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KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan officials sharply increased the tally of dead in an attack last week on a military hospital, saying Wednesday that at least 50 people, including patients and staff members, were killed. In addition, 24 people have been arrested in connection with the March 8 attack, including Afghan generals, according to Lt. Gen. Helaludin Helal, the country’s deputy minister of defense for strategic and intelligence affairs. The arrests were for a variety of charges including negligence, incompetence and complicity, General Helal said at a contentious news conference. The news conference was called after Afghan news reports and social media accounts suggested that the casualty toll was actually in the hundreds that three hospitalized Afghan generals were among those killed by the attackers and that the minister of defense, Abdullah Habibi, had personally signed the V. I. P. vehicle pass that allowed the attackers to enter the heavily guarded hospital complex in a car packed with explosives and weapons. The reports seemed to be fueled partly by contradictory government claims immediately after the attack that only two people had died, a number many officials stuck to even after personnel at the Ministry of Defense confirmed that at least 31 people were dead. In addition, it took the authorities seven hours to quell the attack, leaving the armed insurgents prowling Sardar Daud Khan Hospital for hours, hunting down patients and medical staff members in the facility, which is usually full or nearly so. General Helal maintained that the news reports in general were distorted and incorrect, without getting into specifics. As the questioning grew heated, General Helal abruptly left, leaving the Defense Ministry spokesman, Maj. Gen. Dawlat Waziri, to take over. General Waziri confirmed that officials were investigating the possibility that the attack was carried out by insiders, but he did not directly address assertions that doctors working at the hospital were involved. He did not identify the generals who were arrested, and did not say how many generals were arrested or what the charges were. He confirmed that the attackers brought their vehicle, a red Toyota Corolla, into the hospital compound in Kabul using an official pass, which he described as “fake. ” One of the five attackers detonated their car with a device as they entered the hospital grounds dressed in white medical clothing, according to the official accounts. They then carried out the attack using guns, grenades and suicide vests, at least one of which detonated. The authorities said all five attackers were killed, but Afghans have widely questioned that assertion as well, and raised questions about whether wounded Taliban prisoners who had been in the hospital might have escaped. The victims’ names have not been made public by the government, further fanning speculation about a higher death toll. Some names have emerged. One victim was Gen. Daud Askaryar, who recently retired after six years as head of the National Police Academy, according to his son, Mohammad Maroof Askaryar, who was visiting him at the time of the attack and hid in a bathroom to escape being killed. His father, he said, was stabbed to death through his oxygen tent in the intensive care unit. “The number of those killed is way higher than 50,” said Jawed Kohistani, a former general who is a military analyst with wide connections among the Afghan security forces. A retired general who is currently a member of Parliament, Nazifa Zaki, also disputed the official figure. “I believe 200 people were martyred in the hospital,” Ms. Zaki said. “This is what I heard from eyewitnesses and those who went to the hospital and funerals of the martyred. ” Much of the public ire has been directed at the country’s defense minister, General Habibi, a former general appointed by President Ashraf Ghani, especially after reports that the general had signed the vehicle pass for the attackers. Members of Parliament have derided General Habibi, who is 64, for apparently sleeping through official meetings in the middle of a war, charges backed up by photos posted on local social media posts showing him apparently dozing off on the job. One shows him sleeping next to Mr. Ghani at an official function. “He should just go to a mosque and catch up on his sleep,” said Allah Gul Mujahid, another member of Parliament. “We need shrewd and active generals to lead the forces. This is not the place for him. ” Afghans were also critical of the country’s chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah, for posing for selfies with soldiers in front of the hospital immediately after the attack. The furor over the military hospital attack has underscored public disenchantment with the coalition government. It has struggled for more than a year to agree on a defense minister, and is two years overdue on holding national elections for Parliament. The military situation has steadily worsened in the meantime, with historically high casualties on the government side more and more districts that are dominated by insurgents and growing numbers of Afghans who have been displaced by fighting. The Islamic State claimed on one of its websites that it was responsible for the hospital attack, while the Taliban denied any role. Government officials, however, have blamed the Taliban, and General Helal said “we cannot deny” that one of the attackers shouted, “Long live the Taliban. ” The Islamic State, also known as ISIS, has a relatively small number of fighters in Afghanistan, mostly in the eastern province of Nangarhar. And while their members have carried out attacks in Kabul — such as one last July at a protest that killed 80 people — the hospital assault was more complex and sophisticated than anything the group has done before in Afghanistan. | 1 |
College Republicans at UC Davis have challenged a statement from UC Davis administrators claiming that the group cancelled MILO’s event voluntarily. College Republican representatives are claiming that the administration intimidated them, lied to them, and largely took the decision to cancel without them. [Speaking to Breitbart News, UC Davis College Republicans executive director, Andrew Mendoza stated that the campus group was “absolutely” intimidated by campus faculty into cancelling the event. UC Davis administrators reportedly told the College Republicans that they would be “personally liable for property damage and injury to people and even death. ” “They basically took the decision without us and consequently forced us to take responsibility for it. ” said Andrew Mendoza speaking exclusively to Breitbart News, “We were heavily pressured by the university police to cancel the event, as we were told people’s lives could be endangered if it went ahead. ” All responsibility was placed on the young students, “We were told that if our insurance failed it would be on us. ” said Mendoza. Of course this is not legally accurate, colleges are required to keep speaker and students safe at their expense. The responsibility for the safety of students and MILO is on the college, not the event organisers. UC Davis is still attempting to claim that there was never a risk of violence at the event and that protesters acted peacefully, despite video evidence that directly proves otherwise. “The police have been excellent, the students are being completely peaceful and respectful, and they are standing up for the rights of the community,” said a UC Davis college counsellor as protesters outside reportedly smashed windows and threw barricades at police. “UCD is denying that there were hammers there. ” said Kurtie Kellner, a communications director for the Davis College Republicans, “We were told by Milton Lang (Associate to the Vice Chancellor for Student Life, Campus Community and Retention Service) that there were in fact hammers at the event. ” “Our concern was about hammers and the protesters using them on the glass to get into building when the Chief of Police suggested that they had more concerning weapons. This was the safety concern that led to our cancellation of the event. If there hasn’t been hammers, we wouldn’t have feared for ’s safety, and we wouldn’t have felt pressured to cancel the event. ” When asked for comment, UC Davis Associate Director Andy Fell said, “To reiterate the statement we issued last night, the DCR cancelled last night’s event on the advice of UC Davis police and officials because it was no longer possible to continue the event safely. ” Watch MILO’s full march through UC Davis to protest the cancellation of the event here. | 1 |
Fast food 'combo meals' tied to kids' over-consumption of high-calorie drinks
Saturday, October 29, 2016 by: Isabelle Z. Tags: fast food , obesity , children (NaturalNews) Fast food chains know how to squeeze every last dollar out of their customers. From decorating their establishments with appetite-stimulating colors, to pricing their meals to encourage people to get bigger sizes, their every move is perfectly calculated to maximize profits. Unfortunately, these practices are hurting a lot more than just your wallet – they are also affecting the health of your children.A study led by researchers from the NYU Langone Medical Center found that children who ate at any of five fast food chains consumed an average of 179 more calories when their meals came with soda, juice, sweetened tea or flavored milk, when compared to those who drank unsweetened beverages with their meals.The researchers also discovered that the children consumed an average of 82 more drink calories when the drinks were part of bundled meals than when the drinks were bought separately. Moreover, parents who bought a combo meal were 24 percent more likely to buy a high-calorie drink sweetened with sugar.The study looked at almost 500 children aged 18 and younger who ate food from McDonald's, KFC, Burger King, Subway or Wendy's in New York and New Jersey between January 2013 and June 2014. Seventy-four percent of the combo meals purchased were kids' meals. Half of the drinks were sodas , and 38 percent of them were juice, with flavored milk making up 5 percent. A further 5 percent was made up of lemonade, sweetened tea and hot chocolate. Non-sugary drinks proved to be quite unpopular, with regular milk accounting for just 2 percent and water a measly 1 percent.Dr. Brian Elbel of NYU Langone, the study's senior investigator, said: "Our study strongly suggests that uncoupling sugary drinks from combo meal deals might reduce high-calorie beverage consumption and help to curb childhood obesity rates fueled by these kinds of liquid calories." Parents need to take responsibility Combo meals tend to appeal to big families, which can find their bills quickly adding up at fast food restaurants. Well-meaning parents who might not normally allow their children to drink sugary beverages sometimes find themselves giving in when the drink is included.Although the practice on the part of fast food chains of bundling unhealthy foods together to create perceived value encourage unhealthy habits, it is ultimately up to the parents to decide which meals to buy for their children. Parents have the final say, and just because that super-sized Coke comes with your child's meal does not mean that you should let them drink it. Fast track to diabetes Fast food meals are already high in calories, which means that the last thing you should be doing is pairing them with high-calorie beverages. Research published in the journal Diabetes Care showed that drinking even just one sugary beverage each day raised a person's risk of developing type 2 diabetes by as much as 25 percent. It also upped the risk of developing metabolic syndrome by 20 percent.With around 17 percent of our nation's youth believed to be obese, there is an urgent need for poor eating habits to be curbed. Until people start giving up the convenience of the local drive-through and start making a concerted effort to feed their children clean food , the situation is only likely to get worse, and more and more children will end up obese or diabetic.So, the next time you're thinking of ordering that combo meal, keep in mind that any money that you might save on a meal deal is likely to end up costing far more in medical bills down the road. Sources include: | 0 |
State Duma applauds to Trump's victory 09.11.2016 | Source: Russian MPs applauded to the news about Donald Trump's . "Dear friends, dear colleagues, three minutes ago Hillary Clinton acknowledged her defeat in the US presidential election of the United States, and a second before, Trump began his speech as president-elect of the United States of America, and I congratulate you all on that," RIA Novosti quoted MP Vyacheslav Nikonov as saying. In response, members of the State Duma began to applaud. Trump received 274 electoral votes after a victory in Pennsylvania. 270 votes were required to win. Pravda.Ru Read article on the Russian version of Pravda.Ru | 0 |
LOS ANGELES — Nine days after Nikolas Michaud’s latest heroin relapse, the skinny sat on a roof deck at a new drug rehabilitation clinic here. He picked up a bong, filled it with a pinch of marijuana, lit the leaves and inhaled. All this took place in plain view of the clinic’s director. “The rules here are a little lax,” Mr. Michaud said. In almost any other rehab setting in the country, smoking pot would be a major infraction and a likely cause for being booted out. But here at High Sobriety — the clinic with a name that sounds like the title of a Cheech and Chong comeback movie — it is not just permitted, but part of the treatment. The new clinic is experimenting with a concept made possible by the growing legalization of marijuana: that pot, rather than being a gateway into drugs, could be a gateway out. A small but growing number of pain doctors and addiction specialists are overseeing the use of marijuana as a substitute for more potent and dangerous drugs. Dr. Mark Wallace, chairman of the division of pain medicine in the department of anesthesia at the University of California, San Diego, said over the last five years he has used marijuana to help several hundred patients transition off opiates. “The majority of patients continue to use it,” he said of marijuana. But he added that they tell him of the opiates: “I feel like I was a slave to that drug. I feel like I have my life back. ” Dr. Wallace is quick to note that his evidence is anecdotal and more study is needed. Research in rats, he said, supports the idea that the use of cannabinoids can induce withdrawal from heavier substances. But in humans? A report published in January from the National Academy of Sciences on the health effects of cannabis “found no evidence to support or refute the conclusion that cannabinoids are an effective treatment for achieving abstinence in the use of addictive substances,” said Dr. Marie McCormick, a Harvard professor who was the chairwoman of the report committee. The group’s research did find strong evidence to support that cannabis or related compounds can be used to treat chronic pain in adults. But that is different from using it safely and effectively to wean people off drugs, and some experts in the addiction field are highly skeptical. “The concept on its face is absurd,” said Dr. Mark Willenbring, a psychiatrist who treats addicts and formerly oversaw research at the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. He said that alternative approaches are needed to traditional drug treatment, but not this. “I’m not prone to making exaggerated or unqualified statements and in this case I don’t need to make any: It doesn’t work,” he said. “Like trying to cure alcoholism with Valium. ” The idea stems not only from the legalization of marijuana in several states, including California, but also from a broader reckoning taking place in the traditional addiction treatment business: treatment often fails, costing families, the government or insurers tens of thousands of dollars per therapy. Many patients quit partway through treatment, or relapse time and again. These failings have become more apparent owing to a handful of developments: a growing death toll from opiates and an increase in the death rate of young white adults caused by drug overdoses. There also is a growing conversation about whether some update is needed to the bedrock program: It demands total abstinence but many people fail and ultimately die. Some research suggests that marijuana might help stem the tide. A study published in 2014 in JAMA Internal Medicine found that states with medical marijuana laws have lower rates of death from opiate overdose. Another paper, published this year in The International Journal of Drug Policy, found that 30 percent of the 271 respondents reported that they used marijuana as a substitute for opiates. (But the researchers noted that the sample could be unrepresentative and that it was not known if marijuana provided a partial or total substitute for other drugs, and how much other drug use was displaced.) More concrete and direct evidence has been hard to gather given that marijuana is still seen as a Schedule 1 drug by the federal government, which severely limits availability of funding for studies on humans. Amanda Reiman, a expert and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, called the lack of such studies “a huge barrier. ” She said that the dearth of evidence argues not just for further study, but for pushing ahead with clinics like High Sobriety. Her main point is that opiates and other addictive drugs kill people so why not make every effort to find a better way. “There’s no scientific reason to believe that somebody is better off being completely miserable and sober than using cannabis occasionally, or even fairly regularly, as an adult and being functional and happy and productive,” said Dr. Reiman, an unpaid consultant with High Sobriety, who added, “Using cannabis is a relatively safe practice. ” The and main investor in High Sobriety, Michael Welch, is a recovering heroin addict who was helped by a traditional, program. He also and operates several rehabilitation clinics that have a total of 100 beds. (Charges range from $25, 000 to $80, 000 a month for a private room). “Every single treatment center knows it, and we know it,’’ Mr. Welch said. “Some of us have had the same clients, five, 10, 15 times over. We say: ‘We just can’t reach Billy, we just can’t reach Joe. ’” Why not, he said, try marijuana to help take the edge off for clients who “can’t face the emotional threshold” of abstinence. “People are dying,” he said. His Joe Schrank, argued that marijuana will not kill patients as opiates do. But it does help clients sleep, relax and develop an appetite. The drug, he said, gives addicts some sense of emotional control. High Sobriety’s first inpatient was Mr. Michaud, who shared his story in February and it seems tailor made to test their hypothesis. A military brat who moved around, he said he felt traumatized when his homosexuality surfaced as a child and he was told in places like Kansas and South Carolina that he wasn’t gay but suffering from various mental disorders. led to until his life, he said, was a cocktail party of morphine, heroin and pills. His mother, Kristen Michaud, said that over the years she sent him to half a dozen programs, several of them more than once, and spent more than $300, 000. But so far he has stayed the course at High Sobriety, which Mr. Schrank attributed to the availability of marijuana. “If this kid doesn’t get cannabis, he’s a goner,” said Mr. Schrank, himself a recovering addict who previously founded and ran a clinic in Brooklyn. “If it wasn’t for cannabis, he’d have bolted in the middle of the night. ” | 1 |
Rep. Dave Brat ( ) talked with Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Friday regarding the Freedom Caucus endorsement of the GOP’s Obamacare repeal plan, his evaluation of President Donald Trump’s first 100 days, and the budget deal. [While discussing the details of the Republican House and White House debate about the Obamacare repeal, Brat said, “In the conference, we’ve moved the thing as far as we can move it in the free market direction without losing the votes. ” Asked if the latest tax bill is “for show or the real thing,” Brat said, “Well, it’s both. It’s trillion in tax deductions and possible increases in the deficit — in that neighborhood. That’s a whopper. So they’ve got to find that repatriation. There’s two trillion dollars overseas they can bring back to lessen the pain on the deficit side. So they’ve got to do some of that movement, too. We can’t sustain deficits that big. ” Brat also said he gives Trump “an A” for his first 100 days. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. | 1 |
For someone who promoted his management skills and campaigned as an “organizational genius,” as Anderson Cooper of CNN put it, it has been a rocky White House debut for Donald J. Trump, the first president to go directly from the executive suite to the Oval Office. “Chaos” seems to be the word most often invoked, closely followed by “turmoil. ” (One exception: the White House spokesman, Sean Spicer, who said he preferred “ . ”) In less than two weeks, Mr. Trump created upheaval at the nation’s borders, alienated longtime allies, roiled markets with talk of a trade war and prompted some of the largest protests any president has faced. The conservative editorial page of The Wall Street Journal bemoaned a refugee policy “so poorly explained and prepared for, that it has produced confusion and fear at airports, an immediate legal defeat, and political fury at home and abroad. ” Even the top House Republican, Speaker Paul D. Ryan, who had released a statement praising the immigration order, later distanced himself, saying, “It’s regrettable that there was some confusion with the rollout. ” All new presidents undergo a learning curve. But Mr. Trump promised a seamless transition and, with a real chief executive in charge as opposed to a career politician, an administration that would function as a machine. So it doesn’t seem premature to ask some leading management experts for an assessment of Mr. Trump’s first weeks, purely from the viewpoint of organizational behavior and management effectiveness, as I did this week. The unanimous verdict: Thus far, the Trump administration is a textbook case of how not to run a complex organization like the executive branch. “This is so basic, it’s covered in the introduction to the M. B. A. program that all our students take,” said Lindred Greer, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. By all outward indications, Mr. Trump “desperately needs to take the course,” she said. Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior at Stanford and the author of “Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don’t,” said Mr. Trump’s executive actions as president “are so far from any responsible management approach” that they all but defy analysis. “Of course, this isn’t new,” he told me. “His campaign also violated every prudent management principle. Everyone including our friends on Wall Street somehow believed that once he was president he’d change. I don’t understand that logic. ” Wall Street did take notice. After months of cheering the prospect of tax reform and infrastructure spending, investors sold stocks after a weekend of chaos at the nation’s airports connected to the president’s executive order on immigration. On Monday, the Dow industrials experienced the biggest decline since the election, fueled by worries that a dysfunctional White House wouldn’t be able to execute Mr. Trump’s policies. “If you thought immigration was bad, just wait for health care,” Mr. Pfeffer warned. The White House did not respond to requests for comment. There is an enormous amount of literature and data exploring what constitutes effective management of complicated organizations. “The core principles have served many leaders really well,” said Jeffrey T. Polzer, professor of human resource management at Harvard Business School. “It’s really common sense: You want to surround yourself with talented people who have the most expertise, who bring different perspectives to the issue at hand. Then you foster debate and invite different points of view in order to reach a solution. ” This is often easier said than done. It “requires an openness to being challenged, and some and even humility to acknowledge that there are areas where other people know more than you do,” Mr. Polzer continued. “This doesn’t mean decisions are made by consensus. The person at the top makes the decisions, but based on the facts and expertise necessary to make a good decision. ” Mr. Trump has already violated several of these core principles. The secretary of Homeland Security, John F. Kelly, was still discussing a proposed executive order restricting immigration when Mr. Trump went ahead and signed it. Nor was Jim Mattis, the defense secretary, consulted he saw the final order only hours before it went into effect. Not to consult thoroughly with top cabinet officers before deciding on the order “is insane,” since they “have the expertise and should be on top of the data,” Ms. Greer said. “Ignoring them leads to bad decisions and is also incredibly demoralizing. ” And there’s another reason to consult, Mr. Polzer said: “When people are genuinely involved in a decision and their input is heard and valued and respected, they are more likely to support and buy into the decision and be motivated to execute to the best of their abilities, even if the decision doesn’t go their way. ” Conversely, people who aren’t consulted feel they have no stake in a successful outcome. Far from encouraging and weighing differing views as part of the process, Mr. Trump appears to view dissension as disloyalty. After career State Department officers circulated a draft cable questioning the effectiveness of the immigration ban, Mr. Spicer responded, “They should either get with the program or they can go. ” “Debate and dissent are essential to reaching any thoughtful outcome,” Ms. Greer said. Comments like Mr. Spicer’s “will discourage anyone from speaking up. You end up with group think, an echo chamber where people only say what they think the president wants to hear. ” And while it’s understandable that the president was eager to act swiftly to follow through on his campaign promises — he had made a long list of actions to be carried out on “Day 1” — his directives came across as needlessly hasty and poorly thought through. Some had to be reframed (talk of a Mexican border surcharge) or significantly modified and clarified after the fact (immigration policy). I asked the management experts to ignore their views about the merits of Mr. Trump’s policies, but all said that execution and substance are inextricably linked. “When you’re on the receiving end of a policy decision, the merits of the decision and the execution go hand in hand,” Mr. Polzer said. “If either one is done poorly, the outcomes will be bad. Even good plans that are poorly rolled out aren’t going to work well. ” For many people, the Affordable Care Act was indelibly tainted by the computer malfunctions that plagued its start. Similarly, for many Americans, the enduring image of Mr. Trump’s immigration policy will be that of a tearful Iraqi immigrant who was detained at Kennedy International Airport after risking his life working as a translator for the American military over a period. (He was released after lawyers intervened on his behalf.) That prompted even Mr. Ryan to say, “No one wanted to see people with green cards or special immigrant visas, like translators, get caught up in all of this. ” Some Trump defenders have said that the president thrives on chaos, and it has proved to be an effective management approach for him in the past. But every expert I consulted said there is no empirical data or research that supports the notion that chaos is a productive management tool. “I’m not aware of anyone who advocates that,” Mr. Polzer said. “I don’t really know what’s going on in the White House, so I don’t feel comfortable commenting on that specifically. But I can say in general that in organizational settings, less chaos is a good thing. ” Everyone agreed that there was still time for Mr. Trump to right the ship. Other administrations have had course corrections and personnel . But having to reorganize only weeks into a first term is not promising. If this were the private sector, “someone would be fired,” Ms. Greer said. That seems highly unlikely, since Mr. Trump has not even acknowledged a problem, instead blaming the media for an impression of upheaval in the White House. That is a fundamental problem, Mr. Pfeffer said. “No good business makes decisions that are based on falsehoods,” he said. “My sense is that Trump takes no one’s counsel but his own. That’s bad management, period. ” | 1 |
on October 27, 2016 2:53 am ·
Conservatives claim that voter ID is necessary to catch illegal voters, but it turns out they’re the only ones creating fake IDs to use on Election Day.
Trump supporters are taking Trump’s call to monitor polling places so seriously that they are creating fake ID badges in order to infiltrate polling locations across the country and intimidate voters by interrogating them, confusing them, and filming them — all of which are illegal.
But, Trump’s deplorables are doing this in droves with the help of a right-wing group known as “Vote Protectors.”
The group, which is affiliated with top Trump ally Roger Stone, is giving people the ability to intimidate voters on Election Day. They are literally teaching them to create their own fake badge, which is designed to give them access to voters both inside and outside the polling places where citizens cast their votes.
According to the Huffington Post ,
Stone’s group created an official-looking ID badge for its volunteers to wear, and its volunteers planned to videotape voters and conduct fake “exit polls,” efforts that election experts say risks intimidating and confusing voters. Or at least that’s what the group was planning to do before The Huffington Post asked Stone about it on Tuesday. The controversial Trump ally, long known for his bare-knuckled political tactics, said that key proposals on his group’s websites were there without his knowledge, and assured HuffPost that he would operate within the confines of election law.
In fact, after HuffPo confronted Stone with evidence that these kinds of tactics were being pursued by the website, he acknowledged that Vote Protectors had a “bad idea” and “ordered them taken down.”
Campaign Legal Center deputy director Danielle Lang called the tactics a clear voter intimidation scheme.
“It’s inherently intimidating and an invasion of privacy,” she told HuffPo in reference to the videotaping. “When that’s being live streamed to the internet, it amplifies the potentially intimidating aspect of it, and violates a sense of security and privacy people have a right to enjoy at the polls. Objectively, intimidating voters is unlawful, no matter where you do it.”
Indeed, but that’s exactly what Donald Trump has been calling upon his supporters to do because he has repeatedly claimed that the election is rigged against him.
As it turns out, he’s right about the election being rigged, only it’s conservatives who are trying to rig it in favor of Trump.
Earlier this week, a Wisconsin city clerk in Green Bay got caught trying to intentionally prevent college students from voting by arguing in an email to the Wisconsin Ethics Commission that an extra polling place should not be opened near the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay because she has merely heard that students lean Democrat.
“I was reading the statutes and read: No site may be designated that affords an advantage to any political party,” Republican appointed clerk Kris Teske wrote.
“UWGB is a polling location for students and residents on Election Day but I feel by asking for this to be the site for early voting is encouraging the students to vote more than benefiting the city as a whole. I have heard it said that students lean more toward the democrats and he is a democrat. I have spoken with our Chief of Staff and others at City Hall and they agree that budget wise this isn’t going to happen. I would like to know your thoughts on this. Do I have an argument about it being more of a benefit to the democrats.”
So not only are Trump supporters trying to rig the election with voter intimidation tactics using hypocritical methods, they are using voter suppression tactics as well.
And that is likely going to cause a lot of Election Day chaos. Voters should be prepared to stand up for their right to vote no matter what Trump’s deplorables try to do to keep them from exercising it.
Featured Image: Drew Angerer/Getty Images Share this Article! | 0 |
Mike Pence, who has served as governor of Indiana since 2013, will be Donald J. Trump’s running mate on the Republican presidential ticket. Mr. Pence, a staunch social conservative, was elected in 2000 to the House of Representatives, where he served in the party leadership. Here is a look at his stand on important issues, and how he compares with Mr. Trump. Mr. Pence is opposed to granting amnesty for people who have come to the United States without authorization. He has supported increased border security measures, strict enforcement of laws prohibiting unauthorized residents from working in the United States and a guest worker program that would place prospective immigrants with employers who cannot find American workers to fill open jobs. Earlier this year, he sought to bar the resettlement of Syrian refugees in his state. Where they differ After Mr. Trump called for a ban on Muslim migration to the United States, Mr. Pence said on Twitter that the proposal was “offensive and unconstitutional. ” Mr. Trump also initially said that Syrian refugees should be taken in, but he quickly reversed that opinion. _____ Mr. Pence, who has supported numerous legislative efforts to ban marriage in Indiana, was at the center of the national debate over religious freedom laws that critics said could make it easier for businesses to refuse service to gay couples. As a congressman, Mr. Pence opposed federal funding that would support treatment for people suffering from H. I. V. and AIDS, unless the government simultaneously invested in programs to discourage people from engaging in relationships. He also resisted changes to laws that would have included acts against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. And he opposed the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a Clinton administration policy that allowed closeted L. G. B. T. people to serve in the military. Where they differ In the 1980s and 1990s, Mr. Trump donated to charities that worked to combat the AIDS crisis, and in 2000 he said that he supported amending the 1964 Civil Rights Act to “include a ban of discrimination based on sexual orientation. ” _____ As governor, Mr. Pence signed into law several regulations that add broad limits to women’s access to abortions. He approved a bill in March that outlawed abortions based on a fetus’s “race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, or diagnosis or potential diagnosis of the fetus having Down syndrome or any other disability. ” The bill led to backlash on social media from opponents of the regulation. Mr. Pence also called for an investigation of Planned Parenthood after footage leaked by abortion rights opponents that outraged many abortion rights advocates. The videos turned out to have been altered by the people who released them and the videographers were later indicted on a charge of tampering with a government record. Where they differ Mr. Trump supported abortion rights until 2011. Earlier this year, he said that abortion should be banned and then said that women violating the ban should face “some sort of punishment. ” He recanted within hours, after he was criticized — even by some conservatives — and said that doctors who perform abortions should be held legally responsible women, he said, were the victims. _____ Mr. Pence’s foreign policy views mesh well with Mr. Trump’s “America First” framework, which is built around the idea of a robust American military. The Indiana governor called for big increases in military spending during a speech in 2015 and he has criticized Democrats who do not use the phrase “Islamic extremism” when discussing jihadists. As a member of Congress, where he was on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr. Pence was a strong supporter of Israel and a proponent of tough interrogation measures for prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. Mr. Pence voted to authorize military action in Iraq in 2002 and opposed proposals to set a date to withdraw troops from Iraq. Where they differ The biggest difference between the Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence when it comes to foreign policy is their respective stances on the Iraq war. Mr. Pence supported it, while Mr. Trump claims that he was against it from the beginning. _____ Mr. Pence has received an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association, which has financially supported his campaigns for the House and for governor. He supports a national right to carry a firearm in public and in 2004, as a member of the House, he voted to repeal gun control laws in Washington, D. C. He wrote on Twitter in June that he “will always be a strong proponent of the Second Amendment. ” Where they differ Mr. Trump is also very but he has expressed openness to restricting people on terrorist watch lists from buying firearms. _____ Mr. Pence has said he supports free trade, but he has also raised concern over the enforcement of trade agreements with China. Specifically, he asked the federal government to investigate allegations that Chinese steel companies were dodging tariffs in deals with American businesses. As governor, Mr. Pence visited nations like Japan and Germany on trade missions meant to stoke Indiana’s trade relationships with international businesses. Where they differ While Mr. Pence has expressed support for the Partnership trade deal, Mr. Trump regularly rails against it. Mr. Trump has also threatened to impose tariffs on imports from foreign countries to protect American jobs. _____ The Cato Institute, a group, called Mr. Pence a “champion tax cutter” and lauded his “frugal” spending record. As governor, he repealed Indiana’s inheritance tax and lowered taxes on corporate income and business property. In 2010, Mr. Pence proposed a bill in the House that would have instituted a limit on federal spending, but the idea did not have enough support to pass. Where they differ Mr. Trump has promised big tax cuts, but he does want to close some loopholes, such as the one on carried interest, that benefit the rich. _____ In 2015, Governor Pence threatened to disobey the Obama administration’s orders to lower carbon emissions unless the regulations underwent extensive changes. Mr. Pence said the regulations would “raise electricity costs on Hoosiers, result in less reliable electricity and impede economic growth and prosperity in Indiana and the rest of the country. ” He said the Clean Power Plan was “ill conceived and poorly constructed,” and he accused the Environmental Protection Agency of going beyond its legal authority in enacting the rules under the plan. Under Governor Pence, Indiana joined several other states that have tried to block the Clean Power Plan in court. Where they differ Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence are largely in agreement on energy and the environment. Mr. Trump is also against regulations to limit carbon emissions. Like Mr. Pence, he has doubts about the reality of climate change. And he has expressed concern about the dangers that windmills pose to birds. _____ Mr. Pence was one of only 25 Republican congressmen who voted against President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind policy. As governor, he challenged conservative Republicans in the State Senate to support legislation to establish a preschool program that would primarily serve children in poor families. He vocally supported school choice and setting learning standards at the local level, and pushed to direct state support toward technical and vocational education programs. Where they differ Mr. Trump has said little about his education plans other than that he is against Common Core and that “education has to be at a local level. ” | 1 |
Planned Parenthood: Abortion pill usage now rivals surgery October 31, 2016 The Planned Parenthood logo is pictured outside a clinic in Boston, Massachusetts, June 27, 2014. REUTERS/Dominick Reuter
Abortion pill usage has almost overtaken surgical alternatives as legalization of infanticide faces a major chance of repeal. in election 2016. Two medications used to induce abortion won US approval in 2000, but Pro-Life activists successfully implemented legislative restrictions. In 2014: Abortion medication was used in 43 percent of pregnancy terminations at Planned Parenthood clinics. in 2010: Up from 35 percent according to previously unreported figures by Planned Parenthood. In Ohio, Texas and North Dakota: Demand for medication abortions tripled in the last several months to as much as 30 percent of all procedures in some clinics. States with no restrictions: Up to 55 percent in Michigan, 64 percent in Iowa. Studies: Drug induced abortions kill the child up to 95 percent of the time. The abortion pill was approved in France in 1988. Guttmacher Institute: Pill used in 91 percent of abortions in Finland, 80 percent in Scotland. 1 million of the more than 2.75 million U.S. women who have used the abortion pill received it from Planned Parenthood. Federal data: Overall U.S. abortion rates have dropped to a low of 16.9 terminations per 1,000 women aged15-44 in 2011, down from 19.4 per 1,000 in 2008. U.S. Food and Drug Administration allows abortion pills to be used as far as 10 weeks into pregnancies. Planned Parenthood said both types of abortion typically cost from $300 to $1,000.
(NEW YORK CITY) American women are ending pregnancies with medication almost as often as with surgery, marking a turning point for abortion in the United States, data reviewed by Reuters shows.
The watershed comes amid an overall decline in abortion, a choice that remains politically charged in the United States, sparking a fiery exchange in the final debate between presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
When the two medications used to induce abortion won U.S. approval 16 years ago, the method was expected to quickly overtake the surgical option, as it has in much of Europe. But U.S. abortion opponents persuaded lawmakers in many states to put restrictions on their use.
Although many limitations remain, innovative dispensing efforts in some states, restricted access to surgical abortions in others and greater awareness boosted medication abortions to 43 percent of pregnancy terminations at Planned Parenthood clinics, the nation's single largest provider, in 2014, up from 35 percent in 2010, according to previously unreported figures from the nonprofit.
The national rate is likely even higher now because of new federal prescribing guidelines that took effect in March. In three states most impacted by that change - Ohio, Texas and North Dakota - demand for medication abortions tripled in the last several months to as much as 30 percent of all procedures in some clinics, according to data gathered by Reuters from clinics, state health departments and Planned Parenthood affiliates. | 0 |
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Как пишет Nikkei Asian Review со ссылкой на осведомленный источник, кроме стандартных 4,7 и 5,5-дюймовых версий, в линейке может появиться смартфон с диагональю пять дюймов. Также источник рассказал, что старшая версия смартфона получит изогнутый OLED-дисплей, когда как остальные модели оснастят LCD-экраном.
Напомним, производителями фронтальных панелей стали компании Biel Crystal Manufactory и Lens Technology. Они же выпускают и задние крышки для смартфонов, которые также будут выполнены из стекла.
По данным СМИ, в 2017 году Apple будет праздновать 10-летний юбилей с выхода первого iPhone. Опираясь на это, многие аналитики предрекают полный редизайн смартфона и добавление множества новых функций. Так, в сентябре источники рассказал, что компания минует промежуточную модель 7s и выпустит iPhone 8.
26 октября, компания впервые за 15 лет отчиталась о снижении годовой выручки. Около 63 процентов выручки обеспечили продажи iPhone, которых в четвертом квартале было реализовано 45,5 миллиона штук.
Федеральная антимонопольная служба РФ начала проверку цен на iPhone 7, после которой ведомство может возбудить новое дело против Apple.
Как сообщает ТАСС, ссылаясь на представителя антимонопольной службы, анализ будет проводится в течение месяца или чуть-чуть побольше, по его итогам будет принято решение. Вместо возбуждения нового дела ФАС может расширить уже возбужденное против Apple после проверки цен на iPhone 6.
Информацию у американской корпорации по ценообразованию на новые смартфоны в РФ пока ещё не запрашивали.
Напомним, в начале августа 2016 года ФАС возбудила дело в отношении группы лиц в составе Apple Inc., а также ООО "Эппл Рус", Apple Holding B. V., Apple Sales Ireland, Apple Operations International. Поводом стали результаты проведенной ведомством проверки, показавшей, что с начала официальных продаж iPhone 6s и iPhone 6s Plus в России большинство реселлеров установили на эти смартфоны одинаковые цены и удерживали их. 16 крупнейших торговых сетей России установили одинаковую цену на смартфоны Apple. Позже стало известно, что корпорация может заплатить штраф в размере до 5 миллионов рублей.
Ведомство заявило, что такие совпадения могут являться результатом координации ценообразования российских реселлеров группой компаний Apple, которая привела к установлению цен на российском рынке и принятию рекомендованных цен в качестве обязательных.
Apple в ответ заявила, что реселлеры самостоятельно устанавливают цены на продаваемую у них продукцию Apple. Напомним, в конце сентября начали продажи Apple iPhone 7 и iPhone 7 Plus. Число предзаказов на новинки от Apple, по данным Hi-Tech Mail. Ru, совокупно по всем ритейлерам достигло 20 тысяч. Новинки доступны в пяти цветах - золотом, серебристом, "розовом золоте", черном и "черном ониксе". Стоимость iPhone 7 начинается от 56,99 тысячи рублей, iPhone 7 Plus - от 67,99 тысячи рублей.
У нового телефона остался 3,5-мм разъем, а также два слота для SIM-карт. Согласно, iPhone 7 вышел в трех модификациях. Две младших модели получат 4,7-дюймовый экран, а у старшей он будет крупнее, 5,5-дюймов.
Ранее ходили слухи, что Apple выпустит 4,7-дюймовый iPhone 7 и два 5,5-дюймовых смартфона - iPhone 7 Plus и iPhone 7 Pro. Помимо этого, iPhone 7 сохранит 3,5-мм разъем, это подтвердили в компании.
