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Free Thought Project – by John Vibes
In the midst of deepening tension between US allies NATO and Russia, NATO is planning the largest military buildup along the Russian border since the cold war.
NATO called on allied governments this week to contribute whatever troops and equipment they can to the effort. According to Reuters, thousands of troops are expected to arrive in the coming days and weeks.
It was reported that Italy, France, Denmark and other European states are expected to join the NATO military divisions that will be led by the United States along Russias border.
On Wednesday, Britain announced it is sending hundreds of soldiers and hardware to Russia’s borders as part of a huge military deployment.
A total of 800 troops, drones and tanks are moving to Estonia as part of the biggest military build-up of NATO troops on Russia’s borders since the Cold War.
In addition to the forces allocated for his specific operation, NATO has an army of over 40,000 ready to be called up to fight at any time.
The US military claims that this threatening move is meant to act as a “deterrent” to the Russian military, but this is obvious a move that will escalate tensions and push towards a possible third world war.
“This is a credible deterrence, not to provoke a conflict but to prevent conflict, ” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday — ironically ignoring the fact that it is a de facto provocation.
Just imagine what would happen if Russian troops amassed along the Mexican border and told the US that this move was to ‘prevent conflict.’
The so-called Iskander-M cruise missiles can hit targets across Poland and the Baltics, although NATO officials declined to say if Russia had moved nuclear warheads to Kaliningrad.
The United States’ envoy to NATO, Douglas Lute told reporters that NATO and the US military may consider Russia a threat if they had nuclear weapons within range of NATO’s deployment. This statement is insane considering the fact that the US military is the ones who are many miles from home on the border of someone else’s lands.
“This deployment, if it becomes permanent if the presence of nuclear weapons were confirmed, would be a change in (Russia’s) security posture, ” Lute said.
If anyone is a threat, it is NATO and the US government.
These military tensions are the result of an ongoing proxy war in Syria, in which western powers are attempting to institute a regime change in the country by funding violent rebel groups. Meanwhile, Russia has interests in keeping their allies in the Syrian government in control, putting the two superpowers at odds.
Until now, Russia and the US have been fighting through third parties, just as they had during the previous cold war, and the same type of situation is developing today. Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/nato-us-uk-assemble-largest-troop-buildup-russian-border-since-cold-war/#Egz3E7sm2qQrQwBh.99 Share this: | 0 |
By Ryan Banister With the apparent elimination of rickets at the turn of 20th century, following the discovery of the role that vitamin D plays in the elimination of this disease, most may think that... | 0 |
Donald Trump’s latest shot across the bow of NATO hit close enough to leave some European leaders dripping with “astonishment and agitation,” as German Foreign Minister Steinmeier put it. [“I said a long time ago that NATO had problems,” Trump said during the interview with the Times of London and Germany’s Bild. “Number one, it was obsolete, because it was designed many, many years ago. Number two, the countries weren’t paying what they’re supposed to pay. ” Trump expanded on the latter point by explaining that “countries aren’t paying their fair share so we’re supposed to protect countries but a lot of these countries aren’t paying what they’re supposed to be paying, which I think is very unfair to the United States. ” Specifically, he said Britain was one of five countries “paying what they’re supposed to,” out of 22 members. Trump nonetheless stressed that NATO is “very important to me,” and that he feels “very strongly toward Europe,” comments that appear to have been omitted from or dismissed by many reports on the interview by American and European media outlets. Another part of Trump’s remarks quoted by very few outlets reporting the Times and Bild interview is his stern criticism of Russia’s intervention in Syria. Monday’s Twitter streams are filled with mockery of Trump as a Russian pawn or collaborator, because the Russians swiftly agreed with his description of NATO as “obsolete,” but he was quite tough on what they have been doing to Syria: Nah, I think it’s a very rough thing. It’s a very bad thing, we had a chance to do something when we had the line in the sand and it wasn’t — nothing happened. That was the only time — and now, it’s sort of very late. It’s too late. Now everything is over — at some point it will come to an end — but Aleppo was nasty. I mean when you see them shooting old ladies walking out of town — they can’t even walk and they’re shooting ’em — it almost looks like they’re shooting ’em for sport — ah no, that’s a terrible — that’s been a terrible situation. Aleppo has been such a terrible humanitarian situation. He followed this up by saying he trusts German Chancellor Angela Merkel as well as Russian President Vladimir Putin, “but let’s see how long that lasts, it may not last long at all. ” He was responding to a question about whether he understands the historical importance of NATO to Europeans, and their continuing apprehension about Russia, when he described the alliance as “obsolete. ” He was not saying there is no need for caution or defense against Russia he was saying NATO, as currently constructed and funded, is not the ideal tool for the job. CNN writes that Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov “agreed with Trump’s assessment of NATO” by saying “the systematic goal of this organization is confrontation. ” That is not what Trump said, but apparently the media had decided any and all attacks on NATO, from everyone, constitute agreement with Trump. Various levels of pushback and panic fill the bulk of CNN’s article, including the German Foreign Minister, Steinmeier, portraying the alliance as “rattled” by Trump’s remarks, and relaying “concerns” from NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. “A strong NATO is good for the United States, just as it is for Europe,” declared NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu. CBS News cites French Foreign Minister Ayrault calling for Europeans to “stay united, together as a bloc” in response to Trump’s remarks. AFP describes Chancellor Merkel’s response to Trump’s comments as “sharp,” but she merely said, “We Europeans have our fate in our own hands. ” “I am personally waiting for the inauguration of the U. S. president. Then of course we will work with him on all levels,” she added. If that is a “sharp” response, then Trump has already won his political struggle with Europe, and he is not even sworn in yet. Europe “taking its fate in its own hands” appears to be what Trump wants when he objects that the NATO burden on the United States is too high. Europe reeks of obsolescence right now, far beyond NATO headquarters. If the election of Donald Trump jolts Europe’s leaders into action, then American voters have done the people of Britain and the Continent a huge favor. | 1 |
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YouTube videos of interviews with college students showing their often abysmal ignorance on even basic issues have recently surfaced. This YouTube video , for instance, asks students, “Who won the Civil War?” Those quizzed didn’t know, or they didn’t know there was one, or if it occurred in 1965. As another example, this YouTube video asks students attending George Mason University to identify a photograph of Vice President Joe Biden. None of them could, including one student majoring in political science.
Walter Williams added to the dismay by noting that a recent study by the American Institutes for Research showed that half of four-year college students couldn’t perform simple tasks such as balancing a checkbook. Williams also cited NBC News , which reported that Fortune 500 companies spend about $3 billion a year to train their new employees basic English.
Williams went on to quote reports from the Pentagon that between two-thirds and three-quarters of young people between the ages of 17 and 24 were not qualified for military service because of 1) weak educational skills, 2) poor physical fitness, 3) a history of illegal drug use, 4) medical conditions, or 5) criminal records.
Selwyn Duke, writing at The New American , revealed that almost half of American young people between 16 and 20 would vote for a socialist while one out of five would vote for a communist.
Each of these statistics can be challenged on one basis or another, no doubt, but using these disparate examples as proof that the "dumbing down" of America is complete greatly exaggerates the situation. Just one brief look at what’s happening with homeschooling is sufficient to challenge such a conclusion.
Beginning at essentially zero in the 1970s, there are now, according to careful research done by Ann Zeise at A2ZHomeschooling.com, 1.5 million students being homeschooled in the United States. That is 2.7 percent of the 55.7 million youngsters between the age of five and 17 in the country.
Not all of of those remaining 54.2 million are in public schools, however, as Zeise doesn’t include private schools, charter schools, Catholic schools, or other options.
For those involved in the freedom fight, how can this possibly be interpreted as good news? In order to “win” — to reverse the ravages of socialist infiltrations into the culture — doesn’t that number have to be 50.1 percent or higher?
Not according to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). Its Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center published a remarkable yet still unheralded study in July 2011 asking, and then answering, the question: What percentage of a given population needs to adopt a specific point of view before that viewpoint becomes accepted by the population at large? Here is the answer presented in language that only a social scientist could love: We show how the prevailing majority opinion in a population can be rapidly reversed by a small fraction p of randomly distributed committed agents who consistently proselytize the opposing opinion and are immune to influence. Specifically, we show that when the committed fraction grows beyond a critical value pc≈10%, there is a dramatic decrease in the time Tc taken for the entire population to adopt the committed opinion.
Gabrielle DeMarco, writing two months later, helped readers to understand what RPI had just discovered: Take the see-saw as an example. One side is up. One side is down. Put the biggest kid on the playground on one side. That see-saw is going nowhere. Put a little kindergartner on the other end. Nothing happens. Keep adding on the kindergartners. The see-saw wiggles a bit, gives a little. But, when the pile of 5-year-olds reaches a certain point, that next tiny, seemingly insignificant kindergartener changes the entire schoolyard dynamic.The see-saw squeaks. The big kid is quickly hoisted into the air. The kindergartners stand triumphant.
Margaret Mead said the same thing but differently: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
According to RPI, the operative percentage is 10 percent.
That’s why what one parent who is homeschooling her children at The Freedom Project Academy says is so important, and encouraging: NO Common Core, NO Government funding, NO worries about our children being taught revisionist history.… This begins the list of things for which we thank Freedom Project Education. Our home school family became an FPE family in 2012. We tried one class for our eldest child. He loved it. So did we. Our two eldest are now enjoying their second year as full-time FPE students. Next year, two more siblings will join them. We plan to have all eight of our children graduate from FPE.
Each of those eight students is much more likely to participate in politics than are those who haven’t been educated in such an environment. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, young people ages 18 to 24 in general vote far less than their older peers, yet homeschoolers are far more active. According to a study done as the homeschooling movement was spooling up, the National Home Education Research Institute found that 71 percent of adults who had been homeschooled participate in an ongoing community service activity compared with just 37 percent of adults with a public-school background. The study went on: Homeschool graduates are more involved in civic affairs and vote in much higher percentages than their peers. 76% of those surveyed between the ages of 18 and 24 voted within the last five years, compared with only 29% of the corresponding U.S. populace. The numbers are even greater in older age groups, with voting levels not falling below 95%, compared with a high of 53% for the corresponding U.S. populace.
The passage of time hasn’t changed those numbers very much, nor has the motivation of parents homeschooling their children. Jennifer Courtney, writing at ClassicalConversations.com, did an informal survey of some 70 homeschool families, asking them why they homeschooled their children. The top three reasons were: religion, safety, and the quality of their education. Wrote Courtney: “Parents who homeschool often want to set higher standards for their children, choose quality curriculum, or have the flexibility to work at a faster pace in the subjects in which their students excel.”
As those increasing numbers enter the culture, the closer comes that “tipping point” where real restoration of the savaged American Republic can begin, YouTube videos to the contrary notwithstanding.
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . | 0 |
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In a rare interview, Red Bull boss and Austria’s richest man Dietrich Mateschitz has slammed mass migration and political correctness, warning they threaten to destroy Europe’s true cultural diversity. [Speaking to Kleine Zeitung, the Formula 1 investor called the decision of key politicians to open the borders — which resulted in Europe’s migration crisis — “unpardonable” noting that “if a company were to make mistakes on the same scale, it would have gone broke”. Highlighting the “hypocrisies” of what he called the “refugees welcome brigade” with regards to migration, Mateschitz said: “I am talking about the fact that none of the people shouting ‘refugees welcome’ or [Chancellor Angela Merkel’s famous phrase] ‘we can do it’ were preparing their own guest rooms or tents in their gardens to accommodate half a dozen migrants. “Even then it was clear to everyone that most of the people [arriving in the continent] did not correspond to the definition of the refugee. In any case, not the Geneva Convention”. In the interview, Mateschitz took a stand against the “destabilisation of Europe” which he said threatens the “uniqueness of [the continent’s] diversity and individuality with its different cultures and languages”. “I hope I’m not the only one who’s worried that one of the highest officials in Brussels said that countries which aren’t multicultural should be wiped off the map” Mateschitz told the newspaper, possibly alluding to comments made by European Commission Frans Timmermans in 2015. “Any society, anywhere in the world, will be diverse in the future — that’s the future of the world,” Timmermans said, demanding that Eastern and Central EU nations undergo similar demographic transitions to Western Europe. Of political correctness, Mateschitz said: “It seems that no one dares to tell the truth, even if everyone knows what the truth is. ”“The elites want citizens to be frightened, and easily manipulated,” he added. The Red Bull founder said he sees numerous problems plaguing the European Union (EU) the architects of whom he fingered as belonging to a “ intellectual elite” with nothing to contribute to the continent. “Policies which are steeped in political correctness have been imposed in the name of a intellectual elite who have nothing to contribute to our country neither economically nor culturally despite their best intentions,” he said. Mateschitz also poured scorn on how Russia has been framed as the EU’s nemesis by large parts of the media and Western liberal establishment, telling Kleine Zeitung: “I do not need anyone to tell me who my enemies are. ”Criticising attempts to destroy the former Soviet superpower through economic sanctions, the Formula 1 investor pointed out that “for Europe as a whole [this policy] results in losing billions of Euros”. Challenged by the Austrian newspaper with the assertion that he too is an ‘elite’ Mateschitz hit back, describing himself as a “humanist” but “someone who basically opposes any dogma”. Speaking about banning the Islamic veil, a talking point in Austria currently, the Red Bull boss said: “I can’t bring myself to think that this is really a matter of any importance … It’s silly to make a political issue out of something like this when there are far more pressing matters. ” | 1 |
Financial Markets , Gold , Market Manipulation , U.S. Economy Banana Republic , Clinton Foundation , Hillary emails , Podesta emails , the rapture admin Must have been some kind of time/space warp while we slept last night… today Obama says if illegals vote they become a citizen and the NY Post headline is the Filipino maid who printed Hillary’s classified emails then Comey bails on 650,000 damning emails. F#%k me Dave, I feel like I’m on LSD. – email from a reader
About 12 years ago I was chatting with the friend who dragged me feet-first into the “dark side” and the world of precious metals in 2001. We were discussing Eastman Kodak’s likely demise a few years before the Company went into the tank. We knew a 2008-type event was going to happen at some point. At the time, we said that eventually we would see events occur in this country that would blow our minds. Mind you, this was a couple years after Enron, 9/11 (which we knew was a Government false-flag operation), Bernie Madoff and the U.S.’ illegal invasion based on admitted (eventually) lies propagated by Colin Powell.
