providing Libya with ten patrol craft, to be delivered before the summer. The Libya Herald reports Libyan Prime Minister Fayez flew to Rome with a “shopping list” of demands, including the call for more money and equipment, in the wake of some 20, 000 having made the crossing this year alone. An estimated 3, 000 migrants were rescued in the Mediterranean in just the past weekend. The new agreement struck Monday with Italy and other European nations agreeing to help Libya patrol her coast and keep the smuggler boats from setting off was short on actual detail or a plan to improve the situation, but instead showed a will, said the Italian interior minister. Democratic party minister Marco Minniti said of the meeting: “Naturally we haven’t resolved the problem because it’s clear no one has the definitive solution to the problem in their pockets. “But we have common will. And this common will has a common objective: to not chase or suffer illegal migration but govern it. ” Austrian interior minister Wolfgang Sobotka praised the movement with Libya, telling press: “We have to do everything we can to stop the illegal migration across the Mediterranean” reports Kronen Zeitung. The spending of British and European money in Libya has come under considerable criticism this year, as the poor conditions of migrant camps set up in the country courted criticism. Future spending may see camps established in other North African nations. While a not insignificant amount of money, the €800 million now discussed will be dwarfed by coming European contributions if a new “African Marshall Plan“ an aid package designed to boost African nations, is put into place. President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani said if the bloc doesn’t start pumping cash into the continent immediately, “20 million Africans are going to come to Europe in the coming years”. | 1 |
Dave Hodges
The  CSS will feature 3 great guests this Sunday night.
Hour 1 – Doug Hagmann and new information on World War III and election fraud
Hour 2 – Bob Griswold- What preparations should one take to survive what’s coming?
Hour 3 – Mike Adams -No matter who wins the election, there will be blood in the streets.
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In other words, in his first 100 days, Donald Trump has promised to initiate the literal KILLING of tens of thousands of American men, women, children, babies, and fetuses PER YEAR by denying them access to healthcare! | 0 |
Waking Times
Research reveals that cannabis may, in fact, serve as an effective exit drug for persons suffering from alcoholism or addiction to illicit or prescription drugs. A survey conducted by researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC) found that addicts may benefit from using cannabis as a substitute to more dangerous and health-destroying substances, especially alcohol and prescription drugs. Cannabis may be a step towards fighting addiction.
“Research suggests that people may be using cannabis as an exit drug to reduce use of substances that are potentially more harmful, such as opioid pain medication.” ~ Zach Walsh, Researcher and UBC Associate Professor of Psychology
The UBC study was conducted using a 414-question survey that was offered to medical cannabis patients. The survey gathered information about medical conditions and symptoms, patterns of medical cannabis use , cannabis substitution and barriers to access to medical cannabis.
Collecting surveys from 472 adults, all of whom used cannabis for therapeutic purposes, the researchers found that:
“Substituting cannabis for one or more of alcohol, illicit drugs or prescription drugs was reported by 87% of respondents, with 80.3% reporting substitution for prescription drugs, 51.7% for alcohol, and 32.6% for illicit substances.”
The research also revealed that the use of medical cannabis may be able to help with depression, PTSD and anxiety in some sufferers. The researchers felt that it was not effective in treating symptoms of bipolar disorder and psychosis. The findings were published in the academic journal Clinical Psychology Review.
The study also found that, according to evidence, “cannabis use does not appear to increase risk of harm to self or others.” ( Source )
Full study can be found here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dar.12323/abstract About the Author
Anna Hunt is co-owner of OffgridOutpost.com , an online store offering GMO-free healthy storable food and emergency kits . She is also the staff writer for WakingTimes.com . Anna is a certified Hatha yoga instructor and founder of Atenas Yoga Center. She enjoys raising her children and being a voice for optimal human health and wellness. Visit her essential oils store here . Visit Offgrid Outpost on Facebook .
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Thursday’s nuclear option vote restores 200 years of Senate practice, going far beyond Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation to restore the proper constitutional balance for Supreme Court and federal court appointments. [On April 6, the U. S. Senate voted to extend Senate Democrats’ own precedent to guarantee that Supreme Court nominees can be confirmed with a vote of 51 out of 100 senators. As an immediate result, Gorsuch was confirmed as a Supreme Court justice Friday morning by a bipartisan vote of but the benefits to the Republic will last for decades. Article II of the Constitution vests the power to appoint judges jointly between the president and the Senate. From the ratification of the Constitution in 1789 until 1987 (same digits, but in a different order) judicial nominations followed a particular pattern. The president takes the lead by nominating anyone he wants. Then the Senate either approves or disapproves of that choice by an confirmation vote. Their roles were always different. The president would consider every aspect of a nominee, including whether the nominee reflected the president’s philosophy on how to understand the Constitution, the law, and the role of the courts in America’s democratic republic. The Senate’s role was more limited. The Senate does not pick the nominee instead it was a check on the president so that, as Alexander Hamilton explained in The Federalist Papers No. 76: To what purpose then require the of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. In addition to this, it would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration. In other words, the Senate would ensure that the president did not choose someone on an improper basis, such as because that person was a family member, or a good friend, or perhaps the president owed the nominee money. In practical terms, that means the Senate traditionally looked to three objective criteria to determine if a nominee was fit for office: education, experience, and character. So long as a judicial nominee satisfied those requirements, the Senate would respect the president’s prerogative. That was why Justice Antonin Scalia — whose seat Gorsuch will now fill — was confirmed in 1986 by a vote of despite his record of being very conservative. But then the very next year, something unprecedented happened when President Ronald Reagan nominated Judge Robert Bork, who might have been even more qualified for the Supreme Court than Scalia or Gorsuch, as extremely qualified as those two men were. (Bork was a former U. S. solicitor general, Yale law professor, one of the greatest legal scholars in all of American history, and a judge on the U. S. Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit.) Democrats took control of the Senate in the 1986 midterm elections, and it had become an article of faith in that party to protect sacred cows leftists were getting from a liberal Supreme Court that they could not get through the ballot box, like abortion on demand, racial preferences, and militant secularism. In 1985, Attorney General Ed Meese declared that the official constitutional philosophy of the Reagan administration was originalism: In our democratic republic, the only legitimate way for unelected, politically unaccountable judges to interpret the law (and especially the Constitution as the Supreme Law of the Land) was according to the original meaning of its provisions, leaving it to the American people alone to decide whether the Constitution or lesser laws need to be changed or amended. Reagan and Meese made good on that philosophy when Reagan elevated Scalia to the Supreme Court. With Bork — who was even more conservative than Scalia — nominated to the Court, the Left saw the possibility of an eventual Supreme Court majority that would destroy their march to achieve their agenda without earning the votes of the American people. Consequently, Sen. Ted Kennedy ( ) led the charge to destroy the unbelievably Bork, purely because Bork was an unapologetic conservative who openly explained his judicial philosophy. The Senate voted down Bork’s nomination. That seat on the Court eventually went to Anthony Kennedy. Several years later it almost happened again. Justice Clarence Thomas was narrowly confirmed, . Republicans tried to restore the constitutional balance. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed in 1993, despite being as clearly very liberal as Scalia, Bork, and Thomas were clearly conservative. In 1994, Stephen Breyer was confirmed . But Democrats would have none of it. When the very Samuel Alito was nominated, he was confirmed in 2006 by a vote of . To avoid a this new baseline started to impact how Republicans voted on Democratic nominees, as seen in the confirmation votes of Sonia Sotomayor ( ) and Elena Kagan ( ). But the Left did not stop at the Supreme Court during these years. When George W. Bush was elected president, Senate Democrats in 2001 narrowly controlled the Senate and began refusing final floor votes on Bush’s nominees to the federal courts of appeals. As an example, they refused to vote on the nomination of John Roberts to be a judge on the D. C. Circuit appeals court. The American people did not tolerate this, and gave Republicans control of the Senate in the 2002 midterms. Now in the minority, Democrats decided to . One senator, Chuck Schumer ( ) persuaded most of his colleagues to begin filibustering nominees they did not support, even when some Democrats were willing to join with the Republican majority to confirm them. Roberts got through to the D. C. Circuit anyway, but others — like Miguel Estrada, another nominee to the D. C. Circuit — were blocked. As Republicans continued to gain seats in the Senate, Democrats considered taking things to still another low. They decided against filibustering Roberts’s nomination to the Supreme Court, but tried to do so on Alito. But that was a bridge too far for many Democrats at the time, which is why cloture was invoked on Alito even though many of those Democrats who voted for cloture then voted against his final confirmation on the vote, resulting in . Finally with Gorsuch, Schumer led Democrats to claim the role of of federal judges, merging filibusters with final confirmation votes. If a Republican president nominated someone whom Democrats would not have nominated (which presumably would be the case 100 percent of the time) Senate Democrats would not only vote against final confirmation, but also vote against cloture, regardless of qualifications. Under the historical standard, President Donald Trump’s nomination of Gorsuch is a . Education? Undergraduate degree from Columbia, law degree from Harvard, and even a doctorate from Oxford. Experience? Law clerk for the U. S. court of appeals and for the Supreme Court, then a partner at a prestigious law firm, also U. S. deputy associate attorney general, then finally a federal judge for more than ten years on the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Character? Impeccable honesty and integrity, as well as being a good husband, father, and member of his community, and known to be a gracious, humble, and respectful gentleman. Because it takes 60 votes to invoke cloture, for the first time in American history putting cloture and final passage on the same level created a threshold for confirmations, meaning that without 60 votes for both, a nominee would be filibustered. Unless Republicans would consistently hold a supermajority on the Senate, it became possible that a vacant Supreme Court seat could conceivably remain unfilled for a full presidential term. Critics insist that Schumer’s hypocrisy here was shameless, because during the Obama years, when Democrats narrowly held the Senate, for a while Republicans followed the Democrats’ new standard, and filibustered a couple of President Barack Obama’s nominees. Crying indignation, in 2013 Sen. Harry Reid ( ) Dick Durbin ( ) Pat Leahy ( ) and Schumer created a parliamentary ruling that the filibuster rule, Senate Rule XXII, did not apply to any presidential nominees, except that the ruling did not explicitly cover the Supreme Court. During this time, Schumer gave a passionate speech about how preventing an vote on judicial nominees was profoundly undemocratic, and an assault on the constitutional order. So Democrats created that precedent on November 21, 2013, one that did not address the Supreme Court simply because there was no Supreme Court vacancy at the time. During the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton’s running mate and Senate Democrats publicly declared that when they won the White House they would immediately extend their ruling to cover the Supreme Court. Consequently, jaws dropped when Schumer declared with righteous indignation that denying a minority the right to filibuster by insisting on an vote was profoundly undemocratic, and an assault on the constitutional order. This was the same time that Senate Democrats made clear that virtually every senator who opposed Gorsuch’s confirmation would also oppose cloture, solidifying a threshold for judicial nominees from Republican presidents. This ultimate and the warping of the constitutional framework was the last draw, which is why on Thursday Republicans ended the madness. They highlighted the fact that this was purely a response to what the Democrats had done, by phrasing the procedural issue as whether “the precedent of November 21, 2013,” applied to Supreme Court nominations. By a vote of senators issued a “judgment of the Senate” that the Democrats’ own rule applies here, abolishing the remaining judicial filibusters. Now the Republic goes back to where it stood for roughly 200 years. Elections have consequences. When the American people give the presidency and the Senate to opposing parties, they have the choice of picking comprise candidates (if there is such a thing these days) or of keeping seats open. When the American people speak with one voice to give the same party control of both the White House and the Senate, then it should be no surprise that they are able to get judges who reflect that unified philosophy on the federal judiciary at every level — including the Supreme Court. Ken Klukowski is senior legal editor for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @kenklukowski. | 1 |
November 6, 2016 at 10:19 am
Here again that bitch is downloading old videos from 2015 which is obviously NOT her work but she simply steal others video. All her videos are obviously outdated and she download them. What a thief. I invite everyone to unsubscribe from her channel which just bring confusion on what we are now. She can't even do a video from her search but simply steal others. | 0 |
Home | World | Analyst: Why Turkey Opening Border to Millions Migrants into Europe is a Good Thing Analyst: Why Turkey Opening Border to Millions Migrants into Europe is a Good Thing By Gazi 25/11/2016 11:28:20
ANKARA – Turkey – The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday has vowed to throw open Turkey’s borders to illegal migrants after the European Parliament voted to back a freeze in membership talks with Ankara, and have reneged on a visa deal that was promised by the EU a few months ago.
With all these broken promises, Turkey is fully justified in opening the floodgates into Europe once again, where the Schengen zone is an effective unguarded corridor not only for illegal migrants, but drugs, arms and other contraband.
This mass deluge of human traffic into Europe will be good for the United Kingdom’s Brexit stance, as an estimated 5 – 10 million migrants will push their way from Turkey directly into the European heartland, causing further unrest and problems for the EU, which has already been inundated with millions of migrants from South East Asia, Syria, and Africa.
The open border with Greece, all the way up to the Black Sea will once again be open to traffic, and as more millions come, news will spread and even more migrants will make the journey.
Turkey’s stance should be applauded in the destruction of the EU, as there will be limited capacity or enthusiasm for even more migrants.
The numbers of migrants could easily increase to 20 million or 50 million migrants within a year or so, depending on the efforts of the Turks and their open door policy, as well as the forced reception within EU countries residing in the Balkans and Eastern Europe.
Most migrants will naturally gravitate towards the leading EU nations of Germany and France, however there could be an increased bottleneck scenario occurring around Calais as some try to reach the UK.