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It won’t be the old car or the thousands of tobacco leaves or even the leaping crocodile model that will greet visitors when they walk into “¡Cuba! ,” the first major exhibition the American Museum of Natural History has ever organized about that island nation. Guests will be welcomed instead by photographs of Cubans from Cuba and New York, alongside quotations that display a variety of views and aspirations. Although this is not a political exhibition, the nature of Cuba’s relationship to the United States means that politics cannot — and should not — be avoided, said Christopher J. Raxworthy, curator of the museum’s department of herpetology and a curator of “¡Cuba!” “We wanted the exhibition to be very honest,” he said, to allow the diversity of Cuba, both environmental and political, to come through. “¡Cuba! ,” opening Nov. 21 and running through Aug. 13, 2017, will be one of the largest exhibitions on Cuba’s biodiversity, natural resources and culture ever presented in the United States. It will also be the museum’s first fully bilingual show. All the senses will be brought into play. The scent of tobacco leaves will waft through part of the exhibition. Videos of Cuban music — and perhaps even live performances — will play at the end of what looks like a typical Cuban street, with cafes (no food or drink, but guests can sit down and play a game of dominoes to the aroma of coffee). The timing is both serendipitous and not. It comes about 16 months after President Obama announced the of diplomatic ties, which were severed by the Cuban missile crisis more than 50 years ago. Legal commercial flights to Cuba began just this summer. But the museum’s ties to Cuba go deep. “We have a relationship with Cuban scientists and paleontologists going back 100 years,” Dr. Raxworthy said. While the museum had long had an interest in doing something on Cuba, “the normalization awakened people’s interest,” he said. The political shift also made it easier to invite Cuban colleagues to help and accelerated visas, said Ana Luz Porzecanski, director of the museum’s center for biodiversity and conservation and a curator of the exhibition. While it takes a minimum of two years to create something of the complexity and size of “iCuba! ,” this has been a little more rushed. “We have had just under two years,” Dr. Raxworthy said. Nothing is being shipped from Cuba because of the tight controls on the movement of biological materials. In any case, Dr. Porzecanski said, it is common for the museum to make models the exhibition needs to be hardy enough to travel, as it might be shown in different museums over the next 10 years. So in the bowels of the museum, an entire kaleidoscope of Cuban life has been created. It took 25 volunteers and several staff members to make the 4, 000 tobacco leaves out of construction paper. They are with acrylic in varying shades of brown and green, complete with tiny holes mimicking insect damage. Stems made of hardened hot glue are attached. Then they are crinkled, bundled together and hung over drying poles. “It’s taken from April to the end of August” to finish the leaves,” said Andrea Raphael, a model maker for the museum. There’s a shed for the leaves that will demonstrate the tradition of and a of a throne used for the spiritual tradition known as Santeria, with information on how both have shaped the island nation. Also displayed are 30 original posters created over the last decade, which show “the breadth and vitality of Cuban art,” said Catharine Weese, director of exhibition graphic design. Michele Miyares Hollands, a Cuban artist who created some of the posters, was brought in to help develop that part of the show. An interactive exhibit allows museumgoers to explore the country’s art, fashion and dance worlds. A 1955 Chevy will be on display as a tool to explain Cuban restrictions on imports and sales of American cars after 1959, as well as the ingenuity Cubans used in keeping their ancient automobiles running. But of course, the natural world is an important part of the exhibition, and that means an enormous amount of work has been done to recreate accurately everything from the prehistoric giant owl to the bee hummingbird, the tiniest bird in the world. Wetlands, rain forests and coral reefs all come to life. The plywood, foam and resin model of the Garden of the Queens coral reef alone took about six months to make, complete with a shark, which once lived in the museum’s Ocean Life hall and had been banished to storage. “Cuba has some of the best sea corals in the Caribbean,” Dr. Raxworthy said. The giant owl, which went extinct about 6, 000 years ago and might have been the largest flying bird, stands about three feet tall and was created by sculpturing epoxy, applied over foam and a steel armature form. Its piercing glass yellow eyes were flown over from Wales because no one in the United States had the right size in the right color, said Jason Broughan, a model maker who was working on the owl. “It was hard to flesh out the whole body — we had to do a lot of inference,” he said. Rebecca Meah, who created the model of the endangered Cuban crocodile — known for leaping in the air to catch small animals hanging from tree branches — used the skull of a Cuban crocodile that lived in the Bronx Zoo for many years to shape its head. Working with clay over urethane foam, Ms. Meah said it was the details — such as recreating exactly how the skin lies on the bone — that make the animal seem real. “Otherwise, it looks like a stuffed animal,” she said. The reuse of bits and pieces from other parts of the museum is typical. The fur of the Cuban solenodon — which looks like a shrew with a very long snout — was repurposed from a polar bear and painted rusty brown. And some live animals, including the Cuban tree frog and Cuban boa, will also be on view. The hope, Dr. Raxworthy said, is that visitors will “learn and have fun” And, he said, “for who haven’t been back in a long time, it could be emotional. ” | 1 |
License DMCA Ryan, Obama, McConnell, Reid, Pelosi, MSM, and most of Americans need to grasp and act on the irrefutable fact that America can never, involuntarily, go broke. We can afford anything we need which serves a public purpose. All of our needs are paid for from the Treasury's General Fund Account, not from tax dollars or revenue from bond sales. Because Speaker Ryan and his allies, wrongly, couch discussions of spending in the context of scarce resources, the public is always led to believe that Congress must rob Peter to pay Paul, raise taxes, or sell Treasury bonds to fund federal government expenditures. They insist there is only and always the harbinger of debt being the singularly most constraining factor preventing our government from funding public purpose. Nothing is further from reality and the irrefutable truth than this cynical presentation of America's capacity to fund itself. There needs to be an open discussion concerning fiscal policy constraints on Congress allegedly preventing it from appropriating funds to resolve health care provision not only in South Carolina but the provision of funding health care nationally. Clearly, one constraint is ideology (politics.) It would seem that a reasonable political solution would begin with the acknowledgment that doing nothing exacerbates human suffering. No one should support that alternative. A second alternative is to agree to do something that optimizes available resources to resolve the problem of poverty. That solution begins with the acknowledgment of the indisputable power of the Congress to make laws that create the currency with which all Federal Programs are funded. - Advertisement - Because our Federal Government is monetarily sovereign, it can never, involuntarily, "become bankrupt." We can never be Greece, or any of the EC member nations because they do not have monetary sovereignty, cannot issue currency. Our Federal Government (Congress, Treasury, and Federal Reserve) issues a sovereign currency, the dollar, as a non-convertible, fiat currency, in a flexible exchange rate regime, and it has no debt in a foreign currency. Under these, irrefutable, monetary characteristics Congressional appropriations are constrained only by the actuality of inflation and Congress' refusal to pay our bills (appropriate funding.) Moreover, Congress never needs revenue per se to fund its appropriations. The notion that our government needs income to spend is, categorically, false in our post gold standard Modern Money Era which began in 1971-'73. Speaker Ryan and company would have us believe that tax revenue is needed to accomplish spending. That contention is illogical. Tax policy in America manages inflation by taking dollars out of the economy to prevent over spending. While there has been no serious threat of inflation since the 1970's, we are over-taxed. Tax policy is also supposed to be designed to manage income distribution. It has failed this task over the past 45 years as marginal tax rates have become more regressive favoring the rich over the rest. Simply put, tax revenue does not fund the Federal Government. That revenue is never recycled. The government simply issues more electronic dollars. It's illogical and inefficient to recycle government liabilities. - Advertisement - The dollars with which we pay the tax liability must first come from government spending. Speaker Ryan knows this and that Government spending is the first source of dollars entering the economy. Fiat creates dollars. In the instance of the Federal Government, when it spends more than it receives in revenue (which it never needs and this construction is purely accounting not a financial requirement.) Ryan and too many others, consider this an economic Armageddon. None of them admit to the existence of the surplus. That surplus, from government "deficit spending dollars" is now held by those of us in the private sector. We now possess the dollars; it's our surplus or technically our net financial savings after taxes are paid. It's essentially interest-free money for us to spend as we choose. That's why the financial sector/commercial bankers hate deficit spending. Americans benefit from deficit spending and therefore, don't need to go into debt to maintain living standards. Our surplus from deficit spending is what keeps the economy growing. Federal (public) deficit spending is equal, to the penny, to net financial assets in the private sector. When Ryan and company tell us they're going to cut the deficit, it automatically means they are going to reduce the amount of interest-free money available to us. That eventually will, in short order, force us to use our savings, retained earnings or borrow from banks at interest just to maintain current spending. The last six times our economy went into recession were each preceded by either a government surplus or a balanced budget. In all cases too much was cut or taxed away from us by austerity policies and conversely, not enough government spending was authorized by Congress to support interest-free stimulus. Moreover, since this economy has high levels of regional and sub-regional unemployment (ranging from 12% to 35%), the Federal Government should deficit spend until we have a full employment economy. | 0 |
Russia strikes with its new hypersonic missile 31.10.2016 A hypersonic aircraft known as Article 4202 or 15Yu71 was successfully tested for the first time on 25 October during gunnery drill from the Dombarovskiy launcher deployment area in the Orenburg region at the Kura Missile Test Range in Kamchatka. All the on-board equipment, avionics, as well as guidance system are made of the Russian components. The weapon is capable of moving at a speed of around 7km/s at the maximum height. The device is designed to be installed in advanced intercontinental ballistic missiles instead of traditional warheads. 4202 starts operating at a height of about 100km and flies to the target at a speed of 5-7km/s. While before entering thick layers of atmosphere above the target, the hypersonic aircraft conducts a difficult manoeuvre, which hampers its being intercepted by means of missile defence. It should be noted that the project of combat blocks named Albatros occurred in the USSR in the mid-1980s as a response to the US attempt to create missile defence in the framework of the Star Wars conception. Pravda.Ru | 0 |
FLINT, Mich. — Three government workers were charged with crimes on Wednesday for their roles in this city’s water crisis, accused in part of covering up evidence of lead contamination. The workers — an employee of Flint and two state workers assigned to monitor water quality in cities — are the first to face criminal charges in connection with the failures that left residents of this city drinking foul and unsafe water for many months. In announcing the charges, some of which are felonies carrying penalties of as much as five years in prison, Bill Schuette, the Michigan attorney general, answered skeptics in Flint and elsewhere who had openly doubted that anyone would ever be held accountable for the health crisis here. Emails and other documents have shown a cascading series of failures at every level of government — local, state and federal — and Mr. Schuette, a Republican who is widely seen as a possible candidate for governor in 2018, emphasized that his investigation, begun in January, was far from over. “These charges are only the beginning,” Mr. Schuette said. “There will be more to come — that I can guarantee you. ” The charges against the three defendants — Michael Prysby, a district engineer with the State Department of Environmental Quality Stephen Busch, a district supervisor in the same department and Michael Glasgow, the city’s utilities manager — included tampering with evidence contained in reports on lead levels in city water, and the two state officials were also charged with conspiracy to tamper with evidence. Mr. Prysby and Mr. Busch were arraigned later on Wednesday, court records show. Lawyers for the three men could not be reached for comment. Among other things, the workers were accused of distorting the results by directing residents to run their water before it was tested and failing to collect samples from some houses they were required to test. That had the effect of making the levels of lead in the water supply appear far less dangerous than they were, and falsely reassured officials who could have intervened months earlier, as well as residents, that the water was safe. The disaster has left Flint residents fearful about the lasting effects of lead on the city’s youngest children, distrustful of the promises of the authorities and reliant on filters and bottled water. Some have questioned whether this economically distressed, majority black city of fewer than 100, 000 residents will ever get justice. The charges against relatively officials were being viewed as a promising initial step, but by no means a final answer. “We want the complete story,” Karen Weaver, the recently elected mayor of Flint, said after listening to details of the charges from the front row of a news conference with prosecutors and investigators here. “This is the start to that. ” Some residents pointedly alluded to Gov. Rick Snyder. Asked whether Mr. Snyder would face charges, Mr. Schuette said, “There’s no target, and no one’s off the table. ” Ellis Stafford, a Flint native and an investigator on the team Mr. Schuette assigned to investigate what happened in Flint, choked up as he addressed the failed water system — and the broken trust in government that has come from it. “It really hurts,” he said. “I have friends, personal close friends. They live here. They look at me and they wonder if there’s any truth to this investigation. I hope I gave them some. ” He went on to say, “I told one of my friends, ‘You might not believe in government or the state, but believe in me. ’” The three men face a total of 13 charges, a mix of felonies and misdemeanors. The state workers have been suspended without pay, Mr. Snyder said late Wednesday. Mr. Glasgow has been placed on administrative leave, Ms. Weaver said. The charges are linked to the handling of a change in the city’s water supply two years ago and to the aftermath of that change, including a failure to add chemicals that reduce corrosion inside pipes. The resulting problems led to Flint residents’ exposure to water contaminated with lead and possibly linked to a deadly outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease. David M. Uhlmann, who was chief of the environmental crimes section at the Justice Department from 2000 to 2007, and who is a law professor at the University of Michigan, said such charges were rare. ”It’s extremely unusual and maybe unprecedented for state and local officials to be charged with criminal drinking water violations,” he said. Mr. Busch and Mr. Prysby, the state officials, were charged with misconduct in office, a felony, for “willfully and knowingly misleading” the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Genesee County Health Department about dangers posed by the water. Mr. Prysby was also charged with misconduct in office for authorizing use of the Flint plant, “knowing that the Flint water treatment plant was deficient in its ability to provide clean and safe drinking water. ” Each of those charges carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $10, 000 fine. Each of the tampering charges is a felony punishable by up to four years and $10, 000. Mr. Prysby and Mr. Busch each face two misdemeanor charges of violating the state’s Safe Drinking Water Act by failing to order anticorrosion treatment of the water, and for telling residents to run, or “preflush,” their taps before samples were taken for lead testing, creating misleadingly low readings. Each count carries a penalty of up to a year in prison, and a fine of up to $5, 000 for each day of violation. Mr. Glasgow also faces a misdemeanor charge of willful neglect of duty, with a maximum sentence of a year and a $1, 000 fine. At times, Mr. Glasgow has been seen as someone who tried to warn officials about his concerns over the water. Not long before Flint switched to a new water supply in 2014, Mr. Glasgow warned state officials that he believed the city was not fully ready to make the change and suggested, in an email released as part of thousands of emails made public since the crisis began, that “people above” him were pushing to move too quickly. Mr. Snyder, a Republican who has apologized repeatedly for what happened in Flint but has also indicated that staff members failed for months to tell him about the gravity and dangers of the mounting situation, has faced the most intense criticism of his two terms over the issue, as well as calls for his resignation or recall. The city had switched to the troubled water system while under the control of an emergency financial manager, appointed by the governor to sort out Flint’s fiscal troubles. Last month, a panel appointed by the governor assigned most of the blame to state officials, citing “government failure, intransigence, unpreparedness, delay, inaction and environmental injustice. ” Mr. Snyder, who announced this week that he would drink Flint water for a month, said at a news conference on Wednesday that the charges were “deeply troubling and extremely serious. ” He said he had not yet been interviewed by the attorney general’s team, but that his office was cooperating with the investigation. Asked whether he believed he had committed a crime, Mr. Snyder said, “I don’t believe so. ” Along the streets here on Wednesday, some people questioned why Mr. Snyder was not being held to answer for the state’s failings. “Somebody knew about this at the top,” William McCraw, 64, said as he waited at a bus station in Flint. “They need to round them all up, everyone who knew. ” They also wondered aloud how criminal charges could now solve their continuing water and health problems. Researchers from Virginia Tech said recently that while Flint’s system was “on the path to recovery,” it remained a “ zone for lead in water. ” Nicole Woycik, a mother who worries about her son’s behavioral changes and wonders about effects the water may have on him, described the criminal charges as “a start. ” But, she added, “The charges will not bring a lot of closure, because we’re affected either way. ” Asked whether Flint was now beginning to heal, Ms. Weaver, the mayor, said the criminal charges were “part of getting it healed. ” The other part, she said, would be securing all of the money Flint needs to replace its aged water system. | 1 |
Now that the 49ers want nothing to do with him, it appears that the liberal sports media sympathizes with quarterback Colin Kaepernick and advocates that some NFL team should sign him to a new contract. [Mike Florio writes at NBC Sports PFT that although Kaepernick may not, as Ron Jaworski once claimed, have the potential to “become one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time,” he deserves a chance “to show what he can still do. ” Florio agrees with Doug Lesmerises of the Cleveland Plain Dealer that the Cleveland Browns should give the QB, who refused to stand for the National Anthem last season, a chance. The blame lies with Browns owner Jimmy Haslam, Florio argues, because he is a Republican with ties to the Jeb Bush for president campaign and he is the brother of Republican Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, without considering that management might be considering their fan base or that Kaepernick just isn’t that good. Florio doesn’t seem to remember the Isaiah Crowell ordeal. The Cleveland Browns running back posted an Instagram pic last year of a cop getting murdered by a terrorist and appeared to “advocate the knifing of police officers,” which caused the Cleveland Police Union president to actually threaten to pull security from Browns games. Crowell eventually apologized. Kaepernick might be an especially bad fit in a town already weary of his stance. Moreover, Florio criticizes New York Jets Owner Woody Johnson for having the same “mindset” as Haslam. Johnson, appointed by President Trump as Ambassador to the United Kingdom, would never employ Kaepernick. That’s because, despite their current search for a quarterback, his new boss already voiced disdain for Kaepernick’s lack of respect for the American Flag and the nation’s police officers. Trump said of Kaepernick’s antics, “Maybe he should find a country that works better for him. ” Florio seems incredulous, saying, “The fact that no one has even brought him in for a visit suggests that something more than football is influencing the process. ” Why is it that Florio only points the finger at conservative owners for denying Kaepernick a place on the roster? Why not go after Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie, who contributed handsomely to the Hillary Clinton campaign? Yet, instead of signing Kaepernick, Lurie the white Nick Foles. Why isn’t he under scrutiny? The Rooneys own the Steelers, and one of them served as Obama’s ambassador to Ireland. With Ben Roethlisberger musing about retirement, why haven’t they brought Kaepernick in yet, if only for a look? As Hamlet’s Marcellus might have said, “Something is rotten in the land of sports media. ” | 1 |
President Donald Trump’s national security adviser General Michael Flynn delivered a stern warning to Iran, pointing to their “destabilizing behavior” in the Middle East. [Flynn specifically referred to the Iranian regime’s “provocative ballistic launch” after the government conducted a test of a missile, as well as their support of Houthi militants who attacked a Saudi naval vessel. “As of today we are officially putting Iran on notice,” Flynn said at the White House press briefing on Wednesday. Flynn’s statement was short, but a senior administration official answered followup questions about the statement to reporters at the White House later in the afternoon. The official said there was a “large number of options that were available” to the administration and signaled that they would take “appropriate actions” in response to Iran’s behavior. “We consider these actions to be inherently destabilizing and a threat to our friends and our allies, and it’s to the goals of the region,” the official said. But the official would only confirm that a deliberative process had begun regarding how to respond, and he offered few additional details. The message, however, was clear — the administration wanted to send a signal that there was a different president in the White House who would have a different relationship with Iran than former President Obama. “We are considering these things on a different perspective,” the official noted. The official explained that Gen. Flynn delivered the message because the administration felt that it was important to send it directly from the White House, not through diplomacy at the State Department. “It reflects the level of importance that this administration believes this issue warrants,” the official explained. | 1 |
Casualties have been reported after a truck crashed into pedestrians in the Swedish capital Stockholm, police say. [UPDATE 5:00 pm EST: Details have emerged about the man arrested by police. He is said to be a migrant from Uzbekistan who is a father of four. According to the reports, he is said to have posted State material on Facebook and has admitted to being part of the attack. Neighbours of the man do not believe that he was part of the attack and say that he rarely discussed politics or religion. Police still maintain that they do not believe he was the driver of the truck in the attack. UPDATE 4:15 pm EST: Stockholm police have announced that the person arrested was not the driver in the attack and say the driver is still at large. UPDATE 2:50 pm EST: Police have confirmed that they have arrested a suspect in the attack and that there are now four victims according to Swedish newspaper Expressen. The man is said to have been arrested in the district of Märsta outside of Stockholm. UPDATE 2:30 pm EST: Video from a local shop has emerged showing people running in panic and the truck used in the attack driving by at high speed. UPDATE 11:40 am EST: Police now say that no one has officially been arrested in connection with the attack and have released a picture of a man in a hoodie who they believe to be a suspect. Police have begun a manhunt for the suspected attacker. UPDATE 10:40 am EST: Jimmie Åkesson, leader of the migration Sweden Democrats, has expressed sympathy for the victims of the attack on Twitter saying, “let our thoughts go to the victims and their families. Fruktansvärda händelser i Stockholm just nu, med både döda och skadade. Låt våra tankar gå till de drabbade och deras anhöriga. — Jimmie Åkesson (@jimmieakesson) April 7, 2017, UPDATE 10:35 am EST: Police have ordered the evacuation of the main train station in central Stockholm. UPDATE 10:31 am EST: Pictures have emerged of police arresting a man at the scene of the attack. UPDATE 10:21 am EST: A video posted on Twitter appears to show the aftermath of the attack with a fire having broken out. Watching the events unfold after a truck drove into Åhléns on Drottninggatan. pic. twitter. — Emil Stenqvist (@svammel) April 7, 2017, UPDATE 10:06 am EST: Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has released a statement calling the attack likely an act of terrorism. The Swedish leader also has said that one suspect is currently in custody. UPDATE 10:03 am EST: Swedish police have officially deemed the incident an “attack” in an official statement. Swedish police statement on Stockholm situation, have deemed it an attack: pic. twitter. — Megan Specia (@meganspecia) April 7, 2017, UPDATE 10:00 am EST: According to Spendrups, the owners of the truck involved in the attack, the truck in question was hijacked earlier today. Communications director Mårten Lyth said that the driver is unharmed and the hijacker took the truck as the driver was about to unload cargo. UPDATE 9:43 am EST: Newspaper Dagens Nyheter reports that there has been another shooting in the Fridhemsplan areas in Stockholm. It is unknown if the shooting is related to the incident in Drottninggatan at this time. JUST NU: Skottlossning på Fridhemsplan i Stockholm, enligt källor till DN https: . pic. twitter. — Dagens Nyheter (@dagensnyheter) April 7, 2017, The truck slammed into pedestrians near the Åhlens shopping centre on the Drottninggatan pedestrian street in the Swedish capital. According to Swedish paper Aftonbladet, the police on the scene are saying that the incident is likely a terrorist attack. “I saw hundreds of people ran, they ran for their lives,” said one witness name Anna. Another witness said, “We stood inside a shoe store, and we heard no noise, and so people start screaming. So I look out at the store, so I see a huge truck slammed into the wall opposite. ” Swedish broadcaster SVT are now claiming that three people have been killed in the incident and that shots have been fired. . @SigmaSquawk video from #Stockholm, #Sweden. pic. twitter. — Global News (@GlobalZarfati) April 7, 2017, Terrorattentat i Stockholm! !!#terrorattack #stockholm pic. twitter. — Per Gardell (@PerGardell) April 7, 2017, More follows | 1 |
The newest batch of emails released from Wikileaks puts Hillary Clinton in deep trouble. Eric Bolling read them through and through and discovered that Hillary actually has deep terror ties…
From Conservative 101:
Eric Bolling and his team took the time to sift carefully through the emails.
Announced Bolling on The Five , “There are even more ne WikiLeaks revelations. In 2014, Hillary sent an e-mail to her Campaign Chairman John Podesta saying, ‘Saudi Arabia and Qatar are funding ISIS.’ And the leaked e-mails also show Clinton’s staff debated how much outrage she should show lawmakers over Benghazi at her 2015 Capitol Hill hearing. K.G., they have lots — it’s like 4,000 e-mails in the last couple of days.”
Does it get any more disgusting than this?
Saudia Arabia gave her personal “charity” the Clinton Foundation $35 million dollars, and now in her emails we have proof she knew Saudi Arabia was funding ISIS.
There you have it folks. Elic Bolling just exposed everything!
This is the evidence that the American public needed… this will destroy Hillary for good!
Share it everywhere, America deserves to know the truth! | 0 |
Bailey, a goldendoodle, lived a placid, largely uneventful life on a block of handsome brownstones in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, until 7:15 on the morning of Oct. 24. That was when her owner leashed her to a metal chair outside Henry’s Local, a coffee shop on Henry Street, and went in for an iced latte. Another customer entered the cafe. Bailey, startled, jumped to the side. The chair crashed to the sidewalk. The noise spooked Bailey further. She bolted — down Henry Street, dragging the clattering chair behind her, with her owner, Orna Le Pape, in pursuit, yelling: “Bailey, stop! No! No!” Bailey ran diagonally through the intersection at Carroll Street. Then the chair snagged on something. Bailey broke free, leaving the chair and her leash and ID tags behind. She turned right at the When in Rome hair salon onto her block, President Street. She ran right past her house, and she kept going. Ms. Le Pape, 47 and fit but no match for a sprinting dog, lost sight of Bailey at the next corner, but yelled directions: “She went that way!” Bailey went left and left again, toward the waterfront. When Ms. Le Pape got to Columbia Street, on the far side of the Expressway, no one was on the street. She screamed Bailey’s name. She guessed at a direction to run. She passed people. No one had seen her. Gone. Every week, dozens of dogs and cats go missing in New York City. Their distraught owners put up signs. Some turn up alive. Some do not. Over the next few days, Bailey somehow became a phenomenon, a cause, and in her rarefied corner of Brooklyn and beyond, a social media star. Now it was around 7:30 on a Monday, a school and work day, though Ms. Le Pape, a psychotherapist, had no patients scheduled until evening. She ran home, got her car and began an aimless, frantic drive in search of the dog. She called home and told her son to find photos of Bailey (a dog with a shaggy coat, a chestnut beard and enormously long eyelashes) and start printing out fliers. She drove home, picked them up, walked to a nearby copy shop to make more and started posting them, crying all the while. Ms. Le Pape canceled sessions with her evening patients, citing a family emergency. All day, she wandered the tidy precincts known collectively as Brownstone Brooklyn. Up Columbia to Atlantic Avenue, down Hicks Street by the expressway, west to the factories and warehouses of Red Hook, swinging by the dog run beneath by the highway overpass. Everywhere Ms. Le Pape went, people seemed compelled to help. They asked for an extra flier so they could post it on Facebook, or make copies and tape them up elsewhere. They offered suggestions — call vets, call shelters, call animal rescue places, go to the police. “I went to the sanitation garage, down by the water, and the guy said, ‘I’m announcing this on roll call until they find her,’” Ms. Le Pape said. “I ran into absolute strangers who said they were going to church to pray for my dog. ” Ms. Le Pape spared no expense. For $149. 95 she registered with LostMyDoggie. com, which 1, 250 of her neighbors, alerting them to look out for Bailey. She printed over a thousand fliers. Omar at the copy shop would not take her money. In the evening, Ms. Le Pape became fixated on Brooklyn Bridge Park, a mile and a half north of her house — a quiet place to hide for a dog who hates loud noises. From 11:30 p. m. to 1:30 a. m. Ms. Le Pape and her mother, who had come out from Manhattan to help, wandered the deserted park, calling the dog’s name. Nothing. Tuesday: Day 2. Ms. Le Pape started getting calls from people who said they had seen Bailey the day before. She was able to reconstruct some of Bailey’s route: 7:30 a. m. on Monday near the Brooklyn Bridge, a mile and a half north of her house. Then a mile and a half southeast of the bridge at Nevins and Degraw Streets. At 10:30 p. m. on Monday, Bailey had been spotted on Henry Street, five blocks from her house, but running the wrong way. That first day she covered at least 4 miles, probably considerably more. Ms. Le Pape went to the city pet shelters in East Harlem and East New York, Brooklyn. Nothing. More acts of kindness. Near the Fairway supermarket in Red Hook a man flagged her down. “He said, ‘I see you’re offering a reward on your sign. I have the winery that’s down here — tell people the reward is they can come for a tasting and a tour. ’” It is not clear why the search for Bailey drew such an outpouring of support. Part of it may be that Carroll Gardens retains an intimate feel. It certainly did not hurt that she was a particularly appealing dog. “I don’t know if the entire neighborhood would mobilize for an dog,” Ms. Le Pape said. A cynic might wonder if class had anything to do with it. A friend of Ms. Le Pape’s had another theory. “She said, ‘At a time like this, when there’s so much turmoil going on around the election, here’s this story that everyone can latch on to and be on the same side. Everyone wants a lost dog found. ’” In the late afternoon, Ms. Le Pape’s mother noticed signs for a beagle named Edie, who lived three blocks from Bailey and had also run off while leashed to a chair on the same day as Bailey. “I thought it would be a great idea to join forces,” she said. She called one of Edie’s owners, Olly Smith. “I can’t talk right now,” he said. “I think we’ve just found our little dog’s body. ” Edie had been hit by a car on the Expressway. At 4:30 a. m. on Wednesday, Ms. Le Pape was awakened by a dream: Bailey is downstairs, go downstairs. “I didn’t listen to the voice because it was crazy. ” In the morning, Ms. Le Pape went on Facebook. Under “Trending” (a list based on her location, her own social network and broader algorithms) the top topic was Bailey. Outside, she found dog poop on the sidewalk in front of the house. It appeared to be a few hours old. It looked like Bailey’s. “I thought, ‘What if I pick it up and took it to the vet and had them analyze it? ’” Ms. Le Pape recalled. “I was reaching for anything. ” Ms. Le Pape canceled her Wednesday appointments to continue the search. “We heard you have to do at least a radius,” she said. In her part of Brooklyn, there are something like 1, 500 blocks within a radius. At 10 p. m. on Wednesday evening, more than 60 hours after Bailey dashed off, Ms. Le Pape was riding a bike two neighborhoods from home, calling Bailey’s name, and her phone rang. “This woman is panting and puffing,” she recounted. “She says, ‘I’m following your dog, trying to stay with her. ’” Bailey was on Sackett Street, just a few blocks from home. Ms. Le Pape flew down Columbia Street. She ran into the woman: “She said, ‘I was trying to call you again — we lost her. ’” The phone rang again. Someone had just seen Bailey in Red Hook, on Van Brunt Street. And again: “I see your dog,” a man told her. Bailey was on Degraw Street, heading in the direction of home. Ms. Le Pape called her mother. “I just sort of screamed something to the effect of, ‘Everyone get downstairs! ’” Ms. Le Pape’s older son opened the door. There was Bailey, at the top of the stoop. She was starving and dehydrated. She had lost eight pounds. Her paw was bleeding. But she was intact. Ms. Le Pape and her mother began to notify everyone who had been helping with the search, including Edie’s grieving owner, Olly Smith. “This is the most wonderful news,” he wrote back. “We’re so, so happy for you all. ” Bailey has resumed her old life, with one notable change: the coffee place. “I still go there every day,” Ms. Le Pape said. “But without her. ” | 1 |
Cool | 0 |
A South Carolina man has been given a prison sentence for shooting a mother who intervened to stop him from raping her daughter, court documents reveal. [Nate Hunter, 34, was convicted of burglary, attempted murder, criminal sexual conduct with a child, and illegal possession of a gun for the April 2014 of a home in West Columbia, South Carolina, according to Fox Carolina. Police had charged Hunter under the suspicion that he broke into the home and ordered the mother and the little girl to strip naked. He then grabbed the girl to molest her, but the child’s mother attacked. Police said Hunter then shot the woman five times. Despite being severely wounded, the enraged mother was able to fight the suspect off and push him out of the home. In court, prosecutors said Hunter left a stocking cap behind after he fled and DNA linked the cap to the suspect. Hunter’s DNA was already in the CODIS system and the match led police to arrest him as a suspect, WLTX 19 reported. Once arrested, police were also able to test a . 40 caliber pistol in his possession and found it matching the bullets recovered at the scene of the home invasion. Both the mother and the now girl testified against Hunter during the court proceedings. Addressing the court, the little girl’s mother said that Hunter had “forever stolen her daughter’s security and innocence. ” Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 1 |
More lies from our esteemed scandalous liberal Muslim leader and his administration! I for one have trust issues like so many others yet these clowns think that the American people are believing these stories? It appears that the liberals in the government are showing that they are more ignorant than the people by thinking that we actually believe them! | 0 |
by Jerri-Lynn Scofield
By Jerri-Lynn Scofield, who has worked as a securities lawyer and a derivatives trader. She now spends most of her time in India and other parts of Asia researching a book about textile artisans. She also writes regularly about legal, political economy, and regulatory topics for various consulting clients and publications, as well as writes occasional travel pieces for The National .
The biggest story on Indian television yesterday wasn’t the election of Donald Trump. For on Tuesday night (IST), Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a surprise speech declared that currency notes of rupees (Rs) 500 and Rs 1000 — the highest two denominations in circulation– would be invalid as of midnight that same night. The withdrawn notes could no longer be used for transacting business or as a store of value for future usage (with some limited exceptions, but even these were only allowed for a short transition period).
From Modi’s speech :
“There is a need for a decisive war against the menace of corruption, black money and terrorism… Corruption, black money and terrorism are festering wounds which make the country hollow from within,” he said, adding such activities hold back the nation’s progress.
Describing illegal financial activities as the “biggest blot”, Modi said that despite several steps taken by his government over the last two-and-a-half years, India’s global ranking on corruption had moved only to 76th position from 100th earlier.
“This shows the extent of the web of corruption in the country. The disease of corruption is the domain of some veted people who are flourishing. Some people have misused their positions and benefitted. On the other hand, honest people are suffering,” he said.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)– the Indian central bank– as reported by The Times of India , elaborated:
The incidence of fake Indian currency notes in higher denomination has increased. For ordinary persons, the fake notes look similar to genuine notes, even though no security feature has been copied. The fake notes are used for antinational and illegal activities. High denomination notes have been misused by terrorists and for hoarding black money. India remains a cash based economy hence the circulation of Fake Indian Currency Notes continues to be a menace. In order to contain the rising incidence of fake notes and black money, the scheme to withdraw has been introduced.
Chaos Ensues
India remains a cash-based economy, especially for low-value transactions, and the move has caused widespread chaos, as I write this from Kolkata where I am currently visiting. The move was accompanied by a temporary shut down of all banks and ATMs, with banks reopening earlier today and ATMs due to reopen tomorrow.
Initially, after the announcement, the highest denomination legal tender note in circulation was the Rs 100 note. New legally tender Rs 500 and Rs 2000 notes have been made available today, according to Tushar Roy, chief manager of a nationalized bank, Central Bank of India. Not all banks have yet received the new notes, but Roy says that this problem is expected to be resolved soon. The government also expects to re-introduce Rs 1000 notes soon, to include advanced security features. When ATMs open tomorrow, withdrawals will be limited to a maximum of Rs 2000 per transaction, as compared to the Rs 10,000 and in some cases, Rs 15,000 limits, that previously applied.
Starting today, after producing appropriate identification, people are allowed to exchange old notes for new at any of the 19 RBI offices, any bank branch, or at any head post office or sub-post office. They will have until December 30 to complete their transactions.
Individuals receive full value for the entire volume of bank notes tendered at any of these venues, but here’s the kicker: At the moment, each person is limited to receiving only Rs 4000 per person in cash irrespective of the size of tender. Anything over and above that amount can only be credited to a bank account. This allows the government to track whether the sums tendered have been legitimately acquired. Withdrawals from bank accounts will be limited to Rs 10,000 a day and Rs 20,000 a week. The government has announced this part of the policy may be relaxed in future, says Roy, in order for employers, for example, to meet payrolls currently made in cash. (Ultimately the government wants more transactions to be paid via bank accounts, so that they can be tracked and taxed appropriately).
Does The Policy Make Sense?
It’s beyond the scope of this post to speculate on the impact the new policy will have on individuals of various occupations and with myriad reasons for transacting in large amounts of cash. For more on this point, interested readers might wish to look at this article in The Wire .
Some have criticized the policy for focusing on currency alone, and have noted that black money is typically not held by Indians in stacks of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes, but in one of two alternative ways.
The very rich store black assets in offshore accounts (as detailed in, among other sources, the Panama Papers).
But tax evasion and corruption is not limited to the very richest alone. In India, many doctors and other professionals, members of the business community, and small traders also underreport their taxable income. They tend to hold their black assets on-shore, within India, in the form of real estate, art work, gold bullion, jewellery, or securities.
Unlike other current policy areas– border incursions into Pakistan, for example– the political opposition has has not contested the objective of the Modi move. There is virtually unanimous concurrence– at least publicly– on cracking down on black money. Yet as The Hindu reported, former Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram has criticized the Modi government’s method for achieving its objective:
“We support the objective of the government to stamp out black money. But the method they have adopted raises questions… The move has come as a bolt from the blue for the common man.”
The real test for the government would begin [Thursday], Mr Chidambaram said. “How efficiently and how quickly the money is exchanged…. If there is harassment or inconvenience and all kinds of questions are asked, then I think that will be completely counterproductive.”
A similar move had been contemplated by the previous Congress-led UPA government, he recalled. But the idea was dropped as “the economic gains were not too great.”
Mr. Chidambaram said the introduction of the new series of notes was estimated to cost Rs. 15,000 crores to Rs 20,000 crores [Jerri-Lynn here: a crore is 10,000,000 in the Indian numbering system]. “The economic gains of demonetisation should be at least equal to that amount.”
If the additional tax revenue pulled in by the Modi move is less than that amount, the new policy will actually have ended up costing the government money– rather than increasing government revenues.
As Chidambaram summarized (again from The Hindu article quoted above):
The “economic wisdom” of the government’s decision, Mr Chidambaram said, would be tested on three parameters: a) the present cash to GDP ratio is 12 per cent. Will it come down to the world average of about 4 per cent? b) The value of the high denomination notes currently in circulation is about 15 lakh crore rupees [Jerri-Lynn here: a lakh is 100,000, a crore, 10,000,000, so a lakh crore is 1,000,000,000,000.] Will that value come down significantly? c) Will gold imports surge, indicating that unaccounted income/ wealth is seeking refuge in bullion and gold jewellery?
Various economists have also presented other criticisms of the government’s move, as reported by The Wire. Requiring a switch to new bank notes means Indians must take time to switch their existing Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes into the new bank notes. If new notes are not freely and widely available, this will freeze trade and the normal functioning of an exchange economy. Further, many Indians receive salaries in cash and do not have bank accounts at present, so requiring transactions to pass through the banking system will cause them considerable immediate inconvenience.
Impact on Economic Activity
But there is a wider reason for critiquing the policy. “Black money and not paying taxes: These are bad things in a society,” says Suvojit Bagchi, Kolkata bureau chief for The Hindu. “Not surprisingly, everyone– including the opposition– agrees on the objective of cracking down on black money.” Increasing the tax base- is the prime objective here. But will the demonetization policy produce substantial tax revenue? Bagchi noted that Chidambaram questioned whether taxes raised would be sufficient to recoup the cost of printing new bank notes.
Another objective, Bagchi added, is to move India away from its reliance on cash, toward a more American or European plastic system, where it’s easier to track– and tax– money.
And finally, at least half of Indian economic activity occurs in the informal sector, which is not tightly controlled. Bagchi gave the example of a building promoter, whose building activity produces both black and white revenues. Indeed, perhaps 40% of the promoter’s overall activity, he estimated, might be black activity. But that black activity also generates employment, as well as other knock on effects. While the government hopes that its policy will increase the tax base, it’s also possible that demonetization might instead lead to the shut down of at least some black activity. “So, the government’s latest move may actually slow economic activity considerably,” Bagchi says, “But for how long, and to what extent, no one knows.”
He further added, “At the moment, the Indian economy is somewhat insulated from the world economy, in part due to its reliance on cash and the existence of considerable black activity. Once India moves to a plastic system, and cuts back on that black activity, it will lose some of this insulation.”
As reported in The Wire , Abhijit Sen, former member of the Planning Commission, is also concerned about contraction in the informal sector:
The sudden decision to demonetise currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 is targeted to reduce illicit stocks of black money and fake currency. This has a clear rationale if such notes are used mainly to stock undisclosed wealth, rather than for transactions. However, RBI data show that currency notes of these two denominations make up over 80% of the total currency in circulation. Therefore, unless a very large proportion of money in circulation lies permanently as stocks, the demonetisation can also be expected to have a significant immediate effect on that part of the economy which relies mainly on cash transactions.
The size of India’s cash economy is not exactly known but, given the large proportion of workers in informal sectors, it is unlikely to be less than half the total economy. We can, therefore, expect an immediate contraction of this part of the economy in the next two days and with the effect stretching over a longer period of time, although diminishing over time. Whatever its long-term positive effects, those depending on cash whether for daily wages or as payments for goods or services they sell are likely to be in for tough times in the coming days. In the long term as well, all that this does is partially eliminate some black money stocks without undoing the processes that lead to black money creation. | 0 |
MiG 15: The plane that panicked the West
Mikhail Gurevich, Artëm Mikoyan
Your translating contributing editor needed a break. Then the thought: Fort Russ readers need a break too! Sit back, click on the video below. Enjoy!
-- Tom Winter
After the credits (at 43:57) and the interview with the North Korean defector, a newsreel “We Flew the MiG” begins at 56:56.