I have to say, the way in which Hillary Clinton’s criminal organization has gained complete control over the political and justice system and the media in this country is truly mind-blowing. Hillary is a criminally insane sociopath. That point is unequivocally inarguable. But the true Devil in her organization is John Podesta, who’s persona has been made available to anyone willing to spend time reading just a portion of the “Podesta” emails given to us by Wikileaks. There are 691,200 seconds in 8 days. FBI Director Comey reviewed 650,000 emails in 8 days? An email per second? Americans aren’t stupid! – tweet from Bernard Kerik, ex-NYPD Commissioner
If anyone knows about corrupt organizations, it’s an NYPD Commissioner – the NYPD being one of the most internally corrupt law enforcement organizations around. It’s great when ex-insiders blow the whistle on others when the agenda of those others do not fit that of the ex-insider’s “team.”
The manner in which Jim Comey has folded is beyond stunning. I’m not sure there’s anyone who cares about this matter who believes that Comey was able to parse through over 650,000 emails in 8 days in order to determine that Hillary did not commit “intent” in her email escapades.
Hillary’s email trail made available to the public is a fascinating trail of criminality. I doubt James Patterson, John Grisham and Robert Ludlum could combine resources and make up a crime tale as intriguing as Hillary’s.
The evidence piling up against Hillary is breathtaking. According to the recently released Podesta emails, the Clinton Foundation has been used for everything except funding charitable causes, including paying for Chelsea’s wedding and funding Chelsea’s husband’s failed hedge fund. If I were not able to laugh at this insanity, I’d be suicidal…
I think most Americans who are being honest with themselves are fully aware of the fact that Hillary Clinton is likely the most corrupt politician in U.S. history. If anything, the election of Hillary Clinton is a symptom that the end is near for the United States.
I am convinced that we are at a pivotal moment in American history, and if the American people willingly choose Hillary Clinton it will be an indication that there is zero hope for the future of this nation.
The above quote is an excerpt from a must-read essay written by Michael Snyder: I Just Lost All Faith In Our Deeply Corrupt Legal System…
I urge everyone to read Snyder’s commentary. | 0 |
Kellyanne Conway and @ChrisCuomo clash on known information about the Russian hacking. https: . Friday on CNN’s “New Day,” Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway took on show Chris Cuomo over allegations the Russian government engaged in hacking to interfere with the last November’s presidential election. Cuomo insisted Donald Trump should acknowledge Russia’s role in the hacking. “Why won’t the acknowledge what is so clear to the intelligence community, that Russia was involved in the hacks?” Cuomo said. Conway pointed out Trump has yet to receive his intelligence briefing on the matter, which is scheduled for later in the day. She also pointed out President Barack Obama could have done more to combat the hacking at the time Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had said the Russians were responsible and argued the current discussion about the hacking was meant to delegitimize Trump. “I really believe there are those out there — there are those out there that are trying to delegitimize his presidency, review the election results and you know it,” she said. “[W]e had a president of the United States in October who could have when Mr. Clapper said what he said, could have pushed back harder but did not because what was he doing? He and Hillary Clinton and all of their teams were absolutely believing that she was going to be the next president of the United States. ” Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor | 1 |
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In exactly one week from today, millions of Americans will join a mass exodus to various polling places around the nation to select new city and state officials, mayors, judges, sheriffs, congressional representatives, and of course the next President of the United States.
However, some find themselves locked out of the process not from a lack of desire to participate, but because they have responsibilities as parents and can not find the time, or the resources, to leave their offspring alone so that they may go to the ballot box.
With lines at some polling stations reaching up to 5 to 8 hours during the primary a few months ago, in Arizona for example, voting can be rightly seen as out of reach for those who have more to do than stand around chewing the fat with their neighbors while they wait for their turn to pull a lever.
The YMCA has offered to do their part to help alleviate some of this inconvenience by offering free child car services on election day. The USA President and CEO of the YMCA, Kevin Washington, issued this decree :
“Election Day is arguably one of the most important days in the U.S. this year — the ultimate opportunity for Americans to make their voices heard through the democratic process. Unfortunately, many people who want to vote find it challenging because they have to take children with them. The Y’s hope is that Zoe’s Kids Day Out initiative enables those parents and caregivers to exercise their right to vote, and ensures children can spend their time in a safe, nurturing environment.
Now not every single YMCA location across the nation is offering this fantastic service, so please be sure to check with your local chapter beforehand.
While the YMCA deserves applause and recognition for their commitment to furthering American democracy through inclusion, what they are offering is a band-aid to a systemic problem.
To correct this issue entirely the American people deserve election day to be a national holiday. Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) proposed a bill to create “Democracy Day” which would codify into law the right for all Americans to have a day off to vote. Presently there are no legal requirements for employers to give their employees time off to vote, although hundreds of large corporations have voluntarily allowed their workers time to vote without fear of penalty or repercussion, but this is not enough.
Only around 54% of eligible voters turned out to polling places in 2012, and that cannot be entirely blamed on voter apathy, but also on the reality that many do not have the time or resources to cast a ballot despite their deep desire to do participate in the democratic process. The American people deserve better, and our government must do more to ensure that everyone who wishes to vote has the ability to do exactly that. | 0 |
RIO DE JANEIRO — Down in the pool, the Australian synchronized swimming duo was performing a tour of the animals of the outback — kookaburras, emus, centipedes — to music from “Crocodile Dundee. ” In the stands, the American duo of Ruth and Emily Thunstrum was trying to figure out what, exactly, was going on. “There was definitely a bird of some kind,” Emily said. “I think there was a crocodile,” Ruth answered. “You should know — you spent that time in Australia. ” You do not have to be from someplace other than Australia to be mystified by synchronized swimming, a sport that lies in the corner of the Twilight Zone where Kabuki opera meets advanced underwater survival. It may look as if the athletes are simply gesticulating emphatically, flinging themselves around in improbable aquatic configurations, and executing shockingly complex leg movements while upside down and not breathing. But that’s not the half of it. Each synchro routine also has an elaborate theme, and each theme must be conveyed with grace, precision and dramatically relevant facial gestures, as well as moves like the catalina rotation (rotate your body while holding your leg, in the air) and the vertical descent (descend, straight upside down, until your toes are submerged). The athletes also have to do each move at the same time and make it seem fun and not hard at all, even when they are heaving, hypoxic and about to pass out. Judged for their artistic as well as athletic skills, synchro swimmers put considerable effort into their themes and choreography. The stories can celebrate a nation’s history and culture evoke classic tales, ballets, songs and myths mimic natural phenomena or abstract principles and, in the case of “Fury,” the American duo’s free routine theme in Rio, convey a mood itself. Sometimes the themes are obvious and careworn: Every competition seems to include at least one “Swan Lake” (hello, Austria). They can also be hideously ill conceived. In 1996, for instance, the French synchro team picked an unusual subject for the Olympics: the Holocaust. The routine began with the athletes on the deck like Nazis and ended with them being rounded up and sent to the (figurative) gas chamber in the pool. After an international outcry, the team switched to a different topic, although its trainer, Odile Petit, tried to argue that the routine was no more offensive than the one “depicting torture in Chile” performed by the national team. One strange feature of the sport is that despite all the attention lavished on the themes, even the judges cannot always work out what they are. “Not all the judges get the story,” said Irene Hawes, a longtime synchro judge. Take the “Firebird” suite by Stravinsky, she said. “There’s the phoenix rising and the battle and all that. A lot of people don’t know that. ” She continued, “I remember one routine was meant to be a tumbleweed, and the athletes were rolling along the deck, and people were wondering what they were doing. ” She figured it out, she said, only when the competition ended and “the country handed out a flier. ” Still, synchro athletes said, the narratives help both them and the spectators. “It’s much more interesting to watch a routine that has a specific theme in it,” said Bianca Hammett, captain of the Australian synchro team. She said the team’s free routine was “a journey through the unique flora and fauna of Australia. ” It features both the obvious (crocodiles: athletes’ legs snapping open and shut) and the not. “We have a lizards’ dance party,” Hammett said. “We put our hands near our heads, like we’re mimicking lizards. ” Many synchro teams pick themes celebrating their countries. The Spanish duo in Rio is doing a Flamenco routine while the Brazilians are depicting natural life in the Amazon. Britain is representing snakes (always popular, because of their watery sinuousness) the Kazakhs, ravens. The Swiss theme is “Orient bazaar,” whatever that means, while the French, with renewed Gallic ambition, have selected “Africa. ” The Russians, who almost always win, are modestly pretending to be mermaids. Another challenge: The choreography has to fit the music. “If you used a ballet but did, like, movements, we would see it as strange,” Hawes said. “Same thing if it has a crescendo and you’re doing absolutely nothing but laying on your back. If it has a winding type of sound, which wants spinning, and you’re doing marches — these are factors. ” Every judge has pet peeves. Many people at the 2012 London Games did not care for Canada’s team program, which looked more like an Esther Williams extravaganza than a sports routine and which Hawes denounced as “gross. ” “It had to do with their headgear — large swimming caps covered with plastic flowers — their extreme facial moves, and the spitting of water,” Hawes said. As for Linda Loehndorf, another judge — spare her the circus programs. “It’s like, ugh,” she said. “I get it. You’re a clown. You don’t need to stick your tongue out at me. ” And then there are particularly memorable performances. Last year, for instance, China unveiled an electrifying routine that at first seemed destined for cliché corner. “I thought, Oh, jeez, not that again — ‘The Phantom of the Opera,’” Loehndorf said. “It’s something you hear over and over again. But they managed to tell the whole story in four and a half minutes, and I got it completely. It was a sort of thing. ” And people still speak with awe about Spain’s daring 2009 performance to “Stairway to Heaven,” the cryptic song that launched a thousand sweaty slow dances. For those who have long been made to wonder, the team’s interpretation of the always challenging “bustle in your hedgerow” lyric offered as plausible an explanation as any. There was a line of athletes lying in the water, arms and legs stretched out, possibly like a hedge wearing a selection of bathing suits there were two athletes off to the side, performing what was surely a bustle. “It was gorgeous,” Loehndorf said. | 1 |
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Donald Trump’s campaign debuted a dark new attack ad on Tuesday, looking to further its portrayal of Hillary Clinton as a corrupt politician and doubling down on allegations that she grew wealthy through “pay-to-play politics.”The TV spot hits Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, on controversies related to her family’s foundation, stating that “staggering amounts of cash poured into the Clinton Foundation from criminals, dictators, countries that hate America” and that “Hillary cut deals for donors.”
