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Amid reignited fears about lead poisoning nationwide, the key to identifying solutions could lie in the common city pigeon. A study published on Monday in the journal Chemosphere found that Manhattan neighborhoods that had many children with elevated blood lead levels also had pigeons with elevated lead. The research suggests that scientists may be able to use the birds to predict lead contamination in the environment. The principal author of the study, Rebecca Calisi, who was an assistant biology professor at Barnard College when the research was conducted, examined data on 825 pigeons from various neighborhoods from 2010 to 2015. Dr. Calisi found that elevated lead levels in pigeons from Greenwich Village and SoHo, for example, correlated positively with elevated lead levels in children in those neighborhoods, as identified by New York City’s health department. The link indicates that pigeons could be used to detect areas of pollution across the country, particularly in urban areas. “There’s a potential to be able to circumvent health problems in humans before they even begin,” said Dr. Calisi, now an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis. The researchers drew on data compiled by the Wild Bird Fund, a New York City nonprofit that rehabilitates sick, injured or orphaned birds. Dr. Calisi recognized that pigeons would be ideal birds for making comparisons with human health, she said, because they live in proximity to people and eat much of the same food. And unlike many other birds, they tend to spend their entire lives within the same square mile. Whether the information from this study will be practically useful is up for discussion. Christopher R. Miller, press secretary for the health department, said it “seemed a stretch to equate feral pigeons with the proverbial canary in a coal mine” because the city already had a “robust” system for evaluating lead exposure. More than 80 percent of New York City children are tested before age 3, and in 2014, fewer than three out of 1, 000 had elevated blood lead levels, the department said. But for Dr. Calisi, the findings present opportunities that extend well beyond New York — and even lead. Researchers in her lab in California intend to use pigeons to monitor other heavy metals, as well as pesticides and fire retardants, in urban areas worldwide. “We’re just getting started,” Dr. Calisi said. “This is kind of the beginning of what’s going to be a really big field of study. ” Marc A. Edwards, a professor at Virginia Tech who served as a principal investigator of the lead crisis in Flint, Mich. said the study offered a new way to monitor children’s lead exposure. “This could be an unusual firsthand mapping of where are the problem areas where we should divert our resources,” he said, adding that the research provided “new insight into how pervasive these toxins are. ” | 1 |
When Donald J. Trump unveiled his new online travel booking venture, GoTrump. com, he said in a promotional video in 2006 that customers would “love everything I put on this site. ” “There’s nobody better,” he added. “There’s nobody even close!” A few months later, ground was broken for Trump Tower Tampa, a project he said would “redefine both Tampa’s skyline and the market’s expectations of luxurious condominium living. ” And when he signed a deal with the fledgling U. S. Pro Golf Tour that summer to become a partner on a new championship series, he proclaimed that “there is no doubt the talent level is among the highest in the world. ” The travel venture never took off. The tower in Tampa, Fla. was not built. And the golf championships? Mr. Trump withdrew as the tour fell apart. Moving past a disastrous period that led to a loss on paper of more than $900 million — possibly freeing him from federal income taxes for years — Mr. Trump became a factory of big ideas, churning out a continual stream of projects and promises. Together, they fed the image of Mr. Trump as an American Midas, the foundation of his argument for why he would make a great president. To see whether the results of these ventures came close to their billing, The New York Times analyzed scores of Trump business announcements starting a decade ago, including those posted on the Trump Organization’s website and those that have been deleted but live on in web archives. The Times also combed through news reports, his personal financial disclosures and court records interviewed partners and interviewed Mr. Trump himself. Of the roughly 60 endeavors started or promoted by Mr. Trump during the period analyzed, The Times found few that went off without a hitch. of them never got off the ground or soon petered out. Another third delivered a measure of what was promised — buildings were built, courses taught, a product introduced — but they also encountered substantial problems, like lawsuits, government investigations, partnership woes or market downturns. The remaining third, while sometimes encountering strife, generally met expectations — notably the television show “The Apprentice” and the purchases of numerous golf courses, including properties near Philadelphia and in the Hudson Valley. In interviews, Mr. Trump disputed some of the characterizations, saying that, among other things, some projects that might appear to be failures were successes, for him at least, because he often made his money upfront, through fees for the use of the Trump name. The bottom line of all the hits and misses, however, is impossible to determine because Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has not released any tax returns. Regardless of how much money a deal made — or did not make — one constant through the years is that these ventures were almost always introduced with a certain Trumpian flair: Each would set a “new standard” or be the “very, very best. ” Jim Dowd, who advised Mr. Trump on public relations and marketing from 2004 to 2010, recalled that Mr. Trump typically took a personal interest in each news release, marking up drafts with a red pen he kept on his desk. “We would draft a quote for him, but he would always rewrite it, making it much larger than life,” Mr. Dowd said in an interview earlier this year. (Mr. Dowd died last month.) There were some common terms: “Huge, billions — those words would have to be in there,” Mr. Dowd said. “Definitely ‘unprecedented.’ Definitely ‘the best of the best. ’” For free publicity, Mr. Trump would also schedule news conferences to announce his deals, and he seemed to feast on the attention. “He was so caught up in the glamour of the press conference and getting the lobby of Trump Tower filled with media,” Mr. Dowd said. “He would plop down the elevator, do his thing for 35 minutes, and he was pretty much in every media outlet the next day. ” Eventually, Mr. Dowd said, the throngs of journalists who attended Mr. Trump’s news conferences waned, as they asked Mr. Dowd, “Really, another one?” Mr. Dowd thought Mr. Trump was putting himself out too often. “He was doing these all over the world,” he said. “He was flying to Panama to announce that project. He was flying to Puerto Rico the golf course in Scotland. ” Mr. Trump said he recalled those visits fondly, though he demurred when asked if he had been overexposed in his business ventures. “It’s a big world,” he said. “You can do a lot of things. ” But the reality was that the success of “The Apprentice,” which averaged 21 million viewers weekly when it made its debut in 2004, had given Mr. Trump access to what seemed like an endless flow of business opportunities. There were unrealized real estate developments in Atlanta on the Baja California peninsula in Mexico and in Cap Cana in the Dominican Republic, an “elite destination that will be known worldwide in the years to come. ” The hotel and golf club in Cap Cana bearing the Trump name, announced almost a decade ago, have not been built, and Mr. Trump ended up suing his partners over licensing fees. There were entertainment endeavors: a concept for a Trump animation series akin to “The Simpsons” a speaking tour in Australia that was canceled, though Mr. Trump did eventually go there for a round of lucrative speeches and “Trump Tycoon,” a smartphone app that sold for “$2. 99 but the advice is priceless,” as he wrote at the time on Twitter. He said recently that he did not recall the app, which is no longer available. There were scores of products, with mixed success: vodka magazines suits ties chairs bath towels crystal and perhaps the most famous one, Trump Steaks, sold by Sharper Image and “by far the best tasting, most flavorful beef that you’ll ever eat. ” Some live on, but in general, they typically failed to match the initial hype before quietly disappearing. And there was Trump University, a series of real estate seminars that, like many of Mr. Trump’s endeavors, wound up in the courts. Mr. Trump’s name seemed to be just about everywhere. But a close look reveals patterns, particularly before and after the financial crisis of 2008. (The Times did not analyze any projects begun after 2012, because a number of them were too new to evaluate.) Until the crisis, Mr. Trump focused mainly on real estate developments, often mixed projects. The market downturn thwarted some of those plans, and he began shifting more aggressively to smaller licensing agreements with makers of home products and goods. The Trump Organization accelerated its focus on golf, buying clubs near Philadelphia in Westchester County, N. Y. in Doral, Fla. and elsewhere. Despite occasional bumps, as when neighbors in Doral complained about noise and the course’s new trees, the purchases have generally gone according to plan. Where others might see disappointment, Mr. Trump is unfailingly upbeat when reflecting on his business ventures. In the interviews, he maintained that his deals, for the most part, “are all tremendously successful. ” And a number of them were, at least for him, because they were licensing arrangements that paid him millions of dollars in fees upfront regardless of how well the engagement turned out. Other times, he said, he showed his business acumen by canceling or delaying deals to avoid hitting a difficult market. “All of my jobs work in some form or another,” Mr. Trump said, noting several times that he had more than 100 deals in progress or in negotiation. “A lot of people don’t understand. ” He harbored no regrets about how he had trumpeted his past engagements, explaining how his promotions were no different from what one might find in newspaper ads for a new car or home. “People use language that’s very much up there,” he said. He acknowledged that he sometimes announced deals before they were fully baked. It was part of the plan, he said, to gauge the public’s response, like a trial balloon, to see whether a deal was worth doing. “It is an awfully good way of testing things, I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “There’s no investment, as opposed to doing the deal and letting it be a failure. ” As president, Mr. Trump said, he might use the same approach to policy making. “I guess you could say there will be a time where I may want to test something by talking about it publicly and seeing what the response is,” he said. But he said that some of his campaign pledges were positively bankable. “For instance,” he said, “we are going to build a wall. I’m going to build the wall. ” | 1 |
Scott
It’s really amazing to see how little of the blame is going to Clinton herself. It was her decision to set-up a private email server. It was her decision to serve as Secretary of State while accepting millions from foreign governments. It was her decision to get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars while unofficially running for President. It was her decision to call millions of Americans deplorable.
We have very little idea of what a Trump presidency will amount to. My best guess has been that he will be a Jimmy Carter cubed in Berlusconi packaging.
Recall that even though Carter has been the best former President of the modern era, he came to Washington as an outsider with his Georgia team. Despite having ben a governor and thus knowing how to draft legislation and get bills passed, he famously got little accomplished despite having a Democratic party majority in the House and Senate.
Trump is likely to spend his first year, and conceivably his entire Presidency, with all of the Democratic party and enough of the Republican party against him to stymie him, fighting for the right to govern. And that assumes he has an agenda beyond the very few goals he has articulated consistently: getting out of “bad” trade deals and entering into better ones; reducing immigration and deporting many undocumented immigrants (and building his famed wall); investing heavily in infrastructure; making NATO members pay their share of its budget (the theoretical level, 2% of each nation’s GDP, is largely footed by the US); cutting back our involvement in overseas conflicts; cutting taxes; and repealing Obamacare.
The only initiatives where the Republicans might back him solidly are cutting taxes and ending Obamacare, and even then, given the lobbying power of Big Pharma and the health insurers, the Republicans might not be as willing to pull the trigger on Obamacare as all their kvetching would lead you to believe.
There is one more Trump campaign promise that will serve as an important early test of his seriousness as well as his survival skills: investigating Clinton. Even if Obama pardons her, as our Jerri-Lynn Scofield has predicted, it will be critical for Trump to carry out a probe of the Clinton Foundation’s business while Clinton was Secretary of State.
If Trump is to cut the cancer of the neocons out of the policy establishment, he has to have them on the run. It is a reasonable surmise that Clinton’s enthusiasm for war was due at least in part to heavy Saudi support of the Foundation. Showing that American’s escalation in the Middle East, which Obama tried with mixed success to temper, was due in part, and perhaps almost entirely, to the personal corruption of the Secretary of State, would keep the hawks at bay, particularly if other prominent insiders and pundits were implicated in Clinton Foundation influence-peddaling.
It will be hard for Trump to do much to alter the course of the military-surveilance complex unless he can hamstring the warmongers. Just as Warren has argued relative to bank regulations, “personnel is policy.” If Trump is a fast learner, he’ll see that that is just as true on the foreign policy front.
Finally, those on the left need to turn the blame cannon aimed squarely at them back on the professional hacks who are truly responsible. Despite their tiresome chest-beating about meritocracy, these Acela corridor bubble-dwellers are constitutionally incapable of holding their fellow club member accountable. Their preening self regard repelled hard-working Americans who’d done the right thing, as in gotten an education, and if they were older, launched a career, bought a house and started a family, only to struggle harder and harder while seeing any vestige of security and hope of improved living standards erode. And unless they were at the top of the professional classes, they felt defeated by not being able to pay for their kids to go to college and being uncertain as to how to advise them with their educations and job prospects.
The Democrats under Clinton and Obama abdicated the duty of the elites, which is to improve the conditions for, or at least limit harm to, the members of the communities they lead. Even Bill Clinton did remember that the most important duty for a Democrat is to create jobs, even if he did so by presiding over a rise in household debt and a stock market bubble.
Young people, who poll well to the left of their elders, have inferred a lesson that the labor movement forgot: the exercise of power includes being willing to inflict punishment in the form of withholding support. Look at how diminished organized labor has become by casting its lot with the feckless Dems who’ve sold them out again and again. Hillary tried the Clinton “They have no where to go” trick one time too many, kicking the left after she only narrowly beat Sanders. And the left decided to return the favor. She made clear she has no intention of representing them. They heard her message loud and clear and acted accordingly.
As reader aab :
The big question to me is, take over the hollow shell of the Democratic Party, or crush it with a new party. Is it possible to take over the Ds — as weak as it is now as a party — without being corrupted and co-opted? I now hate my former party to such a degree, I find myself recoiling at having anything at all to do with it. But given all the institutional constraints, it still may be smart to try; the answer is above my pay grade, as they say.
This is an important question to consider as we see how the Democratic party responds to this well-deserved defeat. 0 2 0 0 0 0 | 0 |
In this episode, we depart from the familiar format for a dive into the world of music streaming services. It is a topic that fascinates the Haggler, who can still barely fathom that for a mere $10 a month, he can get access to just about any musical recording on the planet. But which streaming app is the best? The Haggler has been mulling this question for a while, and after a lot of dabbling he regards Spotify as the gold standard. It is sturdy and remarkably fast when you play a song from the cloud, it starts so quickly it seems to be waiting for you. The system is also easy to use. Streaming services, at least to the Haggler, are all about creating playlists — grabbing albums and songs and putting them in a place where you can find them quickly. That process is simple and intuitive on Spotify. If the system has a weakness, it is a user interface, which is black and a Halloweenish shade of green — a little too goth for the Haggler’s tastes. Far more important, it isn’t great at introducing you to new albums and acts. It has features and algorithms designed to help you find undiscovered music, but they aren’t compelling or visually appealing enough to be much help. The Haggler winds up listening to the same stuff over and over. This is why the Haggler has been rooting for Apple Music since an Android version of it was unveiled in November. The user interface is gorgeous — bright, airy and dominated by album art — and it is the finest new music introduction system ever created. It’s like a professional matchmaker who never sleeps. It is always trying to find you something to love. But for all its upsides, Apple Music for iOS has been criticized for randomly deleting both songs and playlists. On Android, though, the app behaves even more weirdly. It took the Haggler a while to figure out what was happening. Then, a few weeks ago, it all became clear: Apple Music is stoned. Not stoned, either. Apple Music is fried. It has the kind of “Where am I?” buzz that should worry its friends. To wit: When the Haggler tries to turn an album into a playlist, only half the songs make the journey. Or all the songs make the journey but there are three copies of many. Or two copies. Sometimes, inexplicably, the songs are arranged alphabetically. “Heh heh heh,” says Apple Music, or so it seems to the Haggler’s ears. “I’m really high right now. ” You sure are! Just as bad, the system is supposed to learn what music you like, but no matter how many times the Haggler presses the “I don’t like this suggestion” button on jazz albums, Apple Music keeps serving up Chet Baker and Bill Evans in a “For you” list on the main menu. That’s especially vexing because each time that button is pressed, up pops this message: “Got it. We’ll keep that in mind. ” But Apple Music forgets. Do you know why? It’s totally baked. When someone consumes this amount of weed, for so long, it’s time for an intervention, and fortunately Apple Music just completed one. On July 8, the company updated the program, promising a fix for an assortment of bugs. A fix for the iOS version was released a few weeks ago. The Haggler doesn’t own an iPhone, so he can’t comment on whether it has improved, though the “My music has vanished!” online complaints do seem to have died down. But he is happy to report that on his Android smartphone, the fixes work. Since the program update, playlists have been rationally sorted. No more triple copies, no more alphabetized albums. So is it time to ditch Spotify? Not so fast. Apple Music is still missing essential features. It doesn’t let users make and share their own playlists, à la Spotify, which is how the Haggler got to know every song from the HBO show “Silicon Valley. ” (Some fan of the show just made a compilation.) Apple Music also lacks crossfade, which allows the next song to fade in, over a customizable number of seconds, as the last song fades out. This is invaluable if you listen to music in part to block out the noise made by the rest of the universe. Also, while it’s off recreational drugs, Apple Music is still balkier than Spotify, and is more likely to leave you staring at a spinning red line as it gathers its wits and looks for songs. And Apple Music has failed to streamline its playlist adding system. On Spotify, a playlist of Drake’s album “Views” is automatically designated “Drake — Views. ” On Apple Music, when you create a new playlist, it has no idea what to call it. The name is blank. So you have to type it yourself. This isn’t exactly hard labor. But it adds to the sense that Apple Music needs more tweaks. The Haggler contacted Apple, but the company would not discuss whether any of these tweaks were coming, because it generally does not discuss future iterations of products. What’s odd is that Apple is the user interface master of the world. If anything, you would expect it to take the bar established by Spotify and then leap over it. Instead, at least in a few crucial areas, it’s lagging. Yet recently, after a few hours of rummaging around the “Radio” section of Apple Music — a bunch of shows curated by artists and D. J. s — the Haggler fell hard for a fantastic indie band from Oklahoma called Broncho and its song “Class Historian. ” On Dr. Dre’s radio station, the Pharmacy, he was reacquainted with A Tribe Called Quest’s “Oh My God” which he hadn’t heard in years. The “For you” list last week included an album of Beethoven’s string trios that the Haggler will never again live without. If only someone could splice together the best parts of Apple Music and the best parts of Spotify, and then subtract each of their flaws. Unlikely, yes. But the Haggler can dream. | 1 |
The Washington Post has removed a reference to MILO in a piece about his upcoming appearance at CPAC implying that he “espoused racist, and sexist points of view. ”[The article, by David Weigel and Robert Costa, described MILO as being the latest example of the conservative movement’s “embrace of aligned figures,” despite MILO declaring on multiple occasions that he is not a member of, nor aligned with, the but only sought to give them a fair hearing in the press, notably by writing ‘An Establishment Conservatives Guide To The .’ After Breitbart News contacted the authors, the introduction was changed to describe MILO as a “ firebrand,” along with removing all references to the bigotry that MILO was accused of. One reader in the comment section, writing before the article updated, said that “this article is so riddled with errors, it may as well be fake news. ” Many other news outlets have attempted to brand MILO with the or white nationalist label, including CNN, The Chicago Tribune, CBS, USA Today, LA Times, Glamour Magazine and NBC News. White supremacists have repeatedly attacked MILO the Daily Stormer declared a “holy crusade” against MILO, and proceeded to protest him at the University of Alabama. Most of the aforementioned outlets were forced to issue corrections and retract their claims for having no basis in reality. Jack Hadfield is a student at the University of Warwick and a regular contributor to Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @ToryBastard_, on Gab @JH or email him at jack@yiannopoulos. net. | 1 |
Bob Dylan no podrá recoger el Nobel “porque viene el del gas a revisar la caldera” "ESTÁ MÁS SOLICITADO ÉL QUE YO", ASEGURA EL ARTISTA Premio Nobel de Literatura
El cantautor estadounidense Bob Dylan, ganador del Nobel de Literatura de este año, no viajará a Estocolmo a recoger el premio, que se entrega el próximo 10 de diciembre, informó este miércoles la Academia Sueca. El motivo es una cita que ya había acordado el premiado con el técnico del gas, que debe revisar su caldera.
“Los inyectores están sucios y el agua sale templada pero no caliente”, ha argumentado Dylan, añadiendo que “el reconocimiento público de mi trayectoria es importante pero, cuando tienes que ir a casa del vecino a ducharte, reordenas tus prioridades”.
El artista ha explicado a la Academia que el técnico del gas está “muy solicitado, más que yo con el Nobel” y ha animado a la organización a perseguir a la compañía del gas para que busque otra fecha. “Intentadlo si queréis, os pondrán en espera”, asegura.
“No es que me dé pereza ni nada. De hecho, con la caldera jodida estoy seguro de que hace más frío en mi casa que en Estocolmo”, ha insistido el premiado. “Y recemos todos para que el tío del gas se presente el día que toca, que esa es otra”, ha añadido. | 0 |
The Federal Reserve increased its key interest rate by 0. 25 percent on Wednesday, signaling the Fed’s continued confidence in the improving U. S. economy. [Fed officials raised its target for interest rates by 0. 25 percentage points to a range of 0. 75 percent and 1. 00 percent. This is just the third time in a decade that the Fed has raised rates. The first was in December 2015 and the second in December 2016. The Fed is widely expected to hike its target rate multiple times this year as the economy shows signs of continued strength. “The Committee expects that economic conditions will evolve in a manner that will warrant gradual increases in the federal funds rate,” the Fed said in a statement announcing the rate hike. The Fed slashed its target rate to zero in 2008 in reaction to the financial crisis. It then deployed various unconventional monetary tools in an attempt to lower rates even further. The rate increase means that the Fed is confident that the U. S. economy can withstand higher rates, with consumers and businesses less needful of very low rates to sustain economic growth and price stability. Recent data on job creation, business confidence, consumer optimism, and inflation has made it clear that the economy has been growing stronger since the election of Donald Trump as president. “Solid income gains and relatively high levels of consumer sentiment and wealth have supported household spending growth. Business investment, which was soft for much of last year, has firm somewhat and business sentiment is at favorable levels,” Fed chair Janet Yellen said at the start of her press conference. While Fed officials hinted that the Fed could raise rates at a faster pace this year, Wednesday’s statement shows that Fed officials still expect to raise rates just two more times this year. The view of rates got slightly more hawkish, indicating a small move upward in rate expectations over the next few years. Fed chair Janet Yellen will hold a news conference discussing the Fed’s views of the economy at 2:30 pm eastern. | 1 |
November 13, 2016
Under the hashtag ‘StopFundingHate’ the Danish firm have ceased collaboration with Republicans, The Daily Mail and James Corden’s agent. Citing ethical reasons, the toy manufacturer said they would continue to make Star Wars-themed Death Stars but had declined to Donald Trump’s request for a ‘full-sized’ one.
Despite being the nemesis of bare feet everywhere, Lego were keen to distance themselves from any negative publicity – withdrawing from plans for a Lego Boko Haram ‘Adventure Playground’, Lego Kim Jong-Un with Missile Launcher and Lego Mrs Brown’s Boys ‘House of Fun’. Instead their focus will be on a ‘Brexit Box of Bricks'; which lacks any plan and, despite promises on the packaging, can not be used to build any hospitals whatsoever.
Lego’s rejection leaves Mr. Trump no choice but to assemble his 2,000 mile wall out of pulped copies of the Koran; held together with ‘whatever the hell’ he uses as hair glue. Sadly Mexico had already agreed to pay for the construction costs, but, like most parents this Christmas, had balked at the material cost of using Lego.
Meanwhile The Daily Mail will no longer give away toys but will continue to dispense fear for free. Likewise Mr. Trump has said he will keep his election promises without Lego; replacing Obamacare with ‘Doc McStuffins’, waterboarding with ‘Super Soakers’ and any non-compliant women with ‘Barbie’– or Ivana as she is known. Share this story...
Wrenfoe Wrenfoe .. | 0 |
Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” host Joe Scarborough criticized the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on President Donald Trump’s executive order halting immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Scarborough said that although he thought the executive order was bad policy, the appeals court’s ruling was “laughable” and he said it will be overturned. “Our law professors always told us — bad facts made bad law,” he said. “Horrific facts coupled with horrific politics makes for horrific law. That’s exactly what happened here. ” “This decision, though, is laughable,” Scarborough conitnued. “This is, for me, the most disturbing part of the entire case. And by the way, at the end, this isn’t going to matter because I think the White House is going to fix it up, briefly fix it up. They could do a couple quick changes and take care of these problems. But the Ninth said, ‘The government has pointed to no evidence that any alien from any of the countries named in the order have perpetrated a terrorist attack in the United States.’ As if it is the executive branches job to actually get the Intel community in and say these are all the things that are going to happen. No, in fact, Barack Obama worked with a bipartisan Congress to come up with these seven countries, not because there was specific attacks, but because they saw deteriorating security situation that they wanted to remedy. They wanted to prevent attacks. That’s the entire purpose of that. ” “This will be overturned,” he added. | 1 |
I met Maajid Nawaz on a drizzly afternoon in March, tucked in a corner of the restaurant at the central London members’ club he uses as a satellite office. He was dabbing the chicken from his Caesar salad into a mound of yellow English mustard, which he stopped doing for long enough to load a video on his iPhone and slide it across the table. It showed the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Heidi Beirich, speaking at Duke University about him. “Let me just give you an example of Maajid Nawaz — our problem with him,” she says. “He believes that all mosques should be surveilled. In other words, his opinion is that all Muslims are potential terrorists. ” Nawaz, a Muslim himself, bristled with frustration at the claim. In fact, he explained, he is on record making the case against collective surveillance. A former Islamist, for the past nine years Nawaz has made a name for himself as an indefatigable activist. These days he blends seamlessly into the sort of cosmopolitan circles that extremists decry at his club, dressed in an olive bomber jacket over fitted workout sweats, he could have been a senior marketing exec or a director. At 39, Nawaz is handsome and vaguely famous looking in person, prematurely with a widow’s peak and Mephistophelean soul patch that punctuates a politician’s easy smile. Whenever I saw him, he dapped me with one of those that, to anyone of a certain age, serves as shorthand for an adolescence steeped in the manners of . For Nawaz’s detractors, of whom there are many, it’s this very chameleon quality, this in disparate roles and spaces, that has earned him a reputation as something of a charlatan, a preening opportunist cashing in on his own sensational travails by means of society’s abundant bias. This uncharitable narrative has shadowed him from the outset, yet his point of view has only grown more relevant after an exceptionally violent 2016 that saw coordinated suicide bombings in Brussels and Istanbul a mass shooting in a nightclub in Orlando the ambush and execution of a police officer and his partner near Paris a Bastille Day slaughter in Nice ax and suicide bomb attacks in Bavaria the throat slitting of a Catholic priest in a church in Normandy bombs in Manhattan and New Jersey and a massacre at a Christmas market in Berlin. And on March 22 this year in London, a man mowed down pedestrians with his car near Parliament before stabbing a police constable to death. With each grisly new assault — and the specter of Syria and the Islamic State looming beyond it — the voices of hatred and reaction in the United States and throughout Britain and Europe found not only sympathetic ears but also willing hands to pull levers in the voting booths. Throughout the upheaval and backlash, Nawaz has remained a constant presence in the media: on “Real Time With Bill Maher,” trying to draw a distinction between religion and political dogma in his book, “Islam and the Future of Tolerance” ( with the prominent “new atheist” Sam Harris) insisting that Islamism does have something to do with Islam and that ISIS in fact possesses a plausible if terribly ungenerous interpretation of the Quran. But whatever role Nawaz enjoys as a public intellectual is inextricable from his personal celebrity as a former fundamentalist. His work is his story, and his story is his celebrity. In order to make his case against radicalism, he finds himself in the not entirely enviable position of nonstop . On this front, he’s as busy as ever. He is finishing a documentary based on his book with Harris, but foremost on Nawaz’s mind these days is the 2017 opening of the first new chapter of his organization, the Quilliam Foundation, in the United States. “Lots of Muslims in America are basically liberals, but if you don’t have a visibly presence, then the Trumps of this world win” through and misrepresentation, he says. “Our presence is needed in America to reassure the mainstream, whereas our presence is needed in Europe to stop radicalization. ” Despite such deliberate affirmations and qualifications, there is nonetheless confusion as to where Nawaz’s sympathies actually lie. According to Vice News, he has earned a “terrorism” designation on Thomson Reuters a database. (Thomson Reuters would not confirm this.) But, last October, the Southern Poverty Law Center took the incredible step of including him on a “Field Guide to Extremists,” which they published with three other research organizations. The guide listed 15 public figures, and Nawaz was the only Muslim among them. (This is why Beirich brought him up at Duke.) He was visibly furious whenever the topic came up and told me he plans to crowdfund a legal response. Though he and his allies, and even some of his opponents, have complained to the S. P. L. C. — there is a change. org petition to remove him and the atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, which has garnered almost 12, 000 signatures — the group has not wavered on its position, the costs of which have already been real for Quilliam. Nawaz claims that the listing has compromised some funding for the organization. “I consider myself a liberal and wanted to work with liberals,” he said, shaking his head. In reality, his views on Islamic extremism are more complex than these labels allow, which is, arguably, one of the more compelling reasons to listen to him on the subject. Early in Nawaz’s 2012 memoir, “Radical: My Journey Out of Islamist Extremism,” there’s an scene. The narrator, an irreligious, N. W. A. child, has resorted to strapping a knife under his shirt for fear of the gangs of skinheads that stalk his Essex suburb, Southend. He is 15, and on this afternoon, he is with his older brother, Kaashif (identified by a pseudonym in the book) and a friend who has converted to Islam. Neighborhood racists have chased the boys with baseball bats and now have them cornered and outnumbered. The skinheads’ leader steps forward and asks to talk. Kaashif gestures to the side of the road, where he and the skinhead fall into a tense and private discussion. When the two return, the skinheads begin to retreat. Incredulous, Maajid demands to know what his brother has told them. Kaashif says he told the skinhead, “We’re Muslims, and we don’t fear death” — and, furthermore, that he was carrying a bomb in his backpack. The anecdote, which surfaces repeatedly in “Radical” and ultimately swells to the dimensions of a creation myth, is quintessential Nawaz. On one hand, it’s a distillation of his larger rhetorical project, capturing the confused and painful textures of contemporary Muslim experience that can lead to the embrace of Islamism: an initial lack of familiarity with religion local grievance spun into a narrative of global victimization a tribal relation to other Muslims beyond racial and ethnic categorization the illusion of empowerment through threat of violence. On the other hand, it has become emblematic of the cantankerous, highly personal discourse that clings to the man himself: For a number of reasons — more on which later — many of his critics have come to claim that the anecdote is pure fabrication. What’s indisputable is that soon after that day in Southend, first following Kaashif’s example but then with a fervency that was entirely his own, Nawaz threw himself into his new identity, falling under the sway of Nasim Ghani, a charismatic young recruiter and future leader of the British branch of Hizb a multinational Islamic revolutionary organization founded in 1953 in Jerusalem. H. T. as Nawaz refers to it, advocates the imposition of Shariah law through “bloodless” coups in countries first and ultimately in the West as well. In other words, these were Islamists but not jihadists, and the distinction isn’t frivolous. Still, the line is a porous one: Two H. T. leaders, Anjem Choudary and Omar Bakri Mohammad, would go on to lead a splinter group of a far more deadly variety. In September 2001, after stints of organizing and recruiting for H. T. in London and Pakistan, Nawaz took his first wife and their infant son to Alexandria, Egypt, where he posed as an student while secretly proselytizing for the group. Though H. T. is legal in Britain, it is banned in many countries, including Egypt. In 2002, at 24, Nawaz was forcibly removed from his home, blindfolded and thrown in the back of a van, one more Islamist caught up in the wide and extralegal international crackdown on extremism in the wake of . He spent his next four years in Egyptian prisons, where he claims to have witnessed torture and where, in his solitude, he was able to memorize half of the Quran. A pivotal moment in Nawaz’s moral education came when news of the attacks in London reached the inmates at Tora, Egypt’s prison notorious for holding political dissidents. Four attackers bombed a bus and three subway trains, claiming 52 lives. Nawaz writes that he suddenly “felt revulsion” at the human cost of his ideas. A man Nawaz calls Omar, a Dagestani bomb maker, had celebrated the slaughter. Nawaz is a hero in his own telling of the ensuing exchange: He claims to have debated Omar for the entirety of the day about the legitimacy of killing British civilians, until the latter eventually conceded defeat. Nawaz writes, “I felt that I had saved many future lives. ” In 2004, Amnesty International adopted Nawaz as a prisoner of conscience and secured his return to London two years later. His was not an overnight epiphany, but within two more years, he had graduated from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, renounced Islamism and H. T. and publicly reinvented himself as an advocate for liberal democracy: a expert on preventing radicalization. His enemies, a long list made up of family members, and former H. T. associates, have publicly questioned his conversion narrative. Ian Nisbet, a white convert to Islam who was jailed with Nawaz in Egypt, told a reporter from Alternet that Nawaz remained a fanatical Islamist after he was freed. Indeed, back in England, Nawaz appeared on the BBC’s “Hardtalk” program and declared that his experience in Egypt left him convinced “that there is a need to establish this caliphate as soon as possible. ” In his defense, Nawaz claims that making a clean break with a former life is both difficult and genuinely confusing. He rather colorfully compares it to a breakup with a lover. (Nawaz and his first wife split up around the time of his departure from H. T.) He has also insisted that his public positions were in part strategic: He didn’t want to tip his hand to H. T. until he had his exit plans in place. Whatever the case, that same year, alongside a college friend named Ed Husain, who had already made a name for himself with his own memoir, “The Islamist,” Nawaz the Quilliam Foundation, which they named for William Quilliam, a British convert who opened one of Britain’s first mosques in the late 1880s. Quilliam’s first headquarters occupied the ground floor of a rowhouse overlooking the verdure of Russell Square, practically the same view T. S. Eliot would have had when he worked at Faber Faber, and just a block from two of the sites of the attacks. As his critics constantly stress, Nawaz’s timing was convenient the British government was then looking to finance organizations and provided Quilliam with early funding. Nawaz, then, is somewhat like British Petroleum when it is tasked with cleaning up a catastrophic oil spill: His main qualification to do this kind of decontamination work is precisely his experience as a contaminator. As recently as the Islamist ideology was unpopular in British Muslim communities. “We would have to convince people of something that is strange to them,” he told me of those days. “We had to really hone our argumentative skills and our ability to convince and influence people as that vanguard of the Islamist movement in the West. ” He insists his background as an Islamist is what allows him and others at Quilliam today not only to pinpoint Islamism’s weaknesses but also to employ the very same tenacious ability to communicate ideas and influence people for the purpose now of advocating liberal values. “They’re transferable skills” is how he once put it to me. What Nawaz seems to understand better than any of the other critics of Islam he’s so often lumped with is that Islamism is cool — and it is cool in some of the same ways that punk rock and gangsta rap and macho rebellion in general, whether symbolic or real, are perennially seductive. As a result, countering it will have to mean finding ways to, as he puts it, “make it cool to be a liberal Muslim. ” And that may be harder than it seems. While the vast majority of British Muslims today are certainly not flocking to join groups like H. T. — and many who have never been attracted to the ideology justifiably find it irritating to be lectured by a man who was — a sobering number nonetheless have expressed views that would be very much at home in even more extreme precincts. An online poll done in Britain following the bombings, for example, showed that more than a fifth of British Muslims felt some sympathy for the bombers’ feelings and motives more than half said they could understand the bombers’ behavior and nearly a third agreed that “Western society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to bring it to an end” by nonviolent means. One incredible Gallup report from 2009 found that 0 percent of British Muslims viewed homosexual acts as morally acceptable. Though it is not at all clear what pushes any given individual to cross the line into violence, attitudes like these are what Nawaz and Quilliam have controversially described as the “mood music” to terrorist acts. It is this last contention that seems to be the crux of the S. P. L. C. complaint against Nawaz, along with the disclosure that, in 2010, Quilliam provided a list of nonviolent “Islamist” organizations to a British counterterrorism official. But Nawaz justifies the move by arguing that the distinction between violent and nonviolent Islamism is far less rigid than many liberals would like to think. “Now when these guys are joining ISIS, the arguments have been made,” he told me. “What they’re doing is just putting that last piece in the jigsaw: ‘I’m going to go and fight for this cause.’ But the ideology’s already been established. The surveys and the polls tell you that. ” Before Quilliam moved late last year to an undisclosed location for security reasons, I visited Nawaz on several occasions. The organization hummed with the energy and sense of mission of a tech . On one side were doors leading into a large and crowded room where analysts, academics and imams were doing the intellectual grunt work that the foundation demands. On the other was the modest office Nawaz used for himself. Though he is the face of the organization, he is hardly the only employee with an exotic résumé. On my first visit, my eyes fixed on a small prayer rug draped neatly over the arm of a desk chair. “Oh, that’s for him!” Nawaz quickly clarified, referring to his officemate, Noman Benotman, the current president of the organization and a former jihadist who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, tried to violently depose Muammar Gaddafi in the 1990s and later worked with Osama bin Laden and Ayman in Sudan. Back across the hall there was also Dr. Usama Hasan, the head of Islamic studies at the organization. The son of a conservative and influential Salafi sheikh, Hasan used a break from his studies at Cambridge to engage in jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan (on a scale of he told me, “our group maybe got up to about five”). And yet, in 2011, after waging holy war in the east and after 25 years of service at his father’s London mosque, that kind of effort didn’t count for very much when he came under attack by . He was forced to stop delivering Friday prayers when 50 Muslim protesters stormed his lecture and openly called for his execution. His offense had been to venture that Islam could be compatible with modern theories of evolution and that Muslim women should be allowed to uncover their hair in public. Aside from the life experience of some of its members and the issuance of the occasional Quilliam is a standard think tank: a body of experts conducting research and providing advice and ideas on specific political or social problems in support of liberal democracy. The group works to shape public opinion from the top down, making frequent media appearances, publishing reports that aim for the highest levels of government (such as a critical 2009 investigation into the ways British prisons incubate extremism) and periodically advising government ministers and heads of state on matters of terrorism. But they also engage ordinary Muslims and alike through outreach work, organizing debate and training programs in Europe and the Middle East. All of this ought to make Quilliam a natural ally of progressives and of institutions like the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose mission, after all, is to advocate for the vulnerable. Yet that has not been the case. Nawaz’s layered arguments and concessions — his insistence, for example, that Islam does have something to do with Islamism — provoke a visceral suspicion among those who are concerned with fighting Islamophobia above all. A term that you will hear with frequency from Nawaz is “the regressive left,” as in purportedly progressive institutions like the S. P. L. C. that, often starting from a legitimate concern that Muslims en masse not be persecuted for the actions of a few, nonetheless embody a perplexingly backward when it comes to Islam. “It’s an Orientalist fetish,” Nawaz says, “a deeply socially conservative Muslim who is medieval in their outlook is a ‘real’ Muslim, and anyone who’s challenging that status quo is a sellout. ” The left has, in Nawaz’s view, forfeited what’s best about the liberal project, entirely conceding the right to speak in moral absolutes and about universal values. “The problem is you can’t draw a line with that reasoning: Why is what ISIS is doing bad, then?” A core idea Quilliam espouses is that space must be claimed for secular identities within Islam the measure of Muslim authenticity would then be a matter of individual imagination and will, not a test to pass or fail. In other words, he would like to see many more Muslims thinking, speaking and acting like him. Which is a big part of the reason it’s impossible to think of Quilliam independent of the outsize figure cut by its and why so much debate about the validity of the organization’s ideas comes down to a question of being for or against Nawaz. Attack pieces about Nawaz have practically become their own literary genre. In the summer of 2015, The Guardian ran a deeply critical story about him, which questioned the integrity of Nawaz’s work with the Cameron administration and took him to task for, among other misdeeds, “sipping a skinny flat white” coffee in front of the reporter. This was followed, in January 2016, by a hard takedown at The New Republic, whose writer, Nathan Lean, had earlier referred on Twitter to Nawaz as Sam Harris’s “lap dog. ” Roughly a week after that piece came a longer, even more personal attack at Alternet, which stood out in its attempt to debunk, scene by scene, the events in “Radical. ” The authors revisited the subject of the bomb in the backpack and quoted Nawaz’s older brother as well as an anonymous cousin, who called the story “imaginary. ” (Many of the sources in the Alternet article seem concerned that Kaashif’s ruse in the anecdote might be taken literally.) When I asked him about it, Nawaz was dismissive. “You go to a deeply wounded brother that loved me all of his life, and I turn out to be not who he aspires for me to be,” he said. “As a journalist, you can exploit that. ” He shrugged soberly. It is undeniable that one advantage, and shortcoming, of memoir as a form lies in its ability to dominate the reader through an empirical imbalance that can never be resolved in its entirety. Arguments, when unsound, can be negated, but who can negate another person’s lived experience? It is a rhetorical tactic that is, in fact, most at home on the left, where personal stories of grievance and oppression are typically set in opposition to the status quo in the wider society. Perhaps, then, this is why so much attention has been paid to Nawaz’s biography. If his life story can be shown to be contrived, the deeper message, however compelling, can be dismissed: Not only is the messenger’s life not a genuine Muslim life, when seen from this angle, it may even prove to be an life. I saw Nawaz in New York in September, while he was in town for Quilliam’s American chapter. We had made plans to meet at a Soho hotel for a drink, but he was running late. When I asked after him, the concierge either didn’t know his real name or pretended not to. Nawaz and Benotman have been targeted by Al Qaeda and ISIS affiliates, and he travels under an alias. When he finally arrived, we went down to the bar, and he was in wonderful spirits. He’s been criticized in the British press for drinking and receiving a lap dance at a strip club, but in situations like this, it’s strange to think of Nawaz as having been anything like a humorless extremist. Yet the bind he has made for himself is a real one: He has to prove that liberal, moderate Islam can be “cool,” while not coming off as too hip to convince the left of his Muslim authenticity. He runs the very real risk of satisfying no one. It reminded me of an observation that had been running through my head since the previous winter, when Quilliam opened an art exhibit in London called “The Unbreakable Rope. ” Billed as “an exploration of sexuality in Islam,” the show was by Nawaz’s second wife, Rachel Maggart (the couple had their first child in January) a lanky brunette from Tennessee by way of N. Y. U. In addition to the regular Quilliam bodyguards, there were plainclothes counterterrorism officers monitoring the site. Inside the venue, a shirtless, tattooed Kuwaiti performance artist did preparatory stretches with his assistant and a crystal ball. He would eventually be tied up in a corset and left on the floor for guests to contemplate. The crowd sipped wine and soft drinks and milled about the sparsely hung, mildly provocative artwork, which was in fact beside the point. The point, of course, was that they were even daring to do this in the first place. I fell into conversation with Nawaz’s mother and little sister and lost track of time as the space filled up all around us. There were whites, blacks, Persians, Arabs people looked devout and nondevout, gay, straight, young and old. Standing next to me was a man with the voluminous beard of a cleric, turned out in an djellaba, ironed as crisply as a bedsheet at the Ritz, a pair of Nike Air Force 1s and a New Era cap printed with a expletive. He looked like a cross between the leader of Hezbollah and the Bay Area rapper Lil B. The room darkened and quieted, and Nawaz, brimming with life, stepped into the middle of the crowd, whose diversity he lauded, and thanked them all for coming. Like the he once aspired to be, he thrills to the sound of his own voice flowing through the microphone. “The first thing they do is try to silence us, and the first to suffer are the creators!” he told the room to enthusiastic applause. “But while you throw gays off the rooftops, we who are Muslims want to respond like this!” As I watched Nawaz bask in the applause of his most earnest admirers and glanced back at the walls adorned with such unbearably unhip art, the enormity of his task pressed itself upon me. After all, Islamism, like good art, is innately subversive it captures diffuse feelings of alienation in a way that is difficult to fabricate. And therein lies the biggest challenge confronting Quilliam in Europe and, as it seeks to expand, in America: Though Nawaz himself is a star, there is something both noble and perilously square about this kind of forced secularism. Yet I’m convinced that Nawaz really does have his finger on the pulse of one of the most urgent problems of the contemporary era, a problem that is far too often mishandled or greeted with denial, through ignorance, hatred and fear, certainly, but also as a result of the very best of intentions. Without having planned to, I found myself at the hotel bar in New York opening up to Nawaz about a recent train ride my wife and I made in France. I watched an agitated young Arab man and his wife, in full abaya, shut themselves inside the bathroom along with all of their luggage. When they opened the door, the hair on my neck stood up, and I braced myself for a fusillade that never came. Even as I chastised myself for overreacting, I was convinced that the man continued to behave strangely. My shame increased with each moment nothing happened. Nawaz listened intently to my story, but his eyes showed he’d long since arrived at his answer. “You’re caught in a classically situation,” he said. “You’ve got two competing forces, which are entirely legitimate. One is not wanting to racially profile, and the other is not wanting to be the neighbor of the San Bernardino shooter who didn’t want to profile and, as a result, people lose their lives. Or, more urgently, [you] just don’t want to be the first person to catch a bullet! On a human level, that is a perfectly natural reaction. The fact that you’re having these doubts is a good thing. ” Though he meant this defense of human prejudice to reassure me, it did not. I almost wish he had accused me of Islamophobia — at least then the conversation might have achieved a certain clarity. But Nawaz, the consummate thinker, then took care to layer on several more shades of gray. “I literally just tweeted, five minutes before coming to see you, a picture of a blond ISIS child — a child with blond hair — helping to execute people,” he said, producing on his phone a shocking image of a very young, Eastern boy holding a gun in the desert. “I said, ‘Trump, how you gonna profile this? ’’u2009” | 1 |
in: General Health , News Articles , Toxins Halloween is creeping near, are you prepared? Before you make a mad dash to the nearest costume shop, consider this—do you know what’s in your costume? Your masks and makeup? Terrifying toxins! Catastrophic chemicals! Horrifying harbingers of–ok, alright. You probably get the idea. Festive Halloween accouterments can be loaded with harmful chemicals and toxic metals. It can be difficult to resist a low-price costume produced with cheaply-sourced goods, but there are a few good reasons why you should consider more than price when deciding which Halloween products to buy. Chemicals in Costumes, Accessories, and Decorations Costumes, accessories, and decorations from most major national Halloween retailers contain chemicals and additives that have been linked to health issues such as reproductive problems, developmental delays, and even cancer. [ 1 ] PVC, Phthalates, and Dioxins In one evaluation of nearly 150 Halloween products, one-third contained PVC (polyvinyl chloride), a known endocrine disruptor. [ 1 ] Additionally, PVC fabric is frequently treated with chemicals known as phthalates . Children are susceptible to the ill-effects of phthalates which include premature puberty, birth defects, liver problems, and testicular cancer later in life. [ 2 ] PVC products also contain dioxins, chemicals that are classified carcinogens and cause reproductive issues and learning delays. [ 3 ] Lead Contamination Lead is another toxin that often contaminates cheap foreign goods, especially Chinese imports, including food and children’s toys. [ 4 ] It shouldn’t be a surprise that lead’s insidious reach extends to Halloween products. In 2012, the US federal government seized over 1400 Halloween costumes of Chinese origin due to lead levels that were 10 times higher than the allowed maximum. [ 5 ] Many lead-contaminated costumes or props have a piece or two that will, at some point, find its way into a child’s mouth. The seized items included pirate costumes that had an eye patch that contained over 40 times the legal maximum limit for lead. [ 6 ] Lead poisoning is exceptionally hazardous to children. It interferes with calcium, is toxic to proteins, and has a severely negative effect on nerve function. Exposure to lead is even linked to cognitive and hearing impairment. Lead exposure threatens fetal development as well. Pregnant women who have been exposed to lead may experience miscarriage, premature birth, or have undersized babies. [ 7 ] Flame Retardants Fabrics that have been treated with flame retardants are another concern with respect to Halloween costume safety. Such fabrics are often contaminated with antimony [ 8 ] and other dangerous chemicals . Exposure to antimony trioxide, a common flame retardant applied to fabrics, is linked to sharp increases in peripheral arterial disease (PAD), [ 9 ] which is a condition that causes atherosclerotic plaque to form in the arteries. [ 10 ] Some flame retardants are especially dangerous to children because their chemical structure is similar to developmental neurotoxins, like organophosphate pesticides, which affect brain development. [ 11 ] Toxic Makeup and Glow Sticks Many people don’t consider that the skin is their largest organ and one of the first contact points for toxins. Makeup, in general, is something to watch out for, as toxic metals frequently contaminate cosmetics . [ 12 , 13 ] Some face painting kits for children also contain high levels of lead, arsenic, mercury, cadmium, and antimony, all of which are especially toxic to the kidneys and the immune, reproductive, and nervous systems. [ 14 ] Glow sticks and glow jewelry seem like a harmless way to stay visible while trick-or-treating, but the chemicals in those plastic tubes do pose a threat. Dibutyl phthalate (DBP) and anthracene, two chemicals found in glow sticks, can be poisonous. But, to be fair to glow sticks, the amount contained is usually too small to cause problems in humans. A more likely scenario is a child or pet getting DBP in their eyes, mouth, or on their skin. For children, the effects range from skin irritation or mild chemical burns to nausea and vomiting if ingested. [ 15 ] Pets have a similar reaction—they may drool profusely, retch, vomit, or paw at their mouths if they made the mistake of chewing on a stray glow bracelet. [ 16 ] A sick pet or child can ruin your evening, so forego the glow sticks or make sure no one tries to cut (or bite) them open. How to Have a Healthy, Happy Halloween We’re not here to ruin Halloween for you—we want you to have the safest, healthiest, and happiest Halloween possible! There are safe alternatives that render the hazardous options completely unnecessary. Of course, you could perform a full body detox , but reducing your exposure to toxins in the first place is a better strategy. When assembling your costume, examine the labels before purchasing. Or, better yet, make your own costumes and accessories yourself with non-toxic materials. The Top 5 Ways To Ensure a Toxin-Free Halloween Look for makeup kits labeled non-toxic, and make sure they are produced in a country with strict regulations on consumer goods. Wash off makeup before bed. Wear a wig instead of temporary spray-on hair color, as they often contain VOCs. [ 17 ] Avoid plastic teeth as they tend to be softened with phthalates. [ 18 ] Check labels on costumes and accessories for vinyl (polyvinyl chloride or PVC) and flame retardants. Limit candy consumption, avoid corn syrup and synthetic food dyes . Healthy Treats Are Important, Too Toxic costumes aren’t the only potential problem. Conventional Halloween fare is too sugary, over-processed, and full of preservatives and stabilizers. It’s difficult to resist all the Halloween cakes, cookies, and candy, but you can easily find recipes that recreate the traditional treats with legitimately healthy ingredients like cashews, chia seeds, and dark chocolate. Autumn is a time to be indulgent — in a healthy way. Try our dessert recipes for great-tasting and good-for-you alternatives, like the vegan custard-stuffed pumpkin . Do you have any tips for enjoying a happy, healthy Halloween? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts. References | 0 |
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This is the news everyone has been waiting. A Super Computer in India, which correctly predicted our ENTIRE Primary season, was just used to predict the results of the US Presidential election.