The Turks must be fully commended in their push for the destruction of the EU, and the increase in sentiment for Brexit, however it is the Schengen zone created by unelected eurocrats which will be their own undoing..a beautiful and just end to the masochistic EU, who engineered their own destruction through their own socialist utopian dreams. Share on : | 0 |
House Democrats this week buried a report analyzing the party’s failings in 2016 from the party’s members, Politico has revealed. [After a five month wait, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney ( ) presented his findings to lawmakers at a event at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) headquarters Thursday night. The report detailed both the reasons behind Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the presidential election and the party’s failure to win back control of Congress. However, the report was only accessible to the roughly lawmakers who attended, while members were not allowed to take copies of the report and could only view it under the supervision of DCCC staff. During the report’s presentation, Maloney reportedly focused on how the Democratic machine raises money and its spreading of resources, rather than their political messaging or policy positions. The report also recommended that the DCCC improve its research methods and tighten its media operation, as well as employ a more diverse range of political consultants. It did not single out any particular figure for criticism. Some Democrats criticized the secrecy surrounding the report, suggesting it made Maloney’s findings look worse than they actually are. DCCC spokeswoman Meredith Kelly denied the claims, and said: “Like any healthy organization, the DCCC always works to evolve and grow after each election cycle, and we were happy to have Congressman Maloney as part of that effort this year. ” “This analysis is based on strategic information about our organization and meant for internal purposes, not public consumption,” she continued. Meanwhile, revelations from a recent book analyzing Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign suggest that her campaign was dogged by infighting, poor organization, and lack of any convincing message. A report following the 2016 election found that Clinton had ample financial resources, spending a total of $1. 2 billion on her failed campaign. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com | 1 |
The number of refugees admitted into the United States increased 19 percent in the month of May to 3, 969, which was 653 more than the 3, 316 admitted in April, according to the Department of State’s interactive website. [Slightly fewer of these refugees were Muslim. One thousand one hundred and ten Muslims were admitted to the United States as refugees in May, 19 fewer than the 1, 129 admitted as refugees in April. Muslims as a percentage of all refugees admitted declined from 34 percent in April to 28 percent in May. During the 4 months and 11 days of the Trump administration, 38 percent, or 6, 243 out of 16, 261 total refugees admitted, were Muslim. During FY 2016, the last full year of the Obama administration, 45 percent, or 38, 555 out of 89, 994 total refugees admitted, were Muslim. The percentage of all refugees admitted from the seven Middle Eastern countries whose residents were temporarily banned from obtaining travel visas to the United States under President Trump’s first travel ban executive order (EO 13769) has declined slightly from 43 percent (36, 722 out of 84, 994 total refugees) in FY 2016 to 38 percent (6, 181 out of 16, 261 total refugees) during the first 4 months and 11 days of the Trump administration. (Those seven countries were Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen.) Most of the decline in refugees from these seven countries is due to a significant drop off in Syrian refugees, from 14. 8 percent of total refugees in FY 2016 (12, 587 out of 84, 994) to 9. 8 percent (1, 603 out of 16, 261) in the first four months and 11 days of the Trump administration. That drop off in Syrian refugees is accelerating in each successive month of the Trump administration. “The number of Syrian refugees admitted to the United States under the federal refugee resettlement program has declined for the fourth consecutive month,” Breitbart News reported earlier this week. In February, the first full month of the Trump administration, 673 Syrian refugees were admitted into the country. In March, that number fell to 282. The decline continued into April, when 226 were admitted and the number admitted so far in May has declined further to 156. All told, since January 21, President Trump’s first full day in office, a total of 1, 603 Syrian refugees have been admitted into the United States, according to the State Department’s interactive website. News of the increase in total refugees in May, a fact not changed by the decline in Syrian refugees, appears to confirm the report last week in the New York Times that officials in the State Department have told the voluntary agencies that the number of refugees admitted to the United States will nearly double from the rate of 830 per week to about 1, 500 per week for the last four months of FY 2017. The Times report was further confirmed by The Huffington Post, which reported on Monday that “The United States appears to be resuming its longstanding efforts to resettle refugees after the program was derailed and almost completely upended abroad for several months. ” U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services “has begun to expand its interview schedule in the 3rd quarter of the fiscal year,” public affairs officer Marilu Cabrera told HuffPost in a statement on Friday. The Department of Homeland Security is working with the State Department to plan for a “further expansion” through the end of fiscal year 2017, she added. The upsurge in refugees has perplexed critics of the federal refugee resettlement program, most of whom strongly supported Trump during the presidential campaign on the basis of his campaign promises to suspend the Syrian refugee program and tighten refugee vetting procedures. “[I]t does appear that the resettlement contractors are getting excited that it will flow with gusto soon since they are rehiring staff they let go shortly after Trump put out his first Executive Order,” Ann Corcoran wrote at Refugee Resettlement Watch on Wednesday. “The Republicans in Congress funded the US Refugee Admissions Program [in the budget passed in May for the balance of FY 2017] at a level for 75, 000 refugees to be admitted by September 30th (the last day of this fiscal year) and Trump signed it! . . . [T]he President has the power to set the ceiling in “consultation” with Congress. If Trump wanted to take them on he could ask for a rescission of those funds to admit the numbers he wants — which he said would be under 50, 000!” Corcoran continued. “Every day that the White House is silent on the stunning news we heard last week says to me that the White House agrees with the 75, 000 admissions this year,” she said: Why do the Republicans in Congress want to keep the pipeline going? It is because most of them work for their big business donors and the Chamber of Commerce to guarantee a steady supply of cheap immigrant labor! Adding insult to injury, your tax dollars support refugee families through the welfare system because wages are too low! You pay for the importation of the labor and for the laborers’ support once here! It is really quite a difficult obstacle for us (who wish to see the USRAP reformed) to overcome — big businesses and global corporations pushing cheap labor in conjunction with ‘religious’ charities (paid by taxpayers!) claiming this is all about humanitarianism while essentially acting as ‘head hunters’ for big business. As Breitbart News reported previously, “It is unclear if the State Department made this upward adjustment with the knowledge and approval of President Trump. ” One possible explanation is that Obama holdovers in the State Department and at USCIS at DHS, in combination with a recent State Department appointee who was, prior to the election, a Trump critic, have joined forces to undermine Trump’s refugee policies. In March, for instance, the Daily Caller reported that “Brian Hook, a Trump critic and former Bush administration official, is currently serving as the State Department’s director of policy planning. ” Foreign Policy magazine previously reported that Hook was Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s favorite for the role and a department spokeswoman confirmed to TheDC Thursday that Hook got the job. The director of policy planning is a key position responsible for running the department’s internal think tank, which is home to the secretary of state’s speechwriters. Hook previously served in the Bush administration in several roles, including as assistant secretary of state for international organizations, and later served as a foreign policy adviser for Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign. The State Department official also the John Hay Initiative, a neoconservative group that organized a letter of over 100 Republican foreign policy experts who would refuse to back Trump. Eliot Cohen, another of the John Hay Initiative, has been a strong critic of the Trump administration. It is unclear, however, what, if any, influence Hook has had on the recent changes in the State Department’s Refugee Admissions Program policies. | 1 |
$23 How Deep Will 2016’s Blue Wave Be? Progressives Push Candidates, Issues Up and Down Political Ladder Steven Rosenfeld / AlterNet Jason Morrison / CC BY-NC 2.0
As the 2016 election closes, progressives are on the frontline of the latest rallying cry by Democrats Hillary Clinton, Tim Kaine, President Obama and the rest of the party’s leaders to sweep Republicans out of office up and down the political ladder.It’s no secret the Clinton campaign, its surrogates and state party operations have built and unleashed a giant ground game, registering voters and urging them to turn out, with five times as many paid staffers as the GOP. But a parallel track is unfolding in progressive circles, where collectively, groups like Democracy for America, Progressive Democrats of America, Our Revolution and others are pushing, promoting, fundraising for and urging their ranks—even those who don’t like Clinton—to elect scores of other candidates and vote on statewide ballot measures to move a progressive agenda.
“I think there is growing confidence that we can win the presidential election. So that’s not new,” said Neil Sroka, spokesman for Democracy for America, which has endorsed 125 candidates . “What we have been focusing on are the down-ballot races, the U.S. Senate races that up until recently haven’t started getting a lot of attention. But also on city council races and state legislative races.”“On November 8, we can measure how successful the progressive political revolution has been,” said Shannon Jackson, executive director of Our Revolution , which grew out of Bernie Sanders’ campaign. “We have 105 progressive champions we are supporting. We have 31 different ballot races we are behind. We’re calling, we’re texting, we are organizing online. We are doing e-mails. We are assisting through our fundraising. We want to make sure they have the tools available to them so they can succeed.”In some cases, mainstream Democrats and progressive groups are supporting the same candidates and taking the same stances on ballot measures, such as pushing for health care reforms, raising the minimum wage and enacting campaign finance reform. But in other cases, the progressives are further to the left, embracing all forms of marijuana legalization, repealing the death penalty and opposing charter school expansion and anti-union right-to-work ballot measures. Donna Smith, executive director of Progressive Democrats of America , gave two examples illustrating these parallel tracks.
“PDA is intensely focused on electing Doug Applegate in California’s 49th Congressional District, where defeating Darrell Issa would be an added bonus,” she said, referring to a Republican who has repeatedly sought to undermine President Obama. “Applegate is a strong progressive who has been attacked by Issa on his progressive stands as highlighted by the PDA endorsement questionnaire. We have put substantial resources into that race.”“We are also backing Nanette Barragan, CA CD-44, where even in a relatively safe Democratic district we must push to make sure we elect the most progressive candidate with a solid, respected track record,” Smith continued. “Across the country we have focused on other congressional races where we can make real inroads and where we can still see hope for the policy agenda Sen. Bernie Sanders so brilliantly articulated during the presidential primary. The challenge has been to overcome some voter fatigue in areas where the coverage of the presidential contest has overshadowed many of these critical congressional races.” The open question for progressives like Smith, who want to see the political landscape reshuffled to the left, and also for the Clinton campaign, which is urging Democrats to retake congressional majorities and governors’ mansions, is how much attention will voters pay to down-ballot races? With Election Day quickly approaching, these groups are making every effort to engage them. This goes beyond the fundraising bonanza Paul Ryan unleashed when he groused that a Democratic Senate majority would put Sanders in the Senate Budget Committee chairman’s seat, which DFA and Our Revolution seized on to raise several million dollars online for their candidates. DFA, for example, is pushing its Washington and Colorado members to pay attention to their state senate races, because picking up one or two seats would shift the legislative majority from red to blue. “If you can get people volunteering and taking action to support a candidate for local state legislature, those votes will trickle up,” said Sroka, referring to the likelihood that people working hard for local races would end up supporting the federal candidates. “Also, there are some progressive Democrats who aren’t super excited about the presidential race, and so that’s okay.”“We want to make sure that there’s a space for everyone in the fight to November,” he continued, “because frankly, we need everyone’s help. So focusing on the Senate race in North Carolina, as one example, is another one that until recently folks weren’t focusing on [nationally]. We were paying attention to it, because it’s a place where people could take action, have a meaningful role and help the ticket as well.”Sroka said DFA and Our Revolution are coordinating, explaining that DFA has more on-the-ground experience and a better grassroots network at this stage of the campaign, while Our Revolution is more of an online community. Jackson agreed, saying many Sanders supporters needed to pause after the Democratic Convention but rejoined the fray after Labor Day. Raising $2 million in 72 hours after Ryan’s remarks showed how potent these progressives remain, injecting needed funds into dozens of races.“We want to make sure they have the tools available to them so they can succeed,” Jackson said. “From [U.S. House candidate] Zephyr Teachout in New York, from [U.S. House] candidate Pramila Jayapal out in Washington, from coast to coast. However you measure it, we are going to see progressive champions winning seats from school board to state senate to U.S. representatives and senators.” It’s hard to dissect all the factors that prompt voter registration and turnout. But registration for the 2016 election has closed in many states, with the number of registered voters across America breaching the 200 million mark for the first time. Meanwhile, ballots cast in early voting by registered Democrats are outpacing Republicans in many states at a comparable period before the 2012 election, according to media reports from Florida , North Carolina , Virginia , Colorado , and Arizona .“When we look at the early voting numbers, we go, hmm. Something definitely is going on. Something different from the past. But it’s very much on a state-by-state basis,” Sroka said. “What we do know is whether it is Florida or North Carolina or Nevada, Democrats are taking advantage of the organization structure they have on the ground this year in a significant way.”
“That kind of success… is a reflection of grassroots power,” he continued. “To get those kinds of numbers we are seeing with early voting takes contacts for volunteers, or contacts from the campaign. It’s reflective of the kind of ground game that the Democrats may have over Republicans looking at the country overall.”That ground game isn’t just coming from what’s called the coordinated Democratic campaign—the presidential and state party effort. In Nevada, big multi-ethnic unions like the Culinary Workers have been pushing voter registration for months and are now focusing on get-out-the-vote efforts. In California, the National Nurses United union and Sanders have been pushing a ballot measure requiring state government health programs pay the same price for drugs as the federal Veterans Administration, which would cut costs. That’s not the only health care proposal pushed by Our Revolution. Colorado will vote on creating a statewide single-payer system.Down-ballot candidates and statewide initiative measures often don’t get as many votes as the presidential campaign; people just skip them if they’re not sure, which means they can pass or fail by smaller margins. Jackson said he did not know the latest polling on all of the statewide measures pushed or opposed by Our Revolution. But on those where he did review recent surveys, Jackson said it looks like many progressive positions are going to win.That appeared to be the case with the California drug-pricing measure, another California proposal to repeal the state’s death penalty, measures in California and Washington calling for overturning the Supreme Court’s Citizens United campaign finance decision, the medical or recreational marijuana legalization measures (outside the South), minimum wage hikes in Maine and Washington, and opposing charter school expansion in Massachusetts. Our Revolution is also pushing an automatic statewide voter registration proposal in Alaska, where any resident who receives an annual oil industry dividend from the state—including 50,000 Native Alaskans—would be on voter lists.So while the mainsteam media coverage is centered on the Clinton campaign and its enlarged focus to retake the Senate and shrink Republican majorities in the House and state capitals, the efforts of progressive groups, working inside and outside of traditional Democratic circles, may determine how deep and wide 2016’s blue wave will be. | 0 |
By Kurt Nimmo According to NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller, the threat of terrorism is a constant. Following yet another empty... | 0 |
President Donald Trump said Democrats were “phony hypocrites” after protesting his decision to fire FBI Director James Comey. [“Dems have been complaining for months months about Dir. Comey,” the president wrote on Twitter. “Now that he has been fired they PRETEND to be aggrieved. “Phony hypocrites!” Trump’s response helped conclude the White House reaction to the hysteria from Democrats after Comey’s firing and calling for an independent investigation into Russia. Earlier in the day, leftists outside the White House protested Trump’s decision to remove Comey. White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said during the press briefing that the administration was anxious for the investigation’s completion. “We encourage them to complete this investigation so we can put it behind us and we can continue to see exactly what we’ve been saying for nearly a year: There’s no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia,” she said. | 1 |
Marvel Comic fans will be excited to hear that Marvel Entertainment, Disney|ABC, and IMAX Corporation has announced their unprecedented agreement to premiere the new ABC series, “The Inhumans” in IMAX commercial theaters. This will mark the first time that a live-action television series debuts in this way. The series will be shown in a two-week window, with its first two episodes slated to air in the late summer of 2017.
Marvel Comics is producing their first two episodes in conjunction with ABC studios. “The Inhumans” was filmed entirely with IMAX digital cameras. Following the premiere on the big screen, ABC will release the weekly series in the fall.
Who are The Inhumans? The Inhumans were first introduced into the Marvel Comics, in 1965, by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. During the Kree-Skrull War, which occurred millions of years ago in Earth time, the Kree alien species set up a station on Uranus. As they worked on the station they noticed life on Earth had genetic potential. The Kree started experimenting with humans by splicing Eternals DNA into Cro-Magnons.
The Krees’ goal was two-fold; they wanted to stop their own evolutionary stagnation, as well as create a powerful mutant race of soldiers, to help them fight the Skrulls. Though they were successful in their experiments, the Kree abandoned it.
However, their test subjects, the Inhumans, survived and formed their own society. They thrived in seclusion and developed advanced technology. After experimenting with the mutagenic Terrigen Mist, they found that although they acquired various powers, the mist also caused genetic damage and deformities.
The Unspoken was once the leader of the Inhumans but was dethroned by the current king, Black Bolt. Bolt’s royal family consists of Maximus the Mad, Triton, Medusa, Karnak, Gorgon, Crystal, and their dog Lockjaw. Moreover, Medusa and Crystal were members of Marvel Comics, Fantastic Four and Crystal also teamed with the Avengers. “The Inhumans” will surround the never been told story and epic adventures of Black Bolt.
ABC’s Other Marvel Comic Series “The Inhumans” marks the latest series to join the ABC network lineup. Unfortunately, last season, the network canceled “Agent Carter,” after two seasons. They also passed on a spin-off of “Agents of SHIELD.”
However, Marvel Comics is teaming up with Hulu on one of their other comic book-based series, which is in development. Other projects include the upcoming “X-Men” spin-off of “Legion,” on FX.
IMAX Marks Its First Debut With ‘Marvel’s The Inhumans’ Marvel Comic’s presentation of “The Inhumans” was originally slated for release in 2018, as a movie, rather than a series. However, it was pushed back to 2019, to make room for the Marvel Comic movie, “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” before it was pulled from the schedule, in April 2016.
IMAX is setting an unprecedented first, by hosting the premiere of the Marvel Comics television series. The reason being, IMAX is financing the pilot. Co-chairman of Disney Media Networks Ben Sherwood stated:
This unprecedented alliance represents a bold, innovative approach to launching great TV content for a worldwide audience. It highlights Disney|ABC’s unrelenting commitment to finding new and creative ways to showcasing our very best programming and increasing global engagement and reach.
After the series premiere in IMAX theaters, Marvel Comics’ “The Inhumans” will move to ABC for the remaining six episodes.