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Dan Goodin of Ars Technica writes that the report on Russian hacking in 2016 “provides almost no new evidence to support the Obama Administration’s claims Russia attempted to interfere with the US electoral process. ”[From Ars Technica: Talk about disappointments. The US government’s analysis of hacking operations provides almost none of the promised evidence linking them to breaches that the Obama administration claims were orchestrated in an attempt to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. The report, which was jointly published Thursday by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, billed itself as an indictment of sorts that would finally lay out the intelligence community’s case that Russian government operatives carried out hacks on the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Clinton Campaign Chief John Podesta and leaked much of the resulting material. While security companies in the private sector have said for months the hacking campaign was the work of people working for the Russian government, anonymous people tied to the leaks have claimed they are lone wolves. Many independent security experts said there was little way to know the true origins of the attacks. Sadly, the JAR, as the Joint Analysis Report is called, does little to end the debate. Instead of providing smoking guns that the Russian government was behind specific hacks, it largely restates previous claims without providing any support for their validity. Even worse, it provides an effective bait and switch by promising newly declassified intelligence into Russian hackers’ “tradecraft and techniques” and instead delivering generic methods carried out by just about all hacking groups. Read the rest of the story here. | 1 |
O. K. Peter Doig may have tried LSD a few times when he was growing up in Canada during the 1970s. But he still knows, he said, when a painting is or isn’t his. So when Mr. Doig, whose eerie, magical landscapes have made him one of the world’s most popular artists, was sent a photograph of a canvas he said he didn’t recognize, he disavowed it. “I said, ‘Nice painting,’” he recalled in an interview. “‘Not by me. ’” The owner, however, disagreed and sued him, setting up one of the stranger art authentication cases in recent history. The owner, a former corrections officer who said he knew Mr. Doig while working in a Canadian detention facility, said the famous painter indeed created the work as a youthful inmate there. His suit contends that Mr. Doig is either confused or lying and that his denials blew up a plan to sell the work for millions of dollars. But Mr. Doig, 57, has compelling evidence he was never near the facility, the Thunder Bay Correctional Center, about 15 hours north of Toronto. “This case is a scam, and I’m being forced to jump through hoops to prove my whereabouts over 40 years ago,” he said. To Mr. Doig’s surprise, though — and the astonishment of others in the art world — a federal judge in Chicago has set the case for trial next month at United States District Court for Northern Illinois. Art law experts say they can’t recall anything like it, certainly not for a major artist like Mr. Doig. “To have to disprove that you created a work seems somehow wrong and not fair,” said Amy M. Adler, a professor at New York University Law School. The stakes are high as well. A Doig painting has sold for more than $25 million. Other works have routinely sold at auction for as much as $10 million. The plaintiffs, who include the correction officer and the art dealer who agreed to help him sell the work, are suing the painter for at least $5 million in damages and seek a court declaration that it is authentic. They have focused on what they say is a hole in Mr. Doig’s teenage years in Canada when, they assert, he cannot fully account for where he was or what he was doing. “Every artist has destroyed work,” said William F. Zieske, the lawyer for the painting’s owner and the art dealer. “We can’t really get into his mind and say why he looked at this painting and said, ‘I am not going to own that.’ I don’t think anyone can. ” Disputes about authenticity, a vexatious topic in the art world, tend to center on the works of dead artists. Legal claims, when they arise, are usually made against experts who have doubted the art’s veracity, and not against the artist. But Mr. Doig is not the first artist to deny having created a work and still be challenged. Picasso denied painting a work attributed to him, “Erotic Scene” (known as “La Douleur,” or “The Pain”). (The Metropolitan Museum, which was given it, however, did some research and thinks it’s clearly his.) Similarly, Gilbert Stuart denied having painted the portrait of George Washington that hangs in the East Room of the White House. The White House says it’s his. Neither man, however, was sued for rejecting the work. When artists have been sued, it has been in cases in which they disavowed works because they said they had been altered. In 2012, for example, a collector sued Cady Noland, an American conceptual sculptor, after she disavowed a work, “Cowboys Milking,” because, she said, it had been damaged. In her defense, Ms. Noland invoked a 1990 law called the Visual Artists Rights Act. It gives artists powers to, among other things, prevent their names from being used on works that have been mutilated or distorted. The retired corrections officer, Robert Fletcher, 62, said he bought the painting for $100 from a man named Pete Doige (spelled with an e) whom he met in 1975 in Thunder Bay, Ontario. The young man he knew was taking art classes at a local college, Lakehead University, and said he was, like Mr. Doig, from Scotland. After the man was incarcerated on an LSD charge at a prison farm where Mr. Fletcher worked, Mr. Fletcher saw the young artist create the painting, an untitled acrylic canvas of a rocky desert scene. The painting is signed “Pete Doige 76. ” “I am 100 percent convinced that this is the man and that this is the painting I own,” Mr. Fletcher said in an interview. He became the young man’s parole officer and also helped him find a job through the Seafarers International Union. He said he bought the painting because he feared Mr. Doige might go back to selling drugs. About five years ago, a friend noticed the painting on Mr. Fletcher’s wall and told him it was by a famous artist. When Mr. Fletcher pulled up a video and watched Mr. Doig speaking at a college, he said, he recognized his facial expressions and mannerisms, and now feels let down by someone he believes he helped, and wants to be proved right. Mr. Fletcher, who lives in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, consigned it to a gallery in Chicago on the recommendation of his brother, who lives there. The gallery, run by Peter Bartlow, contacted an auctioneer, hoping no doubt for a payday similar to those achieved by several recent Doig sales. Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Bartlow said the painting contains many similarities to Mr. Doig’s undisputed works, such as a horizontal striped landscape, a body of water, logs protruding from a lake, even white lichen on the trees. A Sotheby’s specialist, to whom they sent an image of the picture, said it was “rare to see such a complete and highly resolved early painting by Doig” and said it had Mr. Doig’s “trademark eeriness of the empty landscape,” though she later said she never inspected it firsthand and did not authenticate it, according to court papers. “There are so many of defendant Doig’s commonly used techniques and elements in the disputed work that it could be the most typical of all of his works,” Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Bartlow say in court papers. Mr. Doig, however, said they are taking advantage of the similarity in two people’s names so as to profit from a tale. Yes, he grew up in Canada before attending art school in England. But in 1976 he was only 16 or 17, and lived in Toronto. He has never been to Thunder Bay, he said, and was never incarcerated. He denies there are similarities to his own works. “I did not begin to paint on canvas until late 1979. (Before that, I had done some pencil and ink drawings on paper),” he said in court papers. Never to this day, he said in an interview, has he used acrylic paint on canvas. “If I had painted that painting when I was 16, I would admit it. ” Mr. Doig and his lawyers say they have identified the real artist, a man named Peter Edward Doige. He died in 2012, but his sister said he had attended Lakehead University, served time in Thunder Bay and painted. “I believe that Mr. Fletcher is mistaken and that he actually met my brother, Peter, who I believe did this painting,” the sister, Marilyn Doige Bovard, said in a court declaration. She said the work’s desert scene appeared to show the area in Arizona where her mother moved after a divorce and where her brother spent some time. She recognized, she said, the saguaro cactus in the painting. The prison’s former art teacher recognized a photograph of Ms. Bovard’s brother as a man who had been in his class and said he had watched him paint the painting, according to the teacher’s affidavit. Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Bartlow have no record of Mr. Doig being imprisoned in Thunder Bay, but they said that’s because he was a minor and his records were probably expunged, or paperwork was just lost. (In June, The New York Times asked the Ontario authorities to search their records in an effort to come up with conclusive evidence. They were able to easily search only records going back as far as 1985 a deeper search would take more than six weeks.) Mr. Doig plans to present his own set of records, school documents, correspondence, photos and testimony to demonstrate, he said, that he never attended Lakehead University and that during the months in 1975 and 1976, when he is said to have created the painting, he actually was in Toronto or working on oil rigs in western Canada or traveling outside the country. He asked the judge to dismiss the case, arguing that he should not be tried in Illinois. But Judge Gary Feinerman of United States District Court decided in April this was a dispute that could be resolved only at trial. “The presence of the Lakehead and the Seafarers records for Doige, but not for Doig, certainly favors Doig,” Judge Feinerman said in his decision. “There is no doubt about that. But it’s not strong enough evidence, given all of the evidence in the record,” the judge said, to eliminate any chance that Doig “was not the person at Thunder Bay who was the author of the painting. ” Mr. Bartlow said that, at first, he thought Mr. Doig disowned the painting because he was embarrassed by that period in his life. But Mr. Doig has never denied his association with past drug use. Some of his paintings have been inspired, in part, by LSD. Now, Mr. Bartlow said he thinks the artist refuses to acknowledge the painting because it shows he has been using similar formulaic compositions for four decades. Mr. Bartlow has made dozens of videos to demonstrate his case, some posted on YouTube. He financed some of the costs of bringing suit by soliciting contributions from about six or seven private contacts, with whom he promised to share some of any payouts. “There is no question that Peter Doig painted the painting,” he said. “You see the outline of our painting in his other works. ” Both sides plan to call experts to debate this point. The process is a stressful distraction for an artist at the peak of his talents, said Gordon VeneKlasen, Mr. Doig’s dealer at Michael Werner Gallery in New York. “This has become about much more than Peter’s painting,” Mr. VeneKlasen said. “It’s about authorship. It’s about being forced to put your name on another artist’s work. ” In a statement, he went further: “In our case, the artist and dealer have the resources to carry on this fight, but I wonder about all the artists who might not. Do they simply acquiesce and let inauthentic works into the market if they are the product of a similar attempt at bullying and rampant greed?” To win, art lawyers say, Mr. Fletcher and his advisers will have to persuade the judge that the painting is real. But even if the court favors Mr. Fletcher, it could be a hollow victory. Since the artist himself and the dealer who represents him say it’s not a Doig, the art market is unlikely to assign much value to it, art experts said. A decision against Mr. Doig, and any costly award for damages, would nevertheless probably send a shock wave through the art world. “It would,” said Nicholas M. O’Donnell, a Boston art lawyer who has no role in the case, “put all artists in the cross hairs. ” | 1 |
License DMCA The American journalist, Edward Bernays, is often described as the man who invented modern propaganda. The nephew of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psycho-analysis, it was Bernays who coined the term "public relations" as a euphemism for spin and its deceptions. In 1929, he persuaded feminists to promote cigarettes for women by smoking in the New York Easter Parade -- behavior then considered outlandish. One feminist, Ruth Booth, declared, "Women! Light another torch of freedom! Fight another sex taboo!" Bernays' influence extended far beyond advertising. His greatest success was his role in convincing the American public to join the slaughter of the First World War. The secret, he said, was "engineering the consent" of people in order to "control and regiment [them] according to our will without their knowing about it."
He described this as "the true ruling power in our society" and called it an "invisible government." Today, the invisible government has never been more powerful and less understood. In my career as a journalist and film-maker, I have never known propaganda to insinuate our lives and as it does now and to go unchallenged. Imagine two cities. Both are under siege by the forces of the government of that country. Both cities are occupied by fanatics, who commit terrible atrocities, such as beheading people. - Advertisement -
But there is a vital difference. In one siege, the government soldiers are described as liberators by Western reporters embedded with them, who enthusiastically report their battles and air strikes. There are front page pictures of these heroic soldiers giving a V-sign for victory. There is scant mention of civilian casualties. In the second city -- in another country nearby -- almost exactly the same is happening. Government forces are laying siege to a city controlled by the same breed of fanatics. The difference is that these fanatics are supported, supplied and armed by "us" -- by the United States and Britain. They even have a media center that is funded by Britain and America. Another difference is that the government soldiers laying siege to this city are the bad guys, condemned for assaulting and bombing the city -- which is exactly what the good soldiers do in the first city. Confusing? Not really. Such is the basic double standard that is the essence of propaganda. I am referring, of course, to the current siege of the city of Mosul by the government forces of Iraq, who are backed by the United States and Britain and to the siege of Aleppo by the government forces of Syria, backed by Russia. One is good; the other is bad. - Advertisement - What is seldom reported is that both cities would not be occupied by fanatics and ravaged by war if Britain and the United States had not invaded Iraq in 2003. That criminal enterprise was launched on lies strikingly similar to the propaganda that now distorts our understanding of the civil war in Syria. Without this drumbeat of propaganda dressed up as news, the monstrous ISIS and Al-Qaida and al-Nusra and the rest of the jihadist gang might not exist, and the people of Syria might not be fighting for their lives today. Some may remember in 2003 a succession of BBC reporters turning to the camera and telling us that Blair was "vindicated" for what turned out to be the crime of the century. The US television networks produced the same validation for George W. Bush. Fox News brought on Henry Kissinger to effuse over Colin Powell's fabrications. The same year, soon after the invasion, I filmed an interview in Washington with Charles Lewis, the renowned American investigative journalist. I asked him, "What would have happened if the freest media in the world had seriously challenged what turned out to be crude propaganda?" | 0 |
CHILDREN are usually forced to pick just one or two of their beloved stuffed animals to take with them on summer vacation. Adults should consider doing the same with their electronic devices. You don’t want to weigh down your travel bag with gear you will barely use. And you probably should leave your more expensive gadgets at home, unless you want to become a target for muggers. What to do? My personal packing starts with devices that are compact and lightweight. The price tag should not exceed $500, and if my smartphone can capably perform a task, I don’t bother with something that does the same thing. Here is a guide to products that I have found useful on an airplane, in a rental car, in a hotel, in an Airbnb house rental and outdoors, or traveling overseas. I have tested all of the items in the last few years, and some of them were purchased through The Wirecutter, a product recommendations website and creative partner of The New York Times. This happens too often: After cramming into your airplane seat, you shut your eyes to relax and a baby starts screaming behind you. You need a media device to drown out the noise with music or a movie. My favorite media tablet for travel is the Apple iPad Mini, which starts at $399 (though I would buy the $499 model for the extra storage). Its compact size makes it easier to rest on an airplane tray. Because it is a multifunctional tablet, you can choose from a host of distractions, such as reading a book and playing a mobile game. (In other words, leave your Kindle at home.) For watching videos on a tablet, SeaGate’s wireless portable hard drive, which costs $100, may also be worth stowing in your luggage. Ahead of your trip, you can load movies and other media onto the hard drive, and the drive creates its own network to stream movies to your iPad. As for earphones, I will skip recommending a fancy pair of earbuds — just another small, valuable item to lose on a trip. The earbuds that came with your smartphone, like the Apple EarPods, should sufficiently drown out the noise. Most hotels include cable television, but after channel surfing for a few hours, you will realize that the only movies that ever seem to air are “Total Recall” and “The Shawshank Redemption. ” Chances are you will be aching for the variety of programs you could get from streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and HBO. So I would pack Roku’s new Streaming Stick, which is the size of a thumb drive, making it easy to stow in a travel pouch. One major bonus of the Roku stick is a feature called Hotel Dorm Connect. It bypasses an obstacle in many hotels — the requirement that you log into their networks through a web page — by letting you enter the credentials through your smartphone browser. Another common headache in a hotel is finding enough outlets to charge multiple gadgets. Anker’s USB wall charger can be plugged into a single outlet to charge four USB devices at the same time. The most annoying part of renting a car is all the upsells, particularly the extra fee for a GPS device and a mount — as if your smartphone did not provide maps already. The best solution is to pack your own smartphone car mount. TechMatte’s MagGrip CD Slot, which costs only $11, is a fantastic travel companion on trips with lots of driving. The mount holds your phone with a magnet you put a magnet sticker on your smartphone case, so mounting your phone is as simple as tapping the back of the phone on top of the magnet. What’s more, because the MagGrip hooks up to an unused CD player slot, the phone doesn’t block your view of the road. As for playing music from your phone, I recommend packing a standard audio jack that connects a smartphone with a stereo system, like the $5 audio cable from Amazon. When renting a house on Airbnb or a similar site like HomeAway, the situation may be different from a hotel if a large group and a kitchen are involved. This may sound odd, but I have found it extremely useful to pack a sous vide precision cooker on Airbnb trips. First, a primer: A sous vide cooker heats water to a precise temperature you seal food like steaks and salmon into plastic bags and immerse them in the water to cook them evenly at that temperature. The $199 Anova Precision Cooker, recommended by our technology columnist Farhad Manjoo, is slim enough to store in a weekender bag. Anova’s cooker also includes a bracket so that the device can be easily mounted to your Airbnb host’s cooking pot — meaning all you probably need to pack are the cooker and some bags. The benefit of bringing along a sous vide cooker is the amount of time it frees up for you to enjoy other activities instead of paying attention to your food. Imagine going hiking for three hours and returning to a perfectly cooked beef roast. It beats going to a restaurant. When you’re outside, you don’t need much technology other than a camera. Assuming you bought a smartphone in the last few years, don’t bother packing an extra camera like a GoPro — that’s just extra space and another power cable to carry around. Instead, if you’re going to be in the water kayaking or splashing around at the beach, consider a waterproof smartphone case like LifeProof’s Fre, which fits snugly around an iPhone to protect it from water without making it look ugly. If you are the type who enjoys drowning out the sounds of nature with music, the $100 Roll from Ultimate Ears, which I recommended last holiday season, continues to be my favorite wireless portable speaker. It has a slim disk shape, making it easy to pack in a travel pouch, and includes a bungee cord for strapping it onto a lawn chair or bench. Plus, it’s waterproof. Earlier this year, I wrote a guide on taking your smartphone abroad while traveling, which involved unlocking it and buying foreign SIM cards. Some readers encouraged me to also mention Google’s Project Fi, which is offered in more than 120 countries and charges the same rate no matter where you are: $20 a month for unlimited minutes and text messages and $10 per gigabyte of data. In my testing of Google Fi for a few weeks, I found that the service offered robust coverage comparable to that of traditional wireless carriers. However, there are caveats: Google Fi is available only on a small number of Android phones, and in foreign countries, the data speeds are capped. I recommend a Google Fi phone, with prices starting at $199 on Google’s webpage, for people who frequently travel abroad. But for those who seldom go overseas, it is more practical to use a foreign SIM card with your own phone. Also when traveling abroad, your smartphone battery is going to be struggling because of all the pictures you take. For iPhones, I recommend Apple’s $99 Smart Battery Case — it offers enough power to keep your phone running all day. You can also charge it with the Lightning cable included with iPhones, so you will have one fewer power cable to pack. For Androids, the AmazonBasics Portable Power Bank is an excellent battery pack. | 1 |
If he's not nice to Australia Donald won't be able to track his Nukes from Pine Gap. So let's see how good he is at keeping everyone on side. | 0 |
It is difficult to surprise at New York City’s pride parade — that pulsing kaleidoscope of pink unicorn horns and rainbow undergarments, bejeweled miniature dogs and revelers who seemed to have misplaced their shoes. But around 1:45 p. m. Sunday, beneath a virtually cloudless sky, something was afoot on Christopher Street. Lights flashed. Officers stirred. Sirens pierced the Cher soundtrack wafting over Greenwich Village. Soon, a van door opened. “Hillaryyyyyyyyy!” someone hollered from the sidewalk. And so began a very chase along the city’s foremost corridor of gay rights. For four blocks or so — beginning steps from the Stonewall Inn, the nexus of the modern gay rights movement — Hillary Clinton led a mayor, a governor, a phalanx of aides, a crush of reporters and several beleaguered security personnel on a stroll. It was an unannounced appearance for Mrs. Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, two weeks after the massacre at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando. The tragedy colored the proceedings across several floats and marching groups, lurking like an unwelcome guest. Some attendees dressed in white, with the names and faces of victims displayed on placards hanging from their necks. “We Are Orlando,” a sign read. “One Pulse,” said another. Mrs. Clinton did not speak at the event, smiling and waving and occasionally venturing to the police barricades to shake hands. But her presence resonated, attendees said, communicating a measure of solidarity in a wrenching moment. “It was a nonverbal confirmation of her support,” said Micah Feinberg, 35. Women with rainbow leis around their necks reached for her. Residents overhead pointed cellphones from their open windows. A large rainbow flag flapped against a fire escape. “She’s right here,” a woman said, to no one in particular. “Right here. ” When Mrs. Clinton, moving west, reached Bleecker Street, a group rained confetti from a rooftop. “The next president of the United States!” shouted a man with a microphone. “Make some . ” Mrs. Clinton waved toward another guest in a rainbow bathing suit. Moments later, as a “Hillary” chant began to build, she stopped to acknowledge the crowd. Throughout the walk, she was joined by a horde of dignitaries eager to share in her spotlight. These included Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, who remain engaged in a protracted feud, and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who quickly positioned himself beside Mrs. Clinton and took care not to relinquish his perch. By about 2 p. m. Mrs. Clinton was hustled into a waiting vehicle, waving once more before heading for a flight to Indiana. (In a speech there hours later, she addressed Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, arguing it reaffirmed the need for “steady, experienced leadership” in the presidential race.) Paradegoers remained tickled by her cameo. “I saw her and was completely dumbfounded,” said Kelsey Roberts, 28, an engineer who said Mrs. Clinton was an inspiration to her in a field. Mrs. Clinton has marched in the parade before, participating as far back as 2000 during her run for the United States Senate. Her appearance on Sunday came as her Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, continues to make the case that he is the true champion of gay rights in the presidential race. In the wake of the Orlando shooting, Mr. Trump has said he is the candidate most able to keep gay and lesbian Americans safe from hate crimes. While Mrs. Clinton remains likely to command the vast majority of support from gay voters, she has had a complicated history with gay rights. As secretary of state, she focused often on international gay rights, urging countries to accept gays and lesbians during a 2011 speech in Geneva. She has since denounced Russia’s treatment of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people, and in March 2013, she endorsed marriage both “personally and as a matter of policy and law. ” But while much of Mrs. Clinton’s donor base includes gay and lesbian supporters, some have questioned the deliberate pace of her evolution. There are also old wounds from her husband’s administration, which enacted the military policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the Defense of Marriage Act barring federal recognition of marriages. Mrs. Clinton inspired fresh criticism this year after the death of Nancy Reagan, mistakenly praising Mrs. Reagan’s “ advocacy” concerning H. I. V. despite the Reagans’ lengthy public silence on the disease. Mrs. Clinton quickly apologized. The crowd on Sunday included a handful of skeptics. “She did it strictly so that we would relate the image of her with the image of pride,” said Lexi Avidani, 24, from Long Island. “And she doesn’t support it. ” Most, though, were more effusive. Wearing a shirt that read, “SPOILER ALERT: HILLARY WINS,” Matt McDermott, 26, marveled at the progress of gay civil rights. “A year ago, we passed marriage equality in the Supreme Court, and a year later, a major party nominee is walking in the pride parade in New York,” he said. “So things change quickly. ” Loretta Tassotti, 55, said Mrs. Clinton’s gesture demonstrated that she was “not afraid. ” “This is not a Trump kind of party,” she added. Ms. Roberts, the engineer, suggested the significance ran deeper. The Orlando victims were so young, she said, that it was essential for presidential candidates to participate in the grief. Ms. Roberts looked out again on the parade route, where a collection of mourners drew near. She reconsidered the question of Mrs. Clinton’s appearance. “How could you not come?” she asked. | 1 |
CAIRO — The EgyptAir from Paris to Cairo, an Airbus A320 jetliner less than half full, had just entered Egyptian airspace early Thursday on the final part of its journey. Suddenly the jetliner jerked hard to the left, then hard to the right, circled and plunged 28, 000 feet, disappearing from the radar screens of Greek and Egyptian air traffic controllers. That began a day of emergency rescuers scrambling, officials issuing conflicting information and experts speculating about the fate of EgyptAir Flight 804, which carried at least 66 people from roughly a dozen nations and was presumed to have crashed into the Mediterranean Sea. EgyptAir initially said wreckage of the plane had been found with the help of searchers from Greece, but a senior official of the airline speaking on CNN retracted that assertion hours later. Egyptian officials suggested that terrorism was a more likely cause for the disappearance than mechanical failure, but others cautioned that it was premature to make that judgment. The loss of the flight was the second civilian aviation disaster to hit Egypt in the past seven months. It resurrected fears and speculation about the safety and security of Egyptian aviation, which has a history of lapses — as well as the specter of a security breach in Paris, where the plane took off. The mystery of the plane’s demise also raised broader questions about the vulnerability of civilian air travel to terrorism. Flight 804 went missing against the backdrop of threats from militant extremist groups like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, with networks linking Europe to the Middle East. By Thursday evening, no group had claimed responsibility. With differing reports about precisely what wreckage had been discovered, President Abdel Fattah of Egypt ordered the armed forces to “take all measures necessary” to find the remains of the plane, his office said in a statement. The statement also said work had begun immediately “to unravel the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the Egyptian aircraft and establish its causes. ” As news of the missing plane spread in Cairo, relatives of those aboard rushed to the airport, some overcome with grief and anger over the lack of information. “Pray for them,” said a relative of a flight attendant who had just married. “We don’t know anything. ” Earlier in the day, Egypt’s civil aviation minister, Sherif Fathi, acknowledged at a news conference that the cause might have been terrorism. Mr. Fathi said that “if you analyze the situation properly,” the possibility of “having a terror attack is higher than the possibility” of technical failure. EgyptAir said the pilot and had nearly 9, 000 hours of flying time between them. Officials from the Interior Ministry and Cairo Airport described them as experienced fliers with no known political affiliations. The jetliner departed Paris at 11:09 p. m. on Wednesday. The pilot spoke to Greek air traffic controllers at 2:26 a. m. and nothing seemed out of the ordinary, officials said. Three or four minutes later, the plane made its last normal radar contact. At 2:37 a. m. shortly after entering Egyptian airspace, the plane made a turn to the left and then a full circle to the right, first plunging to 15, 000 feet from 37, 000 feet and then to 9, 000 feet. At that point it disappeared from radar, the Greek defense minister, Panos Kammenos, said at a news conference on Thursday afternoon. There was also conflicting information about precisely how many passengers Flight 804 was carrying — 66 or 69. EgyptAir said early in the day that 56 passengers were aboard, along with seven crew members, and three members of airline security personnel. But three infants also were reported to have been aboard and it was unclear if they had been counted. At least 30 of the passengers were from Egypt, according to the airline, with others from Algeria, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Chad, France, Iraq, Kuwait, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. The aircraft was delivered to EgyptAir in November 2003 and had accumulated 48, 000 hours of flying time, according to data compiled by Flightradar24, an aviation website. Such aircraft are typically built to last 30 or 40 years, and there was no indication anything was mechanically amiss. But the aircraft’s North Africa itinerary in the previous two days was possibly more worrisome. Flightradar24 data showed it had flown round trips between Cairo and Asmara, Eritrea, and between Cairo and Tunis before going to Paris. American and European officials have expressed concerns about security gaps in North African airports. Officials in Egypt, who have been under intense scrutiny since a bomb brought down a Russian airliner over the Sinai Peninsula in October, killing all 224 people on board, declined to describe the events as a crash. The aviation minister’s quick acknowledgment that terrorism might be a cause this time was in stark contrast to the government’s handling of the loss of the Russian airliner, which Egyptian officials had insisted for months could not have been the result of terrorism. The French president, François Hollande, after speaking by telephone with President Sisi of Egypt, also raised the possibility of terrorism. “The information that we have been able to gather — the prime minister, the members of the government, and, of course, the Egyptian authorities — unfortunately confirm for us that this plane crashed at sea and has been lost,” Mr. Hollande said at the Élysée Palace. Mr. Hollande said that “no hypothesis was being ruled out,” and that search teams from France, Greece and Egypt were hoping to recover “debris that would enable us to know the truth. ” He added, “When we have the truth, we must draw all the conclusions, whether it is an accident or another hypothesis, which everybody has in mind: the terrorist hypothesis. ” Security at Charles de Gaulle Airport outside Paris, where Flight 804 departed, was tightened after the terrorist attacks in and around the French capital in November, and scrutiny of passengers and luggage was also stepped up in the wake of the bombing of Brussels Airport in March. President Obama was briefed by Lisa O. Monaco, his adviser for homeland security and counterterrorism, and the administration offered “support and assistance,” the White House said in a statement. Administration officials said it was too early to say what had caused the plane to vanish. But they said they were sharing information from a terrorist watch list as well as other data with Egyptian, French and other investigators. EgyptAir said the last radar contact with the plane had been about 2:30 a. m. when it was 175 miles off the Egyptian coast. (Greek officials put the last radar contact at a minute earlier.) At 3:14 a. m. the Greek authorities began a search operation, deploying a military transport plane. At 4:26 a. m. — nearly two hours after the last radar contact — the plane emitted a signal, although it was not clear whether that was an emergency distress signal sent by a crew member or an automated signal from the plane’s onboard computers. “We don’t know if the pilot had something to do with this or if it is just the plane sending it,” said Ihab Raslan, a spokesman for the Egyptian Civil Aviation Ministry. In the October crash of the Russian jetliner, the plane broke up in midair 23 minutes after takeoff from the Red Sea resort city of Sharm el Sheikh. The Islamic State, whose local affiliate is fighting the Egyptian military in the Sinai Peninsula, claimed that it had brought down the plane, an Airbus . The crash dealt a crippling blow to Egypt’s tourism industry, which had already declined sharply in recent years. It also helped precipitate a decline in the value of the Egyptian currency in recent months. Russia and Britain have suspended flights to Sharm el Sheikh since the crash. The Egyptian investigation has yet to officially identify the cause. But President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Mr. Sisi discussed the resumption of flights in a telephone call on May 10, according to a statement from the Kremlin. The last major crash involving an EgyptAir plane occurred in 2002, when a Boeing 737 traveling from Cairo struck a hill near the Tunis airport, killing 18 of the 62 people on board. In March, a hijacker wearing a fake explosives vest diverted an EgyptAir domestic flight to Cyprus, but a standoff ended with his arrest and no injuries. The Cypriot authorities later described the man, Seif Eldin Mustafa, as “psychologically disturbed. ” He is currently battling extradition to Egypt. Egypt has come under criticism in the past for its lack of transparency in aviation accidents. In 1999, an EgyptAir flight crashed into the Atlantic Ocean shortly after takeoff from New York, killing all 217 on board. Although American investigators concluded that the had steered the airplane into the sea, Egypt rejected the idea of suicide and still insists that the crash was caused by an unspecified mechanical failure. | 1 |
“I’m in the lion’s den, Trevor. ” Tomi Lahren, a conservative commentator, had left her bubble of more than 4. 3 million followers on social media last week to appear in front of the progressive, diverse audience that attends the weeknight tapings of “The Daily Show With Trevor Noah” in Manhattan. Before the interview began, Mr. Noah requested that the studio audience be polite to Ms. Lahren. “Imagine you’re at Thanksgiving again, and your racist uncle walked in,” he joked. Ms. Lahren hosts a nightly show, “Tomi,” for The Blaze, a website, TV station and subscription service created by the conservative media personality Glenn Beck. And her reputation — among supporters, detractors and her prodigious online following — has been built on the commentaries with which she closes each show. A segment from August featuring an incendiary address to the San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has been watched on Facebook 66 million times. Ms. Lahren criticized Mr. Kaepernick, who had been protesting racial oppression by kneeling during the national anthem before games, pointing at unemployment and homicide rates, and saying that black people should take responsibility for their communities being run “into the ground. ” Ms. Lahren has also been critical of prominent black people like President Obama and Beyoncé in commentaries that have gone viral. During the presidential campaign, she became one of the most visible young supporters of Donald J. Trump, saying that she was using her show to speak for those who live between the coasts and “are too timid or too bashful or too busy to voice their own opinion. ” It is an approach that has made her a new media star, while also drawing the ire of critics who say her commentaries are often racist. Brendesha Tynes, a professor at the University of Southern California who specializes in addressing social media issues and cyberbullying, initially declined to comment on Ms. Lahren’s “Daily Show” appearance, saying, “We normalize racism when we give these folks a platform. ” She later elaborated, saying Ms. Lahren’s appearance “sends a signal to our children and the world that facts don’t matter, that hate is normal. ” It is likely that Ms. Lahren’s audience has little crossover with Mr. Noah’s. Ms. Lahren, whose name is pronounced “Tommy,” seemed unfazed during her conversation on politics and race with Mr. Noah, even as the audience booed and laughed at her. “There were some people in the audience that were just there to razz me,” she said afterward, adding that she did not think she persuaded anyone in attendance with her arguments. At one point, she compared the Black Lives Matter movement to the Ku Klux Klan. The next day, however, footage from the interview was popular online, prompting headlines like “Trevor Noah Expertly Skewers Conservative Tomi Lahren” from The Huffington Post, and “Trevor Noah Thoughtfully Confronting Tomi Lahren on Racism on ‘The Daily Show’ Might Be His Best Work Ever” from New York magazine. There was speculation that Ms. Lahren and Mr. Noah could develop a friendly sparring relationship not unlike that of Bill O’Reilly and Jon Stewart. Many conservative outlets praised Ms. Lahren’s appearance. A headline on RedFlagNews. com read “Tomi Lahren Enters the Lion’s Den, Takes On Trevor Noah on His Own Show. ” David Dennis Jr. a journalism professor at Morehouse College, was disappointed by reactions to the interview. “People talked about it as if they were exchanging ideas and talking about beliefs — like they were debating sports,” he said, asserting that Ms. Lahren’s words “are literally to black people. ” When she said, for instance, that the Black Lives Matter movement aimed to murder police officers, “people hear that and they believe that, and they see me as a threat,” Mr. Dennis said, citing the death of Trayvon Martin. Ms. Lahren has frequently denied being racist. In interviews with The New York Times last week, she condemned the fringe movement known as the which espouses white nationalism and calling it “disgusting,” and said she would never be “an advocate, a cheerleader or an apologist for the K. K. K. or any other hate group. ” Ms. Lahren, an only child born and raised in South Dakota by parents from ranching backgrounds, studied broadcast journalism and political science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, graduating in 2014. She started working at The Blaze in October 2015, after piquing the network’s interest with a viral video criticizing President Obama. In the interviews, Ms. Lahren spoke about issues that inspire her. There are numerous military veterans in her family, she said, including a grandfather who was a paratrooper in World War II and an uncle who was awarded the Purple Heart during Vietnam. Ms. Lahren spoke passionately about the hardships of being a soldier and of being related to one. She does not call herself spiritual — “Spiritual sounds like you worship the grass,” she joked — but said she believes in God and prays every night and when she runs, often asking “to be a better person. ” But she also blasted organized religion as being “about hierarchy, power, control and greed. ” Minutes later, she said, “The institution of religion is important. ” She is and does not object to gay marriage. She curses regularly, and professes to love junk food and the rappers Pusha T and Kendrick Lamar. She enjoys argument as sport and, as evidenced by her appearance with Mr. Noah, can be a talented sparring partner. She testified to her authenticity — “People like me because I’m real” — but said of Mr. Noah and herself, “We both know that we have to play these parts. ” She mocks liberal “snowflakes” as being overly sensitive to but says she is bothered when people use the word “retard. ” Ms. Lahren says she is surprised when she meets black fans. Charlamagne Tha God, the host of the New radio show “The Breakfast Club,” is friendly with her. He does not think Ms. Lahren is racist, but “misinformed,” he said in a phone interview. He enjoys her show, he said, identifying with Ms. Lahren’s “political incorrectness. ” He stressed the importance of Democrats speaking directly to people like her. Still, he said, “I have to remind myself that some of the rhetoric she puts out there is troubling. ” He said that in a recent conversation with Ms. Lahren, he questioned what he saw as her contradictory views. For instance, when he asked why she supported Mr. Trump, given the bigotry of some of his supporters, she said that a few bad apples did not represent the movement. “So you have to have that same respect with the Black Lives Matter movement,” Charlamagne recalled telling her. Ms. Lahren said she was an informal adviser to Mr. Trump’s campaign on its use of social media starting in August, and she appeared on the campaign’s behalf via Facebook Live broadcasts in the final weeks before the election. She has about 3. 5 million followers on Facebook and over 800, 000 cumulatively on Twitter and Instagram. She is open to opportunities beyond The Blaze, including any that might involve Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump’s team did not respond to a request for comment. While Ms. Lahren, a fan of the radio host Howard Stern and the rapper Eminem, often seems to enjoy causing controversy, at other times she is more conciliatory. She expressed hope that “The Daily Show” would show an unfamiliar side. “I find that when people are actually around me, it’s impossible not to like me,” she said. “People expect me to be angry, bitter. They expect to me be abrasive, aggressive. I’m not. ” | 1 |
SHOCK VIDEO : How American Elections are HACKED SHOCK VIDEO : How American Elections are HACKED Videos By Amy Moreno October 31, 2016
This is an eye-opening, yet disturbing video of how a United States election is hacked.
From Infowars:
Black Box Voting, founded in 2003, performs nonpartisan investigative reporting on elections in an attempt to stop vote rigging.
You may be wondering what the term “black box” means. A “black box” system is non-transparent; its functions are hidden from the public. Elections, of course, should not be black box systems.
Here is a link to a free copy of the book, Black Box Voting HERE .
Author Bev Harris became known for groundbreaking work on electronic voting machines, which can remove transparency of the vote count.
With voting machines, all political power can be converted to the hands of a few anonymous subcontractors:
This is a powerful video that we URGE you to share. This is a movement – we are the political OUTSIDERS fighting against the FAILED GLOBAL ESTABLISHMENT! Join the resistance and help us fight to put America First! Amy Moreno is a Published Author , Pug Lover & Game of Thrones Nerd. You can follow her on Twitter here and Facebook here . Support the Trump Movement and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter. | 0 |
By Rmuse on Sun, Oct 30th, 2016 at 9:53 pm The F.B.I. has a solemn obligation to remain neutral in political matters; the faintest appearance of using the agency to influence our election is deeply troubling. Share on Twitter Print This Post *The following is an opinion column by R Muse*
As a nation of laws, the American people should, and most likely do, demand that law enforcement officials hew as closely to the law as humanly possible and that goes double for the country’s largest investigative agency. One thing every American who has ever watched a law enforcement press conference after a crime has occurred understands is that the public never really knows the details of an investigation regardless the severity of the crime or who the suspect is. As an occasional print journalist, this author can attest that asking a police spokesman for details during a press conference about what the police are doing or who they are investigating never fails to get a stern scolding about expecting law enforcement to reveal any facts during an investigation for glaringly obvious reasons. The scold always includes referral to the agency responsible for charging and prosecuting a crime after the investigation is complete and the results are handed over to the local district attorney.
Apparently, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director James Comey never got the memo that discussing an investigation publicly is verboten; if for no other reason than to maintain the integrity of said investigation and not hamper a possible prosecution. However, as it turns out Mr. Comey did get “a memo ” from the Department of Justice in the form of a warning . But because he is a law unto himself and his allegiance is to House Republicans and not the Department of Justice, he ignored the DOJ counsel to do a solid for the GOP less than two weeks before a presidential election.
Since Mr. Comey can’t keep it (investigations) in his pants, or follow long-standing law enforcement and investigative rules, or take heed to Justice Department warnings, it is incumbent on President Barack Obama to summarily fire F.B.I. Director James Comey on the morning of Wednesday, November 9th 2016. Why should President Obama wait until the day after a general election to fire the partisan director of the F.B.I.? So as not to give the appearance of any impropriety or partisanship during a campaign or just prior a presidential election; something FBI director James Comey is apparently incapable of comprehending.
This incident, just like the one in July when Comey broke precedent and convened a press conference in July, and then publicly testified before Congress to discuss the Bureau’s ongoing investigation is more than just a breach of precedent; it smacks of partisanship for more than one reason. First, as mentioned above, not only did the Department of Justice warn Mr. Comey that it was inappropriate to discuss an ongoing investigation at all, much less so close to an election, that warning came after the F.B.I. contacted the DOJ about going public with information the Bureau admitted it had not yet even “ reviewed .” That was precisely what Comey told his Republican buddies in a letter to Congress.
In the letter , Comey told congressional Republicans that the F.B.I. really had no clue whether any of the emails were related to Hillary Clinton’s private email server, but what he did “ know ” for sure was that they “ appeared ” to be pertinent; even though his agency, the F.B.I. had not yet examined them. So the real pertinent question is: why did Mr. Comey publicly inform Congress about emails the agency had not yet examined if he wasn’t attempting to inject some ‘ partisan drama ’ into the election that might have deleterious impact on the outcome?
It is just as pertinent a question as demanding to know from Mr. Comey precisely what his motivation was in holding a press conference back in July to discuss the agency’s finding on an investigation before the DOJ weighed in, or discuss that investigation in public and before a viciously partisan Republican committee in Congress. And no, it was not to defend the Bureau’s decision not to bring criminal charges against Clinton; only a brain-dead moronic imbecile or partisan Republican hack would begin to think that the F.B.I., C.I.A., local sheriff, or any police investigative agency has the ability to bring charges to prosecute a violation. For dog’s sake even the 1960’s fictional sheriff Andy Griffith’s hapless deputy Barney Fife was competent enough to comprehend that a district attorney’s office or Department of Justice is tasked with prosecution any violation of the law.
According to Mr. Comey, who was “ stung by criticism from both Democrats and Republicans ” as well as former prosecutors and “ appeared to be on the defensive ;” “ he felt obligated to inform [Republicans in] Congress ” even though the Bureau really didn’t “ know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails. ’’ Likely because he knew they did not come from Hillary Clinton. As an aside, Sarah Jones has a nifty summary of the “email” caper the F.B.I. Uncovered while investigating “ serial sexter ” Anthony Weiner’s laptop computer, iPad, and cellphone. And no, Anthony Weiner was not sexting nasty pictures to presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
It doesn’t matter what kind of pathetic excuse Comey gave for publicly commenting on an ongoing investigation, it is virtually impossible to believe he didn’t have partisan intents and purposes in publicly alerting House Republicans. As interim chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, Donna Brazile said, “ The F.B.I. has a solemn obligation to remain neutral in political matters – even the faintest appearance of using the agency’s power to influence our election is deeply troubling .” Ms. Brazile demanded more information from Comey and didn’t conceal her concern over Comey interfering with the election.
Mr. Comey claimed, very conveniently one might add, that as a died-in-the-wool Republican he contributed to John McCain and Willard Romney’s presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012 respectively, that he is not a Republican now. That was his remark back in July when he first began breaking precedent and revealing information about an investigation that was the proper purview of the Department of Justice, not the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It was a suspicious “ confession ” in July and it is nearly impossible to believe in late October after he ignored Department of Justice warnings and revealed information about an ongoing investigation into a disgraced former congressman and serial sexter just 11 days before an election and before the Bureau had even reviewed anything.
Comey cannot possibly remain as head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation after twice revealing information about an ongoing investigation. If Comey hadn’t taken heat for his ‘reveal’ in July, and a warning from the Justice Department this week, then one might just regard him as an inept law enforcement official pulling a publicity stunt for attention. But since he was warned, and is not an inept law enforcement official, it is more than reasonable to believe that Comey’s most recent act was a partisan political ploy that should earn him a summary termination on November 9, 2016. Because firing his partisan personage just prior to the general election would break a longstanding precedent and look like a highly partisan move; something a sap like James Comey might try, but not President Obama. | 0 |
Videos Evidence Reveals Possible Link Between Voting Machines And Clinton Foundation According to OpenSecrets, the company who provided the alleged glitching voting machines is a subsidiary of The McCarthy Group, a major donor to the Clinton Foundation. | October 28, 2016 Be Sociable, Share! A technician works to prepare voting machines to be used in the upcoming presidential election, in Philadelphia, Friday, Oct. 14, 2016.
Could these connections be enough to implicate the Clinton Foundation in the alleged early vote rigging in Texas?
As usual, the internet has come through as the ultimate watchdog while the supposed safeguards of our democracy have failed.
A Gab user by the name “Special Prosecutor Will Logan” has found some stunning information. Note: as Gab is a members only site, you’ll have to join to see his actual posts, but we included all pertinent information in the article. Click to enlarge
According to OpenSecrets, the company who provided the alleged glitching voting machines is a subsidiary of The McCarthy Group.
The McCarthy group is a major donor to the Clinton Foundation – apparently donating 200,000 dollars in 2007 – when it was the largest owner of United States voting machines. Or perhaps the 200,000 dollars went to paying Bill Clinton for speeches?
Either way, it doesn’t look good.
But there’s more.
As the same user notes in this post , Dominion Voting Systems and The Clinton Foundation did a 2.25 million dollar charity initiative in developing nations together called the DELIAN Project.
According to the project’s own website : In 2014, Dominion Voting committed to providing emerging and post-conflict democracies with access to voting technology through its philanthropic support to the DELIAN Project, as many emerging democracies suffer from post-electoral violence due to the delay in the publishing of election results. Over the next three years, Dominion Voting will support election technology pilots with donated Automated Voting Machines (AVM), providing an improved electoral process, and therefore safer elections. As a large number of election staff are women, there will be an emphasis on training women, who will be the first to benefit from the skills transfer training and use of AVMs. It is estimated that 100 women will directly benefit from election technology skills training per pilot election.
Of course, this is all speculation, and we are not making any claims of illegal activity by the Clinton Foundation.
However, it presents a very troubling conflict of interest. Most Americans would certainly agree that voting machines should have zero connection to presidential candidates and their foundations.
Consider the implications further abroad, as well. Could this DELIAN Project be designed to influence elections in developing nations?
It can certainly be argued that electronic voting machines do not in fact provide an “improved electoral process” or provide “safer elections”
Again, this is speculation. This work by Planet Free Will is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. | 0 |
November 20th, 2016 - Fort Russ News -
Various - Translated by Inessa Sinchougova
How close is too close for NATO to spread Eastwards, and how far will they test the boundaries? Talks of Ukraine joining the military alliance were on the agenda the 2000s, but ceased after Russia's swift response to the Georgian aggression in Tskhinvali in 2008. Currently, the Ukraine is unable to join NATO due to internal conflict - the absence of which is a prerequisite for new members.
It would seem then that stopping the US-initiated war in Eastern Ukraine would be beneficial to US interests - or, are they fully aware, that this most certainly will not be allowed to happen as a direct threat to Russia's security?