Clinton’s charitable foundation has faced intense scrutiny this election over concerns about possible conflicts of interest because it took in money from corporations and foreign governments. Clinton has repeatedly denied, however, that her work as secretary of state was compromised by the foundation’s work or that she gave any special privileges to its donors.The Clintons have also said that the foundation, which contributes to AIDS relief abroad, among other charitable causes, will cease taking money from corporations and foreign governments if she is elected president.Still, the ad from the Republican nominee claims that Clinton “sold out American workers, exploited Haitians in need, she even gave American uranium rights to the Russians.”“Hillary Clinton only cares about power, money and herself,” its voice over concludes.The advertisement is another instance of Trump, an embattled candidate in an already divisive race, going on the offensive as the presidential campaign enters its final weeks. As Trump trails in the polls and high-profile Republicans abandon him, he has attacked Clinton and her husband’s character, going so far as to bring women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct to watch the second debate in St. Louis last weekend.Some Republicans had called for him to drop out of the race after a 2005 recording emerged showing him bragging about sexual assault last week. But, attacking even Republican establishment figures like Speaker Paul Ryan and Arizona Sen. John McCain, Trump has promised to plow forward, and some observers suggest he has little to lose.“It is so nice that the shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for America the way I want to,” he tweeted on Tuesday. | 0 |
War is like crack for presidents. It confers instant gravitas, catapulting them to respectability, bypassing all station stops. They get to make macho pronouncements on a topic where every utterance is seen as august. [On the other hand, Trump’s Syrian misadventure is immoral, violates every promise he ran on, and could sink his presidency. Left to his own devices, uncontaminated by Washington Trump gets it right. Back in 2013, when President Obama was being egged on to attack Syrian President Bashar in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack far more sweeping than this latest one, Trump tweeted: — Aug. 29, 2013: “What will we get for bombing Syria besides more debt and a possible long term conflict? Obama needs Congressional approval. ” — Aug. 31, 2013: “Be prepared, there is a small chance that our horrendous leadership could unknowingly lead us into World War III. ” — Sept. 1, 2013: “If the U. S. attacks Syria and hits the wrong targets, killing civilians, there will be worldwide hell to pay. Stay away and fix broken U. S. ” On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly stated that he had no interest in starting “World War III over Syria,” saying, “We have bigger problems than Assad. ” His policy position was: “Let Syria and ISIS fight. I look at Assad — and Assad looks better than the other side. ” Trump was right on every point. Assad is one of the least bad leaders in the entire Middle East. He’s not a murderous thug like Saddam, has no rape rooms, isn’t into jihad, protects Christians, and is fighting ISIS. He provided us with intelligence on after . He does not have crazy Islamic police slapping women around or throwing gays off buildings. (That would be our beloved ally, Saudi Arabia.) Trump was also correct about Assad’s opponents being far worse, containing large helpings of both ISIS and . As awful as it was to see those dead children, Trump knew that America’s first duty is to our own children. We have never succeeded at turning a Third World dictatorship into a paradise. The history of these things is that removing a Middle Eastern strongman always makes things worse — for example, in Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Egypt. We leap in, thinking we’re helping the poor devils under the thumb of a dictator — and then the new tribe takes over and oppresses everyone else, usually much more brutally, while hating us even more than the old tribe did. If voters wanted more Middle Eastern wars, there were plenty of other candidates offering that: Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, Carly Fiorina, and Hillary Clinton, for example. And we must never forget Jeb! though it proved surprisingly easy to do so in 2016. But we picked Trump. While most of the left wailed about the return of Nazi Germany under Trump, savvier liberals saw his vulnerability: flattery. All we have to do is praise him! You’ll be shocked at how easy it is. And, boy, did they lay it on thick with the Syrian misadventure. No sucker’s bait was left on the floor. Cable news hosts gushed, “Trump became president of the United States tonight!” On MSNBC, Brian Williams called the bombing “beautiful” three times in less than a minute. Sen. Lindsey Graham (one of the “women of the Senate,” according to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg) compared Trump to Reagan. The New York Times headlined an article, “On Syria Attack, Trump’s Heart Came First. ” My nightmare scenario: Trump and Jared watching TV together and : DID YOU SEE THE NEWS! THEY LOVE YOU! All Trump had to do was pointlessly bomb another country, and it was as if a genie had granted his every wish. Looking for some upside to this fiasco, desperate Trump supporters bleated that bombing Assad had sent a message to North Korea. Yes, the message is: The Washington establishment is determined to manipulate the president into launching counterproductive military strikes. Our enemies — both foreign and domestic — would be delighted to see our broken country further weaken itself with pointless wars. Was America strengthened by the Iraq War? The apparently Afghanistan War? Vietnam? This is how great powers die, which is exactly what the left wants. Administration policy was heading in the wrong direction at 90 mph, but thank God, Trump seems to have grabbed the steering wheel and hit the brakes. Notwithstanding the hopes and dreams of Clausewitzian military strategist Nikki Haley, we will not be engaging in regime change in Syria or starting World War III with Russia today. We want the “president of America” back — not “the president of the world. ” | 1 |
MOSCOW — First, two television reporters vanished. Then a waiter went missing. Over the past week, men ranging in age from 16 to 50 have disappeared from the streets of Chechnya. On Saturday, a leading Russian opposition newspaper confirmed a story already circulating among human rights activists: The Chechen authorities were arresting and killing gay men. While abuses by security services in the region, where Russia fought a war against Islamic insurgents, have long been a stain on President Vladimir V. Putin’s human rights record, gay people had not previously been targeted on a wide scale. The men were detained “in connection with their nontraditional sexual orientation, or suspicion of such,” the newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, reported, citing Russian federal law enforcement officials, who blamed the local authorities. By Saturday, the paper reported, and an analyst of the region with her own sources confirmed, that more than 100 gay men had been detained. The newspaper had the names of three murder victims, and suspected many others had died in extrajudicial killings. A spokesman for Chechnya’s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, denied the report in a statement to Interfax on Saturday, calling the article “absolute lies and disinformation. ” “You cannot arrest or repress people who just don’t exist in the republic,” the spokesman, Alvi Karimov, told the news agency. “If such people existed in Chechnya, law enforcement would not have to worry about them, as their own relatives would have sent them to where they could never return,” Mr. Karimov said. The sweep, like so much else in Russian politics today, was entangled in the country’s troubled politics of street activism. It began, Novaya Gazeta reported, after a gay rights group, GayRussia. ru, applied for permits to stage gay pride parades in four cities in Russia’s predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region, of which Chechnya is a part. The group had not focused on the Muslim areas. It had been applying for permits for gay parades in provincial cities around Russia, and collecting the inevitable denials, in order to build a case about gay rights and freedom of assembly with the European Court of Human Rights, in Strasbourg, France. It had applied to more than 90 municipal governments. Nikolai Alekseev, a gay rights activist coordinating this effort, told Novaya Gazeta he had chosen this tactic rather than staging risky, unsanctioned gay parades. The group had not applied for a permit in Chechnya, but in another Muslim region in southern Russia, . The mere application there — denied, as usual — had prompted an counterdemonstration. In the restive Muslim regions, Mr. Putin has empowered local leaders to press agendas of traditional Muslim values, to an Islamist underground. The gay pride parade applications became a galvanizing issue. “In Chechnya, the command was given for a ‘prophylactic sweep’ and it went as far as real murders,” Novaya Gazeta reported. According to the report, the authorities set to finding and arresting closeted gay men, partly by posing as men looking for dates on social networking sites. “Of course, none of these people in any way demonstrated their sexual orientation publicly — in the Caucasus, this is equal to a death sentence,” the newspaper wrote of those detained in the sweep. “I got numerous, numerous signals,” about the sweep of gay men, said Ekaterina L. Sokiryanskaya, Russia project coordinator for the International Crisis Group, and an authority on the North Caucasus. “It came from too many sources not to be true. ” Gay men have begun deleting online accounts, or fleeing the region. One user of Vkontakte, a Russian social networking site, wrote that a boy had been detained in a village in Chechnya. He returned days later, according to the post, “all beaten, just a sack with bones. ” The newspaper published contact information to aid men wanting to leave Chechnya for relatively more tolerant parts of Russia. But reaching communities of closeted gay men in the remote mountain region poses challenges. “Even delivering the information is very difficult,” Ms. Sokiryanskaya, who is familiar with the aid effort, said. “They are just small islands, isolated. ” | 1 |
Donald J. Trump met on Tuesday with journalists from the newsroom and opinion staff at The New York Times. Several reporters, news editors and opinion writers used Twitter to report live on the interview with Mr. Trump. Here are highlights of the significant answers Mr. Trump gave in the interview. Many were tweeted by Maggie Haberman, a political reporter who covered Mr. Trump’s campaign, and Michael M. Grynbaum, a media reporter for The Times. “I don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t,” Mr. Trump said. “She went through a lot and suffered greatly in many different ways. ” He also said that it could be argued that the Clinton Foundation had done “good work. ” As The Times reported shortly after the election, “Mr. Trump told Mrs. Clinton at the second presidential debate that if elected, he would instruct his attorney general ‘to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation because there has never been so many lies, so much deception.’ ” His reversal has already provoked a backlash among some of his supporters, something he said Tuesday he did not expect to happen. Mr. Trump was referring to James N. Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general who headed United States Central Command, who is under consideration to head the Department of Defense. The Times most recently covered General Mattis on Monday, noting that he “oversaw military operations in the Middle East and Southwest Asia from 2010 to 2013,” but “had his tour cut short by the Obama administration, which believed he was too hawkish on Iran. ” Here are two Times articles about the conference, which took place on Saturday in Washington. “It’s not a group I want to energize, and if they are energized, I want to look into it and find out why,” Mr. Trump said in the interview on Tuesday. Mr. Trump’s appointment of Stephen K. Bannon, a nationalist media mogul who is the former head of Breitbart News, to a top White House position, had elicited fierce criticism. The Times profiled Mr. Bannon when he was named to be Mr. Trump’s campaign chief in August. Asked by the columnist Thomas L. Friedman about whether he thought human activity was linked to climate change, Mr. Trump said: “I think there is some connectivity. Some, something. It depends on how much. ” But while acknowledging the connection, he said in response to questions about the warming climate that he was thinking about “how much it will cost our companies. ” Mr. Trump’s statements were a turn away from assertions that climate change was a “hoax,” something that he later claimed never to have said. Mr. Trump was acknowledging a recent meeting with the British politician Nigel Farage, in which, The Times reported, he “encouraged Mr. Farage and his entourage to oppose the kind of offshore wind farms that Mr. Trump believes will mar the pristine view from one of his two Scottish golf courses. ” He was referring to Senator Kelly Ayotte, a Republican who was unseated by New Hampshire’s governor, Maggie Hassan, a Democrat. Ms. Ayotte had turned against Mr. Trump late in the campaign, saying that she misspoke when she called him a role model. The “Heck” he’s referring to is Representative Joe Heck, a Republican who was defeated in Nevada by Catherine Cortez Masto, his Democratic challenger. Pressed about his business interests, Mr. Trump also said, “In theory I could run my business perfectly and then run the country perfectly. ” As The Times reported over the weekend, recent meetings that Mr. Trump has held have suggested that he may keep up his business ties. “The law’s totally on my side,” Mr. Trump said. “The president can’t have a conflict of interest. ” “He said very nice things after the meeting and I said very nice things about him,” Mr. Trump said of President Obama, adding that “I think he’s looking to do absolutely the right thing for the country in terms of transition. ” Here’s our article on the cordial meeting in the Oval Office. Ms. Haberman was referring to Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s who has been one of the ’s closest advisers. (PEOTUS is an abbreviation for of the United States.) The Times reported Saturday that Mr. Kushner, an Orthodox Jew, “has emerged as the closest thing to a steadying influence” in Mr. Trump’s circle. Mr. Kushner has arranged important meetings for Mr. Trump, including one with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and has sought out the advice of foreign policy experts including Henry Kissinger. “I would love to be the one who made peace with Israel and the Palestinians, that would be such a great achievement,” Mr. Trump said. The final tweet is . | 1 |
Home | Win | Forget Your Encyclopaedia Get the Pokiespedia Forget Your Encyclopaedia Get the Pokiespedia By Don Partridge 09/11/2016 10:27:21
SYDNEY – Australia – What the hell are Pokies? Well, they’re something the antipodean folks down under like to call the slots.
If you’re ever in Australia and you wander into a watering hole somewhere in the Outback or in a city, you’ll chance upon a pokie, and that’s when the fun starts. You feed your money into that machine whilst you’re plastered out of your skull on Aussie nectar, and you wake up the next day, not only with a raging headache, but a bucket full of cash, or if you’re an unlucky bugger, nothing.
But you don’t have to be in the land of Oz to play the pokies, you can be anywhere when you play them online.
So what sort of games can you encounter playing the pokies?
Different types, all sorts, and the good ol’ classics.
Classic – Classic slots are great if you can still find ’em. They only have one payline, although the classic games you find these days may not be limited to only one line.
Multiple Payline – Multiple payline games are all over the place and you can find games from 3 to 50 paylines. By activating more paylines with more coins you bet the more opportunities you will have for creating a winning combination and hitting the payload.