By Tracy Blake
Edited by Jeanette Smith
Sources:
News Everyday: Marvel Comics Partners With ABC For ‘Inhumans’ Series In Summer 2017
Marvel: ‘Marvel’s The Inhumans’ Coming to IMAX & ABC in 2017
The Hollywood Reporter: Marvel, ABC Set ‘The Inhumans’ TV Series
Image Courtesy of Dennis Amith’s Flickr Page – Creative Common License
IMAX , Marvel comics , spot | 0 |
HANOI, Vietnam — When Bill Clinton landed in this capital 16 years ago, the first American president to visit since the end of the Vietnam War, his mission was to put that conflict behind him, and the trip was among the most remarkable of his presidency. When President Obama arrives here early Monday, his task may be a bit less dramatic, but is in many ways far more ambitious. These two countries, bedeviled by decades of misunderstandings, violence and wariness, now have the chance to create a partnership that seemed unlikely even three years ago. Since then, China’s expansion in the South China Sea has deeply shaken a new Vietnamese government. While the leadership here has not let up on its repression of its people — the police have beaten protesters in demonstrations over an environmental disaster — it now appears more interested in playing one superpower off against the other, perhaps even giving the Pentagon some rotating access to key Vietnamese ports. It would not be an alliance neither side seems ready for that. But it could throw Beijing off balance in the daily shadowboxing over who will dominate one of the world’s most strategically vital waterways. “It does show how history can work in unpredictable ways,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser who spent time over the past two years luring Myanmar out of its shell. “Even the worst conflicts can be relatively quickly left behind. ” In many parts of Asia, Mr. Obama’s strategy of focusing on the region is still more of a slogan than an operational plan. He has been drawn back into Middle East conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. But in this part of Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam, he seems on the verge of the kind of progress Mr. Clinton could only imagine during that first visit, only 10 months before the Sept. 11 attacks changed America’s priorities. Slurping noodles in a shop in Ho Chi Minh City at the end of that trip, Mr. Clinton wondered aloud to a reporter whether the Communist leaders in Vietnam were really willing to turn away from their traditional link to China. It turned out they were not. But now the Chinese, who hindered American efforts during the Vietnam War, are making things easier for the United States. For years, the Communist Party leadership in Vietnam, headed by Nguyen Phu Trong, ignored Chinese activity off the country’s coast even as its deeply nationalistic population became increasingly alarmed. But in 2014, China placed a drilling rig to explore for oil and gas right off Vietnam, and Mr. Trong, the party’s general secretary, could not even get his phone calls to Beijing returned. He registered his protest by visiting Mr. Obama in the Oval Office last year, an unsubtle signal to the Chinese that Vietnam had other options. But with a military leadership still full of veterans of the American War, as it is known here, the warming of ties has proceeded at a deliberate pace. Ahead of Mr. Obama’s visit, a parade of American officials, including Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Daniel Russel, the State Department’s most senior Asia hand, have been showing up in Hanoi. Their goal has been to get enough human rights guarantees from the Vietnamese to allow for the lifting of sanctions on arms sales to Vietnam and perhaps the return of American military units to its shores for the first time since the chaotic helicopter evacuation from Saigon that is seared in the American memory. For most Vietnamese, half of whom are under 30, and increasingly savvy about the world around them, those memories have little meaning to their lives or ambitions. Poll after poll shows that improved ties with the United States are highly sought. And they demonstrated their power when they took to the streets in recent weeks over a huge fish kill, believed to have resulted from a spill by a steel plant. The government crackdown that followed was not exactly part of the game plan before Mr. Obama’s arrival. Mr. Obama is making his first visit late in his presidency he has already been to Myanmar twice. But unlike Mr. Clinton and President George W. Bush, he arrives without the burden of having to explain what he was doing during the war by the time he turned 18, Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, had fallen. For Mr. Obama, the trip has its political sensitivities. On the campaign trail, Republicans will almost certainly cast it as another stop on an “apology tour. ” During his visit in November 2006, Mr. Bush avoided any notion of an apology in part by avoiding most Vietnamese. His attention was focused on the Iraq war, then in its worst phase, and the trip was overshadowed by questions of whether the United States was entering another quagmire. (“We’ll succeed unless we quit,” Mr. Bush said when pressed on the comparisons.) Mr. Obama has made clear that pragmatism outweighs other factors when it comes to maneuvering around Beijing. From a practical viewpoint, a decision to lift the arms embargo against Vietnam would have minimal effects — the Vietnamese military still likes Russia’s prices for arms — but it would be symbolically important. “The delicate balance is that we need to have both a constructive relationship with China and the ability to be firm on some issues,” Mr. Rhodes said in an interview. Then there is the question of the reception Mr. Obama will receive. He is more popular here and in Europe than he is at home. His aides are clearly hoping for a welcome more like the one Mr. Clinton received in November 2000. Mr. Clinton spoke to students, took in the sights, went shopping and spent hours in a rice field outside Hanoi, sifting the dirt for the remains of a downed American pilot alongside the pilot’s sons, who had accompanied the president. Mr. Obama’s schedule is very light on the war, and very focused on the future. After meetings on Monday with the country’s leadership, he will spend Tuesday with dissidents and then deliver a speech. Then he will head to Ho Chi Minh City, landing at the airport that was once the hub of the American military effort, and will meet with entrepreneurs. On Wednesday, Mr. Obama will hold a forum with members of the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative, a signature effort of his to strengthen ties with a remarkably young population throughout the region. | 1 |
WASHINGTON, D. C. — Over 25 Jewish organizations and Republican and Democratic lawmakers convened at the U. S. Capitol Visitor’s Center on Wednesday to mark and celebrate the 50th anniversary of Jerusalem Day and reaffirm that Jerusalem is Israel’s eternal capital. [Jerusalem Day is a national holiday in Israel that celebrates the country’s reunification of Jerusalem following the Six Day War of 1967. Jerusalem Day this year is officially celebrated on Tuesday, May 23, when President Donald Trump will be visiting the city. The Capital Hill event, dubbed Jerusalem Unity Day, was held six days before. Martin Oliner, of the Religious Zionists of America, organized Wednesday’s event. He told Breitbart News, “I’ve brought 25 Jewish organizations together from all over a full plurality of disparate Jewish organizations that often don’t agree, but we’ve come here for unity. ” He said, “We’re here to thank God and we’re here to thank Congress for the wonderful relationship that we have together. The U. S. relationship is stronger than ever. We want to keep it strong and we’re here to really celebrate this wonderful miracle that has occurred. ” He said he believes it’s “critical” that Trump moves the U. S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. “This has been our home, our capital for 3, 300 years since King David founded it. We have been praying to come back to Jerusalem for over 2, 000 years our generation had the pleasure of having that happen during their lifetime. So I feel extraordinary and that’s what we are here to celebrate today. ” “As VP of the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce, one of the of the event with Martin Oliner, I came to join with other and over 25 senators and congressmen who came to show support,” Odeleya Jacobs told Breitbart News. “The event created an awareness of the great miracle that God did by reuniting Jerusalem to all of Israel and proclaiming Jerusalem the eternal capital of the Jewish people. ” Rep. Ron DeSantis ( ) who has already visited several location in Jerusalem for the potential embassy move, said, “And for me, what better time to finally follow through with our promise if we relocate the U. S. Embassy to Jerusalem” than next week when Trump is in the Holy Land. “I think there’s a lot of risk if we don’t follow through with our word to move the embassy to Jerusalem,” DeSantis said. He added that many of the Arab states respect “strength and decisiveness. ” He noted that some in the Arab world might not like that Trump follows through on his word, “but, man, they are going to respect it. ” “Look, I think at this point, not recognizing Jerusalem as the unified and indivisible capital of Israel actually hurts the peace process,” he continued, “because I think Palestinian Arabs still believe that somehow Israel is a transient country that will eventually be wiped off the map. So moving the embassy there is a great statement to say Israel is here to stay. And if you want to act destructively, fine. But we are not going to play these games and act like we don’t know where the Western Wall is located. ” However, DeSantis noted, “I’m not necessarily predicting that that’s going to happen, but I think if you’re ever going to do it, with all the celebrations that are going to be going on next week, just think of how much energy this would add to that not only in Israel, but here in the United States, for the millions and millions of Americans who would like to see this happen. ” A poll conducted by Smith Research found that in the absence of a solid vow to move the U. S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Trump’s approval rating among Jewish Israelis has dropped by 23 percentage points since he took office in January. Vice President and Dean of Touro College Dr. Robert Goldschmidt told Breitbart News he came from New York “to celebrate a milestone anniversary with the salute to the reunification of Jerusalem, which I think is a historic event for people of all faiths and all creeds. ” Rabbi Marc Volk, executive director of the National Council of Young Israel, told Breitbart News, “Jerusalem is the holy center of Eretz Israel, the State of Israel, and moreover the world. We know that so many individuals across the spectrum of religious life invariably go to the Kotel, the Western Wall, to offer prayer. ” Volk added, “The Kotel, the Western Wall, is a remnant of the Holy Temple that once stood in Jerusalem. We believe Jerusalem is part of Israel. ” Among lawmakers present at Wednesday’s event were Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Rep. Ed Royce ( ) Sen. Ben Cardin ( ) Sen. John Barrasso ( ) Rep. Steny Hoyer ( ) Rep. Ileana ( ) Sen. Joe Manchin ( ) Rep. Lee Zeldin ( ) Rep. Eliot Engel ( ) and Rep. Brad Schneider ( ). Sen. Ben Cardin said, “Israel is at great risk right now. We know that there are so many forces around the world that are trying to comprise the legitimacy of Israel. We see that in the effort of the Palestinians to take the negotiations with Israel to the United Nations rather than direct negotiations. We cannot let that happen. ” He added, “there is no separation between the United States and Israel. We are Israel’s only clear ally and friend and we must make sure that remains solid, bipartisan and that we will stand by Israel. ” Cardin also blasted the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against the State of Israel. He stated, “The support for Israel should be guaranteed in this year’s budget. Funding the memorandum of understanding, funding the Iron Dome, funding the technology that makes Israel safer and the United States safer. ” He said America must stand by the Jewish state to ensure support for Israel remains strong and bipartisan. Senator John Barrasso blasted the United Nations’ abuses against Israel. “We, as a Senate, say it is time to get rid of what you are doing at the United Nations. ” Rep. Brad Schneider began his speech by saying, “b’ruchim habayim,” which in Hebrew means “welcome” and “blessed are those who come. ” Schneider said the “permanent” unbreakable bond between the United States and Israel “depends on the bipartisan support in this body. ” He told those gathered that he came to Wednesday’s event “to make sure Jerusalem remains the undivided capital of Israel. ” Rep. Tom Suozzi ( ) told the crowd that he introduced House Resolution 328 on the House floor on Wednesday to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem “and for other purposes. ” HR 328 was cosponsored by Rep. Francis Rooney ( ) who served as the former ambassador to the Vatican under President George W. Bush’s commission. “I want you to know that I’m 100 percent on the team,” Suozzi said. “I’ll do whatever I can do be a strong defender of Israel through thick and thin. ” Follow Adelle Nazarian on Facebook and Twitter. | 1 |
President Trump’s sweeping new immigration policies — which include efforts to shine a harsh national spotlight on cities that released undocumented immigrants who went on to be accused of serious crimes — are sharply increasing the legal and political risks confronting local law enforcement officials. As Mr. Trump ratchets up the pressure on sanctuary cities through what some advocates are denouncing as a “ ” campaign to force them to work more closely with federal immigration authorities, police and sheriff’s departments are being caught in a crossfire. In Denver, Sheriff Patrick Firman, who runs the local jail, has long received one set of instructions from the city government and local advocates. The city attorney warned him against detaining anyone without a warrant. The American Civil Liberties Union threatened to sue him if he did. Immigrants’ rights groups applied the added deterrent of local political pressure. So Mr. Firman’s department began doing what many law enforcement officers around the country have learned to do: balance contradictory requests. When the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency wants to deport one of his inmates, the jail sends a fax notifying ICE before the inmate is about to walk free — leaving it to federal agents to show up and make an arrest. But the fax is not necessarily sent with a great deal of advance notice. In the case of Ever Valles, 19, a Mexican national awaiting trial for car theft, the Denver jail’s fax was sent in the middle of the night in late December, 10 hours after Mr. Valles posted bail but less than a before he walked free. ICE was nowhere to be seen. Last Friday, Mr. Valles was charged with a much more serious crime: murdering a man at a light rail station in a robbery gone awry. Now, Mr. Firman is in the eye of a political storm that highlights the precarious position confronting many law enforcement officials. Immigration officials accused Mr. Firman of ignoring their detainer request. “Had the officer for ICE been sitting at the fax machine, waiting for it to come in, it still would not have been enough time for us to come and get him,” said Shawn Neudauer, an ICE spokesman. The Fox News host Bill O’Reilly declared that Mr. Firman and Denver’s mayor had “blood on their hands. ” Angry messages quickly began flooding the sheriff’s department and its social media pages. Mr. Firman declined to be interviewed. Officials at the jail, which releases about 100 people a day and receives three to five detainer requests a week, say they try their best to cooperate with immigration officials and to notify them in a timely manner, despite calls from local advocates not to communicate with the agency and to release undocumented immigrants through a side door to elude federal agents. The Trump administration hopes the firestorm will help shift public opinion in cities that have vowed to protect their undocumented populations. Yet, the attacks on Mr. Firman do not acknowledge the confusing and often conflicting rules that have led to complaints by the law enforcement agents. United States appeals courts have ruled that federal detainer requests are not a substitute for a warrant or for the probable cause required to get one. “You can’t just pick up the phone and say, ‘Please hold an individual,’” said Jonathan F. Thompson, executive director of the National Sheriffs’ Association. When federal officials began issuing detainers in 2008 under a pilot program called Secure Communities, most jurisdictions treated the requests as mandatory. But after American citizens were mistakenly held, filed suit and won costly damage awards, some jurisdictions stopped cooperating. More confusion occurred when cities and states adopted their own policies spelling out when to turn over undocumented immigrants. As compliance with detainers dropped sharply, the Obama administration ended the program and introduced a new one allowing local jurisdictions far more leeway to decide when to cooperate. But that has caused even more confusion among law enforcement officials, when what they want is clarity about their obligations, Mr. Thompson said. He said his members were relieved this week when Mr. Trump reinstated the Secure Communities program. But Mr. Thompson said the rules surrounding federal detainers were still “a work in progress. ” It remains to be seen how the reinstated program will avoid the same legal setbacks that took the program down under President Obama. “We’re all trying to figure out how to do that as quickly as possible,” Mr. Thompson said, mentioning a meeting he and some of his members had recently with Mr. Trump. Recent clashes between local and federal officials have only muddied the waters. In New York City this week, ICE officials publicly assailed the city government after an undocumented Salvadoran teenager with suspected ties to a violent gang, Estivan Rafael Marques Velasquez, was released from Rikers Island despite a federal request for assistance with his deportation. “Honoring a detainer request is not about politics,” Thomas R. Decker, director of enforcement and removal operations for ICE in New York, said in a news release. “It is about keeping New York citizens safe. ” But the city’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, vigorously defends that policy, adopted by the City Council in 2014, under which only those accused of 170 serious felonies — such as arson, robbery or homicide — can be turned over to immigration enforcement agents. And in a radio interview last month, the mayor suggested that turning local police into a deportation force would make the city more dangerous because fewer people would report crimes or cooperate with investigations. “If so many of our fellow New Yorkers who are undocumented feared to communicate with the local authorities because they thought they might be deported, we couldn’t run our city,” he said. The case of Mr. Velasquez, 18, who has been arrested six times since 2014 on charges that remain sealed because he was a minor at the time, highlights how quickly public opinion can shift if an undocumented immigrant commits a serious crime. A trenchant New York Post headline — “ ‘Sanctuary City’ Law Let Gang Member Walk Free From Rikers” — lit up social media as Trump supporters across the country railed against New York’s defiance. The prospect of more such cases being publicized has rattled New York officials. “I don’t think that litigating this in the public sphere is the best path forward,” said Nisha Agarwal, the city’s commissioner for immigrant affairs. Mr. Velasquez — known to city officials as Steven Marquez — was involved in a clash last year between youths outside Queens County Criminal Courthouse witnesses told investigators they heard gunshots. He was charged with felony weapons possession, which would have made him eligible to be handed over to ICE under New York City’s policy. But he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, weapons possession. He served less than a year at Rikers Island, where investigators noted that he had a tattoo associating him with the Salvadoran gang . On Feb. 16, he was released from jail. Hours later, he was rearrested by federal agents at a Queens apartment, according to ICE, whose agents say it is far more dangerous to arrest someone on the streets than in jail. To highlight the additional risks they say they must take in sanctuary cities, ICE agents make a point of issuing news releases that criticize jurisdictions that decline to cooperate with deportations. That kind of warfare is almost certain to escalate. This week, the Department of Homeland Security ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release weekly reports of crimes committed by immigrants who were the subjects of detainer requests that went ignored. Some sanctuary cities view the move as beyond the pale. “This is a shaming list, a scarlet letter that the federal government is going to put on jurisdictions around the country,” said Dennis Herrera, San Francisco’s city attorney. “We welcome an open and honest discussion about immigration and crime, because numerous studies have shown that immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be incarcerated than individuals. ” But Mr. Thompson, of the National Sheriffs’ Association, said the effort was merely meant to illuminate the constraints under which law enforcement agencies are operating. The new directive “wasn’t written in a way to shame anyone,” he said. “It was written in a way to give the department a handle on, ‘Why can’t these criminal aliens be held? Is it state law or local law preventing a sheriff from cooperating? ’” | 1 |
Re: the nonsense she says : it’s best not to take ideological disagreements too personally imo 11:17 PM; I don’t. I don’t give a shit. Dao 11:19 PM: you seem a bit off to me is all. just looking out for you. I do care. 11:20 PM; as opposed to what? you only know me starting from a period where I experienced many of the worst things in my life, to be honest you don’t have a strong baseline in knowing me yet, and it takes years for most 11:22 PM: just an intuition 11:22 PM; there’s a difference between life is hard now and life is hard 11:23 PM; if you want to know what I meant, not expecting that she did. I see the same potential and value in all forms of life. I don’t see humanity as any better or worse than any other species and if I were to attribute "genius" to anything it would be to the spirit that binds with the human body. I don’t think she took it that way but her response was emotive as it was, no point in adding to it. She feels how she feels, I do how I do. An argument changes neither of our views and how we act in real life. Hence adding about practicality and empirical occurrence. If things don’t change in real life, I don’t see the point in arguing. 11:32 PM; out and about 11:34 PM: there is a value in exchanging ideas even if you don’t mutually change your original opinion, it offers perspective 11:34 PM; I’ve been over that same notion with others before, I lean away from that 12:16 AM: why? 12:16 AM; start with why not? 12:17 AM: didn’t I just say my opinion though? that would be my reason 12:17 AM; for me, cost benefit analysis is usually such that discussions carry more risk than potential benefit 12:18 AM: see, I don’t feel that way at all. I feel exactly the opposite. I always feel that if you are open to learning about others, there’s never a wasted discussion 12:19 AM; one can’t give equal weight to all relationships, one can’t be open to everyone yet give whole focus on who counts most in their life 12:21 AM: well, yeah you prioritize the people who count the most to you, but that doesn’t have to exclude others you talk to either 12:21 AM; I mean things quite more broadly, taken in principle and in turn down to the minute. If I spent so much time engaging in random discussions with random people I’d hardly have the time and energy for discussions and people that are not so random to my life, let alone those not random at all. 12:23 AM: I disagree. I think there is plenty of time for discussions with random strangers and important people. We spend a lot of time online anyway, we might as well make the time we do spend meaningful. Plenty just browse social media or don’t interact at all. We may be strangers but we are a real social circle. It may be far less important then the face to face interactions for you, but is there no time for it and is it meaningless? IMO no. 12:28 AM; You misunderstand. Before I speak for myself more, take a look at the fueds of the people you know. You can’t choose equanimity for all of them even if you wanted to. 12:31 AM: sure, but that doesn’t mean those people don’t mean anything to me, or that I’d write them off 12:32 AM; It’s not about that, especially if you’re focusing on discussion/interaction in this case. If anything to opt out represents greater sense of caring for others. 12:33 AM: how? 12:33 AM; by sparing people hardship through disagreement for one 12:34 AM: disagreement is enlightening. as sun tzu says, those we disagree with often teach as the most. I think it’s important to understand the perspective of others. it’s not a hardship, discussion and disagreement is how the truth is found. if you avoid those who disagree with you you easily fall prey to a cognitive fallacy known as confirmation bias 12:35 AM; note I said cost benefit analysis before. the risks comes too great and people get heated and even friendships break. I say that from observation including of your own friends, and I say that from experience regarding mine. I spared ___ an argument just now that wouldn’t have changed her view on anything if it happened, nor would it have changed mine. It’s the same now, I won’t change your view and you won’t change mine. 12:37 AM: well that’s silly imo ___. I think intellectual peers need to learn how to dissociate their ideas from their feelings and friendships and the people in this room are more then capable of that. are you? 12:38 AM Page 1 | 0 |
We Are Change
Hillary Clinton hasn’t been the most favored candidate. In fact, she is one of the most disliked candidates to ever run for president. Election day is just on the horizon, and as this presidential race draws to a close, the indictment of Hillary Clinton seems increasingly more likely with every new scandal that comes around the corner.