The outtake is from annual Q&A 2014
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Man Wearing ‘Jewmerica’ T-Shirt Never Dreamed He’d See This Day SAND SPRINGS, OK—Feeling a mixture of intense pride and abject disbelief after news networks called the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump, local man Terry Williams, who is currently wearing a T-shirt adorned with the word “Jewmerica,” told reporters late Tuesday night that he never dreamed he’d see this day during his lifetime. Nation Throws Off Tyrannical Yoke Of Moderate Respect For Women WASHINGTON—Political experts are hailing Donald Trump’s historic presidential victory early Wednesday as a resounding declaration that the nation is finally ready to cast off the tyrannical yoke of moderate respect for women that has suffocated the citizens of this country for generations. Nation Elects First Black-Hearted President WASHINGTON—Shattering a barrier long thought unbreakable in the United States, Donald Trump, the 70-year-old billionaire real estate mogul from New York, became the first black-hearted man in history to win the American presidency, in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Nation’s Optimists Need To Shut The Fuck Up Right Now WASHINGTON—Saying their rosy attitude about the state of the election was not helping anything given what is currently transpiring, sources confirmed Tuesday night that the nation’s optimists need to seriously shut the fuck up as soon as humanly fucking possible. Anderson Cooper Informs Viewers CNN Just Minutes Away From First Significant Piece Of Information Of Day NEW YORK—Roughly two hours into the network’s live nine-hour-long “Election Night In America” programming block, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper informed viewers Tuesday evening he is only moments away from delivering the first piece of genuinely significant information of the day. | 0 |
Four days after the explosive Donald J. Trump “Access Hollywood” tape was made public, Billy Bush was negotiating his exit from NBC. Mr. Bush and NBC are working out the terms of his departure from “Today,” which may come in the next few days, according to two people briefed on the plans. It would be a swift fall for Mr. Bush after a brief tenure as a host in the 9 a. m. hour of the show. He joined “Today” this summer. In the videotape from 2005, which was filmed during the taping of an “Access Hollywood” segment, Mr. Bush laughs and goads Mr. Trump as he speaks about women in vulgar and lewd terms, claiming he tried to have sex with the woman who was then Mr. Bush’s . Mr. Bush, 44, apologized on Friday evening, and throughout the weekend NBC officials maintained they had no plans to discipline him. As late as Sunday morning, the plan was for Mr. Bush go on “Today” on Monday and address the controversy, saying something along the lines of the statement he released on Friday, in which he said he was “ashamed. ’’ But the backlash was significant. Mr. Bush’s Facebook page was deluged with thousands of angry comments. Two women that Mr. Bush and Mr. Trump discussed in the tape — the former “Access Hollywood” host Nancy O’Dell and the “Days of Our Lives” actress Arianne Zucker — released statements over the weekend expressing their disappointment. Given the tape’s incredible visibility, it was likely that Mr. Bush would remain part of the news cycle for the near future. “Today” is in competition with ABC’s “Good Morning America” and the fallout from the videotape could have affected NBC’s ratings in the morning hours, particularly among women, who represent a significant portion of the show’s viewership. By Sunday night, NBC had suspended Mr. Bush. Noah Oppenheim, the executive in charge of “Today,” told his staff in an email, “there is simply no excuse for Billy’s language and behavior on that tape. ” NBC News officials also learned in recent days that at the Olympic Games this summer, Mr. Bush bragged to some staff members about a videotape involving bad behavior by Mr. Trump. The New York Post first reported this on Monday night. “Access Hollywood” personalities like Natalie Morales, Kit Hoover and Nina Parker have offered Mr. Bush support this week (“The Billy that I know — and a lot of people would say this — has the biggest heart of anybody and he is a good person,” Ms. Hoover said) but few other people have defended him. Complicating matters, Mr. Bush did not have a particularly warm relationship with many of the other stars of “Today. ” That point was underscored in August when Mr. Bush landed what looked to be the scoop of the Olympics: The first interview with the swimmer Ryan Lochte as he described being robbed at gunpoint in Rio de Janeiro. As Mr. Lochte’s story disintegrated in the following days, Mr. Bush was hesitant to condemn him. During a segment of “Today,” Mr. Bush contended that Mr. Lochte “lied about some details. ” Al Roker quickly stepped in to dress down his colleague, saying pointedly, “Billy, not some details,” before adding, “He lied. ” | 1 |
TORONTO — Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is due in China on Tuesday for a much anticipated visit, hoping to reset what had been an relationship under the previous government. Closer ties, Mr. Trudeau says, would release untapped prosperity at home and promote Canadian values like good governance and the rule of law in China. But many say the opposite is happening. They say the growing economic clout wielded in Canada by China, Canada’s largest trading partner after the United States, is leading to an erosion of their own freedom — specifically their freedom to speak openly about China’s authoritarian state. Journalists who write for the many publications in Canada, along with activists and others, say they are under increasing pressure to promote the interests of the Chinese government. “It’s gotten worse and worse,” said Jonathan Fon, 67, a Toronto paralegal, freelance writer and critic of China’s Communist rulers. Mr. Fon, who emigrated from China in 1992, said publications that had once printed his opinion articles now routinely rejected them because of worries about political and financial fallout. “They will not take my contributions, even though we’re friends,” he said. In the past decade, China has embarked on an ambitious effort to promote its image abroad, including a overseas expansion by Chinese state media and a network of Confucius Institutes, which teach Chinese language and culture while disseminating the Communist Party’s viewpoints. In Western countries, analysts say, the party exerts influence over Chinese immigrants and students through embassies, consulates and community organizations, as well as business interests with the financial leverage to shape local media coverage. “China is not shy about using overseas Chinese communities to advance its interests abroad,” said Minxin Pei, an expert on Chinese politics at Claremont McKenna College in California. “What’s brilliant about the Chinese government’s interest strategy is that it exploits the freedoms of Western democracies against Western democracies. ” Even some Canadian officials who are eager for closer ties have weighed in, expressing support for Beijing on human rights and trying to discourage negative coverage of China. That has provoked anger in Canada, where many see China as a threat to their way of life, and underscored the challenge faced by Mr. Trudeau, who took office in November, as he seeks more engagement after a decade of sometimes chilly ties under his predecessor. Mr. Trudeau’s weeklong visit will culminate in a Group of 20 economic summit meeting in the Chinese city of Hangzhou. But his trip is also intended to help Canadian businesses gain greater market access to China’s growing middle class, encourage Chinese capital investment in Canada, and attract Chinese tourists and university students to Canada. The Canadian foreign minister, Stéphane Dion, said in an interview that the government’s pursuit of closer engagement with nondemocratic countries, including China, would allow it to promote human rights while protecting Canadian interests. “We’ll try to make sure that Canada will be part of the solution, to make these countries more free than they are today,” he said. Asked about complaints that Beijing was putting pressure on Mr. Dion said he and Mr. Trudeau were “very strongly against any attempt to muzzle public opinion in Canada. ” He noted that many were clearly not afraid to criticize Beijing. But recent events have kept the issue in the spotlight. In June, during a news conference in Ottawa, China’s visiting foreign minister, Wang Yi, berated a Canadian reporter for asking Mr. Dion a question about human rights in China. “You have no right to speak of this,” Mr. Wang said. A week later, Michael Chan, a who was Ontario’s provincial minister of citizenship, immigration and international trade, defended China’s human rights practices in a column on a Canadian website, 51. ca. Making no mention of China’s use of torture, illegal detention or other systemic abuses, Mr. Chan argued that China’s rights record should be viewed positively, in the context of economic development. “People are living with freedom,” he wrote, praising Beijing for improving Chinese people’s “basic livelihood,” allowing them to travel and study abroad. Outrage soon followed both officials’ remarks — as did consequences for some writers who criticized them. A Chinese writer said he had lost his column in the Global Chinese Press, based in British Columbia, after the newspaper was pressured over his criticism of Mr. Wang and Mr. Chan, according to a report in The Globe and Mail. A freelancer in Toronto who uses the pen name Xin Feng received death threats online for chastising Mr. Wang in a column. “Be careful that your whole family doesn’t get killed,” one person posted. “Be careful when you walk outside!” A year ago, the editor in chief of a newspaper in Ontario said she had been fired for publishing a commentary critical of Mr. Chan. She blamed that, in part, on complaints from the Chinese consulate in Toronto. In Ontario, which includes Toronto and its suburbs, journalists and media executives say has become widespread because of the economic pressures on their outlets. They fear boycotts by advertisers and the loss of distribution deals with Chinese state media publications. Ontario has more than 30 news outlets, mostly free newspapers, and the majority of them appear to avoid reporting that would anger China’s leaders. Jack Jia, 54, the publisher of the Chinese News Group newspaper and website, said China’s influence had “grown stronger and stronger” in recent years. “They want to control everything,” Mr. Jia said. He said China’s consul general in Toronto and her deputy had asked him several years ago to stop publishing ads from practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned as an “evil cult” in China. He refused. Today, he said, as immigration from China has soared, Chinese officials have gained more leverage. “They can threaten, because most media employees have family back in China,” Mr. Jia said. A reporter in Toronto, who asked not to be identified in order to protect her job and her relatives in China, said her editors now regularly deleted quotations that were critical of Beijing, and reviewed article ideas specifically to head off coverage that might reflect poorly on the Chinese government. “When I came to Canada, I felt some freedom, but now there are so many restrictions,” the reporter said. “It’s everywhere now. ” A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa declined to answer questions about China’s involvement with ethnic Chinese communities in Canada. Political attitudes vary widely among the roughly 1. 5 million ethnic Chinese living in Canada. While pride in their heritage is widespread, many bristle at what they say is mounting pressure to express loyalty to Beijing, both from local media and from other . “As a Canadian, you should share Canadian values — freedom, democracy and human rights,” said Harry Xu, 54, a Toronto real estate broker who emigrated from China 10 years ago. “These principles are important to us, but some Chinese immigrants are confused. ” Activists in Canada critical of Beijing have found themselves targets for intimidation. Not long after Zang Xihong, 54, a prominent Chinese activist, emigrated to Canada 27 years ago, she said, she began receiving menacing phone calls from Chinese state security agents at her home in the Toronto suburbs. In recent years, she said, the harassment has grown more ominous. Her face and phone numbers have been digitally inserted into pornographic escort ads, she said hackers have posted photos stolen from her computer and articles have appeared online accusing her of embezzlement. She has also been sued by a man who claims she was responsible for his cousin’s death in China. Ms. Zang said the Canadian authorities had told her that they could take no action because most of those activities were protected free speech, leaving her powerless, she said, to escape the long arm of the Chinese government or its supporters. “When I fled from China, I suddenly realized they are here already,” she said. “Where else can I go?” | 1 |
CORK, Ireland — When European officials ordered Ireland to collect a record $14. 5 billion in back taxes from Apple, Kieran O’Connell drew up a wish list for spending the money. A public social worker who deals with youth, Mr. O’Connell has faced drastic cuts since the Irish government imposed austerity measures six years ago during a financial crisis. His salary was frozen and his pension taxed. With his agency’s budget shrunk 30 percent, he hasn’t been able to replace staff, keep up with the demand for addiction and retraining programs or accommodate all the homeless teenagers looking for shelter. “You could invest it in treatment centers, detox beds and community care,” said Mr. O’Connell, 50, who works in this southern Irish city, where Apple has had its European headquarters for more than 35 years. But Ireland doesn’t want Apple’s billions. Instead, the Irish government is appealing Europe’s tax ruling, a move that is exposing a rift in a country still feeling the aftershocks from years of harsh cutbacks. The Irish government’s defense is a mixture of financial realpolitik, national pride and damage limitation. The European Union’s decision takes direct aim at some of the country’s generous tax policies, calling them illegal incentives in Apple’s case. Local lawmakers, in part, worry that taking the tech giant’s billions could scare off other multinationals from investing in Ireland just as other countries vie to entice them. Many people across the country are also upset that European officials are meddling with the country’s tax policies. Apple, which is also appealing, is taking the same stand, calling the case “politically motivated. ” But it is a big payday to forgo, prompting criticism from lawmakers, government workers and even some local fans of Apple. European officials calculate that Apple’s tax bill may rise to $21. 3 billion when interest is included. The money would go a long way toward funding hospitals, schools and other social programs. At the height of austerity, Ireland cut government salaries by percentages, halted investment in public works and introduced a series of new taxes. In Cork, unemployment still hovers around 8 percent, or roughly the national average, after reaching highs of about 15 percent. Many young people still must emigrate in search of jobs. “That money could create at least 100, 000 jobs,” said Mick Barry, a Cork lawmaker from the Alliance, a small political party. “It would have a transformative effect. ” This tug of war over Apple’s money is part of a broader identity crisis in Ireland since the downturn. Much of the country’s economic growth has been tied to attracting international companies through low taxes and flexible working conditions. Almost 200, 000 Irish workers, or roughly 10 percent of the total work force, are now employed by overseas companies, according to government statistics. And Ireland is hoping to entice even more. Countries around the region are lining up to woo companies thinking about leaving Britain after it voted in June to leave the European Union. While the Irish are eager for the jobs offered by international companies, years of are highlighting the yawning inequalities of policies that allow the world’s richest companies to sidestep billions in taxes. The improving economy only adds to the debate. Ireland has roared back from recession, but much of the recent growth is related to financial maneuvering and not longstanding improvements in the domestic economy. “A lot of people don’t have a problem with government’s appeal, but where were they during the financial crisis when Irish workers could have done with the same help?” said Declan Connolly, 39, an information technology worker for Cork’s local government. Almost a third of his colleagues have either been let go or not been replaced when they retired. Extra taxes on his income and pension have left him with roughly 10 percent less cash in his pocket. “The Irish government never did do as much for us as they are now doing for Apple,” Mr. Connolly added. Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, has been quick to defend the company’s tax practices. “When you’re accused of doing something that is so foreign to your values, it brings out outrage in you,” he said in an interview with the Irish broadcaster RTE. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on the case. Cork, with a population of about 125, 000, is a contradictory blend of Silicon Valley chic and austerity. A Starbucks in a refurbished building on the banks of the River Lee, which meanders though the city center, attracts a techie crowd of millennials, speaking languages as varied as Chinese and Czech. stores like Tommy Hilfiger line the main thoroughfare, and luxury sedans carry tech and pharmaceutical executives to meetings. Yet only a few blocks away, where street stall vendors once sold fruit and vegetables, pawnshops and mostly empty casinos dot the streets. Posters at a government agency offer tips on how to deal with spiraling personal debt. A longtime port town, Cork in recent decades has made itself an attractive hub for multinationals. Companies can tap into a steady stream of graduates from the local university, along with lucrative tax breaks on any research and development carried out in the city. Rents are roughly half those in Dublin. Apple was at the leading edge of this movement, putting down roots in the early 1980s, when the company was a mere minnow in the tech world. Three decades on, Cork’s suburbs are littered with newly built office parks, where buildings are emblazoned with logos from some of the world’s largest companies, like Dell Technologies, Intel and Eli Lilly and Company. Apple, with its fortresslike compound, is one of the area’s largest employers. Its army of over 5, 000 workers has been a boon for the local economy, pumping in millions of dollars through income tax, rents and spending at fashionable restaurants and luxury stores. When Apple arrived, its workers mostly assembled computers and other devices. But as labor costs sent production to Asia, the company’s Cork offices have now switched gears, mostly providing global customer and sales support. “Cork and Apple have stuck together through thick and thin,” said Des Cahill, the city’s mayor, who will meet company executives in San Francisco this week as part of an annual trade visit to drum up new investment. “We’re like an old married couple. ” Just a few minutes’ walk from Apple’s main campus, Cork shows a different side. Austere concrete government housing stands crumbling in the sun. And social workers say many local residents stand little chance of landing jobs at Apple, mostly because of a lack of skills. In Cork’s poorest neighborhoods, austerity has meant layoffs, economic uncertainty and often little support. The number of people living on the streets jumped to 345 last year compared with just 38 in 2011, according to Cork Simon, a local homeless charity. The city’s annual budget has been cut by 20 percent, to $170 million, over the same period. For Charlie Harrington, a paramedic, the Apple tax standoff comes down to fairness. Like most people in Cork, Mr. Harrington, 53, said international companies — and the jobs they created — were more than welcome in the city. But he doesn’t think tax rules are equally applied. When he recently refused to pay a new property tax, authorities took the money directly from his paycheck. If the government was so quick to penalize his tax avoidance, Mr. Harrington asked, then how could it protect Apple? “If the big guys don’t pay and the government helps them, then everyone else will ask why we are paying too,” he said over a cup of tea in a living room decorated with family photos. “They owe the money, so they should just pay it. ” | 1 |
I agree with that. We'll start with Syria, move onto Russia, and maybe Iran is in her crosshairs, too. | 0 |
How is it that with seven days left until the election, we are consumed anew by emails, Hillary Clinton’s private server, the F. B. I. and an investigation that was supposed to be closed? In the latest episode of The we examine the most recent surprise twist in a campaign that never ceases to shock. We break down this development into three parts. First we sift through the essential, facts of the case with two reporters who have covered the investigation since it emerged, Amy Chozick and Michael S. Schmidt. Second, we examine why the F. B. I. director, James B. Comey, decided to make the new findings public, by talking with Carrie Cordero, a former attorney at the Department of Justice who worked closely with the F. B. I. And to close out, we explain what impact this could have on the outcome of next Tuesday’s election, with insight from Nate Cohn of The Upshot. He says that, as with so many of the major news events in this contest, this one is not likely to be a game changer. “All those things did move the polls, but they didn’t fundamentally reshape the race,” Mr. Cohn says. “The core underlying dynamic of this election hasn’t ever changed, and that’s that a majority of voters don’t really believe Trump is qualified to be the president, they don’t like either candidate, so when the news is good or bad for their candidate they become more or less likely to indicate their support, but there has never been a time in this race when Trump has been able to assemble a clear path to victory. ” COMING UP! The is doing a show for Nov 8. Ask us anything about the election, the candidates, the polls — or about the reporters on the show. We’ll respond on air. Leave us a message at (347) or send us an email at therunup@nytimes. com. Be sure to leave us a your full name, the state where you live, and a number where we can reach you. From a desktop or laptop, you can listen by pressing play on the button above. Or if you’re on a mobile device, the instructions below will help you find and subscribe to the series. On your iPhone or iPad: 1. Open your podcast app. It’s a app called “Podcasts” with a purple icon. (This link may help.) 2. Search for the series. Tap on the “search” magnifying glass icon at the bottom of the screen, type in “The ” and select it from the list of results. 3. Subscribe. Once on the series page, tap on the “subscribe” button to have new episodes sent to your phone free. You may want to adjust your notifications to be alerted when a new episode arrives. 4. Or just sample. If you would rather listen to an episode or two before deciding to subscribe, tap on the episode title from the list on the series page. If you have an internet connection, you’ll be able to stream the episode. On your Android phone or tablet: 1. Open your podcast app. It’s a app called “Play Music” with an icon. (This link may help.) 2. Search for the series. Click on the magnifying glass icon at the top of the screen, search for the name of the series and select it from the list of results. You may have to scroll down to find the “Podcasts” search results. 3. Subscribe. Once on the series page, click on the word “subscribe” to have new episodes sent to your phone free. 4. Or just sample. If you would rather listen to an episode or two before deciding to subscribe, click on the episode title from the list on the series page. If you have an internet connection, you’ll be able to stream the episode. | 1 |
HEFTY is “trashing” the campaign, Excedrin is curing headaches caused by the caustic debates, and Ringling Brothers wants to remind the public that it is the real circus, despite what the last few months may have seemed like. In previous election years, it was not unusual for brands to create ads that lightly poked fun at the political process or went heavy on patriotism and optimism. Now, marketers have a new focus when connecting with voters: fatigue and disillusionment. “Whether you’re completely conservative or more liberal, it’s kind of like everybody’s sick of this conversation and the low trashy depths that this election has gone to,” said Jason Peterson, chief creative officer of Havas North America, which oversees Hefty’s advertising. People visiting the CNN and Fox News websites in the last few days may have noticed stark black banner ads with white letters declaring, “This political ad has been trashed thanks to Hefty. ” Hefty, the trash bag maker, seized on the five days leading up to Election Day to run such ads across several major political news sites and videos on YouTube. Its hope is to curry favor with Americans by shielding them from additional political messaging after a long, vitriolic presidential race. “People are almost demanding this kind of relief,” Mr. Peterson said. It is perhaps harder now to make light of the election as businesses have during previous campaigns, as when JetBlue offered international trips to voters whose candidate lost, Pizza Hut stitched together debate clips to highlight how cheap its pizza was or Snickers ran cheeky “Don’t Vote Hungry” ads. Tecate, the Mexican beer label, was seen as poking fun at Donald J. Trump with its recent commercial featuring a “Tecate beer wall,” a ledge to rest beers on, even though the brand said the ad was nonpartisan. Indeed, the appetite for humor seems low in an environment where both Skittles and Tic Tac had to issue formal statements within weeks of each another distancing themselves from untoward mentions by the Trump campaign. So come the new tactics. Hefty said its digital campaign, which started on Thursday and will run through Tuesday, was built on the belief that “Americans hate political ads. ” Just last month, the American Psychological Association said that 52 percent of American adults cited the presidential election as a “very or somewhat significant source of stress” in a survey conducted by Harris Poll. And the final New York News Poll released late last week showed that more than eight in 10 voters said the campaign had left them repulsed rather than excited. Excedrin, on the day of the third and final presidential debate last month, promoted the hashtag #DebateHeadache on Twitter, saying, “Debates bring headaches Excedrin brings fast headache relief. ” The brand tweeted out statistics from a survey it conducted throughout the day, including one that said 73 percent of Americans would experience headaches this year. The product, given its focus on relieving head pain, doesn’t generally have the opportunity to “speak on a larger scale,” especially during a presidential election, said Scott Yacovino, a senior brand manager for Excedrin and the United States pain business at GlaxoSmithKline. This situation was a “perfect storm,” he said. “Even during the first debate, there was a lot of organic chatter around people getting headaches and the election causing headaches,” Mr. Yacovino said. “We thought we could bring our benefit to folks no matter what their political affiliations are. ” Another ad campaign born out of election fatigue came from Ringling Brothers and Barnum Bailey last month, which officially denounced the use of the term circus to refer to this year’s presidential race. Its social media tracking tool showed that between Oct. 15 and Oct. 24, the terms “circus” or “clowns” were used to describe the election or candidates an average of almost 4, 000 times a day. As part of its effort to “Take Back the Circus,” the company made a humorous video featuring several performers expressing their indignation over misuse of the terms. In one scene, a ringmaster turned to the camera and said, “People keep calling candidates clowns. ” A clown by his side responded, “But we’re real clowns, and we take clowning seriously. ” Hefty’s banner ads have appeared on CNN, Fox News, AOL, and the Huffington Post’s politics page. Hefty’s YouTube ads will be aimed at people tracking the election, especially in swing states like North Carolina and Pennsylvania. The company’s agency said its purchase guaranteed at least 40 million page views across the sites. “We did pick out media buys based upon where more of the trashy politics are going on and more in the swing states where it’s getting heated,” Mr. Peterson said. He added: “What I really love about it and what I think consumers appreciate in advertising is when you’re able to offer them a utility to what they’re feeling. And to me, people are sick and tired. ” | 1 |
Welcome to the Trump World Order By Maria Dubovikova
So Donald Trump is the new president of the United States. Allan Lichtman and his 13 Keys to the White House have been proved right. The 30-year tradition of predicting the out-come of the US presidential elections continues uninterrupted. Political figures have started checking their social media accounts, deleting Tweets that could be uncomplimentary to Trump. It doesnt help as the Internet remembers everything.
Some are even more unlucky. French President Francois Hollande said in public recently that Trump make you want to retch. The global political narrative is quickly drifting away from the dumb Trump to Congratulations, dear Mr. President, I always knew you would win!
Journalists who had been vilifying Trump and promising apocalypse in case he is elected have started debating how he would possibly save the world. Most experts failed in their prognosis. They could not imagine that the erratic Trump will be victorious over reserved, pragmatic, and experienced Clinton. They had their reasons but in their analysis they missed a lot of things.
Why Trump is president-elect Trump is a living example of the American dream. From being a simple middle class Ameri-can, child of second generation German immigrants, he jumped to become a billionaire and then the US president. His penthouse apartment is said to be more luxurious than the White House. He had his own plane before becoming the US president.
More importantly, he has promised to revive the American dream for all Americans, irrespec-tive of their social status. Experts and the so-called elite considered his mannerisms and choice of language as a disadvantage. But instead it turned out to be his advantage as he connected to people in their language.
The fact remains that the elite, and people considering themselves intellectuals, do not form the majority in any society. The US is no different. Trumps tweets and declarations were shocking for the elites but were very common for the masses. His imperfections made him closer to the ordinary people, especially from the working class. The he is one of us image always works when you deal with the masses. He gambled with it and emerged the winner.
He got a chance to grab the Oval Cabinet as he is not liberal. Shadi Hamid seems right not believing that humans naturally inclined toward liberalism. Moreover, some men continue to remain sexist. If they dont confess it, they keep this deep inside. Women frequently like more bad guys than respectable family men. They may not confess it but this sometimes reveals where their sympathies lie and how they vote.
A large number of white Americans continue to show racist tendencies. While calls for toler-ance goes on, the influx of immigrants gave a fertile ground for racism and somehow xeno-phobia. During these elections, it appeared, that the Americans had to choose between two candi-dates with little credibility. They opted for change and fresh ideas. Also, the turnout was far lesser than on the previous elections, which indicates disillusionment over the current presi-dential campaign and both the candidates.
Popular vote shows the deep divide in the American society, with Clinton showing ad-vantage over Trump. However, it was the US electoral system that brought Trump to power.
Homeland and foreign policy Apparently he is set to make America great again not by foreign policy and imposing its will but by boosting the economy, retuning to manufacturing and giving new jobs. There is also a possibility that he will put even foreign policy based on business ties. So no help or assis-tance could come for free or without concomitant advantages for the economy.
The tycoon that he has been Trump is aware that money decides everything. He will proba-bly try to implement this rule in policymaking, both at home and abroad. The main motive of the foreign policy could turn into bargain, trading and profit.
Trump is not going to be easy for the Arab leaders. You, guys, are out of business these were his words in response to a journalist asking about the President-elects policy vision toward the Middle East. Pro-Israeli and mostly anti-Arab, he will not try to solve Arab prob-lems anymore. However, he will continue the US fight against terrorism and probably be more hawkish than Clinton.
In any case, he will not be inclined to treat the Arabs as equal partners. Such an attitude is going to be unacceptable for the Middle Easters powers and could lead to cooling of ties. The same fate i.e. no allies, just business probably awaits Europe.
Trump and Russia Russia, which was frequently debated during the campaign, is neither a winner nor a looser after this election. First of all, no one really knows who is Mr. Trump and what he is going to do. Secondly, he has Senate and Congress, which will not let him do whatever he likes. Moreover, an anti-Russian spirit prevails in the US no matter what.
With Senate and the Congress, both in Republican hands, they are likely to seriously limit his intentions, as he will have to balance between what he wants and what he actually can. However, this man is hard to deal with. So pressure groups and other instruments of man-agement of the US policy will not probably work with Trump.
Even if there is a shift in the US-Russia relations, this will take a long time. Such a shift is needed anyway and a confrontation isnt good for the whole world. Trump is probably de-fined to press the reboot button in Russian relations and Russia doesnt need a weak US. Russia needs to speak with the US, to listen and to be heard. Trump, as a businessman, seems exactly that kind of a figure.
We are entering into a new era that will be hardly predictable but extremely interesting. Clinton had many cards on her hands but failed to play them the right way. Trump has out-smarted her. A game of poker has never been so relevant as an analogy. A spicy 45th season of the United States Saga is about to begin.
Maria Dubovikova is a President of IMESClub and CEO of MEPFoundation. Alumni of MGIMO (Moscow State Institute of International Relations [University] of Ministry of For-eign Affairs of Russia), now she is a PhD Candidate there. Her research fields are in Russian foreign policy in the Middle East, Euro-Arab dialogue, policy in France and the U.S. towards the Mediterranean, France-Russia bilateral relations, humanitarian cooperation and open diplomacy. She can be followed on Twitter: @politblogme | 0 |
students are overwhelmingly awarded the Truman Scholarship, a federal scholarship granted to U. S. college juniors for demonstrated leadership potential and a commitment to public service, according to a survey by The College Fix. [According to the survey, more than a third of Truman Scholarship recipients have ties to Democratic politicians or leftist activist groups. Only several had ties with Republican or organizations. More than 40 of the 112 scholars in 2015 and 2016 have ties to Democratic politicians or liberal groups while less than a handful were found to have worked for Republicans or conservative organizations. Among the 2015 Truman Scholars, at least 26 had either worked for Democratic politicians and administrations, organizations or were members of the College Democrats before or after they were awarded the Truman Scholarship. The Fix identified only two scholars as having ties to Republicans or conservative groups on their resumes. Multiple scholars interned for local and Congressional Democratic lawmakers, as well as at the White House during President Barack Obama’s tenure. Scholar Frank Smith was a fellow for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Another, Katherine Hamilton, worked on Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. Others worked for think tanks and advocacy groups such as the Brookings Institute, Planned Parenthood, Feminist Majority Foundation, NAACP and Urban Institute. The survey revealed that 16 recipients had worked for Democratic candidates, while only two had worked for Republicans. When asked about the discrepancy, Andrew Rich, the executive director of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation claimed that the foundation doesn’t discriminate based upon an applicant’s political activity. “We’re really focused on what they’ve done by way of service and then their engagement with leadership around it. It’s fairly infrequent that it’s political,” Rich said. “Most [scholars] aren’t very political at all. ” “In all honesty, I mean, we do see both intellectual and ideological variety among our applicant pool. To the extent that there’s less … one direction or another, it really has to do with the schools are sending our direction,” he said. Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart. com | 1 |
In the world of baking cookbooks, the ones written by pastry chefs are glamorous things, filled with the drama you would expect to see at the end of a tasting menu. But however ambitious they are on the page, the recipes often fall short in the kitchen, leaving a frustrated cook amid a trail of fallen soufflés. Baking books by professional food writers tend to be more modest endeavors. Most don’t attempt to get you to the top of a croquembouche, but appeal to you with simpler techniques, practical advice and interesting flavors — a flaky scone here, a splash of pomegranate molasses there. They are more reliable, if less exciting. This year’s roster of baking books, however, turns these truths upside down. Two of the best by restaurant pastry chefs are chatty, informative and easy to navigate, and they yield terrific baked goods with nary a tear. Three more by professional food writers eschew the standard formula of “tried and true with a twist” in favor of riskier, more experimental territory. And then one made our list because, though the recipes are German classics, the excellence of the testing and writing makes it well worth using for years to come. Of the lot, Dorie Greenspan’s latest, “Dorie’s Cookies” (Rux Mifflin Harcourt, $35) combines the best of all worlds: photography, thrilling recipes and a reassuring and authoritative writing style. This is a lot to expect in any cookbook, but particularly in one centered around cookies. How and thrilling can a cookie be? In Ms. Greenspan’s hands, extremely. First, there is the playfully unconventional photography by Davide Luciano. Each picture shows the cookies by themselves on a vividly colored background, without falling back on any of the usual cookbook tropes — a glass of milk or a ray of sunlight hitting a vintage teapot in the background. In Mr. Luciano’s photos, the camera gets up close and personal with the cookies, showing off all their intimate, alluring details: the texture of their crumbs, the sheen of their icing, the melty chocolate chips oozing from the center. It’s a pretty daring approach for a cookie book, and whether it works for you depends on how attached you are to sunlit teapots. The recipes themselves split the difference between and heirloom. There is an entire chapter on savory “cocktail cookies,” in which Ms. Greenspan folds Triscuit cracker bits into cream cheese dough in one recipe, and combines white miso paste and puffed barley in another. On the more traditional side, she has her World Peace Cookies — cocoa upon chocolate upon chocolate chip — along with some of the chewiest, most deeply flavored ginger molasses cookies I’ve ever made. Her buttery Breton shortbread galettes, browned at the edges and filled with jam, are the ideal version of their kind, while the gently floral Moroccan semolina cookies were light and delicate. With her exacting, thoughtful instructions, Ms. Greenspan anticipates pitfalls and leads you deftly around them. Just as wonderfully radical in content, though a bit more traditional in form, is Irvin Lin’s “Marbled, Swirled and Layered” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $30). Mr. Lin, a graphic designer in San Francisco who writes the food blog Eat the Love, takes risks in nearly every one of the 150 elaborate recipes in his book. He doesn’t just paint the lily he bejewels and shellacs it, too. You can almost see his mind buzzing as he adds mesquite powder and teff flour to malt cookies, and roasts white chocolate until it caramelizes to make blondies with jam (photo on cover). At times the recipes sound over the top (Rosemary Caramel and Dark Chip Tart, for one) but in the end they were artfully balanced. It’s an amusing read, too, with Mr. Lin’s musings, which bounce from how personal one’s preference for the cocoa percentage in chocolate can be to his fashion choices of the 1980s (“Oh, acid washed, how you played me”). Even if you never bake a thing, his book will make you laugh. In “Better Baking: Wholesome Ingredients, Delicious Desserts” (Rux Mifflin Harcourt) Genevieve Ko, a food writer and recipe developer, also pushes the envelope of the familiar, but does so in the name of healthfulness rather than pure exploration. Ms. Ko adds rye flour and olive oil to snowball cookies, whips up truly fudgy brownies out of canned adzuki beans, and even goes so far as so make her own Cocoa cereal. But in addition to creating relatively healthful desserts, she can also be highly sophisticated in her approach, using goat cheese and spelt flour in rugelach, and tinting rainbow cookie bars with subtly shaded matcha powder instead of the usual neon hues. Of the handful of recipes I tested, my favorite was one of the simplest: thin crackers with pecans and raisins. Although I devoured them with blue cheese, they were almost sweet enough for dessert, especially if wholesomeness was your goal. There is nothing particularly healthful about Luisa Weiss’s “Classic German Baking” (Ten Speed Press, $35) and this is all to the good. German baking is no place for virgin coconut oil and flax seeds. Instead, Ms. Weiss, who grew up in Germany and lives in Berlin, revels in marzipan, dark chocolate and plenty of European butter. The recipes are not at all experimental, but are instead impeccably tested and annotated classics. There are yeasted, coffee cakes rustic apple cakes meringue and tortes and a generous amount of highly spiced Christmas cookies. Ms. Weiss, a former cookbook editor known for her blog, The Wednesday Chef, has a writing style that is warm and nurturing. She holds your hand during the rather intimidating Viennese Sacher torte, reassuring you through the three pages and 12 steps that it will all be wonderful in the end. Mine wasn’t as pretty as the photo (my fault for being impatient with the glaze) but it tasted terrific, which is what matters most. As for baking books by restaurant chefs, my favorites this year were both inspired by Middle Eastern cuisine. The Honey Co. cafe in London isn’t known in the United States, but after the publication of its cookbook “Golden” (Little, Brown, $30) this should change. Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer offer modern recipes that reflect the perfumed and spiced flavors of their Israeli heritage, mixed with favorites from British teatime and French patisseries. You’ll find excellent apricot and elderflower jam, chickpea flour shortbread and yeasted morning buns filled with strawberry, pistachio paste and a syrup. The recipes in “Soframiz” by Ana Sortun and Maura Kilpatrick (Ten Speed Press, $35) from Sofra Bakery and Cafe in Cambridge, Mass. cover similar ground, but do so with an American sensibility. Their moist and tender carrot cake, which has a frosting flecked with halvah, has spoiled me for every other carrot cake in the universe. Much quicker to make but no less appealing are the tahini shortbread cookies, coated in sesame seeds for a gentle crunch. The recipe will say they keep for five days. Impossible to stop eating, mine made it through two. Which gives me a perfect reason to make them again. Recipes: Pistachio, Rose and Strawberry Buns | Sacher Torte | Moroccan Semolina and Almond Cookies | Golden Raisin and Pecan Thins | Tahini Shortbread Cookies | Blondies With a Swirl | 1 |
Rachel Dolezal, a former NAACP leader and professor who received national media attention after it was revealed that she was a white woman posing as has been disinvited from a speaking event at a Martin Luther King Jr. festival in North Carolina after a community backlash about her scheduled appearance. [Dolezal, who was formerly an adjunct professor at Eastern Washington University, was disinvited from her scheduled appearance at Cary, North Carolina’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Dreamfest in January. She was scheduled to participate in a panel discussion about racial identity and race relations with representatives from the NAACP. Dolezal is the former president of the Spokane, Washington chapter of the NAACP, a position that she was forced to resign from after she was accused of portraying herself as despite being born and raised by white parents. Doug McRainey, Cary’s director of parks, recreation, and cultural resources, claims that the decision to remove Dolezal from the program was made after backlash erupted in the community. “They made the decision about two weeks ago to remove her from the diversity summit, which we support,” McRainey said. “We had two focus group meetings with citizens and pastors, and I think the feeling was that her presence would take away from the goals of the Dreamfest. ” | 1 |
By Jay Syrmopoulos
Moscow, Russia – With all eyes on Russia’s unveiling their latest nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which NATO has dubbed the “SATAN” missile , as tensions with the U.S. increase, Moscow’s most potent “weapon” may be something drastically different.
The rapidly evolving geopolitical “weapon” brandished by Russia is an ever increasing stockpile of gold, as well as Russia’s native currency, the ruble.
Take a look at the symbol below, as it could soon come to change the entire hierarchy of the international order – potentially ushering in a complete international paradigm shift – and much sooner than you might think.
The symbol is the new designation of the Russian ruble, Russia’s national currency.
Similar to how the U.S. uses the dollar sign ($), the U.K. uses the pound sign (£), and the European Union uses the euro symbol (€), Russia is about to begin exporting its symbol internationally.
After the failed “reset” in U.S./Russian relations by the Obama administration, and the continued deterioration of the countries relationship, Washington began targeting entire sectors of the Russian economy, as well as specific individuals, meant to impose an economic burden so severe that it would force Moscow into compliance.
Instead of decimating Russia, what it precipitated was a Russian response of gradually weaning themselves off of the hegemony of the U.S. petrodollar, and working with China to create an alternative to the SWIFT payment system that isn’t solely controlled by Western interests (see Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank , New Development Bank).
According to the Corbett Report :
New reports indicate that China is ready to launch its SWIFT alternative, and for those who have their ear to the ground this is the most significant move yet in the unfolding process of de-dollarization that is seeing the BRICS-led “resistance bloc” breaking away from the financial stranglehold of the US-led “Washington Consensus.”
For those who don’t know, SWIFT stands for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication and is shorthand for the SWIFTNet Network that is used by over 10,500 financial institutions in 215 countries and territories to transmit financial transaction data around the world. SWIFT does not do any of the clearing or processing for these transactions itself, but instead sends the payment orders that are then settled by correspondent banks of the member institutions. Still, given the system’s near universality in the financial system, it means that virtually every international transaction between banking institutions goes through the SWIFT network.
This is why de-listing from the SWIFT network remains one of the primary financial weapons wielded by the US and its allies in their increasingly important financial warfare campaigns.
Recently, financial guru Jim Rickards, author of the book “Currency Wars,” wrote that “Russia is poised for a major comeback in its economy. Russian bonds and stocks and the Russian currency, the ruble, will all benefit.” Rickards believes a “strong turnaround” is coming within Russia, and that this comeback will benefit the ruble.
While still suffering from the economic warfare being waged by the U.S., Russia has realized that as long they are subservient to the petrodollar, there remains a clear and present danger of the Russian economy being devastated by the whims of Washington.
The Bank of Russia, that nation’s central bank, is extremely clear about its mission, and monetary policy declaring on its website:
Monetary policy constitutes an integral part of the state policy and is aimed at enhancing well-being of Russian citizens. The Bank of Russia implements monetary policy in the framework of inflation-targeting regime, and sees price stability, albeit sustainably low inflation, as its priority. Given structural peculiarities of the Russian economy, the target is to reduce inflation to 4% by 2017 and maintain it within that range in the medium run.
In layman’s terms, that means that monetary policy, similar to nuclear weapons and the military, are “an integral part of the state policy” in Russia. While many analysts have noted the increased build-up in Russia’s military arsenal, seemingly few have highlighted the massive build-up of Russian gold reserves over the past decade.
Below is a chart showing Russian gold reserves between 1994 and last year, 2015:
Since 2006, there has been a year-on-year increase that reveals a significant upward trend. The chart clearly reveals that Russia’s state policy of increasing state monetary assets, in the form of gold. Additionally, the Russian government has been converting state rubles into gold assets. From 2006 to 2015, Russia’s state holdings of gold tripled.
Within just the past year Russia has substantially increased its gold holdings
According to the Business Insider :
In July of this year, the central bank of Russia added 200,000 ounces of gold to its reserves. The one-month uptick in Russian gold reserves — 200,000 ounces — is approximately equal to the entire annual output of Barrick Gold’s Turquoise Ridge gold mine in Nevada.
At that same rate — 200,000 ounces per month — in a mere five months, Russia would add to state gold reserves the equivalent of the entire annual output of Barrick’s massive Goldstrike mine in Nevada.
Currently, Russian gold reserves rank seventh in the world. It’s clear that there is a concerted effort by Russian authorities to build up the country’s gold reserves as part of a national strategy to negate the effects of economic warfare waged by the United States.
Rickards, in his 2011 book “Currency Wars,” theorized that Russia and China could combine their gold reserves to form a global gold-backed currency to compete against the U.S. dollar. Currently, Russian reserves stand at roughly 1,500 tonnes, with Chinese reserves totaling over 1,800 tonnes (according to China — it’s likely more), which would amount to a combined total of roughly 3,300 tonnes of gold.
The U.S. is about to lose overarching control of policymaking within the International Monetary Fund (IMF), thus the U.S. lockup on global gold is about to vanish, according to Business Insider.
Imagine for a moment the distinctly real possibility that Russian-Chinese alliance could exercise indirect (or even direct) control over the IMF’s gold reserve of over 2,800 tonnes. Russian, Chinese and IMF gold combined would equal roughly 6,100 tonnes, and would allow for direct competition with the U.S. gold reserves, estimated at 8,100 tonnes.
Russia and China have realized that the petrodollar is wielded by Washington as it’s weapon of choice when opposing a well-armed state, and clearly see the writing on the wall – thus working together to create a new global financial paradigm.
The reality is that the United States is $20 trillion dollars in debt, and eventually the time will come when the U.S. economy begins to implode — and all the fiat currency people are stuck holding will essentially be worth nothing more than the paper it’s printed on. Hard assets, such as gold and silver, should be bought and taken custody of while there is still an opportunity to do so, as a means of hedging against the potentially disastrous results of the U.S. using the petrodollar as a “weapon.”