The computer took into account more than 20 Million data points across the US, factoring in things most groups ignore like interaction of Facebook, Twitter, and Google, and came up with this as it’s final result… DONALD TRUMP WILL DEFINITELY WIN THE US ELECTION!!
The Program, known as MoglA, was developed back in 2004 by an Indian developer named Sanjiv Rai. It has since been collecting Data and learning from every US election cycle, and has predicted every single trend since then.
The news gets even better, though! As if it were not enough already that Trump is predicted to win, …He has also beat Barack Obama’s peak engagement figures from back in 2008 by 25 Percent!!!
Now that is something the Lamestream media does NOT want you to know about.
So I say Nate Silver and all the other Hillary shill pollsters can suck it! The Super Computer has spoken, and the winner is Donald Trump.
Now it’s up to us to get this shared out all across Facebook so the world sees that the Revolution is REAL! | 0 |
In 1902, a seamstress named Katherine Berger married a conductor named John Branca and spent half of the next 26 years pregnant, giving birth 17 times. One of her children, Ralph Theodore, grew taller than the others. And he was a teenager, the only Branca to reach 6 feet, when he began to wonder why he alone had been so physically blessed. “He used to say,” his brother John remembered, “‘Why did God give me this gift of being bigger and stronger?’ He used to say, ‘Why me?’ quite often. ” Branca had long since found his answer when, on Oct. 3, 1951, he looked to his catcher for the sign. Branca was now 6 feet 3 inches tall and weighed 220 pounds, a big able to throw a baseball over 90 miles an hour. And as he threw the fastball that was called for at 3:58 p. m. the Brooklyn Dodger had long since decided that he had been made big and strong so as to shoulder responsibility for his family. But then the New York Giants batter, Bobby Thomson, swung. And all at once, Branca, then 25, was left not only as baseball’s most famous loser but in want of another answer to that same desperate question: Why me? To hear Branca tell it, he did not let the unremitting aftershocks of the Thomson home run — the famed Shot Heard Round the World — unsettle him, not on the major league fields where he pitched five more years, nor off them, where he lived another 65 until dying on Wednesday at age 90. Rather, he said, it took him mere hours to find his footing. For after a cold and tearful shower, he had posed his question to a Jesuit priest in the parking lot at the Polo Grounds and received an answer that made sense to him. God had chosen him to endure what was already a blow of biblical proportion, the priest said, because his faith was strong enough to bear it. And it was strong enough. Branca had found faith as a boy in the Roman Catholic church in Mount Vernon, N. Y. where his mother, Kati, had sent her brood to pray. And in the days and months that followed the Thomson home run, Branca kept that faith as he endured public discourtesy. Branca would be O. K. He had God and baseball and, 17 days after the home run, a wife, a beauty in white satin named Ann Mulvey, who had already taken him for better and for worse. Yes, he had failed afield. But he was at peace. But then, three years later, in 1954, he wasn’t. For a pitcher named Ted Gray told Branca that the Giants had cheated, had bested him not only with a bat of ash but also with a telescope and buzzer. They had, Gray said, spied on the catcher’s signals and relayed them to the Giants batters — including Thomson. (Whether Thomson availed himself of that stolen sign on that famous pitch from Branca, only he knew.) And so, suddenly, Branca no longer saw himself as a man who had failed but as a man who had been wronged. He grew bitter. And even after he retired, pitching insurance instead of baseballs, his question — Why me? — rang in his ears. Branca tried to exonerate himself. In 1962, for example, when a reporter asked him to pose with Thomson at an old timers’ day event, he refused. “It’s taken years to live down that hurt,” Branca told Sports Illustrated. “If you want a picture, take one of the guy with the binoculars who was stealing our signs that day. ” He added, “I’m human. ” Few listened, however. And as the years passed, Branca began to appear beside Thomson nonetheless, the old pitcher heartened by religion, by St. Joseph, whom he selected as a boy to be his patron saint, and by St. Christopher, whose likeness he had been wearing around his neck when he gave up the home run. As for the home run, it continued to soar — written about by everyone from Steinbeck to Kerouac to DeLillo, christened by The Sporting News as baseball’s greatest moment, honored on a stamp. Branca thirsted for reassessment. And so, when in 2001, I laid bare in The Wall Street Journal the scheme the Giants employed straight through the home run that divided Branca’s life as surely as a line of chalk parts fair from foul on the diamond, Branca was thankful. “You loosened my lips,” he told me over and again. Those lips spoke increasingly of those achievements that the Shot Heard Round the World had drowned out, had taken from public memory. And there were many. It was Branca who willfully stood beside Jackie Robinson on opening day in 1947 as his teammate readied to break baseball’s color barrier. It was Branca who won 21 games that season, completing 15 of them. And it was Branca who, over the six decades that followed his career afield, was by most every measure off it a wonderful colleague and friend and son and brother and father and husband. Still, Branca continued to wonder of the why of it all. And he was 85 when he put forth another guess as to why he had grown tall and become a pitcher and given up baseball’s most famous home run and been cheated, too. I had just told Branca what I had learned of his mother — that she had been born Jewish, and so, according to Jewish law, that he was Jewish, too. And home in Westchester, the old pitcher allowed himself a moment to see the home run, the great hinge of his life, as not a blessing but something else. “Maybe that’s why God’s mad at me — that I didn’t practice my mother’s religion,” he said with a sad smile. “He made me throw that home run pitch. ” | 1 |
Democratic Unionist Party leader Arlene Foster has hailed the “very good discussions” representatives of her Northern Ireland (Ulster) based party have been having with Theresa May’s Conservatives, with political observers now expecting an official pact between the parties as early as Wednesday. [Hoping to form a parliamentary pact with the DUP after the Conservatives’ collapse in seats following last week’s snap general election, negotiators from Theresa May’s Tories have been hammering out a deal with the group Tuesday, in the second day of official talks. Speaking to the BBC about the progress in negotiations, DUP boss Arlene Foster declined to “negotiate on the airwaves” but praised progress, and gave insight into the areas over which the agreement was being made. She said: “We’ve had some very good discussions again today, and these discussions continued into the afternoon. I hope we can reach a conclusion sooner rather than later. ” Hope we can reach a conclusion ”sooner rather than later” — DUP leader Arlene Foster on talks with PM Theresa May https: . pic. twitter. — BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) June 13, 2017, In words apparently chosen to reassure both her voters in Ulster and politicians in Westminster, Foster said: “It won’t surprise anyone that we’re talking about matters that pertain to the nation generally, bringing stability to the UK government, in and around issued around Brexit, obviously around . ” Discussions are going well with the government and we hope soon to be able to bring this work to a successful conclusion. — Arlene Foster (@DUPleader) June 13, 2017, As for what she expected in return for supporting the Conservative government, Foster said she had discussed “doing what’s right for Northern Ireland with respect to economic matters”. This remark could refer to points within the DUP manifesto that aim to make Northern Ireland more competitive for businesses than their southern neighbour, the Republic of Ireland. Amongst those initiatives is a cut of corporation tax to 12. 5 per cent — well below the Conservative goal of 17 per cent and the present figure of 19 per cent. More outlandish is the establishment of “freeports” — tax and customs free trading areas — in “economically underdeveloped parts of the UK” a sure euphemism for Ulster. Other ambitions laid out within the DUP manifesto while for traditional conservatives have caused consternation amongst Britain’s political left. The manifesto promise to “freeze then cut or abolish the TV licence” and the possibility it may be a price demanded by the DUP for supporting the government, has so worried Labour deputy leader Tom Watson he was motivated to appeal to the Conservatives Tuesday that they would pledge not to scrap the licence fee. Writing to Conservative Culture Minister Karen Brady, Watson said: “The DUP’s manifesto includes a commitment to ‘freeze then cut or abolish the TV licence’ … I urge you to fight hard to ensure that this pledge is not included in any agreement, formal or otherwise, between the Conservative Party and the DUP,” reports The Guardian. Slamming the BBC’s main source of income, a levy on all homes which have a working television set whether they watch BBC programming or not, the DUP manifesto said: “The TV licence fee is a highly regressive tax which was designed for a different era and a world of communications that no longer exists. The success of Netflix and Amazon streaming services shows that media can and does work. ” | 1 |
shorty
The following article by originally published in the December/January 2016 edition of Socialism Today, the magazine of the Socialist Party in England and Wales. H uman beings have radically altered the Earth, adapting nature in the struggle to survive and thrive. The pace of change accelerated rapidly with the development of agriculture and class-based society. It hit breakneck speed in the industrial revolution, and with post-war scientific and technological breakthroughs. Many now say that we have entered a distinctive geological epoch – a new human era, the Anthropocene. JESS SPEAR, a member of Socialist Alternative in Seattle, USA, reports. Humans, arriving on the scene roughly a million years ago, and building modern industrial society as we know it only about 50 years ago, represent a blip in Earth’s 4.5 billion year history. Yet, at each stage of humanity’s development, we have modified nature and therefore modified our own evolution, setting the course for biological and social changes. From simple farming to unearthing and burning fossil fuels, to unleashing atomic bombs, our interaction with nature has gone from local to global. Humankind has, without a doubt, left our mark on the planet. We can discover what the Earth looked like, the shape and position of the continents as they have drifted apart and recombined every 300-500 million years, what creatures roamed its seas and land, and what plants covered the surface, by deciphering the chemical or physical imprints of their existence left behind. And what we’ve learned is that the planet is never static. The planet – as we know it, the Earth system comprised of rock, water and atmosphere in constant interconnected cycles of energy exchange – has always had upheaval, mass extinctions, and climate change. Earth’s history is full of radical change. Nonetheless, scientists today are ringing the alarm bells over the rate of change we’re witnessing compared to that which existed prior to human society. Climate scientists are pointing to the rapid shift in greenhouse gases, biologists to the rising number of species extinctions, oceanographers to the increasing acidity of the ocean, and soil scientists to the depletion of nutrients and degradation of farmland, as evidence that humanity’s productive activity is overwhelming the Earth system. The rate of increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) is unlike anything they’ve seen in Earth’s history for at least the past 800,000 years. Climate change and economic depression, the dual crises of capitalism, have produced a growing global revolt and a search for ideas and strategy to end our misery and protect future generations. Mass movements against austerity demonstrate that working people refuse to accept a system that demands severe cuts to living standards to satisfy the 1%. Not yet clear to the vast majority of people rebelling against the ruling elite is with what to replace this rotten system or how. With the window of opportunity to mitigate the consequences of climate change and prevent further disruption inching closer with each passing year, winning the working class to a socialist alternative is ever more paramount. Only scientific socialism can arm the working class with a programme and strategy to unite and fight to end the rule of the 1%, transfer power to the 99%, and rapidly implement a plan to develop society along sustainable lines. More heat, more problems W e live relatively brief lives. With only a little less than a century for our point of reference, our perspective on global changes is correspondingly narrow. To add further obfuscation, the Earth is rather large, so we don’t notice the accumulated effects of deforestation, glacier retreat, and massive piles of trash collecting in the Pacific and Atlantic ocean gyres. The Earth’s temperature rising nearly a degree Celsius has virtually no meaning to communities who daily experience larger fluctuations. That we have unearthed and burned so much carbon, chemically changing the very air we breathe, that there are now 400 molecules of CO2 for every million air molecules – a level not seen in, perhaps, the last 25 million years – up from about 280, is generally unnoticeable. Yet, regardless of our inability to perceive the radical transformation of our atmosphere and the general out-of-sight-out-of-mind privilege most in the developed countries have when it comes to environmental destruction and pollution, we are nonetheless reaching dangerous tipping points. The consequences of burning fossil fuels have long been known. As early as 1896, Svante Arrhenius published a paper detailing how CO2 absorbs light reflected from Earth’s surface, preventing it from escaping the Earth system (that is, the greenhouse effect). In the late 1950s, Charles Keeling began measuring the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Within just a few years he made the startling discovery that not only are there are seasonal fluctuations in CO2 related to plants absorbing it, then decomposition returning it to the atmosphere, but that the overall concentration was rapidly rising every year. The Keeling Curve – which continues to grow as measurements are added to a continuous record from 1958 to today – is regarded as the first proof that industrial activity was transforming the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases. Yet, it is the dramatic and speedy depletion in Earth’s ice inventory that is the canary in the coalmine. The news last year that the west Antarctic ice sheet has destabilised and is expected to disintegrate over the coming centuries should have elicited an immediate response from world leaders. The ice sheet holds enough water to raise global sea level by about 3.3 meters! There is no way to prevent its demise. We can only now adapt to the rising seas. Added to this is the news that a section of the Greenland ice sheet, which contains the equivalent of half a meter global sea level rise, is also melting rapidly. Arctic sea ice has dramatically been reduced, as well, and scientists expect the Arctic will be ice free in the summer as early as 2020. Earth’s glaciers and ice sheets act as a global air conditioner, keeping the planet cooler than it would be otherwise by reflecting sunlight. The loss of Earth’s ice (land-based ice that is) will not only raise sea level, displacing the more than one billion people inhabiting low-lying coastlines. It will also further disrupt climate, acting as a positive feedback reinforcing global warming. As the ice melts, the Earth absorbs more heat, more ice melts, and so on. Still, for most people, climate change is about hotter summers and extreme weather events. And, we are not just talking about our future – which will undoubtedly get hotter, with more intense weather – but our current state of affairs. 2015 is set to be the hottest year on record. We have now hit the one degree mark (above pre-industrial levels) for average global temperature rise (up from 0.85 degrees). This added heat has produced heatwaves, flash flooding, and deadly weather events that force us to acknowledge that climate disruption is not merely something scientists debate and discuss for future generations. Climate change is our present. In 2003, an estimated 70,000 people died from the heatwave that gripped Europe. Since the 1960s extreme weather events have more than tripled, killing an estimated 60,000 people from mostly underdeveloped countries. The World Health Organisation estimates that without mitigation efforts we can expect an additional quarter of a million people will be killed by climate change related effects from 2030-50. For what we can expect our future climate to look and feel like, what’s important to keep in mind is that the sheer scale of the problem that is current global climate change stems from just a tiny increase in global temperature. Just one degree Celsius. Imagine the impacts on us, the environment that sustains us, and the Earth system itself, when the Earth gets another degree warmer. That is what scientists tell us we can expect by the end of the century, if we don’t stop ‘business-as-usual’. Welcome to the Anthropocene T he alteration of our planet from human activity, from the top of the atmosphere down to the bottom of the ocean, is so extensive that a growing number of scientists who study Earth’s history and system are now hotly debating whether we have entered a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene (anthropo – human, cene – new), or maybe we have been in it for centuries and just didn’t know it. Proposing a new geological epoch is not merely adding a date and name to the geological time scale, which spans 4.5 billion years from the formation of the solar system to the present day. In fact, the geological time scale itself is not merely a list of dates and names. It’s also a tool – a common measurement scientists use to understand how changes on our planet from its birth until now occurred. The eons, eras and epochs that comprise it are distinguished by rapid shifts on the entire planet. Acceptance of the Anthropocene as a new epoch is therefore a question of whether the impact humanity has made is abrupt, discernible globally, and undeniably different from the previous epoch, the Holocene (and before that, the Pleistocene). In other words, has human activity fundamentally disrupted the Earth system such that it can be seen in the rocks, water, and atmosphere, and future scientists will see it? Proponents of adding the new epoch to the geological time scale disagree about when, exactly, the Anthropocene began. The three dates currently being debated – 8,000 years ago, the industrial revolution, and 1945 – represent markers along the road to civilization as humanity discovered and applied new ways to modify nature to satisfy our basic needs. Some argue it began roughly 8,000 years ago when humans began clear-cutting forests and rice farming, which altered the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases. Others argue the Anthropocene really started at the beginning of the industrial revolution when widespread use of fossil fuels began disrupting the Earth system, leading to the effects we are witnessing today and will experience in the future. The widespread atomic bomb testing, beginning with the Trinity Test in 1945, is the latest date proposed. It is supported not because atomic bomb testing itself disrupted the Earth system – though we should not forget that scientists warned of the dangers of a nuclear-war-induced ‘atomic winter’ – but because atom bombs leave a global fingerprint easily seen and measured, and atom bomb testing marks the rise of American capitalism’s unprecedented period of expansion. Unlike previous changes to the geological time scale, however, the proposals have political and social implications. That scientists are suggesting a new epoch marked by human-caused alterations has correctly been seized by many environmentalists as concrete proof that we are indeed radically altering the planet. The response from the left has been a mixture of confusion and conflation of the scientific debate and the predictable political response. Some anti-capitalists call foul over the name of the epoch. They argue that its focus on humans, and therefore insinuating all humans are responsible, hides the real root of the rapid changes taking place: namely, capitalism. To others, particularly deep green ecologists, it is proof that humanity is largely sociopathic – how dare we name an epoch after humans! – and that really civilization is the problem, not humans. These arguments stem from either a misunderstanding or a lack of understanding of how humanity and human society developed over the last million years. A historical materialist analysis of human history and pre-history is in fact the key to unlocking the door to our sustainable future. Change is constant “History can be viewed from two sides: it can be divided into the history of nature and that of man. The two sides, however, are not to be seen as independent entities. As long as man has existed, nature and man have affected each other”, wrote Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in The German Ideology (1846). Many in the environmental movement, however, believe we can’t interact in nature without causing harm because we, humans, are separate from nature. This argument is embodied in a book written by environmental leader and founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben, The End of Nature (1989). Similar to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), McKibben’s book is seen as one of the first to warn humanity of the dangers of global warming. In it McKibben doesn’t just warn about carbon pollution, he passionately argues that humanity has destroyed nature, that “we have ended the thing that has, at least in modern times, defined nature for us – its separation from human society”. We have altered the chemistry of the atmosphere, he argues, therefore there is no place on Earth one could travel that is untouched by humanity. Yet, our ‘separation from nature’ is a recent phenomenon, a product of capitalism, which combined wage labour with social production for private profit, separating humans from the Earth on which they laboured for sustenance. For the vast majority of human existence we were intimately connected to the Earth, learned and accumulated knowledge of its seasonal changes, and experienced it as part of our existence, even though we lacked understanding of its driving forces. As Marx explained, “man lives from nature, ie, nature is his body, and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he is not to die”. So, the conception that we are separate from nature is also recent, and is linked to the development of capitalism. The notion that it is modern industrial society that’s the problem, and that a return to living directly from the Earth is the solution, is both overly simplistic and ahistorical. It extracts civilization from the history of humanity and measures its impact based on the presumed better situation that existed previous to civilization – for the Earth, but clearly not for humans as we died from all sorts of health issues now treatable and preventable. Furthermore, it ignores that pre-modern humans also greatly altered the Earth. For as long as we’ve had boats (10,000+ years) and people crossed the seas, at first in search of food, then for imperialist conquest and/or in search of religious freedom, we have unknowingly (and many times knowingly) transported species from one side of the Earth to the other, radically altering ecosystems, causing some species to flourish in new environments and others to go extinct. The proponents of the earliest start date for the Anthropocene would argue the advent of agriculture at the end of the last ice age even altered the chemistry of the atmosphere, evidence that humans were radically changing the planet as early as 8,000 years ago. Indeed, we are not even the first species to transform the atmosphere. To give an extreme example, around 2.7 billion years ago, cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) appeared, becoming the first organisms to photosynthesize and produce oxygen as a by-product. Before they evolved and started pumping out oxygen, there was practically no oxygen in the atmosphere. Without cyanobacteria we would not exist. Interaction with nature without altering it is impossible. Living organisms must exchange material with the Earth to live, thereby influencing their environment, affecting their evolution and others. As Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin write in The Dialectical Biologist (1985), “the environment and the organism codetermine each other”. But if all species impact nature in some way, are we, with our increasing population and extensive industrial activity, relegated to the role of nature’s perpetual destroyer? Within or without? O ur ability to understand the impact we are having on the planet, that it will have negative consequences for us both in the short and long term, and the decisions we make to alter the course of history, is what sets us apart from cyanobacteria and other organisms. Labour is not just a source of wealth. It is also what created humanity, conscious thought, conscious planning, and the accumulation of knowledge. The advent of tools, and with it the co-development of the mind, the social activity of hunting and the creation of language, put us on a path to producing food surpluses, the very basis of class society, civilization and scientific understanding. In short, all of human history can be distilled down to the organisation of labour and technique, and the concurrent changes in culture, society, and our environment. When capitalism replaced feudalism, it started the long process of drawing ever larger sections of the population away from farms and into factories and cities, and changed our ideas about nature in relation to ourselves. No longer did we see ourselves as part of nature, but separate. For the capitalists, nature became a source of free wealth which, when moulded by human labour, produced enormous profits for them. For the new working class, alienated from nature, the ripping apart of the Earth for raw materials, the dumping of toxins into rivers, and the sooty skies above urban centres, represented an assault on nature, a degradation of once beautiful areas. At each moment, as humanity leapt from the agricultural revolution to the industrial revolution, our ideas about ourselves in relation to nature shifted. Towards a socialist future “We don’t want merely an amelioration of the present society, but the establishment of a new one”. (Engels, quoted by John Green in A Revolutionary Life, 2008) Capitalism has now outlived its usefulness for humanity. It is destroying the environment, disrupting our climate, and relegating a billion people to the slow death of starvation and malnutrition. No one could argue that a system based on the profit motive will solve a problem on which it depends for existence. Capitalism cannot offer the means to restore ecological balance because it places no value in nature. Yet, to throw all of modern civilization, fostered by the tremendous wealth, technology, and resources developed by capitalism, into the dustbin, as some suggest we do, because it also produced environmental destruction, is to ignore the potential, also created by this system, to create a sustainable future. When capitalism triumphed over feudalism, it unshackled science from the confines of religion which sought to stifle discoveries that challenged its rule. Further development of capitalist technique, socialised production, division of labour, and machinery, required major leaps in science. And though investment in scientific research is primarily focused on how to further maximise profits, the ruling class today also cannot hold back discoveries that ultimately undermine its authority. Whether it is plastic made from banana peels or solar roadways, science applied to environmental and social problems is eroding the authority of those who say fossil fuels are necessary. Capitalism also developed the force which has the power to liberate all of humanity: the working class. As capitalism forced people off the land and into mainly urban wage labour, it created the force which has the common interest and potential to overthrow it and create a society that benefits the majority. All around you see working people rising up and demanding change because, not only does capitalism hold back the transition to renewable energy, it refuses to invest in society. The quest for profits has every major corporation and smaller businesses seeking to compete for a market share, depressing wages, cutting benefits, and threatening economic ruin for tax cuts. No longer is capitalism able to grow enough reserves to offer the working class a share of the profits. The ruling elite globally have no idea how to both restore economic growth and ensure payment to the major bondholders of sovereign debt. Anti-austerity movements from Ireland to Spain to the heroic working class in Greece have refused to accept their fate. Protests against new trade deals – the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – reveal that working people understand that corporations are looking to cement their rule into international law, ignoring the needs of people and the planet. Overcoming a system that is based on the exploitation of us all, that separated us from nature, and is driving us towards a completely unsustainable future, starts first and foremost with a rejection of its ideas. If we limit what humanity is, ignore what it was and, importantly, do not understand how it changed from one to the other, then we are effectively rejecting the idea that we have evolved and, crucially, that we are still in the process of evolving. The state of the planet during the Anthropocene, whether we accept the earliest start date or the latest, is that of constant change. Our evolution from hunter/gatherers to modern industrial society involved constant interaction with our environment. It shaped us. We shaped it. Through this process we developed ideas about what we are, what our environment is, and our relation to each other. Humanity, with all the accumulated knowledge and experience of past generations, has over this time also developed the capacity to finally move beyond merely surviving to actually living. The vast resources, technology, wealth, and human ingenuity could be harnessed and directed to ending the needless suffering, raising living standards globally, and achieving ecological balance. If we grasp this fact and use it to inform our actions, then we can take control over the changes taking place today and which will occur in the future. This vision has the potential to unite the working class in its historical task of overthrowing capitalism. We are at a precipice from which we can choose to either leap off, hoping that capitalism will find a way to profit from building us a safety net, or we can appropriate the tools, technology and resources to build a bridge to a socialist future. | 0 |
By: The Voice of Reason | We are less than two weeks away from the moment of truth, when the results of the 2016 Presidential election will more than likely be tallied, and we’ll have a new President-elect, at least in name anyway, if nothing else. I’ll preface this post by saying it’s not too late for people to still take as many precautions as possible in hopes of ensuring their families safety not if, but when all hell breaks lose upon the announcement of the election’s winner. The media has done their best to conceal it for whatever reason, but there have been ample warnings that there is the potential for massive amounts of violence regardless of who wins. The second video below runs through a laundry list of crimes committed by Hillary Clinton, which has a lot to do with why four in 10 Trump supporters say they won’t recognize the legitimacy of Clinton as president, if she prevails, because they say she wouldn’t have won fair and square. The second video cites specifics, and when you hear them, it’s no wonder why former Congressman Joe Walsh called for armed revolution Wednesday if Donald Trump is not elected president. Walsh, a former tea party congressman from Illinois who is now a conservative talk radio host, tweeted, “On November 8th, I’m voting for Trump . On November 9th, if Trump loses, I’m grabbing my musket. You in?” The former Congressman is hardly alone. A 51% majority of likely voters express at least some concern about the possibility of violence on Election Day; and one in five are likely voters are “VERY concerned,” and they should be. One 69-year old gentleman from Michigan said as the polls began shifting towards Hillary, he slowly began buying more ammunition. If Hillary Clinton and the Democrats win on November 8th, things will not go well for Hillary Clinton’s political enemies. Recall that over 70 of them are dead, five of which died in just six weeks under mysterious circumstances during the primaries that Hillary stole from Bernie Sanders. In the first video below, I review warnings issued by both sides of what will happen if the other party’s candidate wins. So far, if Hillary wins we have one former Congressman going for his gun, and if Trump wins, we have Black Lives Matter members saying saying back in March: “Dear white people if Trump wins young niggas such as myself are fully hell bent on inciting riots everywhere we go. Just so you know.” That’s just the tip of the iceberg… The question posed, “What would you do,” is primarily directed at Trump supporters if Hillary wins, because the only way she’s winning anything, is by fraudulently stealing it, and doing so with Obama’s help! How can we make that assertion without any doubt? Starting off light, we know not just from Project Veritas videos released this week , but also from Federal Election Commission (FEC) records, that an activist was caught on camera bragging about having helped start violent disruptions at Donald Trump campaign rallies, and brags that was paid by the Clinton campaign directly right before she stirred up trouble. The Project Veritas videos this week merely confirmed the initial account. We also know that despite Julian Assange saying he did not get information from the Russians, when Trump was beginning to pull away from Hillary in the polls, and Hillary needed a distraction, her and Barack Obama had no problem peddling a baseless accusation against Russia, eventually angering Putin to the point where Russia deployed nuclear missiles into Kaliningrad , along the border with Poland, and aimed them directly at our allies in Berlin. Nukes pointed at our allies? Who cares right? In her mind, “the ends justify the means.” so long as Hillary wins… Then of course, let’s not forget the email that was leaked by Wikileaks that proved that Hillary was not only aware of the transaction, but she allowed weapons to be sold to ISIS during a time of war , weapons that were presumably used against either U.S. troops or American allies at the very least. That act has a name: Treason, and it’s punishable by death. Still, the list goes on, including her use of psychological weapons against voters as detailed in one of her internal campaign documents leaked as part of the Podesta emails. In the second video, Alex Jones makes his point very clearly, that there is NO level the Democrats won’t stoop to for control of the White House. None. Zero. Furthermore, If by some chance all their fraud isn’t enough, and Hillary doesn’t win, they plan to burn American cities to the ground. Have you heard of any plans put in place by Obama to stop that? Of course not. Trump supporters: If Hillary is willing to do all those things, and so many more I don’t have the time to go into but have all been well documented, just so she can gain entry into Oval Office, what do you think she’ll act like once she takes possession of the Office of the President? We know what the Soros funded far-left has planned if Trump wins because they’ve told us countless times, what about the Trump supporters if Hillary wins? In the video below, Alex Jones asks the question, “Is there anything, anything at all that Hillary and the Democrats won’t do?” The answer to that seems clear. The question then is really whether people think that if Hillary is announced as the winner, is it likely that the American voters will put up with that criminal behavior and just roll over, or is it more likely we’re going to see some violence break out? You tell me? THE VOICE OF REASON is the pen name of Michael DePinto, a graduate of Capital University Law School, and an attorney in Florida. Having worked in the World Trade Center, along with other family and friends, Michael was baptized by fire into the world of politics on September 11, 2001. Michael’s political journey began with tuning in religiously to whatever the talking heads on television had to say, then Michael became a “Tea-Bagging” activist as his liberal friends on the Left would say, volunteering within the Jacksonville local Tea Party, and most recently Michael was sworn in as an attorney. Today, Michael is a major contributor to www.BeforeItsNews.com , he owns and operates www.thelastgreatstand.com , where Michael provides what is often very ‘colorful’ political commentary, ripe with sarcasm, no doubt the result of Michael’s frustration as he feels we are witnessing the end of the American Empire. The topics Michael most often weighs in on are: Martial Law, FEMA Camps, Jade Helm, Economic Issues, Government Corruption, and Government Conspiracy. Submit your review | 0 |
Here's something interesting from The Unz Review... Recipient Name =>
Denouncing Russian air strikes on Aleppo as “barbaric,” Mike Pence declared in Tuesday’s debate:
“The provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength. … The United States of America should be prepared to use military force, to strike military targets of Bashar Assad regime.”
John McCain went further:
“The U.S. … must issue an ultimatum to Mr. Assad — stop flying or lose your aircraft … If Russia continues its indiscriminate bombing, we should make clear that we will take steps to hold its aircraft at greater risk.”
Yet one gets the impression this is bluster and bluff.
Pence has walked his warnings back. And there are few echoes of McCain’s hawkishness. Even Hillary Clinton’s call for a “no-fly zone” has been muted.
The American people have no stomach for a new war in Syria.
Nor does it make sense to expand our enemies list in that bleeding and broken country — from ISIS and the al-Qaida-linked al-Nusra Front — to Syria’s armed forces, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.
These last three have been battling to save Assad’s regime, because they see vital interests imperiled should it fall.
We have not plunged into Syria, because we have no vital interest at risk in Syria. We have lived with the Assads since Richard Nixon went to Damascus.
President Obama, who has four months left in office, is not going to intervene. And Congress, which has the sole power to declare war, has never authorized a war on Syria.
Obama would be committing an impeachable act if he started shooting down Russian or Syrian planes over Syrian territory. He might also be putting us on the escalator to World War III.
For Russia has moved its S-400 anti-aircraft system into Syria to its air base near Latakia, and its S-300 system to its naval base at Tartus.
As the rebels have no air force, that message is for us.
Russia is also moving its aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov, into the Med. Vladimir Putin is doubling down in Syria.
Last weekend, the Russian Foreign Ministry warned that U.S. attacks in Syria “will lead to terrible tectonic consequences not only on the territory of this country but also in the region on the whole.”
Translation: Attack Syria’s air force, and the war you Americans start could encompass the entire Middle East.
Last week, too, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, warned that creating a “no-fly zone” in Syria could mean war — with Russia. Dunford’s crisp retort to Sen. Roger Wicker:
“Right now, senator, for us to control all of the airspace in Syria it would require us to go to war, against Syria and Russia. That’s a pretty fundamental decision that certainly I’m not going to make.”
And neither, thankfully, will Barack Obama.
So, where are we, and how did we get here?
Five years ago, Obama declared that Assad must step down. Ignoring him, Assad went all out to crush the rebels, both those we backed and the Islamist terrorists.
Obama then drew a “red line,” declaring that Assad’s use of chemical weapons would lead to U.S. strikes. But when Obama readied military action in 2013, Americans rose up and roared, “No!”
Reading the country right, Congress refused to authorize U.S. military action. Egg all over his face, Obama again backed down.
When Assad began losing the war, Putin stepped in to save his lone Arab ally, and swiftly reversed Assad’s fortunes.
Now, with 10,000 troops — Syrian, Iraqi Shiite militia, Hezbollah, Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Afghan mercenaries — poised to attack Aleppo, backed by Russian air power, Assad may be on the cusp of victory in the bloodiest and most decisive battle of the war.
Assad and his allies intend to end this war — by winning it.
For the U.S. to reverse his gains now, and effect his removal, would require the introduction of massive U.S. air power and U.S. troops, and congressional authorization for war in Syria.
The time has come to recognize and accept reality.
While the U.S. and its Turkish, Kurdish and Sunni allies, working with the Assad coalition of Russia, Hezbollah and the Iranians, can crush ISIS and al-Qaida in Syria, we cannot defeat the Assad coalition — not without risking a world war.
And Congress would never authorize such a war, nor would the American people sustain it.
As of today, there is no possibility that the rebels we back could defeat ISIS and the al-Nusra Front, let alone bring down Bashar Assad and run the Russians, Hezbollah, Iran and the Iraqi Shiite militias out of Syria.
Time to stop the killing, stop the carnage, stop the war and get the best terms for peace we can get. For continuing this war, when the prospects of victory are nil, raises its own question of morality.
Copyright 2016 Creators.com. | 0 |
FRANKFURT — The investigation into emissions fraud at Volkswagen widened on Saturday after the company acknowledged that United States and German regulators were examining why some Audi luxury cars and sport utility vehicles behaved differently during tests than they did on the road. The disclosure raises suspicions that Volkswagen used a new type of emissions cheating software in some Audis. Volkswagen is already in deep trouble for programming 11 million diesel cars worldwide to provide artificially low emissions levels during official tests, and then lying to regulators in the United States for more than a year after officials noticed discrepancies. The company, which has agreed to pay $16. 5 billion to settle lawsuits by owners and dealers in the United States, could face further severe consequences if it turns out that the fraud was more widespread than previously believed and that the company has failed to be forthright with officials. In a statement on Saturday, Volkswagen tacitly confirmed a report in the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper that some Audis with automatic transmissions behaved differently when the cars were being tested. If the software that controlled the transmission detected testing conditions, according to the newspaper, the cars shifted in a way that would produce less carbon dioxide. In normal use, the cars used a shifting sequence intended to provide better performance. Audi did not identify the models involved. According to a lawsuit filed on behalf of Audi owners in United States District Court in Minnesota on Thursday, they include 100, 000 Audi A6 and A8 luxury sedans and Q5 and Q7 S. U. V.s with gasoline engines manufactured through May. The cars sensed that they were undergoing stationary tests on rollers if the steering wheel did not move more than 15 degrees. Representatives for Volkswagen and its Audi division acknowledged that regulators were looking at why some models shifted differently during tests. But the company suggested that any discrepancies were not a deliberate attempt to cheat. “In the testing situation,” Audi said in a statement on Saturday, “dynamic shift programs can lead to incorrect readings and results that cannot be reproduced. ” Volkswagen admitted last year that it had manipulated 11 million diesel cars, including 500, 000 in the United States, to grossly understate emissions of nitrogen oxides, which cause lung ailments and contribute to smog and global warming. The latest accusations involve emissions of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming. Regulators in Europe and the United States have tightened standards for carbon dioxide emissions in recent years. The previous accusations, which affected mostly Volkswagen vehicles but also some Audi and Porsche cars, involved only diesel models sold from 2009 to 2015. The California Air Resources Board is taking the lead in testing Audis in the United States, according to the lawsuit. The agency, which also did much of the detective work to expose cheating with Volkswagen’s diesel models, said it could not comment on a pending investigation. The which is responsible for enforcing emissions standards in Germany, did not reply to a request for comment. The revelations came a week after Volkswagen disclosed that the chairman of its supervisory board, Hans Dieter Pötsch, was under investigation for violating German securities laws in connection with the emissions fraud. If it turns out that more cars had illegal software known as “defeat devices,” Volkswagen could face even more criticism that it remains in denial, is still run by the many of the same people who were in charge while the wrongdoing was taking place and is unable to contain the damage to the carmaker’s finances and reputation. Mr. Pötsch was the longtime chief financial officer at Volkswagen before becoming supervisory board chairman in October. He is suspected of failing to notify shareholders quickly enough of the financial risks of the diesel emissions cheating scandal. An internal company document from 2013, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, offers clues to the origin of the software believed to be used in concealing the true carbon dioxide emissions of the Audi vehicles. The document, reported by the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag, recorded the outcome of test drives of new vehicles in southern Africa in February 2013. It was standard procedure at Volkswagen to test new vehicles in South Africa and Namibia, where top executives critiqued performance and ordered changes. According to the document, a manager asked, “When will the shifting program be available?” “Cycle optimization” is code for software or other equipment that allows cars to perform differently when they are undergoing official test cycles on rollers in a lab. The document noted that “the shifting program should be configured to be 100 percent active on rollers but only 0. 01 percent for customers. ” Volkswagen is being investigated in the United States not only for programming cars to cheat but also for orchestrating a starting in early 2014 after tests first cast doubt on what the company claimed were “clean diesel” cars. The company still faces federal and state fines for its behavior, and some executives could be charged with crimes. | 1 |
By Claire Bernish at thefreethoughtproject.com
In a country continuing to shirk the ordinary, Iceland’s Pirate Party — an amalgamation of anarchists, libertarians, and hackers, who want to ban digital surveillance — is predicted to win the country’s national elections this Saturday.
This collection of free-thinkers have upturned the traditional Western political paradigm and hopes to use online public polls to shape governmental policy and end all Internet spying.