On Wednesday, a Fox News report revealed two sources with “intimate knowledge of the FBI investigations” had stated, that the probe of the Clinton Foundation would continue to be ongoing after the election. However it is not certain as to whether this will result in an indictment yet. Fox News redacted the earlier claim stating that this would indeed lead to an indictment. These sources also told Fox News anchor, Bret Baier, that this investigation was being treated as ‘very high priority’, with ‘a lot of’ evidence having been gathered, even before the Wikileaks revelations , which have revealed the absolute highest levels of corruption from within the Clinton Campaign.
These sources also stated that they’re “looking into possible pay-for-play interaction between secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and the foundation” and that this investigation has been “going on for more than a year.” The FBI have interviewed individuals who are suspected to be linked with this activity.
In an article published by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, it was stated that:
“Secret recordings of a suspect talking about the Clinton Foundation fueled an internal battle between FBI agents who wanted to pursue the case and corruption prosecutors who viewed the statements as worthless hearsay, people familiar with the matter said.”
We are uncertain as to what these recordings entail, but it’s evident that their contents must be of substantial importance, as it was concerning enough to contribute to the reopening of the Clinton Foundation investigation.
Meanwhile, The FBI have also discovered new, not duplicated, emails that they believe to have come from Hillary’s server. However, it is currently unknown as to whether they contain classified information. These emails were discovered whilst combing through former Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner’s laptop—after a sexting scandal involving a 15-year-old girl.
With an “avalanche of new information coming every day,” this investigation will have wide-reaching implications for the Clinton Foundation. Appearing more intensive and expansive than we ever could have imagined. The reopening of the investigation into the Clinton Foundation has also show Trump to have gained support in the polls, appearing almost even with Clinton in most polls, while the L.A Times shows Trump to have a 4 per cent lead.
Despite attempts on behalf of Department of Justice officials to shut this investigation down, a report from the Wall Street Journal states FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe refused to close the case, calling it a “validly predicated investigation” while discussing this with other DOJ officials. The FBI investigation into the Clinton campaign is now running parallel to the reopened criminal investigation into Hillary’s private email server, which she created violating State Department regulations.
With an onslaught of evidence confirming the Clinton campaign’s deceit and rampant corruption, it is highly unlikely that they’ll come out of this ordeal unscathed. If she were to be elected, there are a large number of possible charges Hillary could be facing whilst in the White House. Including perjury, obstruction of justice, bribery, pay-for-play, and undoubtedly many more.
Earlier today, in a morbid turn of events, batch 30 of the Wikileaks Podesta emails revealed the sadistic past times of the Podesta brothers, having been invited to a ‘Spirit Cooking’ dinner with performance artist Marina Abramovic. The grotesque nature of Clinton’s inner circle really is the gift that keeps on giving. From raunchy sexting to ritual sacrifice, this election cycle has divulged the darkest, more abhorrent secrets held by this crooked campaign. If there is any justice left in the world, it is morally essential that Hillary Clinton and her mob go down, to prison, as well as hell.
The post Is This The End For Hillary Clinton? appeared first on We Are Change .
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Schools All Over America Are Closing On Election Day Due To Fears Of Violence All it is going to take is a single incident to change everything Image Credits: flickr, cali4beach .
Will this be the most chaotic election day in modern American history?
All across the nation, schools are being closed on election day due to safety fears. Traditionally, schools have been very popular as voting locations because they can accommodate a lot of people, they usually have lots of parking, and everyone in the community knows where they are and can usually get to them fairly easily. But now there is a big movement to remove voting from schools or to shut schools down on election day so that children are not present when voting takes place. According to Fox News , “voting has been removed or classes have been canceled on Election Day at schools in Illinois, Maine, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and elsewhere.” Just a couple days ago , I shared with you a survey that found that 51 percent of all Americans are concerned about violence happening on election day, and all of these schools closing is just another sign of how on edge much of the population is as we approach November 8th.
Many officials are being very honest about the fact that schools are being shut down on election day because they are afraid of election violence. The following comes from Fox News …
Several schools across the nation have decided to close on Election Day over fears of possible violence in the hallways stemming from the fallout from the heated rhetoric that consumed the campaign trail.
The fear is the ugliness of the election season could escalate into confrontations and even violence in the school hallways, endangering students.
“If anybody can sit there and say they don’t think this is a contentious election, then they aren’t paying much attention,” Ed Tolan, the Falmouth, Maine police chief, said Tuesday. His community has already called off classes on Nov. 8 and an increased police presence will be felt around town.
And without a doubt, voting locations are “soft targets” that often have little or no security. We have been blessed to have had such peaceful elections in the past, but we also need to realize that times have changed. I believe that there is wisdom in what Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp told reporters …
“There is a concern, just like at a concert, sporting event or other public gathering that we didn’t have 15 or 20 years ago,” said Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, co-chairman of the National Association of Secretaries of State election committee. “ What if someone walks in a polling location with a backpack bomb or something? If that happens at a school, then that’s certainly concerning.”
All it is going to take is a single incident to change everything.
Let us hope that it is not this election day when we see something like that.
Another reason why polling locations are under increased scrutiny this election season is because of concerns about election fraud. This is something that Donald Trump has alluded to repeatedly on the campaign trail. For instance, just consider what he told a rally in Pennsylvania …
“We don’t want to lose an election because you know what I’m talking about,” Trump told an overwhelmingly white crowd in Manheim, Pa., earlier this month. “Because you know what? That’s a big, big problem, and nobody wants to talk about it. Nobody has the guts to talk about it. So go and watch these polling places .”
And of course reports are already pouring in from around the country of big problems with the voting machines. In Illinois this week, one candidate personally experienced a machine switching his votes from Republicans to Democrats…
Early voting in Illinois got off to a rocky start Monday, as votes being cast for Republican candidates were transformed into votes for Democrats.
Republican state representative candidate Jim Moynihan went to vote Monday at the Schaumburg Public Library.
“I tried to cast a vote for myself and instead it cast the vote for my opponent,” Moynihan said. “You could imagine my surprise as the same thing happened with a number of races when I tried to vote for a Republican and the machine registered a vote for a Democrat.”
In addition, if you keep up with my work on The Economic Collapse Blog , then you already know that a number of voters down in Texas have reported that their votes were switched from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton .
Well, it turns out that those voting machines appear to have a link to the Clinton Foundation …
According to OpenSecrets, the company who provided the alleged glitching voting machines is a subsidiary of The McCarthy Group.
The McCarthy group is a major donor to the Clinton Foundation – apparently donating 200,000 dollars in 2007 – when it was the largest owner of United States voting machines. Or perhaps the 200,000 dollars went to paying Bill Clinton for speeches?
Either way, it doesn’t look good.
After everything that we saw in 2012 , I am convinced that there is good reason to be concerned about the integrity of our voting machines.
But Democrats don’t like poll observers, because they think that having too many poll observers will intimidate their voters…
“It’s un-American, but at the same time we have a long history of doing things like that ,” Ari Berman, author of the 2016 book “ Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America ,” previously told The Christian Science Monitor. “Voting was very, very dangerous. I don’t think anyone’s suggesting that we’re at the same place today. I just think the loss of the [official poll observers] is going to be really problematic.”
Without a doubt, this has been the craziest election season that we have seen in decades, and I have a feeling that it is about to get even crazier.
But will the end result be the election of the most corrupt politician in the history of our country ?
If that is the outcome after all that we have been through, it will be exceedingly depressing indeed. NEWSLETTER SIGN UP Get the latest breaking news & specials from Alex Jones and the Infowars Crew. Related Articles | 0 |
On Tuesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Situation Room,” Senator Robert Menendez ( ) reacted to the commutation of Chelsea Manning’s sentence by stating, “at a time that we are seriously questioning what Russia did, as it relates to our recent elections, and the role that WikiLeaks … has played in that regard, I’m not sure what type of message we send here. ” Menendez said, “I don’t know why he did it, and so, I look forward to hearing his reasoning, because I just heard about it. But the reality is I have serious concerns about equivocating sentences when national security’s at stake. What happened here is that, literally hundreds of thousands of documents were released. It put national security at risk. It put individual operatives at risk. It put our national interests at risk with other countries. And at a time that we are seriously questioning what Russia did, as it relates to our recent elections, and the role that WikiLeaks … has played in that regard, I’m not sure what type of message we send here. And, so, I’m really surprised that the president took this action and I have concerns about what message we send about ultimately revealing sensitive national security documents. ” He further wondered, “[W]hat message do we send for the next person who thinks that they can get a treasure trove of documents released because something inspires them to do so and the consequences that flow from that?” And “if at the end of the day, you think you can do that, and then have your sentence commuted, I’m not sure that we send the right message. ” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 1 |
Dilbert creator Scott Adams announced in a blog post that he will stop donating to this alma mater, UC Berkeley, in the aftermath of the riots that erupted on campus last week in response to a scheduled event featuring Breitbart editor MILO. [Adams, who earned an MBA degree at UC Berkeley, announced that he is terminating his support of the public institution over concerns that he wouldn’t “feel safe or welcome on campus. ” Speaking of Hitler, I’m ending my support of UC Berkeley, where I got my MBA years ago. I have been a big supporter lately, with both my time and money, but that ends today. I wish them well, but I wouldn’t feel safe or welcome on the campus. A Berkeley professor made that clear to me recently. He seems smart, so I’ll take his word for it. I’ve decided to side with the Jewish gay immigrant who has an boyfriend, not the hypnotized in black masks who were clubbing people who hold different points of view. I feel that’s reasonable, but I know many will disagree, and possibly try to club me to death if I walk on campus. Adams writes that a Berkeley professor “made it clear” to him that he wouldn’t be welcome on campus due to his political beliefs. In July 2016, Adams regularly placed a disclaimer at the bottom of his blog posts which claimed that his endorsement of Hillary Clinton was made out of concern for his personal safety. Note: I endorsed Hillary Clinton — for my personal safety — because I live in California. It isn’t safe to be viewed as a Trump supporter where I live. My politics don’t align with either candidate, but backing Clinton reduces my odds of dying at the hands of my fellow citizens. (And yes, I am 100% serious. It just happens to be funny by coincidence.) Adams frequently praised President Trump during his run for the White House and was one of the few public figures who predicted his victory. | 1 |
"allies" cringe. | 0 |
Campus carry and legislation holding businesses liable for injuries to disarmed citizens are both on the move in Missouri. [The campus carry legislation is contained in House Bill 630, which is sponsored by state Rep. Jered Taylor ( ). The Missourian reports that HB 630 would remove numerous “ zones” around the state, including those in “child care centers, public universities and churches. ” This means child care workers with concealed carry permits would be able to have a gun at hand to protect children, permit holders would be able to keep a gun with them on campus to defend their lives and the lives of fellow students, and could be armed to fend off an attack during church services around the state. State Rep. Jon Carpenter ( City) was taken aback by efforts to roll back “ zones” and asked, “Is this for show or is this for real?” Rep. Taylor responded, “I want individuals to be able to choose whether or not they carry a gun to protect themselves and others if the need were to arise. ” He added, “Criminals know where the zones are. They know they’re going to be able to carry out their rampage and likely won’t be stopped until law enforcement arrives. ” State Rep. Nick Schroer ( ’Fallon) is sponsoring legislation that would hold “ ” businesses liable if a customer in the business suffers harm in a situation where they could have defended themselves with a gun. He said, “This policy of making places provides a sense of safety to those who engage in magical thinking. These killers are not stopped by a sign on the front door. ” Schroer said businesses that advertise their status with signage highlight “the dangerous condition we talk about when we talk about premises liability. ” AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 1 |
Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson has admitted Sweden has “major problems” as a result of the population growth brought on by mass immigration. [Earlier this week, the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SKL) admitted, by 2020, municipalities face a funding deficit of 40 billion Swedish Krona (£3. 5 billion) to finance services like hospitals and nursing homes. “Demographic trends show that, with more children and more elderly people, the need for local government services is expected to grow significantly faster than the tax base,” says Annika Wallenskog, chief economist at SKL. Andersson told Swedish Television News (SVT) that “it is quite obvious that we have big problems” as a result of the demographic changes aggravated by mass migration. The Socialist minister stressed the country must hire more staff and build more facilities, and said politicians cannot afford to promise any tax cuts. Sweden’s National Audit Office announced in November that it believes the government “underestimates public spending”. In a piece published by Dagens Nyheter, the office remarked: “”If the government’s forecasts are realised, Sweden will be required to make significant reductions to welfare, and municipalities significant cuts by 2020. “If local government wants to be able to meet the needs of the increased population that is projected, it will have to increase expenditure by 50 billion Swedish Krona beyond what is in the government’s forecast for 2020. ” Granting citizenship to 60, 343 people last year, Sweden saw a record number of new nationals in 2016. The largest share of ‘new Swedes’ hail from Somalia. As a result of its high rate of immigration, Sweden recorded more than 2. 3 million people with a foreign background at the end of the year. The nation’s open borders policy has not been without controversy, however. In February, Breitbart London reported that many libraries in Sweden were refusing to stock Kurdish economist Tino Sanandaji’s “sincere and analysis” of the country’s immigration policy, alleging the contents were “contrary to human rights”. | 1 |
By Fink | Leave/Read Comments Vice President-elect Mike Pence claims that a 1983 conversion therapy saved him.