Ultimately, the United States, Russia and China are all controlled by centralized power-hungry tyrants attempting to command powerful global bureaucracies like the IMF, the World Bank, SWIFT, New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
It’s not Russian nuclear weapons that people should fear, as the policy of mutually assured destruction essentially voids any benefit of a state launching a first-strike nuclear attack. The true threat to America is our economic house of cards, built upon the back of a neoliberal trade policy that puts the “rights” of corporations over that of people .
Source: The Free Thought Project
Related: Russia to buy 200 tons of gold in 2016 Russia becomes world’s largest gold buyer Russia Adds 300,000 oz to Gold Reserves in February China, Russia and Iran planning gold backed currency Russia Bought More Than 200 Tonnes of Gold in 2015 Away From Dollar: Russia, China to Create Entirely Different Gold Market Gold Bullion Is “100% Guarantee from Legal and Political Risks” – Russia Germany joins China and Russia’s flight to gold Russian Ruble: Soon to Be Backed by Gold? Is Russia Planning A Gold-Based Currency? END GAME: Putin May End Ruble Crisis by Taking Russia onto the GOLD STANDARD! Checkmate: Is Russia Selling Oil For Gold? China & Russia to Accuse U.S. of Not Having the Gold Russia is stockpiling gold bullion Currency Wars: Russia Not Declaring All Gold Reserves To IMF? Russia admits it’s dumping USD and Euro for gold Russia Buys 900,000 Ounces Of Gold Worth $1.17 Billion In April Russia Raises Gold Holdings By 7.247 Tonnes To Over 1,040 Tonnes In February | 0 |
SEOUL, South Korea — As the protests against her have grown larger, louder and closer, and her career, reputation and presidency march inexorably toward an impeachment vote on Friday, President Park has kept mostly hidden from public view, gripped by and despair, and largely alone. Cloistered in the presidential Blue House, which in a twist of fate befitting a Greek tragedy is also her childhood home, she has had few visitors, aides said. At 64, she is not married and has no children. Her brother and sister have been estranged from her for years. Her three most trusted aides have been fired over the corruption and scandal that now threatens to undo her presidency. One has been jailed. Ms. Park’s closest friend and confidante, Choi is also in jail. Ms. Park has stopped attending cabinet and presidential staff meetings. She has been dejected, she said in one public apology, losing “countless nights” of sleep and at times regretting ever becoming president. “She has grown noticeably wan,” said Chung the floor leader of Ms. Park’s governing party, Saenuri, who visited her in the Blue House on Tuesday. “She said a few times that she was sorry to our lawmakers. ” Since the scandal began to break into public view in October, over allegations that Ms. Park conspired with Ms. Choi to extort tens of millions of dollars from big businesses and to help Ms. Choi, who had no official post, manipulate government affairs from the shadows, Ms. Park has rarely been seen in public. She last met a foreign visitor on Nov. 10, when she greeted a presidential delegation from Kazakhstan, the same day she spoke on the phone with Donald J. Trump. She has delivered three televised apologies, each only several minutes long, sometimes choking with emotion. “My heart is crushed,” she said, “when I think I cannot resolve the deep disappointment and anger of the people even if I apologize 100 times. ” She was said to have heard the weekly protests calling for her to leave office. Those protests have grown from 20, 000 people in central Seoul six weeks ago to about 1. 7 million on Saturday, who came within a few hundred feet of her compound, shouting, “Evict her!” “The president heard the people’s voices with a heavy heart,” Jung Ms. Park’s spokesman, said after one of the protests, though he did not clarify whether she heard the protesters’ shouts through her window or, as one South Korean news outlet has reported, watched them on TV. Beyond that, her aides have declined to discuss her daily routine or her mood these days, except to say that she was taking the crisis gravely and was doing her best to deal with it. They said she had invited Christian leaders and a top Buddhist monk to visit her last month to offer advice on the crisis. Her office did not disclose what they told her, except that the monk had quoted Buddhist scripture, saying, “A tree bears fruit when it sheds flowers. ” For many in South Korea, the flower has already fallen. As Ms. Park’s approval rating has plummeted, shop owners across the country have pulled down pictures of her they once hung proudly on the wall. Even in her hometown, Daegu, where she made a brief visit last week, she was confronted by protesters demanding her resignation. After visiting a market that had been heavily damaged in a fire, her office said, she returned to her car and wept. Possibly the last time a South Korean leader was this isolated was in 2008, when massive crowds had rallied in central Seoul for weeks to protest President Lee ’s decision to lift a ban on American beef imports amid fears of mad cow disease. At the time, Mr. Lee said he climbed Mount Bugak, the cool green peak that rises above the Blue House, in the evening, saw the protesters’ candlelight filling the city center and wept. For Ms. Park, the Blue House itself is ablaze with memories. She first moved there at age 9, when her father, Maj. Gen. Park seized power in a military coup in 1961. At 22, after her mother was killed in an assassination attempt against her father, she became his acting first lady. In 1979, after her father was assassinated amid widespread protests against his dictatorship, she left the presidential palace, only to return as president in 2013. In between, she lived a secluded life in southern Seoul, in a house plastered with photos of her dead parents and adorned with their relics. “Her home was more like a museum for Park ” Choi an editorial writer at the South Korean daily JoongAng Ilbo, wrote recently of his visit there a decade ago. “It looked as if her clock had stopped in the 1970s and she spent much time communicating with her dead father. ” Mr. Choi described the atmosphere there as “heavy and dark. ” In her 1993 memoir, “What If I Were Born in an Ordinary Family,” Ms. Park wrote of her tragic family history and her sadness: “In my life’s scale, the worthwhile times have never outweighed painful ones. ” In the end, Ms. Park’s cloistered life may have set the stage for her political implosion. She has said she often spends evenings alone reading government reports. She shuns meetings with senior aides. Her former cook told a South Korean magazine that she usually ate alone, watching TV. She has said she cut ties with her brother and sister to prevent nepotism, a bane of past South Korean presidents. She has two dogs, white Jindos, a Korean breed prized for its loyalty. But in an episode that has haunted her presidency, when the ferry Sewol sank in 2014, killing more than 300 people in one of the country’s biggest disasters in decades, her chief of staff said he could not locate her for seven hours. Where she was during those crucial hours has been one of the most jealously guarded secrets of her office, spawning lurid rumors. Her office recently said that she was in her residence, not in her main work office, at the time and that she did receive reports about the sinking. In testimony before a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday, her former chief of staff, Kim said only that he did not know where in the sprawling compound she was. “I only knew that she was somewhere in the Blue House,” he said. “I didn’t know well what was going on in her personal life in her residence. ” Her trusted friend and adviser all these years was Choi whose family had befriended her while her father was still in power. After becoming president, Ms. Park has said that she continued to rely on Ms. Choi to look after her wardrobe and other personal affairs. Prosecutors said Ms. Choi did far more than that, and they have indicted her on extortion and other charges. While Ms. Park cannot be indicted while she holds office, the indictment of Ms. Choi identified Ms. Park as a criminal accomplice, a first for a president. In her apologies, a Ms. Park has said she could not forgive herself for letting her guard down with Ms. Choi, who she said had helped her during her “lonely” and “difficult times. ” But she admitted no legal wrongdoing. By this time, few Koreans trusted her. According to opinion polls, she had become the least popular president since South Korea began democratizing in the late 1980s. She has tried to restore a semblance of normalcy to her besieged administration by making appointments of ambassadors and deputy cabinet ministers. Her government also pressed ahead with signing a controversial military intelligence sharing pact with Japan. It all may be too little, too late, and the crowds outside the Blue House on a recent Saturday evinced little sympathy. “If you are so lonely,” some chanted, “why don’t you go and join Choi in her prison cell?” | 1 |
A winter snowstorm can be serene. It can be lovely. It can be invigorating. And it can be an unexpected respite from the daily hustle. Tuesday’s storm was none of those things. It was a big sloppy mess of sleet and snow, marked by fierce winds and falling temperatures that threatened to turn wet roads and sidewalks into slick sheets of ice. At least that was the case in the major coastal cities of the Northeast, where fears of a blizzard dissolved into a slushy mix of rain, snow and sleet. New York City and the region did not come to a halt under a blanket of snow. Instead, they skidded through the day in a muck of ice and slush. “What a mess,” said Soo Becchina, a teacher, from Oceanside, N. Y. on Long Island. “When I was shoveling all I kept thinking was how wet and heavy the snow was. It’s like getting a slushy from without the straw, red coloring and cup. ” There were reasons to be concerned on Monday night as two powerful weather systems — one coming out of the Midwest and the other moving up from the southeast — were set on a collision course. Some models showed that as much as two feet of snow would fall in the city. Governors and mayors in the metropolitan region rushed to the microphones to issue sweeping warnings and declare states of emergency. In Connecticut, a travel ban was put in place, ordering all cars off the roads by 5 a. m. Subway service in New York City was curtailed, with the Metropolitan Transportation Agency ordering all aboveground tracks and stations closed. trains stopped running. The buses in New Jersey sat idle. Schools were closed, museums shuttered and concerts canceled. (On Broadway, however, the show went on and theaters were open Tuesday night.) Thousands of flights were canceled. Tens of thousands of people lost power as high winds and heavy snow downed lines. But as with any forecasts involving snow near the coast, there was always a caveat: the divide. If the storm set up a good distance off shore, New York and the rest of the coast would be walloped. A few miles to the west and it would deliver more rain and sleet than snow. “The storm tracked closer to the coast than previously forecast and brought warmer air with it,” said Joe Pollina, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “Mother Nature is an unpredictable lady,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said at a news conference Tuesday. While the focus overnight was on the city and Long Island, Mr. Cuomo shifted resources upstate as it became clear that the Southern Tier would be harder hit. He announced a full travel ban on Interstate 84 from the Pennsylvania border to the Connecticut border on Tuesday afternoon. The heaviest snowfall was expected near the Interstate 81 corridor of Pennsylvania and in the Hudson Valley of New York, approaching two feet in some places. Northern Connecticut and parts of Massachusetts and New Hampshire were also expected to get significant snow. Some towns and communities were left buried in snow, like Pa. Tony Brooks, vice chairman of the City Council, said that by midafternoon Tuesday, they had been buried in more than two feet of snow, the most of any storm since 1996. He said that the city was at an “absolute standstill” and that the only people on the streets were college students who were enjoying the snow. “There is not a soul on the street except college students,” he said. By early afternoon, snow was falling fast and furiously around Boston, where 12 inches was expected. While that was some 6 inches below what had been forecast, Gov. Charlie Baker repeated warnings for commuters to stay home. “We’ve seen the snowfall pick up,” Mr. Baker said at an early afternoon press briefing. “Most places are now seeing somewhere between 2 and 4 inches per hour. ” Power outages were beginning to tick upward, with 63, 000 reported in the state by early evening. Mr. Pollina, of the National Weather Service, also warned that even in those places with only a few inches of snow, like New York City, any liquid on the ground would turn to ice overnight. Temperatures in New York were expected to hover in the teens after nightfall and were not likely to rise above freezing on Wednesday. Kim Buttrick of the National Weather Service in Taunton, Mass. said that people tend to focus only on the snow and miss other dangers, including the wind. The eastern coast of Massachusetts could get wind gusts of over 50 miles per hour during the storm, she said Nantucket and outer Cape Cod could get gusts of up to 65 m. p. h. “That’s conditions,” Ms. Buttrick said. Forecasters are expecting moderate coastal flooding in New England. “You have waves building off shore,” Ms. Buttrick said. “This storm will pound the coast, especially for our and shore lines. There’ll be beach erosion, some flooding of roadways, possible damage to marinas, docks and piers. ” Even though the storm failed to deliver heavy snow, in some places, officials continued to urge people to stay home, if possible. “It’s a good day to make brownies,” said Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut. But once that was done, what joys were left when the precipitation was more ice than snow and the wind could make even adults tear up? “Right now there has been no pleasure,” said Michael Weiss of Syosset, N. Y. on Long Island. He works in Manhattan but was home with his wife, two daughters — ages 9 and 11 — and their hound mix named Cody. “So far I have gotten lots of email from work. I made breakfast. Shoveled the front and back steps and walked the dog around the neighborhood,” he said. “Hopefully, later I will be able to go out with the kids and make an iceman. ” | 1 |
Saker Message: No current Saker messages. What’s goes around comes around, or How Russia and the US are trading punches, by Scott Humor
This article was first published by the Duran
Three years ago someone’s video parody of a “ Russian guy’s reaction ” to a meteor falling over Chelyabinsk went viral. “Russia Today” even included it into its reportage of how the Russian dashcam videos become internet sensations [2:24].
This 10 sec video had done more to project the toughness of Russians than all the fireworks of Vitaly Churkin’s diplomatic rhetoric. Hands down, Churkin is brilliant and his speeches should be included into high school curriculum, however, due to peculiarities of the Western supranational media, his oratorical talent remains largely unrecognized by a wider audience. Yet, everyone remembers a video of a guy in a knitted cap, who just lowered a sun visor driving directly onto a collision path with a rapidly approaching celestial body.
Readers and commentators of The Saker blog often express their frustration with the “lack of immediate” response to the Western provocations from the Russian government and society . “Why don’t Russia’s government respond by hitting them back hard and in kind?” ask out readers. Whereat we, Russians, consider this to be our national character trait. Rather than jumping nervously every time the West says “Boo!” we keep steadfastly and resolutely moving forward despite of adversities.
There is also a well calculated geopolitical dimension to this “wait and observe” stance chosen by the Russia’s government every time Washington comes up with a newly staged provocation. Which is every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, if I am not mistaken. “Washington” here is being a working term to include Pentagon, CIA and also a slew of companies like:
Valbin Corporation – Bethesda, MD
CACI International Inc – Suitland, MD
Leidos – Vienna, VA
Varen Technologies – Fort Meade, MD
Sagent Partners – Linthicum, MD
Pluribus International – Fort Meade, MD
Assured Information Security, Inc – Fort Meade, MD
AECOM – Chantilly, VA
Razor Technology LLC – Washington, DC
Engility Corporation — Fort Meade, MD
Goldbelt Inc – Herndon, VA
CWU, Inc. – Hunter Army Airfield, GA
Belay Technologies, Inc — Annapolis Junction, MD
Applied Technology Group – Annapolis Junction, MD
Booz Allen Hamilton – McLean, VA
Pluribus International – Fort Meade, MD
Advantage SCI – United States
This is just a short snippet of a long list of willing participants in a division of a US military budget pie, which is now turned into a thriving and mushrooming industry of private constructors specializing in recognizance, intelligence gathering, intelligence analysis of SIGINT & FININT in support of operations CONUS or OCONUS.
We, of course, are mostly interested in “operations” that are being conducted OCONUS, which is outside of the continental US, also known as the rest of the world. In case you are wondering about the location of your country in relation to the US intelligence community. Take the US military, plus the entirety of NATO, some crafty old spy masters from Britain, France, and Germany, add to it hundreds of private and public enterprises, and you will understand where the plethora of false flag attacks, provocations, terror acts, civilian sabotage on the media, sports, kidnapping of Russian citizens and other violations of the human rights of Russians are coming from.
In the last two weeks of October we watched a Ukrainian civil airline dispatcher threaten to take down a civil aircraft from Belarus. Russia got pushed out of the UN Human Rights Council, after the generally proven-to-be-fake campaign of the White Helmets , which are another of these private intelligence companies financed by NATO members.
We also were presented with the gruesome murder of one of the originators of so called “ Russian Spring ” in Ukraine, known to the Western audience as “Motorola.” Keeping in mind, of course, that the “Russian Spring” starting with the Bolotnaya Square protests, just like its predecessor the “ Arab Spring ,” was engineered by Western intelligence and military complexes. Let’s give credit where credit is due.
All of these provocations, from big to small, from violent to ridiculous, all of them have one common goal, to draw the reaction of the Russian government, to take its precious time, resources, and to disrupt its work.
Here comes the catch: the more willing participants are being involved in designing and staging this torrid stream of provocations against Russia, the less professional, less coordinated, and less convincing they are becoming. It’s exactly like with the famed musical “Cats” which was perfectly choreographed on Broadway, but watching it on a community theater stage would hurt your eyes in shame for the production crew and actors.
By the fall of 2016, the saturation of provocative actions against Russia has reached it’s critical stage. In other words, we had ceased reacting emotionally to them and have started analyzing them rationally.
This explains the Russian government’s reaction to the multitude of recent provocative actions. A reaction that can be generally described as “muted,”“low-key,”“hushed,” and at least in one instance “absent.”
Knowing who or what is behind a provocation should warrant a type of response, if any.
Let’s say, the Justice Department backtracks it’s perfidious demands for billions of dollars in fines arbitrarily imposed on Deutsche Bank, only after Germany agrees to deploy its troops and tanks to the Russian border. Understandably, their move puts an adult population of Russian into a sentimental mood summarized in “let’s finish the job our grandfather died doing.” Russia’s Foreign Ministry issues a warming statement, and the Defense Ministry moves a few troops closer to the Western border, mirroring NATO moves. The Pentagon and CIA issue memos to the all Western media outlets stating the “Russian aggression.” The Western press copies these memos verbatim and propagates them in every nook and cranny of the “free” world.
After that, the Russian Defense Ministry releases information on successful testing of a new “Sarmat” missile with some of its technical characteristics. Youtube hosts several videos with detailed explanations of how it takes only two Sarmats to destroy the East and West coasts of the US. They also specifically explain why Sarmat is invincible to the Western anti-missile systems. If you wonder how we got to this point, see the aforementioned information.
Everyone, privy to the latest Russian military upgrades, which includes every YouTube viewer, can see the Russian government response to the attacks of the US banking system and Wall Street and the DOJ.
We are witnessing a situation when hundreds of companies employing well over a million people who are trying to make themselves relevant in a crowded industry of war making, by producing torrents of “events” around the globe. They are the Americans with “gas cans” setting fires around the globe, according to the memorable comparison made by Rostislav Ishchenko in his April 2015 article “ What does Putin want?”
He wrote: “ One can only guess who will be more effective – the Americans with their gas can or the Russians with their fire extinguisher? ”
Fire, however, dies quickly in the absence of oxygen. Most of the anti-Russian actions go unnoticed and just turn into white noise, but some manage to stand out in the news for a day or longer. In essence, they all vie for the Russian government attention. Maybe that gets them a yearend bonus and an annual contract renewal?
Thank you for your time,
Scott | 0 |
Kellogg Company, the nation’s largest breakfast cereal manufacturer, is again announcing major cut backs and has slashed its sales forecast as profits continue to fall. [On February 9 the company cut its sales projections for the year after experiencing another quarterly decline. The company imagined it would have flat sales but instead found a two percent decline. “For the quarter ended Dec. 31, Kellogg reported a loss of $53 million, or 15 cents per share,” the Associated Press reported on Thursday. “Not including items, it said it earned 92 cents per share. Analysts expected a profit of 85 cents per share. Total sales were $3. 1 billion, slightly better than expected revenue of $3. 07 billion. ” But that wasn’t the only cuts Kellogg Co. reported this week. The company also told investors and employees that big cuts in facilities and workers are coming. On Wednesday the company announced it was closing a large number of distribution centers across the U. S. and that layoffs would result, WKBN reported. Some insiders have said Kellogg’s is looking to cut sales representatives, merchandisers, and shuttering as many as 39 distribution centers. Kellogg spokesman Kris Charles released a statement saying the move is a “difficult decision. ” While this is the right move for the company to achieve our objectives, it was a difficult decision because of its impact on employees. On average, our distribution centers employ approximately 30 workers. As the distribution shifts from our network to our retailers’ networks, so too will the work. We’ve been actively engaged in conversations with some of our biggest retail partners who have expressed strong interest in hiring these employees for roles once the transition is complete. As a result, we are optimistic that our employees will find similar employment once this transition is complete so the net impact is impossible to quantify. As the affected employees work throughout the U. S. this change will not have a sizable impact on any one community. ” The closures and layoffs are to be completed by the fourth quarter of this year, the company said. John Bryant, Kellogg Company Chairman, and CEO, said that the “retail landscape continues to change” and Kellogg has to keep up with that shift. “We have to change the way we reach and communicate with consumers. Because our customers’ and our own warehouse distribution systems have become more efficient and effective, we can now redeploy resources previously tied to DSD and direct them to the kinds of brand investments that drive greater demand with today’s consumers − ultimately growing our business and our retailers’ businesses,” he said. This latest move is on top of the major cuts already announced this year. Early in January Kellogg Co. announced it was firing 250 workers. The continued moves to scale back the company comes after Kellogg’s decided to cut its advertising with Breitbart News at the end of 2016, thereby snubbing Breitbart’s 45, 000, 000 readers. In November, Kellogg’s noted that Breitbart News’s conservative readers are not “aligned with our values as a company. ” While the decision by Kellogg’s to cease advertising made virtually no revenue impact on Breitbart. com. it did represent an escalation in the war by companies like Target and Allstate against conservative customers whose values propelled Donald Trump into the White House. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 1 |
LOS ANGELES — During new pressure on Viacom to turn around Paramount Pictures, the studio misfired again over the weekend: “” which cost Paramount and about $100 million to make, not including marketing expenses, arrived to a disastrous $11. 4 million in domestic ticket sales. flops are no longer uncommon in Hollywood. What is unusual is the patience that Paramount’s corporate owner has afforded the studio. In addition to “” “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows,” “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” and “Zoolander 2” failed to find audiences for Paramount. “Star Trek Beyond” has been a hit. But domestic ticket sales for that film trail its series predecessor by 36 percent. (“Star Trek Beyond” is still rolling out in major markets overseas.) On Friday, as Viacom ousted its chief executive, a media analyst, Michael Nathanson, called Paramount a “truly shocking” problem, noting in a report that the studio may lose $350 million this year. Paramount did protect itself financially on “ ” by teaming with which paid for 80 percent of the production costs. Paramount also believes that “ ” can take in $100 million overseas. “Movies like ‘Ghostbusters,’ ‘Independence Day’ and ‘ ’ certainly looked like they were going to be big going into the summer, but audiences, especially in the world of remakes, have been very tough,” Rob Moore, Paramount’s vice chairman, said in a phone interview on Sunday. Directed by Timur Bekmambetov and counting Mark Burnett as a producer, “ ” appeared to run into several problems. It was a poorly reviewed remake of a celebrated classic for which few were clamoring. Moviegoers have also generally ignored epics in recent years. In terms of turnaround efforts at Paramount, Mr. Moore pointed toward coming films like “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back,” with Tom Cruise “Arrival,” a thriller and “Fences,” an adaptation of the August Wilson play starring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis that is seen as an Oscar candidate. For the weekend, “Suicide Squad” (Warner Bros.) was again the No. 1 ticket seller. It took in about $20. 7 million, for a domestic total of $262. 3 million, according to comScore. (Overseas, “Suicide Squad” has taken in $310. 4 million.) Among new the comedic drama “War Dogs” (Warner Bros.) performed the best. Costing at least $45 million to make, “War Dogs,” which received mediocre reviews, collected an estimated $14. 3 million. The animated movie “Kubo and the Two Strings” (Focus Features) which delighted most critics and cost Laika Entertainment $55 million to make, arrived to about $12. 6 million in ticket sales. | 1 |
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Even as surveillance hawks such as FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and joint chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee Senators Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) continue to claim that terrorists and other criminals are using technology to “go dark,” so America needs an increased ability to perform civilian surveillance, the reality is that the hawks have more access to more data than ever before. And — as recent information confirms — many of the reasons for that increased surveillance ability are the supposed “reforms” that were sold to the American people as a way to curtail that surveillance.
Those in power — especially those who have built their careers in government by expanding the surveillance state — are not above using manipulation to increase their power by increasing that surveillance. The recent surveillance “reforms” — particularly the misnamed USA FREEDOM Act — prove that point perhaps better than anything else could. As this writer said last year: On Saturday, November 28, 2015, the NSA telephone surveillance program ended. Except that it didn't. The spying program — made famous when former NSA contractor Ed Snowden leaked a trove of secret documents to reporters — has simply continued under different authority. The "new and improved" surveillance may even be worse than before because the required warrants will be issued by a secret court. When the USA FREEDOM Act became law in June 2015, it was sold to the American people as a solution to the unwarranted surveillance Snowden had revealed. The law was set to take effect November 28, 2015 and "reform" that warrantless surveillance. The USA FREEDOM Act, like the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, is a misnomer. The name is a not-very-subtle manipulation, designed to hide from the American people the real nature of the law. The architects of the USA PATRIOT Act used the word "patriot" to persuade Americans that the "patriotic" way to confront the specter of terrorism was to trade liberty for security. It took the one but never delivered the other. Likewise, in the USA FREEDOM Act, the use of the word "freedom" is designed to convince Americans that their freedom is being returned to them by "reforming" the surveillance state. In fact, no such reform is taking place .
And while the surveillance hawks claim that the “war on terror” (another misnomer) depends on mass surveillance, there is more at stake here than just security. Liberty — and the privacy that must necessarily accompany it — falls in direct proportion to the rise of the surveillance state. In the digital age, there is no line of demarcation between digital privacy and any other privacy, between digital liberty and any other liberty. After all, if you have no choice about the data that is collected on you and who has access to it — including your phone calls, texts, e-mails, browsing history, calendar, and more — can you really be said to be free?
Mass surveillance, far from a solution, is itself a major part of the problem. Not only does it threaten privacy and liberty, it is counterproductive to the stated goal of finding and stopping terrorists. If one is trying to find a needle in a haystack, adding more hay is not the way to go about it; investigators should narrow their searches, not expand them.
The rise of the surveillance state in the 15 years since 9/11 has taken its toll on the American spirit. And yet, even while gathering data on more and more of the inhabitants of planet Earth at a greater and greater rate, the surveillance hawks still want more. Last December, Senator Burr wrote an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal that was laden with errors, half-truths, and outright lies. The article claimed that encryption — used by millions of ordinary people every day — is a tool of terrorism which “allows criminals and terrorists, as the law enforcement community says, to 'go dark' and plot with abandon.” In an obvious attempt at giving lip service to the rights of individuals to protect their privacy and liberty, Burr wrote: Consumer information should be protected, and the development of stronger and more robust levels of encryption is necessary. Unfortunately, the protection that encryption provides law-abiding citizens is also available to criminals and terrorists. Today's messaging systems are often designed so that companies' own developers cannot gain access to encrypted content — and, alarmingly, not even when compelled by a court order. This allows criminals and terrorists, as the law enforcement community says, to "go dark" and plot with abandon.
But is Burr correct? Does modern technology allow “ criminals and terrorists, as the law enforcement community says, to ‘go dark’ and plot with abandon”? Not even close. The myth of “going dark” is little more than a bogey-man, used to scare people into sacrificing their rights for the hollow promise of safety. As this writer said in the article quoted above: When the final USA FREEDOM Act vote was counted in the Senate on June 2, 2015, The New American 's Warren Mass reported that the act, which was sold to the American people as a way to "reform the authorities of the Federal Government" to (among other things) conduct electronic surveillance for "foreign intelligence, counterterrorism, and criminal purposes," was both misleading and unnecessary. If true reform had been the goal, a large part of that goal had already been accomplished. On May 31 the provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, which had been interpreted to allow much of the surveillance exposed by Snowden, expired: Many of those authorities — which the National Security Agency (NSA) has used to justify the collection of phone records — had been found in provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act that expired at midnight Sunday night. Therefore, Congress could have eliminated those surveillance powers merely by doing nothing. Despite promises made by its supporters, the USA Freedom Act doesn't end government snooping. It merely shifts the responsibility for collecting communications metadata from the NSA to companies such as AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon, which already keep customer records for as long as five years. The NSA or the FBI would simply need to obtain permission from the secret FISA Court to access that data — and the court nearly always grants it.
At the time The New American published that article and the previous article by Warren Mass (which is quoted in that article), the mainstream media was singing the praises of the USA FREEDOM Act. Recently, our dire predictions of greater surveillance resulting from the very law which promised to curtail that surveillance have been shown true. And the same mainstream media is now confirming that. ABC News recently reported that the “NSA can access more phone data than ever,” and said: One of the reforms designed to rein in the surveillance authorities of the National Security Agency has perhaps inadvertently solved a technical problem for the spy outfit and granted it potential access to much more data than before, a former top official told ABC News.
The article cites Chris Inglis, who served as the NSA's deputy director until January 2014. Inglis told ABC News that before the USA FREEDOM Act, the NSA had incomplete access to phone records because the agency had to pull the data from several different networks, reformat much of it and compile it “according to existing privacy policies.” Since the USA FREEDOM Act shifts much of that responsibility to the carriers — who are required under the law to maintain that data and make it available to the NSA — Inglis told ABC News that all the technical and compliance issues are now "somebody else's problem." The report also says: The USA Freedom Act ended the NSA's bulk collection of metadata but charged the telecommunications companies with keeping the data on hand. The NSA and other U.S. government agencies now must request information about specific phone numbers or other identifying elements from the telecommunications companies after going through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court and arguing that there is a "reasonable, articulable suspicion" that the number is associated with international terrorism. As a result, the NSA no longer has to worry about keeping up its own database and, according to Inglis, the percentage of available records has shot up from 30 percent to virtually 100. Rather than one internal, incomplete database, the NSA can now query any of several complete ones. The new system "guarantees that the NSA can have access to all of it," Inglis said.
Just let that marinate for a while: "The NSA can have access to all of it."
So the American people were sold a bill of goods. One thing was promised and another delivered. If the mainstream media had reported on this as The New American did, perhaps America could have been spared this increased surveillance. As it is, the mainstream media is catching on too little, too late.
As the surveillance hawks on the one side and privacy advocates on the other side continue to wage the battle for digital privacy, it is likely that some type of “compromise” will be offered to “solve the problem” of encryption.
Don’t fall for it. Photo of the White House: CC-BY-SA-3.0 / Matt H. Wade | 0 |
Tweet Home » Headlines » World News » “IN ONE DAY IT WILL BURN”: Chilling 30 Year Old Prophesy Warns Russia Will Nuke America Even now they are preparing an attack against America. When America believes there is peace and safety, the Russians will lead an all-out attack . They already have it planned! “The Heavenly Messenger showed me all of California, Las Vegas, New York, and Florida, and said, ‘This is Sodom and Gomorrah. All of This – In ONE DAY It Will BURN…’ “ Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, unless He reveals his secret to his servants the prophets. – Amos 3:7 In 1984, a Romanian Pastor who had been mercilessly tortured by Soviet Bloc Communists for smuggling Bibles into Romania received a Chilling Warning from the Almighty: America – the Land of the Free – would be destroyed in a SINGLE DAY by the Russians in a fiery judgement – unless she repented for her great sins: Dumitru Duduman was a Romanian pastor who smuggled Bibles in his native land of Romania for 25 years.
In 1984, God called him out of Romania to the land of America – telling Duduman He had an important warning for His people there. Duduman, unable to speak a word of English, arrived with his family in New York and subsequently Fullerton, California without as much as a play to lay their heads.
Nearly immediately after arriving in the Land of the Free, Duduman received an Angelic Visitation, which he describes in Through the Fire Without Burning:
It seemed we were over California. The angel said, “There is San Francisco. There is Sacramento and Modesto. Soon we will see Los Angeles.” I had no idea there were such places in California, or even in the world. But I still remember the exact names. At last we were over Fullerton where we now live. “You can go home,” the angel said, “but I want to tell you what will happen. You have seen a number of cities.
The day will come when I will punish the citizens of those cities because of their sins. Their sin has reached into heaven. God will punish them just as he punished Sodom and Gomorrah.”
How will this happen? Surely they are able to defend themselves against any imaginable invasion.
“That is your opinion, not the mind of God. The Russian government will have all the information regarding the whereabouts of American missiles. They will have the exact locations of the weapons factories. Even now they are preparing an attack against America. When America believes there is peace and safety, the Russians will lead an all-out attack. They already have it planned! They plan to attack from such remote bases as Cuba, Nicaragua, Central America, Mexico, and the ocean. They have had these plans for a long time, but God has not yet allowed them to be fulfilled. Nevertheless, the day will come when America will be punished for her sins by fire.”
Dumitru responded to the vision by fasting for 21 days, requesting it would be repeated if it was truly from God. At the conclusion of his fast, Dumitru received a second vision:
Suddenly a bright light came toward me…from the light I head the same voice that I had heard so many times in prison. He said, “Dumitru, why are you so despaired?”
I said, Why did you punish me? Why did you bring me to this country? I have nowhere to lay my head down. I can’t understand anybody.” He said,
“Dumitru, didn’t I tell you I am here with you also? I brought you to this country because this country will burn.”..
I was not asleep. It was not a dream. It was not a vision. I was awake just as I am now. He showed me all of California and said,
“This is Sodom and Gomorrah ! All of this, in one day it will burn! I t’s sin has reached the Holy One.”
Then he took me to Las Vegas.
“This is Sodom and Gomorrah! All of this, in one day it will burn!”
Then he showed me the state of New York. “Do you know what this is?” He asked.
I said, No.
He said, “This is New York. This is Sodom and Gomorrah! In one day it will burn!” Then he showed me all of Florida. “This is Florida. This is Sodom and Gomorrah! In one day it will burn!”… Dumitru stated he was told America would burn because if it’s sin: This country will burn!
I said, what will you do with the Church? He said,
“I want to save the Church, but the churches have forsaken Me …The people praise themselves. The honor that the people are supposed to give Jesus Christ, they take upon themselves. In the churches there are divorces. There is adultery in the churches. There are homosexuals in the churches. There is abortion in the churches; and all other sins that are possible.
Because of the sin, I have left some of the churches. You must yell in a loud voice that they must put an end to their sinning. They must turn toward the Lord. The Lord never gets tired of forgiving. They must draw close to the Lord, and live a clean life. If they have sinned until now, they must put an end to it, and start a new life as the Bible tells them to live.” Dumitru asked how these things would happen:
“Remember this, Dumitru. The Russian spies have discovered where the nuclear warehouses are in America. When the Americans will think that it is peace and safety – from the middle of the country, some of the people will start fighting against the government. The government will be busy with internal problems. Then from the ocean, from Cuba, Nicaragua, Mexico,… (He told me two other countries, but I didn’t remember what they were) … they will bomb the nuclear warehouses. When they explode, America will burn!”
What will you do with the Church of the Lord? How will you save the ones that will turn toward you? I asked. He said,
“Tell them this: how I saved the three young ones from the furnace of fire, and how I saved Daniel in the lions den, is the same way I will save them.”…
“Israel doesn’t want to recognize Jesus Christ. They put their faith in the Jewish people in America. But, when America burns, the Lord will raise China, Japan, and other nations to go against the Russians. They will beat the Russians and push them all the way to the gates of Paris. Over there they will make a treaty, and appoint the Russians as their leaders. They will then unite against Israel.
When Israel realizes she does not have the strength of America behind her, she will be frightened. That’s when she will turn to the Messiah for deliverance. That’s when the Messiah will come. When I heard all of this I said, “If you are truly the angel of the Lord, and everything you have told me is true, then all you have said must be written in the Bible.”
He said, “Tell everyone to read from Jeremiah 51:8-15, Revelation Chapter 18, and Zechariah Chapter 14 , where Christ fights against those who possess the earth. Only a few short years ago, Duduman’s chilling prophetic warning seemed unfathomable. The Cold War was over. Russia and America were no longer enemies.
Thanks to Barack Obama, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton, war with Russia is on the horizon again, if not imminent. We are reminded the fact that judgement begins with the house of God . 1 Peter 4:17
Will God’s people in America repent, and delay God’s wrath?
If My people, who are called by My Name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways , then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin, and I will heal their land. 2 Chronicles 7:14 Ahead of the elections, we call on God’s people in America to take Saturday 10/29 as a day of repentance with sackcloth, ashes, and fasting. Behold, the Lord ’s hand is not shortened, That it cannot save; Nor His ear heavy, That it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God ; And your sins have hidden His face from you , So that He will not hear . For your hands are defiled with blood, And your fingers with iniquity; Your lips have spoken lies, Your tongue has muttered perversity. No one calls for justice, Nor does any plead for truth…
Their feet run to evil, And they make haste to shed innocent blood; Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; Wasting and destruction are in their paths. The way of peace they have not known, And there is no justice in their ways; They have made themselves crooked paths; Whoever takes that way shall not know peace…
We look for justice, but there is none; For salvation, but it is far from us. For our transgressions are multiplied before You, And our sins testify against us; For our transgressions are with us, And as for our iniquities, we know them: In transgressing and lying against the Lord , And departing from our God, Speaking oppression and revolt, Conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood. Justice is turned back, And righteousness stands afar off; For truth is fallen in the street , And equity cannot enter. So truth fails, And he who departs from evil makes himself a prey… Then the Lord saw it, and it displeased Him That there was no justice. He saw that there was no man, And wondered that there was no intercessor; Therefore His own arm brought salvation for Him; And His own righteousness, it sustained Him. For He put on righteousness as a breastplate, And a helmet of salvation on His head; He put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, And was clad with zeal as a cloak. According to their deeds, accordingly He will repay , Fury to His adversaries, Recompense to His enemies; The coastlands He will fully repay. So shall they fear The name of the Lord from the west , And His glory from the rising of the sun; When the enemy comes in like a flood, The Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him. “The Redeemer will come to Zion, And to those who turn from transgression in Jacob,” Says the Lord . – Isaiah 59 Dumitru’s full amazing story Through the Fire Without Burning can be found here : Excerpts from Through the Fire Without Burning by Dumitru Duduman, Published by Hand of Help, Inc . This entry was posted in World News and tagged Is America Mystery Babylon , Mystery Babylon , nuclear war , Putin WW 3 , Repent , repentance , Russia WW 3 , Teshuva , WW 3 . Bookmark the permalink . Post navigation | 0 |
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Attorney General Loretta Lynched promised this July that she would press charges against Hillary Clinton if recommended by the FBI.
As more details emerge regarding Clinton’s use of a private server during her time as Secretary of State, and a new investigation by the FBI opening only days before the election, Lynch’s promise has taken on renewed significance.
The Daily Caller reports:
The New York Times reported Friday that the emails were obtained from a device belonging to either longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin, or her estranged husband, former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner, who is under investigation for sending illicit text messages to a 15-year-old girl.
So far, Lynch has remained silent on Comey’s announcement regarding the newly discovered emails.
Lynch was the subject of public scrutiny after it was revealed that she and Bill Clinton met for 30 minutes on an airplane runway at the end of June.
Lynch admitted that the meeting “cast a shadow” over the investigation, before making her promise to accept the FBI’s recommendations.
When the FBI requested to open up a public integrity investigation into the Clinton Foundation, however, the Department of Justice (which is headed up by Lynch) declined, claiming there was insufficient evidence to open an investigation.
New details have already emerged that prove relevant to the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton. That, in fact, is why the case was re-opened yesterday.
If those new details prove particularly damning for Hillary, the FBI could very well recommend criminal charges against the former Secretary of State and current Democratic nominee for president.
Worse yet, that FBI recommendation could come before the election.
Whether or not she intends to keep the promise she made four months ago, the spotlight will certainly then fall on Lynch to act and act fast.
What she’ll do next is anyone’s guess.