Feature – Features pokies come with special symbols that increase your chances. Features include wild symbols, scatter symbols, multipliers and jackpot symbols. Racking up a load of symbols in certain combinations can get you some serious wonga.
Bonus – Bonus slots are a real find, because it’s like a game within a game. You may be chugging along, and hit a bonus, then you win more cash, and you continue the game and win even more cash. What’s not to like in a Bonus pokie?
Progressive – Progressive slots, no we’re not talking about socialists, they are in fact a popular category of online casino games. As the name suggests the more you progress into the game the more your jackpot grows. The progression index can be activated by any number of factors, but getting a payout from these machines is a real bonus as your jackpot can be huge, monstrous, enormous!
Unique – You have a favourite film character, film or theme? There’s probably a pokie for that. These pokies are branded to specific films or brands, and all have unique features to their game play. Best way to find out what they do is play them.
Rules of the Game
First things first, there are no specific rules, play for free online, but most of all play for fun. Go to www.pokiespedia.com to get a feel for which games you like and then keep on playing.
It’s a simple way of making some good money, choose the size of your bet, press the button and you’re away on a roll. As outlined above, there are many different types of pokies, and it’s up to your preference which ones you think is the best.
Playing online is also a discreet way of playing the pokies, you could be in your pyjamas or lying on a deck chair on the beach, it’s a fantastic way of dealing out some chance. You could even be pretending to talk to your wife whilst having fun on the pokies, and if she gets angry that you’re not listening to her, just nod your head in agreement, or better still, get her to join in.
There’s nothing like feeling really alive, the thrill of playing the pokies, yes, it’s a game of chance, but there is skill there too, and you can literally play it anywhere.
Go on.. | 0 |
Hedge funds have been failing over the last year at the fastest rate since the financial crisis in 2008. Some crashed and burned after sudden reversals. Others quietly liquidated. Then there’s Edward S. Lampert’s ESL Investments. It hasn’t failed, but may be setting a benchmark for slow, painful declines thanks to its outsize, bet on two venerable retailers, Sears and Kmart. Last week, Sears Holdings, the parent company, said what was becoming increasingly obvious to most investors, not to mention anyone who’s been in a Sears store lately: “Substantial doubt exists related to the company’s ability to continue as a going concern. ” Sears said that the statement reflected a new, more stringent accounting rule, and that the company was in no imminent danger of bankruptcy. “We are a viable business that can meet its financial and other obligations for the foreseeable future,” said Jason Hollar, Sears’s chief financial officer. Still, coming after seven straight years of huge losses, the announcement seems a milestone on a road that has only one likely end. “It takes a retailer like Sears a long time to die,” said Greg Melich, senior managing director and head of consumer research for Evercore, and the last Wall Street analyst still covering Sears. “It’s been burning through over a billion dollars in cash every year. That’s not sustainable. ” Sears Holdings has long been ESL’s largest investment, along with other Sears assets Mr. Lampert spun off, such as the struggling Lands’ End. (The two holdings accounted for nearly half the fund’s holdings at the end of the year, according to its most recent securities filings.) Sears Holdings shares were $162 in 2006 this week they were barely above $11. Few hedge fund managers have been as celebrated as Mr. Lampert in his heyday, which now appears to be the . Mr. Lampert was a Wall Street wunderkind, a Goldman Sachs intern whose intellect, ingratiating personality and prodigious work ethic attracted the patronage of some of America’s most prominent and successful investors: Robert Rubin, Mr. Lampert’s mentor at Goldman Richard Rainwater, who invested for the billionaire Bass brothers before starting his own firm and David Geffen, the billionaire entertainment mogul. Mr. Lampert was 25 years old and at the vanguard of the hedge fund movement when he founded ESL in 1988 with $28 million in seed money from Mr. Rainwater. Just three years later, he was the subject of a profile in The Wall Street Journal. He reaped even more publicity after he was kidnapped at gunpoint in 2003 and held hostage in a Days Inn before talking his way to freedom. By 2004, ESL’s spectacular 29 percent annualized returns landed him on the cover of Businessweek magazine. Besides Mr. Rainwater and Mr. Geffen, his investors included Michael Dell, members of the Ziff publishing family and Thomas J. Tisch, a philanthropist and heir to the Tisch family fortune. In 2006, Forbes ranked him No. 67 on its list of the 400 richest Americans, with a net worth of $3. 8 billion, a few notches ahead of another retailing executive, Jeff Bezos of Amazon. He was widely hailed as another Warren Buffett, only perhaps even smarter. “Eddie is one of the extraordinary investors of our age, if not the most extraordinary,” Mr. Tisch told Businessweek. No one compares Mr. Lampert to Mr. Buffett anymore. His investors are, for the most part, long gone. Mr. Tisch, who’s also a director of Sears, is described as steadfastly loyal. Steven Mnuchin, Mr. Lampert’s roommate at Yale and now Treasury secretary, disclosed last year that he had a $26 million investment in ESL. (Mr. Mnuchin said he would divest the position.) Notably, a group of Goldman Sachs clients who had invested $3. 5 billion in 2007 bailed out of the fund in 2013. Their exit “pretty much says it all” as far as investor confidence in Mr. Lampert goes, Mr. Melich said. Where did someone as smart, successful and as Mr. Lampert go wrong? His initial concept to combine two iconic but deeply distressed retailers — Kmart and Sears — initially appealed to many investors as a classic investment in undervalued, poorly managed assets in the Warren Buffett style. But Mr. Buffett doesn’t personally manage his portfolio companies. Several former Lampert investors told me that Mr. Lampert’s fundamental mistake was one common to many hedge fund managers: hubris, and the belief that investment prowess would translate into management skill. “He was a very successful investor before he took over Kmart and Sears,” said Mark Cohen, former chief executive of Sears Canada and a professor at Columbia Business School, where he’s the director of retail studies. (Mr. Cohen left Sears Canada before Mr. Lampert arrived.) “He seemed to think he was smarter than anyone in the retail business, but he had no idea how to run the company from Day 1,” Mr. Cohen said. “One thing I teach is that core competencies are the basis for success or failure. Lampert had no experience in retail, and no management competency whatsoever. ” Sears and other retail chains, of course, have been battered over the last decade by forces beyond Mr. Lampert’s control, especially the rise of internet retailing. Mr. Lampert claims to have foreseen the trend. If so, he’s had scant success carrying out a strategy to deal with it. His one consistent approach over the years has been to cut costs drastically. Initially, it seemed to work, increasing cash flow and earnings. “There’s a philosophy to that,” Mr. Melich said, but Sears “grossly underinvested in areas that proved to be very relevant to the future of merchandising, such as multichannel retailing. ” He pointed to the contrast between Sears and Home Depot, whose shares have nearly tripled in the last five years, despite the internet and competition from Amazon. Mr. Lampert has shown more prowess as a financial engineer, and has seemingly squeezed Sears’s once formidable assets for every penny of value through a continuing series of asset sales, spinoffs, dividend payouts and loans secured by Sears assets. Mr. Lampert has emphasized that because he is Sears’s largest shareholder, his interests are aligned with other Sears shareholders. But the perception persists that many of these deals have benefited Mr. Lampert more than shareholders, since he’s often on both sides of the transactions. Over the last two years alone, Mr. Lampert and ESL have extended Sears over $800 million in loans secured by Sears assets — nearly as much as Sears’s entire market capitalization of $1. 2 billion. That makes Mr. Lampert and ESL the largest Sears creditors, giving them vastly different interests than most shareholders. (ESL Investments holds 48 percent of Sears Holdings’s equity and 32 percent of its total debt.) As creditors, they could end up owning Sears if it reorganizes in bankruptcy, while other Sears shareholders would be wiped out. Last month, Mr. Lampert and the Sears board agreed to pay $40 million to settle a shareholder lawsuit claiming that Sears’s sale and of much of its most valuable real estate to a real estate investment trust — 43 percent owned by Mr. Lampert and his ESL hedge fund — was a blatant conflict of interest that harmed Sears shareholders. Sears has denied any wrongdoing and said it had settled the suit merely to avoid “protracted litigation. ” Mr. Lampert “has stripped Sears of its assets,” Mr. Cohen said. “It’s the longest liquidation in retail history. His reputation in the retail community is that he’s a financial pirate. ” Like most hedge fund managers, Mr. Lampert continues to get a management fee no matter how poorly the fund’s assets perform. Still, Sears’s travails and their impact on ESL’s results have clearly taken a toll on Mr. Lampert’s own fortunes. Although Mr. Lampert probably shows substantial gains on his original investment in Sears and Kmart, “he and ESL investors can’t have fared very well over the past six or seven years,” Mr. Melich said. Mr. Lampert remains one of the country’s richest people. He owns lavish homes in Greenwich, Conn. Aspen, Colo. and Miami as well as a yacht, Fountainhead, named after the Ayn Rand novel (Mr. Lampert is a devotee of the author). Last year Forbes ranked him tied for No. 309 on its annual list of the 400 richest Americans, with a net worth of $2. 3 billion. But that’s a dollars less than Forbes estimated back in 2006. Since then, Mr. Bezos has vaulted to No. 2 on the Forbes list, just behind Bill Gates, with a net worth of $67 billion. Had Mr. Lampert simply put his fortune in a stock market index fund rather than gaining control of Sears and Kmart, he would have fared far better. Through a spokesman, Mr. Lampert declined to comment. Even his critics concede that Mr. Lampert has been stubbornly consistent, refusing to throw in the towel on Sears even after years of deteriorating results. In a news release last week, he showed no signs of backing down, pledging yet another “fundamental restructuring” of Sears. His strategy? Cutting “at least $1 billion in costs on an annualized basis. ” | 1 |
Chris Bosh, one of the top players in the N. B. A. has never caused trouble for his team, on or off the court. He has won two N. B. A. titles and been selected for the Game 11 times. The Miami Heat, however, do not want him to step on the court for them this season, or perhaps ever again. In one of the strangest and most ethically challenging standoffs in sports history, Bosh and the Heat are locked in a dispute over whether he should be deemed medically fit to play after dealing with serious health problems. With training camp scheduled to start this week, Bosh says he is ready to go. The Heat say he is not. Bosh’s last two seasons have been cut short by blood clots. He has indicated that he has worked with a private physician to devise therapies that would allow him to play. The Heat are less certain. Bosh is owed about $76 million over the next three seasons whether he plays or not. So if the team is, in fact, looking out for Bosh’s welfare, it suggests an exception to what is perhaps a more common practice of pro sports franchises: pushing players to compete regardless of medical concerns. The Heat announced their conclusion, citing a medical exam, after Bosh’s recent emergence from a cocoon of silence to wage a public battle with the team’s medical staff. Bosh has done several interviews with Uninterrupted — his former teammate LeBron James’s digital platform for athletes — in which he has sought to make his case. “Yeah, I’ll be there,” he said about training camp on a recent Uninterrupted podcast. “Will I be cleared? I don’t know. That’s out of my hands. I will play basketball in the N. B. A. I’m confident. ” People with blood clots typically take medication, which is probably one of the most daunting hurdles for Bosh. Athletes who are on blood thinners are advised to avoid contact sports because of an increased chance of internal bleeding and other complications. Even an elbow to the ribs could cause significant damage, said Dr. David Forsh, the chief of orthopedic trauma at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in Manhattan. “There are a lot of risks,” he said. Bosh experienced his first known clotting problem in February 2015. He had cramps, spasms and shortness of breath, although he tried to hide his symptoms, he said. Bosh recalled one particular instance when he was in pain until 3 or 4 in the morning and the Heat were scheduled to face the Dallas Mavericks the next day. Bosh played because the Heat were already . “Not the best thing to do,” Bosh said on the podcast. He added: “One thing about athletes — and I don’t know what it is about us — we ignore pain, or we try our best to ignore pain. And I think that’s one of the worst things you can possibly do. ” Bosh was eventually hospitalized, and tests revealed that a blood clot in his calf had traveled to his lungs, causing a pulmonary embolism — a problem that can be fatal. Bosh had surgery and spent nine days in a hospital. He lost 20 to 25 pounds, he said, and missed the final 30 games of the season. Bosh has never publicly articulated his specific course of treatment, but he presumably took drugs. He appeared in a television commercial for one such medication, Xarelto. Bosh was cleared by the Heat to return for the season opener. He played well through the first half of the season, averaging 19. 1 points and 7. 4 rebounds per game before the break. But a few days before the Game, he awoke with a sore calf. He was soon found to have had a recurrence of blood clots. He met with team doctors, who told him that his season was over and that his career was probably finished, too, he said. “I felt right away that I was written off,” Bosh said in one of his interviews with Uninterrupted. He added, “If a doctor tells me, ‘Hey, that’s it, and this is how it is,’ and I don’t buy that, then I think I have the right to disagree with you. ” Bosh also alluded to the tension between himself and the Heat’s medical staff. “If you’re an athlete in this game, you have to protect your own interests, and you have to protect your body and your family,” Bosh said. “If one doctor is a doctor for 15 guys, who’s paying this guy?” He added, “If you’re paying a doctor through your pocket, your insurance — whatever that case may be — that changes their interest. ” It has mostly remained a public tussle. The Heat, aside from sporadic statements, have not spoken in detail about Bosh’s medical situation, nor have team officials said what liability, if any, the franchise might have if something were to happen to Bosh on the court. The Heat’s president, Pat Riley, told reporters on Monday that Bosh’s career with the team “is probably over. ” “There is not a next step for us,” Riley said. “It’s pretty definitive for us in our position. ” The Heat declined interview requests for this article. The players’ union did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Samantha Brennan, a philosophy professor at Western University in London, Ontario, teaches a class on sports ethics that touches on the role of team doctors and the conflicts of interest that can arise — namely, clearing athletes to return to competition before they are ready. “That’s what makes the case involving Chris Bosh so unusual,” Brennan said, referring to the urge among teams to send players back onto the field. So what happens if an athlete, fully aware of the medical risks, insists on continuing to play? Does the team have a moral responsibility to look out for the athlete’s ? In most cases, Brennan said, risk taking is left to the discretion of adults. The challenge with many athletes, she said, is that they have invested so much of themselves in their careers from an early age that it can cloud their judgment. “When they need to make a difficult decision, it puts them in a bind,” Brennan said. “It makes it very hard for them to say, ‘I’m ready to stop playing. ’” Ultimately, Brennan said, an athlete is an employee, and team officials have the power to do what they want. “So they’re making two kinds of decisions,” Brennan said, referring to the Heat. “One is an ethical decision about not wanting someone they know and care about — imagine if he died playing. They’re also making a decision because they’re worried about injuries and liability. ” Dr. Jack Ansell, a professor of medicine at Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine on Long Island, said he knew of several athletes who had managed problems by taking blood thinners between games and then allowing the medication to be flushed from their systems before they returned to competition. Ansell, a member and former chairman of the medical and scientific advisory board of the National Blood Clot Alliance, has not examined Bosh and has no specific knowledge of his case. But Ansell said he suspected that Bosh would need therapy to prevent recurring clots and that the grueling schedule of the N. B. A. would make intermittent treatment difficult. “You’re playing games every two or three nights,” he said, “so there’s no real time off. ” Rebekah Bradford Plath, a speedskater who competed at the 2010 Winter Olympics, developed a pulmonary embolism in 2012. While still on therapy, she resumed training. The risks were fairly minimal. speedskating is a noncontact sport, although falls do happen Bradford Plath wore a helmet. “I do know that I probably made some of my teammates nervous when they were skating around me,” she said in a telephone interview. “Some of them understood the significance of what I was doing. But I trusted my ability, I trusted the ability of my teammates, and I felt comfortable and confident. ” Last year, after having knee surgery, Bradford Plath had a recurrence of blood clotting even though she was taking blood thinners at the time. After her physician increased the dosage, she said, the clot cleared. Bradford Plath, who still takes blood thinners when she travels on airplanes, continues to train with an eye on the 2018 Winter Olympics. | 1 |