Indianapolis, IN — In a surprise announcement today, Indiana Governor and Vice President-elect Mike Pence said that gay conversion therapy saved his marriage. The controversial Republican, who was elected the 50th governor of the Hoosier State, has been a long-time proponent of a “Biblical view” on homosexuality and as a member of Congress stated that the legislative branch “should oppose any effort to recognize homosexuals as a ‘discrete and insular minority’ entitled to the protection of anti-discrimination laws similar to those extended to women and ethnic minorities.”
“It[gay conversion therapy] was instrumental in helping me overcoming certain urges,” said the Vice President elect in an interview with Fox News. “With God’s help, and the work of many of his therapists, I was able to seek the straight path when I was a younger man. If it wasn’t for that, I would have never been able to marry.”
Conversion therapy is psychological treatment or spiritual counseling designed to change a person’s sexual orientation from homosexual or bisexual to heterosexual. Such treatments are controversial and are a form of pseudoscience. However many orthodox and fundamentalist Christians believe that it does work, citing numerous examples of success. In more ancient times prior to 1981, conversion therapies in the United States and Western Europe included ice-pick lobotomies, chemical castration and various hormonal treatments. Efforts were largely concentrated on men, as female homosexuality was generally viewed as “hot.” This split along gender lines was due American’s general stupidity.
Many of Mike Pence’s classmates at Indiana University said the young Pence struggled with “identity issues.”
“Oh Mike was always a well-groomed sharp dresser,” said University of Chicago Professor James Badwater who was a dorm roommate of Mr. Pence in 1983. “He was private and kept to himself. He had a large collection of Men’s fitness magazines and listened to Wham! continually. He got into the conversion thing the next year, and then immediately married Karen [Mike Pence’s wife] the following year. It’s going to be great to have our first gay Vice President.”
It’s unclear how this news will impact the Donald Trump administration, if at all, however many GOP insiders maintain that this demonstrates the incoming administration’s commitment to diversity and the “widening” of the party’s platform to be more inclusive of what have traditionally been party outsiders. | 0 |
Posted on October 27, 2016
The editorial board at the Yale Review gave the most curious non-endorsement of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton this election season has yet seen – and with a lesson that most of the Republican political complex and especially nominee Donald Trump should learn, quickly, if he wants to keep himself out of even more legal trouble.
In its 144-year history, The Yale Record has never endorsed a Democratic candidate for president. In fact, we have never endorsed any candidate for president. This is, in part, due to our strong commitment to being a tax-exempt 501(c)3 organization, which mandates that we are “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”
This year’s presidential election is highly unusual, but ultimately no different: The Yale Record believes both candidates to be equally un-endorsable, due to our faithful compliance with the tax code.
In particular, we do not endorse Hillary Clinton’s exemplary leadership during her 30 years in the public eye. We do not support her impressive commitment to serving and improving this country—a commitment to which she has dedicated her entire professional career. Because of unambiguous tax law, we do not encourage you to support the most qualified presidential candidate in modern American history, nor do we encourage all citizens to shatter the glass ceiling once and for all by electing Secretary Clinton on November 8.
The Yale Record has no opinion whatsoever on Dr. Jill Stein.
Tax-exempt organizations like The Yale Record and the Donald J Trump Foundation must obey certain rules to keep their tax-exempt status – rules that the Trump Foundation has been flouting for its entire existence. Trump’s been using his private foundation – which is funded almost entirely by the donations of other people – to purchase the political support of different groups throughout his campaign , among other more personal purchases like a $20,000 painting of himself , in clear violation of the tax-exempt rules.
Trump’s foundation has already been suspended from operating in New York for not having the right certification to solicit donors . Such a flagrant disrespect for the laws of the land and of the spirit of “charity” reveal just what kind of man Donald Trump is – a greedy narcissist with no regard for the well-being of others. So take this non-endorsement to heart and applaud their respect for the rules governing tax-exempt organizations. OccupyDemocrats, however, is under no such restrictions, and we heartily encourage you to help shatter the glass ceiling and make former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton our next president. | 0 |
President Trump’s decision to strike Syria has upended assumptions about American military involvement in the Middle East, angering adversaries and raising hopes among allies that it signals a new willingness by the United States to deploy force to help its friends and punish its foes. “People are jubilant in the Gulf right now,” said Mohammed Alyahya, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council who is from Saudi Arabia. “What is clear is that Trump understands what American power can change and is willing to use it. ” The swift decision, by a president who had previously shown no interest in entering conflicts like Syria’s, set Mr. Trump apart from his predecessor’s far more cautious approach to the war. The missile strikes on a Syrian airfield inflicted only minor damage and are unlikely to change the dynamics of a complex conflict that rages on local, regional and global levels. On the ground, it pits an array of rebel groups against the Syrian president, Bashar . Supporting the rebels are nations like Saudi Arabia and Turkey, who oppose Mr. Assad and his ally, Iran. The war has also entangled Russia and the United States, and sent shock waves through Europe, which streams of Syrian refugees have fled to. But Mr. Trump’s decision to launch quick strikes raised questions about whether it would give the involved powers pause as they pursue their objectives in a war that seems to have no end in sight. Russia and Iran, who back the Syrian government, have responded angrily to the strikes, while allies who criticized President Barack Obama’s cautious approach have welcomed the change. Some allies renewed their calls for a leadership change in Damascus, although officials in the Trump administration did not portray the strikes as the start of a broader campaign. “A lot of this is an emotional response, but nothing about this strike suggests that the fundamentals of the Syria conflict have shifted,” said Noah Bonsey, a Syria analyst with the International Crisis Group. As president, Mr. Obama sought to differentiate himself from his predecessor, George W. Bush, by limiting direct American involvement in Middle Eastern wars. That angered some allies. Israel, Saudi Arabia and others accused him of overlooking aggressive moves by Iran in order to clinch a deal to limit its nuclear program. And Persian Gulf states and Turkey were irate when he did not enforce his own “red line” on the use of chemical weapons in Syria by using force against Mr. Assad after an attack in 2013 that killed more than 1, 000 people. Now, many who felt that Mr. Obama’s caution gave a green light to Mr. Assad’s brutality are lauding Mr. Trump for his forcible response to this week’s chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, a town in northern Syria. “Everyone here in Khan Sheikhoun is happy. It is revenge for the families of the victims,” said Yasser Sarmini, a rebel fighter who was in the town at the time of the strike. “Trump is more frank and earnest than Obama. He promised and fulfilled his promise. ” In Turkey, which has long backed Syrian rebels in their effort to topple Mr. Assad, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a rally that he supported the attack but wanted further action. “I want to say we found this positive as a step taken against the war crimes the Assad regime has committed with chemical and conventional weapons,” Mr. Erdogan said. “Is it enough? I don’t reckon it is enough. ” He called for the establishment of “safe zones” inside Syria, an idea considered but ultimately rejected by the Obama administration. Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, went further, calling in a televised speech for a leadership change in Syria. “This regime should be removed from Syria right away,” he said. “The best way to do this is to establish the interim government, an interim government without Assad. ” In Israel, which has kept its distance from the war raging across its northern border, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the strikes sent a clear message against the spread of chemical weapons. “Israel fully supports President Trump’s decision and hopes that this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regime’s horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere,” he said. But Mr. Trump’s actions could complicate the pursuit of other American priorities, including defeating the Islamic State. Russian officials, who have denied that the Syrian government has retained any chemical weapons, condemned the American attack and suspended their agreement with the United States over the use of Syrian airspace, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Friday. Russia has argued that the deaths in Khan Sheikhoun on Tuesday occurred when a bomb hit a chemical weapons facility belonging to the rebels. So far, Mr. Trump has not clarified whether Thursday’s strikes were a response to the chemical attack or the start of more direct American involvement. He had previously spoken of cooperating with Russia against the Islamic State, and his spokesman, Sean Spicer, said just last week that Mr. Assad’s staying in power was “a political reality that we have to accept. ” Maha Yahya, the director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Lebanon, said, “It’s too early to call this a game changer, because we don’t know what the next step will be — or if there will be a next step. ” Ms. Yahya said she had learned of the strikes in the company of Syrian dissidents in Washington, where some applauded and others stayed silent. “There were a lot of mixed emotions,” she added. “They were worried about what this means, yet at the same time incredibly relieved and happy that someone is finally standing up for them against Assad. ” Some analysts said that even if the strike did not represent a major blow to Mr. Assad’s military abilities, it could be a deterrent by signaling new American assertiveness in the conflict. In Iran, the attack, and the swiftness with which it was executed, caught the establishment by surprise. Most in the crowds at Friday Prayer said they had heard of the attack only through social media. State television broadcast the reaction of the Foreign Ministry hours after the strike. Farshad Ghorbanpour, an analyst close to the government of President Hassan Rouhani of Iran, predicted that the country would take the news seriously. “They will choose not to be confrontational towards the U. S. and the West,” Mr. Ghorbanpour said. “Iran will continue to support Bashar but not at all costs. ” The strikes did not appear to have significantly degraded the ability of Mr. Assad and his allies to wage war. A correspondent in Syria for Rossiya 24, the main Russian satellite news channel, filed video from Al Shayrat airfield. The barrages of Tomahawk cruise missiles destroyed nine airplanes and littered a runway with shrapnel, among other damage, the reporter said. He posted a photograph on Instagram of at least one warplane that he said had not been damaged. Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs Province, which includes the air base, said by telephone on Friday that five people in the military and two civilians had been killed in the strikes. “What happened today is biggest evidence that the U. S. and its allies are the biggest supporters of the Daesh terrorist,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. While chemical attacks draw the world’s attention, most of the more than 400, 000 people who have died in the Syrian civil war have been killed with conventional weapons whose use has not piqued Mr. Trump’s ire, leaving some observers skeptical that the strikes would change the war’s course. “I feel the ecstasy of revenge now,” said Malek an antigovernment activist who recently fled to Turkey. “I don’t feel the strike will change anything. Unless Bashar goes, nothing will change. ” | 1 |
Posted on October 31, 2016 “Birth of a Nation” Bombs Chris Roberts, American Renaissance, October 29, 2016 Are whites fed up with white-guilt films?
The results are in: The new Birth of a Nation is a box-office disaster. Its ticket sales are going to fall several millions of dollars short of the cost to make and market the film–maybe as much as ten million dollars short . This is excellent news for white America. Birth of Nation glorifies black-on-white violence at a time when black-on-white violence is on the rise , and the anti-white vitriol from groups like Black Lives Matter has never been more mainstream .
The financial failure of Birth of a Nation is even better news when you consider the success of other recent films that cultivate white guilt and glorify black violence. In 2012, Django Unchained , another story of a black slave killing white southerners, made well over 150 percent of its production costs. In 2013, Twelve Years a Slave nearly tripled its production costs, and The Butler , the story of a sad black servant in the White House, did even better.
Have American moviegoers lost interest in movies that tell them to feel guilty about their history? If so, the reason must surely be the rising disgust among whites at always being cast as the villains of history, and I suspect Donald Trump has had something to do with this. Win or lose, Mr. Trump has sparked a sense of pride in whites, and that affects many things, including movie-going habits.
Think back to 2012 and 2013, when anti-white films were box office bonanzas. That 24-month period may well have been the lowest point for whites in American history. Politically, the implicitly white Tea Party movement disintegrated, and Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama despite winning as much of the white vote as Ronald Reagan had decades earlier. Meanwhile, the number of journalists and commentators being purged for “racism” was higher than ever: John Derbyshire, Jason Richwine, Robert Weissberg, Jack Hunter, Frank Borzellieri, Pat Buchanan, Leif Parsell, Peter Brimelow, Paul Gottfried, and Thomas Bertonneau all lost jobs.
The white world outside of politics was not looking good either. The catastrophic waste of our wars in the Middle East had become obvious to anyone. Perhaps not by coincidence, the heroin epidemic in New England was starting and the white suicide rate was rising. The university system was becoming more and more aggressive with its theories of “white privilege,” microaggressions, and gender fluidity–and there seemed to be no one fighting back. The longstanding trends of black dominance in music and sports continued, and America seemed on its way to becoming this hemisphere’s South Africa .
In such a world, why not laugh along with black actor Jamie Foxx when he joked about enjoying killing all the white people in Django Unchained ? When the theory of “white privilege” is all but doctrine, blockbusters naturally vilify whites.
People often make their conditions worse. Frustrated young men often compound their problems by watching pornography. Frustrated jobless people often compound their problems by drinking too much. A few years ago, white America only hastened its cultural and political dispossession by going to the theater and watching The Butler .
Things are different now. The George Zimmerman trial, the Michael Brown shooting, and Black Lives Matter have helped many whites shed their last feelings of guilt. At the same time, Donald Trump has arrived almost like a modern version of the “ redeemers ” who helped end Reconstruction in the South. All this helps whites give “ black grievance porn ” the cold shoulder.
In any case, blacks and whites have always watched different movies. From about 1915 until the early 1950s, the “ race film ” industry produced no fewer than 500 movies that touted an “all black cast,” or an “all-star Negro cast.” Oscar Micheaux was a major black producer in his day, but the only whites who know about him now are dorky cinephiles. Blacks didn’t want to watch Clark Gable or Joan Crawford, and when they went to a “race film” they could sit anywhere they liked in the theater. The original (and excellent) Birth of a Nation , about the Civil War and southern resistance to Reconstruction, was boycotted by the NAACP , but a boycott by blacks was mostly symbolic. In the 1970s, blacks gorged themselves on “ blaxploitation ” films, while whites occasionally watched one out of curiosity.
Today, playwright and film-maker Tyler Perry is overwhelmingly popular with blacks–he made $130 million in 2011, making him the highest paid man in entertainment that year–but many whites have never even heard of him. Who honestly thinks there are many blacks who watch contemporary white films such as Interstellar or The Lord of the Rings or Gravity ?
Only in recent and unfortunate times have large numbers of whites watched movies made by black film makers like Spike Lee who are openly contemptuous of whites. Let us hope this has finally come to an end. | 0 |
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The Democratic Coalition Against Trump filed a complaint Friday against FBI Director James Comey with the Department of Justice, alleging interference with the 2016 presidential election.