But keep in mind Lynch is an Obama appointee. And if history is any indication, when given the choice between doing what is right and doing what is not right, Obama and his friends will choose the latter option every time. | 0 |
Prof. Michael Hudson on Hillary Clinton and the US Elections Video
Prof. Michael Hudson, economist and author of 'Killing the Host- How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy', speaks to Ross Ashcroft about the difficult choice faced by Americans in the upcoming US elections. Posted October 31, 2016 | 0 |
DUBLIN — The local historian had been telling the authorities for years that dead infants might have been buried in an old sewage system on the grounds of a former home for unmarried mothers and their children in the west of Ireland. Little attention was paid to her claims at first, but the questions eventually led to the establishment of a investigation. And on Friday, the investigators said that the remains of babies, small children and fetuses had been found where she said they would. The discovery, in the County Galway town of Tuam, was announced on the website of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes. “The commission is shocked by this discovery and is continuing its investigation into who was responsible for the disposal of human remains in this way,” the agency said in a statement. From 1925 to 1961, the St. Mary’s home was run by the Sisters of Bon Secours, a Roman Catholic order, but was financed by the Irish government. Tests showed that most of the remains were “likely to date from the 1950s,” according to the statement, which added that further examinations were being conducted. “This is very sad and disturbing news,” Katherine Zappone, the minister for Children and Youth Affairs, said in a statement. “It was not unexpected as there were claims about human remains on the site over the last number of years. Up to now we had rumors. ” The historian, Catherine Corless, said in an interview that she welcomed the commission’s report but thought the deaths should have been investigated “decades earlier. ” “Nobody was listening locally or in authority, from the church or the state. They said, ‘What’s the point?’ And that I shouldn’t view the past from today’s lenses. ” The remains are of some of the 796 children who died at the home over more than three decades. According to death certificates that Ms. Corless hunted down, the causes included malnutrition, measles, tuberculosis, gastroenteritis and pneumonia. The commission that was established in 2015 to investigate allegations of abuse in the institutions, which are known in Ireland as mother and baby homes, said its inquiry in Tuam focused on two structures on the grounds of St. Mary’s. The first of these structures appeared to be “a large sewage containment system or septic tank that had been decommissioned and filled with rubble and debris and then covered with topsoil,” while the second was “a long structure which is divided into 20 chambers and appears to be related to the of sewage waste water. ” It was within this second structure that the commission reported that “significant quantities of human remains had been found in at least 17 of the 20 underground chambers. ” According to the statement, the remains included those of fetuses to children up to 3 years old. Further tests are now being conducted and the commission has asked that the relevant state authorities take responsibility for the “appropriate treatment” of the remains. A coroner had also been informed, the statement added. Although there is no official state religion in Ireland, the Catholic Church has long had a profound influence over the country’s culture and government. Bearing a child outside of marriage was considered both sinful and shameful, and unmarried mothers and their children often suffered discrimination and abuse. Ms. Corless, who lives outside Tuam, went to school with children from the St. Mary’s home and remembered how they were kept to one side of the classroom and had to arrive and leave at different times so there would be no interaction with children of parents who were married. She said the “home babies,” as they were known, looked vulnerable and malnourished to her. When her own children were more grown up, she began to look into conditions at the home, and learned of the 796 deaths. None of the bodies were buried in any of the local cemeteries. She also concluded that the children lived in substandard conditions. After the home finally closed, the buildings were demolished, and now a housing development sits adjacent to the site. In 2012, Ms. Corless published an article in a local history journal. The article concluded that some of the children had been buried in an unofficial graveyard in the back of the home. But after studying a map of the grounds, she thought that other bodies might have been interred in the sewage treatment facilities. A sewage tank had been replaced by a public water system in 1937, but she said there was sufficient evidence to show that some babies and small children had been buried there while it was still in operation. Ms. Corless wanted to erect a plaque with the names of all of the children who had died, and she helped up set a committee in 2013 to finance it. The committee was unable to raise enough money. She also approached journalists with her work. In 2014, Alison O’Reilly, a reporter for the Irish edition of The Mail on Sunday, a London newspaper, wrote an article. But as it spread and was picked up by other news organizations, headlines shouted that “800 bodies” had been thrown into the septic tank. That led to criticism, and some said they found discrepancies in Ms. Corless’s work. She said on Friday that that had been difficult but that she had known she was right. “I never made a statement unless I could back it with facts. I only presented the truth. ” On Friday, the Bon Secours order issued a statement that promised its “continued cooperation with and support for the work of the commission in seeking the truth about the home. ” The order declined further comment. For years, there had been accounts of abuse at many mother and baby homes and the government agreed to begin an inquiry. The homes attracted international attention after the release of the film “Philomena,” which told the story of a woman’s search for the boy who was taken from her and was adopted by a couple in the United States. The commission has been examining allegations of abuse at 14 mother and baby homes, and four similar institutions between 1922 and 1998. But it has no power to award compensation or bring criminal charges. Ms. Corless added that it was important now that the investigation continued its work, and that “it needs to go further inside. ” The commission’s announcement marked another development in a series of scandals involving church and state in Irish life. The director of Amnesty International Ireland, Colm O’Gorman, who himself experienced clerical abuse, said it was time for the government to “join the dots. ” “There is a direct line between the industrial schools, the mother and baby homes and the abuse committed and covered up by priests,” he said. “The state never really accepted that it had accountability or responsibility when it came to their own citizens, so it outsourced all of that to the church. ” In the interview on Friday, Ms. Corless said that Ms. Zappone, the minister for children, had telephoned her earlier in the day and thanked her for her work and perseverance. | 1 |
On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher argued that President Trump “wants to be” North Korean dictator Kim and asked, “does his love of dictators foreshadow him trying that sh*t here?” Maher said Trump, “apparently, really likes to pal around with dictators. Remember Obama used to pal around with terrorists? Well, this guy, I mean, just — first of all, a couple of weeks ago, he talked about the maniac in Turkey, who had a plebiscite that basically ended democracy in Turkey, and he gave him a congratulatory call. Great dictating, man. Okay, then we have Putin. He loves Putin, right? That … guy in the Philippines. … Sisi from Egypt, he had him over at the White House, great guy, because he’s a dictator. And Kim . This is unbelievable. Kim puts out a video at the beginning of the week, where, it’s a stimulation of bombs … coming over to the White [House]. … Then, three days later, Trump says, I’d be ‘honored’ to meet him. ” Maher then stated, “He doesn’t hate Kim. He wants to be him. He wants to have military parades. He wanted to have tanks in the street for his inauguration. So, my question is, does his love of dictators foreshadow him trying that sh*t here?” He later added, “61% of Republicans think freedom of the press is necessary, which would lead me to believe that about 4 out of 10 think it’s not. ” Maher also reacted to Trump’s campaign ad by saying, “Well, if that’s not an ad for a coup, I don’t know what is. ” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 1 |
A new way to get through airport security has been certified as a “qualified anti-terrorism technology”by the Department of Homeland Security and is now being used by over 5 million people at airports across the country.
CLEAR is an identification technology that incorporates a series of questions and the use of biometrics to “clear” a person to move past the airport lines and go directly to the TSA screening line. CLEAR spokesperson David Cohen describes how it works:
They validate their identity using a knowledge-based quiz, they use a government identification that’s validated using technology, and then we link it to their bio-metrics — we take 10 fingerprints with a digital reader, we take a scan of their iris, and we take a high-res photo of their face.
CLEAR has now been deployed in 17 airports, and it will cost travelers $179 annually.
It should be considered that the airport may not keep your records private. Once your biometrics are recorded in the CLEAR database, this information can be sold to third-party companies for use in malls, train stations or department stores.
CLEAR could be the “soft sell” strategy to incentivize travelers to provide this information for convenience so that it could be used to identify individuals everywhere they go. Delivered by The Daily Sheeple
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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), approximately 11% of American children between the ages of 4 and 17 have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) as of 2011. However, if you ask the American Psychiatric Association (APA), they maintain that even though only 5% of American children suffer from the disorder, the diagnosis is actually given to around 15% of American children. This number has been steadily rising , jumping from 7.8% in 2003 to 9.5% in 2007. Big Pharma has played a significant role in manufacturing the ADHD epidemic in the U.S., convincing parents and doctors that ADHD is a common problem amongst children and one that should be medicated. However, many countries disagree with the American stance on ADHD, so much so that they have entirely different structures for defining, diagnosing, and treating it. For example, the percentage of children in France that have been diagnosed and medicated for ADHD is less than 0.5% . This is largely because French doctors don’t consider ADHD a biological disorder with biological causes, but rather a medical condition caused by psycho-social and situational factors.
Why France Defines ADHD Differently French child psychiatrists use a different system than American psychiatrists to classify emotional problems in childhood. Instead of using the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) , the French use an alternative classification system produced by the French Federation of Psychiatry called Classification Française des Troubles Mentaux de L’Enfant et de L’Adolescent (CFTMEA). Not only does this significantly differ from the APA’s system, but it was actually created with the intention to “ offer French child psychiatrists an alternative to DSM-III ” because it didn’t compliment French psychiatric practices. The CFTMEA encourages psychiatrists to identify the underlying issues that cause a child’s symptoms and to address them using a psychopathological approach.
France defines ADHD as a sociological disorder that’s caused by a set of social situations, whereas the U.S. sees ADHD as a neurological disorder whose symptoms are the result of biological disfunction or a chemical imbalance in the brain. France’s definition of ADHD drastically differs from that of the U.S., which is in part because the pharmaceutical industry helped define ADHD in the U.S. (you can read more about that here ). France’s treatment methods, therefore, also greatly differ from those practiced in the U.S.
Treatment Methods for ADHD Used in France Once a French psychiatrist diagnoses their patient with ADHD, they hone in on the behavioural problems by searching for the underlying causes. Psychiatrists will study the child’s distress and compare it to their social situations. France views ADHD as a social context problem; therefore, ADHD is often treated with psychotherapy or even family counselling. Very rarely do French psychiatrists prescribe medications to treat ADHD, as it’s usually rendered unnecessary after taking a more holistic approach.
It’s important to note that French psychiatrists also consider a patient’s diet when searching for the causes of behavioural symptoms associated with ADHD. Poor eating habits such as consuming foods with artificial colours or flavourings, preservatives, sugars, and/or allergens may worsen a child’s behaviour. This isn’t difficult to imagine; even as adults we can feel the effects certain foods have on our mood, energy levels, and thought processes.
Why There Are Fewer ADHD Cases in France Than the U.S. A study conducted in 2011 stated that the amount of youth in France with ADHD may be as low as 3.5% — a far cry from the 11 to 15% estimate in the United States. Family therapist and author of A Disease Called Childhood: Why ADHD Became an American Epidemic Dr. Marilyn Wedge suggests that this may be as a result of the cultural differences between the U.S. and France in regards to raising children. According to Wedge, French parents will often impose more structured lifestyles onto their children, such as enforcing strict meal times and using the “cry it out” method with babies and toddlers. Children are taught self-discipline at a young age, which is why Wedge feels they don’t need to be medicated for behavioural issues.
Unfortunately, spanking is not considered child abuse in France, so this practice is used fairly often to encourage discipline. In March 2015, the Council of Europe, an international human rights organization, faulted France over the country’s lack of legislation regarding corporal punishment of children. As The New York Times explained , “Child abuse is illegal in France and is punished with long prison sentences, but it is not uncommon for French parents to slap or spank children, or for the French courts to view such actions as acceptable under a customary ‘right to discipline.’ “
As Dr. Wedge points out (although neither she nor Collective Evolution support spanking or any other form of child abuse), this simply adds to the discipline they’re encouraged to practice throughout their childhood ( source ).While Wedge makes some interesting points regarding discipline, I don’t think that’s the underlying reason why most French children don’t need to be medicated for ADHD. Rather, because ADHD is largely a behavioural issue, it rarely requires pharmacological intervention. I believe that these treatment methods are successful in France not because of their parenting culture, but rather as a result of their holistic approach in considering diet and behavioural and social context.
I believe France does not have an issue with over-diagnosing ADHD in the same way the U.S. does because pharmaceutical companies have not targeted them as heavily. Pharmaceutical companies play a substantial role in defining ADHD and deciding treatment methods in the U.S. For example, doctors and researchers in the U.S. have been paid to overstate the dangers of ADHD and the benefits of taking their drugs and understate the negative side effects. It’s easy for people to believe this misguided information when it’s affiliated with well-known universities like Harvard and Johns Hopkins. Many people don’t even realize that these studies are funded by the very companies that profit from the drugs’ sale because that relationship is hidden in small print ( source ). These drugs can have significant side effects and are actually considered to be within the same class as morphine and oxycodone due to their high risk of abuse and addiction. You can’t just blame all doctors, either; many of them genuinely believe they’re helping these children because of the information they’ve been given in these studies and by Big Pharma.
Another reason the U.S. has substantially higher rates of ADHD amongst children than France is because of the ADHD drug advertisements that run in the U.S. Big Pharma creates ads for ADHD drugs sold in the U.S. that are specifically targeted at parents, describing how these drugs can improve test scores and behaviour at home, among other false claims. One of the most controversial ones was a 2009 ad for Intuniv, Shire’s A.D.H.D. treatment, which included a child in a monster costume taking off his terrifying mask to reveal his calm, smiling self with a text reading, “There’s a great kid in there.” The FDA has stepped in multiple times, sending pharmaceutical companies warning letters or even forcing them to take down their ads because they are false, misleading, and/or exaggerate the effects of their drugs ( source ). This type of propaganda doesn’t take place in France, at least not on the same scale as the in U.S., largely because it doesn’t coincide with their ADHD diagnosis framework. You can read more about this topic in another article I wrote here .
How to Use This Information to More Effectively Treat ADHD France’s CFTMEA, definition for ADHD, and holistic approach to treating this disorder provide an excellent example of how we should be addressing ADHD patients, especially children. Instead of getting to the root of these children’s “attention deficits” like French psychiatrists do, American health practitioners typically assume ADHD is a medical condition that can only be fixed with medication. This is not only unethical, but also clearly damaging to a child’s self esteem. Many of these kids could simply be uninterested in the subject matter, suffering from some sort of emotional trauma, or even have heightened creativity and energy! You can’t just blame all doctors in the U.S., either; many of them genuinely believe they’re helping these children because of the information they’ve been given in these studies and by Big Pharma.
However, many scientists in the U.S. have suggested alternatives to medicine to treat ADHD and many of them don’t even recognize ADHD as a disorder (read our article on why ADHD may not be real here ). Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine and Editor-in-Chief of The Carlat Psychiatry Report Daniel J. Carlat, M.D , criticized the DSM, stating , “In psychiatry, many diseases are treated equally well with medication or therapy, but the guidelines tend to be biased toward medication.”
Holistic Mental Health Practitioner Dr. Tyler Woods further explains:
The DSM tends to pathologize normal behaviors. For instance, the label “Anxiety Disorder” can be given as a result of some kinds of normal and rather healthy anxieties but the DSM will have experts view it and treat it as mental illness. In addition simple shyness can be seen and treated as “Social Phobia”, while spirited and strong willed children as “Oppositional Disorder”. Consequently, many psychotherapists, regardless of their theoretical orientations, tend to follow the DSM as instructed. ( source )
Neurologist Richard Saul spent his career examining patients who struggle with short attention spans and difficulty focusing. His extensive experience has led him to believe that ADHD isn’t actually a disorder, but rather an umbrella of symptoms that shouldn’t be considered a disease. Thus, Saul believes it shouldn’t be listed as a separate disorder in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic & Statistical Manual. You can read more about his opinion in our article here .
Leading integrative pediatrician and author of ADHD without Drugs: A Guide to the Natural Care of Children with ADHD Dr. Sanford Newmark, M.D. has spent more than 15 years studying and successfully treating ADHD naturally. Some of his recommendations include improved nutrition, increased sleep, iron, zinc, and Omega-3 supplementation, family counselling, making positive social and behavioural changes, and pursing alternative modalities such as Traditional Chinese Medicine and Homeopathy. Dr. Newmark considers conventional medication a “last resort,” given the fact that ADHD drugs only work about 70% of the time and have potential negative side effects ( source ).
It is clear that many doctors are starting to recognize the importance of treating ADHD outside conventional methods. Misdiagnosis and over-diagnosis of ADHD is a serious issue in the U.S., one that is heavily fuelled by the pharmaceutical industry. If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with ADHD, I strongly suggest you research this subject more and explore alternatives to medication with the help of a healthcare practitioner!
“The very vocabulary of psychiatry is now defined at all levels by the pharmaceutical industry.”
– Dr. Irwin Savodnik, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California in Los Angeles ( source )
Related CE Articles:
A.D.H.D. Nation: How Big Pharma Created the A.D.H.D. Epidemic
The Truth About ‘ADHD’ That Should Prevent Parents From Needlessly Drugging Their Child
4 Facts About ADHD That Teachers & Doctors Never Tell Parents
Before His Death, Father of ADHD Admitted it Was an Over-Diagnosed Disease
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When you say 'the server' Obama didn't know exactly which serial number was associated with this piece of hardware, so you can say it was factual that "Obama himself denied any knowledge of the server". He did not have knowledge of the color of the ribbon cable between the hard drive, he did not know how much memory was associated with it. All he knew was something about the tax payers didn't have to cover the cost of the machine. For this he was glad. | 0 |
Times of Israel reports: With the evacuation of the Amona outpost looming, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Tuesday approved the construction of around 3, 000 new homes in the West Bank, some of them outside settlement blocs Israel hopes to keep in a future peace deal with the Palestinians. [The decision came a week after Israel approved the construction of 566 housing units in East Jerusalem and 2, 500 homes in the West Bank. In a statement, the Defense Ministry said the new construction “comes as part of a return to normal life in Judea and Samaria, as well as conduct which provides real solutions to housing and living needs. Read more here. | 1 |
In audio recordings released by Project Veritas, CNN Vice President and Senior Editorial Director Richard Griffiths was caught claiming that the role of the journalist is to “aid the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. ”[“If we are journalists, what is our role as a journalist? What is the fundamental role as a journalist, for us to do?” remarked Griffiths in one of the recordings. “Tell a story. Tell what’s going on. There’s a secondary corollary to that, right? Aid the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. To a degree, right?” “Is that not part of the traditional role of a journalist? It’s actually one of the things I can be most proud of as a journalist,” he continued. “You know we try to show the ugly side of humanity so we can do something about it. It’s hard, very hard. ” The released tapes also reveal CNN’s “misrepresentation of polling data” and the news outlet’s disdain for conservative media. 119 hours of audio data have so far been released with over 100 more hours reportedly to come. Recorded in 2009 at CNN’s Atlanta HQ, the audio clips feature numerous employees including Joe Sterling, Arthur Brice, and Nicky Robertson. Project Veritas made a call for leaked information, offering $10, 000 to anyone else “that exposes media malfeasance. ” “Project Veritas is determined to expose malfeasance, corruption and wrongdoing,” declared Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe. “We want to become a destination where citizen journalists can come forward, work with us and make a real impact. That’s why today, we’re announcing a $10, 000 award for anyone that comes forward with legally obtained materials exposing media malfeasance. If you have hidden audio recordings, video tapes or documents inside of a news room or media institution — and the material is good enough — I will pay you $10, 000. ” In a comment to Breitbart Tech, O’Keefe spoke of his concern at the growing leftist bias of social media companies and warned that Project Veritas would investigate them too. “Yes we know about it, we’re concerned about it, we’re fighting it,” said O’Keefe. “[CNN Leaks] is the first in a long effort to target and expose abuse within the media, and that includes social media … Who knows? Maybe we have someone inside with a camera right now, recording everything. ” Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 1 |
— Rosie Percy (@rosiepercy) October 27, 2016 5. For Halloween, I'm dressing up as that time you farted in an empty office but then someone walked in to talk to you.
— castaignede (@Castaignede) October 21, 2016 6. This Halloween, I'm dressing up as when you see someone you know, so you wave, only it's not them and you have run all the way onto the moon
— TittyBiscuits. (@dawneywawney) October 23, 2016 7. For Halloween I will be dressing as a human; for truly, is not the monster we fear most within our hearts?
Or maybe a zombie, not sure yet.
— Moose Allain (@MooseAllain) October 26, 2016 8.
— Halloween Ahir (@AhirShah) October 17, 2016 9.
— Some Ghostwriter (@testicleas) October 20, 2016 But there’s always that one killjoy, and this year it’s @JessicaJones , who tweets “For #Halloween I’m dressing up as someone who wants people to get the hell away from them. Really excited about it.” | 0 |
Wed, 26 Oct 2016 20:12 UTC © Daniel Mihailescu / AFP US, Turkey and Poland are among the NATO member states which confirmed their readiness to dispatch naval units to the Black Sea in 2017, boosting the alliance's presence in the region, according to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. Stoltenberg noted "progress" in in strengthening NATO's presence in the Black Sea Region in his statement after the meeting of the block's defense ministers in Brussels on Wednesday. "With a Romania-led multinational framework brigade on land and we're working on measures in the air and at sea," he said. According to the secretary General, several member-states " indicated their willingness to contribute to our presence in the Black Sea region on land, at sea and in the air, including Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Turkey and the US ." "Other allies are also looking into how they can contribute," he added. Comment: Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and the US have no business in provoking tensions with Russia in the Black Sea. Of the countries listed, only Turkey has shores on the Black Sea. Interestingly, Bulgaria isn't listed. Perhaps they learned their lesson in botching their involvement in Russia's Nord Stream project. Zing! The plans on enhancing Black Sea presence will be finalized during another meeting on NATO ministers in February. Following Crimea's reunification with Russia, NATO has been increasingly concerned about the Black Sea is turning into a "Russian lake." Since the spring of 2014, NATO warships, including missile cruisers from the US and other allied nations, have been patrolling the Black Sea on a rotational basis, never leaving the area unattended. NATO decided to increase their presence in the Black Sea during a summit in Warsaw in July, calling it a response to Russia's increasing military capabilities and is a gesture of support to its Eastern European members. Comment: Baloney. Eastern European members are under no threat from Russia. This operation is part of the information war to create the image of a Russian threat. The military beef-up in the region is expected lead to the creation of NATO's Black Sea Fleet to be formed by member-states with direct access to the sea. Stoltenberg also said that 17 NATO countries will delegate their units to join the four multinational ground battalions to be deployed in Poland and the Baltic State early next year. The battalions will be led by the US, UK, Canada and Germany, while the countries sending their forces included France, Poland, Albania, Romania, Croatia and others. The Secretary General stressed that NATO was monitoring the movement of Russian vessels in the Baltic Sea. "I can confirm that two Russian warships have recently entered the Baltic Sea, and NATO is monitoring this movement in the way we always do," he said. However, Stoltenberg stressed that, despite its buildup in Eastern Europe, the alliance is ready for dialogue with Moscow. "We are concerned about Russia's behavior. Bur dialogue is even more important when tensions run high. And allies stand ready to hold an ambassadorial meeting of the NATO-Russia Council in the near future," he said. | 0 |
Media Outlets Pledge Evenhanded Criticism Of Trump, Clinton Over Next 4 Years Close Vol 52 Issue 44 · Politics · News Media · Hillary Clinton · Donald Trump
NEW YORK—Declaring that they would work tirelessly to hold both figures to account, the nation’s media outlets pledged Thursday that they would not relent in providing evenhanded criticism of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton over the next four years. “We want to assure the American people that throughout the forthcoming presidential term, we will, with equal rigor, hold both Trump’s and Clinton’s feet to the fire on the issues that matter most,” said CNN president Jeff Zucker, who echoed official statements made by every other cable, print, and online news source across the country by affirming that it was the responsibility of the press to ensure both individuals were made to answer for their misdeeds during the next administration. “While we vow to carefully monitor the decisions and actions of the nation’s next president and expose his and his cabinet’s failings wherever they appear, we also make a solemn promise to provide a balanced critique by refusing to ever let Clinton off the hook. The nation can continue to count on us for fair, equitable reporting on the most important political developments.” At press time, members of the media were already diligently researching what effect Clinton’s email scandal might have on Trump’s foreign policy. Share This Story: WATCH VIDEO FROM THE ONION Sign up For The Onion's Newsletter
Give your spam filter something to do. Daily Headlines | 0 |
Trump Camp Accused Of Anti-Semitism President Trump Has Shattered Jews' American Idyll November 14, " Haaretz " - American Jews have transformed virtually overnight from insiders to outsiders; the appointment of ex-Breitbart CEO Steve Bannon, an accused anti-Semite, as chief strategist, is bound to exacerbate the tensions.
By Chemi Shalev WASHINGTON Those were the best of times, arguably, but these may be the worst of times. Thats the way most American Jews must feel as they wake up with a massive hangover from the shock election results and the reality that Donald Trump will soon be President of the United States.
Whatever differences American Jews may have had with Barack Obama over the Iran nuclear deal and Middle East peace, theyve never had a president who was more in tune with their Jewish and liberal essence.
Obama was the realization of the American Jewish vision of a multicultural society, a dream come true for a generation of civil rights activists. He promoted and embodied the liberal ideals that American Jews are more attached to than any other religious group in America. And he was more knowledgeable about American Jewish culture and Yiddishkeit than any previous president, bar none. Even when they disagreed with him, most American Jews, with the exception of the vocal minority that hated his guts, viewed Obama as a mensch.
It is probably no coincidence that during his tenure, American Jews reached a pinnacle of social and cultural acceptance. Being American Jews was hip. It was cool. It was the thing to be. From Jon Stewart to Jerry Seinfeld, from Joe Lieberman to Bernie Sanders, Jews seemed to be more entrenched than ever before in the American mainstream. Pew Research Polls repeatedly confirmed that Jews were the most loved and most admired religious group in all of America. Mashiach-zeit, old timers would say, but with a note of caution, because if Jewish history teaches anything, it is that all things must pass.
The election of Donald Trump has shattered the Jewish idyll, all across the board. Although one must give the president-elect the benefit of the doubt that he is not an anti-Semite himself, he has frequently promoted disparaging Jewish stereotypes in his personal statements. Sunday evenings appointment of former Breitbart CEO Steve Bannon as chief strategist in the White House is bound to exacerbate Jewish tensions. He is considered the standard bearer for the racist, anti-immigrant alt-right movement and has been accused of harboring anti-Semitic sentiments himself.
Trump has repeatedly and unapologetically disseminated white supremacist tweets. His campaign has used anti-Semitic symbols that Trump has failed to disown even when advised of their offensive content. He has distanced himself from his neo-Nazi supporters only under duress. And under his wings, America has seen an unprecedented outburst of blunt and naked hatred of Jews, which has only gotten worse since his election.
In recent months, most prominent Jewish journalists and other public critics of Trump have been harassed by anti-Semites on social media, in their mail at home and, in some cases, in close physical contact. Swastikas have been painted at schools. Jewish students have been threatened, taunted, told that Adolf Hitler was right all along. Along with Muslims, Hispanics, and African Americans, they are being targeted as the sworn enemies of the America First Weltanschauung that Trump is bringing with him to the White House.
The shock that many Jews are feeling now is partly of their making. In recent years, the American Jewish establishment has willingly enlisted in the Israeli governments effort to depict ever-widening circles of anti-Israeli agitation on the left as anti-Semitism. The fight against BDS and the efforts to portray it as hatred of Jews in another form has consumed the time, energy and resources of the American Jewish leadership, with the possible exception of the Anti-Defamation League.
Meanwhile, virulent and classic anti-Semitism lurking just under the radical rights surface was virtually ignored, concealed by the mainstream right-wings overwhelming support for Israel. Even mentioning it was considered to be an anti-Israeli provocation.
Trumps triumph has unleashed the pent up resentment against Jews. His reluctance to tackle manifestations of racism and white supremacism among his supporters has energized and empowered it. If he and his advisers dont take assertive steps soon, anti-Jewish agitators will feel they have a license from the White House to do as they please. They will get bolder, grow stronger, recruit new adherents and increasingly resort to violence: weve seen it before.
But even if brazen anti-Semitic incidents are quelled or die down by themselves, there is no denying that Jews have transformed virtually overnight from insiders to outsiders. Not only did they vote overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton, prominent conservative Jews who could have allayed their concerns are the ones who have distanced themselves from Trump over the course of the campaign and will play no role in his administration.
American Jewish liberals are bound to feel alienated from their own government in way theyve never felt before. Most of the values, goals and policy objectives of the Trump administration, even if they turn out to be a paler and more palatable version of his campaign rhetoric, are diametrically opposed to those of most American Jews. They support immigration, pluralism, multiculturalism, social reform, government intervention, separation of church and state, gay marriage, abortion rights and on and on. It is easy to see, in fact, why so many of Trumps radical supporters would view the Jews as their mortal enemies.
As Shmuel Rosner rightly points out for the wrong reasons, Trump may ultimately divide Israeli and American Jews. But the reason for that is not limited, as Rosner asserts, to the yet to be proven assumption that American Jews will resent their Israeli counterparts for liking Trump because he is pro-Israel. It is because Trumps core message, his reactionary, nativist, chauvinistic, anti-foreigner, anti-immigrant and mainly anti-Muslim worldview is shared by far too many, though far from all Israelis, and is embraced by its ruling coalition. And because many Israeli Jews are indifferent to right-wing anti-Semitism and indeed share right-wing disdain toward the liberalism of American Jews.
Of course, all may not be bleak. Perhaps Trump will fight the anti-Semitism on his radical fringe with increasing vigor. Possibly his policies will be less offensive to American Jews. Perhaps the American Jewish establishment will produce a leadership capable of meeting these trying times. Who knows, maybe some American Jews will finally realize they should support Israeli Jews who share their worldview rather than a government that doesnt.
And if worse comes to worst, to paraphrase Casablanca, liberal American Jews will always have Israel itself. Moderate, liberal Israelis, beleaguered and on the point of despair, will flock to the airport to welcome them with open arms. Mashiach-zeit, they will tell themselves, in awe. Š Haaretz Daily Newspaper Ltd. All Rights Reserved | 0 |
On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” columnist Charles Krauthammer argued that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling against President Trump’s immigration order was “a disgraceful conclusion, because what they did, is they substituted their judgment, as to what constitutes a threat to American security for the president’s. ” Krauthammer said, “I think this is a disgraceful conclusion, because what they did, is they substituted their judgment, as to what constitutes a threat to American security for the president’s. Now we were all interested in what they think, but that is irrelevant to the case. The case was, does the president have the authority to do it? And if he does, it’s his judgment to make. And that’s the plain reading of the law. It’s he plain understanding of the Constitution. I think the policy was unwise, but that’s irrelevant. I think it’s very clearly legal. ” He added that the order’s chances at the Supreme Court isn’t a “slam dunk,” and could end up a where the 9th Circuit’s ruling is upheld. Krauthammer further stated that he thought the government’s arguments in front of the court were “exceedingly weak. ” And the administration wasn’t prepared to defend the case in court. Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 1 |
. NAZI Flying Saucers & A Permanent Base in Antarctica A highly guarded secret is the probablity that German Nazis, as early as the 1930s, have built a sec... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/nazi-flying-saucers-permanent-base-in.html A highly guarded secret is the probablity that German Nazis, as early as the 1930s, have built a secret base at the South Pole. While this idea undoubtedly will strike most people as absurd, there is tantalizing evidence to suggest that something along this line might have some truth to it.Long-standing banking and business connections allowed high-ranking German leaders in 1944 to forge a formidable Nazi-controlled organization for postwar activities.Author Jim Keith wrote:"...in researching the shape of totalitarian control during this century, I saw that the plans of the Nazis manifestly did not die with the German loss of World War II. "The ideology and many of the principal players survived and flourished after the war, and have had a profound impact on postwar history, and on events taking place today."Orvis A. Schmidt, the U.S. Treasury Department’s director of Foreign Funds Control, in 1945 offered this description of a Nazi flight-capital program:The network of trade, industrial, and cartel organizations has been streamlined and intermeshed, not only organizationally but also by what has been officially described as ‘Personnel Union’.Legal authority to operate this organizational machinery has been vested in the concerns that have majority capacity in the key industries such as those producing iron and steel, coal and basic chemicals. These concerns have been deliberately welded together by exchanges of stock to the point where a handful of men can make policy and other decisions that affect us all.Could one of those "decisions" have been the creation of a Nazi base connected to the development of UFOs? While this notion may superficially appear to be sheer nonsense, the public record offers compelling — if incomplete — evidence to support this idea.One theory is that Martin Bormann and other top Nazis escaped to South America and on to a secret base in Antarctica — renamed Neuschwabenland by the Germans — where they built UFOs so sophisticated that their secret Nazi empire has exerted significant control over world events and governments to this day. Read: Hitler Escaped to Argentina & Died Old: Pictures of Him After the War, FBI Documents, DNA Analysis of Skull & Pictures of His House Reportedly, German Navy Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz stated in 1943:"The German submarine fleet is proud of having built for the Führer in another part of the world a Shangri-La on land, an impregnable fortress."And it has been reported that U.S. Admiral Richard Byrd , upon his return from an expedition to Antarctica in 1947, stated it was,"necessary for the USA to take defensive actions against enemy air fighters which come from the polar regions" and that America could be "attacked by fighters that are able to fly from one pole to the other with incredible speed."Advancing the idea that the Nazis continually shipped men and material to the South Pole throughout the war years, author R. A. Harbinson wrote:"Regarding the possibility of the Germans building self-sufficient underground research factories in the Antarctic, it has only to be pointed out that the underground research centers of Nazi Germany were gigantic feats of construction, containing wind tunnels, machine shops, assembly plants, launching pads, supply dumps and accommodation for all who worked there, including adjoining camps for slaves — and yet very few people knew that they existed."But, while tales of a secret Nazi base in Antarctica may appear plausible to some, the idea that a warm water location at the South Pole has remained undiscovered and no one has escaped or deserted the place in more than 50 years stretched belief to the breaking point in years past.But with the new revelations of 60-70 degree temperature water, magnetic anomalies suggesting the possibility of a hidden city or base and the obvious back out taking place concerning current events at the pole, the idea of a secret base is no longer so far fetched.Rumors began to circulate that whilst Germany had been defeated, a selection of military personnel and scientists had fled the fatherland as allied troops swept across mainland Europe, and had established themselves at a secret base on the Antarctic continent, from where they continued to develop their advanced aircraft technology.Furthermore, it is interesting to note that at the end of the war, the allies determined that there were 250,000 Germans unaccounted for — even taking into account casualties and deaths. Huge Discovery: Nazi Maps and Documents to Agartha Confirm the Hollow Earth Accounts Could Neu Schwabenland have been a permanently manned German base at that time? The brackish water of the warm (30 degrees) lakes virtually confirmed that all had an outlet to the sea and would thus have been a haven for U-boats. The two ice-free mountain ranges in Neu Schwabenland presented no worse an underground tunneling project for Organization Todt than anything they had encountered and overcome in Norway.The Germans were the world's experts at building and inhabiting underground metropolis.At the end of the war the United States gave anything concerning Ohrdruf a top secret classification for 100 years upwards. The fact that there had been substantial underground workings there, and Ohrdruf was the location of the last Redoubt, was concealed absolutely. Fortunately for researchers, in 1962 the DDR had taken sworn depositions from all local residents during an investigation into wartime Ohrdruf, and upon the reunification of the two Germanys in 1989, these documents became available to all and sundry at Arnstadt municipal archive.From the Arnstadt documents it is clear that the Charite Anlage unit operated in a three-story underground bunker with floors 70 by 20 meters.When working, the device emitted some kind of energy field which shut down all electrical equipment and non-diesel engines within a range of about eight miles.For this reason, even though Ohrdruf was crawling with SS, it was never photographed from the air nor bombed. Declassified USAF documents dated early 1945 admit the existence of an unknown energy field over Frankfurt/Main "and other locations" which "fantastic though it may appear" were able to "interfere with our aircraft engines at 30,000 feet."Ohrdruf rebuilt below Neu Schwabenland during the last two years of the war would not have been difficult, and since Charite Anlage had the highest priority of anything in the Third Reich, it seems likely that it must have been.Such a base would have been impregnable, for the suggestion is that the force-field worked in various ways favorable to the occupants. Scary Secrets of the Third Reich's Base in Antarctica A remarkable event occurred in 1999, but only specialists paid adequate attention to it.A research expedition discovered a virus in Antarctica; at that, neither people nor animals had immunity to the virus. After all, Antarctica is far away, for this very reason the virus cannot be dangerous for the rest of the planet, especially since the dangerous discovery was deep in the permafrost.However, scientists say that against the background of a global warming threatening the Earth, the unknown virus can cause an awful catastrophe on the planet.Expert Tom Starmerue from the University of New York also shares the pessimistic forecasts of his colleagues."We don't know what the mankind will face in the South Pole in the nearest time due to the global warming. It is not ruled out that an unbelievable catastrophe may break out. "Viruses protected with a protein cover survive even in the permafrost; as soon as the temperature gets warmer they will immediately start reproducing."American scientists treated the Antarctica discovery very seriously and even organized a special expedition that currently tests the ice for unknown viruses in order to develop an antidote in good time.What is the source of the virus in Antarctica where only penguins can survive in the ice? There is no answer to the question, specialists are at a loss. However, several theories concerning the problem have been put forward.A majority of scientists are inclined to believe that prehistoric forms of life probably survived in the permafrost. But some specialists blame bonzes of the Third Reich for delivery of a secretly developed bacteriological weapon to Antarctica. And this theory arose not in a vacuum. It is known that already in 1938 Nazis suddenly became interested in Antarctica, they organized two expeditions to the area in 1938-1939.At first, planes of the Third Reich took detailed pictures of unexplored territories and then they dropped several thousands of metal pennons with swastika there. The whole of the explored territory was called Neuschwabenland and was considered a part of the Third Reich.After the expedition, Captain Ritscher reported to Field-Marshal Göring:"The planes dropped the pennons 25 kilometers apart; we covered the area of about 8.600 thousand square meters. 350 thousand square meters of them were photographed."In 1943, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz dropped a remarkable phrase:"Germany's submarine fleet is proud that it created an unassailable fortress for the Führer on the other end of the world."It highly likely means that Nazis were building a secret base in Antarctica within 1938-1943.Submarines were mostly used for transportation of necessary freight to the place.As specialists for the Third Reich wrote, at the end of WWII the submarines were relieved of their torpedo arms in the port of Kiel and then were loaded with containers with different goods. The submarines also received passengers whose faces were hidden behind surgical bands.Wilhelm Bernhard was commander of one of the submarines, U-530; the submarine left the port of Kiel on April 13, 1945. When it reached the shores of Antarctica, 16 members from the crew built an ice cave and put boxes into the cave; it was allegedly said that the boxes contained relics of the Third Reich, including Hitler's documents and personal stuff. The operation was code named Valkyrie-2.When the operation was over on July 10, 1945, the submarine U-530 entered the Argentinean port of Mar-del-Plata and surrendered to the authorities.It is also supposed that another submarine from the formation, U-977, under the command of Heinz Schäffer delivered the remains of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun to Neuschwabenland. It followed the route of the U-530 submarine and called at Antarctica. The submarine arrived in Mar-del-Plata on August 17, 1945.But the version of Wilhelm Bernhard and Heinz Schäffer saying that the submarines delivered relics to the Antarctica shores (both captains told it at the interrogations held by the American and British intelligence services) seems rather dubious. It is unlikely that the serious operation was designed only for the sake of delivery of the Third Reich documents and relics.Later, special services seized a confidential letter of Captain Schäffer to his friend, Captain Wilhelm Bernhard who obviously planned to publish his memoirs.The letter was dated with June 1, 1983.It runs as follows: "Dear Willy,I was thinking if it is reasonable to publish your manuscript concerning the U-530. The three submarines that took part in that operation (U-977, U-530 and U-465) are currently at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Isn't it better to leave them there? My old friend, think about it! Think please how then my book will look when you publish your memoirs (after, WWII Heinz Schäffer wrote a book named "U-977").We all made an oath to keep the secret; we did nothing wrong, we just obeyed the orders and fought for our loved Germany and its survival. Please think again: isn't it better to picture everything as a fable? What results do you plan to achieve with your revelations? Think about it, please." Even 40 years after the events, Heinz insisted that Bernhard mustn't say the truth. Is it possible that the submarines delivered something more dangerous to the continent, not Hitler's documents?Could it be the bacteriological weapon traces of which were discovered in Antarctica as unknown viruses in the permafrost last year? NEUBERLIN If you had been a Wehrmacht soldier at the bombed-out railroad station in Poltava, a city in the Ukraine, during the summer of 1942, you may have seen a very strange-looking military unit on the march, heading for a waiting passenger train.The unit consisted of women, all of them blond and blue-eyed, between the ages of 17 and 24, tall and slender, their sensational figures encased in striking sky-blue uniforms.Each woman wore an Italian-style garrison cap, an A-line skirt with the hem below the knee, and a form-fitting jacket with the insignia of the SS. You might have thought the SS had recruited a platoon of high-class call girls, but the truth was far stranger than that. You would have been looking at Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler's latest brainstorm - the Antarktische Siedlungnsfrauen [Antarctic Settlement Women or ASF].The story actually begins in 1938, when the German seaplane carrier Schwabenland sailed across the South Atlantic, bound for Queen Maud's Land in Antarctica.According to Russian ufologist Konstantin Ivanenko,"The Schwabenland sailed to Antarctica, commanded by Albert Richter, a veteran of cold-weather operations."The Richter expedition's scientists used their large Dornier seaplanes to explore the polar wastes, emulating Admiral Richard E. Byrd's efforts a decade earlier."The German scientists discovered ice-free lakes (heated by underground volcanic features) and were able to land on them. It is widely believed that the Schwabenland's expedition was aimed at scouting out a secret base of operations."A German base was established in the Muhlig-Hofmann Mountains, just inland from the Princess Astrid Coast. The area was renamed Neuschwabenland (New Swabia) and "the base was known only as Station 211.From the movie Schindler's List, people have gotten the idea that killing Jews was the Nazis' main concern. But in actual fact, Hitler and the SS were just as ruthless with the rest of the population in their eastern European empire, thinking nothing of shuffling large numbers of people around in their quest for a more perfect Aryan race.This shuffle was accomplished by a little-known office of the SS called the Rasse und Siedlungshauptamt (German for Race and Settlement Bureau) or RuSHA. In the Ukraine alone, RuSHA drafted 500,000 women for forced labor in the munitions factories of Nazi Germany.It was RuSHA which selected women for Himmler's unit of Antarktische Siedlungsfrauen (Antarctic Settlement Women) About half of the "recruits" were Volksdeutsch-ethnic Germans whose ancestors had settled in the Ukraine in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The others were native Ukrainians whom RuSHA had "upgraded" to full Aryans.This process was called Eindeutschung (Germanization).According to Ivanenko,"There is increased popularity for the idea of a 'German-Slavonic Antarctic Reich.' It is said that 10,000 of the 'racially most pure' Ukrainians, out of half a million deported in 1942 by Martin Bormann, were transported to the German Antarctic bases during World War II, in the proportion of four Ukrainian women to one German man."If true, this would mean that Himmler transferred 2,500 Waffen-SS soldiers, who had proven themselves in combat on the Russian front, to Station 211 - now Neuschwabenland - in Antarctica. This may be the source of the myth of the "Last SS Battalion."An ASF training camp was set up in Estonia, on a peninsula near Ristna on Hiiumaa Island in the Baltic Sea. It was a combination finishing school and boot camp, where the ladies took lessons in charm and housekeeping along with their courses in polar survival. Himmler kept the camp's existence a closely-guarded secret. For "unhappy campers," the only escape consisted of a one-way train ticket to Auschwitz.(There is one known instance of an ASF "deserter." In 1943, Auschwitz guard Irma Griese, 22, the off-and-on girl friend of Dr. Josef Mengele , took to wearing a sky-blue ASF uniform, which she had scavenged from a pile of inmate clothing. Griese was hanged in 1946 for war crimes. The uniform's original owner must have had serious second thoughts about a permanent move to Antarctica).The failure of Grossadmiral Karl Dönitz's U-boat offensive by May 1943 freed up dozens of "milk cow" U- boats. These were large submarines, almost as big as tramp steamers, which Dönitz had used to supply his U- boat "wolf packs" in remote seas of the world. Himmler now put them to work carting supplies and personnel to Antarctica.Himmler's rationale for sending thousands of settlers to Antarctica can only be understood within the context of his mystic beliefs. As a result of his youthful reading of New Age books, his association with the occultist Dr. Friedrich Wichtl, and his membership in the Artamen, Himmler became a believer in the Hindu concept of world-ages or yugas. He believed that the current age, or Kali Yuga, would end in a global cataclysm, thereby giving birth to a new world-age called the Satya Yuga.By sending a Nazi colony to Antarctica, Himmler was ensuring that a remnant of the "pure Aryan race" would survive the coming cataclysm with its society and culture intact. They would then take possession of Antarctica when the cataclysm melted the south polar ice cap.According to believers, the Neuschwabenland colony survived not only the end of World War II, but a full on battle with the 3,500 Marines and aircraft of Operation High Jump .In 2003 Ivanenko wrote:"The total population of Nazis in Antarctica now exceeds two million and that many of them have undergone plastic surgery in order to move about with greater ease through South America and conduct all manner of business transactions."He called the Antarctic Reich,"one of the most militarily powerful states in the world because it can destroy the USA several times over with its submarine-based nuclear missiles, remaining itself invulnerable to U.S. nuclear strikes because of the two-mile-thick ice shield."Further, he claims that the city of Neu Berlin, the colony's capital, sprawls through "narrow sub-glacial tunnels" under an unnamed mountain range, heated by "volcanic vents."The ufologist also makes the claim that Neu Berlin adjoins:"the prehistoric ruins of Kadath, which may have been built by settlers from the lost continent of Atlantis well over 100,000 years ago."Still other fringe researchers claim that the actual ruins of Atlantis have been found — and possibly reoccupied — under the Antarctic ice. Some say that Atlantis is located near one of the 70 or so warm water lakes that have been discovered miles beneath the Polar Ice Sheet, such as Lake Vostok near the Russian base at the Pole of Inaccessibility.Another of the oft made claims about Neuberlin is that the city has an Alien Quarter, where Pleiadians , Zeta Reticulans , Reptoids , Men In Black , Aldebarani and other visitors from the stars dwell. As we have seen, the Nazis were working on some very advanced aircraft, some of which may have been capable of leaving the earth's atmosphere.Some researchers are convinced that the Nazis did indeed make it to the moon , and even Mars . Could they have made contact with space aliens once they left the earth? Or, could their rockets, foo-fighters and disk aircraft have attracted aliens to visit them?A claim floats around in modern U.F.O. lore that an extraterrestrial craft with anti-gravity propulsion crashed in the Schwarzwald in the summer 1936, and was recovered by the Nazis who back-engineered it, thus explaining their flying saucer program. You can read more about Nazi UFOs here . This parallels stories of a similarly recovered crashed "saucer" near Roswell , New Mexico in 1947, the American back-engineering of which supposedly led to the discovery of the transistor (patented by Bell Laboratories the following year), fiber-optics and other exotic technologies.Ivanenko reported that talk about the Antarctic Reich is "becoming more and more popular" in Russia, Poland, the Ukraine, Belarus and other countries in eastern Europe.He writes:"In the May 10, 2003 issue of the (newspaper) 'Frankfurter Allgemeine', Polish journalist A. Stagjuk criticized Poland's decision to send troops to Iraq" to assist with the Allied occupation."At the end, he said, 'The next Polish government will sign a treaty with Antarctica and declare war on the USA.'"Ivanenko added that Stagjuk's words were broadcast on the shortwave radio station Deutsche Welle the same week."Some analysts compared this sentence to famous code phrases which started wars in the Twentieth Century, such as 'Over all of Spain, the sky is cloudless' in 1936, and 'Climb Mount Niitaka' in 1941."("Climb Mount Niitaka" was the signal Admiral Yamamoto sent to Kido Butai, the Imperial Japanese Navy's fleet, to begin the attack on Pearl Harbor.)It is strange to think of a large population living under the ice of Antarctica, totally divorced from the "mainstream" world.Then again, there are Jivaro indigenous people living on Lago de Yanayacu (lake), less than 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of Iquitos, Peru, who have never heard of Courtney Love.So, is there a city under the ice inhabited by the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original SS settlers?Or is it just an urban legend stemming from the chaotic conditions that prevailed in Europe during World War II?Some day we may know for certain. Excerpt of Jim Marrs ' article from "Alien Agenda" Dear Friends, HumansAreFree is and will always be free to access and use. If you appreciate my work, please help me continue.