Although the Pirate Party formed just four years ago, its popularity has skyrocketed — most likely for unconventional tactics aligning loosely with libertarianism — the promotion of privacy rights and personal freedoms, and simultaneous shrinking of Big Government.
Edward Snowden has been offered the safe haven of Icelandic citizenship should the Pirates likely victory come to fruition — which makes sense, given the party’s anti-establishment roots.
In fact, the Pirates have experienced astonishing success in a short time — taking the nation’s longstanding political traditionalists off-guard in the process — even the group’s founder, a programmer and former Wikileaks activist, is stunned.
Asked whether she expected the explosion of enthusiasm for the nascent Pirate Party — which now leads in public polls with 22.6 percent — founder Birgitta Jónsdóttir decisively told the Washington Post , “No way.”
But considering growing frustration with ever-increasing Western governments — and all of the surveillance programs, police state tactics, and chill on personal liberties — the rise of the Pirates, who describe themselves as neither right nor left but a radical mix of both, hardly seems too shocking.
“People want real changes and they understand that we have to change the systems,” Jónsdóttir asserted, “we have to modernize how we make laws.”
According to the Pirates’ website , “The Icelandic Pirate Party was founded on November 24th, 2012 based on the political ideology of the Swedish Pirate Party, which Richard Falkvinge founded in January 2006, to bring about internet copyright reform.” | 0 |
Send your workplace conundrums to workologist@nytimes. com, including your name and contact information (even if you want it withheld for publication). The Workologist is a guy with opinions, not a professional career adviser. Letters may be edited. How can I tell my boss to leave me alone when I take a vacation day? I work a lot of nights and weekends beyond the usual workday hours as it is, so I truly need time off to recharge. But she repeatedly pings me with “Sorry to bother you, but … ” emails — often with issues that she or someone else could handle. Ignoring these messages seems risky and unkind. Any suggestions? SAN FRANCISCO Is it really unkind to disregard an unnecessary intrusion into your personal time? I wouldn’t think so. You shouldn’t feel remotely guilty about wanting your off days to be … off. It’s possible that if your boss expects you to be totally responsive no matter what, there might be some risk in suddenly ignoring her. It sounds as though by now you may have in effect trained her to expect you to be constantly available. You might now need to go through the process of untraining her. Next time you’re taking a day off, warn her in advance that you’ll be away from email. You don’t have to get into detail it doesn’t matter whether you’re hang gliding, attending a funeral or just taking a personal digital sabbatical — everybody is unreachable sometimes. You might suggest others she could contact if issues about specific projects arise in your absence. Consider setting up an on your email: You’re out until Monday (or whatever) and not checking messages. When you get back to the office, make a point of noting how energizing it was to take a break, and how ready you are to dive back into work as a result. And I suppose this will sound crazy, but you could also ignore your email for a day. (Apart from being genuinely refreshing, this will test whether, without quite realizing it, you secretly enjoy your boss’s dependence on you.) At the very least, do not respond instantly if she emails despite your warning. Maybe she’ll try other options instead of waiting. If and when you do reply, try to point her to someone else, maybe looping in that person directly. Gradually, you should be able to train her that bugging you on your day off isn’t the most effective way to get her problem solved. About a year ago, a new staff member, “Jeff,” was hired in our small office. It quickly became clear that he was a huge mistake: He disappears for hours at a time, has lengthy personal phone conversations and has a demonstrably poor work output. In short, he is a disaster. The boss has been oblivious to this (and other matters) and has actually praised Jeff. When one of us went to him to point out the problems, he claimed ignorance and promised to look into it. Nothing happened. Later he said he was taking the matter tohuman resources. He didn’t. We are hesitant to report the situation to as we worry about the consequences for our jobs. Is there a strategy that you would advise? N. D. A Workologist rule of thumb applies: Getting management to pay attention to a problem often depends on how you frame it. Anything that comes across as a complaint about a worker’s attitude is easy to shrug off as a personality conflict. Specific evidence of a negative effect on the organization is harder to ignore. So rather than saying, “Jeff is a lazy jerk,” you want the phrasing to go something like this: “This project is going to be late because Jeff is behind and has been out most of the day. ” Take notes on instances of problematic behaviors (like the unauthorized absenteeism) and link them as directly as possible to their consequences. When you go to the boss, stick to facts and avoid personal judgments. Bosses, like everybody else, often have plenty to deal with already, and (consciously or not) find it easier to let things slide until convinced that life will be easier in the long run if action is taken now. If you’re worried about going over the boss’s head, consider expanding — rather than just switching — the audience for your concern. You can go to him and human resources with the same message and inform each what you’ve told the other. And that explanation can go to your boss and at the same time. Finally, of course, there’s “Jeff. ” Is it possible that if you framed the issue to him in terms of its consequences (as opposed to his character) that he might shape up? Either way, it’s important to be that he can be reformed. You may not believe this is possible, but giving him the benefit of the doubt will help you stay focused on the facts that affect the whole office, not on a personal dislike that’s hard to quantify. Regarding a reader’s difficulty over being a nondrinker at work events where peers are expected to share the wine and cocktails, I’ve found two responses helpful in my 28 years of sobriety: “Sorry, but I’m over my lifetime limit,” and “I’m allergic to alcohol — when I drink it I break out in handcuffs. ” These are not appropriate for every situation, of course, but one or the other usually gets the job done. EMILE, SAN DIEGO While this approach may not work for everyone, it’s not a bad idea if you can pull it off. A little humor can help smooth over any potential awkwardness, for both sides of the conversation: It sends a firm message and avoids getting personal, yet keeps the tone light. One caveat: If you try this, make sure you have a reasonable sense of what your audience will find appropriate. | 1 |
HOUSTON, Texas — Two Rice University have been busted for allegedly putting “Trump 16” graffiti on the Berlin Wall memorial on the campus in Houston. [“#DeportSpanos and “TrumpBaby!” was also scrawled on a mural hung on a shipping container on the campus, reported the Houston Chronicle. The vandalism was discovered on Friday when the writing appeared on the memorial wall outside of the Baker Institute of Public Policy. The mural was on the shipping container at the Moody Center which had been decorated with art. The vandalism of the Berlin Wall Memorial covered “Salut mes amis,” which was on the memorial before it was covered by the Trump message. In French this means “Hello my friends. ” Communist East German authorities built the wall to divide East and West Berlin in 1961. It was torn down on November 9, 1989. The destruction of the wall followed a speech by Ronald Reagan where he famously called on Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall. ” The original message was painted before the wall fell in 1989 and has been on the Rice University Campus since 2000, the hometown paper reported. The local ABC affiliate reported the references to “Hashtag Deport Spanos,” could have been a reference to the billionaire San Diego Charger owner, Alex Spanos. The San Diego Chargers recently announced that they would be leaving the California city. The university released a statement on Saturday night which was obtained by the Chronicle. It did not name the students who were responsible for the criminal mischief. “Vandalism of an important symbol of freedom and of student art are deeply concerning,” President David Leebron and Provost Marie Lynn Miranda said in a statement. “We ask everyone in our community to join us in condemning such behavior and to work together to prevent such hostile acts and to protect the Rice property that contributes so much to our experience and quality of life. ”The graffiti was removed from the shipping containers but the Berlin wall has been covered because it requires a special removal process, reported the ABC Houston affiliate. Workers have placed spray on the affected parts of the wall. Editor’s Note: This article has been updated with additional information. Lana Shadwick is a contributing writer and legal analyst for Breitbart Texas. She has served as a prosecutor and associate judge in Texas. Follow her on Twitter @LanaShadwick2. | 1 |
Chicago is considering naming a street after Oscar Lopez Rivera, the domestic terrorist who founded the FALN terror group responsible for killing six people and perpetrating some 130 bombings and terror attacks on U. S. soil between 1974 and 1983.[ Ward Alderman Robert Maldonado submitted a proposal to name a stretch of North Luis Munoz Marin Drive after the convicted terrorist early in February. The proposal was quickly pushed through ahead of new rules that would prevent people who are still living from having a Chicago street named after them. Alderman Maldonado attempted to claim that the new street name is not meant to honor the FALN terror outfit but is only meant to honor Rivera. Others note that it is farcical to claim you are honoring a man whose only claim to fame is in starting a terror group while pretending you are not also honoring the terror group. Joe Connor, the son of a man killed by a FALN terror attack in 1975, was furious at the move to honor his father’s murderer, according to the Chicago . “He is a sworn terrorist,” Connor said. “He was convicted of bombings in Chicago that did injure people. He tried to escape from prison with machine guns and plastic explosives where he was gonna kill the guards. … And Chicago is gonna put up a sign in his honor?” “The idea that people will walk by and see this street sign and think that Oscar Lopez was some sort of great person — it’s diabolical,” Connor added. “The world is upside down here. What’s next for Chicago, bin Laden Boulevard? Charles Manson Court? This is worse than a disgrace. It is sinister. It’s a direct insult to my father’s life. ” The plan to honor the Puerto Rican separatist approved by Chicago’s Transportation Committee advanced this year after Barack Obama commuted Rivera’s sentence. Obama ordered Rivera’s release despite that he has never renounced his past violence. New York Councilman Joe Borelli said the commutation “proves that Obama and most liberals are out of touch with reality and willing to sacrifice all norms in the name of progressivism. ” Indeed, Joe Conner noted that Rivera isn’t even supported by most Puerto Ricans. In an in the Chicago Connor noted that few Puerto Ricans have ever supported the independence movement Rivera championed. Lopez has never represented the people of Puerto Rico. Never more than 5 percent of Puerto Ricans have ever voted for independence from America and in 2012 fully 60 percent voted for statehood. Further, Lopez and the FALN’s vision of “freedom” never involved freedom at all for Puerto Ricans but subjugation in a Marxist state with Lopez and the FALN no doubt in the role of the Castros, as they wanted a “free and socialist” Puerto Rico. The son of the murdered New Yorker ended his with a plea to the city. This is the felon whom Chicago plans to honor. I ask Ald. Maldonado, in the name of decency, to withdraw the honorary street designation for terror leader Oscar Lopez Rivera and cancel the vote. Should Maldonado refuse, I ask Mayor Emanuel and the other aldermen to reject and vote against the naming of Oscar Lopez Rivera Way. Twelve members of the FALN serving lengthy jail sentences were offered amnesty in 1999 by President Bill Clinton but only on the condition that they sign a statement expressing sorrow for their past crimes. Rivera was the only one of the dozen convicted terrorists who refused to sign the oath. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 1 |
Middle class family planning incredibly lame ethical Halloween 31-10-16 A MIDDLE class family is celebrating Halloween in a way that is respectful to witches and does not involve sweets. The Logan family find rubber bats, monster masks and eating shitloads of chocolate problematic, but still believe they can join in the fun. Project manager Tom Logan said: “Our daughter wanted a witch costume so I had to explain they were actually just medieval herbalists stigmatised by a patriarchal society and weren’t green or warty. “We wanted her to wear something non-gender specific for trick-or-treating so we’ve decided to dress her as a piece of organic wheat.” The Logans’ son Edward wanted to wear a ghost outfit but this also proved problematic given the family’s firm atheist beliefs, which reject the possibility of life after death. Instead he will be dressed as a starving 15th century peasant farmer who is being oppressed by the feudal system. Edward Logan said: “We’re only allowed to go to the houses of other children from our school, all treats must be non-dairy or made of carob. It’s going to be beyond shit. “Luckily we’ve got the ouija board for after mum and dad have gone to bed.”
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In the runup to the 2016 election Matt Drudge linked to reports that Hillary Clinton’s health was faltering. For weeks the ‘rumors’ were denied by mainstream media , especially left-leaning web sites.
As the election drew closer, The Huffington Post and other non-partisan web sites claimed that Clinton had an unbeatable lead. On November 4th, just days before the election, Huff Post went so far as to suggest that Clinton had a 98% chance of winning the election. All the while, alternative media researchers, journalists, commentators and bloggers were highlighting the fact that polls actually showed a dead even race , with Trump leading in some cases.
When Wikileaks released tens of thousands of emails, the propaganda went into full swing with claims that the emails sourced from the DNC and Clinton Campaign were fake, even though numerous third-party organizations certified their validity.
If you were to ask the experts, Drudge Report , Infowars , Breitbart , The Daily Sheeple , and other alternative media web sites were peddling fiction. In fact, “peddling fiction” is the exact terminology used by President Obama to marginalize the detailed economic reports being disseminated by Alternative Financial web sites like Zero Hedge .
The fiction narrative, championed by entrenched media personalities, was pushed across social media by millions of anxious Hillary fans. According to them, everything coming from independent media was a lie – it was fake.
As it turns out, Clinton’s health problems were confirmed when she was recorded stumbling about following a September 11th ceremony in New York. The Wikileaks were, in fact legit. Trump won by an electoral landslide. And the economy continues its downward spiral.
One report after another being disseminated by what left-leaning pundits call “fake news websites” has been confirmed as accurate, proving that there was a concerted effort to stifle free speech and real journalism.
Hillary Clinton made mention of it in her Deplorables speech, warning that a lot of fake information was being released through racist web sites across the web.
And if she had her way, no one would have ever read anything but positive information about her, while everything else was disappeared Orwellian-style, never to reach the masses that eventually elected Donald Trump to the Presidency.
What this year’s Presidential election has proven is that alternative media is a force to be reckoned with, and the establishment is scared shitless.
But they won’t let it happen again.
Earlier this year President Obama turned control of the internet over to the United Nations, effectively eliminating free speech protections enjoyed by citizen journalists in America. It may have sounded crazy when we sounded the alarm before the internet takeover, but the today’s actions by Google and Facebook provide further evidence that the establishment media and Deep State politicians are preparing a digital lock down on any and all information that has not been approved by an as of yet unknown Truth Panel.
A Facebook spokesman said it will explicitly ban sites that traffic in fake news from using the Facebook Audience Network, saying they fall under the category of misleading, illegal or deceptive sites already barred. The audience network places ads on other websites and mobile apps.
Earlier Monday, Google said it plans to prevent Google ads from being placed “on pages that misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about the publisher, the publisher’s content, or the primary purpose” of the website. The policy would cover sites that distribute false news, a Google spokeswoman said.
False news stories, particularly those that spread widely on Facebook, became an issue during the recent presidential election. Google experienced its own mishap on Sunday when a story on a right-wing blog erroneously stating Donald Trump won the popular vote appeared atop some Google search results.
…
“While implied, we have updated the policy to explicitly clarify that this applies to fake news,” the Facebook spokesman said. “We vigorously enforce our policies and take swift action against sites and apps that are found to be in violation. Our team will continue to closely vet all prospective publishers and monitor existing ones to ensure compliance.”
Full report
The moves by Google and Facebook follow a recent de-monitzation effort at Youtube that has target alternative media. As noted in their “Advertiser Friendly content guidelines, they appear to be targeting alternative media directly by banning:
C ontent that is considered “not advertiser-friendly” includes, but is not limited to:
Controversial or sensitive subjects and events, including subjects related to war, political conflicts, natural disasters and tragedies, even if graphic imagery is not shown So basically, anything newsworthy is no longer advertiser friendly, and these organizations will now determine whose news will or won’t be seen based on what is sure to be propietary algorithms and human curation.
The bottom line is this: the time and energy required to produce the amount of video content and investigative journalism that we saw during the election is astronomical. Thousands of journalists, bloggers and concerned citizens spent countless hours reporting the news the mainstream media wouldn’t. Many of those people depend on advertising revenue to cover their most basic costs, including their monthly mortgages and the food they put on the table.
The aim with policies like this, which will no doubt be overseen by establishment hacks, is to starve independent media. In turn, they will starve the people of the information they so desperately need to understand what is being done to them.
This is only the beginning.
Hattip Daisy Luther
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On the Monday edition of Breitbart News Daily, broadcast live on SiriusXM Patriot Channel 125 from 6AM to 9AM Eastern, Breitbart Senior Joel Pollak will continue our discussion of the terror attack in London and President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement. [Fred Fleitz, the Senior Vice President for Policy and Programs at the Center for Security Policy and former CIA analyst, will discuss the London terror attack. We’ll also hear from Breitbart London’s Oliver Lane and Chris Tomlinson. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt will join us to discuss the decision to withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement. Veteran pollster Pat Caddell will also weigh in on the decision and the implications for 2018. Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center will discuss Kathy Griffin playing the victim and Bill Maher using the . Breitbart Legal Editor Ken Klukowski will discuss the Supreme Court expediting the review of Trump’s travel ban. Breitbart Financial Editor John Carney will discuss the May jobs numbers and what they mean for the economy going forward. Live from London, Rome, and Jerusalem, Breitbart correspondents will provide updates on the latest international news. Breitbart News Daily is the first live, conservative radio enterprise to air seven days a week. SiriusXM Vice President for news and talk Dave Gorab called the show “the conservative news show of record. ” Follow Breitbart News on Twitter for live updates during the show. Listeners may call into the show at: . | 1 |
PARIS (AP) — Human rights activists are gathered in Paris to draw attention to the situation of gays in Chechnya before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to France. [The activists want French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss the issue with Putin at their Versailles palace meeting. They held a banner “Stop homophobia in Chechnya” at a square in front of the Eiffel Tower. Amnesty International France vice president Cecile Coudriou says “it’s important that Mr. Putin is ready to hear, we hope, strong words coming from Mr. Macron, to say ‘stop’ to that homophobia which has lasted for too long. ” Human Rights Watch said in a new report last week that officials in Russia’s Chechnya humiliated inmates during visits to detention facilities where gay people were allegedly held and tortured. MOSCOW (AP) — On a trip that will likely shape ties for years to come, President Vladimir Putin is set to visit France for talks on Monday with French President Emmanuel Macron after expressing sympathy for his rivals during the campaign. After Moscow lost its bets in the French vote, the visit offers the Russian leader a chance to turn the page and try to establish ties with Macron as the Kremlin has struggled to mend a bitter rift in relations with the West. The meeting comes in the wake of the Group of Seven’s summit over the weekend where relations with Russia were part of the agenda, making Macron the first Western leader to speak to Putin after the talks. The Kremlin has hailed the visit as a chance for Putin and Macron to get to know each other and better understand their views on a range of disputed issues, including the Ukrainian crisis, the war in Syria and Russia’s ties with the European Union. Macron’s invitation for Putin was a surprise after his tough stance on Russia during the presidential campaign that contrasted with the platforms of some of his rivals, including candidate Marine Le Pen and conservative Francois Fillon, who both have spoken for ending Western sanctions against Moscow over the Ukrainian crisis. Amid the Congressional and FBI investigation into Russia’s alleged meddling in the U. S. presidential vote, Macron’s aides claimed in February that Russian groups were interfering with his campaign. Moscow has strongly denied all allegations of election meddling. Putin, however, made his preferences in the French presidential election clear by hosting Le Pen at the Kremlin in March — part of Russia’s efforts to reach out to nationalist and forces in a hope of boosting their influence in the West. Over the years, Putin also has frequently met with Fillon, the French prime minister in and praised him as an experienced statesman. Analysts say the visit to Paris offers Putin an opportunity to improve ties with France that had steadily deteriorated in the closing months of Francois Hollande’s presidency. “As a person who pays utmost attention to personal contacts, Putin believes that only a meeting could give answers to many questions about Macron as a person and president of France, as well as his future foreign policy course and his stance on Russia,” Tatyana Stanovaya of the Center for Political Technologies, an independent wrote in a commentary. “Putin understands quite well that just one productive meeting could lead to a radical revamping of ties. It would be silly not to use that chance. ” In October, Putin abruptly shelved a trip to Paris after Hollande alleged that Russia could face war crime charges over Syria. Hollande declared that he wouldn’t take part in the opening of the newly built Russian Orthodox Spiritual and Cultural Center in the heart of the French capital and was only interested in talking about Syria. As part of his trip Monday, Putin is scheduled to visit the center near the Seine River that includes the Holy Trinity Cathedral along with a school and a book shop. The site was sold to Russia under former President Nicolas Sarkozy amid criticism from rights groups about France’s outreach to Putin. Prior to that, Putin and Macron are set to have talks at Versailles and then tour an exhibition there marking the 300th anniversary of Russian Czar Peter the Great’s trip to Paris that was prepared by St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum. With Peter the Great widely seen as a ruler who modernized Russia and sought to open it up to the West, the exhibition offers a symbolic backdrop for both parties to talk about the importance of ties, and, more broadly, rapport between Russia and the West. Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said Russia is dissatisfied with the current level of political contacts, adding that the talks will offer a chance to review them. “The meeting is very important for both Russia and France,” he told reporters. Ushakov noted that he expects an “interesting discussion” on ways to implement a 2015 Minsk deal for eastern Ukraine, which was brokered by Germany and France. The U. S. and the EU have made the prospect of lifting economic and financial sanctions against Moscow contingent on fulfilling the peace agreement. The deal has helped reduce the scale of fighting between Ukrainian forces and separatists in eastern Ukraine, but clashes have continued and political elements of the agreement have stalled. Ukraine and Russia have blamed one another for the lack of progress. Ushakov said that the two leaders will also have a “frank” discussion on Syria, where Russia has backed President Bashar Assad and France has pushed strongly for his removal. He added that last week’s suicide attack on Manchester Arena emphasized the need to pool efforts in the fight against international terrorism, so the talks will also touch on that. | 1 |
Truthout
A month after President Obama told the Army Corps of Engineers to pause construction on the Dakota Access oil pipeline, the Standing Rock Sioux and those supporting them still find themselves in a dire struggle to protect their water and land. With winter approaching, the 300 tribes that are now represented at the Camp of the Sacred Stone in North Dakota are preparing for a lengthy battle.
In their effort to protect water, life, ancestors and future generations, indigenous peoples are also demanding that corporations, the US government, and settlers respect the treaties and indigenous self-determination. This is widening an existing dialogue and expanding ties of solidarity to include more of us who are of white European descent occupying indigenous land.
As support for those at Standing Rock grows, it is important that allies also confront the fundamental questions of what it means to live on stolen land and how to transform colonial relations in a way that creates a viable and just future for all communities and the planet. After almost a decade of engaging in request-based, volunteer solidarity organizing with indigenous groups fighting relocation in Black Mesa, Arizona due to coal mining , we have learned and honed a list of action steps for non-Native individuals just getting involved, as well as a set of best practices for activists already working on other organizing efforts.
As people of European descent who benefit from both white privilege and settler privilege, we understand that our work and writing is most effective when it is developing and acting upon a mutual stake in decolonization. This means focusing on the responsibilities specific to our position, which is inherently different from that of indigenous and non-Native people of color. Nevertheless, their organizing, along with much activist scholarship — some of which is linked to below — has helped inform this list of action steps and set of best practices.
1. Know whose land you are on. There are plenty of resources out there to help you educate yourself about the land that you, your school or place of worship are occupying and its original inhabitants. Here is one . Find out if the tribes or nations are still in that area. If they are not, find out why. Have they been forcefully relocated or pushed out in another way? Acknowledge that you are on occupied land when you say where you are or where you are from. This is an important way to disrupt the myth of the “disappearing native.”
2. Know your family’s history. How did your family end up in the United States? Was it through a colonial process in another country? If your ancestors are from a colonizing country, what was your family’s connection to land, spiritual traditions, economies, etc., before that country began colonizing other places? Does your family own land in the United States? If so, how did they come to acquire it?
3. Learn together. Encourage learning that is personal, emotional, spiritual, embodied and communal. Host reading groups and discussions that build an understanding of settler colonialism and your community’s relationship to it that is tied to indigenous solidarity. Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz’s “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States” is an enormously helpful place to start, and there are numerous resources, such as the book “Unsettling America,” the website for Black Mesa Indigenous Support, the Colors of Resistance archive , the journal Decolonization , the No One Is Illegal network , queer indigenous studies, critical indigenous studies and more.
4. Ask permission. Asking permission fundamentally shifts the entitlement inherent to the settler experience. Cultural appropriation is an extension of genocide, forced removals, and land theft, as settlers take what does not belong to them as if it is rightfully theirs. This can be countered by asking permission to be on indigenous peoples’ traditional lands. This practice can be extended in a variety of ways and open up new modes of relating and relationships. As one of the first steps of planning, ask permission for any gatherings, marches, etc., from an indigenous representative of the land you are on. Invite them to collaborate in planning around gatherings, conferences, actions, and campaigns for justice work on their traditional homeland. Be open to the work shifting because of such collaboration.
5. Know where your water, heat, electricity and other resources come from. Lands that were relegated to indigenous use under the reservation system often because of their perceived barrenness are now resource colonies for the settler state. Indigenous communities in the United States are among the hardest hit by the negative impacts of climate change because of the extractive projects and processing that take place on their lands. Coal mining and burning, uranium mining and copper mining are just a few of the extractive projects that leave toxic legacies for generations to come. The profit from extraction on Native lands is rarely returned to the community that has paid the cost in destruction of lands and sacred sites, damage to health, and devastation of local economies and lifeways.
6. Take responsibility for Christian privilege/Doctrine of Discovery. If you’ve grown up in Christian culture, you may be unaware of all the ways that Christianity is culturally dominant in the United States. Work with your faith community to raise awareness about the violent legacy of Christian hegemony and move resources to shift power. If you are part of a Christian denomination that has not yet repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery — the theological justification for the theft of indigenous land — start or join a movement to do so. Challenge the notion that the settler church was divinely ordained within your church community. Start conversations about saints or lauded leaders of faith who were directly responsible for conquest. Learn how your church acquired its land and whose land it was originally. Learn the history of your denomination’s relationship to conquest. Consider that within Christian traditions there are built-in practices for atonement and reparations. Get creative with your spiritual community about what atonement and reparations might look like. If it is possible, try and connect with the indigenous tribe or nation in your area to work on this.
The Christian and Catholic Churches are incredibly well resourced not only in cash but also in land. Many, if not all, indigenous-led movements across Turtle Island — the indigenous term for North America — call for return of land to indigenous stewardship. How can the church leverage its many resources in solidarity with indigenous-led efforts for land return? There is a new project in California that is working for the return of urban land to indigenous stewardship. Could your church start a conversation about putting land in trust and working with a local indigenous group to steward it?
7. Engage in local struggles and build relationships. There are ongoing indigenous-led struggles for land and self-determination taking place all over Turtle Island. Not all indigenous spaces and organizations are looking for outside support, but many are. Educate yourself on this history of the area and current struggles. Reach out and take principled and accountable action by centering relationships in your work. The work will often be request-based and/or take on various forms of asking for permission, seeking guidance and input. This is a nuanced dance of taking initiative while ensuring there is guidance and the work upholds, not undermines, community self-determination. Your participation in decision making and giving input should be determined by the indigenous people you work with and will depend on the specific goals. For example, an indigenous community addressing its own tribal government has different objectives and requests from non-Native people than if cross-community power is being built to challenge federal and or state policies, energy policy, corporate power, etc.
8. Work for repatriations of land, upholding treaties, and funding Indigenous-led struggles and efforts for land return. This entails supporting Standing Rock, and other indigenous-led struggles in your region, building power to force the state to respect treaties, and doing creative fundraising campaigns like door knocking for reparations, as members of Resource Generation did in the Bay Area in solidarity with Poor Magazine’s “Stolen Land and Hoarded Resources Tour.” Read more here .
***
While these are helpful tips for individuals entering the sphere of solidarity work, there are also things activists already engaged in other organizing efforts can do to amplify indigenous-led struggles or incorporate a decolonial analysis into their work. It begins with incorporating an analysis of settler colonialism into all of your organizing work.
Settler colonialism is the kind of colonial control that exists in “settler states” like the United States, New Zealand, Australia, Israel/Palestine, Canada, Argentina and other countries. It incorporates elements of external colonialism — in which a colonizing power exports indigenous peoples (as slaves or laborers), resources, knowledge, plants, metals, and/or animals to increase the wealth of the colonizer — as well as internal colonialism — which is marked by the violent management of an underclass of people and lands within the “domestic” borders of the imperial nation. So, when Europeans began colonizing what is now known as the United States, settlers came for good — not just to take things and return to an imperial center based in Europe. This is why scholar Patrick Wolfe called settler colonialism a process of “destroying to replace.” It’s our responsibility as settlers to work to dismantle the settler colonial project.
Here are our tips — based on research and experience — for how to do just that, while also continuing your organizing work in other areas.
If your primary area of organizing is around the environment, recognize that indigenous cultures and lifeways are deeply tied to land, and most contemporary indigenous-led struggles center around access to land or land return. If you engage in environmental work: Consider how the environmental framework of land (or wilderness) as separate from people is an inherently colonial mindset that pits environmentalists not only against labor but also indigenous people, whose lifeways are inseparable from land.
If you engage in climate justice work, recognize the ways that indigenous communities have been disproportionately impacted by extreme extraction and climate chaos, as well as how they are resisting. Globally, indigenous communities are living as frontline blockades against extreme extraction.
If you engage in anti-racist work, consider doing the work of understanding settler colonialism as a structure and logic distinct (although interlocking) that is defined in terms of self-determination rather than being solely rights-based. A stance of self-determination signifies that indigenous nations pre-date the existence of the United States and aren’t always looking for recognition from the colonizing force. Rights and “equality” frameworks are most often based on the idea of the individual as the social actor and view equality under the law for all individuals as the end goal. Many indigenous frameworks don’t fully fit this and are centered more on the ideas of the collective (nation, tribe, people), as opposed to the individual. They also prioritize responsibility (to land, and future generations) as opposed to rights.
If you engage in labor justice work, familiarize yourself with the history of exploitation of indigenous labor in this country and consider ways in which your work for just workplaces may invisibilize the original inhabitants of the land your workplace occupies. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s “An Indigenous People’s History of the United States” and Andrés Reséndez’s “The Other Slavery” are good places to start.
If you are involved in queer and trans organizing that isn’t yet connected to two spirit/Native queer and trans perspectives and movements, learn from and build with queer and/or Two Spirit Native organizers, cultural workers and scholars. Learn the history of non-Native (particularly white) LGBTQ appropriation of indigenous alternative sexualities, genders and kinship structures. The article “ Settler Homonationalism ” by Scott Morgensen is a great place to start. Envision and enact queer and trans liberation that is anti/decolonial.
If you engage in food justice, or permaculture, herbalism, building alternative economies, and more broadly alternatives to capitalist institutions and modes of organizing reproduction and social life, familiarize yourself with the existing alternatives indigenous people have maintained through surviving, resisting, adapting and decolonizing. Consider the potential for connecting your work to questions of land and unsettling settler desire. As Scott Morgensen explores in the essay “Unsettling Settler Desire,” the desire to replace Native peoples and inherit their land, lifeways, alternative economies, spiritualities, modes of kinship and sexuality runs deep in settler society and permeates various alternative and radical subcultures. These desires for connection to land and land-based practices are often seen as a much needed antidote to the disconnection inherent in settler society. If, however, these connections and practices aren’t cultivated in relationship to indigenous peoples’ struggles to maintain their connections, responsibilities and traditions, then the forms of connection settlers are fostering can replicate “settler desire” and further entrench colonialism.
For non-Native people, walking a path of decolonization is the work of envisioning and enacting reciprocal relationships. Through this we can be humbled. We hold discomfort, knowing it is part of our work and our process of rekindling our dignity and interconnectedness. We can work to stop violence and environmental degradation. We can organize to build our communities’ capacity for self-determination, while struggling alongside indigenous communities as they maintain their responsibility to their homelands and future generations. We can shift entitlement and the normalizing of theft, as well as the narrative of “disappearing Indians”— the dominant colonial story that says indigenous peoples, lands and lifeways are inevitably disappearing as part of the natural passing of time. It is the narrative that relegates all things indigenous to the realm of history. We can move away from Western, colonial modes of existing as we restore traditional economies and modes of relating, community to community and nation to nation. Moving towards decolonization allows us to reckon with the violence of our collective inheritance and commit to healing, restoring and transforming our present, so as to ensure that we have a viable and liberatory future.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source. | 0 |
link For your enjoyment a very short vid with Ice-Cube talking about the only 3 people in the US capable of taking on the POTUS role. I agree with him. Well, everything except the boss thing. And he makes a some good points in a very short time. In my opinion he should be the next debate commentator. But a month ago it was a different story. While it isn't a ringing endorsement of Trump, he fared much better than the other 2. edit on 27-10-2016 by seasonal because: (no reason given) | 0 |
Posted on October 28, 2016 Trump Reaches Out to Blacks; Blacks Riot in Philadelphia Jared Taylor, American Renaissance, October 28, 2016 And DOJ prepares a politically motivated “civil rights” case in the death of Eric Garner.
This episode is available for download here . Share This View all posts by Jared Taylor Jared Taylor is the editor of American Renaissance and the author of White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century . We welcome comments that add information or perspective, and we encourage polite debate. If you log in with a social media account, your comment should appear immediately. If you prefer to remain anonymous, you may comment as a guest, using a name and an e-mail address of convenience. Your comment will be moderated. Commentary | 0 |
Hillary Clinton Campaign Still Whining About the FBI November 1, 2016
The Hillary Clinton whineaton continues.
After having mobilized mulltiple ex-officials and media types to attack the FBI, the Clinton campaign, whose candidate blatantly benefited from white glove from the FBI is complaining about a double standard.
Hillary Clinton's campaign accused FBI Director James Comey Monday of engaging in a "blatant double standard."
Clinton's campaign manager Robby Mook slammed Comey in the wake of reports that the FBI director refused to publicly comment on potential Donald Trump campaign ties to Russia's alleged efforts to meddle with the U.S. election, but did weigh in on an updated investigation involving Clinton's email server.
"It is impossible to view this as anything less than a blatant double standard," Mook, Clinton's campaign manager, said on a call with reporters. "That Director Comey would show more discretion in a matter concerning a foreign state action than one involving the Democratic nominee for president is nothing short of jaw-dropping."
Yes, it's jaw dropping that Mook can't grasp how investigations work.
Comey had no reason to comment on the Trump thing because it wasn't part of an existing criminal investigation of Trump. There has been, despite Hillary's bottomless barrel of lies, a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton.
It's a double standard if Trump and Clinton were both facing criminal investigations. It's not a double standard since only Hillary is. | 0 |
The last time they saw each other was roughly a decade ago. He was among America’s most successful entertainers, and her mentor. She was a former young Temple University staff member who said he took advantage of his counseling role, gave her pills and sexually assaulted her in his home outside Philadelphia in 2004. The setting for their last encounter was a deposition in a Philadelphia hotel, one that would ultimately lead to an settlement in 2006 in a civil suit filed against Bill Cosby by his former mentee, Andrea Constand. On Tuesday, Mr. Cosby and Ms. Constand may well see each other again, this time at a pretrial hearing in a Pennsylvania courthouse where Mr. Cosby, 78, is facing criminal charges filed by prosecutors who say the 2004 encounter was a case of criminal sexual assault. At the hearing in the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa. prosecutors will try to demonstrate for Judge Elizabeth A. McHugh that they have enough evidence to go to trial. Some 200 members of the public and the news media are expected to crowd into the courthouse for the hearing. Mr. Cosby, who denies the charges, will be among them. He must be present, though he is not expected to testify. The pressing question is whether Ms. Constand, now 43 and living in Canada, will also be there — not just as a spectator, but as a witness called to testify by the prosecution. Neither her lawyers nor Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele are saying. Prosecutors might simply rely on the statement Ms. Constand gave when she went to the police in 2005. That would avoid exposing her to by the defense. As a matter of strategy, experts say, prosecutors at preliminary hearings hope to move the case to trial while revealing as little of their evidence as possible. The defense typically tries to force prosecutors to offer as much evidence as they can and to question witnesses to gather information in readiness for trial. “The defense is not using the hearing to get the charges dismissed but to tie witnesses down, to explore as many avenues as possible and perhaps identify inconsistencies, and to develop themes for trial,” said David Rudovsky, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. If Ms. Constand takes the stand, the defense will likely try to undermine her account, experts say. Their questions might include why she took a year to file her complaint with police, and why she returned to Mr. Cosby’s home after what she has since described as two previous unwelcome encounters — including one in which she said he unbuttoned her pants and began touching her. “There are so many questions that she has to answer that she is going to have a tough time,” said Stuart P. Slotnick, a New York defense lawyer and former prosecutor. Until recently in Pennsylvania, a witness like Ms. Constand would have had to testify at a preliminary hearing. But a state appellate court ruling last year allowed for wider use of hearsay evidence, meaning that a prosecutor could opt to introduce just Ms. Constand’s police statement, not her direct testimony, as evidence at the hearing. The strategy could be risky, though, since the ruling from last year is under appeal to the state’s Supreme Court. Given that the admissibility of hearsay may be overturned on appeal, prosecutors may not want to rely on the police statement without calling Ms. Constand. “My sense is she will be there,” said Dennis McAndrews, a Pennsylvania lawyer. “The prosecution would obviously be taking a risk if they did not call the victim to the stand. ” The parameters of the questioning, such as the extent to which it might delve into Ms. Constand’s sexual history, will be set by Judge McHugh, 60. Under Pennsylvania’s rape shield law, sexual relationships with someone other than the accused are typically not considered a proper subject for Mr. McAndrews said. “The judge is likely to limit it significantly,” he said. Prosecutors at the hearing could also enter into evidence a transcript of Mr. Cosby’s deposition from the Constand civil suit, in which he acknowledged obtaining quaaludes as part of an effort to have sex with women. Since December, when Mr. Cosby was charged, his lawyers have sought a dismissal of the charges, arguing that a former district attorney who carried out an initial investigation in 2005 had made a binding commitment never to pursue charges against Mr. Cosby so as to induce the entertainer to testify in the civil suit. A trial court judge and an appeals court, however, rejected that argument. Mr. Cosby’s lawyers have a pending appeal, though, in hope of securing a postponement of Tuesday’s hearing. Mr. Steele is fighting those attempts. “This rich celebrity defendant is not entitled to unprecedented special treatment,” he said last week. After the hearing, legal experts expect Mr. Cosby to challenge much of the evidence. For one thing, they said, his legal team may ask to bar his deposition from the civil case because it is subject to a confidentiality stipulation that he and Ms. Constand agreed to as part of their settlement. Mr. Cosby is also expected to fight any attempt to introduce evidence from other women who have accused him of drugging and sexually assaulting them. Such evidence of other alleged bad acts is sometimes ruled admissible under circumstances in which prosecutors can demonstrate that it establishes a defendant’s pattern of behavior, a kind of fingerprint or signature of the defendant. Mr. Cosby is being sued in civil courts by several others. In a case brought by seven women who are suing Mr. Cosby for defamation in Massachusetts, a judge on Friday released the full transcript of a Feb. 22 deposition by his wife of 52 years, Camille O. Cosby. The women say Mr. Cosby sexually assaulted them and then branded them liars after they came forward. The transcript shows confrontational exchanges between the lawyer for the women and Mrs. Cosby and her lawyers. Mrs. Cosby was asked about her husband’s affairs, but she repeatedly refused to answer questions and often invoked spousal privilege. In the criminal case, Mr. Cosby faces three charges of aggravated indecent assault, each of which carries a punishment of five to 10 years in prison and a $25, 000 fine. The hearing would normally take place in the magisterial district court in Elkins Park, Pa. where Mr. Cosby was arraigned in December and where Ms. Constand accuses Mr. Cosby of drugging and assaulting her. But the hearing is being held in the larger courthouse in Norristown because of the expected news media attention and security issues. James Koval, director of communications for Pennsylvania courts, said officials are bracing for a high level of interest in a criminal case hearing, with journalists scheduled to arrive from as far away as Australia. He was planning on arriving in Norristown early on Monday, he said. “We have 20 television production trucks coming in,” he said. “There will be a lot going on. ” | 1 |
Good morning. We’re trying something new for our readers in Asia and the Pacific region: a morning briefing to your day. What do you like? What do you want to see here? Email us with your feedback at asiabriefing@nytimes. com. Here’s what you need to know: • Donald J. Trump is facing backlash over his choice of Stephen K. Bannon as his administration’s chief strategist. The move elevates the nationalist movement Mr. Bannon nurtured while running Breitbart News, a website whose staples include articles linking migrants to the spread of disease. Mr. Bannon said Mr. Trump’s followers are patriots who are being tarred by the existence of racists and “on the margins. ” Reports of racially charged assaults, graffiti attacks and other episodes have surged since Election Day, and the F. B. I. said that hate crimes rose 7 percent last year, driven by a rise in attacks against American Muslims. Many attacks have also been countered by acts of public support and solidarity. _____ • President Obama took questions from reporters for the first time since the election, portraying Mr. Trump as a pragmatist and stressing the importance of a peaceful transition. “Without copping out, I think it’s fair to say that it would not be appropriate for me to comment” on the choice of Mr. Bannon. Mr. Obama is about to fly to Greece, at the start of a final international tour that will also take him to Germany and Peru. He will try to soothe fears of the coming Trump presidency, but his leverage has been diminished and his legacy bruised. _____ • Mr. Trump continued to project his presidency onto the world stage. He spoke with Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Russia has embraced Mr. Trump’s election. The State Duma, or parliament, broke into applause on news of his victory. Mr. Trump, who has threatened to confront China on a range of trade issues, promised Mr. Xi that the two nations would have “one of the strongest relationships. ” _____ • Hong Kong’s High Court ruled that two politicians who were elected to the legislature cannot take their seats. Sixtus Leung, 30, known as Baggio, and Yau 25, set off the conflict by using what some consider a derogatory term for China when they took their oaths of office. Beijing reacted by issuing a new interpretation of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, challenging the territory’s semiautonomous status. _____ • The International Criminal Court is considering a investigation in Afghanistan, after a prosecutor said she had a “reasonable basis to believe” that American soldiers there committed war crimes, including torture. • Samsung is spending $8 billion to acquire Harman International Industries, an American company best known for car stereos, like and JBL. The deal gives Samsung a stake in connected cars, which could mean a boom in screens, computers and connectivity. Its stock rose 25. 6 percent. • Japan’s G. D. P. figures surprised analysts with strong economic growth in the third quarter despite declining consumer prices and deflation. Our analyst looks at whether the trend will last. • The National Geographic Channel has reinvented itself under the leadership of James Murdoch at its parent, 21st Century Fox. Part of the makeover is a shift to shows like “Mars,” a new by Ron Howard. • U. S. markets closed lower, and oil was down. Here’s a snapshot of global markets. • A Malaysian lawmaker was given 18 months in prison for disclosing classified information from an official audit of a investment fund linked to Prime Minister Najib Razak. [The New York Times] • The venture capitalist Eric Li argues that relations between China and the U. S. may suffer over trade, but could improve if the U. S. stops trying to remake the world in its own image. [The New York Times] • Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, was questioned in London about a rape accusation in Sweden in 2010. [The New York Times] • President Rodrigo Duterte said that if Islamic State militants came to the Philippines, he would not let his “people be slaughtered for the sake of human rights. ” [Reuters] • Japan’s government plans to increase medical checkups for older drivers after a wave of fatal traffic accidents. [Asahi Shimbun] • If all the railways projects proposed for Southeast Asia were built, here is a map of how the region would look. [The Diplomat] • Canada’s government is under scrutiny for blocking an arms deal with Thailand over factors including human rights abuses, just months after exporting $15 billion in combat vehicles to Saudi Arabia, which has a poorer rights record. [Globe and Mail] • China’s nationalist resurgence is on display in “The Long March,” above, a new opera about the early days of the Communist Party. [The New York Times] • Gwen Ifill, an television journalist who moderated debates in 2004 and 2008, died of cancer in Washington. She was 61. • And Pizza, the polar bear used to lure shoppers to a mall in southern China, will be temporarily moved while his enclosure is “optimized and upgraded. ” Animal rights groups say the move doesn’t go nearly far enough. Two Chinese astronauts expect to leave their space lab this week, after a monthlong stay that is a first for their nation. China has poured billions of dollars into its space program, aiming to rival the United States and Russia in reaching Mars. Such programs are enormous drivers of technological innovation. So it might come as a surprise to know that space communications rely on an old standby: radio waves. Speech from an astronaut, video from cameras and data from sensors flow into a transmitter, which emits radio waves picked up by a terrestrial receiver. Terrestrial transmitters reverse the favor. The same basic technology sends music to your radio, YouTube videos to your cellphone and photos from Pluto. There really isn’t any alternative until we figure out how to use lasers to convey data. There’s been a lot of of radio capabilities over the 125 years or so that scientists have been playing with electromagnetic radiation. We have great antennas and efficient, secure encoding now. But the technology is also good for a simple call from home. Last week, China’s president, Xi Jinping, called the space lab. “Everyone across China cares very much about both of you,” Mr. Xi said. One astronaut proudly said, “I will go forth, and successfully complete the mission. ” Andrea Kannapell 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 |
Bill O’Reilly, the embattled Fox News host, received a powerful show of support on Wednesday from a longtime friend, interview subject, ideological sympathizer and fellow : the president of the United States. Speaking in the Oval Office, Donald J. Trump praised Mr. O’Reilly as “a good person” and declared, “I don’t think Bill did anything wrong,” days after The New York Times reported that five women had received settlements after making harassment claims against him. News of the payouts, totaling about $13 million, generated a storm of criticism toward Fox News, which recently renewed Mr. O’Reilly’s contract, and prompted more than two dozen advertisers to withdraw their support of Mr. O’Reilly’s prime time show, the program in cable news. Few have spoken out publicly in support of the Fox star. The president had no qualms. “Personally, I think he shouldn’t have settled,” Mr. Trump told Times reporters in a interview. “Because you should have taken it all the way I don’t think Bill did anything wrong. ” “I think he’s a person I know well,” Mr. Trump said. “He is a good person. ” The president is a fan of Fox News, sitting for interviews with its hosts and conferring privately by phone with Rupert Murdoch, the network’s executive chairman. Mr. Trump has bragged to associates that he now refers to Mr. Murdoch, one of the world’s most powerful media moguls, by his first name, according to a person who is friendly with both men. But the president has a particular rapport with Mr. O’Reilly, whose hectoring braggadocio and nostalgia for a bygone American era mirror Mr. Trump’s own. A regular guest on “The O’Reilly Factor,” Mr. Trump has attended baseball games with Mr. O’Reilly, praised his collection of political books, and, as granted him a prominent interview that aired during Fox’s Super Bowl pregame show. The men share a taste for vanilla milkshakes, bantering about how many of the confections Mr. O’Reilly has bought for his friend. The two have something more ominous in common, too: Each has been accused by women of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior. Like the president, Mr. O’Reilly maintains that the accusations against him are without merit. When damaging video footage of Mr. Trump bragging about sexual assault surfaced during the campaign, Mr. Trump called it “locker room talk” and apologized for the remarks. Mr. O’Reilly, on air that evening, allowed that the tape was “an embarrassment” for the Republican nominee. But he also criticized The Washington Post, the newspaper that published the footage. It is remarkable for a sitting president to weigh in on sexual harassment allegations from the Oval Office, especially allegations at the center of a churning controversy. But Mr. Trump’s advice to his friend on Wednesday — that Mr. O’Reilly “shouldn’t have settled” — was consistent with the ethos of a president, and former real estate magnate, who relishes the counterattack. It also hinted at a deeper symbiosis between the White House and Fox News. Mr. Trump often praises the network, recently urging his 27 million Twitter followers to tune in for a Saturday evening show last month, the president cited a Fox commentator, Andrew Napolitano, as backup for an unproven allegation that British intelligence spied on his campaign. In turn, Fox News’s prime time and morning hosts are blatant champions of the administration — to the extent that NBC News’s chairman, Andrew Lack, recently compared the network to “state broadcasting. ” The president and Mr. Murdoch have drawn closer, too. Mr. Murdoch, a savvy political observer, deepened their relationship in the months after Mr. Trump clinched the Republican nomination, and people who know them say the two now speak frequently. Mr. Murdoch’s former wife, Wendi Deng, is so close with Ivanka Trump that the president’s daughter became a trustee of the Murdoch children’s fortune. (Ms. Trump stepped down from the role in December.) Mr. Murdoch, meanwhile, had mentored Ms. Trump’s future husband, Jared Kushner, in the art of media moguldom after his purchase of The New York Observer in 2006. Mr. Kushner, now a powerful White House aide, would later serve as Mr. Murdoch’s chief conduit to Mr. Trump’s campaign. These entwinements have fueled intrigue about how the president might influence Mr. Murdoch’s corporate interests. Mr. Trump now oversees the Justice Department, just as Fox News faces an investigation by the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan over its handling of financial settlements for harassment claims. Mr. Murdoch’s entertainment conglomerate, 21st Century Fox, is also closing in on a coveted prize in Europe, the British satellite television giant Sky. But British regulators are scrutinizing the potential acquisition, and the firestorm around Mr. O’Reilly may speak poorly of the corporate culture over which Mr. Murdoch presides. Fox News has often provided cover for Mr. Trump as the president navigated a host of early controversies. Mr. Trump’s kind words for Mr. O’Reilly on Wednesday seemed a reciprocal gesture of sorts, from a leader who values loyalty. | 1 |
The future of civil rights is up to the Supreme Court A single court seat can change the landscape of our liberties—and this election could determine four. By Mary Frances Berry Posted on November 4, 2016 by Mary Frances Berry
When 95-year-old Rosanell Eaton first registered to vote in the Jim Crow South, she was forced to pass a written literacy test and recite the preamble of the Constitution from memory. Seven decades after becoming one of the first African American voters in her county, Eaton once again found herself facing obstacles undermining her access to the franchise.