November 3, 2016 - By Eduard Popov for Fort Russ - translated by J. Arnoldski -
On November 1st, the news came from the Hague that the Netherlands, in exchange for ratifying the association agreement between Ukraine and the EU, could demand that the EU guarantee in writing that this agreement will not be the first step to making Ukraine a real member of the community. A bit earlier, the Dutch government stated that it had postponed the decision on agreeing to the EU-Ukraine association agreement. Moreover, in April, a referendum was held in which more than 60% of Dutch citizens voted against the EU-Ukraine agreement. All of the parliaments of the EU’s member countries have already ratified it, except the Netherlands.
The ruling circles of the Netherlands are trying to circumvent the results of the nationwide referendum that put a barrier in the way of Ukraine’s path to the EU. Figuratively speaking, this is to slide between the Scylla of the Eurobureaucracy’s pressure and the Charybdis of the Dutch people’s opinion.
Brussels is trying to pressure Russia by supporting Ukraine. Hence why the results of the Dutch referendum, which said “no” to Ukrainian Eurointegration, are of much more than mere local significance.
The opinion of this Dutch people is the opinion of all the peoples of Europe who do not want to see such a problematic country of 40 million people - with war on its territory and a history of downing planes - in the European Union. But the Eurobureaucracy and European politicians, if necessary, will wipe their feet on the results of the people’s self-expression as long as the free trade zone between Ukraine and the EU is operating and benefiting only one side - the European exporters of finished products and European importers of raw materials.
Even more recently, abolishing the anti-Russian sanctions was discussed in European capitals. However, the aggravation of antagonisms between the US and Russia in Syria has forced Europe’s Washington-dependent leaders to reconsider the fate of sanctions policy.
Back in early July, in an interview published on Fort Russ, the Italian columnist Max Bonelli expressed skepticism over the prospects of the anti-Russian sanctions being abolished. His words sounded a discordant note for the Russian reader, since the belief prevails in Russia that the sanctions will soon be lifted, or at most prolonged for only half a year. After a series of interviews with prominent European experts, I became convinced that Bonelli’s opinion is correct.
Alexander Gegalchiy, a well known activist of the Russian World in Czech Republic, even believes that European countries (especially Eastern European ones) could open the door for Ukrainian migration. In their opinion, this would be better than accepting refugees and pseudo-refugees from the Middle East. This dilemma calls for a different view on the possibility of a visa-free regime between Ukraine and the EU.
Earlier, I categorically denied this possibility. But now, following my European partners, I’ve come to the conclusion that Europe could opt for this step. And not for a better life, as we say in Russia, but in order to avoid the greater evil of uncontrolled migration from the countries of the Middle East.
Meanwhile, Turkey will probably not achieve its tactical goal of establishing a visa-free regime with the EU, as it has a population two times larger than Ukraine and is a strong power in political, military, and economic terms. And it is a country with a Muslim population. Europe, despite talk of tolerance, is afraid of Muslim migration and is not in a position to integrate even the Muslim community already living on its territory. Therefore, it is a paradox that weak Ukraine has greater chances of achieving a visa-free regime than strong Turkey.
A visa-free regime is, of course, not membership in the EU, but is a significant step in the direction of Europe. If it is introduced, then the leaders of the Ukrainian state will have a major argument for propagandizing the successes of the “path to Europe.” Millions of Ukrainians will go to the EU (specifically Eastern European countries) and take the place of Muslim migrants. The EU could create obstacles on the ground level, but even so, the doors to Ukrainian migration will be open. I’ll repeat: this will not be a victory of Ukraine’s Eurointegrationists, but a necessary concession in the face of unpleasantries considered graver than those posed by Ukrainian migration.
Relations between Russia and the EU are most likely to go downhill. The leader of the EU, Germany, in the face of Chancellor Angela Merkel, is literally coercing Europe to travel down the harmful path of anti-Russian sanctions and anti-Russian policies overall.
This situation can only be changed by a simultaneous victory in several countries of more sane political forces, not necessarily pro-Russian, but pro-European. Next year, 2017, is election year in the locomotive countries of the EU - France and Germany. Will we see a sensation in these elections? I’m not sure, but there will be surprises for sure.
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http://mediaarchives.gsradio.net/dduke/112316.mp3
Dr. Duke and Pastor Dankof on Trump’s America First Foreign Policy
Today Dr. Duke had Pastor Mark Dankof as his guest for the hour. They talked about Donald Trump’s appointments to his new cabinet. They gave low marks to Representative Mike Pompeo as the new CIA director for his past policy positions, although they noted his loyalty to Trump as a potential silver lining. They also panned Nikki Hailey as the UN ambassador, which however does allow Trump supporter Henry McMaster succeed her as South Carolina governor.
The most hopeful prospect is Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard from Hawaii, who is a potential secretary of state. She has supported Trump’s desire to reconcile with Russia, and has been the most vocal opponent in Congress of the Obama administration’s efforts to overthrow Syrian President Assad. Her appointment would go a long way towards wresting control of American foreign policy from Jewish neocons and putting America’s interests first again.
This is another great show that you won’t want to miss. Please share it widely.
Our show is aired live at 11 am replayed at ET 4pm Eastern and 4am Eastern. | 0 |
MONESSEN, Pa. — Donald J. Trump vowed on Tuesday to rip up international trade deals and start an unrelenting offensive against Chinese economic practices, framing his contest with Hillary Clinton as a choice between nationalism and the policies of “a leadership class that worships globalism. ” Speaking in western Pennsylvania, Mr. Trump sought to turn the page on weeks of campaign turmoil by returning to a core set of economic grievances that have animated his candidacy from the start. He threatened to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement and pledged to label China a currency manipulator and impose punitive tariffs on Chinese goods. He attacked Mrs. Clinton on her past support for the Partnership, a trade pact negotiated by the Obama administration, and challenged her to pledge that she would void the agreement in its entirety. Noting that Mrs. Clinton had backed agreements like Nafta in the past, Mr. Trump warned, “She will betray you again. ” At a rally later in the day in eastern Ohio, Mr. Trump attacked the Partnership in more provocative terms, saying it was a “rape of our country. ” As a policy manifesto, Mr. Trump’s Pennsylvania speech was an attack on the economic orthodoxy that has dominated the Republican Party since World War II. It is an article of faith among establishment Republicans and allied groups like the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents the interests of large corporations, that trade is good and more trade is better. Mr. Trump, by contrast, has made blistering attacks on trade his primary economic theme. In his address he rejected the standard view that countries benefit by importing goods, arguing that globalization helped “the financial elite,” while leaving “millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache. ” It is a critique that has been leveled for years, mainly by a small group of liberal economists who have gained little traction even on the Democratic side. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump not only embraced their views, but also cited the work of the liberal Economic Policy Institute by name. Mr. Trump, as president, would have significant authority to raise trade barriers, and his speech Tuesday included his most detailed account to date of his plans to do so, saying that he would pull the United States from Nafta if Mexico and Canada did not agree to renegotiate it. But it is far from clear that any president has the power to reverse globalization. Under existing law, Mr. Trump could impose tariffs only on specific imports. The most likely effect would be to shift production to other nations. Mr. Trump’s address opened his first tour of the general election race. After he muddled around the political map since his last Republican rivals withdrew, and veered away from the campaign last week for a trip to Scotland, Mr. Trump’s tour this week through Pennsylvania and Ohio was the start of a concerted effort to carve a path to 270 electoral votes on daunting political terrain. The language and location of Mr. Trump’s speech encapsulated his aspirational strategy for the general election: His greatest source of support has been white men, and his campaign hopes to compete in traditionally states, like Pennsylvania and Michigan, to offset his deep unpopularity with Hispanic voters and women, which may put swing states like Florida and Colorado out of reach. Mr. Trump delivered his address at a steel plant in the heart of coal country, on a stage flanked by blocks of compressed steel wiring, aluminum cans and other metals. And for the second time in two weeks, he spoke carefully from a script. Aides to Mr. Trump, who has faced criticism throughout the race for factual exaggerations and outright falsehoods, circulated a copy of the speech with 128 footnotes documenting its claims. Still, Mr. Trump could not resist the occasional line to skewer Mrs. Clinton or boast of his own achievements. He said, for example, that he had forced her to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism. ” And he took credit for pressuring Mrs. Clinton to oppose the Partnership trade deal, though at the time she faced far greater pressure from a primary challenge on the left, from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Mr. Trump’s speech drew rebukes from two sides: The Clinton campaign attacked his credibility as a critic of free trade, and deployed Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a populist Democrat who is viewed as a potential running mate for Mrs. Clinton, to accuse Mr. Trump of hypocrisy. “With all of his personal experience profiting from making products overseas, Trump’s the perfect expert to talk about outsourcing,” Mr. Brown said, reciting a list of Trump products, from suits to picture frames, that he said were made in other countries. “We know just in my state alone where Donald Trump could have gone to make these things,” he added. Mr. Trump also drew a cold response from traditionally interests for his heated attacks on international trade agreements. The U. S. Chamber of Commerce, which spends millions of dollars in federal elections, almost entirely in support of Republican candidates, criticized Mr. Trump’s speech on Twitter and claimed that his policies would hurt the economy. “Even under scenario, Trump’s tariffs would strip us of at least 3. 5 million jobs,” the group wrote in one Twitter message. For Mr. Trump, who has shifted and doubled back on policy pronouncements, trade has been a rare area of consistency in the 2016 race. At nearly every campaign rally, Mr. Trump has knocked trade deals with China as unfair to the American worker so frequently as to make his percussive pronunciation of China a hallmark of impersonators. Mr. Trump appeared in his speech to criticism from economists and business groups that have argued his policy proposals would lead to a damaging trade war with China and perhaps other countries. “We already have a trade war,” Mr. Trump told the crowd, departing from his prepared remarks. “And we’re losing, badly. ” Mr. Trump, who has struggled for months to win support from the conservative business community, also attended a in West Virginia on Tuesday hosted by a coal executive, Robert E. Murray. It remains to be seen if Mr. Trump will stick closely to the message he delivered in Pennsylvania. At an evening rally in eastern Ohio, he returned to a familiar set of themes, calling for a wall on the Mexican border and reiterating his vow to waterboard Islamic State terrorists. But to win that state in November, Mr. Trump hopes to outflank Mrs. Clinton with economically distressed voters who may have voted Democratic in the past, and trade remains an issue that stirs up voters across party lines. In a nod to potential crossover voters, Mr. Trump at one point on Tuesday quoted Mr. Sanders by name in criticizing Mrs. Clinton. Though he dwelled at greatest length in Pennsylvania on what he described as the damaging economic consequences of globalization, Mr. Trump also laced his remarks with broader nationalist language, arguing that the United States would lose its sovereignty and national pride by negotiating too freely with the world. “They get the expansion. We get the joblessness,” Mr. Trump said of trade deals with foreign countries. “That’s the way it works — not going to happen anymore. ” | 1 |
Other Writers LD : If Hillary Clinton becomes President, expect disaster. If Trump is elected, he will have to be smarter than Putin in order to survive. Never before in American history has a presidential candidate been surrounded by so many implacable enemies baying for his blood. . . . by THE SAKER “The United States is about to enter what might possibly be the deepest and most dangerous crisis of its history…. Maybe Trump will be the guy to bring down the Anglo-Zionist Empire in order to save the United States.” — The Saker
Watching the last presidential debate was a rather depressing experience. I thought that Trump did pretty well, but that really is not the point here. The point is this: no matter who wins, an acute crisis is inevitable. Option one : Hillary wins
Hillary would be Obama on steroids , only worse.