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FBI Reviewing Clinton Emails Found While Investigating Anthony Weiner (VIDEO) By Michelle Oxman on October 28, 2016
Leave it to that pathetic loser, Anthony Weiner, to mess things up for the campaign of the Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton. I bet Huma Abedin is kicking herself for not dumping him earlier. The FBI Announcement
On October 28, 2016, FBI Director James Comey informed Congress that the Bureau had learned of new emails that might be relevant to the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of an unauthorized primate email server.
The FBI planned to review the emails to determine whether they were relevant to the Clinton case and, if so, how. Comey stated that the agency learned of the emails in an unrelated criminal case, which he did not identify.
Naturally, the news media jumped the gun and concluded that the Clinton investigation was back on. And just as naturally, the truth was not so simple. JUST IN: FBI Director informs Congress Hillary Clinton email investigation is back on. pic.twitter.com/2p4iAAYH97
— ABC News (@ABC) October 28, 2016 Weiner and Clinton Emails?
As it turns out, the emails that concerned the FBI were found on a device owned by Anthony Weiner. Yes, that Anthony Weiner, the one who couldn’t keep from sexting on his cell phone.
He is the estranged husband of Huma Abedin, who was Hillary Clinton’s Chief of Staff when she was Secretary of State. Abedin remains one of Clinton’s closest aides. Abedin announced that the couple were separating after his latest sexting scandal.
According to the New York Times , the FBI was investigating text messages that Weiner allegedly sent to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. In that investigation, the FBI examined the devices and computers that Weiner used. One of the devices also contained emails that the FBI determined might be related to the investigation into Secretary Clinton’s emails. Not A Reopening
candidate Donald Trump claims that Comey’s letter indicates that the entire investigation into Clinton’s email server is back on. They’re salivating over the possibility that Clinton’s campaign could go down in flames. However, that’s not what’s happening here.
Back in July, Comey testified before Congress that the FBI investigation into Clinton’s email server was complete and the agency did not recommend that anyone be charged criminally. He also said that Clinton had been very careless with classified information.
His October 28 letter informs Congress that the FBI will examine the emails found on Weiner’s computer to determine whether they contain classified information. Comey doesn’t know how long it will take or what he will find. What Remains The Same
Still, it’s highly unlikely that any new information would change the ultimate outcome of the investigation. After all, Comey said back in July that no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges against Clinton without evidence that she either intentionally or recklessly shared classified information.
Does anyone really think that the evidence will appear on Anthony Weiner’s computer?
Watch this news clip for more information :
Featured Image Via U.S. Dept. Of State / CC-0 And Talk News Service / CC-NC-2.0 Via Flickr About Michelle Oxman
Michelle Oxman is a writer, blogger, wedding officiant, and recovering attorney. She lives just north of Chicago with her husband, son, and two cats. She is interested in human rights, election irregularities, access to health care, race relations, corporate power, and family life.Her personal blog appears at www.thechangeuwish2c.com. She knits for sanity maintenance. Connect | 0 |
Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” declined to discuss comedian Kathy Griffin taking and apologizing for a photo depicting her holding up President Trump’s severed head on the grounds that it is “too gross. It’s just not worth doing. ” The show then teased discussion of President Trump’s “covfefe” tweet. During a discussion on Americans going out to lunch less often, the Griffin news came up. Brzezinski remarked, “We’re not talking about it. ” She added, “I’m sorry, it’s too gross. It’s just not worth doing. ” Brzezinski then teased the show’s next hour by previewing discussion of Trump’s “covfefe” tweet. ( Mediaite) Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 1 |
In what amounts to the first pang of just how profound America’s Election Day screw up truly was, Trump’s campaign is reportedly already working on a plan to scrub that last eight years of progress out of existence on Trump’s very first day in office . No Obama accomplishment will remain. They even have a name for the plan: The First Day Project.
Organized by the Heritage Foundation, the goal is to deprive Obama of any lasting effect to his time in office. It’s a perverse sort of vengeance from a group of clowns who have spent the last decade smearing the president at every possible step of the way.
Trump aides are organizing what one Republican close to the campaign calls the First Day Project. “Trump spends several hours signing papers—and erases the Obama Presidency,” he said. Stephen Moore, an official campaign adviser who is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, explained, “We want to identify maybe twenty-five executive orders that Trump could sign literally the first day in office.”
Thinking back over Obama’s list of wins – from gay rights to healthcare to the economy – the idea that these achievements can be erased by a collective of spiteful, bitter men in a matter of hours is almost too much to bear. The suffering to the people whose rights will surely be rolled back will be immense.
And on a separate, but equally terrifying front, Trump’s campaign surrogate Omarosa told reporters that Trump has been compiling an “enemies list”– an assortment of people on the right and left who openly stood against him – and he plans on punishing those on the list when he gets to office.
“I would never judge anybody for exercising their right to and the freedom to choose who they want. But let me just tell you, Mr. Trump has a long memory and we’re keeping a list.”
Erase his predecessor, punish his enemies. In this way, with pen and sword, Trump plans to dismantle a democracy. The oldest, greatest one in the world – up until the point when it wasn’t.
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Elections 2016 , U.S. Politics
According to a recently released report, Virginia Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who has ties with Bill and Hillary Clinton, gave almost $500,000 to support the wife of an FBI official who was implicated in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s unsecured email server from which she shared classified information from while Secretary of State. McAuliffe’s political organization gave over half a million in cash and material support to the election campaign of the wife of the official who helped oversee the Clinton email investigation.
According to campaign finance records, McAuliffe’s political-action committee gave $467,500 to support Dr. Jill McCabe’s state Senate campaign. She is married to Andrew McCabe, the current deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Gov. McAuliffe also has a considerable amount of influence over the Virginia Democratic Party which also donated an additional $207,788 worth mailers to Dr. McCabe’s campaign. The $675,000 that was donated by entities under the control of Mr. McAuliffe, made up more than a third of all the campaign funds Dr. McCabe raised to run for office.
State party leaders hand-picked Dr. McCabe to run, but lost to incumbent Republican Dick Black. According to a statement released by the FBI, Mr. McCabe “played no role, attended no events, and did not participate in fundraising or support of any kind. Months after the completion of her campaign, then-Associate Deputy Director McCabe was promoted to Deputy, where, in that position, he assumed for the first time, an oversight role in the investigation into Secretary Clinton’s emails.” FBI Official’s Wife Involved In Email Case Got Big Donations From Hillary’s People Share this: | 0 |
by Outis Philalithopoulos In the most recent episode of this series , the ghost of Outis had fun watching a Disney movie. Afterwards, he spoke with Zootopia ‘s star, Judy Hopps, about the movie’s sly humor, and its efficacy at stigmatizing prejudice and fostering empathy for the suffering of others. After my visit from Judy, I felt reinvigorated, ready to take a fresh look at the questions that had puzzled me. I could discern three large scale principles at work in deciding whom to include and whom to exclude from the liberal tent. One is postmodernism. One is smartness. And the third, seen clearly in Zootopia , is a consensus about the reality of certain kinds of suffering and trauma. During the past few decades, the importance of smartness has if anything increased. A college education has become a basic requirement for being middle class, and parents of all political stripes scrabble desperately to get their children into the “best” schools. The credentialing sectors of capitalism have been dominated by liberals for decades, but only recently have we successfully leveraged this strategic asset into the idea that liberals are basically the same as educated people. Other sites of cultural production – Hollywood, television, marketing, social media corporations – are also stereotypically liberal, and have become much more responsive to pressure from progressives. Movies like Zootopia , watched by millions of parents and children, show how it is possible to direct corporate power toward positive goals. We have succeeded in dividing capitalism into two halves, one still ugly and irredeemable, but the other (the cultural and credentialing sectors) tamed, dynamic, and fashionable. We absorb into our alliance everyone from marketing professionals to college professors to people who just like the Daily Show, reinforcing our sense of truth by identifying things as stupid, backwards, or insane. Looking now at the other two principles – postmodernism and suffering – Wendy Brown foretold that, as foci, they would be unable to coexist. Since the time of her prediction, the balance between the two has shifted dramatically, and it has become clear that Brown was rooting for the losing side. Postmodernism lamented the modern world’s lack of orienting fixed points, and maybe tried to make a virtue out of this disorientation. Maybe, as I suggested to Foucault, it tried to establish the insistent assertion of the lack of fixed points as its own fixed point, and then covered the maneuver in a bewildering morass of verbiage. The contrast with the familiar liberalism of today is stark. We have reconstructed ourselves as progressives, burying postmodernism and reconstituting a robust sense of absolute morality and truth. The process took some time to gather steam, but is now at the helm of mainstream culture. Although we believe in some positive ideals like education, we have been especially successful at vanquishing the corrosive doubts of postmodernism by setting up negative ideals as transcendentally true. At the center of our imagination are atrocities like slavery, genocide, rape – these no one can doubt, these are things to which at one’s peril one refuses to kneel. Who can deny that they exist, that they hurt, that they are evil? We therefore pick out vivid episodes in which certain groups of people suffered, and make it clear that anyone that does not ritually acknowledge the reality of their suffering is unworthy to be part of society. In this way, we manage to stigmatize horrible, regressive behavior, but that isn’t enough. High profile instances of genocide and torture don’t appear every day, and commitment flags without regular stimulation. And so we have taken seriously at least one idea from postmodernism, the fascination with slight conceptual nuances, and the faith or fear that these nuances can produce enormously consequential effects. We focus not just on torture but also on less obviously brutal but still hurtful behavior (“micro-aggressions”); not just on behavior but on language, not just on language but also on thoughts. By discouraging hurtful speech and sensitizing people to implicit bias, we make the world a more pleasant place. Critics of progressives complain about “political correctness,” but you can’t forge a unitary culture without imposing boundaries, and we mainly focus on obvious principles of good manners and consideration toward others. Zootopia as an Allegory Although there is still a long way to go, the progress of our culture toward liberation is historically unparalleled. Zootopia provides an extensive allegory about our achievement. We naturally dread the uncivilized past. One symbol of the past is the pathetic figure of Judy’s parents, who tell her to settle and not follow her dreams. More frighteningly, the plot of the movie revolves around the mysterious fact that some animals are reverting to wildness – the past is thus not merely the past, but threatens to return. There is a still more insidious threat, which is the possibility that some part of the past remains lodged inside of us, like the specks of evil that St. Augustine once believed that God places in us in order to foil our efforts to attain goodness on our own. This fear is hardly surprising, given that we have come to a consensus that certain ways of talking that just twenty or even ten years ago passed without comment in liberal circles are, in reality, clearly problematic. The climax of Zootopia is when Judy, without any selfish or cruel intent, loses control of her mouth – and primitive, nonprogressive ideas escape from it. Zootopia doesn’t merely show us the shadow of the past, but also offers us, as individuals, hope in the exciting future. Judy avoids becoming a carrot farmer like her parents, and is able to move past the degrading experience of working as a “meter maid.” By virtue of being impressive, competent, and using the rules in her favor, she is able to rise to the top and be valued for her abilities. Leftists often worry that professional success can lead to people losing their moral compass. Zootopia offers a helpful perspective on this dilemma. When Judy reaches the pinnacle of success, that is precisely when she messes up and says problematic things. At first glance, Zootopia seems to suggest that morality is far more important than worldly success. Judy responds to her fault by taking a leave of absence from her job and feeling terrible. In the end, she is only able to redeem herself by treating herself as utterly worthless: by confessing abjectly to Nick, pronouncing herself damned, and handing him the only key that can set her free. I now realized, though, that the message of the movie was optimistic. True, if we say or think wrong things, we need to respond seriously, the way Judy did. But if we do that – and if we express support for progressive ideals and acknowledge our privilege – then we can be as successful as we want to be. There doesn’t need to be any conflict between ambition and being a good person. That doesn’t mean that liberals have to care about professional success. If you want to care about people in Africa or the plight of the working class, that’s great, too. The important thing is that we come together on the important things, like basic moral principles and recognizing the suffering of marginalized groups. As this consensus consolidates, society will continue to progress. Some people will try to derail the process, maybe due to sensitivity about having been called out, or anger at losing their privilege. More and more, those people will be seen as throwbacks. Demographic forces will render them irrelevant. Maybe they will just be swept away by globalization. Or – maybe – they can work at the DMV. The Phantom A bell sounded and roused me from my vision of the future. There I saw a Phantom, draped and hooded, gliding like mist along the ground towards me. It was shrouded in a deep, black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing visible except one outstretched hand. “The Spirit of Liberalism Yet To Come, I presume?” I asked. The Spirit did not answer. I felt a stab of fear at what it might show me. Would the current positive trajectory continue? Would the future bring cultural progress in ways I couldn’t even imagine? Or would the 2020s instead feature a cyclical swing back to postmodernism? Or something worse still? The Spirit merely pointed onward with its hand. I followed it, and found myself listening to another speech, taking place not in the far future, but toward the end of 2016. Yet my sense of foreboding did not abate, and for apparently no reason at all, the cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces of my vision suddenly seemed insubstantial, and vain. I remain curious why the “debate” over antiracism as a politics takes such indirect and evasive forms – like the analogizing and guilt by association, moralistic bombast in lieu of concrete argument – and why it persists in establishing, even often while denying the move, the terms of debate as race vs. class. He seemed to refer to “antiracism” as if it were not an obviously good thing. I looked at his name plate. Adolph Reed? Who was this person? In the logic of antiracism, exposure of the racial element of an instance of wrongdoing will lead to a recognition of injustice, which will in turn lead to remedial action – though not much attentions seems ever given to how this part is supposed to work. I suspect this is because the exposure part, which feels so righteously yet undemandingly good, is the real focus. I did not understand why the sound of his voice troubled me so much. “Spirit!” I exclaimed, “this is a fearful place. I will not forget its lessons, trust me. Let me go!” But the Ghost only pointed, with an unmoved finger, at Reed, whose icy words burned in my ears. These responses [show] how fundamentally antiracism and other identitarian programs are not only the left wing of neoliberalism but active agencies in its imposition of a notion of the boundaries of the politically thinkable – sort of neoliberalism’s intellectual and cultural border guard. “Answer me one question,” I cried. “Are the things Reed says the shadows of things to come, or are they merely his own cynical perspective?” I caught at the Spirit’s spectral hand. It sought to free itself, but I persisted. Yet the Spirit was stronger than I was, and repulsed me. I fell to the ground, and when I arose, I was alone in the weeping land. * * * The series concludes tomorrow, with Outis reaching new conclusions and making an important decision. Sources: Adolph Reed’s remarks are from a recent interview and an earlier article . Some of the thoughts on political correctness are based on Belle Waring’s Crooked Timber article . 0 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 |
Share on Facebook Most commercial dryer sheets are loaded with all sorts of toxic chemicals including Benzyl Acetate, Benzyl Alcohol, Chloroform and Linalool; none of which are good for your health. In addition to all the chemicals that end up on your skin, when heated, the fumes are also toxic. These toxins go straight to their brain's most sensitive neurological centers and wreck havoc. 5 Killer Reasons to Ditch Dryer Sheets Artificial Fragrances When people use dryer sheets, they are coating their clothes with artificial chemical perfumes. These fragrance chemicals are extremely toxic. They are known carcinogens that cause liver damage and cancer in mammals. In a recent study performed by UW professor Dr. Anne Steinemann, a research team conducted a small study to understand the effects of fragrances in laundry products (both detergent and dryer sheets). The results discovered more than 25 VOCs emitted from dryer vents, with highest concentrations of acetaldehyde, acetone, and ethanol (two of which are considered carcinogenic). To put it into context, one of the carcinogenic VOCs, acetaldehyde, had emissions that would represent 3% of total acetaldehyde emissions from automobiles in the study area. This is a major omission of toxic chemicals. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and industry-generated Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) from the 1990s, the following is a list of chemicals in fabric softener products, most in untested combinations. 1. Alpha-Terpineol–This chemical has been linked to disorders of the brain and nervous system, loss of muscle control, depression, and headaches. 2. Benzyl acetate–Benzyl acetate has been linked to cancer of the pancreas. 3. Benzyl alcohol–This upper respiratory tract irritant can cause central nervous system (CNS) disorders, headache, nausea, vomiting, dizziness and dramatic drops in blood pressure. 4. Chloroform–Neurotoxic, anesthetic and carcinogenic. Really toxic to your brain. Inhaling its vapors may cause loss of consciousness, nausea, headache, vomiting, and/or dizziness, drowsiness. 5. Ethanol– Another fabric softener ingredient which is on the EPA's Hazardous Waste list and linked to CNS disorders. 6. Ethyl Acetate–causes headaches and is on the EPA Hazardous Waste list. 7. Linalool–in studies, this chemical caused loss of muscle coordination, nervous system and brain disorders, and depression. 8. Pentane–causes headaches, nausea, dizziness, fatigue, drowsiness, and depression. What's the alternative to toxic dryer sheets? Wool balls. They are 100% natural and are effective at getting rid of static cling and wrinkles, soften clothes. | 0 |
‹ › Arnaldo Rodgers is a trained and educated Psychologist. He has worked as a community organizer and activist. 2016 Tribute to our Troops: veterans who continue to serve By Arnaldo Rodgers on November 4, 2016 veterans By fox2detroit.com Since 2003, FOX 2 has honored the men and women who put their lives on the line for our country. Each year, our goal is to pay “Tribute to our Troops” from Michigan and with ties to the Great Lakes State. That tradition continues this year, as we honor our veterans who continue to inspire us, long after their service. We also focus on issues facing our veterans, including homelessness, PTSD and the unique battles for female veterans. Here are some of the highlights from this year’s program: – President Obama presents the Medal of Honor to LTC Charles Kettles of Ypsilanti, nearly 50 years after his service. Kettles is a U.S. Army veteran. The war hero saved dozens of American soldiers in Vietnam.
Read the Full Article at www.fox2detroit.com >>>> Related Posts: No 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 Arnaldo Rodgers on November 4, 2016, With 0 Reads, Filed under Veterans . 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
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Previous Are You Ready for Aftermath of the Election? Will There Be An Election?
I recently interviewed geopolitical and prepping expert, Bob Griswold of Ready Made Resources . We discussed the election and the false flag attacks that could like between the now and preventing the election.
Most importantly, Bob the provided the listeners with some very low-cost and effective means of prepping for the coming disasters that are coming our way. | 0 |
UK TELEGRAPH
Canada's military is investigating a mysterious "pinging" that is emanating from the sea floor in the Arctic .
The sound, which has also been described as a "hum" or a "beep", has apparently spooked the local wildlife in the Fury and Hecla Strait.
Paul Quassa, a member of the legislative assembly, said the noise was "emanating from the sea floor".
"That's one of the major hunting areas in the summer and winter ... And this time around, this summer, there were hardly any. And this became a suspicious thing."
The military said it was investigating what was causing the sound.
"The Department of National Defence has been informed of the strange noises emanating in the Fury and Hecla Strait area, and the Canadian Armed Forces are taking the appropriate steps to actively investigate the situation," an armed forces spokesperson told CBC News . | 0 |
To be a Jew in Germany in the 1930s was not comfortable. Edgar Feuchtwanger, a schoolboy in Munich at the time, knew the fear and the dread shared by all German Jews witnessing the unstoppable ascent of a madman. Yet his situation was different. Very different. In 1929, Adolf Hitler moved into Mr. Feuchtwanger’s neighborhood. With money from his publisher, Hitler took a apartment on the third floor of No. 16 Prinzregentenplatz (Prince Regent Square). It was luxurious, with two bathrooms and two kitchens. Edgar, 5 years old, could see it from his window, a building not 100 yards away on Grillparzerstrasse. And for the next nine years, until the Feuchtwangers fled Germany in 1938, Edgar lived virtually side by side with a man bent on exterminating him, his family and every family like his, not only in Germany, but as far as the Reich could extend its dominion. Mr. Feuchtwanger ( ) whose memoir, “I Was Hitler’s Neighbor,” was published last year in translation in Britain, will speak about his childhood, and the man who cast his shadow over it, at the 92d Street Y on Friday at 2 p. m. The book, originally in French, has not been published in the United States. Today, at 91, he could well be the last German Jew alive who grew up within arm’s reach of Hitler and observed him day to day, if only in fleeting glimpses. Speaking in a relative’s apartment in Midtown on Wednesday, Mr. Feuchtwanger, a historian who taught for 30 years at the University of Southampton, in England, and now lives in a village near Winchester, recalled his brushes with Hitler, and some of the turning points in history. He brought with him, in a manila envelope, notebooks from his days at the Gebele School in Munich, filled with assignments on patriotic themes and decorated, here and there, with tributes to the leader whom Germans were learning to call Führer. The neighborhood, he said, was stocked with Nazis. On his way to school, he walked past the villa of Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler’s photographer, the man who introduced Eva Braun, then his shop assistant, to Hitler. Often, he caught a glimpse of Hitler lounging in a deck chair in the garden. Not far away was the house of Ernst Röhm, head of the Nazi Party’s paramilitary wing. “He is somewhat forgotten today,” Mr. Feuchtwanger said, speaking slowly, with the hint of a German accent. “But at the time he was considered the second man in the Reich, the only one whom Hitler had to address with some respect. When he spoke to Hitler he did not call him ‘mein Führer,’ but used the informal ‘du. ’” Röhm was soon out of the picture, arrested personally by Hitler on June 30, 1934, in the purge known as the Night of the Long Knives. Mr. Feuchtwanger knew of it long before most of his fellow Germans. Hearing jackboots and slamming car doors, he went to the window and saw SS officers assembling a motorcade for the short trip to Hanselbauer Hotel in Bad Wiessee, where Röhm and his followers were staying. “Even as a small boy I could sense the tremendous, hot tension there was around,” Mr. Feuchtwanger wrote in his memoir. “That public events could produce such tension, that gripped one’s throat, almost took one’s breath away, is now practically unknown to the present generation. ” Mr. Feuchtwanger’s first memorable encounter with Hitler himself occurred when he was 8. He and his nanny, out for a stroll, began walking down Prinzregentenstrasse. “Just as we passed his front door, Hitler came out, wearing a mackintosh and a trilby hat,” Mr. Feuchtwanger said. “There were some people in the street who shouted ‘Heil Hitler.’ Then he looked at me and my nanny, quite benevolently. ” Mr. Feuchtwanger paused for a moment and said, “If he had known who I was, it would have been quite different. ” Indeed. The name Feuchtwanger was well known to Hitler and the Nazi Party, and not in a good way. Edgar’s father, Ludwig, was not the problem. As the director of Duncker Humblot, a distinguished publishing house specializing in books on economics and sociology, he was objectionable only because he was a prosperous Jew. Racial laws forced him out of the business in 1936. Ludwig’s brother, Lion, was another matter. At the time, he was probably the novelist in Germany, the author of “Jud Süss” (“The Jew Süss”) a historical novel about the financial adviser to Duke Carl Alexander of Württemberg in the 18th century. The novel, published in 1925, was later twisted into a viciously film by the Nazis, released in 1940. More offensive to the Nazi Party was his novel “Success. ” Set in Bavaria in the 1920s, it included a satirical portrait of Hitler, inserted into the novel as Rupert Kutzner, a garage mechanic who creates a political movement, the Truly German Party. When “Success” was published in 1930, Joseph Goebbels announced in his newspaper, Der Angriff, that the author had just earned a seat on the first train out of Germany when the Nazis came to power. The novel featured prominently in the book burnings of May 1933. Goebbels himself turned up for the bonfire in Berlin. By chance, Lion was in the United States on a lecture tour when Hitler became chancellor, but his brother, back in Germany, bore the family name. It was not until the Edgar Feuchtwanger recalled, that Hitler assumed his full dimensions. It was still possible to walk on the sidewalk in front of Hitler’s building. Hitler had not yet taken to wearing a military uniform at all times in public or traveling in motorcades. After he became chancellor in 1933, things changed. Mr. Feuchtwanger’s mother now complained that she could not get milk because the deliveryman was steering extra bottles to Hitler. SS guards moved into the apartment below his and took up positions on the sidewalk outside. Pedestrians were made to cross to the other side of the street. History paraded past young Edgar’s window. He saw the fleet of long, Mercedes gather to depart for the annexation of Austria in 1938 and, several days later, watched as Hitler, standing erect, holding onto the windshield of his open car, greeted adoring crowds. Later that year, he watched Mussolini’s car taking him from the conference that led to the signing of the Munich Agreement. “I would join in the crowds to see what was going on,” Mr. Feuchtwanger said, recalling the periodic commotion on the square outside Hitler’s building. Ludwig Feuchtwanger, like many Jews, misread Hitler at the outset. He believed that German Jews could reach some sort of livable, stable accommodation with the regime. “My parents did talk about the political situation, and I knew more about it than do today,” Mr. Feuchtwanger said. “I knew that he was no good for us. But I wouldn’t say I was terrified. ” At school, Mr. Feuchtwanger was not tormented, by teachers or fellow students, although Nazification reached full steam by the time he entered the prestigious Maximilian Gymnasium in 1935. He was spared having to enroll in the Hitler Youth, obligatory for his classmates. But he did have to stand for hours at a time, arm outstretched in the Nazi salute, at school rallies organized by the party. “The way you go through it was to rest your arm on the shoulder of the chap in front of you,” he said. He brought out two of his school notebooks. In the opening page of the first, to commemorate Labor Day 1933, he had inscribed a large swastika superimposed over the Communist hammer. “I had a teacher who was over the moon about the Nazi takeover,” he explained. Political reality sank in on Kristallnacht, in November 1938, when Edgar’s father was arrested and interned at Dachau. Amazingly, the camp administration failed to make the connection between his name and that of the author of “Success. ” Six weeks later he was released and began making plans to take his family out of Germany. “He knew it was curtains,” Mr. Feuchtwanger said. Nearly all the Feuchtwangers escaped. One of Ludwig’s eight siblings, a half sister, died in Theresienstadt. At 14, Edgar Feuchtwanger adopted a second life as an honorary Englishman. He studied at Winchester School, where classmates called him “fish finger” and “Volkswagen. ” He earned a doctorate in history at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and went on to write studies of the Victorian era, including biographies of Gladstone and Disraeli, and histories of modern Germany, up to the Nazi seizure of power. He reached again for a notebook. In this one, from 1934, he honored Hitler on his 45th birthday by pasting in a glowering portrait of the Führer, adorned with a Nazi eagle and swastika. Mr. Feuchtwanger smiled. “Just think, it was a Jewish child who did this,” he said. | 1 |
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Hillary Clinton has reportedly been eyeing Joe Biden for Secretary of State. Creepy Uncle Joe Biden.
A source familiar with Clinton’s planning told Politico that Biden is at the top of her internal shortlist, but he has not yet been notified. The list is being prepared by Clinton’s “transition team.”
According to the same source, Clinton’s team is strategizing about how to approach the Vice President, who nearly ran against her in the primaries.
“He’d be great, and they are spending a lot of time figuring out the best way to try to persuade him to do it if she wins,” said the source.
From Politico :
Among the names most discussed: former undersecretary of state Wendy Sherman, the point person on the Iran deal and a favorite within the State Department; former Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns, who now heads the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Nick Burns, the former under secretary of state of political affairs under George W. Bush who’s been an active advocate for Clinton this year; Kurt Campbell, Clinton’s assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs when she was in the job; Strobe Talbott, the deputy secretary of state during Bill Clinton’s first term and a longtime friend of the Clintons who’s now the president of the Brookings Institution; and James Stavridis, the retired admiral who earlier this summer made it into consideration as the sleeper pick to be her running mate.
Despite being widely known for his numerous gaffes, Biden chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before joining the Obama Administration, and is one of the most experienced and respected Democrats on the world stage.
He is coming to what would be the close of a 44-year career in Washington, first with six terms in the Senate and then two terms as President Barack Obama’s closest adviser, and has expressed his desire to retire.
In addition to his resumé, Biden would bring to the table a “star power” none of Hillary’s other picks could.
To be fair, no one could possibly make a worse Secretary of State than Hillary herself, though Joe Biden might be a close second. | 0 |
Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation October 29, 2016
[Classic: January 22, 1998] — Suddenly nobody is questioning Paula Jones’s veracity anymore. Mrs. Jones told a simple story and has stuck with it, while the president has shifted ground, equivocated with his patented “carefully worded denials,” and let his thuggish, blundering, and very expensive lawyer handle public relations.
The Clinton team’s line, echoed by the major media until recently, has been that Mrs. Jones is “trailer-park trash” whose allegations are credible only to dirty-minded right-wing Clinton-haters. Never mind that her allegations are consistent with a great many other allegations from a great many sources. The Clinton strategy was to scare her off, and then, when that didn’t work, to make her character the issue, leaking their own allegations to the press.
But her tenacity created enormous pressure, forcing the president to make a humiliating appearance in her presence a few days ago to give his deposition — and possibly to try to tamper with other witnesses. Only he knows how many other potential witnesses there are.
The new charges of creepy lechery and criminality have finally cost Clinton his protective press. Though Newsweek spiked its own scoop, the story exploded anyway. All those journalists who have covered for Clinton now feel he’s yanked the rug out from under them once too often
And it happened because a story they didn’t want to dignify with coverage refused to go away. The story Newsweek spiked was written by Michael Isikoff, who had left the Washington Post in fury two years ago when the paper spiked a similar story he’d written on the Jones suit. But now the “respectable” press has finally caught up with the “crazy” press, leaving Hillary Clinton to repeat her usual gripe — Bill’s just the victim of someone’s political agenda — to an empty gallery.
Clinton is standing on a precipice, staring down into the abyss of impeachment and prison. One nudge — another story, witness, allegation, or tape recording — could push him over. And the market value of any damaging evidence has skyrocketed, with the media fighting fiercely for the kind of information they used to spurn. He’s at the mercy of any bimbo who wants to step forward.
After being driven from office, Richard Nixon was able to make a comeback by claiming, however speciously, that his motive had always been to defend the dignity of the presidency. That’s a claim Clinton won’t be able to make. If he seduced a twenty-one-year-old White House intern and urged her to perjure herself for his sake, the dignity of the presidency was the last thing on his mind. Nor will he have the diehard it-didn’t-start-with-Watergate defenders Nixon had. In Clinton’s case, it started long ago in Arkansas.
He arrived in Washington with a trail of sleazy rumors, some of them substantiated. The “respectable” press ignored all that, including the fact that Gennifer Flowers had enjoyed rapid promotion as a state employee (and had tapes of Clinton urging her to lie about their liaison). It ignored “right-wing” reports that he’d used state troopers to procure women. Such stories illustrated his readiness to abuse power for sleazy purposes, but they were treated as cheap sex gossip. When Paula Jones told her story, it fit the pattern — but was rejected as unworthy of serious attention.
Now that the pattern is undeniable, Clinton is still Clintonizing — issuing new carefully-worded-denials, as if he might yet exculpate himself with verbal cleverness. It hasn’t sunk in that he no longer has many supporters who will seize on any excuse for believing his version. His guilt isn’t an epistemological puzzle.
Supporting Clinton has become extremely costly. He has destroyed the Democrats’ congressional majorities in both houses, and though he managed to win reelection (by methods that will now get redoubled scrutiny), he has destroyed his own presidency. And his disgrace will be contagious.
The major media should not be allowed to ask: “How were we supposed to know?” It’s their business to know — and to inform the public. But their job had to be done by Paula Jones and the “right-wing” press. ###
This is one of 82 essays in Joe Sobran’s collection of his writing on the President Clinton years, titled Hustler: The Clinton Legacy , which has just been republished by FGF Books. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — The United States on Saturday transferred nine Yemeni detainees from its wartime prison at Guantánamo Bay to Saudi Arabia, completing a diplomatic deal ahead of a planned visit to Riyadh by President Obama in the coming week. The effort to persuade the Saudi government to take the prisoners began in the Bush administration and finally resulted in an agreement in February. Current and former officials familiar with the negotiations called the timing of the transfer, which reduced the population at Guantánamo to 80 prisoners, a coincidence. “There have been a lot of discussions with the Saudis over the last few years, and they have been emphatic that it was very important to close Guantánamo,” said Cliff Sloan, who served as the State Department envoy for negotiating detainee transfers in 2013 and 2014. “They wanted to help with that. But the one thing they weren’t willing to do for a long time was actually accept Yemenis. That’s why this is a major breakthrough. ” The military brought each of the prisoners from the Afghanistan War to the American naval base at Guantánamo about 14 years ago, soon after President George W. Bush’s administration opened the prison in early 2002. Later, the Bush administration decided to try to close it, a goal the Obama administration has shared. But finding places to transfer the large number of Yemeni detainees there has been a significant obstacle. American officials have been reluctant to repatriate them because Yemen is chaotic and has an active affiliate of Al Qaeda. But Saudi Arabia, which shares a border with Yemen, has a stronger government and security. It also operates a rehabilitation program for Saudis who have drifted into militant Islamism. The program tries to reverse their radicalization and help them reintegrate into peaceful society. It enlists their relatives to help and has a record of reducing — though not eliminating — the risk of recidivism, officials have said. In 2007, a leaked diplomatic cable shows, American officials toured the Saudi rehabilitation center, which is named for Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, a top security official, and raised the possibility of transferring Yemeni detainees with relatives living in the kingdom to the center. But Prince bin Nayef, who is now the crown prince, “said this would not be possible, primarily for domestic political reasons,” according to the document. When Mr. Obama became president in 2009 and vowed to close the prison at the Guantánamo military base in Cuba, there were 242 detainees, 99 of them Yemenis. In separate trips to Saudi Arabia that spring, John O. Brennan, then Mr. Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, and Robert M. Gates, who was the defense secretary, again raised the idea, according to another leaked cable and news reports. They were again rebuffed. As Mr. Obama’s first term unfolded, the effort to close the prison ground to a halt as Congress imposed steep restrictions on transfers. But in 2013, amid a widespread hunger strike by detainees, he resumed his push for transfers — and renewed talks with the Saudis about the Yemenis. At that point, officials said, the main focus was an effort, led by the United Nations, to build a rehabilitation center in Yemen, where security conditions briefly appeared to be improving. The Saudis offered to help pay for a center. But Yemen soon resumed its downward spiral. In late 2013, officials said, Mr. Sloan gave a list of 10 Yemenis with families in Saudi Arabia to a representative of Prince bin Nayef, who suggested that the families petition the Saudi government to take them. The Obama administration passed the word on to the detainees’ lawyers. The administration also began working on resettling Yemenis in other places, starting with Eastern Europe in late 2014. In May 2015, when leaders of several Arab states visited Camp David, Mr. Obama privately urged them to take some Yemenis, officials said. Oman has since taken 20, and the United Arab Emirates five. In July, Lee Wolosky succeeded Mr. Sloan at the State Department. In one of his first acts, he commissioned a report about the detainees with relatives in Saudi Arabia, officials said. The State Department passed the report to Saudi officials in August. The administration’s revived attempt to engage Saudi Arabia over the Yemenis was part of Secretary of State John Kerry’s broader efforts to repair diplomatic relations after disagreements and tensions in recent years he has visited Saudi Arabia five times since early 2015. The effort also followed the death of King Abdullah in January 2015 and the crowning of his successor, King Salman, who shuffled Saudi leadership. King Salman visited the United States in September. During a meeting in the Oval Office, officials said, Mr. Obama urged taking the Yemeni detainees who had relatives in Saudi Arabia. The new king indicated that he was willing to consider the idea, and Mr. Obama dispatched Mr. Wolosky to Riyadh, the Saudi capital, in October. “Lee did amazing diplomatic work in making the argument to the Saudis that some of the key successes of their rehabilitation program exist for the Yemeni detainees — like strong family ties,” said Daniel J. Rosenthal, who then worked on Guantánamo issues at the National Security Council. Later in October, Mr. Kerry visited Saudi Arabia again, but was told only that the Interior Ministry was still looking at the request, officials said. But a positive sign came from Brian Neff, a lawyer for one of the Yemeni men, Mashur al Sabri. After a parolelike board approved Mr. Sabri’s transfer last April, Mr. Neff drafted a petition for his family to send to the Saudi government, asking it to take Mr. Sabri. In October, his relatives told Mr. Neff that Saudi officials had visited them to study whether that plan would work. On Jan. 23, during another visit to Saudi Arabia, Mr. Kerry met with the king’s son, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is now the defense minister, and Adel the foreign minister. At that meeting, the prince said the Saudi government had decided to proceed with the American request. Mr. Wolosky returned to Saudi Arabia in early February to settle the details. But a new hurdle arose when the Saudi government said it needed a letter of consent from Yemen’s government. Because the government was in disarray — it had been pushed into exile in Riyadh by Houthi rebels — it was not clear how long it would take to get such a letter. But the Yemeni ambassador to the United States moved quickly, obtaining a letter signed by Yemen’s foreign minister and emailing it to Mr. Wolosky on Feb. 8. Mr. Jubeir was in Washington and already scheduled to go to the State Department later that day, and Mr. Kerry handed the letter to him, officials said. By March, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter had notified Congress that he was satisfied with security arrangements and would transfer nine of the men, setting off a waiting period. Administration officials are still deliberating over the 10th Yemeni. Mr. Neff said his client, Mr. Sabri, was “ecstatic” when he learned he would be sent to Saudi Arabia. “That is where his loved ones are, and everyone recognized that as the most appropriate living situation for him,” Mr. Neff said. “He is anxious to get on with living a peaceful life. ” The transferred detainees also included Tariq Ba Odah, a hunger striker whom the military has been for years. Last summer, he filed a lawsuit asking a judge to order his release for medical reasons. After an internal debate, the administration decided to fight that request. Omar Farah, a lawyer for Mr. Ba Odah, called it “unforgivable” that the Obama White House had refused to concede the case in court last year and said that “until the very end, Mr. Ba Odah doubted he would be freed. ” The other detainees were Ahmed al Hikimi Abdul Naser Ali al Raimi Mohammed al Hamiri Ahmed Kuman Abdul al Qyati and Mansoor Qattaa. | 1 |
The San Francisco 49ers have bestowed upon Colin Kaepernick the highly prestigious Len Eshmont Award. [The award, which the team presents to the 49er who “best exemplifies the inspirational and courageous play of Len Eshmont, an original member of the 1946 49ers team,” is given annually and voted on by the players. Kaepernick’s protest against alleged racial inequality in America apparently “inspired” teammates to name him for the award. 49ers center Dan Kilgore, though initially skeptical of the reasons behind the protests, spoke about how Kaepernick won him over after a team meeting in August. Kilgore told ESPN, “After Kap stated his case today, and seeing where he is coming from, I do stand with Kap when he says ‘enough is enough’ against crime and the violence and discrimination and racism. I believe that enough is enough. But I could see why people would think it’s bad with the national anthem and the military. ” 49ers wide receiver Torrey Smith discussed some of the criticism Kaepernick has received. Smith said, “Colin has handled that situation better than anyone could have imagined. It hasn’t been a distraction in our locker room, and it probably helped him open up to a lot of our team and our teammates better. He’s been very open in communication about that as well as football. ” Ironically, the award is given to the player exhibiting the most “inspirational and courageous play,” and to date, Kaepernick’s play has inspired exactly one win in ten starts, and even that one win came by one point against arguably the most dysfunctional franchise in the entire NFL. Kaepernick obviously received this award due to his “inspirational and courageous activism,” not play. Yet, even then, what’s the scoreboard on that? Colin Kaepernick’s protests this year played a leading role in the NFL’s ratings demise, which hurts the league financially. Specifically it will hurt the hundreds of players in the league who make significantly less than Colin Kaepernick. So the protests haven’t helped the players. What about the “oppressed?” Have things improved for black people in America since Kaepernick launched his protest? To be fair, the social movement began before Kaepernick, but he is certainly an extension of that. Crime increased nationally in America in 2015. The vast majority of that increase came from murder rate increases in major U. S. cities. Politicians and police leadership, labeled as racists by people like Colin Kaepernick have become so fearful that they’ve scaled back their previously aggressive crime prevention tactics, which causes the deaths of more inner city black people. The true legacy of Colin Kaepernick and those allied with him is the prolonged suffering of those he claims to help by paralyzing those responsible for their protection through fear tactics. Kaepernick’s legacy is that of an ego trip, launched by a quarterback with his best days behind him, and who couldn’t even bother to vote. If the 49ers want to reward that, well, then I guess we have a reason to abhor them too now. Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter: @themightygwinn | 1 |
Posted on November 7, 2016 by DCG | 5 Comments
From MSN : Alicia Keys doesn’t want her kids “Fallin'” for the lessons in classic Disney animated films — especially Snow White.