Because of North Carolina’s harsh new voting restrictions, Eaton had to make 11 trips to various state agencies—traveling a total of over 200 miles —to get the identification she needed to vote.
So Eaton challenged the state’s voter ID laws in a case that made its way to the nation’s highest court. After an appeals court struck down the restrictions, the Supreme Court—in a 4–4 tie vote this August—declined for now to reinstate them, pending an eventual appeal.
Eaton’s harrowing story demonstrates the powerful role of each Supreme Court justice. Had there been one more conservative justice sitting on the court, North Carolina voters like Eaton would be facing the controversial, discriminatory barriers she challenged this November.
As with so many decisions in our country’s history, the protection of Americans’ fundamental rights came down to a single seat on the Supreme Court. It was only by one vote, after all, that the court decided the damaging Shelby County case in 2013, which gutted the Voting Rights Act—a landmark achievement of the 1960s civil rights movement—and allowed North Carolina to establish these discriminatory voting restrictions in the first place.
As powerful as a single Supreme Court seat can be, more than one seat hangs in the balance this November. The next president could nominate up to four justices for lifetime appointments on the Supreme Court. The outcome of the election may well determine the composition of our nation’s most powerful court for decades—and with it, the future of our civil rights.
Based on the list of judges Donald Trump has said he would consider for nomination, our civil rights could be in real jeopardy with a Trump presidency. Multiple judges on Trump’s list have upheld the kind of discriminatory voter ID laws that Eaton is fighting in North Carolina.
For instance, after a lower court found that Wisconsin’s voter ID law “results in the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on account of race or color ,” Judge Diane Sykes—whom Trump has named as a possible Supreme Court nominee—nonetheless voted to reinstate the law. A Trump Supreme Court could uphold suppressive voting laws that have been shown to substantially lower turnout among minority voters.
In other civil rights matters, the records of Trump’s proposed judges paint a similarly distressing picture.
In a case involving a black worker being passed over for a promotion because of his race, Judge William Pryor argued that it was just a “conversational” aside when the supervisor in the case called an African American employee “boy,” dismissing the condescending slur as not connected to promotion decisions. Equally alarming is Judge Steven Colloton, also on Trump’s list, who would have refused to allow a woman who reported being sexually harassed and fired by her manager to go to trial.
Civil rights issues will continue to make their way to the Supreme Court time and again. I shudder to imagine the Supreme Court justices Trump has proposed serving as the final word on the legal questions that shape Americans’ access to the ballot box, housing, discrimination-free workplaces, and other critical civil rights.
The fate of hard-won rights and liberties, like those Rosanell Eaton began fighting for more than 70 years ago, rests in the hands of the justices on that bench—and every vote counts.
Dr. Mary Frances Berry is a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and serves on the board of People For the American Way. Her latest book is “Five Dollars and a Pork Chop Sandwich: Vote Buying and the Corruption of Democracy.” Distributed by OtherWords.org . | 0 |
By Nicholas West While debate surrounds the threat of autonomous “killer robots,” the mechanized replacement of humans continues across the workforce. The industrial robotics industry is... | 0 |
When you’ve decided to sell your home, the last thing you want to do is spend money to spruce the place up. After all, whoever buys it is going to replace those outdated kitchen cabinets and grungy bathroom tiles anyway, right? “We’re often asked why any money should be spent freshening,” said Mickey Conlon, an associate broker with Douglas Elliman Real Estate. “The answer has to do with the psychological effect of assessing a renovation on a prospective purchase. Buyers assign dollar values to repairs that typically exceed the actual cost of remediation. ” To get the best return on your investment — and avoid turning off potential buyers — you need to ensure your home looks its best when it hits the market. At the same time, you don’t want to waste effort or money on improvements that won’t pay off. To find out what you absolutely must do before putting your home on the market, I reached out to several real estate professionals for their essential presale . Here are their top suggestions for making sure your house or apartment is . 1. PAINT THE WALLS A fresh coat of paint is a way to make a place feel new again. But stick with neutral tones like grays and whites, which let the best features of your home stand out, rather than going with bold colors that might not suit everyone’s taste. You can find painters starting at $60 an hour on a site like Handy, which offers handyman and cleaning services in New York and other major cities. “As an added bonus,” said Mr. Conlon of Douglas Elliman, “the faint whiff of paint can be as alluring to home buyers as smell is to auto shoppers. ” 2. SHINE THE FLOORS “Unless your floors are severely damaged, it doesn’t make sense to have them refinished,” said Pat Christodoulou, who stages homes for sale in Connecticut and New York. Instead, she hires a handyman with a floor buffer, paying anywhere from $300 to wax and polish the floor of a small living room to $1, 500 for a Classic Six. “Many good buildings have a buffing machine,” she said, adding that if yours doesn’t, you could try asking for a handyman at another building down the block. 3. CLEAN UP THE BATHROOM Replacing missing tiles and moldy areas are . Small upgrades, like swapping out an old faucet, can brighten up the space. If your tub is looking dingy, a professional refinisher can repair dents, rub out rust spots and recoat it with a new finish in a day or so, for about $500 for a bathtub, according to Homeadvisor. com, a website. This technique, called reglazing, can be applied to those dated pink wall tiles as well, so long as they are in good shape. And if your bathroom is already in decent condition, a new bath mat, shower curtain and fresh towels may be all the sprucing up you need. 4. UPGRADE THE KITCHEN While remodeling an old kitchen is a sure way to help your home sell faster and at a higher price, it is possible to transform a dated space without a complete overhaul. A fresh coat of paint and new hardware will help refresh old cabinets. wall tiles, which can be found at home improvement stores for as little as $8 a square foot, make adding a backsplash easy on the budget. And if you’re feeling a little more ambitious, an epoxy coating, sold at most home improvement stores for about $20, can give laminate countertops a new look and feel. Louise M. Devlin, an agent with Brown Harris Stevens who does a fair amount of business in 1960s swears by this trick. “It’s a fantastic affordable option,” said Ms. Devlin, who hires a handyman to do the work, which involves sanding the countertop and mixing and applying several coatings of epoxy. The end result, which can be finished in a weekend, she said, “looks like a granite industrial finish. ” But what about those old appliances? While real estate professionals agree that replacing them can add value, it may not be worth the time involved or the cost of new appliances. If your budget allows, consider buying steeply discounted appliances at stores that sell used kitchens, like BIG Reuse in Gowanus, Brooklyn, and Astoria, Queens, or Green Demolitions in Fairfield, N. J. 5. CLEAR THE CLUTTER “Sellers don’t realize how much stuff they have and how it deters most buyers,” said Kathleen Perkins, an associate broker at Douglas Elliman. “A good rule of thumb is to get rid of 50 percent of your stuff. ” This includes books, furniture and the clothes hanging in your closets, and it has the added effect of making small spaces seem bigger. Coffee tables, kitchen counters, windowsills and other surfaces should be cleared of family photos, plants and tchotchkes. Also, be sure to put away any personal effects — razors, hair dryers, shampoo bottles, toothbrushes — before showings. 6. DO A DEEP CLEANING Wash the windows inside and out and vacuum all the dust that’s accumulated in those exhaust fans, said Heather McMaster, an associate broker at the Corcoran Group: “Deep cleaning is so important, because while an apartment can show very neatly, it’s the details that people pick up on. ” According to Handy, the handyman and cleaning service, it usually takes about four or five hours to thoroughly scrub down a apartment — including inside the cabinets, oven and refrigerator — and costs $100 to $135. 7. LIGHT IT UP “Every room should have at least three points of light,” said Alison Draper, an agent with Halstead Property who writes for a company blog about design and staging. That means a table lamp, a floor lamp and a task light, for example, or an overhead fixture and a couple of table lamps. Her resource for inexpensive lighting is Ikea. | 1 |
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Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, having a net worth of $81.8 billion, and Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos, having a net worth of $70.4 billion, are the nation's two richest men. They are at the top of the Forbes 400 list of America's superrich individuals, people who have net worths of billions of dollars. Many see the rich as a danger. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote, "It doesn't really matter what ordinary people want. The wealthy call the tune, and the politicians dance." His colleague Paul Krugman wrote, "On paper, we're a one-person-one-vote nation; in reality, we're more than a bit of an oligarchy, in which a handful of wealthy people dominate." It's sentiments like these that have led me to wish there were a humane way to get rid of the rich. For without having the rich around to be whipping boys and distract our attention, we might be able to concentrate on what's best for the 99.9 percent of the rest of us.
Let's look at the power of the rich. With all the money that Gates, Bezos and other superrich people have, what can they force you or me to do? Can they condemn our houses to create space so that another individual can build an auto dealership or a casino parking lot? Can they force us to pay money into the government-run — and doomed — Obamacare program? Can they force us to bus our children to schools out of our neighborhood in the name of diversity? Can they force us to buy our sugar from a high-cost domestic producer rather than from a low-cost Caribbean producer? The answer to all of these questions is a big fat no.
You say, "Williams, I don't understand." Let me be more explicit. Bill Gates cannot order you to enroll your child in another school in order to promote racial diversity. He has no power to condemn your house to make way for a casino parking lot. Unless our elected public officials grant them the power to rip us off, rich people have little power to force us to do anything. A lowly municipal clerk earning $50,000 a year has far more life-and-death power over us. It is that type of person to whom we must turn for permission to build a house, ply a trade, open a restaurant and do myriad other activities. It's government people, not rich people, who have the power to coerce us and rip us off. They have the power to make our lives miserable if we disobey. This coercive power goes a long way toward explaining legalized political corruption.
Take just one of thousands of examples. The Fanjuls are among the biggest sugar cane growers, and they co-own the world's largest refining company, American Sugar Refining, which markets its product under the brand names Domino, C&H, Redpath, Tate & Lyle and Florida Crystals. During the 2014 election cycle, Florida Crystals contributed more than $860,000 to candidates and political spending groups. It spent more than $1 million lobbying Congress, the U.S. departments of Agriculture and Commerce, and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Here's my question to you: Do you think it forked over all that money to help our elected representatives uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution? Nonsense. The Fanjuls and other sugar producers want Congress to use tariffs to keep foreign-produced sugar out of our country so they can reap the financial benefits from being able to charge Americans two to three times the world price of sugar.
So here's the ultimate question: If some rich people can line the pockets of politicians to do their bidding at the expense of the rest of us, who's to blame? I think it's we, the people, who are to blame for not using our votes to run such politicians out of town — and that's most of them. But that might be deceitful of us, for we also ask politicians to enable us to live at the expense of others.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com .
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Horace Mann, the first secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, speaking a few years before the Civil War, declared that public schools constituted “the greatest discovery ever made by man." He added, "Let the common [public) school be expanded to its capabilities, let it be worked with the efficiency of which it is susceptible, and nine-tenths of the crimes in the penal code would become obsolete; the long catalogue of human ills would be abridged; men would walk more safely by day; every pillow would be more inviolable by night.”
Such utopian sentiments provoke laughter today, especially when one considers that a large part of the exodus from the public schools into private schools and homeschooling is because of the unsafe environment in many of America’s public schools.
About 1.8 million children in the country are now homeschooled, with the numbers growing each year. This is double the number of homeschoolers as recently as 1999. Today, the number of children schooled at home represents 3.4 percent of U.S. students between the ages of five and 17.
Twenty-five percent of parents surveyed have said that the environment of the public schools — including such issues as safety, drugs, and peer pressure — is the most important reason for either pulling their kids out, or not ever placing them there to begin with. About the same number (22 percent) cite either religious or moral instruction as a reason to homeschool. Others mention “dissatisfaction with the academic instruction in other schools,” while smaller numbers explain that their child has a special need, such as a physical or mental health problem.
A more recent cause for the rise in homeschooling is the introduction of Common Core and other related aspects of nationally-driven standard curriculum in the public schools. In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the number of homeschooled students has more than doubled, with the implementation of Common Core given as the principal reason for this explosive growth. Similar situations can be cited in many other states. In North Carolina, for example, there was a 14-percent increase in home schooling, with Common Core being listed as the number one reason. Home schooling has grown so quickly in that state that more children are now being homeschooled than are in private schools.
Common Core is just the latest, and perhaps the most ambitious, reincarnation of continuing efforts to impose a nationalized curriculum. Past education ideas, such as Mastery Learning, Outcome-Based Education, No Child Left Behind, and the like share a common ideology: Every school in America should teach the same curriculum, and that curriculum should be imposed upon every student.
This is accomplished via incessant testing. While advocates of “national standards” and “national testing” will usually deny that they are attempting to impose a national curriculum, the truth is that if you have national standards that are evaluated through national tests, you have a national curriculum.
Many of the Founding Fathers were homeschooled, such as George Washington. The modern homeschool movement began in the 1960s, but grew slowly until the last couple of decades. One obstacle was that homeschooling was illegal in most of the states; however, these laws were changed over time, and by 1993 homeschooling was recognized in all 50 states.
Several arguments have been advanced against homeschooling, of course. Some question whether students can learn to “socialize” when educated at home. Others contend that most parents are simply not equipped to supervise their child’s learning, especially as they grow older and need specialized instruction in more advanced subjects.
Many of these well-meaning (in most cases) concerns about homeschooling are based upon misunderstandings about what is involved in homeschooling, and how it has evolved over the years. For example, many homeschooling parents have formed co-ops so their children can participate in group learning, sports, band, and other such activities, and have even started homeschool athletic teams.
Where do the homeschoolers live? A little more than one-third live in the suburbs. About one-third live in rural areas, and a little less than a third are in cities.
The public-school movement originated with reformers such as Horace Mann in the 19 th century, most of whom were Unitarians. Unitarians are an off-shoot of Christianity who reject a cardinal belief of the Christian faith: that human beings have a sinful nature. Unitarians believe in what is called the “perfectibility of man.” As can be seen in the Mann quotation that began this article, they viewed the public schools as the place this could best be accomplished.
Their push for public schools was largely ignored, however, until the 1840s and 1850s, when the nation saw a rising tide of immigration from Ireland and Germany. Almost all of these immigrants were Roman Catholics, and this enabled Unitarians to enlist Protestant ministers in the movement for public schools. The early public schools opened with prayers, used the Bible as a textbook, and were more or less adjuncts of Protestant Christianity in the country. Because of this, the Catholics largely withdrew from the public schools and formed their own parochial schools.
Of course, Catholics have nothing to fear today about having their children converted to Protestant Christianity (or any other kind) by sending their children to the public schools. The Christian faith is often questioned in history textbooks, the doctrine of special creation is mocked with the teaching of biological evolution in science classes, and secular humanism is the prevailing religious view in public-school classrooms. While there are many fine conservative and Christian school teachers in these public schools, the system works against them.
Because the public schools are regarded by so many Christians as indifferent at best and hostile at worst to the Christian faith, we have seen tremendous growth in the number of private schools. There are many good private schools across the country; however, far too often the very same educational philosophy, complete with Common Core and the like, has also invaded these schools, even supposedly Christian schools.
An example of yet another model of education available for parents to consider is the Freedom Project Academy (FPA), a classical school that offers online classes in real time, with live teachers and student interaction, not recorded lessons. From its inception in 2011, FPA has grown tremendously, with 35 percent growth in one year, and now has over 600 students enrolled across the country, from kindergarten through high school. Its media, original programming, and scholastic materials have been accessed by millions of students and viewers.
Graduates have enrolled in higher education, have accepted internships, and have entered the workforce. They are prepared to compete academically at an extremely high level, bolstered by an education centered on civics, economics, writing, and math, and fortified by the Judeo-Christian values that are at the heart of the curriculum.
Dr. Duke Pesta, the academic director for FPA, told The New American , “Many kids who take our placement exams end up joining FPA after spending a few years in private schools, where parents become frustrated with the cost of tuition and imposition of Common Core in the classroom.”
Pesta added that FPA is partnering with private schools, homeschools, co-ops, and churches, “beaming our teachers and curriculum into their local communities,” giving families a quality, yet affordable, education in safe spaces. He noted that “FPA’s reputation as a national leader in online K-12 education has provided a platform for us to offer national leadership in the fight against Common Core standards and the federalization of education. [FPA kids are] economically literate, schooled in the Constitution and founding documents. We are creating morally responsible, civic-minded thinkers, and we’re doing it without the help of the federal government.”
Pesta encouraged interested persons to visit facebook.com/FreedomProjectEducation/. Please review our Comment Policy before posting a comment
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THE DELETER OF THE FREE WORLD Hillary's 33,000 emails might not be 'missing' after all Files backed up on multiple platforms never subpoened by FBI Published: 19 mins ago
(New York Post) For months now, we’ve been told that Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 missing emails were permanently erased and destroyed beyond recovery. But newly released FBI notes strongly suggest they still exist in several locations — and they could be recovered, if only someone would impanel a grand jury and seize them.
In a May interview with FBI agents, an executive with the Denver contractor that maintained Clinton’s private server revealed that an underling didn’t bleach-clean all her subpoenaed emails, just ones he stored in a data file he used to transfer the emails from the server to Clinton’s aides, who in turn sorted them for delivery to Congress.
The Platte River Networks executive, whose name was redacted from the interview report, said PRN tech Paul Combetta “created a ‘vehicle’ to transfer email files from the live mailboxes of [Clinton Executive Services Corp.] email accounts [and] then later used BleachBit software to shred the ‘vehicle,’ but the email content still existed in the live email accounts.” | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Days after Islamist militants stormed the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn reached a conclusion that stunned some of his subordinates at the Defense Intelligence Agency: Iran had a role in the attack, he told them. Now, he added, it was their job to prove it — and, by implication, to show that the White House was wrong about what had led to the attack. Mr. Flynn, whom Donald J. Trump has chosen to be his national security adviser, soon took to pushing analysts to find Iran’s hidden hand in the disaster, according to current and former officials familiar with the episode. But like many other investigations into Benghazi, theirs found no evidence of any links, and the general’s stubborn insistence reminded some officials at the agency of how the Bush administration had once relentlessly sought to connect Saddam Hussein and Iraq to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Years before Mr. Flynn met Mr. Trump, his brief tenure running the Defense Intelligence Agency foreshadowed some of the same qualities he has exhibited more recently as he has plunged into politics and controversy as a key campaign adviser to Mr. Trump, who shared his desire to usurp what he viewed as Washington’s incompetent and corrupt elite. Many of those who observed the general’s time at the agency described him as someone who alienated both superiors and subordinates with his sharp temperament, his refusal to brook dissent, and what his critics considered a conspiratorial worldview. Those qualities could prove problematic for a national security adviser, especially one who will have to mediate the conflicting views of cabinet secretaries and agencies for a president with no experience in defense or foreign policy issues. Traditionally, the job has gone to a Washington veteran: Condoleezza Rice, for instance, or Thomas E. Donilon. The new job will give Mr. Flynn, 57, nearly unfettered access to the Oval Office. Whether it is renewed bloodletting in Ukraine, a North Korean nuclear test or a hurricane swamping Haiti, he will often have the last word with Mr. Trump about how the United States should react. For Mr. Flynn, serving as the president’s chief adviser on defense and foreign policy matters, represents a triumphal return to government after being dismissed as agency director in 2014 after two years there. Heading the agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, was supposed to be the capstone of a storied career. Through tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mr. Flynn had built a reputation as a brash and outspoken officer with an unusual talent for unraveling terrorist networks, and both his fiercest critics and his outspoken supporters praise his work from those wars. In numerous interviews and speeches over the past year, Mr. Flynn, who did not respond to requests for comment for this article, has maintained that he was forced out as director for refusing to toe the Obama administration’s line that Al Qaeda was in retreat. The claim has made the general something of a cult figure among many Republicans. “D. I. A. has always been a problem child and it remains that way,” said Representative Devin Nunes, the California Republican who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a member of Mr. Trump’s transition team. “Flynn tried to get in there and fix things and he was only given two years until they ran him out because they didn’t like his assessment. ” The congressman added: “They didn’t have an excuse to fire him, so they made it up. Nobody has been able to fix that place. ” But others say he was forced out for a relatively simple reason: He failed to effectively manage a sprawling, largely civilian bureaucracy. At the agency, “Flynn surrounded himself with loyalists. In implementing his vision, he moved at light speed, but he didn’t communicate effectively,” said Douglas H. Wise, deputy director from 2014 until he retired in August. “He didn’t tolerate it well when subordinates didn’t move fast enough,” he said. “As a senior military officer, he expected compliance and didn’t want any pushback. ” Founded in 1961, the Defense Intelligence Agency has long been in the shadow of the Central Intelligence Agency, and with the end of the Cold War it lost its primary mission of collecting and analyzing information about the Soviet military. Strained by a decade of conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, it was performing an uncertain role within the constellation of American spy agencies when Mr. Flynn arrived at headquarters in . The agency’s system of human intelligence collection was perceived as largely broken. The effort to rebuild it was underway when Mr. Flynn took control in 2012, but he made it immediately known that he had a dim view of the agency’s recent performance. During a tense gathering of senior officials at an retreat, he gave the assembled group a taste of his leadership philosophy, according to one person who attended the meeting and insisted on anonymity to discuss classified matters. Mr. Flynn said that the first thing everyone needed to know was that he was always right. His staff would know they were right, he said, when their views melded to his. The room fell silent, as employees processed the lecture from their new boss. Current and former employees said Mr. Flynn had trouble adjusting his style for an organization with a work force that was 80 percent civilian. He was used to a strict military chain of command, and was at times uncomfortable with the that is common among intelligence analysts. Some also described him as a Captain character, paranoid that his staff members were undercutting him and credulous of conspiracy theories. At times, the general also exhibited what a number of officials described as on the larger strategic challenges confronting the nation. The most glaring example came in early March 2014, just after Russia had seized Crimea. American officials were weighing whether to impose sanctions in response, but Mr. Flynn was pushing ahead with plans to travel to Moscow to build on an existing initiative with his Russian counterparts. He also wanted to invite Russian military intelligence officials to Washington to discuss the threat of Islamist militants. His superiors ordered both canceled. By the end of his tenure, he had largely cut out senior staff members from significant relying instead on a small circle of trusted advisers he had come to know during his overseas military deployments. His bosses — Michael G. Vickers, the under secretary of defense for intelligence, and James R. Clapper, the director of national intelligence — came to think that the agency was adrift, and that Mr. Flynn refused to address its biggest problems. “Regrettably, he got engaged in an increasingly bitter and organizationally paralyzing feud with his senior staff when he should have been focused on building the intelligence capabilities” of the agency, said Mr. Vickers, who was Mr. Flynn’s immediate boss at the Pentagon. During his tour in Iraq, he served under Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, running intelligence for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command, whose relentless campaign of raids and airstrikes hollowed out Al Qaeda in Iraq. When General McChrystal went to run the war in Afghanistan in 2009, Mr. Flynn signed on as his intelligence chief. “He wasn’t a staid intelligence officer. He was aggressive. He was about the mission,” said Richard M. Frankel, a former senior F. B. I. official who worked with Mr. Flynn at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “He can have sharp elbows because he is about the mission. ” He burnished his reputation as an intelligence officer — but also for controversy. He a paper, “Fixing Intel,” that offered an early hint of his disdain for the civilian intelligence analysts he would later clash with at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Published by a Washington think tank, it bluntly stated that “the U. S. intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy,” infuriating officials at the D. I. A. and the C. I. A. More problematic from the military’s perspective was Mr. Flynn’s willingness to share intelligence with other countries. He returned to Washington at the end of 2010, and found himself under investigation for sharing sensitive data with Pakistan about the Haqqani network, arguably the most capable faction of the Taliban, and for providing highly classified intelligence to British and Australian forces fighting in Afghanistan. His superiors eventually concluded that he was trying to prod Pakistan to crack down on the Haqqanis (they have yet to do so) and the general remains unapologetic about sharing intelligence with British and Australian forces. “They’re our closest allies! I mean, really, we’re fighting together and I can’t share a single piece of paper?” he said in an interview last year. Around the same time, he was also getting to know Michael A. Ledeen, a controversial writer and former Reagan administration official. The two men connected immediately, sharing a similar worldview and a belief that America was in a world war against Islamist militants allied with Russia, Cuba and North Korea. That worldview is what Mr. Flynn came to be best known for during the presidential campaign, when he argued that the United States faced a singular, overarching threat, and that there was just one accurate way to describe it: “radical Islamic terrorism. ” He has posted on Twitter that fear of Muslims is rational, written that Islamic law is spreading in the United States, and said that Islam itself is more like a political ideology than a religion. The United States, he wrote in “Field of Fight,” a book about radical Islam he with Mr. Ledeen, is “in a world war, but very few people recognize it. ” Mr. Flynn saw the Benghazi attack in September 2012 as just one skirmish in this global war. But it was his initial reaction to the event, immediately seeking evidence of an Iranian role, that many saw as emblematic of a conspiratorial bent. Iran, a Shiite nation, has generally eschewed any alliance with Sunni militants like the ones who attacked the American diplomatic compound. For weeks, he pushed analysts for evidence that the attack might have had a state sponsor — sometimes shouting at them when they didn’t come to the conclusions he wanted. The attack, he told his analysts, was a “black swan” event that required more creative intelligence analysis to decipher. “To ask employees to look for the . 0001 percent chance of something when you have an actual emergency and dead Americans is beyond the pale,” said Joshua Manning, an agency analyst from 2009 to 2013. Beyond Benghazi, American officials said that in time, the general grew angrier at what he saw as the Obama administration’s passivity in dealing with worldwide threats — from Sunni extremist terrorism to Iran. He also saw the C. I. A. an organization he had long disdained, as overly political and too willing to advance the White House’s agenda. In particular, he became convinced that the C. I. A. was refusing to declassify many of the documents found at Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, because they seemed to undercut the administration’s narrative about Qaeda strength at the time Bin Laden was killed. “If they put out what we knew, then the president could’ve not said, in a national election, Al Qaeda’s on the run and we’ve killed Bin Laden,” Mr. Flynn said before the latest election, referring to Mr. Obama’s 2012 bid. “Even today, he talks about Bin Laden as though that was a stroke of genius. I mean, c’mon!” | 1 |
Man uses Trump victory as excuse to call ex-girlfriend 10-11-16 A MAN has decided the US election result is sufficiently insane to justify calling his ex-girlfriend. Martin Bishop woke up yesterday to news of Donald Trump’s election, and thought it was a solid excuse to call his ex, Donna Sheridan, and ask her what she thought. Bishop said, “I tried to call her after Brexit but I just got her answer machine. “ Today I got through though, which has nothing to do with the fact I’ve got a new number. “ I asked her if everything was OK and if she’d seen the election result and she said she had. Then there was a bit of a silence so I asked her if she’d come across that cordless drill I couldn’t find when I moved out. “ She said she hadn’t, so then I asked her if that dipshit barman she was screwing now even knew what a Black and Decker was and then she hung up on me. “ Fucking Trump.” | 0 |
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A private group of technical experts has reviewed meta-data about the Trump Organization’s internet usage and just concluded that the Republican nominee is using a personal email server to surreptitiously communicate from the Trump-email.com domain with a controversial Moscow-based bank, Alfa Bank.
The timing of the Russian communications coincides perfectly with milestones throughout the election (see chart at bottom), and the very high level of secrecy deployed to hide them is going to be hard to explain away for the Trump campaign.
Adding fuel to the building controversy, when researchers contacted Alfa Bank for comment, the Trump Organization quickly shut down the server:
The Times hadn’t yet been in touch with the Trump campaign—Lichtblau spoke with the campaign a week later—but shortly after it reached out to Alfa, the Trump domain name in question seemed to suddenly stop working.
The computer scientists believe there was one logical conclusion to be drawn: The Trump Organization shut down the server after Alfa was told that the Times might expose the connection. Weaver told me the Trump domain was “very sloppily removed.” Or as another of the researchers put it, it looked like “the knee was hit in Moscow, the leg kicked in New York.”
But with their eyes watching, the Trump Organization casually re-connected with Alfa Bank only four days later, on a different server. All of this was captured in the Domain Name System (DNS), which is the internet’s internal directory system. DNS leaves log records all over saying how often website visits happen, and it’s the very same web services which was attacked last week , taking down Twitter, The New York Times and others. DNS is the system that routes our internet requests using names instead of numbers, and it keeps logs with IP address numbers and timestamps.
In this case, the meta-data practically screams to experts, because it shows that there is little other traffic of any other kind by design. As we learned from Edward Snowden, the meta-data of a situation is incomplete, but it can tell you a lot.
The new domain is owned by one of Trump’s hospitality marketing contract companies, which dispels Trump’s blown cover story that the private server is just used for marketing.
Domain registration information also confirmed that the same marketing team works on both Trump-email.com and the new client-contact.com email addresses being used. Furthermore, the world-renowned technical expert Paul Vixie revealed that the Trump Organization went to extra-ordinary lengths to shut out all traffic that isn’t from Alfa Bank.
There is a more sinister reason for creating a private email server that only participates in conversation with one specific party was identified by computing legend Paul Vixie:
Earlier this month, the group of computer scientists passed the logs to Paul Vixie . In the world of DNS experts, there’s no higher authority. Vixie wrote central strands of the DNS code that makes the internet work. After studying the logs, he concluded, “The parties were communicating in a secretive fashion. The operative word is secretive . This is more akin to what criminal syndicates do if they are putting together a project.”
Put differently, the logs suggested that Trump and Alfa had configured something like a digital hotline connecting the two entities, shutting out the rest of the world, and designed to obscure its own existence. Over the summer, the scientists observed the communications trail from a distance.
Ironically, the academics and others started looking for foreign interference in order to protect both campaigns from outside meddling. It appears as if only one of the two campaigns conspired to that end:
The computer scientists posited a logical hypothesis, which they set out to rigorously test: If the Russians were worming their way into the DNC, they might very well be attacking other entities central to the presidential campaign, including Donald Trump’s many servers. “We wanted to help defend both campaigns, because we wanted to preserve the integrity of the election,” says one of the academics, who works at a university that asked him not to speak with reporters because of the sensitive nature of his work.
When researchers contacted Alfa Bank for comment, suddenly the Trump Organization shut down their email domain quickly.
Four days later, the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank resumed communications – and it was the bank who contacted the Republican nominee’s company from Moscow, somehow knowing the new code to interact with the Trump private email server.
This new information shows that after Trump asked Putin to hack America’s election to prejudice them against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in late July, traffic between the campaign and the Russian bank spiked.
In the end, this is yet another matter that the FBI will surely have to investigate.. The question is: will they be fair and release the files from their inquiry in the kind of “act of radical transparency” that Director James Comey imposed on Hillary? | 0 |
Louis T. McFadden
Louis T. McFadden
Louis T. McFadden was a member of the House of Representatives in the twenties and thirties. He was the chair of the House Banking and Currency Committee during the twenties. He used his position in Congress occasionally to crusade against the Federal Reserve. "Mr. Chairman, we have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal reserve banks. The Federal Reserve Board, a Government board, has cheated the Government of the United States out of enough money to pay the national debt. The depredations and the iniquities of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal reserve banks acting together have cost this country enough money to pay the national debt several times over. This evil institution has impoverished and ruined the people of the United States; has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted our Government. It has done this through defects of the law under which it operates, through the maladministration of that law by the Federal Reserve Board and through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it." -- Louis T. McFadden, June 10, 1932
At one point McFadden started impeachment proceedings against the entire board of the federal reserve. Not too surprisingly, there were three attempts on McFadden's life, one shooting and two poisonings, the second of which was cuccessful. Although still officially declared as heart failure, newspapers of the time reported ... "Now that this sterling American patriot has made the Passing, it can be revealed that not long after his public utterance against the encroaching powers of Judah, it became known among his intimates that he had suffered two attacks against his life. The first attack came in the form of two revolver shots fired at him from ambush as he was alighting from a cab in front of one of the Capital hotels. Fortunately both shots missed him, the bullets burying themselves in the structure of the cab.
"He became violently ill after partaking of food at a political banquet at Washington. His life was only saved from what was subsequently announced as a poisoning by the presence of a physician friend at the banquet, who at once procured a stomach pump and subjected the Congressman to emergency treatment."
President John F. Kennedy
President John F. Kennedy
As President, John F. Kennedy understood the predatory nature of private central banking. He understood why Andrew Jackson fought so hard to end the Second Bank of the United States. So Kennedy wrote and signed Executive Order 11110 which ordered the US Treasury to issue a new public currency, the United States Note.
Kennedy's United States Note - Click for larger
Kennedy's United States Notes were not borrowed from the Federal Reserve but created by the US Government and backed by the silver stockpiles held by the US Government. It represented a return to the system of economics the United States had been founded on, and was perfectly legal for Kennedy to do. All told, some four and one half billion dollars went into public circulation, eroding interest payments to the Federal Reserve and loosening their control over the nation. Five months later John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas Texas, and the United States Notes pulled from circulation and destroyed (except for samples held by collectors).
John J. McCloy
John J. McCloy, President of the Chase Manhattan Bank, and President of the World Bank, was named to the Warren Commission, presumably to make certain the banking dimensions behind the assassination were concealed from the public. Kennedy's E.O. 11110 has never been repealed and is still in effect, although no modern President dares to use it. Almost all of the current national debt has been created since 1963.
As we enter the eleventh year of what future history will most certainly describe as World War Three, we need to examine the financial dimensions behind the wars.
Towards the end of World War Two, when it became obvious that the allies were going to win and dictate the post war environment, the major world economic powers met at Bretton Woods, a luxury resort in New Hampshire in July of 1944, and hammered out the Bretton Woods agreement for international finance. The British Pound lost its position as the global trade and reserve currency to the US dollar (part of the price demanded by Roosevelt in exchange for the US entry into the war). Absent the economic advantages of being the world's "go-to" currency, Britain was forced to nationalize the Bank of England in 1946. The Bretton Woods agreement, ratified in 1945, in addition to making the dollar the global reserve and trade currency, obligated the signatory nations to tie their currencies to the dollar. The nations that ratified Bretton Woods did so on two conditions. The first was that the Federal Reserve would refrain from over-printing the dollar as a means to loot real products and produce from other nations in exchange for ink and paper; basically an imperial tax. That assurance was backed up by the second requirement, which was that the US dollar would always be convertible to gold at $35 per ounce.
The Bretton Woods resort, New Hampshire
The Federal Reserve, being a private bank and not answerable to the US Government, did start overprinting paper dollars, and much of the perceived prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s was the result of foreign nations' obligations to accept the paper notes as being worth gold at the rate of $35 an ounce. Then in 1970, France looked at the huge pile of paper notes sitting in their vaults, for which real French products like wine and cheese had been traded, and notified the United States government that they would exercise their option under Bretton Woods to return the paper notes for gold at the $35 per ounce exchange rate. The United States had nowhere near the gold to redeem the paper notes. By 1966, the IMF estimated foreign central banks held $14 billion U.S. dollars, however the United States had only $3.2 billion in gold to redeem those paper notes! So on August 15th, 1971, Richard Nixon "temporarily" suspended the gold convertibility of the US Federal Reserve Notes.
Nixon announces the end of gold convertability
Later termed the "Nixon shock", this move effectively ended Bretton Woods and many global currencies started to delink from the US dollar.
The "Nixon Shock"
Worse, since the United States had collateralized their loans with the nation's gold reserves, it quickly became apparent that the US Government did not in fact have enough gold to cover the outstanding debts. Foreign nations began to get very nervous about their loans to the US and understandably were reluctant to loan any additional money to the United States without some form of collateral. So Richard Nixon started the environmental movement, with the EPA and its various programs such as "wilderness zones", Roadless areas", Heritage rivers", "Wetlands", all of which took vast areas of public lands and made them off limits to the American people who were technically the owners of those lands. But Nixon had little concern for the environment and the real purpose of this land grab under the guise of the environment was to pledge those pristine lands and their vast mineral resources as collateral on the national debt. The plethora of different programs was simply to conceal the true scale of how much American land was being pledged to foreign lenders as collateral on the government's debts; eventually almost 25% of the nation itself. All of this is illegal as the Enclave Clause of the Constitution limits the Federal Government to owning the land under Federal Government buildings and military bases, and that Enclave Clause was written into the Constitution by the Founding Fathers specifically to prevent the Federal Government simply seizing the land belonging to the people to sell off, pledge as collateral, or rent!
click for full size image
With open lands for collateral already in short supply, the US Government embarked on a new program to shore up sagging international demand for the dollar. The United States approached the world's oil producing nations, mostly in the Middle East, and offered them a deal. In exchange for only selling their oil for dollars, the United States would guarantee the military safety of those oil-rich nations. The oil rich nations would agree to spend and invest their US paper dollars inside the United States, in particular in US Treasury Bonds, redeemable through the slave labor of future generations of US taxpayers. The concept was labeled the "petrodollar". In effect, the US, no longer able to back the dollar with gold, was now backing it with oil. Other peoples' oil. And that necessity to keep control over those oil nations to prop up the dollar has shaped America's foreign policy in the region ever since.
But as America's manufacturing and agriculture has declined, the oil producing nations faced a dilemma. Those piles of US Federal Reserve notes were not able to purchase much from the United States because the United States had little (other than real estate) anyone wanted to buy. Europe's cars and aircraft were superior and less costly, while experiments with GMO food crops led to nations refusing to buy US food exports. Israel's constant belligerence against its neighbors caused them to wonder if the US could actually keep their end of the petrodollar arrangement. Oil producing nations started to talk of selling their oil for whatever currency the purchasers chose to use.
Saddam Hussein and the lie of Iraq's nuclear weapons
Saddam Hussein
Iraq, already hostile to the United States following Desert Storm, demanded the right to sell their oil for Euros in 2000 and in 2002, the United Nations agreed to allow it under the "Oil for food" program instituted following Desert Storm. One year later the United States re-invaded Iraq under the lie of Saddam's nuclear weapons, lynched Saddam Hussein, and placed Iraq's oil back on the world market only for US dollars.
The clear US policy shift following 9-11, away from being an impartial broker of peace in the Mideast to one of unquestioned support for Israel's aggressions only further eroded confidence in the Petrodollar deal and even more oil producing nations started openly talking of oil trade for other global currencies.
Gaddafi and the Gold Dinar
Gaddafi
Over in Libya, Muammar Gaddafi had instituted a state-owned central bank and a value based trade currency, the Gold Dinar.
The Gold Dinar
Gaddafi announced that Libya's oil was for sale, but only for the Gold Dinar. Other African nations, seeing the rise of the Gold Dinar and the Euro, even as the US dollar continued its inflation-driven decline, flocked to the new Libyan currency for trade. This move had the potential to seriously undermine the global hegemony of the dollar. French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly went so far as to call Libya a “threat” to the financial security of the world. So, the United States invaded Libya, brutally murdered Qaddafi ( the object lesson of Saddam's lynching not being enough of a message, apparently), imposed a private central bank, and returned Libya's oil output to dollars only. The gold that was to have been made into the Gold Dinars, 144 tons of it, is as of last report, unaccounted for.