The coalition, an arm of the Keep America Great PAC, filed the complaint with the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility, after Comey announced to Congress that because of new emails discovered on Huma Abedin’s electronic devices relevant to the Hillary Clinton email investigation, the agency would review those emails and assess their relevancy to the investigation .
For Scott Dworkin, senior advisor to the Democratic Coalition Against Trump, the announcement is evidence that Comey, a registered Republican, is attempting to undermine Clinton’s chances of taking the White House.
In a statement, Dworkin submitted:
It is absolutely absurd that FBI Director Comey would support Donald Trump like this with only 11 days to go before the election. It is an obvious attack from a lifelong Republican who used to serve in the Bush White House, just to undermine her campaign. Comey needs to focus on stopping terrorists and protecting America, not investigating our soon to be President-Elect Hillary Clinton.
The Democratic Coalition Against Trump has filed numerous complaints with federal agencies about figures connected to the 2016 election.
On Monday, the group filed a complaint with the FBI against Donald Trump himself for allegedly violating the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In other words, the group thinks Trump has called for voter intimidation and suppression on a national level.
Earlier in October, the group also filed a complaint against the Trump campaign and political strategist Roger Stone, saying both were involved with WikiLeaks and also a “foreign government” behind the hacks that lead to the release of emails from John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chair.
Podesta referred to the FBI’s Friday announcement as “extraordinary.”
“It is extraordinary that we would see something like this just 11 days out from a presidential election,” Podesta said . “The Director owes it to the American people to immediately provide the full details of what he is now examining.”
In July, after the FBI came to a conclusion on Clinton’s private email server and said that no reasonable prosecutor would move forward with criminal charges, the Clinton campaign praised Comey as a “well-respected Republican who served as George W. Bush’s Deputy Attorney General.”
Brian Fallon, press secretary for the Clinton campaign, shamed Republicans in September , particularly GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley , for “trying to bully the FBI into serving partisan interests.”
This report, by Jonah Bennett, was cross-posted by arrangement with the Daily Caller News Foundation. | 0 |
Friday on Fox Sports 1’s “Undisputed,” Skip Bayless reacted to UC Berkeley sociologist professor and activist Dr. Harry Edwards comparing free agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick to Muhammad Ali. While Bayless admitted now is too early to see the full impact Kaepernick’s national anthem protest made, he did say the quarterback had “profound national impact” and “opened up some souls of some white people. ” “I’ve also said many times on our Kaepernick discussions, Colin Kaepernick has hd profound national impact. He wound up on the cover of ‘Time’ magazine. He opened a whole lot of eyes and ears and hearts and head. He opened up some souls of some white people to say, ‘Oh, wait a second. Oh yeah, oh, oh, this is a real problem.’ Now, I can’t measure the impact of that right now because we’re in the moment of it. ” Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 1 |
Lithuanian Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis has taken a leaf out of Donald J. Trump’s book, announcing a euro border fence to “ensure credible control of [the] eastern border of the European Union”. [EurActiv reports that the €30 million project will be funded largely from the European Union (EU) budget, to which the UK contributes a net £200 million every week. Skvernelis claims the fence, which will be erected against the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, will “first of all, ensure our economic security” while “also solving issues when it comes to illegal migration”. Far from being disappointed by the project, Russian state media reports Kaliningrad’s governor as being eager to secure contracts for the building materials which the project will require. The Baltic republic is not a popular destination for migrants, with asylum seekers resettled there from camps in Greece and Turkey complaining that state benefits are not so generous as in Germany or Sweden and attempting to escape to wealthier EU members. Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė has predicted an increase in the number of migrants taking alternative routes into western Europe now that the EU signed a controversial six billion euro deal to stem the flow from Turkey. The Turkey deal has been a partial success in terms of reducing overall numbers, but the transfer arrangements it included have seen more than three times as many migrants forwarded to the EU as have been returned to Turkey, and the Turkish president looks set to terminate it if his own EU membership bid is not accelerated. “One should not be afraid to say that Europe has to be closed, at least temporarily, especially for economic migrants,” Grybauskaitė told broadcaster LRT. “The protection of the EU’s external borders should be the European solution. ” Lithuania’s announcement on the fence comes as the United States’s incoming president denounced the migrant crisis as a “catastrophic mistake” on the part of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, congratulating the British public on their decision to leave an EU which he sums up as “basically a vehicle for Germany”. Prior to Trump’s election victory, Merkel’s foreign minister commented that “building walls is a very bad idea — no matter who pays for them”. | 1 |
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On this episode, we keep the focus on the massive, nationwide #PrisonStrike that began on September 9th and which we covered in our last episode.
First, we play a clip from On The Media with Azzurra Crispino, our guest from last week. Azzurra is media co-chair for the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), a branch of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Austin Community College and Co-Founder of Prison Abolition Prisoner Solidarity , an organization dedicated to supporting prisoners and prison abolition efforts. In the clip, she asks whether mainstream media is complicit in violence within prisons because they only cover prison resistance when it turns violent, ignoring non-violent resistance like the current strike. Kumars and Roqayah discuss this point and brainstorm ways to get around this sad reality.
Next, Kumars interviews “D”, the incarcerated strike leader from South Carolina who we spoke to in our last episode. Kumars gets an update from D about conditions on the ground where he is, and the repression he and others have faced as they keep their strike alive. Importantly, D discusses the lasting changes in terms of prisoner consciousness and solidarity he already sees, and discusses next steps for this movement which will not end until prisons as we currently know them cease to exist.
If you want to learn more or get involved:
Donate to IWOC to support striking prisoners
Write letters to incarcerated strike leaders facing repression
Boycott products made with prison slave labor
Call prisons to tell them to meet prisoner demands and halt repression
Bail out arrested prison strike supporters
Free Alabama Movement
IWOC Facebook page
Prison strike timeline and other useful information
Strike tracking state-by-state
Also, email [email protected] to get involved with an IWOC chapter near you!
Follow Azzurra Crispino on twitter at @LibertyHerbert and IWOC at @IWW_IWOC .
The post Delete Your Account – Episode 18: Prison Strike Update appeared first on Shadowproof .
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icon David Letterman says he’s sick knowing that President Donald Trump is representing America on the world stage. [“I’m disappointed that this man is representing me and my country,” Letterman said in an interview with GQ magazine this week. “It makes me sick. ” The former late night mainstay, who retired from CBS’ Late Show in 2015 after 33 years of hosting, said there is “no reason to regret” having Trump on his show as often as he did. “He was just a big, wealthy dope who’d come on and we would make fun of his hair. I would refer to him as a slumlord,” he said. One month before Election Day, Letterman called Trump a “damaged human being” who should be “shunned. ” In March, Letterman said the president is “insulting to America. ” Doubling down on personal insults, Letterman now says Trump is a soulless “goon. ” “But now, this goon … I don’t know,” the comedian told GQ. “He’s demonstrated himself to be a man without a core, a man without a soul. Is there a guy in there?” Acknowledging that he would like to interview Trump once more, Letterman said he just wants to ask the president a single question. “I would love to have 90 minutes with him in a TV studio, just to talk to the guy,” he said. “I would just like to say, ‘All right, Don: What the f*ck happened? ’” Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson | 1 |
Leonard Cohen, the Canadian poet and novelist who abandoned a promising literary career to become one of the foremost songwriters of the contemporary era, died on Monday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 82. Mr. Cohen’s record label, Sony Music, confirmed the death on Thursday night but provided no details on the cause. Adam Cohen, his son and producer, said Mr. Cohen had died “with the knowledge that he had completed what he felt was one of his greatest records. ” His final studio album, “You Want It Darker,” was released in October. “He was writing up until his last moments with his unique brand of humor,” his son said. Over a musical career that spanned nearly five decades, Mr. Cohen wrote songs that addressed — in spare language that could be both oblique and telling — themes of love and faith, despair and exaltation, solitude and connection, war and politics. More than 2, 000 recordings of his songs have been made, initially by the singers who were his first champions, like Judy Collins and Tim Hardin, and later by performers from across the spectrum of popular music, among them U2, Aretha Franklin, R. E. M. Jeff Buckley, Trisha Yearwood and Elton John. Mr. Cohen’s song may well be “Hallelujah,” a majestic, meditative ballad infused with both religiosity and earthiness. It was written for a 1984 album that his record company rejected as insufficiently commercial it was popularized a decade later by Jeff Buckley. Since then, some 200 artists, from Bob Dylan to Justin Timberlake, have sung or recorded it. A book has been written about it, and it has been featured on the soundtracks of movies and television shows and sung at the Olympics and other public events. At the 2016 Emmy Awards, Tori Kelly sang “Hallelujah” for the annual “In Memoriam” segment recognizing recent deaths. Mr. Cohen was an unlikely and reluctant pop star, if in fact he ever was one. He was 33 when his first record was released in 1967. He sang in an increasingly gravelly baritone. He played simple chords on acoustic guitar or a cheap keyboard. And he maintained a private, sometime ascetic image at odds with the Dionysian excesses associated with rock. At some points, he was anything but prolific. He struggled for years to write some of his most celebrated songs, and he recorded just 14 studio albums. Only the first qualified as a gold record in the United States for sales of 500, 000 copies. But Mr. Cohen’s sophisticated, magnificently succinct lyrics, with their meditations on love sacred and profane, were widely admired by other artists and gave him a reputation as, to use the phrase his record company concocted for an advertising campaign in the early 1970s, “the master of erotic despair. ” Early in his career, enigmatic songs like “Suzanne” and “Bird on the Wire” — quickly covered by performers — gave him visibility. “Suzanne” begins and ends as a portrait of a mysterious, fragile woman “wearing rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters,” but pauses in the middle verse to offer a melancholy view of the spiritual: Mr. Cohen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008. Wearing a bolo tie and his trademark fedora, Mr. Cohen, in his acceptance speech, dryly made light of the fact that none of his records had ever been honored at the Grammys. “As we make our way toward the finish line that some of us have already crossed, I never thought I’d get a Grammy Award,” he said. “In fact, I was always touched by the modesty of their interest. ” Leonard Norman Cohen was born in Montreal on Sept. 21, 1934, and grew up in the prosperous suburb of Westmount. His father, Nathan, whose family had emigrated to Canada from Poland, owned a successful clothing store he died when Leonard was 9, but his will included a provision for a small trust fund, which later allowed his son to pursue his literary and musical ambitions. His mother, the former Masha Klonitzky, a nurse, was the daughter of a Talmudic scholar and rabbi. “I had a very messianic childhood,” Mr. Cohen would later say. In 1951, he was admitted to McGill University, Canada’s premier institution of higher learning, where he studied English. His first book of poetry, “Let Us Compare Mythologies,” was published in May 1956, while he was still an undergraduate. It was followed by “The of Earth” in 1961 and “Flowers for Hitler” in 1964. Other collections would appear sporadically throughout Mr. Cohen’s life, including the omnibus “Poems and Songs” in 2011. A period of drift followed Mr. Cohen’s graduation from college. He enrolled in law school at McGill, then dropped out and moved to New York City, where he studied literature at Columbia University for a year before returning to Montreal. Eventually, after a sojourn in London, he ended up living in a house on the Greek island of Hydra, where he wrote a pair of novels: “The Favorite Game,” published in 1963, and “Beautiful Losers,” published in 1966. “Beautiful Losers,” about a love triangle whose members are devotees of a Mohawk Indian Roman Catholic saint, gained a cult following, which it retains, and eventually sold more than three million copies worldwide. But Mr. Cohen’s initial lack of commercial success was discouraging, and he turned to songwriting in hopes of expanding the audience for his poetry. “I found it was very difficult to pay my grocery bill,” Mr. Cohen said in 1971, looking back at his situation just a few years earlier. “I’ve got beautiful reviews for all my books, and I’m very well thought of in the tiny circles that know me, but I’m really starving. ” Within months, Mr. Cohen had placed two songs, “Suzanne” and “Dress Rehearsal Rag,” on Ms. Collins’s album “In My Life,” which also included the title song and compositions by Bob Dylan, Randy Newman and Donovan. But he was extremely reluctant to take the next step and sing his songs himself. “Leonard was naturally reserved and afraid to sing in public,” Ms. Collins wrote in her autobiography, “Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: My Life in Music” (2011). She recalled his telling her: “I can’t sing. I wouldn’t know what to do out there. I am not a performer. ” He was “terrified,” she wrote, the first time she brought him onstage to sing with her, in 1967. Mr. Cohen released his first album later that year, after being signed to Columbia Records by John Hammond, the celebrated talent scout who also signed Mr. Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. The record began with “Suzanne,” which was already being performed by folk singers everywhere thanks to the popularity of Ms. Collins’s version. It also included three other songs of great impact that would become staples of Mr. Cohen’s live shows, and that numerous other artists would record over the years: “Sisters of Mercy,” “So Long Marianne” and “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye. ” His second album, “Songs From a Room,” released early in 1969, cemented his growing reputation as a songwriter. “The Story of Isaac,” a retelling of the biblical tale of Abraham and Isaac, became an anthem of opposition to the war in Vietnam, and “Bird on the Wire” went on to be recorded by Joe Cocker, Aaron Neville, Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. In 1971, Mr. Cohen released “Songs of Love and Hate,” which contained the cryptic and frequently covered “Famous Blue Raincoat,” but after that his production began to tail off, and his live performances became less frequent. He released three more albums during the 1970s but, amid bouts of depression, only two in the 1980s and one in the 1990s. The quality of his songs remained high, however: In addition to “Hallelujah,” future standards like “Dance Me to the End of Love,” “First We Take Manhattan,” “Everybody Knows” and “Tower of Song” date from that era. Mr. Cohen, raised Jewish and observant throughout his life, became interested in Zen Buddhism in the late 1970s and often visited the Mount Baldy monastery, east of Los Angeles. Around 1994, he abandoned his music career altogether and moved to the monastery, where he was ordained a Buddhist monk and became the personal assistant of Joshu Sasaki, the Rinzai Zen master who led the center. During the remainder of the decade, there was much speculation that Mr. Cohen, rather than merely taking a sabbatical, had stopped writing songs and would never record again. But in 2001, he released “Ten New Songs,” whose title suggests he wrote it while in the monastery. It was followed in 2004 by “Dear Heather,” an unusually upbeat album. In 2005, Mr. Cohen sued his former manager, Kelley Lynch, accusing her of defrauding him of millions of dollars that he had set aside as a retirement fund, leaving him with only $150, 000 and a huge tax bill and forcing him to take out a new mortgage on his home to cover his legal costs. The next year, after Ms. Lynch countersued, a judge awarded Mr. Cohen $9. 5 million, but he was unable to collect any of the money. The legal battles may have soured Mr. Cohen’s mood, but they did not seem to damage his creativity. In 2006, he published a new collection of poems, “Book of Longing,” which the composer Philip Glass set to music and then took on tour, with Mr. Cohen’s recorded voice reciting the words and Mr. Glass’s ensemble performing the music. In 2008, Mr. Cohen hit the road for the first time in 15 years for a grueling world tour, which would continue, with a few short breaks, through 2010. He was driven, he acknowledged, at least in part by financial necessity. “It was a long, ongoing problem of a disastrous and relentless indifference to my financial situation,” he told The New York Times in 2009. “I didn’t even know where the bank was. ” Combined with a pair of CDs and accompanying DVDs recorded in concert, “Live in London” and “Songs From the Road,” the constant touring, before audiences often larger than those he had enjoyed in the past, clearly eased Mr. Cohen’s financial problems. Billboard magazine estimated that the 2009 leg of the tour alone earned him nearly $10 million. Over that period, Mr. Cohen performed nearly 250 shows, many of them lasting more than three hours. He seemed remarkably fit and limber, skipping across the stage, doing bends and occasionally dropping to his knees to sing. The shows were not without incident: During a show in Valencia, Spain, in 2009, he fainted, and early in 2010 one segment of the tour had to be postponed when he suffered a lower back injury. He recovered, however, and in 2012 he released “Old Ideas,” his first CD of new songs in more than seven years, and embarked on another marathon tour. That pattern of extensive touring and recording continued into the decade. In 2014, for instance, Mr. Cohen released a CD of mostly new material, “Popular Problems,” as well as a set called “Live in Dublin. ” Mr. Cohen never married, though he had numerous liaisons and several relationships, some of which he wrote about. In addition to his son, Adam, his survivors include a daughter, Lorca, who like Adam is from his relationship with Suzanne Elrod, a photographer and artist who shot the cover of his 1973 album, “Live Songs,” and is pictured on the cover of his critically derided album “Death of a Ladies’ Man” (1977) and three grandchildren. Mr. Cohen was buried in Montreal on Thursday after a traditional Jewish memorial service. To the end, Mr. Cohen took a sardonic view of both his craft and the human condition. In “Tower of Song,” a staple of live shows in his later years, he brought the two together, making fun of being “born with the gift of a golden voice” and striking the same biblical tone apparent on his first album. “The changeless is what he’s been about since the beginning,” the writer Pico Iyer argued in the liner notes for the anthology “The Essential Leonard Cohen. ” “Some of the other great pilgrims of song pass through philosophies and selves as if through the stations of the cross. With Cohen, one feels he knew who he was and where he was going from the beginning, and only digs deeper, deeper, deeper. ” | 1 |
Iraqi Govt Warns Civilians Against Fleeing Mosul by Jason Ditz, October 31, 2016 Share This
According to Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigan, the commander of US air forces in the Middle East, the anti-ISIS coalition is now planning on carrying out airstrikes against any fleeing ISIS fighters around Mosul, trying to prevent escape from the massive city with aerial surveillance and targeted strikes.