Remember that Obama himself was Dubya, only worse. Of course, Dubya was just Clinton, only worse. Now the circle is closed. Back to Clinton. Except this time around, we have a woman who is deeply insecure, who failed at every single thing that she every tried to do, and who now has a three decades long record of disasters and failures.
Even when she had no authority to start a war, she started one (told Bill to bomb the Serbs). Now she has that authority. And now she had to stand there, in front of millions of people, and hear Trump tell her “ Putin outsmarted you at every step of the way ” — did you see her frozen face when he said that?
Trump is right. Putin did outsmart her and Obama, at every step.
The problem is that now, after having a President with an inferiority complex towards Putin (Obama) we will have a President with the very same inferiority complex and a morbid determination to impose a no-fly zone over Russian forces in Syria.
Looking at Hillary, with her ugly short hair and ridiculous pants, I thought to myself “this is a woman who is trying hard to prove that she is every bit as tough as any man” – except of course that she ain’t. Her record also shows her as being weak, cowardly and with a sense of total impunity. And now, that evil messianic lunatic with a deep-seated inferiority complex is going to become Commander in Chief?! God help us all! Option two: Trump wins
Problem: Trump will be completely alone.
The Neocons have total, repeat total , control of the Congress, the media, banking and finance, and the courts. From Clinton to Clinton they have deeply infiltrated the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom, and the three letter agencies. The Fed is their stronghold. How in the world will Trump deal with these rabid “ crazies in the basement “?
Consider the vicious hate campaign which all these “personalities” (from actors to politicians to reporters) have unleashed against Trump – they have burned their bridges, they know that they will lose it all if Trump wins (and, if he proves to be an easy pushover his election will make no difference anyway).
The Neocons have nothing to lose and they will fight to the very last one. What could Trump possibly do to get anything done if he is surrounded by Neocons and their agents of influence? Bring in an entirely different team? How is he going to vet them? His first choice was to take Pence as a VP – a disaster (he is already sabotaging Trump on Syria and the elections outcome). I dread to hear whom Trump will appoint as a White House Chief of Staff as I am afraid that just to appease the Neocons he will appoint some new version of the infamous Rahm Emanuel… And should Trump prove that he has both principles and courage, the Neocons can always “Dallas” him and replace him with Pence. Et voilà !
I see only one way out: The Putin model
When Putin came to power he inherited a Kremlin every bit as corrupt and traitor-infested as the White House nowadays. As for Russia, she was in pretty much the same sorry shape as the Independent Nazi-run Ukraine. Russia was also run by bankers and Anglo-Zionist puppets and most Russians led miserable lives. The big difference is that, unlike what is happening with Trump, the Russian version of the US Neocons never saw the danger coming from Putin. He was selected by the ruling elites as the representative of the security services to serve along a representative of the big corporate money, Medvedev. This was a compromise solution between the only two parts of the Russian society which were still functioning, the security services and oil/gas money. Putin looked like a petty bureaucrat in an ill fitting suit, a shy and somewhat awkward little guy who would present no threat to the powerful oligarchs of the semibankirshchina (the Seven Bankers) running Russia.
Except that he turned out to be one of the most formidable rulers in Russia history.
Here is what Putin did as soon as he came to power:
First, he re-established the credibility of the Kremlin with the armed forces and security services by rapidly and effectively crushing the Wahabi insurgency in Chechnia. This established his personal credibility with the people he would have to rely on to deal with the oligarchs.
Second, he used the fact that everybody, every single businessman and corporation in Russia, did more or less break the law during the 1990s, if only because there really was no law. Instead of cracking down on the likes of Berezovski or Khodorkovski for their political activities, he crushed them with (absolutely true) charges of corruption. Crucially, he did that very publicly, sending a clear message to the other arch-enemy: the media.
Third, contrary to the hallucinations of the western human rights agencies and Russian liberals, Putin never directly suppressed any dissent, or cracked down on the media or, even less so, ordered the murder of anybody. He did something much smarter. Remember that modern journalists are first and foremost presstitutes, right? By mercilessly cracking down on the oligarchs Putin deprived the presstitutes of their source of income and political support. Some emigrated to the Ukraine, others simply resigned, and a few were left like on a reservation or a zoo on a few very clearly identifiable media outlets such as Dozhd TV , Ekho Moskvy Radio or the newspaper Kommersant . Those who emigrated became irrelevant. As for those who stayed in the “liberal zoo”, they were harmless and they had no credibility left. Crucially, everybody else “got the message”. After that, all it took is the appointment a few real patriots (such as Dmitri Kiselev, Margarita Simonian and others) in key positions and everybody quickly understood that the winds of fortune had now turned.
Fourth, once the main media outlets were returned back to sanity it did not take too long for the “liberal” (in the Russian sense, meaning pro-USA) parties to enter into a death-spiral from which they have never recovered. That, in turn, resulted in the ejection of all “liberals” form the Duma which now has only 4 parties, all of them more or less “patriotic”.
Russia and the USA are very different countries, and no recipe can simply be copied from one to another. Still, there are valuable lessons from the “Putin model” for Trump, not the least of which that his most formidable enemies probably are sitting in the Fed. One Russian analyst – Rostislav Ishchenko – has suggested that Trump could somehow force the Fed to increase interest rates, which would result in a bankruptcy domino effect for US banks which might be the only way to finally crush the Fed and re-take control of US banking. WHAT PUTIN ACHIEVED Of brooms and body parts
Leon Trotsky used to say the Soviet Russia needed to be cleansed from anarchists and noblemen with an “iron broom”. He even wrote an article in the Pravda entitled “We need an iron broom”. Another genocidal manic, Felix Derzhinskii, founder of the notorious ChK secret police, used to say that a secret police officer must have a “burning heart, a cool head and clean hands”. One would seek weakness, or even compassion, in vain from folks like these. These are ideology-driven “true believers”, sociopaths with no sense of empathy, profoundly evil people with a genocidal hatred of anybody standing in their way.
Hillary Clinton and her gang of Neocons are the spiritual (and sometimes even physical) successors of the Soviet Bolsheviks and they, just like their Bolshevik forefathers, will not hesitate for a second to crush their enemies. Donald Trump – assuming he is for real and actually means what he says – has to understand that and do what Putin did: strike first and strike hard.
Stalin, by the way, also did exactly that, and for a while the Trotskists were crushed, but in the years following Stalin’s death they gradually bounced back only to seize power again in 1991.
I think that the jury is still out on whether Putin will succeed in finally removing the 5th columnists from power.
What is sure is that Russia is at least semi-free from the control of (((these people))) and that the US is their last bastion right now. Their maniacal hatred of Trump can in part be explained by the sense of danger (((these folks))) feel, being threatened for the first time in what they see as (((their homeland))).
I don’t mean that in a patriotic sense – but rather like a parasite cares for “his” host.
And maybe (((they))) have some good reason to fear. I sure hope that they do.
(Brackets inserted by LD)
I am rather encouraged by the way Trump handled the latest attempt to make him cower in fear. Yesterday Trump dared to declare that since the election might be rigged or stolen he does not pledge to recognize their outcome. And even though every semi-literate person knows that elections in the USA have been rigged and stolen in the past, including Presidential ones, by saying that Trump committed a major case of crimethink . The Ziomedia pounced on him with self-righteous outrage and put immense pressure on him to retract his statement. Instead of rolling over and recanting his “crime”, Trump refused to do so.
Beautiful no? Let’s hope he continues to show the same courage.
Trump is now doing what Jean-Marie Le Pen did in France: he is showing the Neocons that he dares to openly defy them, that he refuses to play by their rules, that their outrage has no effect on him and that they don’t get to censor or silence him.
That is also what he did when, yet again, he refused to accuse the Russians of cyber-attacks and, instead, repeated that it would be a good thing for Russia and the USA to be friends.
Again, I am not sure that how long he will be able to hold that line, but for the time being there is no denying that he is openly defying the AngloZionist deep state and Empire. Conclusion The United States is about to enter what might possibly be the deepest and most dangerous crisis of its history .
If Trump is elected, he will have to immediately launch a well-planned attack against his opponents without giving them any pretext to accuse him of politically motivated repressions.
In Russia, Putin could count on the support of the military and the security services. I don’t know whom Trump can count on, but I am fairly confident that there are still true patriots in the US armed forces.
If Trump gets the right person to head the FBI, he might also use that agency to clean house and deliver a steady streams of indictments for corruption, conspiracy to [fill the blank], abuse of authority, obstruction of justice and dereliction of duty, etc. Since such crimes are widespread in the current circles of power, they are also easy to prove and cracking down on corruption would get Trump a standing ovation from the American people.
Next, just as Putin in Russia, Trump will have to deal with the media. How exactly, I don’t know. But he will have to face this beast and defeat it. At every step in this process he will have to get the proactive support of the people, just like Putin does.
Can he do it? I don’t know. Honestly, I doubt it.
First, I still don’t trust him. But, more relevantly, I would argue that to overthrow the deep state and restore true people power is even harder in the USA than it was in Russia.
I have always believed that the Anglo-Zionist Empire will have to be brought down from the outside, most probably by a combination of military and economic defeats. I still believe that. However, I might be wrong – in fact, I hope that I am – and maybe Trump will be the guy to bring down the Anglo-Zionist Empire in order to save the United States.
If there is such a possibility, however slim, I think that we have to believe in it and act on it as all the alternatives are far worse. Source Like this? Share it now. 3 thoughts on “ Only Trump can save America now — if he can survive and follow in the footsteps of Vladimir Putin ” LD says: 27 am
Of all the articles written on the Trump/Clinton imbroglio and the dangers that face America after the November 8 election, this is the most outstanding I have read so far.
Firstly, it offers a neat summation of what will happen if Hillary Clinton wins: things will get worse than they have ever been before and then spiral out of control, with World War Three almost certain, given the mental instability and sheer malignancy of this female monster from hell.
Secondly, if Trump wins, the article spells out in detail the formidable challenges that would face him — far greater in magnitude and number than the challenges facing Putin when he came to power in Russia in 1991. To succeed against his implacable enemies — the “Anglo-Zionist establishment” to quote the Saker — Trump would have to possess the fighting spirit and unique chessmaster skills of Vladimir Putin.
Alas, even his most ardent admirers cannot possibly believe that Trump is half the man that Putin is. Indeed, the Saker ends his laudatory article of Trump with the surprising words, “I still don’t trust him.” This is because Trump is largely an unknown factor. He is the devil we don’t know.