UPDATE: Emails surfacing as part of the investigation into Hilary Clinton's use of a private email server for classified information CONFIRM that the real reason for the US invasion of Libya was to destroy the threat of the Gold Dinar becoming a pan-African currency, displacing the dollar!
General Wesley Clark blows the whistle on US plans to conquer the oil-rich Middle East
According to General Wesley Clark, the master plan for the "dollarification" of the world's oil nations included seven targets, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran (Venezuela, which dared to sell their oil to China for the Yuan, is a late addition). What is notable about the original seven nations originally targeted by the US is that none of them are members of the Bank for International Settlements, the private central bankers private central bank, located in Switzerland. This meant that these nations were deciding for themselves how to run their nations' economies, rather than submit to the international private banks.
UPDATE: Emails from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton released as part of the Benghazi investigation confirm that the true motive for the attack on Libya was to control the Libyan oil reserves and to destroy Libya's gold-backed currency.
Now the bankers' gun sights are on Iran, which dares to have a government central bank and sell their oil for whatever currency they choose. The war agenda is, as always, to force Iran's oil to be sold only for US dollars and to force them to accept a privately owned central bank. Malaysia, one of the few remaining nations without a Rothschild central bank, is now being invaded by a force claimed to be "Al Qaeda" and has suffered numerous suspicious losses of its commercial passenger jets.
With the death of President Hugo Chavez, plans to impose a US and banker friendly regime on Venezuela are clearly being implemented.
So, just where is the gold?
Germany's gold bullion. Where is it?
The German government recently asked for the return of some of their gold bullion from the Bank of France and the New York Federal Reserve. France has said it will take 5 years to return Germany's gold. The United States has said they will need 8 years to return Germany's gold. This suggests strongly that the Bank of France and the NY Federal Reserve have used the deposited gold for other purposes, most likely to cover gold futures contracts used to artificially suppress the price of gold to keep investors in the equities markets, and the Central Banks are scrambling to find new gold to cover the shortfall and prevent a gold run. So it is inevitable that suddenly France invades Mali, ostensibly to combat Al Qaeda, with the US joining in. Mali just happens to be one of the world's largest gold producers with gold accounting for 80% of Mali exports. War for the bankers does not get more obvious than that!
Mexico has demanded a physical audit of their gold bullion stored at the Bank of England, and along with Venezuela's vast oil reserves (larger than Saudi Arabia), Venezuela's gold mines are a prize lusted after by all the Central Banks that played fast and loose with other peoples' gold bullion. So we can expect regime change if not outright invasion soon.
Can a bank foreclose on your house if they have provided nothing of real value in the mortgage?
A little remembered footnote in banking history occurred in December 1968. A bank was moving to foreclose on a house, and the homeowner decided to fight the foreclosure in court, arguing that contract law requires two contracting parties to agree to swap two items of value, legally called the "consideration." In the case of First National Bank of Montgomery vs. Jerome Daly , Daly argued that since the bank simply wrote a number in a ledger to create the loaned money out of think air, there was no real value and therefore no legally binding consideration. The lawyers for the bank admitted that this is how the bank works. They create money out of thin air as a ledger or computer entry, which you must repay with your labor. And there was no law in 1968 that specifically gave banks the legal right to do that. Daly argued that because there was no equal consideration, the mortgage was null and void and the attempt to foreclose invalid. The jury agreed! So did Judge Mahoney, who resisted demands to over-rule the jury in favor of the bank, and wrote a simple streightforward decision that stated that there was no question that the mortgage contract was void because the claim that the bank simply made up the money out of thin air was not disputed by the bank itself.
Judge Mahoney was murdered with poison less than six months later, and the lawyer representing Daly was debarred. The decision in favor of Daly was then nullified on procedural grounds and the entire matter forgotten!
You are BRAINWASHED!
You have been raised by a public school system and media that constantly assures you that the reasons for all these wars and assassinations are many and varied. The US claims to bring democracy to the conquered lands (they haven't; the usual result of a US overthrow is the imposition of a dictatorship, such as the 1953 CIA overthrow of Iran's democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh and the imposition of the Shah, or the 1973 CIA overthrow of Chile's democratically elected government of President Salvador Allende , and the imposition of Augusto Pinochet ), or to save a people from a cruel oppressor, revenge for 9-11, or that tired worn-out catch all excuse for invasion, weapons of mass destruction. Assassinations are always passed off as "crazed lone nuts" to obscure the real agenda.
The real agenda is simple. It is enslavement of the people by creation of a false sense of obligation. That obligation is false because the Private Central Banking system, by design, always creates more debt than money with which to pay that debt. Private Central Banking is not science, it is a religion; a set of arbitrary rules created to benefit the priesthood, meaning the owners of the Private Central Bank. The fraud persists, with often lethal results, because the people are tricked into believing that this is the way life is supposed to be and no alternative exists or should be dreamt of. The same was true of two earlier systems of enslavement, Rule by Divine Right and Slavery, both systems built to trick people into obedience, and both now recognized by modern civilizatyion as illegitimate. Now we are entering a time in human history where we will recognize that rule by debt, or rule by Private Central Bankers issuing the public currency as a loan at interest, is equally illegitimate. It only works as long as people allow themselves to believe that this is the way life is supposed to be.
But understand this above all; Private Central Banks do not exist to serve the people, the community, or the nation. Private Central Banks exist to serve their owners, to make them rich beyond the dreams of Midas and all for the cost of ink, paper, and the right bribe to the right official.
Behind all these wars, all these assassinations, the hundred million horrible deaths from all the wars lies a single policy of dictatorship. The private central bankers allow rulers to rule only on the condition that the people of a nation be enslaved to the private central banks. Failing that, said ruler will be killed, and their nation invaded by those other nations enslaved to private central banks.
The so-called "clash of civilizations" we read about on the corporate media is really a war between banking systems, with the private central bankers forcing themselves onto the rest of the world, no matter how many millions must die for it. Indeed the constant hatemongering against Muslims lies in a simple fact. Like the ancient Christians (prior to the Knights Templars private banking system) , Muslims forbid usury, or the lending of money at interest. And that is the reason our government and media insist they must be killed or converted. They refuse to submit to currencies issued at interest. They refuse to be debt slaves.
So off to war your children must go, to spill their blood for the money-junkies' gold. We barely survived the last two world wars. In the nuclear/bioweapon age, are the private central bankers willing to risk incinerating the whole planet just to feed their greed?
Apparently so.
This brings us to the current situation in the Ukraine, Russia, and China.
The European Union had been courting the government of the Ukraine to merge with the EU, and more to the point, entangle their economy with the private-owned European Central Bank. The government of the Ukraine was considering the move, but had made no commitments. Part of their concern lay with the conditions in other EU nations enslaved to the ECB, notably Cyprus, Greece, Spain, and Italy. So they were properly cautious. Then Russia stepped in with a better deal and the Ukraine, exercising the basic choice all consumers have to choose the best product at the best price, dropped the EU and announced they were going to go with Russia's offer. It was at that point that agents provocateurs flooded into the Ukraine, covertly funded by intelligence agency fronts like CANVAS and USAID, stirring up trouble, while the western media proclaimed this was a popular revolution. Snipers shot at people and this violence was blamed on then-President Yanukovich. However a leaked recording of a phone call between the EU's Catherine Ashton and Estonia's Foreign Minister Urmas Paet confirmed the snipers were working for the overthrow plotters, not the Ukrainian government. Urmas Paet has confirmed the authenticity of that phone call.
This is a classic pattern of covert overthrow we have seen many times before. Since the end of WW2, the US has covertly tried to overthrow the governments of 56 nations, succeeding 25 times. Examples include the 1953 overthrow of Iran's elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh and the imposition of the Shah, the 1973 overthrow of Chile's elected government of Salvador Allende and the imposition of the Pinochet dictatorship, and of course, the current overthrow of Ukraine's elected government of Yanukovich and the imposition of the current unelected government, which is already gutting the Ukraine's wealth to hand to the western bankers.
Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa have formed a parallel financial system called BRICS, scheduled to officially launch on January 1, 2015. As of this writing some 80 nations are ready to trade with BRICS in transactions that do not involve the US dollar. Despite US economic warfare against both Russia and China, the Ruble and Yuan are seen as more attractive for international trade and banking than the US dollar, hence the US attempt to fan the Ukraine crisis into war with Russia, and attempts to provoke North Korea as a back door to war with China.
Click for larger image
Flag waving and propaganda aside, all modern wars are wars by and for the private bankers, fought and bled for by third parties unaware of the true reason they are expected to gracefully be killed and crippled for. The process is quite simple. As soon as the Private Central Bank issues its currency as a loan at interest, the public is forced deeper and deeper into debt. When the people are reluctant to borrow any more, that is when the Keynesian economists demand the government borrow more to keep the pyramid scheme working. When both the people and government refuse to borrow any more, that is when wars are started, to plunge everyone even deeper into debt to pay for the war, then after the war to borrow more to rebuild. When the war is over, the people have about the same as they did before the war, except the graveyards are far larger and everyone is in debt to the private bankers for the next century. This is why Brown Brothers Harriman in New York was funding the rise of Adolf Hitler.
As long as Private Central Banks are allowed to exist, inevitably as the night follows day there will be poverty, hopelessness, and millions of deaths in endless World Wars, until the Earth itself is sacrificed in flames to Mammon.
The path to true peace on Earth lies in the abolishment of all private central banking everywhere, and a return to the state-issued value-based currencies that allow nations and people to become prosperous. "Banks do not have an obligation to promote the public good." -- Alexander Dielius, CEO, Germany, Austrian, Eastern Europe Goldman Sachs, 2010 "I am just a banker doing God's work." -- Lloyd Blankfein, CEO, Goldman Sachs, 2009 | 0 |
November 9, 2016 Jewish Home touts Trump victory as sign of change
Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked (Jewish Home) responded Wednesday morning to the news of Donald Trump’s election victory over Hillary Clinton, congratulating the new President-elect and offering his thanks to the former Secretary of State.“I congratulate Trump, and all the American people. We thank Hillary Clinton for her friendship with Israel,” said Bennett in a statementShaked also congratulated Trump, praising him as a “true friend of Israel.”Bennett pledged to strengthen the “special relationship” between Israel and the US, adding that Trump’s win offers the chance to scrap a central tenet of American foreign policy in the Middle East for five decades – Palestinian statehood, which was conspicuously absent from the Republican platform.“We are sure the special relationship between the United States and Israel will continue, and even grow stronger.” | 0 |
Le Royaume-Uni reprend la formation des jihadistes en Syrie Réseau Voltaire | 1er novembre 2016 Español Deutsch Le ministre britannique de la Défense, Michael Fallon, a annoncé que son pays allait reformer l’Armée syrienne libre. Son gouvernement reprend ainsi le programme de formation de combattants dits « modérés » qui avait été lancé par le président Obama en 2014.
L’Armée syrienne libre a été créée par la France en 2011 autour du chef libyen d’al-Qaïda Abdelhakim Belhaj. L’opération avait été présentée comme une aide à des déserteurs syriens conduits par le colonel Riad el-Asaad. Progressivement les membres de l’ASL ont rejoint al-Qaïda. En 2016, l’étiquette de l’ASL a été ressuscitée par la Turquie qui en a fait usage pour ses milices turkmènes.
Les États-Unis avaient quant à eux dépensé un demi milliard de dollars pour la formation de nouveaux « combattants rebelles ». Cependant, la totalité des personnes formées a aujourd’hui rejoint al-Qaïda.
Il donc fort probable que le nouveau programme britannique masque une nouvelle aide à al-Qaïda. | 0 |
Muere un informático al caerse de la nube POR SUERTE, EN LA NUBE HAY UNA COPIA DE SEGURIDAD DEL FALLECIDO ordenadores
Un informático ha muerto tras precipitarse de la nube. La tragedia se produjo esta mañana mientras la víctima se encontraba navegando por el ciberespacio. Según los testigos, el informático se tropezó con un archivo mal adjuntado y, aunque trató de agarrarse a una barra de herramientas, acabó dándose en el suelo con todo el disco duro.
Los expertos en seguridad cibernética advierten de los peligros del WiFi a la hora de subir a hacer trabajos de mantenimiento. “Es importante subir con cable, el operario perdió el dominio de la situación y en un nanosegundo la nube ya lo estaba descargando”, declaran. A pesar de los intentos que se hicieron para reiniciarlo, su sistema operativo ya había dejado de funcionar. “Le hicieron un escáner pero había perdido al menos 50 gigas de memoria”, continúan los especialistas. “Tenía toda la base de datos esparcida por el suelo”, añaden.
Los familiares del fallecido todavía no sé explican qué ha podido pasar: “Tenía mucha caché, no sabemos cómo se ha podido caer”, lamentan. La autopsia ha descartado que la víctima consumiera LCD o cualquier otra sustancia que le restara reflejos. Afortunadamente, los parientes tenían guardada una copia de seguridad y confían en poder recuperarlo. “Con el golpe se quedó comprimido como un zip, pero creemos que se podrá extraer entero”, aseguran.
La lluvia de informáticos que caen de la nube preocupa mucho a las autoridades y los gobiernos ya trabajan juntos para acabar con esta lacra. “Pondremos otra red debajo de la nube, esta vez más grande y consistente. Así reforzaremos la seguridad y evitaremos muchas muertes”, explicaron en el último Mobile World Congress. | 0 |
California Governor Jerry Brown told Adam Nagourney of the New York Times in an interview published on Tuesday that he does not use the word “resistance” to describe his opposition to President Donald Trump, and finds it inappropriate. [“I don’t use the term resistance … That was a term I associate with the French underground and people who risked their lives. So I don’t know that that’s a fair, apt metaphor for the latest contretemps over policy,” Brown told Nagourney. Nagourney’s article explores the efforts of Democratic politicians in California — who dominate the state’s politics — to lead the nationwide opposition to the Trump administration. The question of how, exactly, to conduct that opposition is one that divides the state party, and which is already playing into the election to succeed Brown as governor in 2018. While some candidates, and the state legislature, are pushing for more aggressive confrontations, Nagourney notes, “a more pragmatic dynamic is emerging for Democrats who are more settled in office” and need Trump’s “cooperation. ” He mentions lobbying by state and local officials for a share of Trump’s proposed spending on infrastructure projects. An important example that escaped Nagourney’s attention is California’s reliance on the Trump administration to provide emergency relief. Already, the state has requested aid from the federal government four times since Trump took office, as it wrestles with the damage of heavy winter rains, snow and flooding. Each time, Trump has granted the aid. Democrats — not just in California — have embraced the term “resistance. ” Jewish groups are even calling themselves the “Jewish resistance,” even though the original Jewish Resistance Movement was a militia. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. | 1 |
Bitcoin Soars As China Launches Crackdown On Wealth-Management Products Oct 26, 2016 3:36 PM 0 SHARES
After trading in a tight range for much of the summer, coiled within a $100 range around the mid-$500s, over the past several weeks bitcoin has once again started to push higher, closely tracking the decline in the Chinese Yuan as shown below.
However, the most recent burst in bitcoin activity, which sent it surging by over $20 overnight, has little to do with any moves in the official Chinese currency, which recently rebounded modestly tracking the recent dip in the dollar, and is likely attributable to a long overdue crackdown on China's Wealth-management products, a key component of China’s "shadow banking" system.
As Bloomberg reported overnight , China’s central bank is finally conducting a trial monitoring of banks’ off-balance-sheet wealth-management products under its macro-prudential assessment system. A question one should ask perhaps is why the $1.9 trillion in asset locked up with WMPs had so far been exempt from regulatory supervision.
Just as notable, going forward the WMPs will be included in calculating broad-based credit, something we discussed last week when we showed just how vastly China is undercounting its broadest credit aggregate, Total Social Financing by ignoring shadow debt . Currently, the products aren’t included in the assessment framework, however it’s not clear when or if the People’s Bank of China will add them, Bloomberg added.
Citigroup estimated that 13 trillion yuan ($1.9 trillion) of the products, which are a key building block in China’s shadow-banking system, could be covered. Other banks' estimates are even bigger.
No matter the size, the extra scrutiny will certainly cool growth of the unregulated products, as China tries to rein in financial risks that could tank the economy. Adding the products to the central bank’s calculations could help to emphasize requirements for lenders to limit dangers and maintain sufficient capital. A change would mean regulators would be may be better able to “control the pace of broad-based credit supply," Judy Zhang, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Citigroup, said in a note. WMP issuance and yields may shrink as lenders pass on extra costs to investors, she said.
As Bank of America explained overnight, in late 2015, PBoC officially introduced its MPA framework, which expanded its focus from loans to credit in a broader sense, covering not only loans but also banks’ bond investments, equity rights and other investments, financial assets bought with re-sale agreement, and deposits with non-deposit-taking financial institutions. The MPA can make it more difficult for banks to adjust on-balance sheet assets to circumvent government’s credit control. The latest move adds banks’ off-balance sheet WMPs, i.e. those without a principal guarantee, to the mix. This, in theory, should make it more difficult for banks to move assets off balance sheet .
Chinese households, companies and banks held a record 26.3 trillion yuan of wealth-management products as of June 30 and the China Banking Regulatory Commission has been tightening rules on WMPs since late 2014. Most of the products are non-principal guaranteed, which means they reside off banks’ balance sheets.
The implications for th economy can be significant:
The cornerstone of PBoC’s MPA is capital adequacy, in-line with Basel III. So it’s possible that in the long term, banks may be required to provide capital for at least some of its off-balance sheet assets, including the WMPs. As of Jun, total balance of bank WMPs reached Rmb26.3tr. Without considering future growth, the additional amount under the MPA would be some Rmb15.5tr, after deducting Rmb6.1tr products with guarantees (already on banks’ balance sheet) and Rmb4.7tr of cash and deposits. This represents about 7% of banks’ on-balance sheet assets as of June (Rmb217tr). More important, we should view the latest development in the broad context of policy tightening over shadow banking activities since early this year (related reports linked in the sidebar).
However, the most immediate practical consideration from the increased regulatory supervision of the $1.9 trillion in related product is that these funds, many of which are of highly suspect origins, will seek to shift away from the heightened scrutiny and find alternative venues. Which may explain the latest jump in bitcoin as a modest portion of the funds locked up wealth-management products may have found itself into the digital currency, promptly sending it higher by nearly 5%. Should the crackdown on WMPs persist, it may be just the catalyst to push bitcoin above its recent multi-year highs just why of $800 hit earlier this summer. | 0 |
Don Buchla, a pioneer and maverick of electronic music who had a lifelong fascination with the ways that humans, technology and sounds interact, died on Wednesday at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 79. His death was confirmed by his son, Ezra, who said the cause was complications of cancer. Mr. Buchla was an instrument builder, musician and composer. He conceived his instruments, including a modular synthesizer, as tools for creating previously unheard sounds and gave them names like the Music Easel, Thunder or simply the Buchla Box. His inventions were prized for the flexibility and richness of the sounds they produced and the possibilities they suggested. Mr. Buchla disliked the term “synthesizer,” which suggested to him a synthetic imitation of existing sounds. He was best known for the many devices he designed for his own company, Buchla Associates. But in a career, he also helped build (and sometimes ran) the Grateful Dead’s sound system in the 1960s, worked on NASA projects and devised early transistorized hearing aids and navigation devices for the blind. At least one sound from a Buchla instrument has been heard worldwide: the “pop and pour” sound created by the composer Suzanne Ciani and used in countless advertisements. In the 1960s, Mr. Buchla’s instruments represented what became known as the West Coast philosophy of electronic music: more experimental and less commercial, breaking away from tradition and virtuosity. “I always figured that if I made something that was too popular, that I was doing something wrong and had best move on,” Mr. Buchla told Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco, the authors of “Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer” (2002). “And I’ve always enjoyed being on the edge. ” In the early ’60s, the Robert Moog, who died in 2005, and Mr. Buchla arrived independently at the idea of the modular synthesizer: an instrument assembled from various modules that controlled one another’s voltages to generate and shape sounds. Voltages could control pitch, volume, attack, timbre, speed and other parameters, interacting in complex ways. Mr. Buchla began designing his first instrument in 1963, but it was not completed until 1965. The first Moog prototype was unveiled in 1964. On the East Coast, Mr. Moog built synthesizers that could be played from a keyboard, a configuration that working musicians found familiar and practical. Mr. Buchla, in San Francisco, wanted instruments that were not necessarily tied to Western scales or existing keyboard techniques. To encourage unconventional thinking, his early instruments deliberately omitted a keyboard. “A keyboard is dictatorial,” he said. “When you’ve got a keyboard, it’s hard to play anything but keyboard music. ” While the modules of Moog synthesizers had straightforward names out of electrical engineering — oscillators to generate tones, filters to modify them — Mr. Buchla’s instruments had modules with more colorful names, like Multiple Arbitrary Function Generator, Quad Dynamics Manager and, for his noise generator, Source of Uncertainty. “I have always been outside, and I’ve chosen to remain there,” he said in a 1983 interview with Polyphony magazine. “I’ve been an experimentalist since really early childhood. ” Mr. Buchla was born in South Gate, Calif. on April 17, 1937, and grew up in that state and in New Jersey. He studied piano and, discovering a knack for electronics, began building radio sets. He studied astronomy, music and physiology at the University of California, Berkeley, and graduated as a physics major in 1959. While at Berkeley, where he stayed for postgraduate study, he worked on NASA projects, including controls for the Gemini space capsule. He also developed a navigational aid for the blind for RCA and the Veterans Administration in the early 1960s. And he made music, building string instruments and sound sculptures. His composition “Cicada Music” (1963) calls for “approximately 2, 500 performers. ” Mr. Buchla grew interested in musique concrète, an experimental technique using recording tape to manipulate sounds, and worked at the San Francisco Tape Music Center as both a composer and a technician. In 1965, with $500 from a Rockefeller Foundation grant made to the Tape Music Center, the composers Morton Subotnick and Ramon Sender commissioned Mr. Buchla to build his first instrument, the original Buchla Box. It included a module that would transform both and popular music. Called a sequencer, it vastly expanded the concept and functionality of a tape loop by generating and repeating a chosen series of voltages, enabling it to control a recurring melody, a rhythm track or other musical elements. It would become an essential tool of electronic dance music. Mr. Subotnick used a Buchla Series 100 Modular Electronic Music System to create “Silver Apples of the Moon,” a 1968 album commissioned by Nonesuch Records. The composer Vladimir Ussachevsky ordered three for the studios of the Electronic Music Center (now the Computer Music Center at Columbia University). That order led Mr. Buchla to start his instrument factory in a Berkeley storefront so small that the instruments were often assembled out on the sidewalk. The Buchla Box also supplied sound for the writer Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests, the freewheeling multimedia happenings at which attendees, including Mr. Buchla, used LSD. Mr. Buchla was at the electronic controls for sound and visuals at the Trips Festival in San Francisco in 1966, a pinnacle of the psychedelic era. In his book “The Electric Acid Test” (1968) Tom Wolfe wrote about the “Buchla electronic music machine screaming like a logical lunatic. ” After building part of the Grateful Dead’s sound system in the 1960s, he sometimes mixed the band’s live shows, adding electronic sounds from his Buchla Box. CBS licensed Mr. Buchla’s designs in 1969 for a division it owned at the time, but the partnership did not last Mr. Buchla’s instruments were not geared toward a mass market. He returned to developing and manufacturing instruments on his own. As the 1970s began, he saw possibilities in minicomputers, inventing hybrid electronic instruments, beginning with his 200 series Electronic Music Box. Mr. Buchla was the technical director, from 1970 to 1971, at the California Institute of the Arts, designing both musical equipment and computer languages for music composition. As technical director of the Electric Symphony during that period, he used electronics to capture and extend the sounds of orchestral instruments. He introduced his portable, programmable Music Easel in 1973 and started the Electric Weasel Ensemble, a quintet of Music Easel players. He also built electronic music studios for educational institutions, including Stony Brook University on Long Island and the Norwegian Center for Electronic Music in Oslo. By the end of the 1970s, he had invented a keyboard instrument, the Touché, and an electronic cello interface. His 1982 Buchla 400 Series included a video display. Mr. Buchla was a consultant to the contemporary music organization Ircam (Institute for Research and Coordination in ) in France, and he received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship to design instruments and write music for a electronic orchestra. During the 1990s, he turned to designing MIDI controllers, alternatives to keyboards that send signals from a physical performance to a synthesizer. One controller, the Thunder, had 50 plates that responded to contact, pressure and location another, the Lightning, had wands responding to motion and gesture. And the Marimba Lumina, played with mallets, responded to velocity, position and contact each of its four mallets could be assigned its own sound. Mr. Buchla consulted for other instrument companies, including Oberheim, for which he designed the 1995 Oberheim and Moog, which manufactured his 2002 PianoBar, which employed sensors placed on a piano’s keys and pedals to translate a pianist’s performance into MIDI signals. As the 21st century began, there was a surge of interest in modular analog synthesizers — a backlash against predictable, sterile digital sounds. Mr. Buchla revisited his 200 series from the 1970s, updating it as the 200e. Yet his business ran into financial problems, and in 2012, as Mr. Buchla struggled with cancer, he sold the company to Audio Supermarket, which changed its name to Buchla Electronic Musical Instruments and made Mr. Buchla its chief technical officer, only to fire him in 2013. Mr. Buchla had a stroke in 2014. In 2015, he sued Buchla Electronic Musical Instruments to regain control of the company, contending that he had not been fully paid for the sale, that he was terminated without good cause and that the company had failed to “use reasonable business efforts to reach sales targets. ” The case went to arbitration in July 2015 and reached a confidential resolution this year. Besides his son, who is also a musician, Mr. Buchla is survived by his wife, Bonnel two daughters, Jeannine Serbanich and Erin Buchla and two grandchildren. | 1 |
U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers arrested 113 criminal illegal aliens in New Jersey this week during a “enforcement surge. ”[Officers targeted criminal aliens throughout the state during an operation from June 5 to 9. Officials reported 93 of the illegal aliens arrested had criminal convictions and 87 percent of those arrested had felony convictions, according to information obtained by Breitbart Texas from ICE officials. “The continued results of our Fugitive Operations officers and their law enforcement partners underscore ICE’s ongoing and steady commitment to public safety,” Newark ERO Field Director John Tsoukaris said in a written statement. “As part of this operation, we continue focus on the arrest of individuals who are criminal and are a threat to public safety and national security. Because of the tireless efforts of these professional officers, there are 113 fewer criminals in our communities,” he added. The criminal aliens nabbed ranged in ages between and . The crimes committed by these individuals included convictions for sexual offenses and offenses against children, including sexual assault on a minor, sexual exploitation of a minor, sex offense against a and child abuse. Other crimes against the person included aggravated assault, threats to kill, domestic violence and battery. Some of the more egregious criminal aliens included: The aliens arrested also had priors for theft crimes, including theft by the use of weapons or force — robbery, burglary, larceny, illegal use of credit cards, fraud, and theft of U. S. government property. Other convictions included: possession of, or distribution of narcotics, trespassing, damage to property, driving under the influence, possession of a weapon, and illegal reentry, officials reported. The foreign nationals were from the following of countries: Bangladesh, Central African Republic, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, India, Iraq, Ireland, Jamaica, Jordan, Korea, Latvia, Liberia, Mexico, Morocco, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Peru, Poland, Slovakia, Trinidad and Uruguay. The New Jersey Field Office for ICE, the New Jersey State Parole Office, and ICE Homeland Security Investigations assisted ICE ERO agents in arresting these criminal aliens. “U. S. Customs and Border Protection is extremely proud to have assisted in this operation,” said Leon Hayward, acting director of the New York Field Office. “It is through collaborative efforts, such as the one leading to today’s arrests, that law enforcement agencies can combat illegal acts and apprehend criminals who pose a threat to the Homeland. ” A statement obtained from ICE by Breitbart Texas said that the agency is focusing on “smart, effective immigration enforcement that targets serious criminal aliens who present the greatest risk to the security of our communities, such as those charged with or convicted of homicide, rape, robbery, kidnapping, major drug offenses and threats to national security. ” ICE officials reported a near 40 percent increase in the numbers of criminal aliens arrested during Presidential Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. ERO officers have removed many violent offenders off the street, including those who were under ICE detainers but were released. On June 1, Breitbart Texas reported that officials with the New York City Department of Corrections (NYCDOC) released Andres Flores Lopez from jail after he served time for a misdemeanor sexual offense. ICE ERO officers issued a detainer requesting authorities to detain him. In spite of giving the notice six months in advance, NYCDOC jail officials released the Mexican national who had two sexual abuse convictions, and they did so without notifying ICE. Following his release by local authorities, ICE officials issued a notice for the convicted sex offender to appear before an immigration judge for removal proceedings. When Flores Lopez failed to show up for his scheduled hearing, ERO officers tracked him down and arrested him in late May. Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook. | 1 |
shorty Dispatches from Eric Zuesse
O n November 1st, The Intercept headlined “HERE’S THE PROBLEM WITH THE STORY CONNECTING RUSSIA TO DONALD TRUMP’S EMAIL SERVER” , and the reporting team of Sam Biddle, Lee Fang, Micah Lee, and Morgan Marquis-Boire, revealed that: “Slate’s Franklin Foer published a story that’s been circulating through the dark web and various newsrooms since summertime, an enormous, eyebrow-raising claim that Donald Trump uses a secret server to communicate with Russia. That claim resulted in an explosive night of Twitter confusion and misinformation. The gist of the Slate article is dramatic — incredible, even: Cybersecurity researchers found that the Trump Organization used a secret box configured to communicate exclusively with Alfa Bank, Russia’s largest commercial bank. This is a story that any reporter in our election cycle would drool over, and drool Foer did.”
The Intercept team concluded their detailed analysis of the evidence by saying: Franklin Foer is an American warmonger and p.r. agent, a Democrat, and former editor of The [scurrilous Neocon] New Republic. Foer was a 2012 Bernard L. Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation. “Could it be that Donald Trump used one of his shoddy empire’s spam marketing machines, one with his last name built right into the domain name, to secretly collaborate with a Moscow bank? Sure. At this moment, there’s literally no way to disprove that. But there’s also literally no way to prove it, and such a grand claim carries a high burden of proof. Without more evidence it would be safer (and saner) to assume that this is exactly what it looks like: A company that Trump has used since 2007 to outsource his hotel spam is doing exactly that. Otherwise, we’re all making the exact same speculation about the unknown that’s caused untold millions of voters to believe Hillary’s deleted emails might have contained Benghazi cover-up PDFs. Given equal evidence for both, go with the less wacky story.”
However, they failed to dig deeper to explain what could have motivated this smear of Trump: was it just sloppiness on the part of Slate, and of Foer? Hardly — it was anything but unintentional: A core part of the Democratic Party’s campaign for Hillary Clinton consists of her claim that Donald Trump is secretly a Russian agent. This is an updated version of the Republican Joseph R. McCarthy’s campaign to “root communists out of the federal government,” and of the John Birch Society’s accusation even against the Republican President Dwight Eisenhower that, “With regard to … Eisenhower, it is difficult to avoid raising the question of deliberate treason.”
Neoconservatives — in both Parties — are the heirs of the Republican Party’s hard-right, which now, even decades after the 1991 end of communism and the Soviet Union, hate Russia above all of their other passions. Neoconservatism has emerged as today’s Republican Party’s Establishment, and (like with the Democratic Party’s original neocon, U.S. Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, the “Senator from Boeing”) they’ve always viewed Russia to be America’s chief enemy, and they have favored the overthrow of any nation’s leader who is friendly toward Russia, such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Viktor Yanukovych, and Bashar al-Assad. Hatred and demonization of Russia is the common core of neoconservatism — the post-Cold-War extension of Joseph R. McCarthy and the John Birch Society. Neoconservatives — in both Parties — are the heirs of the Republican Party’s hard-right, which now, even decades after the 1991 end of communism and the Soviet Union, hate Russia above all of their other passions.
Both Slate and especially Foer have long pedigrees as Democratic Party neoconservatives — champions of U.S. invasions, otherwise called PR agents (‘journalists’) promoting the products and services that a few giant and exclusive military corporations such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Dyncorp, and the Carlyle Group, offer to the U.S. federal government. I’ll deal here only with Foer, not with his latest employer (in a string, all of which are neocon Democratic ‘news’ media). Foer wrote in The New York Times , on 10 October 2004, against ‘isolationist’ Republicans, who regretted having supported George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, and he headlined about them there, “Once Again, America First” , equating non -neoconservative Republicans with, essentially, the pro-fascist isolationists of the 1930s. He concluded that they would come to regret their regret: “Conservatives could soon find themselves retracing Buckley’s steps, wrestling all over again with their isolationist instincts.” That’s how far-right Franklin Foer is: he’s to the right of those Republicans. .. On 7 June 2004, Foer, in a tediously long, badly written and argued, article in New York Magazine , “The Source of the Trouble” , described the downfall of The New York Times’s leading stenographer for George W. Bush’s lies to invade Iraq, their reporter Judith Miller. He closed by concluding that “the source of the trouble” was that Miller was simply too earnest and tried too hard — not that she was a stenographer to power: .. “People like Miller, with her outsize journalistic temperament of ambition, obsession, and competitive fervor, relying on people like Ahmad Chalabi, with his smooth, affable exterior retailing false information for his own motives, for the benefit of people reading a newspaper, trying to get at the truth of what’s what. ” .. (She was anything but “trying to get at the truth of what’s what.” She was the opposite: a mere stenographer to George W. Bush and to the Administration’s chosen mouthpieces, such as the anti-Saddam exiled Iraqi Ahmad Chalaby.) O n 20 December 2004, when the question of whether to bomb Iran was being debated by neoconservatives, Foer, who then was the Editor of the leading Democratic Party neoconservative magazine, The New Republic , headlined in his magazine, “Identity Crisis: Neocon v. Neocon on Iran” , and he introduced a supposed non-neocon from the supposedly non-neocon Brookings Institution, Kenneth Pollack, to comment upon the conflict among ( the other Party’s ) neocons: “In part, the lack of neocon consensus [on whether to, as John McCain was to so poetically put it, ‘Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran’ ] can be attributed to the nature of the problem. Nobody — not the Council on Foreign Relations, not John Kerry’s brain trust — has designed a plausible policy to walk Iran back from the nuclear brink. Or, as Kenneth M. Pollack concludes in his new book, The Persian Puzzle, this is a ‘problem from Hell’ with no good solution.” But, actually, both Pollack and Brookings are Democratic Party neocons themselves; and among the leading proponents of invading Iraq had been not only Pollack but Brookings’s Michael O’Hanlon . Brookings had no prominent opponent of invading Iraq. (Brookings has a long history of neoconservatism , and routinely leads the Democratic Party’s contingent of neocon thinking, even urging a Democratic administration to have its stooge-regimes violate international laws .) The real reason why neocons (being the heirs of the far-right extremists’ Cold-War demonization of Russia, even after communism is gone) wanted to conquer both Iraq and Iran, was that both countries’ leaders were friendly towards Russia, and were opposed by the Saud family who own Saudi Arabia, which family quietly worked not only with the U.S. government but with Israel’s government, against both Iraq and Iran, as well as against Syria — those three nations (Iraq, Iran, and Syria) all being friendly toward Russia, which both the Saudi aristocracy, and not only the U.S. aristocracy, hate. It’s not just the conservative ‘news’ media that are neoconservative now. The so-called ‘liberal’ media are so neoconservative that, for example, Salon can condemn Donald Trump for his having condemned Hillary and Obama’s bombing of Libya. Salon condemned Trump’s having said “We would be so much better off if Qaddafi were in charge right now” — as if Trump weren’t correct, and as if what happened after our overthrow and killing of Qaddafi weren’t far worse for both Libyans and the world than what now exists in Libya. (But, of course, for Lockheed Martin etc., it is far better). CBS News and Mother Jones condemned the Trilateralist Joseph Nye for having veered temporarily away from his normal neoconservatism. Then, Nye wrote in the neocon Huffington Post saying that David Corn of Mother Jones and Franklin Foer of The New Republic had misrepresented what he had said, and that he was actually a good neocon after all. Nye closed: “In any case, I have never supported Gaddafi and am on record wishing him gone, and also on record supporting Obama’s actions in recent weeks. We now know that Gaddafi’s departure is the only change that will work in Libya.” Sure, it did. Oh, really? It’s Trump who is crazy here? More recently, Foer headlined at Slate, “Putin’s Puppet: If the Russian president could design a candidate to undermine American interests — and advance his own — he’d look a lot like Donald Trump.” Foer proceeded to present the view of Trump that subsequently became parroted by the Hillary Clinton campaign (that Trump=traitor). Wikipedia has a 450-person ”List of Republicans opposing Donald Trump presidential campaign, 2016″ , and it’s almost entirely comprised of well-known neoconservatives — the farthest-right of all Republicans, the people closest to Joseph R. McCarthy and the John Birch Society. Foer cited many neoconservative sources that are not commonly thought of as Republican, such as Buzzfeed; and he even had the gall to blame the Russian government for having made public its best evidence behind its charge (which was true ) that the overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 was no authentic ‘democratic revolution’ such as the U.S. government and its ‘news’ media said, but was instead a very bloody U.S. coup d’etat in Ukraine , which was organized from the U.S. Embassy there, starting by no later than 1 March 2013 , a year beforehand. Foer wrote: “The Russians have made an art of publicizing the material they have filched to injure their adversaries. The locus classicus of this method was a recording of a blunt call between State Department official Toria [that’s actually ‘Victoria’] Nuland [a close friend of both Hillary Clinton and Dick Cheney] and the American ambassador to Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt. The Russians allegedly planted the recording on YouTube and then tweeted a link to it — and from there it became international news. Though they never claimed credit for the leak, few doubted the White House’s contention that Russia was the source.” To a neoconservative, even defensive measures (such as Russia’s there exposing the lies that America uses to ‘justify’ economic sanctions and other hostile acts against Russia) — indeed, anything that Russia does against America’s aggressions against Russia, and against Russia’s allies (such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad, and Viktor Yanukovych) — anything that Russia does, is somehow evil and blameworthy. And, of course, America’s aggressions are not. The U.S. government and its neocon propagandists are outraged that some people are trying to expose — instead of to spread — their lies. The American government isn’t yet neocon enough, in the view of such liars. About the author =SUBSCRIBE TODAY! NOTHING TO LOSE, EVERYTHING TO GAIN.= free • safe • invaluable If you appreciate our articles, do the right thing and let us know by subscribing. It’s free and it implies no obligation to you— ever. We just want to have a way to reach our most loyal readers on important occasions when their input is necessary. In return you get our email newsletter compiling the best of The Greanville Post several times a week. NOTE: ALL IMAGE CAPTIONS, PULL QUOTES AND COMMENTARY BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS Print this post if you want. Share This: | 0 |
President Putin Asks US To Stop Provoking Russia
Putin expressed hopes that a new US president will work with him to rectify the dangerous deterioration in relations between the US and Russia. Obviously, this cannot happen if the new president is Hillary.
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/10/30/president-putin-valdai-speech-obama-legacy-can-be-rectified.html
The post President Putin Asks US To Stop Provoking Russia appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org . | 0 |
TRUNEWS 10/27/16 Rob Kirby | Unspoken Secrets October 27, 2016 Will the media ever publicize the DARKEST secrets already released by Julian Assange? Today on TRUNEWS, Rick Wiles details the latest election defining revelations, as WikiLeaks exposes Bill’s generational ‘get rich’ scheme, run through the Clinton Foundation, and the elite's preparations for World War as an October Surprise. Rick also speaks with Rob Kirby, the financial analyst behind Kirby Analytics, regarding the Deutsche Bank’s magical earnings report, and the state of the largest economic bubble in human history.
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WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS NATO calls for more troops for face-off against Putin Largest military build-up on Russia's borders since Cold War Published: 11 mins ago
(Haaretz) NATO will press allies on Wednesday to contribute to its biggest military build-up on Russia’s borders since the Cold War as the alliance prepares for a protracted quarrel with Moscow.
With Russia’s aircraft carrier heading to Syria in a show of force along Europe’s shores, alliance defense ministers aim to make good on a July promise by NATO leaders to send forces to the Baltic states and eastern Poland from early next year.
The United States hopes for binding commitments from Europe to fill four battle groups of some 4,000 troops, part of NATO’s response to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and concern it could try a similar tactic in Europe’s ex-Soviet states. | 0 |
Scientists on Friday debunked a widely circulated news media report suggesting that recent global temperatures were unrelated to climate change. The report, which first appeared in The Mail on Sunday and was summarized in Breitbart News, the opinion and news site, cited incomplete data and drew incorrect conclusions, the scientists said. Federal and international agencies have said that 2016 will likely be the hottest year on record, eclipsing the record set last year. In its report, The Mail on Sunday cited a recent decline in temperatures over land since the weather phenomenon known as El Niño ended this year, and said that El Niño, and not climate change, was responsible for the record heat. But scientists said that while the recent El Niño did contribute to the record warmth, climate change played a major role, too. “Nobody said the record temperatures were exclusively the result of climate change,” said Mike Halpert, the deputy director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center. Deke Arndt, the chief of the climate monitoring branch at the NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, said that the warming trend was quite clear, and that the impact of El Niño was in addition to what were already higher temperatures. “You can have both climate change and a goose from El Niño,” he said. In an El Niño, water temperatures increase in the eastern equatorial Pacific, affecting air temperatures and weather worldwide. Sea surface temperatures have declined since their peak earlier this year, and now the opposite condition — La Niña, with water temperatures lower than normal — prevails. Scientists are not surprised that some global temperatures are falling and expect that temperatures next year will be below those of the past two years because of La Niña. “But it’s still likely to be quite a bit warmer than average,” Mr. Halpert said. Scientists said the news media reports were also faulty in that they cited only temperatures over land, which account for about 30 percent of Earth’s surface. Temperatures over land are much more variable than those over water because land stores relatively little heat. “If you’re going to be making assessments,” Dr. Arndt said, “you need to be looking at data. ” Global data show a slower decline in temperatures than data, scientists said. The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology posted about the Breitbart News report on Twitter on Thursday. The committee’s Republican chairman, Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, has accused the Obama administration of having a “suspect climate agenda. ” The House committee’s Twitter post drew sharp rebukes from scientists and others, including Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who wrote on Twitter referring to an academic expert cited in the article. The Mail on Sunday report, which was written by David Rose, was also strongly disputed online. One blogger headlined a post on the subject: “How Stupid Does David Rose Think You Are?” | 1 |
New Leaked Clinton Emails Came from the Devices of Anthony Weiner 6 shares by Dean Daniels / October 28, 2016 / POLITICS /
On Friday, the FBI announced an investigation into newly leaked emails linked to Hillary Clinton. In a surprising twist, the new leaked emails from the private email server were discovered after the F.B.I. confiscated electronic devices belonging to top aide Huma Abedin, her controversial and perverted husband, Anthony Weiner.
Officially, the federal law enforcement agents are opening an investigation into Weiner texting a 15-year-old in North Carolina. And according to Director Comey, the F.B.I. were taking steps to “determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.”
Shortly after the announcement, Donald Trump utilized the situation to advantage and running theme of Clinton’s corruption at a rally in New Hampshire. Supporters nearly cheered in complete unison: “lock her up.”
“Hillary Clinton’s corruption is on a scale we have never seen before. We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office,” said Trump to the roaring crowd.
“I have great respect for the fact that the F.B.I. and the D.O.J. are now willing to have the courage to right the horrible mistake that they made,” Mr. Trump said, referring also to the Department of Justice. “This was a grave miscarriage of justice that the American people fully understand. It is everybody’s hope that it is about to be corrected.”
“The F.B.I.’s decision to reopen their criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s secret email server just 11 days before the election shows how serious this discovery must be,” Reince Priebus, the Republican committee chairman, said in a statement. “This stunning development raises serious questions about what records may not have been turned over and why, and whether they show intent to violate the law.”