This appears to be a response to growing concerns, both within the region and internationally, that the fall of Mosul will mean thousands of seasoned ISIS fighters popping up elsewhere around the world, destabilizing the Middle East and Europe.
Preventing them from escaping Mosul, however, raises a major concern that the relative lack of US intelligence on who it is targeting, and determination to shoot first and ask questions later is going to lead to US warplanes attacking groups of fleeing civilians that they come across.
The “solution” to this appears to be preventing civilians from fleeing the city as well, despite it being an open combat zone that will likely be facing months of combat. Iraqi officials are now said to be warning Mosul civilians not to try to escape, insisting they will be safer if they stay put.
Staying put in a city during an invasion is far from safe, but suggests US warplanes are going to be particularly indiscriminate in targeting people fleeing Mosul. In the recent offensive against the ISIS city of Manbij, US warplanes killed hundreds of civilians they “mistook” for ISIS, and Mosul is a much larger city with a lot more people to be mistaken for ISIS. Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz | 0 |
College Forces Mandatory Microaggression Sessions on Faculty After Prof Accuses Student of Plagiarism November 2, 2016
College is now a politically correct joke .
Suffolk University’s interim president said Tuesday that the college will hold mandatory microaggression training for all faculty in response to an outcry last week after a Latina student wrote a viral blog post saying she was the victim of a professor’s racial bias.
What did this racial bias involve?
Tiffany Martinez.said an unidentified Suffolk sociology professor handed back a paper she had written and in front of the class and told Martinez, “This is not your language,” insinuating that Martinez had plagiarized.
Martinez posted a photo of the paper on her blog, showing where the professor appears to have written “please go back and indicate where you cut and paste.” The professor had circled the word “hence” in the paper and wrote, “this is not your word.”
“In this interaction, my undergraduate career was both challenged and critiqued,” the student wrote. “It is worth repeating how my professor assumed I could not use the word “hence,” a simple transitory word that connected two relating statements. The professor assumed I could not produce quality research.”
Most college students, regardless of whether their ancestors originated from southern Europe or not, do not tend to use hence in a sentence. Hence, it's the sort of word that professors seize on and suspect that what they are seeing is cut and paste material. Tiffany's interaction has happened thousands of times with students regardless of race.
But Tiffany is lucky enough to be a privileged minority. Which means that she can't be treated like everyone else lest she whine about it and a flood of social justice crybullies descend on Suffolk U.
Kelly, the interim president, also sent a note to the school on Friday after the Buzzfeed article was posted.
“The truth is that all of us here at Suffolk should be concerned about any student feeling this way,” Kelly wrote in her Tuesday blog post. She said the school has experienced an outpouring of support for Martinez from other students, faculty and staff.
Privilege. This is what it looks like.
Scholars and Rogues fights a last stand against the decline and fall of journalism by stating the obvious .
In short, what we have here isn’t merely iffy reporting on an academic dustup. It’s a microcosm of what has happened to journalism in modern America. These headlines are certain to entice Web surfers to click, and if the “reporters” can so easily be suckered into outrage then how can we possibly expect a rational reading by the average product of the American ed system, which has been stripped of all pretense at teaching critical thinking.
The result: an emotionally pitched, unsubstantiated claim of injustice has been instantly transformed into cold, hard fact.
Well yes.
Meanwhile here's a sample of Tiffany's writing. You can decide whether she organically used hence in a sentence.
A Declaration of Self Love
I’m familiar negotiating who I am to please others. Some may call me inauthentic, I call this self-protection. However, I have burned through my shields. Too tired to be exhausted, this continuous disguise has faded. It’s time I accept myself and no longer sacrifice self-love for overall acceptance.
The crybullies of the self-esteem generation can never get enough of loving itself and hating everyone who interferes with its boundless appetite for self-love. | 0 |
Last week, the Texas House approved a bill that would require public school students to pass a U. S. citizenship test as a high school graduation requirement. It would also eliminate the state’s current U. S. history exam. [Not everyone agrees this is such a great idea. The patriotic sounding House Bill 1776 proposes administering the U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services test to Texas high schoolers even though the tool is designed for prospective U. S. citizens as part of the naturalization process. While the bill does not address how, if any, material would be covered, it requires all test questions be given in a multiple choice format. Students must answer at least 70 percent of the questions correctly to pass. The actual citizenship test requires applicants to successfully answer six out of 10 questions culled from a list of 100 total questions on U. S. history and government. It is not a multiple choice test, according to the U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Random samples from the U. S. citizenship practice test ask questions like “What is the supreme law of the land? ,” “What is one right or freedom from the First Amendment? ,” “Who makes federal law? ,” “Why did the colonists fight the British? ,” Why does the flag have 50 stars? ,” What ocean is on the West Coast of the United States? ,” and “Where is the Statue of Liberty?. ” It also asks for the names of the President during the Great Depression and World War II plus the name of the President now. H. B. 1776 proponents support replacing the state’s U. S. history (EOC) exam better known as the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) which they assert is too long and contains too much information to be mastered in one school year. Breitbart Texas reached out to H. B. 1776 lead author Representative Trent Ashby ( ) but he did not respond to our emailed questions inquiring specifics about the bill. However, in an for the Lufkin News, he defended dumping the U. S. history STAAR: “The elimination of the U. S. history exam is part of a national movement to do away with a test that fails to address the most fundamental aspects of American citizenry. ” It remains unclear what are those fundamental aspects he references. Should H. B. 1776 become law it will apply to students who enter the ninth grade during the school year although it is not a grade test. Opponents question the validity of a civics test crafted for prospective citizens and not students. Also, at a time when many decry testing, some fear requiring a U. S. citizenship test opens the door to another standardized test. State Board of Education (SBOE) member Pat Hardy voiced strong concerns that a U. S. citizenship test only measures “rote memorization” of rudimentary facts. A veteran social studies teacher and social student coordinator, Hardy urged her district representatives to vote against H. B. 1776 in a letter. In part, she wrote: To replace our 11th grade EOC with the citizenship test promoted by H. B. 1776 would in no way help us ensure that our students are prepared with the knowledge and skills they will need to participate meaningfully in our democracy and in our government in future years. Hardy emphasized that the grade 11 U. S. History STAAR requires students to know content and to apply it, also testing “students’ ability to think critically which is a 21st Century skill. ” She underscored that students only take two social studies STAAR tests during their school years — both in grades where U. S. history is taught, which might be applauded given in 2015, the “Nation’s Report Card” showed a meager 18 percent of eighth grade public school students as “proficient” or above in U. S. history, while only 23 percent were proficient in civics, Breitbart News reported. Texas public schools concentrate on U. S. history in two parts — grades eight and 11 — covering colonial times through 1877 and from 1877 to the present. The state standards, the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) say: “The student will demonstrate an understanding of issues and events in U. S. history. ” Breitbart Texas spoke to SBOE chairwoman Donna Bahorich who pointed out she always encourages people to look at the state’s eighth and 11th grade social studies standards and then peruse corresponding grade level released STAAR test questions. “I think parents and the general public would be pleasantly surprised by the quality of what is being asked of our students to learn. It’s not rote memorization of facts. ” Bahorich said students are asked to think critically about important concepts fr0m our nation’s founding to the present which she said “our courses address but the citizenship test certainly doesn’t represent that. ” In the Lufkin newspaper Ashby insisted H. B. 1776 “helps to promote fundamental knowledge that is critical to engaged and productive citizenry. ” So did state Representative Bill Zedler ( ) who, in 2015, proposed H. B. 829 to add a U. S. citizenship test to the state’s high school graduation requirement. The bill fizzled. The Texas State Teachers Association opposed it, doubting more students would become and participate in politics. They worried the bill would result in more teaching to the test. However, Ashby’s bill may have more legs since he folded a version of it into House Bill 515, which slashes nine other STAAR tests, including the one for the eighth grade social studies course that covers U. S. History to 1877, replacing it with the citizenship test. The Texas Senate received H. B. 1776 and H. B. 515 last Friday. Two years ago, Arizona became the first state to pass a law requiring students to take a U. S. citizenship test to graduate from high school. Today, 15 states mandate this test. Follow Merrill Hope, a member of the original Breitbart Texas team, on Twitter. | 1 |
FAIRFAX COUNTY, Virginia — Alleged “gang activity” is responsible for murders in the northern region of Virginia, according to Fairfax County Police Chief Edwin Roessler. [Investigators are suspected to be pointing to the transnational criminal gang after police found remains in the Holmes Run Park. Police reported finding other human remains in the past connected tied to gang activity. “I can just assure you that this is gang activity,” Roessler told the media during a news conference, according to WTOP News. Police have not yet identified the remains, and investigators are awaiting autopsies to be completed, according to Roessler. Just two years ago, police discovered two bodies in the Holmes Run Park. Officials tied the remains to the gang, Roessler said. “This problem is horrible,” Roessler told the media. “This is four murders in this park. Obviously, we’ve had other murders in the region in the past few weeks. This is getting out of control, and we need to stop it. ” Roessler, though, refused to name the specific name of the gang linked to the most recent remains, saying “not going to advertise for gangs. ” Last month, Breitbart News reported the Springfield, Virginia murder of a teenage girl, in which four illegal immigrants were arrested for their involvement, with police being led to the gang. Most recently, Breitbart Texas reported on 13 gang members who were indicted on murder charges for their involvement in the deaths of seven individuals. 10 of the gang members were illegal immigrants. As Breitbart Texas’ has reported, the crime syndicate is comprised primarily of illegal immigrants living in the U. S. from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. The United Nations classifies the gang as an international street gang, which is loosely affiliated with the Mexican drug cartels, as they both conduct illegal immigrant smuggling into the U. S. and operate human trafficking rings. John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 1 |
How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? The Times’s technology columnist discussed the tech he’s using. As a technology columnist, what devices and apps do you use to do your job? I’m not sure I’ve arrived at any great system, and I’m always changing things around. At the moment, for phone calls, I use Skype in conjunction with a program called Call Recorder, because it’s the easiest way I know to record calls. When I’m doing interviews, I use DropVox, an app that records and saves audio to the cloud drive Dropbox. For notes, I use Workflowy, a fantastic online outlining program that I’ve found easier to use than most other notes apps. My primary work computer is an amazing 5k iMac desktop, but I spend more than half of my computing time on my phone, an iPhone 7. Which is your favorite product and why? I really like my iPhone they’ve caused lots of problems, but on the whole, I think we’re better off with smartphones than without. And yet I wouldn’t say any of these are really my favorites. Technology occupies a weird space in my life. I love it more than anything for its potential, but I’m always disappointed in its failure to live up to what’s possible. My phone has changed everything about my life, much of it for the better, and yet I find myself hating it often — it can be buggy, the battery life is dismal, I miss the headphone jack, etc. The comedian Louis C. K. has a funny routine about how we’re all ungrateful about tech. I’m that guy, unashamedly. Last year, you wrote about how the presidential election underlined the embarrassing shortcomings of email. What do you use to overcome the misery that is email? Email is just terrible. I use Google’s Inbox app, which has some nice features to automatically sort email, but I still find email a huge chore. More and more of my communications are moving to other channels — Slack, mobile messaging, Twitter DMs, encrypted apps like Signal, and after last year’s email hacks, I’ve even started to make more phone calls. The sooner we can all get off email the better. What new tech product are you currently obsessed with using at home? What do you and your family do with it? This is going to sound weird, but I’m a strange person. I have two kids, ages 6 and 4, and for the last few years I’ve been mourning their loss of childhood. Every day they get a little bit older, and even though my wife and I take lots of photos and videos of them, I can’t shake the feeling that we’re losing most of the moments of their lives. So last summer, after some intense lobbying of my wife, I did something radical: I installed several cameras in my living room and dining room to record everything we did at home for posterity. In other words, I created a reality show in my house. In practice, it works like this: The cameras are and connected to servers in the cloud. Like security cameras in a convenience store, they are set to record on a constant loop — every video clip is saved for a few days, after which it’s automatically deleted, unless I flag it for keeping. Yes, this system sets up a minefield of potential problems. We turn off the cameras when we have guests (it’s unethical and, depending on where you live, possibly even illegal to record people without their consent) and we don’t spy on each other. There are also security concerns. I’m not going to disclose the brand of the cameras I used because I don’t want to get hacked. The safety of devices is generally not airtight. And yet I’ve found these cameras to be just wonderful at capturing the odd, beautiful, surprising, charming moments of life that we would never have been able to capture otherwise. Every time the kids say something hilarious or sweet, or do something for the first time, I make a note of the time and date. Later on, I can go and download that exact clip, to keep forever. I’ve already got amazing videos of weeknight dinners, of my wife and I watching the news on election night, of my son learning to play Super Mario Brothers, and my kids having a dance party to their favorite music. When I’m 80 and the robots have taken over, I’ll look back on these and remember that life was good, once. O. K. How old do you think a child must be to get that first smartphone? My kids are way too young for their own phones. And so far, they don’t seem to have much interest in phones other than to take photos and, more recently, to play Pokémon Go. For them, iPads hold more interest. In general, our policy for devices isn’t based on time but quality. If my kids are going to use their iPads, I want them to use them for experiences that aren’t totally bad for them. So, for instance, we’ve put curbs on how much they can use YouTube, which they use to watch the most garbage videos (usually of other kids playing with toys). But for other stuff — games, for instance — they’re allowed to play for an hour or two on the weekends. I really haven’t thought much about when I’ll get them their own phones. It’s a looming crisis — I know it’s unavoidable, and I’ll probably give in when they’re around 11 or 12, but I’m sure going to hate the feeling of losing them to their gadgets. Of course that’s probably how they feel about me and my phone. | 1 |