In the latest issue of The Edit magazine , the 35-year-old discussed why she doesn’t like her two sons watching certain movies. “They say that every child learns from their mother — and it’s ingrained from babyhood,” Keys said. “I get real funky about the classics; I don’t like [my sons] watching [the original Snow White]. It’s totally sexist, misogynistic — she’s cleaning for seven dwarfs.”
The 1937 Disney animated film pits the titular White against an evil witch, with a colorful cast of dwarves for her to take care of. The “Girl on Fire” singer went on to clarify that it’s not how White spends her time that bothers her. “There’s nothing wrong with a woman who chooses to stay at home with her family, it’s a hard-ass job, but it’s the way it’s spoken about,” she said.
As an artist, Keys has been known to create anthems for change and focusing on individuality. “For the first time, I’m recognizing how art, activism, socially what we’re going through, all go together,” she said. “For the longest time I thought it was all separate.”
Blah, blah, blah. Read the rest of the story here .
DCG | 0 |
Sunday on ’s “Facing South Florida,” while discussing Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memos on the new guidelines for how to implement the Trump administration’s executive order on immigration, Sen. Marco Rubio ( ) questioned the “humanitarian rationale” behinds those memos. Rubio said, “We need to acknowledge that there is no right to illegally immigrate to the United States. Then there is the human side, and that is, okay, there is no legal right but is there not a humanitarian rationale for perhaps allowing some of the people here legally to remain because they have been here a long time because they are good people because they were brought here as children. ” He continued, “The answer is I think quite frankly they’ll have a lot of questions about whether it’s the best use of our resources. ” Rubio added, “I think the implementation of it is much more intense from what I’m hearing. Stories I’m hearing of how it’s actually being implemented. For example, individuals who have never had a run in with the law somehow take a stop sign they get pulled over, they could get turned in, and they can’t prove they been here for two years, and they are deported out of the country. I think if that’s the way it’s applied you are going to have to spend a lot of money to do it number one and you are going to have to deal with the humanitarian reality that over time the America people are going to say maybe this is not what we meant. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
More than 550, 000 people have signed up for a federal program that promises to repay their remaining student loans after they work 10 years in a public service job. But now, some of those workers are left to wonder if the government will hold up its end of the bargain — or leave them stuck with thousands of dollars in debt that they thought would be eliminated. In a legal filing submitted last week, the Education Department suggested that borrowers could not rely on the program’s administrator to say accurately whether they qualify for debt forgiveness. The thousands of approval letters that have been sent by the administrator, FedLoan Servicing, are not binding and can be rescinded at any time, the agency said. The filing adds to questions and concerns about the program just as the first potential beneficiaries reach the end of their commitment — and the clocks start ticking on the remainder of their debts. Four borrowers and the American Bar Association have filed a suit in United States District Court in Washington against the department. The plaintiffs held jobs that they initially were told qualified them for debt forgiveness, only to later have that decision reversed — with no evident way to appeal, they say. The suit seeks to have their eligibility for the forgiveness program restored. “It’s been really perplexing,” said Jamie Rudert, one of the plaintiffs. “I’ve never gotten a straight answer or an explanation from FedLoan about what happened, and the Department of Education isn’t willing to provide any information. ” The forgiveness program offers major benefits for borrowers, advocates say, to the point of persuading some people to take public service jobs instead of more lucrative work in the private sector. The program generally covers people with federal student loans who work for 10 years at a government or nonprofit organization, a diverse group that includes public school employees, museum workers, doctors at public hospitals and firefighters. The federal government approved the program in 2007 in a sweeping, bipartisan bill. About 25 percent of the nation’s work force may qualify for the program, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimated. Eligibility is based on a borrower’s employer and whether it meets the program’s rules, not on the specific work an applicant does. On its website, the Education Department directs borrowers who believe their employer qualifies to submit a certification form to FedLoan. If the form is approved, the Education Department transfers the borrower’s loans to FedLoan, which collects payments and tracks the borrower’s progress toward the 120 qualifying monthly payments they must make before the remaining balances will be forgiven. Only a small fraction of the millions of workers who might qualify for the program have begun the process of using it. Fewer than 553, 000 borrowers have submitted at least one certification form to FedLoan and received its approval, according to Education Department data. Borrowers are encouraged to submit a new certification form each year. But some of those approved borrowers might get bad news because it is unclear whether the certifications are valid. Mr. Rudert submitted the certification form in 2012 and received a letter from FedLoan affirming that his work as a lawyer at Vietnam Veterans of America, a nonprofit aid group, qualified him for the forgiveness program. But in 2016, after submitting his latest annual recertification note to FedLoan, he got a denial note. The decision was retroactive, he was told. None of his previous work for the group would be considered valid for the loan forgiveness program. What changed? Mr. Rudert said he did not know. After filing a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, he received a reply from FedLoan saying that his application “had initially been approved in error. ” He has not been told what the error was, and has not found any way to appeal the decision. Mr. Rudert and the American Bar Association filed their suit in December, alleging that the Education Department acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” in making its decisions about which employers qualified. Last week, the department filed a reply that said that FedLoan’s responses to borrowers’ certification forms cannot be trusted. A FedLoan approval letter “does not reflect a final agency action on the borrower’s qualifications” for the forgiveness program, the department wrote. The idea that approvals can be reversed at any time, with no explanation, is chilling for borrowers. Mr. Rudert, who graduated from law school owing nearly $135, 000 on student loans, said he would have picked a different employer if he had known that his work at Vietnam Veterans of America would not qualify. A FedLoan spokesman would not comment on the case, referring questions to the Department of Education. A department spokesman also declined to comment on the suit or on any of the issues it raised, including whether any mechanism exists for borrowers to challenge a denial. That lack of transparency has been a hallmark of the forgiveness program, said Natalia Abrams, the executive director of Student Debt Crisis, an advocacy group. The program’s rules are complex. Only certain types of federal loans qualify, meaning that many borrowers need to restructure their debt to make it eligible — and the Education Department has done little to clarify gray areas, Ms. Abrams said. No borrowers’ debts have been eliminated. Because 10 years of service are required, the first wave of qualified workers will be eligible to submit applications for debt forgiveness in October. At that point, others whose certifications were approved by FedLoan could discover that the Education Department has a different position. Some employers clearly qualify — the definition of a “government organization” is fairly straightforward — but the rules for certain nonprofit organizations are harder to interpret. “It’s kind of a no man’s land,” Ms. Abrams said. “We don’t know how this will pan out. ” Linda Klein, president of the American Bar Association, called the department’s response “illogical, untenable and bewildering. ” An unreliable certification system “exposes those undertaking public service work — exactly what Congress intended them to do — to crippling financial risk,” she said. Mr. Rudert left Vietnam Veterans of America in 2015 and now works at Paralyzed Veterans of America, helping former service members appeal denied applications for disability benefits. The work is almost identical to what he did in his former job, Mr. Rudert said. Last year, FedLoan approved his certification request and deemed Paralyzed Veterans of America a qualified employer. | 1 |
Hurricane Matthew left a tableau of devastation across southern Haiti, destroying houses, leaving villages under several feet of water and killing more than 800 people, according to a count by Reuters. Photographers captured disturbing images of the aftermath. Many of the areas in the south were completely cut off from rescue workers by severed phone lines and collapsed bridges until Thursday. Men in searched for a place to cross La Digue river after the only bridge linking to the south collapsed. Buildings were ravaged, including the Ste. church in Les Cayes, below. “That many people died because they never believed what the authorities told them when they said they had to evacuate,” said Jean Senozier Despreux, who lives and works in Les Cayes and weathered the storm there. “They resisted it. ” Mr. Despreux said the death toll was not surprising. “We knew we would continue find people under the rubble,” he said. “It was so intense there was no way out. ” In Jérémie, burials had already begun on Thursday. In Les Cayes, across the peninsula from Jérémie, people lost their homes, livestock and possessions. A street vendor, below, sold food on the side of a road after the storm. At least 20, 000 homes were damaged across the country, officials said. | 1 |
This is how you colour in Spider-Man Some small changes in this colouring book result in Spider-Man getting a Borat makeover. | 0 |
A former United States Army sergeant with the nickname Rambo who led a team to kill a federal drug agent and a government informer was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Tuesday in Manhattan. The Army veteran, Joseph M. Hunter, 51, had worked as a sniper instructor and senior drill sergeant and was honorably discharged in 2004 after two decades. But a few years later, prosecutors said, he went to work as a mercenary for a shadowy South African businessman, helping to orchestrate murders and other violence before becoming ensnared in a sting operation run by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. In late 2012, as part of the sting operation, Mr. Hunter began assembling a security team for what he had been led to believe were Colombian narcotics traffickers but were actually confidential sources working under the direction of the D. E. A. the government has said. The following March, he told team members that they would have the opportunity to do “bonus work” — that is, assassinations — for which they would be paid extra, prosecutors said. In May 2013, the government said, Mr. Hunter was asked if his team would carry out the killings of the drug agent and the informer, who was said to be a boat captain who had been providing tips to the D. E. A. “My guys will handle it,” Mr. Hunter responded, asking if he would receive a financial bonus as well. “He approached this murder plot as meticulously and thoroughly as he approached his legitimate work in his military career,” Judge Laura Taylor Swain of Federal District Court said before she sentenced Mr. Hunter. In court, Mr. Hunter, a burly man with a dark beard, wept at times as he addressed the judge. He apologized and acknowledged his crimes. “If I only had asked myself what God would want me to do,” he said, adding, “This is my biggest crime, and one that I intend to fix the rest of my life. ” Mr. Hunter’s lawyers have said in court papers that after leaving the Army, he passed the entrance exam for the New York Police Department, but declined to pursue a job with the police because he felt the cost of living would have been too high in New York. Mr. Hunter pleaded guilty in February to conspiring to murder the agent and the informer, to import cocaine into the United States and to possess a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence. He could have received a maximum sentence of life in prison. Prosecutors had sought a sentence within the range stipulated in federal guidelines of about 24 to 30 years. His lawyers had sought a sentence, the minimum he faced. They argued that Mr. Hunter had operated under duress while working as a mercenary for the South African businessman, Paul Le Roux, an international outlaw who had threatened to kill him if he did not follow his orders. (Mr. Le Roux was later arrested, and he has cooperated with the government.) Marlon G. Kirton, a defense lawyer, suggested that Mr. Hunter, who he said had stress disorder, believed that he had no choice but to carry out Mr. Le Roux’s orders. But prosecutors in the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, disputed that claim, arguing that Mr. Hunter knew Mr. Le Roux’s organization was involved in illegal activities, but nonetheless left the group and later rejoined it because he wanted to make money. “Greed, not duress” had led him to a courtroom, a prosecutor, Emil J. Bove III, said. Judge Swain made it clear she agreed, noting that Mr. Hunter had associated himself with Mr. Le Roux voluntarily and had remained with him after becoming aware of, and involved in, his illegal activity. “The safety of law enforcement agents, those helping them and of innocent people,” Judge Swain said, “depends on right choices, even if those choices are life or death choices. ” “As between killing someone sworn to uphold the law,” she added, “and risking his own demise at the hands of people he had chosen to join in criminal activity, Mr. Hunter made the dishonorable choice. ” | 1 |
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Dr. Duke and Dr. Slattery discuss the “Color Revolution” against Trump & the Jewish war against him and America!
Today Dr. Duke had Dr. Patrick Slattery as his guest for the hour. They discussed the Soros & Company-fueled demonstrations that are going on in cities across the United States that bear a resemblance to the “color revolutions” that were used by Soros in several countries around the world to overturn the results of elections or overthrow governments that were not kosher enough.
They talked about the media’s continuing attack on Trump. He granted an interview to 60 Minute’s Leslie Stahl, who constantly interrupted him, preventing him from answering the questions she posed to him. Trump importantly insisted that he will continue to by-pass the media and communicate directly with his supporters via social media. He also seemed to prioritize tightening the immigration law over immediately deporting all illegal aliens, which Doctors Duke and Slattery agreed was the proper strategy.
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Our show is aired live at 11 am replayed at ET 4pm Eastern and 4am Eastern. | 0 |
ESPNW, the site which focuses on women’s sports, has apparently also decided to start focusing on women’s political activism. [ESPNW chose Donald Trump’s Inauguration Day to tweet out a call for people participating in Saturday’s Women’s March to share their stories with the “sports” network: The organizers of the Women’s March are radical leftists who have billed the march as an effort to support every leftist initiative under the sun. Here’s how Women’s March Carmen Perez describes the purpose of the march, “We are coming here so that we could show this new administration that we’re not going anywhere, right? So, we are marching to continue to allow women to make decisions about their bodies and ensure we have reproductive justice rights, immigration reform, criminal justice reform, as well as indigenous rights. “So, there are so many things. We have been extremely intentional about allowing organizations to get involved, Planned Parenthood, as well as Define American. ” Clearly this march is no benign event. On the contrary, it’s a highly politicized march organized by committed leftists who oppose Donald Trump. Which begs the question, why would a sports network would allow their social media platforms to become a multiplier for activists demonstrating against President Trump? Unless, ESPN’s commitment to covering women’s sports is no honest effort to give special attention to female athletes, and instead represents another venue in which the leftist sports network can further indoctrinate and radicalize under the guise of diversity and inclusivity. A truth reinforced by the fact that ESPN didn’t make any of their social media platforms available to Trump supporters, so they could share their videos and memories of Inauguration Day. Just in case anyone needed reminding of why ESPN has lost over 9 million subscribers over the least three years … this is why. Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter: @themightygwinn | 1 |
European Parliament suspends negotiations with Turkey on EU membership November 24, 2016 - Fort Russ News - RIA Novosti - translated by J. Arnoldski - At a plenary session in Strasbourg, the European Parliament approved a resolution calling on the EU to suspend negotiations on Turkey’s membership over the actions of the Turkish authorities. The head of European diplomacy, Federica Mogherini, said during a debate in the European Parliament session that relations between Ankara and the EU are at a crossroads and that “the transition from rhetoric to action on the issue of the death penalty will be a signal that Turkey does not want to be a member of the European family, nor the Council of Europe, nor the European Union.” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated on Wednesday that the adoption of the resolution means nothing to Turkey. Commenting on the results of the vote in the European Parliament, the Turkish Minister for EU Affairs, Omer Celik, said that “while Turkey, due to threats from Syria and Iraq, is undergoing a difficult period in the fight against terrorism, unfortunately, short-sided and one-sided discussions are happening in Europe.” Brussels has repeatedly asserted that Ankara’s behavior calls into question its desire to join the bloc. In early November, in its yearly report on Turkey’s progress on the road to joining the EU, the European Commission highlighted Ankara’s failures in policy in the fields of civil society, human rights, and freedom of speech. The report also noted that Turkey’s authorities are not doing enough to bring legislation in line with European norms. The agreement on association between the European community and Turkey was signed in 1963. Ankara applied for membership in 1987. However, negotiations on joining the EU, which began only in 2005, have repeatedly been complicated by disagreements that have now led to their suspension. Now only 16 out of 35 chapters of the negotiation file on Turkey joining the EU are open. In March 2016, the leaders of EU member countries agreed to intensify negotiations in exchange for Ankara’s agreement to contribute to reducing the influx of migrants to Europe via Turkish territory. Follow us on Facebook! | 0 |
As U. S. courts seek to block President Trump’s executive order restricting some travel into the country, Italian populist leader Matteo Salvini has sharply criticized the move as politically motivated. [The leader of Italy’s Northern League party (La Lega) told Breitbart News Friday that Trump is paying the price for keeping his campaign promises, facing the wrath of a “system in rebellion” and federal judges who have been “politicized. ” Salvini said that Trump’s executive order was a “proper, useful and courageous response to a real threat,” one that European leaders should emulate. Leaders of both individual European states as well as of the European Union have been notoriously ineffectual in responding to the grave migrant crisis afflicting the continent. The head of Italy’s Lega told Breitbart that he had nothing but admiration for the U. S. President’s ability to act on his campaign promises, “something that seldom happens in Italy. ” Salvini, who aspires to govern Italy, said he would do the same thing Trump has done: “I would rely on intelligence services to close Italy’s borders to those countries considered a threat to national security,” he said. Even though President Trump must now deal with strong internal protests against his actions, Salvini said, “he will move forward with courage, emboldened by the knowledge that he has the majority of American citizens on his side, as evidenced by the election outcome. ” From early on, the League’s leader has been a vocal advocate of Trump’s ascendance to the White House, setting him apart from Italy’s other political parties. During the campaign cycle last April, Salvini traveled to the United States to meet Trump personally and pledge his support. “On many issues we see with President Trump and we look forward to partnering with his administration,” Salvini told Breitbart Thursday, declaring his party to be a logical ally of the Trump administration. Salvini has noted many similarities between the platform of his party and that of the Trump administration, spanning beyond immigration to the idea of a flat tax to boost the economy to financial penalties for companies that outsource and opposition to international economic treaties that damage the national economy. “Our battles on these issues are perfectly in tune,” he told Breitbart, “and we also agree on limiting the role of expensive supranational structures like the U. N. and NATO. ” Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome | 1 |
The leads have dried up in the killing of a young woman in Queens during a jog last summer. Tips about potential suspects have gone nowhere. A reward has failed to bear fruit, even as it has swelled to over $280, 000. And the samples of a stranger’s DNA found on the hands, throat and cellphone of the jogger, Karina Vetrano, 30, did not match those in national offender databases. But the authorities say that the recovered DNA could hold the key to solving the case if state officials authorize what is called familial searching, which allows investigators to search criminal databases to identify likely relatives of the offender. The technique, which has been used more than a dozen times in the United States over the last 10 years, represents a frontier in the evolving world of forensic science. While some methods, like microscopic hair testing and matching, have been challenged in recent years, DNA testing remains a staple of forensic investigation, used to both identify suspects and exonerate the wrongfully convicted. Familial searching allows investigators to search offender databases with wider parameters to identify people who are likely to be close relatives of the person who may have committed a crime. Law enforcement officials say a hit in the database is less a piece of evidence than it is a lead, and such matches have helped solve some heinous crimes in states where the practice has been authorized. But the method raises some complicated ethical issues that have trailed the expansion of DNA technology since its introduction. And as the collection of DNA grows in the private sector, so do the concerns about its potential misuse, particularly in the hands of government institutions. Problems at some laboratories, including the New York City medical examiner’s office, have highlighted how DNA evidence is not immune from human error. A 2013 review of more than 800 rape cases processed by the medical examiner’s office found that DNA evidence was mishandled in dozens of cases. In the case of Ms. Vetrano, who the police say was sexually assaulted and strangled, lack of progress led Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney, to push for familial searching. “The Police Department reached a point where they exhausted all their leads. And they came to us and said in essence, ‘What else can we possibly do? ’” Mr. Brown said in an interview. Mr. Brown and two of his deputies, Eric Rosenbaum and Robert J. Masters, said that Ms. Vetrano’s case presented an ideal situation for using familial searching, in part because of what they say is the high likelihood that the DNA is from the perpetrator. “It is a stranger rape case,” Mr. Masters said. “In the annals of law enforcement, there are few fact patterns that are more frightening. ” The New York State Commission on Forensic Science, a panel appointed by the governor to develop standards for forensic laboratories, and its DNA subcommittee will hold a meeting next month on whether to authorize the technique. Familial DNA searching was pioneered in Britain, helping in 2002 in what was believed to be the first conviction using the technique. In 2008, California became the first state in the country to authorize the testing, and Colorado followed a year later. It has now been used in at least eight other states. California has solved seven cases using familial searching, a spokeswoman for the state’s Justice Department said. One was the Grim Sleeper case in Los Angeles. A serial killer preyed on vulnerable women and eluded identification for decades until investigators matched crime scene DNA to the killer’s son, whose DNA was in an offender database. “You’ve got a serial murderer or rapist in your community — you sit on your hands and wait for him to get in your database or do you try something?” said Mitchell R. Morrissey, an early proponent of the testing and a former district attorney in Denver. In New York, efforts to authorize such testing through the Legislature went nowhere several years ago. A compromise that allowed the authorities to use partial DNA matches automatically generated in the course of routine investigations has proved ineffective. But Ms. Vetrano’s case — along with the public pleas of her father, Philip, and his work with the Police Department and elected officials — has the push for familial searching. Critics of the technique say that regardless of its potential for success, it expands the use of DNA databases beyond their original intent. They fault it for allowing for searches of people who happen to be related to someone who has committed a crime, and say that given the composition of the offender databases, familial searching disproportionately affects blacks and Hispanics. “You’re creating a database of suspects largely defined by their race and class,” said Stephen Mercer, the chief attorney of the forensics division of the public defender’s office in Maryland, which outlawed the technique in 2008 in the face of these concerns. “That is just so fundamentally against our core values. ” The District of Columbia has also prohibited these searches. Leads provided by familial DNA have resulted in errors. A filmmaker in New Orleans was told that he was a suspect in a murder in Idaho based on a DNA sample given by his father years earlier as part of a genealogy project. Ancestry. com, which had purchased the database from a nonprofit that had collected the DNA, was required by a court order to identify the man to the police. The man was cleared after his DNA — which he gave under a court order — was tested. Since then, Ancestry. com has made the database private and has not received any other requests from law enforcement officials for health or genetic information about an Ancestry member, a spokesman for the company said. The spokesman, Brandon Borrman, said the company would comply with such a request only if legally required. Proponents of the technique said the filmmaker’s case could have been handled differently DNA samples of potential suspects can be retrieved surreptitiously, from a discarded soda can, for example. But in some cases, that hasn’t been a ready option. Investigators chasing the BTK serial killer in Wichita, Kan. compelled a hospital to turn over a sample of the suspect’s daughter’s DNA she had recently undergone a Pap test. That sample allowed the police to acquire an arrest warrant for the man, Dennis Rader. Mr. Rader later was sentenced to more than 170 years in prison after pleading guilty to 10 counts of murder. The legal implications of familial testing, namely whether it is limited by the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches or the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, have not been tested in the courts, Erin E. Murphy, a law professor at New York University, said. She said the logic that law enforcement officials rely on to support familial testing should, by extension, support the testing of other government databases, which include repositories of DNA from members of the military, forensic personnel and crime victims. But such testing would most likely face wider opposition. “Familial searching is just an around these debates,” said Professor Murphy, the author of “Inside the Cell: The Dark Side of Forensic DNA. ” “You shouldn’t have fewer civil rights because you’re related to someone who broke the law. ” A spokesman for Mr. Brown, the Queens district attorney, said it would be premature to answer questions about whether the office would seek to search other databases. If the DNA subcommittee and the New York State forensic commission vote to approve familial searching after the meeting on Feb. 10, a period for public comment will follow. The Legal Aid Society and the New York Civil Liberties Union have both filed memos with the commission that question the method’s constitutionality as well as the commission’s authority to weigh in on the matter. Many law enforcement officials around the state said that any in civil liberties were minor compared with the potential to solve some particularly difficult cases. “Invasion of privacy is basically what law enforcement does. We do it legally. We do it with warrants, court orders,” William J. Fitzpatrick, the Onondaga County district attorney and a proponent of the technique, said. Mr. Fitzpatrick, who is a member of the state forensic commission, compared the method to a tip from an informant. “You’re telling me that if I have a scientific piece of evidence that shows me a perpetrator’s son is in prison — what’s a better lead?” In New York City, the police commissioner, James P. O’Neill, and the district attorneys from Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan and Staten Island, support authorizing the method. Mr. Vetrano acknowledges that the testing may not lead to his daughter’s killer, but he said he would continue to advocate its use. “This would have been left as a dead issue unless I started making waves,” he said. “I’m the squeaky wheel and I will never ever stop. ” | 1 |
México, ante la CIDH (otra vez) El Estado mexicano hoy está de nueva cuenta en el banquillo ante la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (CIDH). Ahora, por la tortura y masacre de 10 indígenas na’saavi y un estudiante universitario en una paupérrima localidad de la Costa Chica de Guerrero. A pesar de las evidencias que claramente pesan sobre el Ejército Mexicano, el gobierno ha solicitado al organismo internacional que declare “inadmisible” el caso y lo archive.
Socios | 7 de noviembre de 2016 Zósimo Camacho @zosimo_contra
Esta “respuesta” del Estado mexicano a la CIDH ocurrió la semana pasada, 13 meses después de que venciera el plazo fijado para pronunciarse al respecto. La mera demora refleja el menosprecio que al gobierno mexicano le merecen las acusaciones ante la comunidad internacional.
La madrugada del domingo 7 de junio de 1998, unos 300 efectivos del Ejército Mexicano rodearon una humilde escuela en la comunidad na’saavi de El Charco, municipio de Ayutla. Al frente del operativo iba nada menos que el general Juan Manuel Oropeza Guernica, entonces comandante de la 27 Zona Militar.
Sabían los militares que en dos aulas de la escuela Caritino Maldonado Pérez pernoctaban representantes comunitarios de la región y algunos integrantes de la guerrilla guerrerense. Los primeros habían asistido a una asamblea para organizarse en torno a la demanda de apoyos para el campo. Los segundos habían acudido a solicitar que fueran escuchados para exponer ante los campesinos sus motivos de lucha. Como puede suponerse, una delación tuvo que haber ocurrido para que se movilizara tal cantidad de tropa del Ejército Mexicano y llegara al lugar de la reunión. “El error de los compañeros fue que pernoctaran en ese lugar”, me comentaron varios años después algunos integrantes y exintegrantes del Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo Insurgente (ERPI) con los que Contralínea ha sostenido entrevistas periodísticas.
Y pues las armas nacionales se vistieron de gloria: actuaron como sabemos que lo han hecho en 1962 (con Rubén Jaramillo y familia); en 1968 y 1971 (incluso a plena luz del día y en la Ciudad de México); en 1972 en la sierra de Guerrero… y para no enlistar todos los casos (conocidos), llegamos a Tlatlaya (¿e Iguala?) en 2014.
Los cientos de efectivos del Ejército Mexicano dispararon a mansalva contra un puñado de indígenas indefensos y cuatro guerrilleros. De estos últimos, dos cayeron en combate y dos más, que se habían rendido para no exponer a la población, fueron vejados y ejecutados extrajudicialmente por los soldados en la misma escuela. En el lugar torturaron y ejecutaron fríamente tanto a los integrantes de la guerrilla como a pobladores que no tenían relación alguna con el movimiento armado. Los militares quisieron sembrar el terror para contrarrestar el entonces impresionante crecimiento del ERPI por todo Guerrero.
Los indígenas asesinados aquella madrugada fueron Honorio García Lorenzo y Mauro González Castro, de la comunidad Ahuacachahue; Fidencio Morales Castro y Daniel Crisóforo Jiménez, de Coyul; Fernando Félix Guadalupe, de Ocote Amarillo; Apolonio Jiménez García, de Potrero; Manuel Francisco Prisciliano, de Mesón Zapote; Ceferino Damián Marco, de Coxcatlán, quién fue confundido con Juan García de los Santos; José Rivera Morales, de La Palma; Mario Chávez García, de El Charco, y el estudiante de la Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Ricardo Zavala Tapia. El reporte militar señaló al estudiante como el comandante Daniel del ERPI.
Otros siete indígenas sufrieron torturas y heridas por parte de los militares. Además, a los detenidos aquella madrugada se les trasladó a un cuartel militar, donde bajo tortura fueron obligados a declarar ante autoridades castrenses. Entre los detenidos iban cuatro menores de edad: Bernabé García de Jesús y Melitón Castro Morales, quienes contaban con 14 y 15 años de edad, respectivamente, no hablaban español y no sabían leer ni escribir; Pedro Esteban Ávila y Adrián Patriarca Agustina, entonces de 17 y 16 años de edad, respectivamente; estaban aprendiendo a escribir, leer y hablar español.
Los testimonios de los mayores de edad trasladados a las instalaciones militares dan cuenta de los métodos inhumanos (¿debemos decir “de investigación”?) de los militares.
Érika Zamora Pardo declaró que le esposaron las manos, le amarraron un cable y la tiraron con agua en el piso. Sintió entonces descargas eléctricas. Los soldados le decían que tenía que decir lo que ellos querían, porque si no lo hacía la matarían y agredirían a su familia. Le hicieron firmar unos documentos que ellos habían escrito y que nunca le permitieron leer.
Efrén Cortés Chávez declaró que le decían que aceptara todo lo que ellos estaban escribiendo, porque, como quiera, de ahí no iba a salir. Le vendaron los ojos y los trasladaron a un lugar donde, con un aparato que le colocaron en la garganta, le oprimieron el cuello hasta casi estrangularlo. Lo desnudaron y le ataron manos y pies a una plancha; con una esponja le mojaron el cuerpo y le aplicaron descargas eléctricas en las tibias de los pies, genitales y en la cabeza.
Mientras, en la comunidad de El Charco, los soldados entraron a las casas a robar enseres domésticos y alimentos. Las chozas fueron allanadas y saqueadas. Lavaron, pintaron y resanaron la escuela, para eliminar la sangre salpicada en las paredes, pisos y patio, y para disimular los impactos de bala.
He tenido la oportunidad de visitar en varias ocasiones la comunidad de El Charco: su tierra colorada, casi roja; sus milpas húmedas y generosas, donde el maíz, la calabaza y el frijol crecen junto con los niños descalzos; sus sembradíos de flor de jamaica, que pintan de guinda laderas enteras; sus cañas de azúcar cultivadas junto a los arroyos; sus trapiches en los solares de las casas. Y su escuela Caritino Maldonado: conservada como un sencillo memorial de las víctimas.
Hoy el Estado Mexicano pide a la CIDH archivar este caso y declararlo inadmisible… Lo que es inadmisible es que no haya la menor intención de reconocer el hecho y, por lo tanto, se garantice que situaciones como ésta se sigan ocurriendo. Los cobardes asesinatos contra personas indefensas –hayan o no cometido delitos– tienen que ser castigados. Campañas publicitarias que se pagan con dinero público buscan instalar en la población la idea de que las Fuerzas Armadas respetan los derechos humanos. Si fuera verdad; si el Ejército ha incorporado en sus protocolos de actuación el respeto a la vida y dignidad humanas, ¿por qué no permitir que se sepa la verdad de un pasado que ha quedado atrás? Hasta la fecha (y ahí están los reportes de la Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos) es común que quienes son detenidos por efectivos militares sean trasladados a instalaciones castrenses y no sean entregados a autoridades civiles sino hasta que son torturados. Muchos han muerto en el tormento. ¿Cuándo se va a acabar con esta práctica?
Fragmentos
El promotor de la Coordinadora Regional de Autoridades Comunitarias-Policía Comunitaria (CRAC-PC) en Tixtla, Guerrero, Gonzalo Molina González, se encuentra preso en el Centro Regional de Readaptación Social de Chilpancingo, Guerrero. Padece enfermedades que requieren atención quirúrgica: litiasis renal y ureteral obstructiva que está afectando al riñón y uréter derechos; litiasis ureteral izquierda, y hernia inguinal derecha. El Colectivo contra la Tortura y la Impunidad demanda atención médica inmediata para Molina González, toda vez que los daños a su salud pueden ser irreversibles en un corto plazo.
Zósimo Camacho
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Contralínea 513 /del 07 al 12 de Noviembre 2016 | 0 |
Financial Markets , Gold , Market Manipulation , Precious Metals Comex , gold silver ratio , Junior mining stocks , LBMA , Shanghai Gold Exchange , silver eagles admin
In the absence of the extreme degree of price intervention being conducted by the western Central Banks and bullion banks in the paper gold and silver markets, the price of both precious metals would be several multiples higher. That this intervention occurs not only has become overtly visible to all market participants, but recent prosecution/settlement events have rendered this assertion indisputable.
After a massive move that started in mid-December 2015, the sector began selling-off in early July. This correction was a function of both characteristic market technicals and conspicuous paper market manipulation in the New York and London paper gold/silver “markets.”
But after nearly five years of oppressive, unfettered market manipulation, the physical market has put a floor beneath the market. After a price “correction” of 8% in gold and 16% in silver, the metals are now ready to go higher from here. This was “telegraphed” by the recent price-action in the junior mining stocks as represented by the GDXJ junior mining stock index:
The junior mining stocks – especially the smaller exploration companies – similarly signaled the move higher in the metals ahead of the rest of the sector beginning in early December 2015.
While the Central Banks would love nothing more right now than to take gold and silver down to zero, the markets – driven by the physical deliver bullion markets in the eastern hemisphere, appear to want the market to move higher. The sequence of trading events beginning yesterday through today illustrates this dynamic.
After a big rally in the mining stocks and metals in the first half of the trading on Wednesday, the miners slammed after the FOMC meeting statement was released in the afternoon. The HUI was taken down from its high of 226 (up 7 pts) to close down down 4 points at 215. This signaled a likely price ambush in the metals, which occurred just after midnight EST, taking December gold down $14 from $1301 to $1287 – silver was taken below $18.
The mind-set going into the NYSE was that the HUI would get slammed again. But the market had different ideas. The HUI began moving up at the open. It’s been up as much as 2.5% from yesterday’s close. Shortly thereafter, the metals began to rally as well. Historically, after a reversal like yesterday, the metals and miners typically continue lower for at least few days. But with the mining stocks leading the way, it is highly probable that the next move from here will be higher (with plenty of manipulated volatility, of course).
In today’s episode of the Shadow of Truth, we explain why the precious metals sector has shifted into a trend in which every price pullback should be used to accumulate and add to positions in gold, silver and your favorite mining stocks. Share this: | 0 |
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by Spirt Science An empath, or, someone who is highly sensitive to other people’s feelings, intentions, motivations, and the general the energy that surrounds them, often don’t realize that they are until they’re in such emotional/mental turmoil, they go looking for the cause. The difference, of course, between simply being “empathetic” and what one would […] Sea cucumber kills cancer cells with amazing efficiency
Sea Cucumber has been proven to kill cancer cells with ease! by Cindy Murdoch – Staff Writer Sea cucumber can be beneficial in the battle against cancer by killing cancer cells and stimulating the immune system. What is a sea cucumber? Consider the lowly sea cucumber. No it is not a vegetable although its name […] Shocked scientists discover the skin communicates with the liver
Skin communicates with the liver! by Ethan Huff – Natural News Skin: It is your body’s largest organ, and groundbreaking new research out of Denmark has found that the proper function of your other vital organs is dependent upon its integrity. A collaborative research project out of the University of Southern Denmark (USD) recently discovered that […] GMO Corn versus NON GMO: The Shocking Corn Comparison
The claims that “There is no difference between GMO corn and NON GMO corn” are false. (See the photo below) A 2012 study, called the Corn Comparison Report, was recently released by Profit Pro and published on the website for Moms Across America March to Label GMOs – a group dedicated to raising awareness about […] 12 Symptoms of Kidney Disease You Shouldn’t Ignore
It is important to identify kidney disease early because in most cases the damage in the kidneys can’t be undone. by Dr. Anitha Anchan Most people are not aware of the fact that kidney diseases can be silent killers. They may not show any symptoms for a long time till the situation becomes critical. (Why […] Permaculture Gurus Share Secrets of Dramatic Land Transformations
Traci Knight – Staff Writer Permaculture is a movement whereby permanent agriculture is incorporated into personal landscapes through careful designs that mimic patterns in nature. A minimalist approach to land management is adopted, after the implementation of careful planning – usually with mass plantings of fruit and nut trees where land and space allow. The […] Chief Seattle’s Prophecy for America: The End of Living and the Beginning of Survival
by Richard Cassaro – RichardCassaro.com Chief Seattle (1780 – 1866) was a prominent native American chief who pursued a path of peace with colonial white settlers in what is now the state of Washington. During treaty negotiations in 1852, he gave a famous speech in response to an offer by the U.S. Government to buy two […] Six powerful ways to use lavender during the cold and flu season
by Carolanne Wright | Natural News Hidden beneath the pleasing scent of lavender is a fierce natural medicine and formidable protector. Used since antiquity, lavender was a significant guardian against some of the most deadly infectious diseases of all time – the great epidemics of plague sweeping across Europe throughout the Middle Ages and into the […] Man says raw food diet has made him ‘almost superhuman’
by Antonia – Natural News For fruitarian and endurance athlete Michael Arnstein, his 15-mile commute to work isn’t by car, bus or train. Instead, he runs to the office, jogging through residential neighborhoods and eventually New York’s Central Park, pausing only to enjoy fruit along the way. Before his run, he may enjoy a breakfast of […] Join For Free! Discover Little Known Health Secrets and Useful Tips For Healthy Living! First Name | 0 |
(42 fans) - Advertisement - In my research of what is happening in our communities regarding resilience from the insanity of today's corporate and government behaviors, I came across this Maryland Community Pilot study. This study is listed as being written this year, 2016. This makes the research fresh. To give credence to this movement, consider some of the investigators for the study. People like: * Karen Akerlof, Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason University * Fredrika Moser, Maryland Sea Grant * Kristin Baja, Office of Sustainability I could continue on and on. My point is, the people involved are professionals and not whacked out "greenies". There are four Maryland neighborhoods involved in the study. Some of the neighborhood climate risks entail: Flooding and sewage overflows from storm water run-off, urban heat island effects, pollen allergens, increased air pollution, storms, riverine flooding (in Westport). - Advertisement - The vulnerabilities include: Low socioeconomic populations, racial disparities, vacant housing, poor health and air quality (Baltimore), industrial facilities (Westport) The site further states that Communities are beginning to plan efforts to consider adaptation strategies to build their resilience (NRC, 2010), yet many lack the political capital or access to information and resources that would allow them to prepare for chronic flooding, catastrophic storm events, and losses of economically important natural resources. Frequently, it is underserved and underrepresented communities that lack these resources and are most vulnerable to the effects of changing environmental conditions (Douglas et al., 2011; Melillo, Richmond, & Yohe,2014). Storm events are particularly devastating to socially vulnerable communities, even when controlling for infrastructure characteristics (Highfield, Peacock, & Zandt, 2014). - Advertisement - Meeting the needs of high-risk/low-resource communities is one of the most critical challenges in achieving resilience nationally (NRC, 2010), but little tailored information exists to guide program development specifically for these contexts (NOAA, 2015). Moreover, our understanding of the conditions under which audiences are most likely to engage in successful decision-making to reduce vulnerabilities is still evolving (Webler, Tuler, Dow, Whitehead, & Kettle, 2014). "Build resistance to what?" you may ask. Personally I use the term resilience. It's more positive. Resilience as I define it is the adoption of behaviors and programs that lead to a supportive and clean environment, healthy families and a vibrant you. | 0 |
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