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In the golden California summers before World War II, Sammy Lee, a was just one of the “colored” boys in the Pasadena pool on Wednesdays. That was “International Day,” when Asian, black and Latino children were allowed to swim. After they were gone, the pool was drained and refilled with clean water for the white children who came every other day of the week. Years later, fulfilling a vow to his father, he stood on the high diving platform at the Olympic Games in London and looked down at cheering crowds. It was like standing atop a building. But he had long ago conquered his fear of heights, and of bigotry. He was a doctor and a compact athlete representing the United States. He ran forward and rose majestically into the air. Dr. Sammy Lee, who died of pneumonia on Friday in Newport Beach, Calif. at age 96, faced prejudice growing up, and discrimination when he tried to buy a home in a white community in Southern California. But he also became the first man to earn Olympic gold, and the first American to win consecutive gold medals in Olympic platform diving. (The diver Victoria Manalo Draves won a gold medal two days before he did.) The University of Southern California announced his death on its website. Dr. Lee won a gold medal in platform diving and a bronze in springboard diving at the 1948 Olympics in London, and a gold in platform diving at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Finland. He also won three national diving championships as a collegian in the 1940s and was named America’s outstanding amateur athlete of 1953 by the Amateur Athletic Union. He became an ambassador to the Olympics for Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan coached Greg Louganis, Bob Webster and other American diving champions, as well as the American diving team at the 1960 Olympics in Rome and was elected to the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1968 and the United States Olympic Hall of Fame in 1990. An ear, nose and throat specialist, Dr. Lee was an Army major and medical officer in the Korean War. But in 1955, as he ended eight years of military service, all his achievements did not spare him from racial discrimination when he tried to buy a home in Garden Grove, a booming postwar community in Orange County, where he wanted to open a medical practice. When turning him away, real estate agents were candid. “I’m sorry, Doctor,” he remembered one telling him, “but I have to eat, and I’d lose my job for selling to a nonwhite. ” Dr. Lee’s wife, Rosalind, then tried to buy a building lot in a development in Anaheim. He recalled, “The agent said the value of the property would drop so badly if he sold to me that he wouldn’t be able to sell the rest of the homes. ” That day, Dr. Lee was at the White House, dining with President Eisenhower. When word got out that he had been a victim of housing discrimination, the news media picked up the story, and it became a national scandal. Protests, apologies and offers of assistance ensued. Housing discrimination has always been common in America, despite laws against it. But Dr. Lee’s status as an Olympian made a difference. Vice President Nixon said he was “shocked” and pledged help. Anaheim’s mayor spoke out. A newspaper offered to pay the Lees’ expenses, and real estate agents jumped to show them homes. The Lees bought one in Garden Grove, and the county gave a welcome party when they moved in. Neighbors came, and politicians gave speeches. “My belief in the American people is substantiated,” Dr. Lee said. He later toured Asia for the State Department. “Whenever I was asked by those people in the Far East how America treated Oriental people, I told them the truth,” he recalled. “I said Americans had their shortcomings, but they had guts enough to advertise them, whereas others try to cover them up. ” Dr. Lee practiced medicine in Orange County for 35 years, retiring in 1990. He later moved to Huntington Beach, Calif. His condominium community had a pool, and even in his 90s he swam a few laps every day. Samuel Lee was born on Aug. 1, 1920, in Fresno, Calif. the youngest of five children of Soonkee Rhee and Eunkee Chun, who married in Korea as children, fulfilling a traditional contract by families. They moved to California in 1905 and settled in Fresno, where they changed their surname and opened a restaurant. Sammy learned to swim in Fresno. After the family moved to Highland Park, in northeast Los Angeles, in the late 1920s, he swam at Brookside Park in nearby Pasadena — but only on Wednesdays, because the pool was reserved for whites on other days. The Lees encountered racial abuse from neighbors, who used slurs and urged them to move. Sammy also heard it in school, where distinctions among Japanese, Chinese and other Asians were lost in a blur of angry abuse. Dr. Lee said his father called the bigots misguided, and urged him to be proud of his heritage. Inspired by Americans who took all the diving medals at the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Dr. Lee promised his father he would someday be an Olympian. He graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School in 1939, Occidental College in 1943 and the University of Southern California medical school in 1947. In 1950, he married Rosalind M. K. Wong. She survives him, as do their two children, Pamela Lee and Sammy Lee II, and three grandchildren. Trained privately, Dr. Lee won the national A. A. U. springboard and platform championships in 1942, and was the national A. A. U. platform champion in 1946. The 1940 and 1944 Olympics were canceled because of World War II, but on Aug. 5, 1948, as the Olympic diving competitions drew to a close in London, he stood on the high platform, as he had vowed. He was lithe and muscled, just over five feet tall, and in recent days had dazzled crowds and judges with dives of balletic precision, with front and back somersaults and elegant pikes and twists. He had already won a bronze for springboard dives, and he led the pack in platform scores. The cheers stopped. He ran forward and rose majestically into the air. He hovered at the peak, his arms reaching for heaven, and curled into a tuck — a man wrapped into a tight ball, chin brushing kneecaps, hands grasping shins — before rolling forward into the power dive. A blur of speed, he somersaulted three and a half times in a pinwheeling plunge, coming out of it just in time and opening into a perfect illusion of the vertical body — a knife entering the water. He had the gold. And he would do it again four years later. | 1 |
Despite his dislike of walls, Pope Francis declared Friday that “every country has the right to control its borders,” especially where the risk of terrorism exists. [In an extended interview with the leftist Spanish newspaper El País, the Pope reaffirmed basic Catholic doctrine regarding immigration, namely, that sovereign nations have the fundamental right to maintain secure borders and to receive immigrants in an orderly and controlled fashion. “Yes, every country has the right to control its borders, who comes and who goes,” Francis said Friday, “and those countries at risk — from terrorism or such things — have even more right to control them more. ” The one qualification to this right, the pontiff continued, is that “no country has the right to deprive its citizens of the possibility to talk with their neighbors,” as often has occurred in the case of totalitarian states such as East Germany and the U. S. S. R. Over and over again the Pope has made it clear that he does not believe in illegal immigration, and that states must maintain secure borders for the safety of their citizens. At the same time, he has often insisted that individuals as well as nations should keep their hearts open to people who migrate from their homelands in search of a better life. In Friday’s interview, Francis stated that “each immigrant constitutes a very serious problem,” since they are often “fleeing their country, because of hunger or because of war. ” Often, too, they are “exploited,” he added, citing Africa as an example of where this often occurs. The pontiff praised the examples of Italy and Greece, holding them up as models of welcoming migrants. “Even now, Italy, with all the problems caused by the earthquake and all that, still cares for them. They welcome them,” he said. As he has done on other occasions, the Pope also highlighted the problem of integration, that is, the possibility of successfully assimilating immigrants into the existing culture. “Where there is no integration,” Francis said, immigrants become “ghettoized,” and do not become part of the culture of their host country. As an example of this, Francis said that the perpetrators of “the atrocity in Zaventem,” the Belgian airport, “lived in an immigrant neighborhood, a closed neighborhood. ” Last fall, he warned nations that they should not be taking in more immigrants and refugees than they can reasonably assimilate. As models of successful integration of migrants, Francis held up Sweden and the Catholic community of Sant’Egidio in Italy. In his interview, the Pope once more underscored the right of Catholics and others to contradict him. “They have the right to disagree,” he said. “They have the right to think that the path is dangerous, that the outcome may be bad, they have that right. ” At the same time, Francis said that such opposition should be carried out openly, and not in secret. “Hiding behind others is inhumane, it is a crime,” he said. “Everyone has the right to debate, and I wish we all would debate more, because it creates a smoother connection between us. Debate unites us. ” Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome | 1 |
The latest hacked email released by WikiLeaks details how one of Bill Clinton’s closest aides helped rake in tens of millions for 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 its 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. 29 | 0 |
Following the recent media firestorm around former Breitbart Senior Editor MILO, people have begun scrutinizing past similar comments and actions of liberal celebrities. [In the wake of MILO’s departure from Breitbart News, a number of instances have come to light where those on the left have discussed or joked openly about pedophilia. Unlike in MILO’s case, the media has been largely silent in response. 1: George Takei, In a 2006 interview on The Howard Stern Show, actor George Takei spoke about being molested by an camp counselor as a at summer camp. In the excerpt, what many seem to find most shocking about Takei’s comments is that he insists he wasn’t molested because he found the perpetrator “attractive. ” At 2:20 mark @GeorgeTakei promotes pedophilia with 13 year old boys to Howard Stern. #tcot #Milohttps: . — John Cardillo (@johncardillo) February 21, 2017, George Takei Amazing how this doesn’t trend. No liberal outrage! Nothing from #pizzahut or #tacobell, — gab. 🐸 (@HillaryNo1sPres) February 22, 2017, 2: Bill Maher, HBO host and comedian Bill Maher can be seen in a clip from 1998 on Maher’s previous TV show Politically Incorrect defending an adult teacher who had sexual relations with her student. “Basically, they’re having a family and they’re keeping the mother in jail because she won’t conform to the perfect American family,” he says. Later in the clip, Maher asks, “How can a woman rape a man?” if bill maher thinks sunlight is the best disinfectant then here’s him saying the same shit as milo, that it’s ok for adults to fuck kids pic. twitter. — warrior cop (@wyatt_privilege) February 22, 2017, In 2016 Maher once again defended the relationship between an adult and a minor when he called out “social justice warriors” for attacking a relationship between singer David Bowie and Lori Mattix. “If there’s a victim here, it’s the guy who had to fuck Lori Mattix next,” said Maher. “How do you follow David Bowie in a kimono?” 3: Roman Polanksi, Roman Polanski, the acclaimed liberal director of films such as Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown, pled guilty to engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor after being accused of drugging and raping old Samantha Geimer in 1977. Polanski fled the United States before he could be sentenced and has been living in France ever since. Since then Hollywood celebrities such as Meryl Streep have openly defended Polanski, with Streep stating that she’s “very sorry that he’s in jail” and Polanski receiving a standing ovation from Hollywood stars following his Oscar win in absentia for Best Director for The Pianist. 4: Lena Dunham, Lena Dunham, writer and star of HBO TV show Girls, wrote in her memoir Not That Kind Of Girl of inappropriate sexual activity with her younger sister. Dunham writes in her autobiography of “casually masturbating” while in bed next to her younger sister and bribing her with “three pieces of candy if I could kiss her on the lips for five seconds … anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl I was trying. ” Dunham also spoke of touching her sister’s genitals, saying, “Grace was sitting up, babbling and smiling, and I leaned down between her legs and carefully spread open her vagina. She didn’t resist,” Dunham wrote. “This was within the spectrum of things I did,” she added. Dunham also admitted to sharing the same bed with Grace until she was seventeen, and that sometimes she “slipped my hand into my underwear to figure some stuff out” while sleeping next to her. Rather than experiencing outrage and anger from fans and the media for these actions, Dunham was instead invited to speak at the Democratic National Convention on the topic of women’s rights. At the DNC, Dunham introduced herself saying: “I am a feminist, sexual assault survivor with a chronic reproductive illness. ” | 1 |
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Obamacare tax penalty? I'll take it, millions say "Has not been large enough to motivate people to sign up for insurance' Published: 20 mins ago
(New York Times) The architects of the Affordable Care Act thought they had a blunt instrument to force people — even young and healthy ones — to buy insurance through the law’s online marketplaces: a tax penalty for those who remain uninsured.
It has not worked all that well, and that is at least partly to blame for soaring premiums next year on some of the health law’s insurance exchanges.
The full weight of the penalty will not be felt until April, when those who have avoided buying insurance will face penalties of around $700 a person or more. But even then that might not be enough: For the young and healthy who are badly needed to make the exchanges work, it is sometimes cheaper to pay the Internal Revenue Service than an insurance company charging large premiums, with huge deductibles. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — As he met with Neil M. Gorsuch in the Capitol last week, Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois posed to the Supreme Court nominee what he considered a fairly basic question on the relationship between the executive and judicial branches. “He really backed away from it,” recalled Mr. Durbin, an influential Democratic voice on judicial issues with long service on the Judiciary Committee. “Even in the most general constitutional terms, he didn’t want to discuss it. From where I am sitting I don’t think there is a more important question in light of this president. ” Democrats preparing for hearings next month on President Trump’s first nominee to the nation’s highest court say it is not a matter of getting the answers they want from Judge Gorsuch it is a matter of getting any pertinent answers at all. “He refused to say anything about potentially relevant questions,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat and former state attorney general who also sits on the panel that will consider the nomination. The test of wills promises to provide friction at hearings scheduled to begin on March 20 as Democrats try to pin down Judge Gorsuch on what he sees as the role of an independent judiciary in constraining the executive branch, given their rising fears about Mr. Trump. It is also the latest match in the longstanding over how far judicial nominees should or should not go in responding to questions from lawmakers. Given fierce partisan tension over Supreme Court seats, it has become an uncomfortable norm for nominees to avoid providing bountiful answers both in private interviews and during the confirmation hearing. They lean heavily on the excuse that the issue could end up before the court and they would hate to prejudge it. In the current environment, the view is clearly the less said, the better the chances of confirmation. “Everyone knows you are going to ask your best question and they are not going to answer it,” said Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and majority leader, of the difficulty of inducing a nominee to say something truly revealing. No one expects a nominee like Judge Gorsuch to address how he would rule on a specific case — like President Trump’s contested immigration order — or offer a detailed view on federal policy likely to land before the court. But Democrats say that Judge Gorsuch must be willing to discuss the merits of past Supreme Court decisions as well as his judicial principles and philosophy if they are to make a judgment on his fitness. “It’s always important for a Supreme Court nominee to tell senators his or her views on the Constitution, but given how aggressively this president is testing the Constitution so early in his term, senators deserve those answers more than ever,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader. Lawmakers say that Mr. Gorsuch assured them during their meetings that no one in the Trump White House had asked him how he would rule in specific cases. But Democrats note that his nomination was promoted by leading conservative groups such as the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. In the absence of information to the contrary from him, they say they will have to assume he shares the views of those groups on such issues as abortion and gun rights. “His refusal to answer these questions leaves us with the inescapable conclusion that he has passed the Trump litmus test,” said Mr. Blumenthal, who, like other lawmakers, found Judge Gorsuch personable and impressively prepared. For their part, Republicans have voiced nothing but praise for the nominee. “I met with Judge Gorsuch for more than an hour and was tremendously impressed with his intellect, his humility and his respect for the rule of law,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine. She said they had an extended discussion about precedent and that Mr. Gorsuch said he believed that “it is not sufficient to overturn a precedent for five current judges to believe a previous decision was wrongly decided. ” That position could be interpreted by lawmakers who support abortion rights, like Ms. Collins, to mean he would not overturn Roe v. Wade even if he were part of a majority that disagreed with it. Kelly Ayotte, the former New Hampshire senator who is serving as Judge Gorsuch’s sherpa through the Senate process, said she found him quite forthcoming during the 58 meetings with lawmakers she attended and added that he talked at length about his rulings on the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. “He’s obviously saying as much as he can without violating his responsibility as a judge not to offer opinions on cases that may come before the court,” she said. In trying to forestall Democratic complaints that Judge Gorsuch has not been sufficiently revealing, Mr. McConnell has reminded Democrats of the “Ginsburg standard” — a reference to Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s repeated refusal at her hearing in 1993 to answer many direct questions on the grounds she could not “preview or forecast” her decisions. But Republicans had their own differences in the past with the reluctance of nominees to be direct. Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who now heads the Judiciary Committee, opposed the nomination of Elena Kagan in 2010, saying she failed to provide candid answers. One contemporary nominee did pride himself on his ability to take on members of the Judiciary Committee in a full exchange of views. Judge Robert Bork answered nearly every question from senators over five days of testimony in 1987. At the time, Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said he hoped Mr. Bork’s willingness to engage would “set a pattern for the future. ” It did. After Mr. Bork’s nomination was famously defeated, nominees have been very stingy with their answers to avoid blowing up their chances of success. | 1 |
Google is one of the most valuable companies in the world, but its future, like that of all tech giants, is clouded by a looming threat. The search company makes virtually all of its money from ads placed on the World Wide Web. But what happens to the cash machine if web search eventually becomes outmoded? That worry isn’t . More of the world’s computing time keeps shifting to smartphones, where apps have supplanted the web. And devices that may dominate the next era in tech — smartwatches, devices like Amazon’s Echo, or virtual reality machines like Oculus Rift — are likely to be free of the web, and may even lack screens. But if Google is worried, it isn’t showing it. The company has long been working on a weapon to avert its potential irrelevance. Google has shoveled vast financial and engineering resources into a collection of data mining and artificial intelligence systems, from speech recognition to machine translation to computer vision. Now Google is melding these advances into a new product, a technology whose ultimate aim is something like the talking computer on “Star Trek. ” It is a bet: If this new tech fails, it could signal the beginning of the end of Google’s reign over our lives. But if it succeeds, Google could achieve a centrality in human experience unrivaled by any tech product so far. The company calls its version of this machine the Google Assistant. Today, it resembles other digital helpers you’ve likely used — things like Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana. It currently lives in Google’s new messaging app, Allo, and will also be featured in a few new gadgets the company plans to unveil next week, including a new smartphone and an Amazon talking computer called Google Home. But Google has much grander aims for the Assistant. People at the company say that Sundar Pichai, who took over as Google’s chief executive last year after Google was split into a conglomerate called Alphabet, has bet the company on the new tech. Mr. Pichai declined an interview request for this column, but at Google’s developer conference in May, he called the development of the Assistant “a seminal moment” for the company. If the Assistant or something like it does not take off, Google’s status as the chief navigator of our digital lives could be superseded by a other assistants. You might interact with Alexa in your house, with Siri on your phone, and with Facebook Messenger’s chatbot when you’re out and about. Google’s search engine (not to mention its Android operating system, Chrome, Gmail, Maps and other properties) would remain popular and lucrative, but possibly far less so than they are today. That’s the threat. But the Assistant also presents Google with a delicious opportunity. The “Star Trek” computer is no metaphor. The company believes that machine learning has advanced to the point that it is now possible to build a predictive, superhelpful and conversational assistant of the sort that Captain Kirk relied on to navigate the stars. The Assistant, in Google’s most vision, would always be around, wherever you are, on whatever device you use, to handle just about any informational task. Consider this common situation: Today, to book a trip, you usually have to load up several travel sites, consult your calendar and coordinate with your family and your colleagues. If the Assistant works as well as Google hopes, all you might have to do is say, “O. K. Google, I need to go to Hong Kong next week. Take care of it. ” Based on your interactions with it over the years, Google would know your habits, your preferences and your budget. It would know your friends, family and your colleagues. With access to so much data, and with the computational power to interpret all of it, the Assistant most likely could handle the entire task if it couldn’t, it would simply ask you to fill in the gaps, the way a human assistant might. Computers have made a lot of everyday tasks far easier to accomplish, yet they still require a sometimes annoying level of human involvement to get the most out of them. The Assistant’s aim is to eliminate all this busywork. If it succeeds, it would be the ultimate expression of what Larry Page, Google’s once described as the perfect search engine: a machine that “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want. ” At this point, a few readers may be recoiling at the potential invasion of autonomy and privacy that such a machine would necessitate. The Assistant would involve giving ourselves over to machines more fully. We would trust them not just with our information but increasingly with our decisions. Many people are already freaked out by what Google, Facebook and other tech companies know about us. Would we be willing to hand over even more power to computers? Those are important questions, but they are also well down the road. For now, the more pressing question for the Assistant is: Will it even work? Google has technological advantages that suggest it could build a more capable digital assistant than others have accomplished. Many of the innovations that it has built into its search engine — including its knowledge graph database of more than a billion people, places and things, and the 17 years it has spent trying to understand the meaning of web queries — will form the Assistant’s brain. Google has also been one of the leaders in machine learning, the process that allows computers to discover facts about the world without being explicitly programmed. Machine learning is at the heart of a number of recent advances, including Google Photos’ uncanny capacity to search through your images for arbitrary terms (photos of people hugging, for instance). “We are in the process of transforming into a company,” Jeff Dean, who is in charge of Google Brain, the company’s artificial intelligence project, told me this year. For each problem Google solves this way, it gets better at solving other problems. “It’s a boulder going downhill gathering more momentum as it goes,” Mr. Dean said. If you use the Assistant today, you’ll see some of these advances. As my colleague Brian X. Chen explained last week, if your friend sends you a picture of his dog on Allo, Google Assistant will not only recognize that it’s a dog, but it will also tell you the breed. That’s an amazing technological feat. But as Brian pointed out, it’s also pretty useless. Why does your friend care if you know his dog’s a Shih Tzu? This gets to a deeper difficulty. The search company might have the technical capacity to create the smartest assistant around, but it’s not at all clear that it has the prowess to create the friendliest, most charming or most useful assistant. Google needs to nail not just Assistant’s smarts, but also its personality — a new skill for Google, and one that its past forays into social software (Google Plus, anyone?) don’t speak highly of. Then there is the mismatch between Google’s ambitions and Assistant’s current reality. Danny Sullivan, the founding editor of Search Engine Land, told me that so far, he hadn’t noticed the Assistant helping him in any major way. “When I was trying to book a movie, it didn’t really narrow things down for me,” he said. “And there were some times it was wrong. I asked it to show me my upcoming trip, and it didn’t get that. ” Of course, it’s still early. Mr. Sullivan has high hopes for the Assistant. It would be premature to look at the technology today and get discouraged about its future, especially since Google sees this as a multiyear, perhaps even project. And especially if Google’s future depends on getting this right. | 1 |
President Trump this week signed an executive order declaring war on sanctuary cities. Agencies within the United States Government will begin withholding federal grant funds from those cities, and additional actions to enforce federal immigration law will be taken soon. [Unlike Obama, President Trump is not trying to making new laws by executive decree. In his Executive Order, the president is only reminding mayors and governors of existing federal law dating to 1996: U. S. Code › Title 8 › Chapter 12 › Subchapter II › Part IX › § 13738 U. S. Code § 1373 — Communication between government agencies and the Immigration and Naturalization Service: Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or local law, a Federal, State, or local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual. (b) Additional authority of government entitiesNotwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or local law, no person or agency may prohibit, or in any way restrict, a Federal, State, or local government entity from doing any of the following with respect to information regarding the immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual:(1) Sending such information to, or requesting or receiving such information from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service. (2) Maintaining such information. (3) Exchanging such information with any other Federal, State, or local government entity. (c) Obligation to respond to inquiriesThe Immigration and Naturalization Service shall respond to an inquiry by a Federal, State, or local government agency, seeking to verify or ascertain the citizenship or immigration status of any individual within the jurisdiction of the agency for any purpose authorized by law, by providing the requested verification or status information. (Pub. L. 104 — 208, div. C, title VI, § 642, Sept. 30, 1996, 110 Stat. 3009 — 707. The president’s executive order is not only good news for law enforcement, it is also a good civics lesson for some mayors and even some members of Congress. The Trump executive order is also good news for taxpayers. Sanctuary cities impose a huge, billion cost to taxpayers that has been hidden from public view and shielded from political accountability. This will be news to you because those annual taxpayer costs are hidden from public scrutiny — by Congress, by state legislatures, and by local officials. Sanctuary city policies have a high cost not only in allowing criminal aliens to roam free on our streets, they also impose a huge burden on taxpayers. How can we estimate those taxpayers costs? There is a wealth of data hidden in the annual reports on the federal State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP) published by the US Department of Justice and each state department of corrections that chooses to apply for reimbursement grants under that program. Over 2, 000 local county sheriffs also get federal reimbursement grants under that federal program. The taxpayer costs revealed by those annual reports are . States and local communities are being reimbursed at less than three cents on the dollar of the true costs for criminal alien incarceration, but politicians are hiding that fact from the nation’s taxpayers. In my home state of Colorado, the 2016 SCAAP report by the state Department of Corrections revealed that state prison system was holding 2, 039 criminal aliens at a cost of $37, 958 per inmate. That is a total cost of $77, 396, 362. The federal reimbursement grant was $2, 077, 720. That is a grant of 2. 7 cents for every dollar of actual cost. Those 2, 039 criminal alien inmates were 14% of all state prison inmates: One in every seven felons in the state prison system is a criminal alien. What are the comparable numbers for your state? You can discover the SCAAP grant amounts for each state prison system and the local county jails applying for federal reimbursement at this website. The federal SCAAP grant program was established by Congress as an acknowledgment of federal responsibility for a failed border security and failed federal enforcement of immigration laws. But the appropriated amount for reimbursing local communities their incarceration costs through SCAAP grants has NEVER been adequate for full cost reimbursement. In 2016, the federal reimbursement program was given a paltry $189 million. To most Americans, these hidden taxpayer costs are not the most important reason for opposing sanctuary city policies. The real cost is not in taxpayer dollars but in the hundreds of thousands of crimes committed by individuals who should not be here in the first place. If we had secure borders and effective enforcement of all immigration, these criminal alien incarceration numbers would be very small. Yet, the fact that local governments hide these cost figures is symptomatic of the deeper problem. Too many local officials want all the political benefits of claiming to be the protector of “our immigrant community” while hiding the costs of protecting criminal aliens. Does your local sheriff publish the incarceration costs for criminal alien inmates in your local jail. Does he ever acknowledge the number of criminal aliens released from jail annually who are NOT turned over to federal immigration authorities because of local sanctuary policies? Does anyone on your local city council ever ask those questions? Some local politicians also use a phony “states rights” argument for resisting federal enforcement of immigration law. This is a phony argument because there is a long string of Supreme Court decisions, most recently the 2012 Arizona v. United States ruling by Justice Kennedy, saying that the Constitution in Article VI gives the federal government preemptive authority over immigration law. States cannot “ ’ of federal immigration law, and neither can cities or counties — or universities or private religious organizations. While public attention has been focused on the policies of the Obama administration, the truth is, even without official sanctuary policies established by mayors of local government, too many local sheriffs and police chiefs have been hiding behind an alleged “fear of liability” in not honoring the Detainer requests made by federal law enforcement, namely the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency — known as ICE. ICE detainers are fully legal and should be — indeed, MUST be — honored by local law enforcement agencies. Local sheriffs and police chiefs have no constitutional basis for refusing to honor ICE detainers. Citizens should hold local officials accountable when they refuse to obey the law. The Trump administration is making it clear that federal sanctions will be imposed — including the withholding of federal funds — from cities which want to disobey the law. But local citizens need not remain silent in this battle. Editor’s note: This article has been updated to note the figure for the cost to Colorado is $37, 958 rather than $27, 958. | 1 |
VIDEO : FBI SOURCES SAY INDICTMENT LIKELY FOR CLINTON VIDEO : FBI SOURCES SAY INDICTMENT LIKELY FOR CLINTON Videos By TruthFeedNews November 3, 2016
BRET BAIER: Here’s the deal: We talked to two separate sources with intimate knowledge of the FBI investigations. One: The Clinton Foundation investigation is far more expansive than anybody has reported so far… Several offices separately have been doing their own investigations.
Two: The immunity deal that Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, two top aides to Hillary Clinton, got from the Justice Department in which it was beleived that the laptops they had, after a narrow review for classified materials, were going to be destroyed. We have been told that those have not been destroyed — they are at the FBI field office here on Washington and are being exploited. .
Three: The Clinton Foundation investigation is so expansive, they have interviewed and re-interviewed many people. They described the evidence they have as ‘a lot of it’ and said there is an ‘avalanche coming in every day.’ WikiLeaks and the new emails.
They are “actively and aggressively pursuing this case.” Remember the Foundation case is about accusations of pay-for-play… They are taking the new information and some of them are going back to interview people for the third time. As opposed to what has been written about the Clinton Foundation investigation, it is expansive.
The classified e-mail investigation is being run by the National Security division of the FBI. They are currently combing through Anthony Weiner’s laptop. They are having some success — finding what they believe to be new emaisls, not duplicates, that have been transported through Hillary Clinton’s server.
Finally, we learned there is a confidence from these sources that her server had been hacked. And that it was a 99% accuracy that it had been hacked by at least five foreign intelligence agencies, and that things had been taken from that…
There has been some angst about Attorney General Loretta Lynch — what she has done or not done. She obviously did not impanel, or go to a grand jury at the beginning. They also have a problem, these sources do, with what President Obama said today and back in October of 2015…
I pressed again and again on this very issue… The investigations will continue, there is a lot of evidence. And barring some obstruction in some way, they believe they will continue to likely an indictment.
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Yemen This photo provided by the media bureau of the operations command in Yemen shows a Borkan-1 (Volcano-1) missile.
Yemeni army forces and allied fighters from Popular Committees have reportedly launched a locally designed and manufactured ballistic missile towards an area deep inside Saudi Arabia in response to the Riyadh regime’s atrocious aerial bombardments against the crisis-hit Arab country.
Yemeni soldiers and their allies fired a Borkan-1 (Volcano-1) missile towards King Abdulaziz International Airport, located 19 kilometers north of the western Saudi port city of Jeddah, Arabic-language al-Masirah television network reported.
A military source, speaking on condition of anonymity, later told the official Saba news agency that the 12.5-meter-long missile had targeted its target accurately and left massive destruction at the airport.
Saudi media outlets, however, reported that the kingdom’s missile systems intercepted and destroyed the solid propellant and Scud-type missile before it could cause any damage.
They said the projectile was launched at 9 p.m. local time (1800 GMT) on Thursday from Yemen’s mountainous northwestern area of Sa’ada.
Also on Thursday, the media bureau of the operations command in Yemen said army soldiers had targeted a gathering of militiamen loyal to resigned president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi in the Aqaba district of the northern province of Jawf, leaving scores of the Saudi-backed armed men dead. Fire rages after a gathering of militiamen loyal to resigned president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi is targeted by Yemeni army forces in the Aqaba district of the northern province of Jawf, Yemen, on October 27, 2016.
An armored vehicle and battle tank belonging to the mercenaries were also destroyed in the attack.
Separately, a number of Saudi soldiers were killed and injured when Yemeni forces and Popular Committees fighters struck al-Kars base in Saudi Arabia’s southwestern border region of Jizan.
Saudi Arabia has been engaged in the deadly campaign against Yemen since March 2015 in an attempt to bring back the former Yemeni government to power and undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement.
The United Nations puts the death toll from the military aggression at about 10,000. Loading ... | 0 |
Friday on ESPN’s “SportsCenter: Coast to Coast,” ESPN Radio Peter Rosenberg said the fact that quarterback Colin Kaepernick remains unsigned in the NFL is “shameful and embarrassing for the league as a whole. ” “[T]he bottom line is Colin Kaepernick is not getting a job in this league, not because of the kind of player that he is, but because of his political stance and because of the fact teams don’t want to stand next to him,” Rosenberg told host Cari Champion. “I think it is shameful and embarrassing for the league as a whole. ” He later added, “This guy is working hard to be in this league and won’t get an opportunity, and we have to talk about why that is. And the fact is teams are scared of the backlash they will get if they sign Colin Kaepernick and I think that is shameful and disappointing. ” Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 1 |
Gilad Atzmon
October 29, 2016
Top five donors to Clinton campaign are Jewish
The Jewish Chronicle reports this weekend that the "five biggest donors to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign are all Jewish."
Donald Sussman, hedge fund Manager;
Jay Robert Pritzker venture Capitalist
Haim Saban, Israeli-American media tycoon
George Soros, speculator
Daniel Abraham, founder of SlimFast
The only open question is whether the American people are ready to connect the dots? In the last few months we have been reading that American Jews are concerned by the sharp rise in antisemitism in the land of the free. I guess that manyAmerican Jews have connected the dots already. They grasp that once again, Jewish elite is playing a very dangerous game on their expense.
One would expect Jews in general and Jewish oligarchs in particular to draw the necessary conclusion from Jewish history. Somehow this never happens. The same disastrous mistakes are repeated. As we know, the consequences are grave | 0 |
3 Thoughts On Steve Bannon As White House 'Chief Strategist' By: Ben Shapiro November 14, 2016
So, in a not-unexpected move, Donald Trump has elevated former Breitbart News CEO Steve Bannon to chief strategist of the White House.
When I left Breitbart back in March, I accused Bannon of turning Breitbart News into Trump Pravda ; as I wrote, “Indeed, Breitbart News, under the chairmanship of Steve Bannon, has put a stake through the heart of Andrew’s legacy. In my opinion, Steve Bannon is a bully, and has sold out Andrew’s mission in order to back another bully, Donald Trump; he has shaped the company into Trump’s personal Pravda, to the extent that he abandoned and undercut his own reporter.”
That decision paid off for Bannon – in August, he became Trump’s campaign “CEO.” At that point, I wrote this piece describing who Bannon was , and this one for The Washington Post describing his probable impact on the campaign .
With Bannon’s accession to a top White House role, it’s time to answer some brief questions about the man and what he’s likely to do.
Is Bannon Anti-Semitic And Racist? I have no evidence that Bannon’s a racist or that he’s an anti-Semite; the Huffington Post’s blaring headline “WHITE NATIONALIST IN THE WHITE HOUSE” is overstated, at the very least. With that said, as I wrote at The Washington Post in August, Bannon has openly embraced the racist and anti-Semitic alt-right – he called his Breitbart “ the platform of the alt-right .” Milo Yiannopoulos, the star writer at the site, is an alt-right popularizer , even as he continuously declares with a wink that he’s not a member. The left’s opposition to Trump, and their attempts to declare all Trump support the alt-right have obfuscated what the movement is. The movement isn’t all Trump supporters. It’s not conservatives unsatisfied with Paul Ryan, nor is it people angry at the media. Bannon knows that. He’s a smart man, not an ignorant one. The alt-right, in a nutshell, believes that Western culture is inseparable from European ethnicity . I have no evidence Bannon believes that personally. But he’s happy to pander to those people and make common cause with them in order to transform conservatism into European far-right nationalist populism. That means that the alt-right will cheer Bannon along as he marbles Trump’s speeches with talk of “globalism” – and that Bannon won’t be pushing Trump to dump the racists and anti-Semites who support Trump anytime soon. After all, they love Bannon – actual white supremacists like Peter Brimelow called his August appointment “great news,” and Richard Spencer explained, “Breitbart has elective affinities with the Alt Right, and the Alt Right has clearly influenced Breitbart. In this way, Breitbart has acted as a ‘gateway’ to Alt Right ideas and writers. I don’t think it has done this deliberately; again, it’s a matter of elective affinities.” That doesn’t mean Bannon will push racist or anti-Semitic policy, or that he’ll be anti-Israel himself – unless it serves his interests.
What Does Bannon’s Accession Mean? Bannon has goals. One of those goals is maximization of personal power, which is why he spent the last decade and a half glomming onto powerful right-wing personalities (Bachmann, Morris, Palin), kissing their asses, and then moving on up the chain. With Breitbart and Trump, he picked two winners in a row – and that means he’s now at the pinnacle of American power.
So, what will he do with that power? He’ll target enemies. Bannon is one of the most vicious people in politics, which is why I’ve been joking for months that should Trump win, I’d be expecting my IRS audit any moment. That wasn’t completely a joke. He likes to destroy people.
But more importantly, Bannon’s interested in turning the Republican Party into a far-right European party. Because Republicans will like some of the policy that comes with that, it could happen. Here’s what I wrote in March about the Trump movement :
Trump is a European-style response to the European-style leftism of Barack Obama. He’s a soft European-style populist, from his interventionist economics to his closed-borders foreign policy. As I wrote in December, “Compare Trump’s platform with that of Marine Le Pen, whose French National Front poses a significant threat to the national political establishment. She calls for harsher penalties for criminals, significant restrictions on Muslim immigration to France, protectionism on trade, a restoration of the Franc as the national currency rather than the Euro, and big government in terms of health care. This sounds a lot like Trump.” But the European right is not the American right. The American right believes in Constitutional ideas about checks and balances and federalism and negative rights from government. The European right doesn’t believe any of these things. Should Trump win, we could watch American conservatism lose the only party it has ever had.
That’s the plan. Yesterday, The Daily Beast reported that Bannon reached out to Le Pen for “global ultra-right coalition.” Over the weekend Le Pen met with Nigel Farage of the UK Independent Party. And Trump met with Farage shortly after being elected. Bannon has always wanted to burn down the GOP. That’s still his goal. He wants it replaced with an American National Front party in fact if not in name.
Which War Will Bannon Lead? Bannon considers himself a wartime consigliore – always at war. Always. So the only question left is this: what will Bannon’s actual role be? It’s difficult to tell, since Trump announced the Bannon hire at the same time he announced that former RNC chairman Reince Priebus as his chief of staff. What will their relationship be like? Ed Morrissey of HotAir thinks that Bannon will lead the anti-media fight, and Reince will coordinate with Congress. That would be the best possible scenario.
Others have speculated that Bannon has been added to the team as a sop to the populist base, which would be angry at Trump hopping into bed with the most establishment-y fellow in Washington. That, too, would be fine.
It’s hard to tell from the outside what’s happening, but here’s a third theory: Reince is the bagman for Trump, and Bannon’s whispering in Trump’s ear. That would fit the fact pattern here, given Reince’s outsized praise for Bannon this morning: “wise and smart…very, very smart, very temperate.” Bannon is anything but temperate to those who disagree. He’s a consummate bully to anyone who disagrees; he's actually malevolent. Priebus may not have seen a lot of disagreement because he’s the one catering to Bannon’s agenda.
If Bannon’s leading and Reince is following, that bodes ill for the Republican agenda. Bannon opposes the Republican Party, hates Paul Ryan – minutes after the joint Bannon/Priebus announcement, Breitbart News approvingly tweeted about a Congressional rebellion against Speaker Ryan – and wants to watch it all “burn.” Bannon loves the firefight. The only question is which direction he’ll turn his fire. Tags | 0 |
Amid what is now an epidemic of fake hate crimes there comes a strange and peculiar incident, which bears all the signs of being yet another hate hoax.[ activist Linda Sarsour has raised $110, 000 and counting on the alleged beating of a Muslim woman in Columbus, Ohio — an area very heavily populated with Muslims, where a young Muslim woman, Rifqa Bary, had to flee for her life ten years ago after she said her father threatened to kill her for converting to Christianity, and one mosque has a history of terror ties. On Sunday morning, Sarsour tweeted: “Please support Rahma, who was brutally beaten yesterday by a white male in Columbus, OH. This is unacceptable. ”https: . gofundme. ”>crowdfunding campaign dedicated to the support of the girl who was raped by Muslim migrants took a full year to reach $80, 000. While this crowdfunding page was receiving a huge number of donations with no publicity, the media coverage that there initially was on this case suddenly disappeared, without explanation. Columbus’ ABC6 did a story on it, headlined “Family of Muslim woman calling alleged assault a ‘hate crime,’” but a couple of short hours after it went online, it disappeared. It wasn’t retracted the space where it was now bears the notice, “Hmmm, we couldn’t find the page you were looking for. ” Aside from this mysteriously vanished ABC6 story, I initially only found two articles about the case. One was on the Muslim site bartamaha. com. The other is on a site called CarbonatedTV, which states that “the victim said the man was interviewed by the police but released without charges. ” It also notes that the Council on Relations (CAIR) is involved in the case, quoting Jennifer Nimer, executive director of : “The fact that the perpetrator was not taken into custody and was not charged raises serious concerns and sends a very dangerous message. ” The national CAIR site also contains a press release about this alleged incident. A rally that had been scheduled for Warsame on Monday was canceled, also only a few short hours after it was announced. The Columbus Underground page announcing the rally now bears the cryptic explanation: “This rally is being postponed per the request of family lawyer. The family and friends are further discussing it and will announce a new date for this event soon. ” First, Columbus police issued a statement refusing to acknowledge the incident as a “hate crime. ” According to the NBC affiliate WKYC, they could not arrest anyone at the scene “due to the lack of physical evidence and conflicting stories” by everyone involved. They noted that they arrived on the scene not in response to any reports of hate crimes, but because multiple citizens had reported public child abuse and potential child abduction. WKYC notes that police did not name anyone involved. The Daily Caller reported Monday, before the police statement came out, a version of the story that corresponded with the WKYC report. The outlet claimed that there was another victim in the incident: a woman named Samantha Morales, who said that “Sarsour and CAIR have the story all wrong, including the allegations that racial epithets were hurled at Warsame. ” Morales stated, according to the Daily Caller, that the incident began when a “woman of African heritage who lives in her apartment complex was yelling at and hitting her son with a shoe. ” Morales tried to intervene, whereupon “she was attacked first by a mob of men and women, including Warsame, following a neighborhood argument involving a woman and her son. ” Said Morales: “What happened is not what she is claiming. The woman that is in the hospital, I feel sorry for her, but she is one of the women who was kicking and hitting me after I got tased. ” It was Morales’ boyfriend, Boyce, who according to Warsame hurled racial epithets at her. Morales and Boyce deny this. With major challenges to Warsame’s story surfacing, many questions remain. Where is all this money for Rahma Warsame coming from? With Warsame exposed, what will it now go to fund? Why aren’t there more journalists who are pursuing the questionable aspects of this story and challenging Sarsour’s version of the incident and the fundraising efforts based thereon? Would doing that be “Islamophobic”? Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) publisher of PamelaGeller. com and author of The Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter here. Like her on Facebook here. | 1 |
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With Hillary Clinton’s victory in the bag, there’s a growing fear that her presidency will begin with a bang: regime change in Syria. Clinton has said as much. Last year Reuters reported that “removing President Assad” would be Clinton’s “top priority.”
This regime change sentiment was echoed more recently by her foreign policy adviser, Jeremy Bash, who said that Clinton would “…work to get Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, “out of there.”
More spectacularly has been Clinton’s repeated insistence during debates that a “no fly zone” should be implemented in Syria, which, as the Libyan experiment proved, is a euphemism for regime change and war.
The fact that such blatant warmongering can go unchallenged is itself a major PR victory for the establishment. The anti-war movement seems speechless, immobile in the face of yet another war.
This paralysis is due, in part, to the Left’s splintering over Syria, where vicious infighting over a consistent anti-war perspective has spoiled debate.
Instead of focusing on stopping the next war, the Left continues to bicker about who deserves the most blame for the Syrian catastrophe. As a result, working people are left in the dark about the U.S. role in the Syrian war. They don’t know the U.S. has been leading a proxy war against the Syrian government, and they are unprepared for the full-scale military intervention that remains a real possibility.
The vast educational void around Syria is being filled, in part, by mainstream politicians, such as moderate Congressional Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, who sounds “radical” when she recently wrote in an online petition:
”The war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad is creating more devastation, human suffering, and refugees…Have we learned nothing from Iraq and Libya? We must end our [U.S.] war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad now.”
If only most Left groups spoke as clearly as Gabbard about Syria, whose petition is only radical because the Left has so thoroughly minimized the U.S. role in funding, arming, training, and coordinating the proxy war against the Syrian government.
A key mistake some Left groups make is focusing their anti-war actions on “all sides,” wrongly believing that this alone is an internationalist approach against imperialism and war. But a critical component gets ignored when this principle is clung to.
Stopping the U.S. war on Syria requires that U.S. activists actively educate and focus on the U.S. role, so that people can be agitated into action and mobilized by the tens of thousands. The principled “pox on both houses” approach leads, in practice, to inaction, making it an empty phrase when what is needed is a concrete strategy for effective on the ground organizing.
The essence of a revolutionary, internationalist approach to anti-war strategy was summarized by Leon Trotsky, when he said “In the struggle against imperialism and war the basic principle is: ‘the chief enemy is in your own country.’”
The quote is a guide to action for those living in imperialist countries, and the U.S. remains the world’s foremost imperialist country. Syria is not an imperialist country.
The focus, therefore, for U.S. anti-war activists should be on the U.S.’ actions abroad in order to mobilize to stop it. An internationalist approach is working to minimize the harm that your imperialist country can do to the working class abroad.