Basma Abdel Aziz was walking in downtown Cairo one morning when she saw a long line of people standing in front of a closed government building. Returning hours later, Ms. Abdel Aziz, a psychiatrist who counsels torture victims, passed the same people still waiting listlessly — a young woman and an elderly man, a mother holding her baby. The building remained closed. When she got home, she immediately started writing about the people in line and didn’t stop for 11 hours. The story became her surreal debut novel, “The Queue,” which takes place after a failed revolution in an unnamed Middle Eastern city. The narrative unfolds over 140 days, as civilians are forced to wait in an endless line to petition a shadowy authority called The Gate for basic services. “Fiction gave me a very wide space to say what I wanted to say about totalitarian authority,” Ms. Abdel Aziz said in a recent interview. “The Queue,” which was just published in English by Melville House, has drawn comparisons to Western classics like George Orwell’s “1984” and “The Trial” by Franz Kafka. It represents a new wave of dystopian and surrealist fiction from Middle Eastern writers who are grappling with the chaotic aftermath and stinging disappointments of the Arab Spring. Five years after the popular uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and elsewhere, a bleak, apocalyptic strain of literature has taken root in the region. Some writers are using science fiction and fantasy tropes to describe grim current political realities. Others are writing about controversial subjects like sexuality and atheism, or exhuming painful historical episodes that were previously off limits. In a literary culture where poetry has long been the most celebrated medium, writers are experimenting with a range of genres and styles, including comics and graphic novels, hallucinatory horror novels and allegorical works of science fiction. “There’s a shift away from realism, which has dominated Arabic literature,” said the novelist Saleem Haddad, whose new book, “Guapa,” is narrated by a young gay Arab man whose friend has been imprisoned after a political revolt. “What’s coming to the surface now is darker and a bit deeper. ” Science fiction and surrealism have long provided an escape valve for writers living under oppressive regimes. In Latin America, decades of fascism and civil war helped inspire masterpieces of magical realism from authors like Gabriel García Márquez and Isabel Allende. In Russia, the postmodern novelist Vladimir Sorokin has published disturbing and controversial futuristic novels that surreptitiously skewer the country’s repressive government. Dystopian themes are not entirely new in Arabic fiction. But they have become much more prominent in recent years, publishers and translators say. The genre has proliferated in part because it captures the sense of despair that many writers say they feel in the face of cyclical violence and repression. At the same time, futuristic settings may give writers some measure of cover to explore charged political ideas without being labeled dissidents. “These futuristic stories are all about lost utopia,” said Layla of a collection of Spring writing titled “Diaries of an Unfinished Revolution. ” “People really could imagine a better future, and now it’s almost worse than it was before. ” In the turbulent months after the uprisings, when the promises of democracy and greater social freedom remained elusive, some novelists channeled their frustrations and fears into grim apocalyptic tales. In Mohammed Rabie’s gritty novel “Otared,” which will be published in English this year by the American University in Cairo, a former Egyptian police officer joins a fight against a mysterious occupying power that rules the country in 2025. Mr. Rabie said he wrote the novel in response to the “successive defeats” that advocates of democracy faced after the 2011 demonstrations that ended President Hosni Mubarak’s rule. While there are parallels to Egyptian society, setting the story in the near future allowed him to write more freely, without drawing explicit connections to Egypt’s current ruler, he said in an email interview translated by his Arabic publisher. Nael Eltoukhy, whose darkly satirical 2013 novel, “Women of Karantina,” takes place partly in a Alexandria in the year 2064, said he felt that a futuristic farce was the best way to reflect the jaded mood in Egypt. “In Egypt, especially after the revolution, everything is terrible, but everything is also funny,” he said in an interview. “Now, I think it’s worse than the time of Mubarak. ” Gloomy futuristic stories have proved popular with readers, and several of these novels have been critical and commercial hits. “Otared” was a finalist for this year’s prestigious International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Publishers say the books have caught on with the public in part because they distill a collective feeling of frustration. This new body of literature shows a sharp tonal shift from the ecstatic outpouring that arrived immediately after the Arab Spring, when many writers published breathless memoirs or dug out old manuscripts they had stashed away for years. Celebrated Egyptian novelists like Ahdaf Soueif and Mona Prince wrote firsthand nonfiction accounts of the 2011 protests in Tahrir Square. The Syrian novelist Samar Yazbek published diaries she kept during the Syrian uprising. A new generation of writers drew inspiration from the stunning scenes of citizens rising up together against entrenched dictatorships. “There was something about the experience of the revolution where suddenly you had a voice, and your voice had weight and it had meaning,” said Yasmine El Rashidi, an Egyptian journalist whose first novel, “Chronicle of a Last Summer,” about a young woman’s political awakening in Cairo during and after Mr. Mubarak’s rule, will be published in the United States next month. In the years since the revolution, that optimism has withered, and the authorities have cracked down on creative expression across the region. In Saudi Arabia, the poet Ashraf Fayadh was sentenced to death last year for his verses, which religious authorities called blasphemous. After an international outcry, his sentence was reduced to eight years in prison and 800 lashes. In Egypt, under the strict rule of President Abdel Fattah the government has shut art galleries, raided publishing houses and confiscated copies of books it views as controversial. Last year, customs officers seized 400 copies of “Walls of Freedom,” about Egyptian political street art, and charged that the book was “instigating revolt. ” “We are concerned now with what we publish,” said Rizk, director of Dar Egypt, an Arabic publishing house. “If something is banned, it does create commercial problems. ” Despite explicit protections for free speech in Egypt’s 2014 Constitution, the authorities have targeted individual writers and artists. The novelist Ahmed Naji is serving a prison sentence for violating “public modesty” with sexually explicit passages in his experimental novel “The Use of Life. ” Many fear that his imprisonment will lead to more . “The Arab Spring and the revolution broke people’s fears and gave them the initiative to express themselves,” said Ms. Abdel Aziz, whose novel, “The Queue,” was published in Arabic in 2013. “Now we are back to oppression. ” Ms. Abdel Aziz, 39, earned a master’s degree in neuropsychiatry in 2005 and now works part time at a center in Cairo that counsels victims of torture and violence. She has published two collections and several nonfiction books on sensitive subjects like torture and the human rights violations committed by Egyptian security forces. But after Mr. Mubarak’s fall, writing a factual account felt like an inadequate way to capture the surreal experience of ordinary Egyptians who lived through the uprisings and subsequent crackdowns, she said. Instead, she aimed to write a universal story that reflected what was unfolding around her but transcended geography and current events. She started writing “The Queue” in September 2012. The novel follows a young salesman, Yehya, who was shot during a failed uprising. Yehya is denied medical treatment and forced to wait in an endless line to petition The Gate for a permit to have surgery. As he grows weaker, the line only gets longer, stretching on for miles. Ms. Abdel Aziz uses coded language for loaded political terms and events throughout the novel, which was translated by Elisabeth Jaquette. The 2011 uprising against Mr. Mubarak is called “the First Storm. ” A later civilian revolt that ended in bloodshed is referred to as “the Disgraceful Events. ” Ms. Abdel Aziz worries about the growing scrutiny Egyptian writers and activists face. About a dozen of her friends are in prison, she said. She has been arrested three times for taking part in demonstrations and protests. But she feels that living in fear is futile. “I’m not afraid anymore,” she said. “I will not stop writing. ” | 1 |
BLACKPOOL, England — The woman on the other end of the phone spoke lightheartedly of spring and of her 81st birthday the previous week. “Who did you celebrate with, Beryl?” asked Alison, whose job was to offer a kind ear. “No one, I … ” And with that, Beryl’s cheer turned to despair. Her voice began to quaver as she acknowledged that she had been alone at home not just on her birthday, but for days and days. The telephone conversation was the first time she had spoken in more than a week. About 10, 000 similar calls come in weekly to an unassuming office building in this seaside town at the northwest reaches of England, which houses The Silver Line Helpline, a call center for older adults seeking to fill a basic need: contact with other people. Loneliness, which Emily Dickinson described as “the Horror not to be surveyed,” is a quiet devastation. But in Britain, it is increasingly being viewed as something more: a serious public health issue deserving of public funds and national attention. Working with local governments and the National Health Service, programs aimed at mitigating loneliness have sprung up in dozens of cities and towns. Even fire brigades have been trained to inspect homes not just for fire safety but for signs of social isolation. “There’s been an explosion of public awareness here, from local authorities to the Department of Health to the media,” said Paul Cann, chief executive of Age UK Oxfordshire and a founder of The Campaign to End Loneliness, a group based in London. “Loneliness has to be everybody’s business. ” Researchers have found mounting evidence linking loneliness to physical illness and to functional and cognitive decline. As a predictor of early death, loneliness eclipses obesity. “The profound effects of loneliness on health and independence are a critical public health problem,” said Dr. Carla M. Perissinotto, a geriatrician at the University of California, San Francisco. “It is no longer medically or ethically acceptable to ignore older adults who feel lonely and marginalized. ” In Britain and the United States, roughly one in three people older than 65 live alone, and in the United States, half of those older than 85 live alone. Studies in both countries show the prevalence of loneliness among people older than 60 ranging from 10 percent to 46 percent. While the public, private and volunteer sectors in Britain are mobilizing to address loneliness, researchers are deepening their understanding of its biological underpinnings. In a paper published earlier this year in the journal Cell, neuroscientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology identified a region of the brain they believe generates feelings of loneliness. The region, known as the dorsal raphe nucleus, or D. R. N. is best known for its link to depression. Kay M. Tye and her colleagues found that when mice were housed together, dopamine neurons in the D. R. N. were relatively inactive. But after the mice were isolated for a short period, the activity in those neurons surged when those mice were reunited with other mice. “This is the first time we’ve found a cellular substrate for this experience,” said Dr. Tye, an assistant professor at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at M. I. T. and a senior author of the paper. “And we saw the change after 24 hours of isolation. ” John T. Cacioppo, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and director of the university’s Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, has been studying loneliness since the 1990s. He said loneliness is an aversive signal much like thirst, hunger or pain. “Denying you feel lonely makes no more sense than denying you feel hunger,” he said. Yet the very word “lonely” carries a negative connotation, Professor Cacioppo said, signaling social weakness, or an inability to stand on one’s own. The unspoken stigma of loneliness is amply evident during calls to The Silver Line. Most people call asking for advice on, say, roasting a turkey. Many call more than once a day. One woman rings every hour to ask the time. Only rarely will someone speak frankly about loneliness. Yet the impulse to call in to services like The Silver Line is a healthy one, Professor Cacioppo said. On a recent afternoon, Tracey, a Silver Line adviser, listened as a caller in his 80s embarked on a nostalgic trip down his list of favorite films. The next caller serenaded Tracey with “Oh What a Beautiful Morning,” on his harmonica. Once the harmonica player had hung up, a call came in from an man with an avalanche of memories to share: dogs he had owned, boats he had captained, London during the blitz. Tracey, a former nurse, listened patiently for 30 minutes. “It can be really fascinating when people talk about things like London during the bombing,” she said after the call ended. “It’s important to remember the rich lives people have led. ” Silver Line workers leave it up to the caller to mention whether they are feeling lonely. Still, the advisers are trained to listen for signs of unhappy isolation, and gently lead the conversation accordingly, perhaps offering to link the caller to a Silver Line Friend, a volunteer who makes weekly phone calls or writes letters to those who request it. Sophie Andrews, chief executive of The Silver Line, said she was surprised by the explosion of calls shortly after the service began operating nearly three years ago. The Blackpool call center now receives some 1, 500 calls a day. Ms. Andrews said she was most concerned not about those who called The Silver Line, but those who were too depressed by their isolation to pick up the phone. “We need to raise awareness with the people who are the hardest to reach,” she said. Professor Cacioppo lauds efforts like The Silver Line, yet he warns that the problem of loneliness is nuanced and the solutions not as obvious as they might seem. That is, a line can help reduce feelings of loneliness temporarily, but is not likely to reduce levels of chronic loneliness. In his research, Professor Cacioppo has shown that loneliness affects several key bodily functions, at least in part through overstimulation of the body’s stress response. Chronic loneliness, his work has shown, is associated with increased levels of cortisol, a major stress hormone, as well as higher vascular resistance, which can raise blood pressure and decrease blood flow to vital organs. Professor Cacioppo’s research has also shown that the danger signals activated in the brain by loneliness affect the production of white blood cells this can impair the immune system’s ability to fight infections. It is only in the past several years that loneliness has been examined through a medical, rather than psychological or sociological, lens. Dr. Perissinotto, the University of California, San Francisco geriatrician, decided to study loneliness when she began to sense there were factors affecting her patients’ health that she was failing to capture. Using data from a large national survey of older adults, in 2012 Dr. Perissinotto analyzed the relationship between loneliness and health outcomes in people older than 60. Of 1, 604 participants in the study, 43 percent reported feelings of loneliness, and these individuals had significantly higher rates of declining mobility, difficulty in performing routine daily activities, and death during six years of . The association of loneliness with mortality remained significant even after adjusting for age, economic status, depression and other common health problems. Dr. Perissinotto is also interested in examining the link between loneliness and suicidal thoughts, as there has been little research in that area. She hopes to study The Friendship Line, a loneliness line run by the Institute on Aging in San Francisco that is also a suicide prevention hotline. Although plenty of research into loneliness takes place in the United States, Britain remains well ahead in addressing the problem. “In the U. S. there isn’t much recognition in terms of public health initiatives or the average person recognizing that loneliness has to do with health,” said Julianne a professor of psychology at Brigham Young University, whose studies also link loneliness to deteriorating health. Age UK, an organization similar to AARP in the United States, oversees an array of programs aimed at decreasing loneliness and coordinates efforts with fire brigades to look for signs of loneliness and isolation in the homes they enter. Another charity, Open Age, runs some 400 activities each week in Central London — sewing circles, current events discussions, book clubs and exercise and computer classes, held at church halls, sport centers, housing projects — and its employees also visit people in their homes to try to get them out and about. “We try to work out what it is that’s preventing them from leaving the house,” said Helen Leech, the organization’s director. Men and women differ greatly in how they grapple with loneliness. Seventy percent of the calls to The Silver Line are from women. “We have this kind of male pride thing,” said Mike Jenn, 70, a retired charity worker who lives in London. “We say, ‘I can look after myself. I don’t need to talk to anyone,’ and it’s a complete fallacy. Not communicating helps to kill us. ” Mr. Jenn runs a “Men’s Shed” in London’s Camden Town district, which aims to bring older men together in a more familiar and comfortable environment — working side by side in a woodworking shop. The concept began in Australia and has since spread to Britain: There are now more than 300 Men’s Sheds throughout England, Scotland and Ireland. Keith Pearshouse, 70, a retired school principal, discovered the Men’s Shed near his home after moving to London from Norfolk, England, in 2007 and recognizing he was lonely. “I was a bit anxious walking into a roomful of people,” said Mr. Pearshouse, chatting amid the din created by a table saw, router and lathe at the Camden Town shed, a workshop in a local community center. “But I immediately thought, ‘Yeah, this is a place that would work for me. ’” Mr. Pearshouse, who had never worked with wood before he discovered the Men’s Shed, showed a visitor a delicate wooden jar he was finishing. The pieces he produces are gratifying, he said, but not nearly as gratifying as the human connections he has made. While Mr. Pearshouse is still a long way from sharing every little ache and upset with his friends at the shed, he said his life would now feel much emptier without the way of confiding he has come to know. As he spoke, he took the lid off his jar, and it gave a slight pop, signifying a perfect fit. | 1 |
Sunday, 30 October 2016 A passing hump-back whale in the English Channel needing nourishment not a Jungle resident!
French Foreign Legion troops brandishing hi-tech baguettes marched into the Jungle last week and bashed it so badly, it ended up in crumbs! Inhabitants of the jungle were seen fleeing the safety of urine saturated trees, bushes and other watering holes with pieces of stinking camembert stuck to their curly-haired heads after being bashed into surrender!
The Tricolore was raised after this outstanding victory. Jungle inhabitants who attempted to escape were caught in huge fishnets erected around the jungle to keep them in and not to let them out because the UK's surrounding seas have been heavily over-fished, and this once proud island really does not need any more alien jungle creatures emptying their pots.
French President, Francois Hollande, who is rather flat, praised his Foreign Legion Baguette Bashers for their superb, historical victory, and even mentioned The Normandy Invasion of 1945 on his stale garlic breath;
"Messieurs et Madames, France has shown to ze world zat one baguette in ze bush is worth many in ze jungle et baguettes in ze jungle; non si vous plait!"
The UK also praised French Foreign Legion forces and told Francois, "Qui could not have done it better!" (A seldom statement from the UK admitting that something another country has done is better!)
Many jungle inhabitants have now been replaced in French zoos, others, not so lucky, have been deported to Bulgaria (They bash with real weapons!). Others who escaped the attack were spotted swimming in the English Channel! Passengers on ferries threw lumps of stale, tasteless English sandwiches, purchased on board, at them, believing they were a school of passing hump-back whales in dire need of nourishment (?). This obviously disturbed the natural instincts of scavenging sea-gulls, who scavenge for a living, but only French ones of course! Make Jaggedone's | 0 |
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