“The United States,” the Saker concludes on a somber note, “is about to enter on what might possibly be the most dangerous crisis of its history.” | 0 |
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AP photo 1. Over the past 20 years, weapons have inundated America, but the rate of murder with the use of firearms and other crimes have fallen by 39% and 69% respectively.2. Almost all cases of mass murder in the United States have occurred in weapon-free zones.3. The United States is the world's leader on the number of weapons per capita. The country is ranked 28th on the number of murders per 100,000 people.4. The index of violent crimes in the United States fell from 757.7 per 100,000 people in 1992 to 386.3 in 2011. The index of murders fell from 9.3 to 4.7 per 100,000 people. 5. In the US, weapons are used 80 times more often to prevent crime rather than commit it.6. In spite of the tough arms legislation, the number of violent crimes in the UK is four times larger than the number of violent crimes committed in the US.7. In 2015, as many as 2,034 violent crimes were committed in the UK per 100,000 people.8. In the United States, the index made up 466.9. In the UK, the number of victims of rapists is 125% larger than in the US.10. In the UK, the number of victims of attacks is 133% larger than in the US.11. Great Britain comes second in the European Union in terms of the general crime indicator.12. In Australia, a weapon ban increased the number of homicide by 19% and robberies - by 69%.13. Chicago is a city with a very tough weapons legislation, where the number of murders has been increasing every year by approximately 10-15%. Today, Chicago is the most dangerous city in the world.14. In the city of Kennesaw, USA, local residents were obliged to arm themselves. As a result, the crime rate in the city has fallen in 23 years by 50% and robberies - by 89%.15. In the 20th century, the leaders of all countries of the world have killed more than 170 million people. How? They disarmed them. Electorat Info | 0 |
Is This A New Escalation? BLACK Chemtrails Reported Around The World! Please scroll down for video
For many years there have been theories floating around about the potential dangers of chemtrails, the white stripes with a cloudlike appearance that can often be seen in the skies. Some have suggested that these chemtrails are not as innocent as most people tend to think and some people have even gone so far as to say that they may be biological and chemical agents.
This kind of theory has often been dismissed in the past as faulty reasoning and paranoid thinking. The phenomenon that believers identify as chemtrails are nothing more than the perfectly innocent condensation trials left behind by all kind of air vehicles. However, recent sightings of highly unusual chemtrails might well challenge this particular line of thinking. Black chemtrails in the sky stump sceptics
According to many witnesses from all across the world, the chemtrails or ‘condensation trials’ appearing in their local areas are not white anymore – they’re black. No scientific body or government has chosen to offer an explanation about the sudden change in the appearance of numerous trails in the sky, but many believe that it is irrefutable evidence that chemtrails are being utilised for chemical or biological testing on civilian populations .
Sceptics have suggested that these unusual black trails might be nothing more than a shadows of a typical white condensation trail left by a plane. However, this theory has been robustly dismissed by others who have pointed out that clouds leave no shadows in the sky and therefore it would be impossible for a condensation trail left by a plane to do the same thing.
Not all of the people who believe that chemtrails are a real phenomenon believe that they are used to covertly test chemical and biological weapons. Others have suggested that they are part of a weather modification technology, often referred to as HAARP. The chemtrails are being used to electrify portions of the sky so that they can be used for testing by scientists working in this field.
Whatever the truth of the matter is, one thing is for sure; these black chemtrails cannot be easily explained away.
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Donald Trump is warning America that Hillary Clinton’s insane idea to create a no-fly zone over Syria would lead to World War Three with Russia, Syria and Iran.
Setting up a no-fly zone over Syria means telling the government of Syria (as well as Russia) they’re not allowed to fly planes over their own country, even though they’re in the middle of a war with ISIS and other US-backed rebel terrorist groups.
It’s completely psychotic, that’s why even leftists like Green party candidate Jill Stein have said Hillary is “much scarier” than Trump and could slide us “into a nuclear war” with Russia .
As you’ll see in this article, Reuters asked Hillary to defend her insane plan but she just dodged the question and instead attacked Trump as “unfit to be commander-in-chief.”
From Reuters :
U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Democrat Hillary Clinton’s plan for Syria would “lead to World War Three,” because of the potential for conflict with military forces from nuclear-armed Russia.
In an interview focused largely on foreign policy, Trump said defeating Islamic State is a higher priority than persuading Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down, playing down a long-held goal of U.S. policy.
Trump questioned how Clinton would negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin after demonizing him; blamed President Barack Obama for a downturn in U.S. relations with the Philippines under its new president, Rodrigo Duterte; bemoaned a lack of Republican unity behind his candidacy, and said he would easily win the election if the party leaders would support him.
“If we had party unity, we couldn’t lose this election to Hillary Clinton,” he said.
On Syria’s civil war, Trump said Clinton could drag the United States into a world war with a more aggressive posture toward resolving the conflict.
Clinton has called for the establishment of a no-fly zone and “safe zones” on the ground to protect non-combatants. Some analysts fear that protecting those zones could bring the United States into direct conflict with Russian fighter jets.
“What we should do is focus on ISIS. We should not be focusing on Syria,” said Trump as he dined on fried eggs and sausage at his Trump National Doral golf resort. “You’re going to end up in World War Three over Syria if we listen to Hillary Clinton.
“You’re not fighting Syria any more, you’re fighting Syria, Russia and Iran, all right? Russia is a nuclear country, but a country where the nukes work as opposed to other countries that talk,” he said.
Clinton’s campaign dismissed the criticism, noting that both Republican and Democratic national security experts have denounced Trump as unfit to be commander-in-chief.
“Once again, he is parroting Putin’s talking points and playing to Americans’ fears, all while refusing to lay out any plans of his own for defeating ISIS or alleviating humanitarian suffering in Syria,” Clinton spokesman Jesse Lehrich said in a statement.
Trump said Assad is much stronger now than he was three years ago and said getting Assad to leave power was less important than defeating Islamic State.
“Assad is secondary, to me, to ISIS,” he said.
A memo was leaked earlier this year showing Hillary Clinton’s State Department said on December 31, 2012 that overthrowing Syria was the “best way to help Israel.”
The foreign policy goals in that State Department memo just so happen to align with the goals of this powerful Israeli think tank :
Seeing as how the U.S. just last month conducted an airstrike on a group of Syrian fighters to help ISIS overrun one of their positions , it’s not unreasonable to question what the hell is actually going on here.
Uniting with Assad and Russia to destroy ISIS, as Trump has said he would do, is without a doubt the sane plan in Syria if one wants to pursue America’s interests. Instead, Clinton and Obama are trying to both overthrow Assad by arming “good” rebel groups and somehow also kill ISIS on the side – though it just so happens the weapons they’re giving to the “good” rebels keep falling into ISIS’s hands.
The result has been what we’re seeing in Syria – an endless, drawn out war leading to untold human misery, suffering, death and the migrant crisis.
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Chart Of The Day: US Productivity Growth Trend Falling Off The Charts By David Stockman. Posted On Wednesday, November 9th, 2016
http://www.firstrebuttal.com/private-capital-allocation-matching-only-the-great-depression-for-inefficiency/
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Next Swipe left/right A woman tried to relax her mum with a little VR and it went really badly As Megan Kelley and her mum sat in a hospital waiting room while her dad had a double organ transplant, Megan thought she’d help take her mum’s mind off things by letting her try out a virtual rollercoaster ride. Bad idea!
She didn’t seem too bad at first. But things quickly became tense … Before reaching critical mass. | 0 |
SAN FRANCISCO — Google and Facebook have been taking steps to curb the number of false news articles propagated across their sites. On Wednesday, the Silicon Valley companies showed that they were still in the early stages of their battle to limit misinformation online. In a blog post, Google said it had permanently banned nearly 200 publishers from its AdSense advertising network near the end of last year, after putting into effect a policy in November to choke off websites that try to deceive users from its online ad service. On the same day, Facebook introduced changes to its Trending Topics feature — a part of the social network that some have blamed for spreading false information — to better promote reliable news articles. Yet taken together, the efforts showed how the fight against fake news remains a work in progress. Google’s bans were a drop in the bucket compared with the almost two million publishers that use AdSense. Facebook’s new measures were part of a continuing series of small experiments by the company to find out what worked best in displaying news to its users. “We genuinely asked Google and Facebook for ‘moonshots,’” said Jason Kint, the chief executive of Digital Content Next, an online publishing industry group. “We appreciate the work, but based on the numbers, that’s hardly even running in place. ” Google and Facebook have been in something of a situation in recent months when it comes to fake news. Both companies have been grappling with a widespread backlash over how their sites may have spread rumors on a vast scale, and how little responsibility they take for any of the content that appears on their platforms. The issue came to a head after the American presidential election, when commentators accused Facebook in particular of swaying voters to President Trump through misleading and untrue news articles. In response, both companies have tried various measures to limit fake news. Google in November said it would ban sites that spread misinformation from AdSense as a way to impair how such sites make money. That same month, Facebook updated some of its policy language, which already said it would not display ads on sites that show misleading or illegal content, to include fake news sites. Facebook has since introduced other changes, including consulting news organizations like The Associated Press and ABC News about the accuracy of articles that users report as being false. Google’s blog post on Wednesday was the first time the company explained the results of its moves against publishers that spread misinformation. The search giant said it reviewed 550 sites “suspected of misrepresenting content to users, including impersonating news organizations” in November and December. It took action against 340 of those sites and kicked nearly 200 publishers off its network permanently. Google was careful not to say that these were fake news sites, only sites that deceive users by misrepresenting themselves or their content. This month, Media Matters noted that Google changed the language of its advertising policy, removing the words “fake news. ” Google said the language change noted by Media Matters involved examples that help explain its policy but were not changes to the actual policy. Google declined to identify the sites or publishers it banned. Before taking steps to thwart fake news publishers, Google had an existing policy that outlawed publishers of “misrepresentative content,” such as websites peddling schemes or counterfeit goods. It expanded this policy to include sites impersonating news organizations. Google was pulled into the fake news debate when Mediaite reported that, in the days after the election, the top result on a Google search for “final election vote count 2016” was a link to an article that incorrectly stated that Mr. Trump, who won the Electoral College, was ahead of his Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton, in the popular vote. Google said that its search algorithms fell short but that the company would continue to work to improve its results. The AdSense system is a major revenue driver for independent web publishers who rely on the network to deliver display advertising on their sites. The publishers are paid when a reader views or clicks on those ads, with a portion of the proceeds going to Google. AdSense is one of the largest advertising networks on the web with nearly two million publishers using the system. Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the number of sites it has banned since November. Trending Topics is a feature on the social network that tells people what popular topics are being discussed on the site. Apart from more transparency around headlines, the changes to the feature on Wednesday included identifying popular topics through the number of publishers posting articles on Facebook about a piece of news, rather than engagement around a single article. “Today’s update may also help prevent hoaxes and fake news from appearing in Trending because the updated system identifies groups of articles shared on Facebook instead of relying solely on mentions of a topic,” the company said in a blog post. Still, industry watchers remain skeptical about the efficacy of these moves. “Nothing drives clicks better than when the headline is exactly what people want to hear or believe,” Ian Schafer, the chief executive and founder of Deep Focus, a digital advertising agency, referring specifically to Google. Mr. Schafer said that without significant changes to the economics and technology of online ads, banning individual sites would not produce change in the long run. | 1 |