All anti-war organizers should base their actions on this premise, since this truism allows for the most effective anti-war strategy when put into practice. Straying from this principle can get you into serious trouble.
It’s in your own country where you actually organize people on the ground, where they can be educated and mobilized directly against the government to apply direct pressure.
Writing the occasional anti-war article that analyzes the various bad actors is fine, but when it comes to the realm of action and organizing, focus is required. You cannot organize effectively against all sides. Your efforts must be prioritized where you can have the most impact, and where your efforts cannot be co-opted by your government as war propaganda.
Your own government is the enemy because its foreign policy is dictated by the same U.S. corporations that exercise power domestically, who exploit workers in the U.S., who don’t pay taxes in the U.S., and who fund anti-worker legislation domestically.
Some of these same corporations want raw materials, contracts, and new markets abroad, and will bomb the world to smithereens to get it. The fight against war always starts at home.
As Fred Halstead wrote in the groundbreaking work “Out Now,” the anti-Vietnam war movement was strong when it focused on educating and mobilizing U.S. society, from students, veterans, union members, etc., while also directly agitating U.S. troops stationed in Vietnam, who were emboldened by the mass rallies they saw at home. When U.S. soldiers began organizing against their officers by refusing to fight, the war could no longer continue. The excellent documentary “Sir No Sir” shows the power of organizing active duty military personnel.
The anti-Vietnam war movement didn’t focus on the violence of the North Vietnamese, or the role played by China and the U.S.S.R., they focused on the role played by the U.S., and because of this they were able to effectively educate and mobilize hundreds of thousands of people, stop the war, and effect a cultural change in the U.S. where for decades it was politically impossible to enact direct military intervention.
A similar approach was used by the Russian revolutionaries in World War I, where a massive anti-war movement was created, not by agitating against the Germans — who were arguably the aggressors — but by focusing first on the Czar of Russia, and then on the Russian capitalists who wanted to continue the war after the Czar’s downfall. The mobilization for “peace” grew to be one of the pillar demands of the successful revolution.
U.S. Left groups needn’t focus on the “evils” of Russia or the Syrian government; huge resources are already spent on this by multi-billion-dollar media conglomerates. Demonizing the enemy of U.S. imperialism doesn’t help U.S. workers in terms of mobilizing to stop the war. In fact, demonizing “the enemy” helps keep workers passive, since it makes the war appear “moral.”
A good example of this grave mistake comes from the International Socialist Organization (ISO), whose recent article criticizes the new antiwar coalition ‘Hands Off Syria.” The article reads:
“U.S. Hands Off Syria is exclusively focused on opposing U.S. military intervention and what it claims is Washington’s determination to achieve regime change in Syria. But this means the coalition and those who endorse it ignore the main source of the barbaric violence and repression in Syria today: the Assad government, its allies within the region and the Russian empire that backs Assad to the hilt….”
Hands Off Syria keeps true to the antiwar maxim “the chief enemy is in your own country,” and the ISO ridicules them for it.
The same article goes on to slander Hands Off Syria by accusing them of “…supporting a dictator like Assad and an imperialist power like Vladimir Putin’s Russia.” This “pro-Assad” slander has been aimed at anyone — this writer included — who focuses their fire on the U.S. involvement in the Syrian conflict. The smear campaign has ruined the discussion around Syria, helping to mis-educate people who might otherwise be organized into action.
The ISO fails to mention in its article that Hands Off Syria specifically mentions that “It is not our business to support or oppose President Assad or the Syrian government. Only the Syrian people have the right to decide the legitimacy of their government.”
The ISO calls Hands Off Syria “pro-Assad” because the group says, correctly, that Syria has the right to self-determination. In a nutshell “self-determination” means that non-imperialist countries, like Syria, have a right not to be interfered with by imperialist countries, such as the United States.
All revolutionaries have a duty to uphold this core tenant of anti-imperialism. Watering this principle down — because “Assad is a brutal dictator” — is another example of undercutting both theory and action around anti-war work.
The main demands of the Hands Off Syria coalition are completely supportable from an internationalist, socialist perspective, and deserve mention, since they went unmentioned in the ISO article that attacked them:
1 An immediate end to the U.S. policy of forced regime change in Syria and full recognition and compliance by the U.S., NATO and their allies with principles of international law and the U.N. Charter, including respect for the independence and territorial integrity of Syria.
2 An immediate end to all foreign aggression against Syria, and serious efforts toward a political resolution to the war.
3 An immediate end to all military, financial, logistical and intelligence support by the U.S., NATO and their regional allies to all foreign mercenaries and extremists in the Middle East region.
4 An immediate end to economic sanctions against Syria. Massive international aid for displaced people within Syria and Syrian refugees abroad.
Hands of Syria is a united front coalition that should have existed for several years; its late arrival is due to the gutter-level Syria debate among Left groups. So attacking this big step forward in anti-war work only detracts from the anti-war movement, and thus empowers the U.S. government to act with a freer hand in Syria.
A consistent antiwar approach means combining theory with action, going beyond intellectual exercises and into organizing. If an antiwar theory equals inaction in the face of war, that perspective is exposed as moribund, lifeless. An antiwar approach must have practical applications to movement politics, a way to connect with and mobilize the masses.
Blaming “all sides” has the unintended consequences of pacifying working people in the face of war, since the kind education that might agitate them into action — their own government’s actions — is being either minimized or crowded out by nonstop comparisons with the “worse” actions of other governments (those in the cross-hairs of U.S. imperialism).
To put anti-war work into practice, every effort must be made to explain the history of the U.S. intervention in Syria, and how this intervention continues today, and how the logic of this intervention inevitably leads to a full scale military confrontation, as very nearly happened in 2013 when Obama backed down from attacking the Syrian government.
A revolutionary approach to war lies in exposing the lies of the capitalist media and politicians, so that workers understand the propaganda that is leading them into war, so they can be prepared to mobilize against it when war breaks out. Anything less is an academic exercise, divorced from the realities of the class struggle in the U.S.
Most conflicts have several precipitating factors, so ascribing blame to who fired the first shot or who was the “most savage” cannot be a guiding force in anti-war work. It serves mainly to distract, to disorient. By focusing on Russia and Syria, the U.S. war propaganda goes unchallenged, and thus can maintain a powerful stultifying force on working people in the face of war.
Any mass movement for peace wields revolutionary implications. Especially in the U.S., whose global empire of military bases acts as a stifling conservative political force across the globe, while the domestic politics have been stifled by this same “military industrial complex.” This behemoth of concentrated power will require an equal power to demobilize it, and that power can only be the working class mobilized.
Any effective anti-war work must stay true to the basic principles elaborated by Trotsky decades ago:
“The transformation of imperialist war into civil [class] war is that general strategic task to which the whole work of a proletarian party during war should be subordinated.”
The enemy remains at home. | 0 |
ASPEN, Colo. — It has been an open secret throughout the Obama presidency that world powers have escalated their use of cyberpower. But the recent revelations of hacking into Democratic campaign computer systems in an apparent attempt to manipulate the 2016 election is forcing the White House to confront a new question: whether, and if so how, to retaliate. So far, the administration has stopped short of publicly accusing the Russian government of President Vladimir V. Putin of engineering the theft of research and emails from the Democratic National Committee and hacking into other campaign computer systems. However, private investigators have identified the suspects, and American intelligence agencies have told the White House that they have “high confidence” that the Russian government was responsible. Less certain is who is behind the selective leaks of the material, and whether they have a clear political objective. Suspecting such meddling is different from proving it with a certainty sufficient for any American president to order a response. Even if officials gather the proof, they may not be able to make their evidence public without tipping off Russia, or its proxies in cyberspace, about how deeply the National Security Agency has penetrated that country’s networks. And designing a response that will send a clear message, without prompting escalation or undermining efforts to work with Russia in places like Syria, where Russia is simultaneously an adversary and a partner, is even harder. The Russians tried to make it tougher still on Saturday when they declared that they had found evidence of American activity in their government systems. It was hardly a shocking revelation anyone who leafed through Edward J. Snowden’s revelations saw evidence of daily efforts to break into Russian spy agencies, nuclear installations and leadership compounds. But in a talk on Friday evening at the Aspen Security Forum, an annual gathering that draws many of the nation’s top intelligence and military officials, John O. Brennan, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, made clear that while spying on each other’s political institutions is fair game, making data public — in true or altered form — to influence an election is a new level of malicious activity, far different from ordinary spy vs. spy maneuvers. “When it is determined who is responsible for this,” Mr. Brennan said, choosing his words carefully to avoid any direct implication of Russia, there “will be discussions at the highest levels of government about what the right course of action will be. Obviously interference in the U. S. election process is a very, very serious matter. ” The Russia problem is thorny, and persistent. Just four months into his presidency in 2009, President Obama and his top national security advisers received a warning from American intelligence agencies: Of all the nations targeting America’s computer networks, a National Intelligence Estimate warned, Russia had the most “robust, longstanding program that combines a patient, multidisciplinary approach to computer network operations with proven access and tradecraft. ” Mr. Obama might have been a bit distracted at the time. While setting up his new administration, he was also learning the dark arts of cyberwar, descending into the Situation Room to oversee a complex offensive operation to disable Iran’s nuclear centrifuges. He expressed concern to his aides that the operation would help fuel the escalation of cyberattacks and counterattacks. The concern was justified. Since then, Iran has attacked Saudi Arabia, Russia has brought down a power grid in Ukraine, the North Koreans have attacked the South. The list gets longer every month. But deterrence has been spotty. In the Democratic National Committee case, two senior administration officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the options, ranging from countercyberattacks on the F. S. B. and the G. R. U. two competing Russian spy agencies at the center of the current hacking, to economic, travel and other sanctions aimed at suspected perpetrators. At the event in Aspen on Saturday afternoon, Lisa O. Monaco, Mr. Obama’s homeland security adviser, sidestepped specific discussion of the D. N. C. hacking but acknowledged that the administration might soon have to consider whether the United States’ electoral system constitutes “critical infrastructure,” like the power grid or the cellphone network. “I think it’s a serious question,” she said, especially if there is “coercion, destruction, manipulation of data. ” Ms. Monaco noted that whenever the United States thinks about retaliation, “the danger of escalation and misinterpretation is such that we have to be responsible about it. ” But she also said that if an event were serious enough, “we have to be very clear we will respond. ” The cost of doing nothing could be high. As the United States and other nations move to more electronic voting systems, the opportunities for mischief rise. Imagine, for example, a vote as close as the 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, but with accusations about foreign manipulation of the ballots or the vote count, leaving Americans wondering about the validity of the outcome. For Mr. Obama, the president who has done the most to raise alarms about the risks of cyberattacks and the most to build up the United States Cyber Command, this territory is fraught with politics, intelligence and questions of American values. “I think that the administration needs to be ironclad on the evidence here to convince the American people that this is about policy, not politics,” said Jason Healey, a scholar at Columbia University who specializes in cyberconflict between nations. “This has got to be about defending a constitutional process, not a party. ” Last week, two California Democrats who specialize in intelligence issues, Representative Adam B. Schiff and Senator Dianne Feinstein, sent Mr. Obama a letter urging him to make public the intelligence assessments on the Democratic National Committee hacking. Mr. Obama often says the world of cyberconflict is still “the Wild West. ” There are no treaties, no international laws, just a patchwork set of emerging “norms” of what constitutes acceptable behavior. For example, Mr. Obama has pressed President Xi Jinping of China to work with the United States and other nations to develop rules about the theft of intellectual property, and about not interfering with a nation’s efforts to bring attacked systems back online. Attacking another nation’s power grid in peacetime is considered out of bounds. But every new case brings a new and imaginative way to weaponize cyberpower. Until November 2014, when North Korea hacked into the computers at Sony Pictures Entertainment in retaliation for a comedy that portrayed a C. I. A. plot to assassinate Kim the country’s leader, no one seriously considered a movie studio to be “critical infrastructure. ” Yet the attack on Sony — which melted down 70 percent of its computing power — was the only case that brought the president to the White House press room to accuse another nation of launching a deliberate cyberattack, and to promise retaliation. Mr. Obama said he was driven to go public by the fact that North Korea was trying to suppress free speech and intimidate Americans with threats if they went to the theater. It is unclear how the United States may have retaliated against the North in secret, if it even did so. But the public punishment, the announcement of some mild economic sanctions, seemed highly ineffective. They were lost in the sea of other sanctions imposed on the North since the signing of the armistice that halted, but did not end, the Korean War 63 years ago. Yet the decision to name North Korea — a country with which the United States does no other real business — was an outlier. China was never formally named in the theft of the security clearance files on more than 21 million Americans, revealing fingerprints, personal financial details and the personal data about family, friends and former lovers. To James R. Clapper Jr. the director of national intelligence, that was not an “attack,” it was just very good espionage. Given the chance, he said last year, “we would have done the same thing. ” Similarly, the administration decided not to call out Russia when the same intelligence agencies implicated in the D. N. C. attack were believed to be behind the siphoning of tens of thousands of unclassified emails from the systems of the State Department and the White House. There was also a more targeted cyberespionage operation, which investigators attributed to the same actors, aimed at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But again, it was considered within the bounds of spy vs. spy. Speaking at the Aspen forum on Thursday, Mr. Clapper, while stepping around who had conducted the hacking, said that in Mr. Putin’s mind, the United States had meddled in Russian politics, in Ukraine and Georgia — all part of former Soviet territory. (Mr. Putin complained that Hillary Clinton, in 2011, helped spark protests over a Russian parliamentary election that the United States considered riddled with voter fraud.) “Of course they see a U. S. conspiracy behind every bush and ascribe far more impact than we’re actually guilty of, but that’s their ” Mr. Clapper said. “And so I think their approach is they believe we are trying to influence political developments in Russia, trying to effect change, and so their natural response is to retaliate and do unto us as they think we’ve done unto them. ” He later described Mr. Putin as “paranoid” and said “he is less of a throwback to the Communist era, than to the czars. ” He added later: “He wants to be seen as the leader of a great power, coequal with the United States. ” | 1 |
Posted on November 2, 2016 by DavidSwanson
Thirty-seven years ago, the United States Congress commissioned and published a work of fiction, an account of what life in Charlottesville, Virginia, might be like during a nuclear war. It’s contained in a longer report called The Effects of Nuclear War which came out in May of 1979. It’s widely available online .
I take an interest for 15 pretty solid reasons: I live in Charlottesville. The world still has enough nuclear weapons with which to destroy itself many times over. We pay a lot less attention to preventing such a disaster now than we did 37 years ago. More nations have nukes now and many more are close to having them. We know more now about the numerous nuclear accidents and misunderstandings that have nearly killed us all over the decades. India and Pakistan are actually at war. The United States and Russia are as close to war as they’ve been in 98 years. The United States is investing in newer and smaller, “more usable” nukes. This Congressional best case scenario for a U.S. city during a nuclear war is deeply disturbing. We now know that even a limited nuclear war would produce a nuclear winter , preventing the production of crops depicted in this tale. It’s not so clear to me that Charlottesville would still rank last on a list of targets for nuclear missiles. It is, after all, home to the Army JAG school, the National Ground Intelligence Center, various weapon makers, a heavily militarized university, and the CIA’s underground hideout . The United Nations has just set up negotiations for the coming year of a global treaty to ban nuclear weapons, and it’s worth trying to understand why. If we survive our possession of nuclear knowledge, we still have climate catastrophe to quickly and miraculously evade or prepare for. The Republican candidate for U.S. president. The Democratic candidate for U.S. president.
So, here are a few excerpts that I encourage you to consider:
“[This account] presents one among many possibilities, and in particular it does not consider the situation if martial law were imposed or if the social fabric disintegrated into anarchy. . . .
“Refugees came from Washington, 130 miles to the north, and they came from Richmond, 70 miles to the east. A few of the hardier types continued on into the mountains and caverns near Skyline Drive; the majority sought the reassurances of civilization that the small city could provide. . . .
“At the sound of the sirens and the emergency radio alerts, most of Charlottesville and Albemarle County hurried to shelter. Fortunately, Charlottesville had a surplus of shelter space for its own population, though the refugees easily took up the slack. Many headed for the University grounds and the basements of the old neoclassical buildings designed by Thomas Jefferson; others headed downtown for the office building parking garages. . . .
“Most did not see the attacks on Richmond and on Washington as they huddled in their shelters. But the sky to the east and north of Charlottesville glowed brilliant in the noonday sun. At first no one knew how extensive the damage was. . . .
“The total dose [of radiation] in the first 4 days was 2,000 reins, which killed those who refused to believe shelter was necessary, and increased the risk of eventually dying of cancer for those who were properly sheltered. . . .
“Three days after the attacks, the next large influx of refugees poured into Charlottesville, many of them suffering with the early symptoms of radiation sickness. . . .
“After being turned away, the sick had no specific destination. Many still clustered around the middle of town near the two major hospitals, taking up residence in the houses abandoned by local residents several days before. With minimal protection from fallout and no medical treatment for other trauma, many died, their bodies left unburied for several weeks. . . .
“Unprotected farm animals were dead, while those which had been confined to fairly solid barns with uncontaminated feed had a fair chance of surviving. Many of these farm animals, however, were missing, apparently eaten by hungry refugees and residents. . . .
“During the third week after the attacks, the new rationing system come into force. Individual identification cards were issued to every man, woman and child. Food was distributed at centralized points. . . .
“By now, the emergency government recognized that the need for food was going to be acute. Without power for refrigeration, much food had spoiled; stocks of nonperishable foods were mostly exhausted. As the shortages became clear, the price of food skyrocketed. . . .
“In addition to those with terminal radiation sickness, there were those with nonfatal cases and those who showed some symptoms. Often it was impossible for doctors to quickly identify those with flu or psychosomatic radiation symptoms. The number of patients crowding the emergency rooms did not slacken off. . . .
“The supply of drugs on hand at the hospitals was dwindling fast. Although penicillin could be manufactured fairly easily in the laboratories at the university, many other drugs were not so simple, even with talent and ingenuity. . . .
“Food riots broke out 4 1/2 weeks after the attacks — precipitated by the first large shipment of grain. . . .
“One day, quite without warning, the city manager was informed that one-half of his fuel stores were to be confiscated by the Federal Government, for the military and for the reconstruction effort. . . .
“In Charlottesville alone, several thousand people died in the first winter after the nuclear attack. . . .
“It was clear that if the economy did not get moving again soon, it might never. Already there were indications that manufacturing was not reestablishing itself with anywhere near the speed the planners had hoped. . . .
“‘We will have survived biologically, but our way of life is going to be unrecognizable. In several generations, the United States is going to resemble a late medieval society.'” This entry was posted in General . Bookmark the permalink . US Insiders – Not Russia – Leaked Clinton Emails → WillDippel
Here is an article that looks at the Obama Administration’s addition to America’s nuclear weapon inventory:
This weapon is an obvious breach of Barack Obama’s promise in 2009 to deescalate the global nuclear weapons threat. ClubToTheHead
With minimal protection … and no medical treatment for other trauma, many died, their bodies left unburied for several weeks. . . .
Shades of Katrina. | 0 |
In the hills and hollows of Mingo County, W. Va. where unemployment is nearly triple the national average, it’s coal. On the southwest side of Chicago, where the landscape couldn’t be more different but the economic fears are much the same, it’s Oreo cookies. Elsewhere, it is cars, computers and . And whether it is through rolling back regulations, imposing tariffs or making some phone calls from the Oval Office to the Donald J. Trump has vowed to bring back the vanishing jobs of miners, bakers and workers, beginning on Day 1 of his administration. “It’s going to happen fast,” Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, recently told a cheering crowd in Charleston, W. Va. “This is so easy. ” If only that were true. For all of the appeal his message might have for residents there (Mr. Trump captured almost 90 percent of the vote in Mingo County) much of what he is promising to do — on his own, and through congressional legislation — couldn’t be accomplished in the first 1, 000 days of a Trump administration, much less the first 100. For example, Mr. Trump has suggested easing regulations enacted by Democrats and Republicans alike that have hurt the coal industry. But King Coal is unlikely to ever recapture market share lost in recent years to natural gas made cheap by the fracking boom, not to mention alternative energy sources like wind and solar. Nor could Mr. Trump, a billionaire businessman, force steel makers to buy coal from Appalachia to heat furnaces in Asia, Europe and North America that have been idled by weak demand. “I will not say he can’t do anything, but it’s very unlikely he’ll be able to restore coal to where it was,” said John Deskins, director of the West Virginia University Bureau of Business and Economic Research. With production and employment in the mines down by about a third since 2008, Mr. Deskins said, “even in our most optimistic scenario, we don’t expect a big bounce back. ” Of course, a Trump presidency is far from certain. And any president’s sway over the national economy is debatable. But a big part of what has gotten Mr. Trump this far are his outsize promises. And while the case of coal and clean air illustrates the limits of a president’s power in the economic arena, there are other places where Mr. Trump would have considerably more room to maneuver. Like much of his speechifying, Mr. Trump’s economic and business agenda is a mixture of opening bids and messages as well as some proposals he might be able to put in effect as president, even without congressional approval. Sorting out what’s what, though, isn’t simple or safe. Just ask the pundits who wrote off Mr. Trump’s candidacy as a sideshow even as he won one primary after another. For his part, Mr. Trump warns it would be a mistake to underestimate his ability to change the rules of the game. “In my whole life, I’ve gotten things done,” he said in an interview on Saturday. “Whether it’s getting a city built on the West Side of Manhattan or getting zoning board approvals, my whole life has been finding a consensus. ” But when it comes to companies moving jobs out of the United States, he said a tougher tone was in order. “I’m not Obama, and there are stupid people in our government,” he said. “With me, there will be consequences if you move, and the consequences will be severe. ” In terms of coal and recovering all of those vanished jobs in West Virginia, Mr. Trump acknowledged that price competition from cheaper natural gas was fierce. “But coal is still less expensive, and it has a major place in terms of energy,” he said. And regulatory relief — whether in terms of environmental rules or workplace safety — would benefit the industry, he said. “I have become very well versed on coal,” Mr. Trump said. “The regulations are brutal, and they are sending inspectors into the mines two and three times a day. Even the miners say it’s out of control. ” In law firms, corporate boardrooms, lobbyist watering holes and think tanks in Washington and beyond, experts are quietly assessing what a Trump presidency might actually look like in practice. Or to put it more bluntly, business is business. So whether they find Mr. Trump politically abhorrent or a welcome antidote to the status quo, these insiders also want to know what he might mean for their bottom line. National debate: “Trump would put the bully in bully pulpit. ” Perhaps the greatest opportunity for Mr. Trump lies in the extraordinary ability of any president to direct the tone and contours of the national debate, especially on issues he has highlighted, like how American companies should treat their American workers. And unlike most past Republican candidates, Mr. Trump has not been reluctant to criticize big business on that topic. “Donald Trump would put the bully in bully pulpit,” said Seth Harris, who served as a top official in the Labor Department under Democratic presidents. Immigration: “Where the president’s power is least restricted. ” Consider immigration, one of Mr. Trump’s signature issues. He might well be able to deliver on one of his central campaign promises: handing out fewer green cards to foreign workers, or denying a place to visa holders unless their American employers agree to pay them more. “There’s a reason why so many of Trump’s proposals revolve around the idea of denying visas to people,” said William A. Stock, a lawyer in Philadelphia who is the of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “That’s where the president’s power is least restricted, if he asserts it. ” The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, Mr. Stock said, gives the president “the ability to suspend the entry of foreign nationals whose entry is deemed to be detrimental to the interests of the U. S. ” Noting that recent administrations have invoked the law to forbid entry to individuals from the former Yugoslavia accused of human rights violations, as well as to Cuban and Iranian government officials, Mr. Stock said, “This is a tool that is pretty powerful, but it’s usually been used in more limited instances. ” Financial reform: “When it comes to regulation, people are policy. ” And what about “dismantling” the 2010 financial law, as Mr. Trump promised this month? Repealing the law might be difficult, but experts who helped draft the regulations agreed that Mr. Trump could defang them through selective enforcement — appointing different officials to the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission — and by issuing new executive orders. A President Trump would have wide latitude to name his own people to oversee less conspicuous but powerful agencies like the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and to seed Treasury and other government departments with officials. “When it comes to regulation, people are policy,” said Aaron Klein, a top official at the Treasury Department from 2009 to 2012 and helped draft the bill. “Regulators who don’t want to regulate can thwart the will of Congress. ” But the president’s reach isn’t unlimited. Nor is it speedy. And however stupendous Mr. Trump’s skills may be, the forces of gridlock in the nation’s capital are no less awesome. “The system doesn’t change,” said Tom Korologos, a longtime Republican strategist and an adviser at the law firm DLA Piper in Washington. “Trump can say, ‘I’m going to repeal this or I’m going to repeal that,’ but it’s going to take longer than 100 days. ” Mr. Korologos, who served on the transition teams of President Ronald Reagan and President George W. Bush, isn’t supporting Mr. Trump this year. He added that while the presumptive Republican nominee’s promises might make “for nice talking points, it will be harder than he thinks. ” Tax cuts: A Republican Congress is unlikely to accept a $10 trillion deficit over 10 years. That’s especially true when it comes to the macroeconomic picture. Mr. Trump claims his proposal for sweeping tax cuts for individuals and businesses wouldn’t bust the budget and could lift the economy’s annual growth rate to 6 percent. More experts say that’s magical thinking, a 2016 version of “voodoo economics,” as President George H. W. Bush famously described what came to be known as Reaganomics in the 1980s. They estimate Mr. Trump’s tax plan could create a $10 trillion shortfall at the Treasury over the next decade, and note that annual economic growth has topped 5 percent only once in the last 35 years. “I have a hard time believing that even a Republican Congress would enact his tax plan, because it would create enormous deficits,” said William G. Gale, an economist under the first President Bush who is now of the Tax Policy Center in Washington. Mr. Trump responded that “those tax cuts go hand in hand with many other things. ” As a result of getting tough on trade policy and what he considers currency manipulation by China, Mr. Trump argues that more jobs would return to the United States, which in turn would spur economic growth and therefore tax revenues. Whether or not that’s realistic, any significant alteration in trade or tax policy means winning over the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, both of which zealously guard their turf. “This is what makes them tick,” Mr. Korologos said. “It’s going to take more than just a bunch of rhetoric to change things. ” Labor: An ebb and flow when administrations change hands in Washington. Like Mr. Korologos, Mr. Harris, the former Labor Department official, has seen the ebb and flow when administrations change hands in Washington. Except he was on the opposite side of the aisle, having served on the Democratic transition teams after President Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 and after President Obama’s victory in 2008. At Labor, where he was a top adviser under Mr. Clinton, and then as deputy secretary in the Obama administration, Mr. Harris saw firsthand just how much influence the president could have. Tasked with enforcing regulations on whether companies are abiding by minimum wage requirements, child labor restrictions, affirmative action guidelines, workplace safety rules and a web of other laws, Mr. Harris said, the Labor Department has never been very popular with big business or the Republican candidates it supports. And when George W. Bush succeeded Bill Clinton, the change was swift, Mr. Harris said. Budgets were cut, and travel to inspect factories and mines decreased. There was less emphasis on enforcement, going into workplaces and punishing violations, he said, and more on educating employers about potential infractions. After Mr. Harris returned to the Labor Department in 2009, budgets were increased, and surprise workplace inspections were resumed. “We investigated more deeply, enforced procedures, and were more likely to find violations,” he said. “There was no executive order or action by Congress or the White House. We just did it. The laws existed — it was a matter of whether you were going to solve the problem aggressively or be more passive. ” Republicans, including Mr. Trump, have long argued that regulatory zeal kills jobs and undermines economic growth. Democrats maintain it is necessary to protect employees from abuses and risks, while imposing checks on the power of big companies. Both arguments contain elements of truth. But Mr. Harris said that what was critical was that civil servants quickly adapted to the message coming down from the Oval Office. “The president sets the tone for how our government is going to relate to our country,” said Mr. Harris, who is now a lawyer in private practice in Washington. “How the laws are implemented and enforced, how the money is spent and how motivated people are to do their job. ” Health care: “Selling insurance isn’t like selling credit cards. ” isn’t the only big law Mr. Trump has talked about repealing. The other prominent target of Mr. Trump’s ire — the Affordable Care Act — would be trickier to dispose of. Even if Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress, simply repealing the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, could bring on a political backlash from the 12. 7 million Americans who are directly covered under the law, not to mention millions more who benefit from provisions like those that allow young adults to be covered under their parents’ policy and those that prevent insurers from dropping coverage for conditions. Moreover, Mr. Trump displays a lack of understanding of how health insurance works. For example, one specific change in the A. C. A. that Mr. Trump, along with other Republican candidates, has called for — allowing insurers to sell policies across state lines — is permitted under the law now. The problem, said Nicholas Bagley, a professor of law at the University of Michigan, is that insurers don’t want to do it because it’s not practical. “Selling insurance isn’t like selling credit cards,” Mr. Bagley said. “ health insurers don’t have networks of doctors and hospitals in place. The problem isn’t legal restraints, and it’s not a solution to what ails the health care economy. ” Mr. Trump responded that deregulation is still the answer, despite the skepticism of experts like Mr. Bagley. “The problem is rules, regulations and restrictions,” he said. “You’re going to have rate increases that are catastrophic, and the deductibles are so high people can’t even use the health care. If it was really open and you got competition going, amazing things will happen. ” Environment: Sending “a chill down the spine” of people who enforce the laws. Environmental regulation offers a more promising target for Mr. Trump, who has called the Environmental Protection Agency a laughingstock and a disgrace, and has promised to cut its budget. In fact, in the absence of congressional action, the Trump administration could target many other environmental regulations by simply going after the people who enforce them, said Don Barry, who spent two decades at the Interior Department and directed the United States Fish and Wildlife Service under President Clinton. Decades later, Mr. Barry still recalls how a round of firings in the Interior Department at the dawn of the Reagan administration signaled a turnabout in policy. “The single biggest thing they can do is send a chill down the spine of career survivors in the bureaucracy and bring things to a halt,” he said. Similarly, a Trump administration might be willing to approve state environmental plans that are more friendly to fossil fuels, said Kevin Book, head of research at ClearView Energy Partners. Proposed, but not completed, regulations aimed at restricting mining for coal in West Virginia could be eased, he said. Trade: Trump can punish countries, but jobs are unlikely to return. Still, even if Mr. Trump were to win in November and roll back some environmental regulations, it wouldn’t significantly alter the fate of Mingo County and much of the nation’s depressed coal industry. “Taking a more lenient stance on or rules would do nothing to help coal demand,” Mr. Book said. “ power plants have been mothballed and are being disassembled, and that capacity is gone. It’s not even close to something you could reverse by administrative fiat. ” If Washington’s ability to gridlock even the most ambitious of presidential agendas were to block Mr. Trump’s White House plans, he would still have the bully pulpit, of course. And unlike Theodore Roosevelt, who coined that term, Mr. Trump probably wouldn’t speak softly. Still, that might not be enough to keep Oreos baking in Chicago. Nabisco’s bakery there isn’t shuttering completely as Mr. Trump has suggested, but some Oreo production will begin shifting to Salinas, Mexico — where Mondelez, Nabisco’s corporate parent, has invested $130 million to build new lines. Oreos will also continue to be produced at Nabisco bakeries in Virginia, New Jersey and Oregon. Announced in July 2015, the Nabisco layoffs in Chicago continued during the Illinois primary in March, despite jabs from Mr. Trump and both Democratic presidential contenders, Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders. United Technologies is similarly unlikely to rethink Carrier’s move out of Indianapolis. And in an era when Apple is willing to fight the Obama administration’s efforts to unlock an iPhone on national security grounds, more corporate defiance may become the norm. Blanketing countries from China to Mexico with import duties would be a tall order without congressional approval. The White House, though, does retain plenty of leeway to punish countries it thinks are engaged in currency manipulation, dumping of products below the cost of production and other abuses. The problem for Mr. Trump — or any president who wants to get tough on trade violators — is that, in the global economy, imposing tariffs on competitors abroad could have serious economic consequences at home by sharply raising prices on imported goods. Cheaper televisions, computers, clothes, furniture and other products from Walmart, Amazon and elsewhere have been a rare bright spot for struggling and Americans. And trade wars cut both ways: Retaliatory tariffs on products from countries like China would prompt howls of pain at still strong domestic manufacturers like Caterpillar and Boeing. But for all the uncertainty around what might happen after Jan. 20, 2017, the lawyers and lobbyists who are now trying to gauge a Trump presidency are already emerging as winners. Mr. Trump’s unpredictability, Mr. Korologos said, is proving to be a boon for Washington’s legions of lobbyists. “Corporate America hates the unknown,” he said. “God only knows what the hell Trump is for. And corporate America is going to want someone to save them. ” | 1 |
IT workers at the University of California intend to file a lawsuit challenging their dismissal after they were replaced by offshore workers, arguing that those sacked from the UC San Francisco campus were discriminated against based on age and national origin. [Around 80 people lost their positions in the department, including 50 workers and 30 contractors, in a move that is unheard of in the public sector, where offsourcing is much less common than in the private sector. UCSF hired the firm HCL to handle its services instead of the American workers. Randall Strauss from Gwilliam Ivary Chiosso Cavalli Brewer, the attorney representing the argued that “to take a workforce that is overwhelmingly over the age of 40 and replace them with folks who are mainly in their 20s — early 20s, in fact — we think is age discrimination. ” The group also represents and “reflects the diversity of California” — to allow them to be “replaced with people who come from one particular part of the world” is discrimination based on their national origin, continued Strauss. The lawsuit will be filed in Alameda County Superior Court. On Wednesday, details about UCSF’s financial situation emerged that may help the IT workers in their case. A report by a California state auditor found an undisclosed $175 million in funds in the university’s budget the outsourcing would be estimated to save $10 million a year for the next 5 years. The lead counsel on the case, J. Gary Gwilliam, released a statement on the subject of the university funding: It is unbelievable to me that a public university would ship good American jobs overseas by telling the fired workers, the Regents, the Legislature and public of a crying need to save money, while at the same time maintaining a secret slush fund of $175 million dollars which would more than cover the cost of keeping all these jobs in California, leaving more than enough money leftover to cover the needs of the University and its students. Similar lawsuits have been popping up around the country recently. In December, former IT workers at Disney filed a lawsuit against the company, claiming that American workers were being discriminated against in favor of hiring visa workers from overseas. Some staff members even alleged that they were forced to train their foreign replacements before being allowed to take their redundancy check. Jack Hadfield is a student at the University of Warwick and a regular contributor to Breitbart Tech. You can like his page on Facebook and follow him on Twitter @ToryBastard_ or on Gab @JH. | 1 |
Friday at her weekly press briefing, Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi ( ) said President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement was a “dishonor ” to God. Pelosi said, “This is a matter of environmental justice. Lower income and minority families are disproportionately vulnerable to the ravages of the climate crisis. It’s civil rights issue. Environmental justice is. And we have a moral responsibility in addition to the national security, the economy and the health of our children. We have a moral responsibility. We must leave future generations with a healthy, sustainable planet. Faith leaders, starting with the Holiness Pope Francis, to the evangelical community, have urged us to be responsible stewards of the beauty of God’s creation. They believe as you live that this planet is God’s creation and we have a moral responsibility to be good stewards of it. ” “When we work with evangelical communities, we put together our climate legislation ten years ago, nine years ago,” she continued. “They had their literature which said that we had a moral responsibility to be good stewards of God’s creation, and in doing so, we must pay special attention to the needs of the poor. I saw it as an environmental justice issue as well in the evangelical community. When the pope went to the White House, he talked about the dangers of air pollution when he was here. Just last week, the pope met with President Trump and gave him a copy of his encyclical, which made the strong case to halt the climate crisis. The pope wrote the climate is a common good belonging to all and meant for all. The Bible tells us to minister to the needs of God’s creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us and that is what we are doing by walking away from this accord. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
Abby Martin Exposes What Hillary Clinton Really Represents ‹ › Since 2011, VNN has operated as part of the Veterans Today Network ; a group that operates over 50 plus media, information and service online sites for U.S. Military Veterans. Trump’s Speech to New World Order! By VNN on October 23, 2016 Trump takes aim at the New World Order
Donald Trump Jr. w/Anderson Cooper; 8-30-2016
Donald Trump Jr. joins left-wing CNN’s Anderson Cooper. Related Posts: 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 October 23, 2016, With 0 Reads, Filed under Afghanistan War (2002-?) , Africa Wars , Libyan Civil War (2011-?) , Syria War (2008-?) , Ukraine War (2014-?) , War , Yemen Civil War (2014-?) . 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 Joachim Hagopian October 31, 2016
This last Friday it became public record that FBI Director James Comey reopened the Hillary Clinton email server investigation after repeatedly testifying before Congress and the world up to last July that he’d closed the case , after in his words not finding sufficient evidence of “any criminal wrongdoing ” to indict her in spite of her four years as Secretary of State egregiously breaching our national security , committing obstruction of justice and willful tampering with evidence, deleting 30,000 emails after receiving a court subpoena constituting destruction of evidence, not to mention repeatedly engaging in perjury before Congress and the FBI.
But obviously, a federal investigation still in process in late June never stopped serial rapist-crime boss Bill Clinton’s illegal ambush at the Phoenix airport of Comey’s boss US Attorney General Loretta Lynch “clearing” the way for Hillary to proceed without consequence to be anointed as the next US figurehead puppet president by the ruling elite. Because it’s so blatantly obvious to the entire world that Hillary is guilty as sin, Comey’s whitewash didn’t go over well with either Americans or longtime FBI agents who reacted angrily to Comey’s over-the-top corruption. Subsequently, in recent months Comey has had a virtual mutiny on his hands as in the FBI boss has lost all credibility, respect, and moral authority.
A former federal attorney for the District of Columbia Joe diGenova spelled it all out in a WMAL radio interview last Friday just hours after the news was released that Comey had sent a letter informing Congress that the case is being reopened. DiGenova said that with an open revolt brewing inside the FBI, Comey was forced to go public on Friday with reopening the investigation. The former DC attorney added that the FBI investigators discovered more emails on a phone confiscated from the former New York Congressman and separated husband Anthony Weiner that also included his wife and longtime Hillary’s right-hand woman Huma Abedin’s communications that allegedly bear pertinent relevance to the Hillary case. Funny how things have a karmic way of coming full circle – the Clintons first introduced Weiner and Abedin 15 years ago and they married a half dozen years ago.
In a separate FBI investigation involving Weiner’s alleged sexting messages with a 15-year old minor , the phone in question was handed over to the FBI. The investigating teams of both the Weiner and Hillary cases compared notes and apparently additional emails not already issued by WikiLeaks or already in FBI possession recently came to light on Weiner’s phone . The legions of rank and file FBI agents were already fuming over Comey’s complete ethical and legal lapses in his choice not to indict Hillary. Joe diGenova believes that FBI personnel forced Comey’s hand to reopen the investigation after giving him the ultimatum that if he failed to do so, the FBI defiantly would. According to diGenova, this latest plot twist only proves that:
The original investigation was not thorough, and that it was an incompetent investigation.
Otherwise, had a real investigation been conducted, that Weiner phone used by both Anthony and Huma would have been picked up by the FBI and its contents thoroughly scrutinized long before now.
In addition to stating the obvious, that the higher-up feds had already made the decision to not consequence Hillary for her crimes, speculating on why that phone was not already submitted to the FBI as evidence, the former DC attorney concluded:
There could be one explanation: Huma Abedin may have denied that any other phone existed, and if she did, she committed a felony. She lied to the FBI just like General Cartwright , and if she did, she’s dead meat, and Comey knows it, and there’s nothing he can do about it.
Finally, diGenova dropped one more bombshell in Friday’s interview. An inside source has revealed to him that the laptops belonging to key Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, both wrongly granted immunity , were not destroyed after all as previously reported, but have been secretly kept intact by investigating FBI agents refusing to destroy incriminating evidence as part of the in-house whitewash. Additionally like their boss, Hillary’s aides also sent classified material using private servers. On top of that, longtime aide Cheryl Mills on multiple occasions has perjured herself lying under oath for the Clinton crime family, tasked with “cleaning up” (aka covering up) their countless scandals over the past several decades. Indeed the whole Clinton entourage not already “mysteriously” winding up in the growing Clinton dead pool are all unindicted criminals protected by the corrosively corrupt DC cronyism where backroom deals (a la Bill’s airport ambush) are brokered based on whatever dirt’s been gathered and used as bargaining blackmail chips against all parties involved. That’s how the Washington crowd stays immune from any and all accountability as well as stays alive. Violate that crime syndicate code of conduct and you lose your life as more recent victims earlier this year have.
In a “leaked” memo to his FBI that surfaced on Fox Friday night, Comey outlined his reasons for reopening the case in light of the new information the director believes would have ultimately been leaked to Congress and the public anyway. So in full damage control/CYA mode, the beleaguered director now going public really had no choice in the matter. His underlings were chomping at the bit to both out and oust him. In an obvious attempt to weakly claim some moral high ground, Comey wrote in his memo:
I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record.
Though his leadership and character are perceived by the vast majority of both FBI personnel as well as American citizens to presently lay in ruin as a pathetically shameful stain and humiliating joke on both the FBI organization and Washington in general, James Comey appears to be feebly attempting to save his own career and reputation for appearing now to “come clean.” But make no mistake, his moral turpitude displayed throughout this Hillary debacle from early 2015 to now has over-exposed him as a total lackey and fraud, so at this late stage of the game, redemption is not even an option. But the criminal misconduct, rampant corruption and diabolical evil committed by those at the highest puppet levels of federal power, and especially the elite puppet masters controlling them, their sins produce far more devastating consequences than this morally lacking man in the middle of this latest controversy.
Because there is no way that the FBI will properly conclude this part 2 of the Hillary investigation saga before the November 8 th election, Hillary, and her Democrats are predictably crying foul , demanding that the FBI immediately disclose what it has, which of course is a moot point that won’t happen. It seems highly unlikely that the email texts from Abedin and Weiner found on his phone would not contain clear criminal evidence that implicates Hillary. Since Hillary was the globalist choice after Obama was selected in 2008, it seems unlikely that the puppet masters would not permit this latest development to even occur. But then perhaps the ruling elite is pulling the plug on Hillary, concluding that she simply carries too much liability baggage with her deteriorating health condition and never-ending scandals, maybe the globalists are rethinking an alternative replacement like her obnoxiously aggressive VP candidate, the Jesuit-trained and educated Tim Kaine.
That said, there are some cynics who believe that this recent odd turn is the last ditch desperado attempt being staged to overturn Trump winning by a landslide. This conjectured scenario goes something like this: a few days prior to the election the FBI will once again “clear” Hillary of all charges. This, in turn, would offer her the last minute much needed boost being able to cash in on her worn out persecution complex , plagued forever by her “right wing conspiracy” theory against the “much maligned” woman of destiny.
In response to all her scandals, Hillary’s M.O. has always been to falsely blame some villainous sinister force. This year it’s been Putin hacking into her emails, and Trump, Putin, and Assange colluding and plotting behind her back. She’s always been as paranoid as Richard Nixon , attempting to deflect the heat she draws from her own skullduggery lies by constantly pointing fingers to externalize blame onto others. It’s a deeply rooted pathological complex that certain tightly screwed sociopaths possess.
This latest sudden turn of events obviously has James Comey incurring the wrath of Hillary Democrats as well as the Justice Department. By disclosing the reopened investigation so close to the election date that undoubtedly casts some influence on the potential outcome, Comey is defying his AG boss while clearly violating DOJ written policy . Lynch herself even tried to quash Comey’s letter to Congress. But as diGenova alluded, by Comey’s own past misdeeds (and those of his boss and Obama as well), the FBI director placed himself between this rock and a hard place by his own slipshod, half-ass probe failing to acquire Weiner’s phone the first time around.
The entire sordid affair of this year’s totally rigged political election – pre-fixed in Hillary’s favor – blatantly reveals to America the gross misnomer of the US “justice” system being two-tiered, one for elitist crime cabal bosses like Hillary and the other for the rest of us 99% no longer protected in a totalitarian police state by our once rule of law the US Constitution. Regardless of what happens in the future, the truth genie’s already been let out of the bag, and for eyes open enough to see, it’s floating in the Washington cesspool of filth, debauchery and deception regularly perpetrated by our “entrusted perps” we have as our so called leaders.
Moreover, this year’s unending batches of Wiki-leaked DNC/Hillary emails and Project Veritas undercover campaign videos confirm that the entire US political, as well as economic system, is morally and financially bankrupt, irreparably broken and in need of complete overhaul. Voter fraud and election fraud are rampant. Soros funded electronic voting machines that are preprogrammed to vote for Hillary are operating in 16 key battleground states. America’s internal house now is in total disarray, badly in need of a deep cleaning purge like never before. Mainstream media is strongly biased against Trump in its blind support for Hillary . As Secretary of State she treasonously sold out our nation, placing us all at high security risk and under foreign interest control at the hands of high rolling bidders so she and her fat cats can get richer as fellow partners-in-crime from places like Saudi Arabia and Israel, destroying our once sovereign country while aiding, abetting, financing and supporting our enemies the global terrorists around the world. She helped create ISIS and plans world war against Russia, China and Iran. The traitors in our government and their globalist puppet masters – the Rothschilds, Rockefellers , the Bushes and Clintons all need to be rounded up, imprisoned and tried at The Hague for both treason and their endless crimes against humanity. The Best of Joachim Hagopian Tags: Joachim Hagopian [ ] is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. In recent years he has focused on his writing, becoming an alternative media journalist. His blog site is at http://empireexposed.blogspot.com . | 0 |
WASHINGTON — With all the crises in the Middle East, the Obama administration took solace in the fact that there was one reliable, democratically elected strongman — a stalwart member of NATO — that Washington could depend on: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. No matter how the coup attempt against Mr. Erdogan plays out over the next hours and days, that certainty is shattered. Until midafternoon Friday, American officials thought Mr. Erdogan had tightened his iron grip on his country. He had purged the judiciary jailed insouciant senior military officers three years ago and installed seemingly compliant successors and cracked down on the opposition and the news media. As one senior American diplomat said Friday evening, no one had come to work that day at the White House, the State Department or the C. I. A. expecting to see Mr. Erdogan turn to FaceTime on his iPhone to plead with the Turkish people to take to the streets in his defense. Even though the coup attempt appeared to be failing by early Saturday morning in Turkey, the country had suddenly become another tumultuous one in a region that knows no end of turmoil. Mr. Erdogan would almost certainly have to begin a purge of the plotters and probably hunt for other challengers to his authority — extending a streak of ruthlessness that has left many of his NATO allies gasping. Friday’s events could leave in limbo some of the top priorities of the United States and Europe. They rely on Turkey to help battle the Islamic State, to contain the flow of migrants out of Syria, and to host American intelligence agencies and NATO forces seeking to grapple with upheaval in the Middle East. The coup attempt “presents a dilemma to the United States and European governments: Do you support a nondemocratic coup,” or an “increasingly nondemocratic leader?” said Richard N. Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, where Mr. Erdogan has often come to talk with Americans influential in the relationship between the two countries. To many in Washington, that dilemma is secondary to the question of whether Turkey will be a reliable partner in the battle against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, a willing host to American forces and a stable player in the world’s most volatile corner. American officials say the next 24 to 48 hours will be crucial in determining whether the coup attempt will have lasting repercussions. Unlike past bloodless coups in Turkey, this one does not have the implicitly understood support of the public, which appears to be divided over the military intervention. “The danger here is this could spiral out of control and turn into a civil war,” Eric S. Edelman, a former American ambassador to Turkey and former leading Pentagon official under President George W. Bush, said in a telephone interview on Friday. A military that appeared, on the surface, to be largely under the thumb of Mr. Erdogan is clearly riven with divisions so severe that the chief of staff appears to have been be detained while officers put tanks on the streets of Istanbul and the air force over Ankara, the capital. Mr. Erdogan has plenty of enemies, eager to see him weakened or removed from power. Among them are Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah who took power in a coup three years ago. The Russians, led by President Vladimir V. Putin, have tense relations with Mr. Erdogan, who has helped try to depose President Bashar of Syria. And Mr. Assad himself would likely be both pleased and amazed if he held onto power longer than Mr. Erdogan. Europeans would have plenty to worry about: Just a few months ago they struck a deal with Mr. Erdogan, paying Turkey more than $6 billion to hold onto Syrian migrants rather than let them flow into Western Europe, where many others had settled. It was the migrant crisis more than anything else, the Europeans believe, that led to Britain’s decision to exit the European Union. A failure to stem the flow, they feared, could lead to the breakup of Europe — a fear that American officials, led by Secretary of State John Kerry, shared. Of the many intelligence failures that surrounded the Arab Spring uprisings five years ago, the coup in Turkey may soon be added to the list. A senior administration official who deals with Middle Eastern issues said that American diplomats and intelligence agencies were, before Friday, near unanimous in their view that a coup attempt was highly unlikely there. Mr. Erdogan, in their view, was secure, the official said, bemoaning the state of American intelligence gathering in Turkey. In fact, diplomatic cables and intelligence reports written as recently as this month concluded that Mr. Erdogan had won enough support in the upper ranks of the military to head off any possible plots before they materialized, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence reporting. Officials will spend a lot of time determining what they missed. But as Cengiz Candar, a Turkey expert with an online news outlet, noted on Friday evening, Mr. Erdogan “made a Faustian bargain with the military, and now the military is back. ” “It was an alliance,” Mr. Candar said, “but the military is not his friend — not emotionally, not institutionally, not ideologically. ” Washington had its own problems with Mr. Erdogan and the crosscurrents of Turkish politics. Mr. Erdogan came to power a seeming reformist, and for a while the country seemed to be a flowering democracy. It was not too many years ago that Turkey was cited by many in the United States as a model for the Islamic world, a country that, like Indonesia, could find the right mix of moderate Islamism and democracy. But for the past three years Mr. Erdogan’s crackdowns have become an increasing embarrassment to his NATO allies. His efforts to veer toward Islamism and crack down on the news media and opposition groups have left American officials caught between their instincts to support democracy and their reliance on an increasingly authoritarian leader. The State Department human rights report, updated last month, complained about new laws allowing the government “to restrict freedom of expression, the press and the internet,” and the arrests of more than 30 journalists. It reported on arbitrary arrests and the denial of fair trials. It complained that Mr. Erdogan’s campaign against the Kurds, and the government’s fear of the Kurdish separatist movement, meant that one NATO ally was bombing rebel groups in Syria while the United States and others were funding — and depending — on those same groups. Any prolonged instability in Turkey could impede Mr. Kerry’s latest effort to bring a to Syria, and perhaps threaten the American ability to operate from the major air base at Incirlik, where many of the operations against the Islamic State are launched. | 1 |
The scale of Syria’s refugee crisis is dizzying. As the war there stretches into a seventh year, more than five million citizens, nearly a quarter of Syria’s prewar population, have fled their country, seeking shelter mainly in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, the United Nations refugee agency said Thursday. Five million people is roughly equal to the population of Norway. If nearly a quarter of the United States’ population left the country, it would be as if the combined populations of California, New York and Florida had disappeared. In addition, 6. 3 million Syrians have been internally displaced by the war. Altogether, about half of all Syrians have been forced from their homes because of violence. With no end to the war in sight, Filippo Grandi, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, predicted that 480, 000 more Syrians would become refugees in need of resettlement this year. That is as if the entire population of Sacramento abandoned the city — and the country — over the course of the next nine months. Since the conflict began in 2011, an estimated 400, 000 people have been killed. The five million Syrians who escaped war, starvation and deprivation now live mostly in one of five countries, often in squalid camps teeming with people. The majority of those refugees, nearly three million, have sought shelter in Turkey. Turkey, a country of 75 million, has absorbed a contingent of refugees equal to 4 percent of its population. The country’s location on the doorstep of Europe has increased its leverage in negotiations with the West about the fate of refugee resettlement, but the sheer number of people has taxed the country’s resources. Since February alone, 47, 000 Syrians have sought refuge in Turkey. Two million other refugees are scattered through Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon. Last year, the United Nations sought pledges to resettle 500, 000 Syrians around the world. Since then, only half that many have been given homes. “We still have a long road to travel in expanding resettlement and the number and range of complementary pathways available for refugees,” Mr. Grandi said. “To meet this challenge, we not only need additional places, but also need to accelerate the implementation of existing pledges. ” The United States previously pledged to make 64, 000 places available for Syrians. But President Trump has sought to decrease the number of refugees entering the United States. In January, he signed an executive order barring all Syrian refugees from entering the country, but he was forced to replace it when federal courts blocked it. His second order is also tied up, working its way through the courts. | 1 |
Email Print An FBI source has confirmed that evidence has emerged from the Clinton email investigation that a massive child trafficking and pedophile sex ring operates in Washington. According to reports , at least 6 members of Congress and several leaders from federal agencies are implicated in the pedophile ring, which they say was run directly with the Clinton Foundation as a front. According to an NYPD source, emails found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop detail trips made by Weiner, Bill and Hillary Clinton on convicted pedophile pal billionaire Jeffrey Epstein’s plane ‘Lolitta express‘ to a place known as “ Sex Slave Island “. Will this be the fatal shot? NYPD talking about Child Porn ring involvement. This is NOT confirmed, but would gut Dems. #GoHillary #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/ke8YTz4DMh
— ALWAYS TRUMP! (@Always_Trump) October 31, 2016 An archived thread on 4chan in which an FBI insider originally hinted that the Clinton email server investigation was merely a distraction from the more sinister Clinton Foundation and its connection to pedophilia: Are the people leading the investigation blackmailed pedophiles? > The people under the magnifying glass do have an affinity for children. Please before you sleep speak a little on the child prostitution ring. Sex rings are popular in all governments, but pedophilia is primarily in British parliament & Saudi Arabia, and that’s why HRC and BC love foreign donors so much. They get paid in children as well as money. Dig deep and you can find it. It will sicken you. Stay connected by subscribing to our news letter. Click on the button. | 0 |
Friday in Tehran, CNN reported on Iranians marching on Revolution Day to mark the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution. According to the report, the demonstration took on an theme with protesters chanting, “Death to Trump. Death to America. ” ( Grabien) Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
‘If you build walls, forget about Italian money,’ Rome warns EU over migrant policy 09 Get short URL Hungarian army soldiers erect a fence on the border with Croatia near Sarok, Hungary, September 20, 2015. © Bernadett Szabo / Reuters If certain members of the European Union introduce borders to prevent the movement of asylum seekers, Italy is within its rights to withhold its funding to the EU budget, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has said.
"We give €20 billion to Europe and the EU gives us back 12, but if Hungary or Slovakia preach to us about migrants and don't give us a hand and then want our money,” then Italy can use its right of veto when discussing the budget in 2017, Renzi said , speaking to Italian RAI 1 TV on Tuesday.
He criticized the plan of some EU countries to shut the borders to prevent the inflow of migrants who mostly arrive in Italy first via the Mediterranean.
“If you [EU countries] build a wall, forget about Italian money,” he said, adding that if asylum seekers “don't go there [into other EU countries], the money won't go there either.” Read more 98% of Hungarians reject EU refugee quotas, but low turnout rules referendum invalid
Renzi commented on the recent incident in the small commune of Gorino in northern Italy, where local residents barricaded entrances to the town in protest at the arrival of migrant women and children.
“The story of… Gorino is a difficult matter to judge. On the one hand, a part of the population is very tired and concerned by reports of new [asylum seeker] arrivals. On the other hand, we are talking about 11 women and eight children [later it was reported that there were 12 women],” he said.
The incident in Gorino on Monday night saw protesters use planks of wood and iron bins to create road blocks at three entrances to the commune, while shouting anti-migrant slogans. The women were then relocated to neighboring towns and communes.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Italian Interior Ministry said that more than 153,000 asylum seekers had arrived in Italy since the start of 2016.
Over a million people, fleeing from wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, flooded Europe in 2015, causing the largest migrant crisis faced by the continent in decades.
Thousands of refugees arrive in Italy every month as they brave the dangerous boat trip across the Mediterranean from Libya, which has already led to hundreds drowning.
In September, Hungary sealed off its southern border with a wire fence to stop the flow of refugees. The measures were taken after the authorities estimated that as many as 1,500 illegal migrants had passed the Hungarian border every day, with most of them having taken the so-called Balkan route and moving on to Germany. | 0 |
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A group on a Delta flight going from Tampa to Los Angeles was treated to a Kenny G performance Saturday morning. Per ABC Action News, the person sitting next to the saxophonist was an flight attendant whose daughter had died of brain cancer. She asked Kenny G to play. The head flight attendant then told passengers that Kenny G would play for them if they donated $1, 000 to cancer charity Relay for Life. Passengers rose to the challenge and then some, raising about $2, 000. Kenny G lived up to his promise, performing while walking up and down the aisle. Follow Breitbart. tv on Twitter @BreitbartVideo | 1 |
Kevin Meaney, a headliner on the comedy circuit for more than 30 years, was found dead on Friday at his home in Forestburgh, N. Y. He was 60. Mr. Meaney’s former wife, Mary Ann Halford, confirmed his death. She said the cause was not yet known. Mr. Meaney made numerous appearances on television talk shows, including more than a dozen on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” beginning in 1987, a year after his first HBO special, according to his website. He played the title role, an irresponsible slob saddled with raising his brother’s three children, on “Uncle Buck,” a CBS sitcom based on the John Candy movie of the same name. The show lasted only one season (a 2016 version, starring Mike Epps, had an even shorter run) but Mr. Meaney was seen frequently on television after it was canceled in 1991. In addition to the talk shows of David Letterman, Conan O’Brien and Carson, he was seen on “Saturday Night Live,” “30 Rock,” “2 Broke Girls” and other shows. An energetic live performer with the sensibilities of an entertainer, Mr. Meaney skewered family life, in particular his mother’s seemingly boundless concern that his actions would cause them to “lose the house. ” “Anything in my house could poke an eye out when I was a kid,” he said in one routine, adding: “I’d be passing pizza across the table. ‘You’re going to take your brother’s eye out with that slice.’ ” He sometimes incorporated music into his act. One signature bit was a spoof of the hit single “We Are the World,” in which he impersonated Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson, Willie Nelson, Stevie Wonder and other singers who had performed on the recording. He later employed his singing skills when he was cast in the Broadway musical “Hairspray. ” He played several roles and understudied the part of Edna Turnblad, played by Divine in the John Waters movie that inspired the musical. (He went on to play Edna at the Connecticut Repertory Theater and elsewhere.) Ms. Halford said Mr. Meaney’s experience on the show, which he described on his website as “life changing,” prompted a period of that led him to realize he was gay. He came out in 2008 while being interviewed on a satellite radio show. His sexual orientation later figured in some of his routines. In one, Mr. Meaney, who was raised Roman Catholic, described a request from his mother that he go to confession. “I told the priest I was gay, and it was very difficult to tell him that,” Mr. Meaney said in a routine captured on video. “And now we’re dating. ” Mr. Meaney was born in White Plains, N. Y. on April 23, 1956, and grew up in nearby Valhalla, the middle child of five. His father, John, was a firefighter his mother, Patricia, a librarian. While in high school he worked as a waiter at the Knollwood Country Club in Elmsford, N. Y. where he met a New York radio and television host, Bob Fitzsimmons, who was a club member. “Bob was Kevin’s inspiration,” Ms. Halford said. “He kept asking Bob how to get into show business. ” Mr. Meaney attended a state college before dropping out and moving to San Francisco to pursue a comedy career. At the time, the city was home to a lively comedy scene. He met comedians like Robin Williams and Dana Carvey there, and performed at one of the city’s most popular comedy clubs, the Holy City Zoo. Later, while living in Los Angeles, he met Ms. Halford. They married in 1997 and had a daughter, Kathleen Ann, two years later. She survives him, as do his mother three brothers, Jack, Tim and Thomas and a sister, Cathy Meaney Paulsen. Mr. Meaney and his family moved back to New York in 2002 to be closer to relatives, Ms. Halford said. In addition to performing on Broadway, he continued to perform across the country at venues of all sizes. “Comedy clubs, private functions, PTAs, firehouses — Kevin could do it all,” his agent, Tom Ingegno, said in an interview on Saturday. “He was just a performer. The stage was really his home. ” Mr. Meaney was scheduled to perform in East Providence, R. I. on Saturday night. The news of his death drew a flood of reactions from his fellow comedians and entertainers. “I’m heartbroken at the loss of one of the best, kindest people I ever knew,” the writer and producer Lizz Winstead posted on Twitter. Also on Twitter, the comedian and actor Patton Oswalt wrote that he first knew Mr. Meaney as a “brilliant comedian,” and that “then we hung out in Ireland and I found out he was also a terrific person. ” | 1 |
Фото: mil.ru
О разработке гиперзвукового оружия в России подробнее рассказал Pravda.Ru главный редактор журнала "Экспорт вооружений" Андрей Фролов.
— Испытание прошло успешно — но в первый раз. Насколько мы конкурентоспособны в разработке гиперзвуковых аппаратов с США?
— Мы занимаем передовые позиции. И это не самое первое испытание, по крайней мере, о нечто подобном сообщалось ранее. Думаю, что уже в ближайшем будущем эти системы будут стоять на вооружении. Пока, скажем, у американцев такого нет. Китайцы также занимаются разработкой.
— Не могли бы приоткрыть подробности?
— Эта тема секретная. Сложно какие-то подробности приоткрывать. Уже хорошо, что сам факт озвучен, что такое есть. Судя по всему, испытания прошли успешно, но, видимо, еще необходимо провести их цикл. И самое главное, разработать ракеты для него. Видимо, это будет новая система "Сармат".
Напомним, "изделие 4202" предназначается для установки на перспективные межконтинентальные баллистические ракеты, вместо традиционных боеголовок. Все бортовое оборудование, электронные комплексы, а также система управления аппарата полностью состоят из российских комплектующих.
Как ранее сообщала Pravda.Ru, гиперзвуковое оружие к 2020 году должно поступить на вооружение российской армии. Технологии разработки гиперзвуковых носителей как ядерного, так и обычного оружия есть не только у России, но и у США и Китая. Еще 9 января 2015 года Китай испытал гиперзвуковой планер WU-14, запускаемый в космос при помощи межконтинентальной баллистической ракеты.
Российские же ученые работают над ракетами разных типов с гиперзвуковыми прямоточными воздушно-реактивными двигателями (ГПВРД), которые можно будет запускать с земли, с кораблей или с боевых самолетов.
Читайте последние новости Pravda.Ru на сегодня Французский эксперт: "Российское оружие поражает во всех смыслах" Поделиться: | 0 |
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November 1, 2016 at 12:11 am
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As a candidate back in July 2015, Donald J. Trump promised that he would repeal Obamacare and replace it with “something terrific. ” The Senate voted, 51 to 48, on Thursday morning for a measure setting Congress on the path toward repealing President Obama’s health care law, and Mr. Trump is now a few days from taking office. The public, however, knows little more about his proposal than it did in 2015. In comments to The New York Times on Tuesday and in his news conference on Wednesday, Mr. Trump described when a Republican health reform bill would be released — “very quickly. ” But he has yet to give details about the policies it would contain. “We’re going to have a health care that is far less expensive and far better,” he said Wednesday. Mr. Trump accurately describes problems with the current health care system for Americans under 65: “You have deductibles that are so high, that after people go broke paying their premiums which are going through the roof, the health care can’t even be used by them because their deductibles bills are so high. ” Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, and House Speaker Paul Ryan have also spoken forcefully in recent days about how health care is too expensive. Premiums for health insurance plans in the United States are high. And increasing deductibles can make needed coverage a financial stretch even for the insured. Recent polling from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation suggests that the public agrees with Mr. Trump’s assessment: High spending on health care is Americans’ No. 1 health care concern. (Mr. Trump has promised that he will not make major changes to Medicare, the program for Americans 65 and older.) But solving those problems is not as easy as identifying them. The real reason health care premiums and deductibles are so high is that medical care is very expensive in the United States — far more costly than it is anywhere else in the world. The United States pays very high prices to doctors and hospitals and drug and device makers, and Americans use a lot of that expensive medical care. That means that the country spent far more on health care than its peers even when tens of millions of Americans lacked health coverage. Obamacare has been successful in getting health insurance to people who lacked it before. About 20 million more Americans had insurance last year than before the law passed, according to an Obama administration estimate. But the health law, largely focused on health insurance regulation, did not drive down the cost of medical treatments. Health care, and health insurance, continues to be expensive. That means that a Republican health reform plan that is both cheaper and better than Obamacare will be hard to deliver. Republicans in Congress and think tanks have put together a number of possible Obamacare replacement plans. They are all slightly different, and it is unclear which one Mr. Trump and congressional leaders will choose. But none of them solve both sides of the “less expensive and far better” equation. Most of the G. O. P. plans manage to be less expensive for the federal government — by offering stingier federal payments in helping people buy insurance and allowing the coverage people buy to be skimpier. But those proposals will tend to increase, not decrease, the amount many Americans spend on their health care. people will end up paying a larger share of their income to buy coverage than they do under Obamacare. Deductibles and other forms of spending, capped under Obamacare, will tend to rise in many plans. Millions to tens of millions fewer Americans will have coverage under such plans, according to independent estimates. Republicans also want to pare back the minimum package of benefits that plans must cover, which will drive up costs substantially for some patients, while reducing them for others. If the bill eliminates requirements to pay for maternity care or prescription drugs, for example, that could lower the sticker price of a health plan, but will make health care much more expensive for anyone who has a baby or takes medication. There will be people who will be better off under a Republican plan. healthy people who buy their own insurance have been the most disadvantaged group under Obamacare, and their fortunes would improve. The Republican plans, with their skimpier benefits, and more generous tax assistance for the wealthy, would offer them a better deal. The G. O. P. plans tend to be worse for people who need insurance and are poor or have major health problems. (Some sick people may be far worse off. Mr. Trump has promised that people with health conditions will be covered under his plan, but not all the Republican plans offer them the kind of coverage that they can get under Obamacare.) The Affordable Care Act is a case study in these . Most of the things its creators did to try to make health insurance “far better,” like requiring minimum benefits or banning lifetime coverage limits, also made it more expensive. The things they did to make insurance “less expensive,” like encouraging higher deductibles or requiring all Americans to buy health insurance or pay a fine, are top talking points. The consensus Democratic approach to making Obamacare “far better” has been to make it more expensive for the federal government, but less expensive for individuals. Proposals circulated by President Obama and Hillary Clinton would involve more federal spending on subsidies to help make insurance more affordable for more people, but at the expense of higher taxes. So far, the Republican plans have tended to engage in the same but tilt in the opposite direction, emphasizing government savings over program generosity. The recent statements from Mr. Trump suggest that the coming replacement plan — promised in the next few weeks — will be able to achieve both goals simultaneously. Mr. Trump has provided almost no detail about what will be in it. | 1 |
Donald J. Trump on Sunday renewed his call for the United States to consider profiling as a preventive tactic against terrorism in the aftermath of the mass shooting last week in Orlando, Fla. “I hate the concept of profiling, but we have to start using common sense,” Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation. ” Mr. Trump issued a similar call in December after the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif. which left 14 people dead and more than 20 injured. On Sunday, he also sought to downplay any differences between his positions on gun control and those of the National Rifle Association. Last week, Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter that people on the government’s terrorist watch list should be barred from buying firearms, a stance that contradicts that of the N. R. A. But Mr. Trump seems to be backtracking, saying on ABC’s “This Week” that he “understands exactly” the N. R. A. ’s objections to restricting access to people on the watch list. “A lot of people are on the list that really maybe shouldn’t be on the list, and their rights are being taken away,” he said. The N. R. A. used the Sunday morning political shows to criticize, and even to mock, Democratic efforts to pass new gun control laws after the Orlando shooting. Wayne LaPierre, the group’s executive vice president, said on “Face the Nation” that legislation was effectively useless at preventing terrorist attacks. “These bad guys we’re facing, they don’t say: ‘Oh gosh, they passed a law. Oh gosh, I don’t think I could do it,’” Mr. LaPierre said. Democrats made their own push for expanded gun control — which the Senate is to take up Monday — and more broadly, for a effort to take on opponents of stricter gun control. Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, who led a marathon of speeches on the Senate floor that ended early Thursday, said on ABC that “the only way that you win this issue is by building a political infrastructure around the country that rivals that of the gun lobby. ” Mr. Trump’s presumptive Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, expressed her support for the effort, writing “Stand strong @ChrisMurphyCT” on Twitter. Profiling has been an occasional theme of the Trump campaign. In addition to his most recent comments, Mr. Trump has discussed increased surveillance of Muslims and mosques, and has said that he would consider registering Muslims in a special database or requiring that they carry cards that identify them as Muslim. | 1 |
TEL AVIV — Amid the claims about Donald Trump and Russia emanating in recent months from intelligence agencies led by Obama administration appointees, it is instructive to recall the results of a damning investigation by House Republicans that found Obama’s Defense Department routinely politicized intelligence to fit certain worldviews. [Specifically, the U. S. House of Representatives’ Joint Task Force on U. S. Central Command (CENTCOM) Intelligence Analysis concluded that the intelligence arm of CENTCOM routinely produced intelligence that “distorted, suppressed, or substantially altered” the results of the campaign against the Islamic State. Much of the August 10, 2016 House report remains unreported by the news media. The investigation provides insight into the manner in which Obama administration officials were caught reforming one U. S. intelligence agency to produce results that conformed to a political agenda instead of accurately reflecting intelligence information on the ground. The document deserves a revisit amid unsubstantiated claims about Trump and Russia in recent months that have dominated the discourse after they were amplified by Obama administration intelligence agencies. While most of the media minimized the findings of the House report on CENTCOM, this reporter previously reviewed the document in full and presented the ten most troubling finds. Here they are again, in no particular order: 1 — Top CENTCOM leaders modified intelligence assessments to present an “unduly positive” assessment of combating the Islamic State and training the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF). The complaint alleges that senior leaders within the CENTCOM Intelligence Directorate and JIC, including the Director of Intelligence and other senior intelligence staff, violated regulations, tradecraft standards, and professional ethics by modifying intelligence assessments to present an unduly positive outlook on CENTCOM efforts to train the ISF and combat ISIL. Media outlets have also raised allegations of possible reprisals against individuals within the CENTCOM Intelligence Directorate. … According to multiple interviewees, operational reporting was used as a justification to alter or “soften” an analytic product so it would cast U. S. efforts in a more positive light. No interview provided any instances where operational reporting was used as a justification to come to a more pessimistic conclusion. Additionally, numerous interviewees indicated that analytical products which conflicted with operational reporting were routinely subject to more stringent scrutiny than those that did not. 2 — CENTCOM established an intelligence “fusion center” for intel, but kept out analysts whose views conflicted with senior intelligence leaders. In June 2014, with the ISIL threat apparent, CENTCOM established an intelligence “fusion center,” a specially equipped JIC facility staffed to serve as a “focal point” for intelligence. Interviewees recalled only informal communications noting the center’s establishment, and some were also uncertain about the center’s organizational structure, responsibilities, and how it was determined which JIC analysts would participate. The establishment of the Intelligence Fusion Center also removed some analysts who had the most experience with respect to ISIL and Iraq, including those whose analytic views often conflicted with those of CENTCOM’s senior intelligence leaders, from the production of daily intelligence products. This impact was especially significant given the critical analytic tasks of the Intelligence Fusion Center at this time of paramount importance in the theater. 3 — Restrictions were implemented for analysts whose views dissented from the mainstream inside CENTCOM. Public statements by CENTCOM representatives emphasized close collaboration with other elements of the IC, but many interviewees indicated that in late 2014, senior CENTCOM Intelligence Directorate leaders instructed analysts to cease all external coordination with other IC analysts. The authority to coordinate was restricted to senior officials only, including to leaders of the Fusion Center. Other special arrangements were also put into place to notify the Director of Intelligence in the event that analysts sought to formally “dissent” from analysis produced elsewhere. The restrictions on collaboration have since been partially rescinded. 4 — Analysis was minimized in favor of details from coalition forces while intelligence was skewed to be “optimistic. ” Furthermore, senior leaders also relied on details reported from coalition forces rather than more objective and better documented intelligence reporting. The Joint Task Force can find no justifiable reason why operational reporting was repeatedly used as a rationale to change the analytic product, particularly when the changes only appeared to be made in a more optimistic direction. By supplanting analytic tradecraft with unpublished and ad hoc operational reporting, Joint Intelligence Center (JIC) leadership circumvented important processes that are intended to protect the integrity of intelligence analysis. 5 — Shocking survey results showed analysts believed data was “distorted, suppressed, or substantially altered” by their supervisors. The annual Analytic Objectivity and Process Survey, directed by the ODNI, was conducted from August through October 2015, and included responses from 125 analysts and managers within CENTCOM. The survey results were significantly worse than those of other IC agencies or COCOMs, and showed that a substantial number of CENTCOM respondents felt their supervisors distorted, suppressed, or substantially altered analytic products. Over 50% of analysts responded that CENTCOM procedures, practices, processes, and organizational structures hampered objective analysis, and 40% responded that they had experienced an attempt to distort or suppress intelligence in the past year. Yet despite receiving these results in December 2015, CENTCOM and IC leaders did not take corrective actions to address many of the issues identified in the survey results. 6 — Intelligence analysts declined to be interviewed, possibly out of fear of reprisals from CENTCOM leadership, while the interviews that did take place were under the watchful eyes of DOD officials. Additionally, the Joint Task Force requested interviews with four more analysts whose positions provided them with visibility into the allegations. These analysts declined to be interviewed. Although they did not express their reasons for declining, the Joint Task Force is concerned that some of the analysts may have done so out of fear of potential reprisals for their testimony. For example, as the Joint Task Force’s interviews were commencing, the Director of the DIA publicly characterized reports of the whistleblower’s allegations as exaggerations. It must also be noted that, pursuant to longstanding arrangements between DOD and the Armed Services Committee, DOD insisted on having department officials present during Joint Task Force interviews. 7 — CENTCOM intel agents operated in a “toxic” leadership environment. The Republican lawmakers fingered CENTCOM leaders, and noted the intelligence process was cleaner under previous officials and Lloyd Austin III, who served as commander from . Dozens of analysts viewed the “subsequent leadership environment as toxic”: Survey results provided to the Joint Task Force demonstrated that dozens of analysts viewed the subsequent leadership environment as toxic, with 40% of analysts responding that they had experienced an attempt to distort or suppress intelligence in the past year. 8 — General Austin’s claim to Congress that IS was in a “defensive crouch” did not reflect the data possessed at the time by CENTCOM senior leaders. Although no interviewee remembered the process of preparing the specific press releases and congressional testimony highlighted here, interviewees described a process in which congressional testimony and public affairs statements did not necessarily reflect contemporaneous intelligence assessments. In particular, the Joint Task Force was dismayed to learn that Intelligence Directorate senior leaders seemed unfamiliar with General Austin’s statements to Congress that ISIL was in a “defensive crouch” and indicated this characterization did not reflect their best assessments at the time. 9 — Even after whistleblower complaints and the “alarming” internal survey last year, the Pentagon took no steps to correct its allegedly distorted intelligence process. The Joint Task Force is troubled that despite receiving the whistleblower complaint in May 2015 and receiving alarming survey results in December 2015, neither CENTCOM, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, nor the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) took any demonstrable steps to improve the analytic climate within CENTCOM. The survey results alone should have prompted CENTCOM and IC leaders to take corrective action without other inducements. 10 — Mirroring the Benghazi House Committee’s complaints against the State Department, the Joint Task Force here writes it “did not receive access to all the materials it requested” and details a process of denying information and records. Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio. ” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook. With research by Joshua Klein. | 1 |
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Hillary supporter Robert Dougherty from Jacksonville, North Carolina bragged on Facebook today about how he committed voter fraud.
Robert boasted on how he voted for some of his Facebook friends using their identities, and tells them not to worry about voting, because he’s already done it for them.
And he’s bragging about it on Facebook.
Robert boasts about how they give you a sticker every time you vote.
He says he will continue to vote all next week!
“Isn’t North Carolina nice they give you a sticker every time you vote… No ID required.”
“There isn’t a need for you to wait in line anymore. Took care of it for you. Gave you a straight Democratic ticket.”
“Amazing how many addresses you get from Google. Going again until Saturday and all next week.”
Robert either thinks voter fraud is a big joke or he’s one stupid Hillary-supporting criminal.
What do you think, will Voter Fraud play a key role in the election? | 0 |
U.S. Army Veteran: ‘I Killed Four People In One Hour In Iraq’ Posted on Nov 3, 2016
First filmed in 2008, Isaac Lebonte, known as ‘Bone’ to his fellow soldiers in Iraq, talks eight years later about killing people in his first firefight, the deaths of close friends and his difficulty adjusting to life outside of war.
The interviews were filmed by the award-winning photographer Sean Smith. | 0 |
Sonntag, 13. November 2016 Forscher entdecken abgelegenen Regenwaldstamm, der noch immer iPhone 4s verwendet São Paulo (Archiv) - Von der Außenwelt isoliert: Ein internationales Forscherteam hat in Brasilien einen Indio-Stamm entdeckt, dessen Mitglieder so rückständig sind, dass sie noch immer das iPhone 4s benutzen. Wo genau der Amazonas-Stamm siedelt, will die brasilianische Regierung nicht bekanntgeben, um die Indios vor den schädlichen Einflüssen der modernen Zivilisation zu schützen. Laut den Wissenschaftlern seien die Geräte der Ureinwohner zwar entfernte Verwandte unserer modernen Smartphones, die Anwendungen darauf "laufen aber gefühlt bis zu einhundert Mal langsamer als in der Zivilisation". Primitives Werkzeug der Ureinwohner Schon beim Überflug über die Siedlung waren die veralteten Telefone des Amazonas-Stamms, der aus mehreren hundert Mitgliedern besteht, klar zu erkennen. Viele der Indios benutzen außerdem "auf uns befremdlich wirkenden Handy-Schmuck und eine Art Köcher für ihre Geräte". "Eine Kontaktaufnahme mit den Indianern war beinahe unmöglich, weil auf ihren Geräten zum Teil nicht einmal WhatsApp läuft", erinnert sich Teamleiter Kenneth Wyne an die Begegnung am Riesenfluss. "Sie zeigten uns Funktionen und Apps, die wir nur noch aus Erzählungen kannten. Auch das 'Pinch-to-Zoom' lief längst nicht so flüssig wie das unserer Telefone." Laut eigener Aussage hatten die Ureinwohner noch nie Kontakt zu modernen Menschen, Gerüchte über einen Nachfolger des iPhone 4s kursieren allenfalls als Legende. Das erfolgsverwöhnte Forscherteam ist derzeit auf der Suche nach einem peruanischen, noch stärker von der Zivilisation abgeschotteten Indio-Stamm. Legenden zufolge benutzen die Stammesmitglieder dort neben Pfeil und Bogen noch immer die Nokia 3310 -Handys ihrer Vorväter. fed, ssi; Foto oben [M]: Valter Campanato/ABr. , CC BY 3.0 BR , Foto rechts: William Hook , CC BY-SA 2.0 ; Hinweis: Erstmals erschienen am 13.8.14, iPhone von 3GS auf 4s aktualisiert Artikel teilen: | 0 |
PARIS — In a surprise verdict, a French tribunal of judges cleared Guy Wildenstein — the patriarch of an international dynasty — of charges that he laundered money by shielding a precious collection in a maze of foreign trusts to avoid inheritance taxes. Olivier Géron, the lead judge who had presided over the trial last fall, announced the decision Thursday at the Palais de Justice. He spent an hour reading a ruling that he acknowledged could seem to “defy common sense” because Mr. Wildenstein and his family had demonstrated a “clear intention” to conceal their wealth over generations. But their behavior, the decision said, fell into a gray area before France enacted legislation in 2011 to require the declaration of foreign trusts. The authorities had sought a 250 million euro fine (about $267 million) for Mr. Wildenstein, 71, who is president of Wildenstein Company, a New York art gallery. The case also ensnared his nephew and his estranged along with Swiss and French legal advisers and foreign trust companies. They were cleared as well — a defeat for a relatively new prosecution unit that had been created to combat international tax evasion. Monica d’Onofrio, the prosecutor, had demanded severe punishment for Mr. Wildenstein, including prison time, calling the family’s financial operations “the longest and the most sophisticated tax fraud” in contemporary France. The French media had also labeled the Wildensteins the “impressionists of finance,” a reference to the family’s deep collection of art, which included works by Bonnard, Fragonard, Caravaggio, Poussin and Watteau. Mr. Wildenstein was not in court for the verdict. But his lawyer, Hervé Temime, said he had called the art dealer and he was “relieved” by the outcome. Mr. Wildenstein’s legal team had argued at trial that he was unaware of the complex terms of the trusts managed by legal advisers. Mr. Wildenstein was accused of underestimating inheritance taxes after his father, Daniel, died at the age of 84 in 2001, in France. Prosecutors contend that Mr. Wildenstein and his brother, Alec, schemed to hide art and assets under the complex trusts and moved millions of dollars in artworks to tax havens in Switzerland days after their father died. The Wildensteins have a presence in the art world dating back four generations, to 1875, and testimony at the trial showed how the family used its artwork to reap income from bank loans against the rising value of the paintings. The case grew out of legal battles waged by women in the family who have complained of having been excluded from the business and cheated out of inheritances. Sylvia Wildenstein, Daniel’s widow, sued her stepsons over his estate, contending that assets had been hidden from her in the trusts. Those tensions were still apparent on Thursday. Outside the courtroom, a lawyer for Mr. Wildenstein trailed Mrs. Wildenstein’s former lawyer, Claude and loudly called the lawyer a “crook” while she spoke with reporters. Ms. ignored him, insisting that the nation’s laws need to be changed to apply to trusts created before the new legislation was enacted to combat tax evasion. Mr. Wildenstein still faces other legal hurdles in civil court, including the claims by the state for about €500 million (about $534 million) in back taxes and other complaints rising from works seized by the police from the vaults of the Wildenstein Institute in Paris because the ownership was not clear. Those works remain in police possession. | 1 |
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It would be hard to imagine a Saturday night at your favorite bar or restaurant without music playing in the background. It would be equally hard to imagine a long road trip without music blasting from the car radio. But a new ruling from a judge in New York has the ability to change all of this, limiting our access music by drastically increasing music costs.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) spent over two years reviewing its antitrust consent decrees with ASCAP and BMI, the leading music collectives that control the rights to nearly 90% of all music compositions.
This summer, the DOJ made the sound decision to keep the decrees as-is with no alterations.
This was the right move. The decrees have been in place for more than 75 years, allowing ASCAP and BMI to maintain their monopolies while also protecting consumers from monopoly pricing.
Despite breaking revenue records this year, ASCAP and BMI are thirsty for more profits and lobbied DOJ to relax the consent decrees, allowing them to price gouge music copyrights the way they did before the decrees’ enactment.
ASCAP and BMI’s goal was to transition to “fractional licensing,” a process that would greatly increase their profits and make it nearly impossible for small businesses to license music.
Under current law, known as “whole work licensing,” a bar or restaurant that wants to license music simply goes to one of the music collectives and purchases a single license for a basket of songs. This process has worked well for decades. However, under “fractional licensing”, small businesses would have to buy the individual rights to million songs, many of which have multiple owners.
Fractional licensing would give an owner with a 1% stake in a song the same negotiating power as an owner that had the other 99%. Negotiating usage rights with each owner would be extremely complicated, surely driving up the cost of licensing music. In fact, negotiating with the millions of copyright owners would be a full time job in and of itself, so many wouldn’t business owners would be forced to raise prices or stop licensing music altogether.
The DOJ spent years considering the long-term ramifications before it ruled on the consent decrees. The body held numerous meetings with stakeholders and offered multiple rounds of comment periods. Ultimately, they made the right decision to maintain the decrees in their current form because of the potential harm changes could make to the marketplace.
Yet, just as a bratty child runs to Dad after Mom says no, BMI ran to the courts to appeal the decision. Unfortunately for consumers of music, a judge from the Southern District of New York ruled in BMI’s favor during a pre-hearing. Unlike the two years of research and consideration the DOJ gave the case, this judge spent less than an hour before making a decision. No testimony on the “merits” of such changes were heard before the judge released a six-page decision that would allow BMI to license music on a fractional basis.
The judge’s decision was based on his belief that the consent decrees do not specifically prohibit fractional licensing. But it was unnecessary to mention fractional licensing because the consent decrees require ASCAP and BMI to provide a license for every work in their catalogs. If the sign says the speed limit is 70 miles per hour, it doesn’t mean that you can drive 80, just because the sign did not specifically say, “Do not drive 80 mph.”
It is very likely that the DOJ will appeal this decision. If not, it will wreak havoc on the millions of businesses that pay music — and it will deny all of us the pleasure of listening to the songs we love.
BMI and ASCAP are make billions of dollars a year — they shouldn’t be able to manipulate pricing and force business owners to select music based on licensing prices. The time is now for the DOJ to stand firm with its previous decision and do what’s right for music consumers everywhere. | 0 |
The Oroville Dam crisis temporarily subsided Sunday night, as 188, 000 residents downriver were evacuated, but the crisis will return with northern California expecting seven straight days of warm rain from another Pineapple Express beginning Wednesday evening. [The water level in Oroville Lake topped the 901 foot crest by up to 4 inches beginning Saturday, sending 500, 000 cubic feet per second (cfs) of water over the earthen dam’s emergency spillway, which had never been activated since the dam, America’s tallest, went into operations in 1968. Over the next 24 hours, erosion tore a gash in the center of the emergency spillway, threatening a collapse of the spillway. At 5:20 p. m. Pacific Time on Sunday, an emergency evacuation was ordered for 12, 000 residents in the City of Marysville and another 35, 000 in Butte County. The order spread to 65, 000 from Yuba County City and another 76, 000 from Yuba County as officials warned that portions of the unstable embankment might collapse. According to Paul Preston of Agenda 21 Radio, who has been reporting live on scene, the a level of panic was spreading on Saturday afternoon that a section of the emergency spillway was in danger of a general collapse, which would unleash a wall of water and threaten the safety of up to one million residents downstream. Breitbart News reported on February 9 that with water flowing into Oroville Lake at the rate of 83, 000 cubic feet per second (cfs) officials opened the primary spillway to release water at the rate of 35, 000 cfs. But the flow surged to 55, 000 cfs as a hole roughly 250 feet long, 170 feet wide and 50 feet deep hole opened up in the spillway, sending massive amounts of water and chunks of concrete surging down the Feather River. Engineers from the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) and collaborating agencies announced they were able to slow water surging down the primary spillway to 20, 000 cfs. But with the reservoir filled to 101 percent of capacity, officials assured the public that water would flow evenly over an emergency spillway on the south facing side of the dam. Law enforcement sources told Preston the National Guard out of Redding was being mobilized for a disaster deployment. The crisis situation has temporarily faded with the primary spillway jettisoning water at a rate of over 100, 000 cfs, bringing the lake height down to the point at which water has ceased overflowing the emergency spillway. Helicopters have been deployed to drop huge boulders into the crack in the emergency spillway, and clear skies are expected over the next three days. But beginning on Wednesday evening, another “Pineapple Express” storm system will arrive to hammer northern California’s lower elevations with 7 straight days of rain, while the Sierras expect 11 straight days of rain and snow beginning on Thursday. With the heaviest snowfall in 22 years, the Sierra snow pack is at 150 percent of its average. And with temperatures climbing to a high of 49 degrees in Tahoe on Wednesday, 4 degrees above average, snowmelt is expected to be heavier than usual. Preston reports that the general consensus from the emergency response teams is that the situation will remain stable into Friday. But with accumulating rain and snowmelt causing another overflow of the weakened emergency spillway by late Friday, there is a significant risk of heavy damage to the Oroville Dam spillways. | 1 |
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