BRUSSELS — Antonio Tajani was elected president of the European Parliament on Tuesday, and he won’t have much time to settle in. Mr. Tajani, an Italian who beat out his countryman Gianni Pittella in the fourth round of voting, takes over as the European Union confronts an array of pressing issues. The Parliament is the only directly elected body among the bewildering list representing the European Union, but it often struggles for relevance — a fact underscored when Mr. Tajani’s ascendance on Tuesday was overshadowed by a speech by Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain on plans for her country to leave the bloc, and an address by Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, in Davos, Switzerland. Mr. Tajani, 63, from the European People’s Party — the Parliament’s largest political group, with 217 members from 27 nations — was the favorite for the post. Mr. Tajani is something of an insider, having previously worked alongside the former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who appointed Mr. Tajani nearly a decade ago to the European Commission, the bloc’s executive office. He served two terms there from 2008 to 2014, overseeing the transport sector and then taking the industry and entrepreneurship portfolio. Some members of the European Parliament criticized Mr. Tajani for failing to do enough in that role to address emissions from cars. “He wasn’t a commissioner who was very open, transparent and fair,” Ska Keller, a prominent German lawmaker with the Greens, said on Tuesday. Mr. Tajani has sought to distance himself from the approach taken by his predecessor, Martin Schulz, who announced in November that he would return to German politics. Mr. Schulz was regarded by some members of the Parliament as too ready to use his perch to promote his personal views. The Parliament needed a “president, not a prime minister,” Mr. Tajani said on Tuesday before the voting. “When I stand in front of the Council, it won’t be my ideas I’ll be expounding on, it’ll be the ideas of the majority in Parliament,” he added, apparently referring to summit meetings of the European Council. There were five other candidates for the post, but Mr. Tajani’s only real rival during the voting was Mr. Pittella, from the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats. By the fourth and final round of balloting on Tuesday night, Mr. Tajani won 351 votes in a runoff against Mr. Pittella, who took 282 votes. Pivotal to Mr. Tajani’s victory was a decision by Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister and the leader of the Parliament’s centrist Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe group, to withdraw from the race and form a coalition with Mr. Tajani’s group. Mr. Verhofstadt suggested that he was taking the step to ensure that the Parliament did not end up weakened by small but staunchly parties. Politics at the Parliament have become “hugely fragmented,” Mr. Verhofstadt said. The hottest issue in European Union affairs is how tough to be over Britain’s exit, and the Parliament has a veto on any deal London reaches with the rest of the bloc. Mr. Tajani pledged Tuesday to take a approach: “We’ll need to be very balanced here — we’ll need to defend the rights of Europe, but I think that in the future the U. K. will be an important partner of ours,” he said. Mr. Tajani must also balance demands among liberal and lawmakers for greater openness and free trade with demands from factions of the and fringe parties to take a more protectionist approach. That will be tested when the Parliament votes in on whether to approve the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the European Union and Canada. Mr. Tajani will also need to oversee passage of highly contentious legislation that could oblige European Union member states to share the burden of hosting asylum seekers under emergency conditions. The move in 1979 to hold direct elections for the Parliament was intended to bring the European project closer to ordinary citizens and to enhance the democratic legitimacy of its decisions. But success has been limited and, in some respects, the initiative has backfired. As the number of voters participating in elections held every five years has dropped steadily since 1979, to just above 40 percent, the body has become a foothold for a number of insurgent, parties with strongly views. The Parliament has also become a magnet for lobbyists seeking to influence legislation on issues from the amount of permissible emissions from industry, including cars, to the way cellphone calls are priced. A number of lawmakers have been caught up in corruption scandals, breeding further disenchantment with the organization. | 1 |
Friday during her speech at Georgetown University, former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton criticized President Donald Trump for his proposed budget cuts to diplomacy and international aid within the agency she once headed. Clinton said, “I’m here also to say we are seeing signals of a shift that should alarm us all. This administration’s proposed cuts to international health, development, and diplomacy would be a blow to women and children and a grave mistake for our country. Some of you may have seen the recent letter from more than 120 retired generals and admirals to congress and the administration, urging the congress and the White House not to retreat from these programs which represent our values. ” “These distinguished men and woman who served in uniform recognize that turning our back on diplomacy won’t make our country safer,” she continued. “It will undermine our security and our standing in the world. Defense Secretary Mattis said it well when he said if you cut funds to the State Department, that means he has to buy more ammunition. ” ( The Hill) Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
PITTSBURGH — Donald J. Trump said Thursday that drugs were to blame for the violence roiling cities across the nation. Mr. Trump used the first roughly 10 minutes of his remarks to energy executives at a shale industry conference here to address the current unrest — including in Charlotte, N. C. after an man was fatally shot by the police — before turning more broadly to the plight of the nation’s largely black urban areas. “And if you’re not aware, drugs are a very, very big factor in what you’re watching on television at night,” Mr. Trump said. Some interpreted the Republican nominee’s remarks as specifically addressing the violent demonstrations in Charlotte, or at least the protests that have sprung up around the country this year in response to police shootings. But Kellyanne Conway, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, said he was not referring to Charlotte or the broader protest movement, which is often led by . “He wasn’t talking about Charlotte specifically,” Ms. Conway said. “As he has done in many different venues on many different occasions, he is addressing a major concern that authorities and moms all across the country are raising with him, which is indiscriminate drug use and opiate addiction. ” Before turning to the topic at hand — energy — Mr. Trump said he first wanted to address “the turmoil unfolding right now in our country. ” “We have some real problems, and we do have a wounded country,” he said. “Many Americans are watching the unrest in Charlotte unfolding right before their eyes on the TV screens. Others are witnessing the chaos and the violence firsthand. ” He also worried aloud whether the protests and unrest had diminished the nation’s international standing. “Our country looks bad to the world, especially when we are supposed to be the world’s leader — how can we lead when we can’t even control our own cities?” Mr. Trump said. “We honor and recognize the right for all Americans to peacefully assemble and protest and demonstrate. But there is no right to engage in violent disruption or to threaten the public safety and peace of others. ” Earlier, in an interview on “Fox Friends,” Mr. Trump addressed his call on Wednesday to broaden the use of policing to other cities across the nation. Asked about the policy, which is loathed by many and whose legality has been questioned, Mr. Trump said he was specifically referring to the use of increased in Chicago — a city that has been besieged by crime and gun violence. But he also asserted his general support for the policy — ”They’ll stop, they’ll frisk, and they’ll take the gun away, and they won’t have anything to shoot with,” Mr. Trump said on Fox — and he reiterated that support during his speech here on Thursday. “Look at the example we had in New York of Mayor Rudy Giuliani,” Mr. Trump said, saying that the policies, which were instituted during Mr. Giuliani’s tenure as mayor, had helped curb murder and other crimes in the city. “Think of how many families these policies saved from the worst heartache imaginable. ” But Mr. Trump, whose support among voters is still in the single digits in most polls, also tried to strike a more inclusive, conciliatory note, speaking of the “ residents who live in these communities” and “suffer the most as a result of these riots. ” He called for more law enforcement, more community engagement and “more effective policing. ” “Our job is not to make life more comfortable for the violent disrupter, but to make life more comfortable for the parent trying to raise their kids in peace, to walk their children to school and to get their children great educations,” he said. “For every one violent protester, there are thousands of moms and dads and kids in that same community who just want to be able to sleep — really to sleep safely at night. To be able to walk on the streets. To be able to go to the grocery store. ” Later, Mr. Trump stopped by Geno’s, the famous Philadelphia cheesesteak place, to sample the city’s signature sandwich. Turning to the assembled cameras and reporters, Mr. Trump repeatedly pressed, “Who wants one?” “I think I’m going to get one for Hillary,” he joked. A man in the crowd shouted back: “Then she’ll choke on it!” | 1 |
House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell met with President Donald Trump Monday in the Oval Office. [The two Republican leaders spoke to reporters after the meeting, which preceded the president’s joint address to members of Congress on Tuesday. “We’ve got a bold agenda ahead of us, and the president is going to lay it out and why it’s going to make a difference in people’s lives,” Ryan said. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he looked forward to a “positive upbeat” message from Trump, promising that the Republicans’ agenda would be “exactly the same as the Trump agenda. ” Ryan said House Republicans would be rolling out a House plan to repeal and replace Obamacare with a better plan that would give Americans “choice and freedom” instead of a mandatory plan that was in a “death spiral. ” That plan would likely be released in the spring, he confirmed. Reporters asked Ryan whether he would support Trump’s budget, even though it was unlikely to include entitlement reforms to Social Security and Medicare. “Repealing and replacing Obamacare is fundamental entitlement reform,” Ryan replied. | 1 |
MUMBAI — The police on Saturday detained a man suspected of running a fraud from a network of Indian call centers, tricking hundreds of unwitting Americans into believing they owed money to the Internal Revenue Service. Sagar Thakkar, known as Shaggy, was apprehended by immigration officials in Mumbai after arriving on a flight from Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, where the police said he had been living since an October raid on his call centers. He was charged with extortion, cheating by impersonation and wire fraud, and is expected to remain in custody until April 15. Mr. Thakkar’s lawyer could not be reached on Saturday. Officials accuse Mr. Thakkar of leveraging India’s vast supply of workers and modern communications technology to earn as much as $150, 000 a day at the height of the fraud. Many of Mr. Thakkar’s nearly 700 young employees would call United States citizens, impersonate I. R. S. agents and demand immediate payment for unpaid taxes. The police estimated that he may have bilked Americans out of $100 million over the telephone. The police have been hunting for Mr. Thakkar since the call center raid last year. They believe an informer tipped him off to the raid, said Abhishek Trimukhe, the deputy commissioner of police in Thane. Mr. Thakkar’s lavish fugitive lifestyle has intrigued Indian crime reporters, who chronicled his purchase of a $400, 000 German sports car from one of India’s most famous cricket players as a gift for his girlfriend. Investigators said that Mr. Thakkar had recruited former schoolmates for the fraud by driving them in limousines and hosting them at opulent restaurants. “He appears like a regular guy he doesn’t appear like a criminal if you talk to him,” said Param Bir Singh, Thane’s police commissioner. “But very, very and very, very smart. ” Mr. Thakkar spent the past six months in Dubai. He told the police he lived there using a residential permit, which he claimed was linked to a shell company. He returned to India of his own volition, perhaps because he had run out of money, Mr. Trimukhe said. And he returned with no luggage, carrying only travel documents and two cellphones, the police said. In conversations with the police, Mr. Thakkar described himself as the child of a family from Gujarat who made his first foray into work at 15, carrying out customer phone surveys about buying and selling cars, and then selling those leads to automotive retailers. He learned about swindles a few years later from friends, and decided to replicate the model on a large scale, enlisting dozens of school friends, Mr. Trimukhe said. “His entire family was in Ahmedabad and they’re lower middle class I don’t think they really needed it,” Mr. Trimukhe said. “He wanted fast money. There is no other intention for this. In Ahmedabad there is a culture of business they want to earn big money. ” The police said on Saturday that they believed their actions had “heavily dented” the illegal industry. “Mr. Thakkar has shared that there were many call centers running in the country, which after our raid have shut down,” Mr. Singh said. The police said they were scouring Mr. Thakkar’s phones for information, but that he had disposed of the iPhone he had used to run the fraud. They said they had found only a handful of contacts and no trace of his past communications on his new phones. | 1 |
THUNDER BAY, Ontario — They were teenagers from tiny indigenous Canadian communities, isolated by a maze of lakes and forest. Thunder Bay, a metropolis by comparison, offered them their only opportunity for a high school education. Instead, the students met death. Starting in 2000 and over the span of more than a decade, the bodies of Jethro Anderson, Curran Strang, Reggie Bushie, Kyle Morrisseau and Jordan Wabasse were found, one by one, floating in the rivers that meander past Thunder Bay’s grain elevators, shopping malls and rail lines, emptying into Lake Superior. Bodies of two other indigenous students, Robyn Harper and Paul Panacheese, were found elsewhere in Thunder Bay, a predominantly white city of 121, 000. Indigenous leaders and parents of the dead had long called for investigations, suspecting the students were victims of hate crimes. But among the broader population, the deaths largely went unnoticed until last year, when the Ontario coroner’s office opened an inquest. Despite months of testimony, the inquest’s jury, which released findings and recommendations in June, was unable to reach a conclusion as to what had led to the deaths of four of the students, and found the others to be accidental. But unlike many tragedies involving indigenous Canadians, these victims were linked by important common denominators: All were young people from remote towns. All were unaccustomed to city life. All were forced to stay in privately run boardinghouses — a lonely, unsupervised life for students as young as 14. The inquest became a window into broader questions over how Canada handles education for such a vulnerable population. Testimony underscored that despite Canada’s national pride over inclusiveness, a racial line often separates indigenous Canadians from the rest of society. “There’s racism here,” said Sara Brady, an Ojibway teacher who runs a team of workers who assist indigenous students at a high school in Thunder Bay. “You have kids who have never experienced racism before, and that’s a big thing for some of them. They don’t understand what that is until they get here. ” Among the statistics offered at the inquest, a calculation by Dr. David Eden, the presiding coroner, stood out. Two of the students, Kyle Morrisseau and Robyn Harper, came from Keewaywin, population around 300, about 350 miles northwest of Thunder Bay. For Thunder Bay to suffer a proportionally similar tragedy, he said, 700 high school students would need to die. Kyle Morrisseau’s death offers a glimpse into his failed jump from one world into another, and its devastating effect on his family. He was a celebrity in Keewaywin, which consists of little more than an airstrip, nursing station, school, general store and post office. He was the third generation of his family to find success in selling art. He and his father, Christian Morriseau (some family members use a single “S” in the surname) painted aboriginal mythology images sold in galleries in Ottawa and elsewhere. His grandfather Norval Morrisseau was one of Canada’s aboriginal painters. Since Kyle’s death, Christian Morriseau’s marriage has dissolved and his house has burned down. He now lives part time in another house, condemned and filled with mold, in between annual trips to paint in Toronto. When his son started attending high school in Thunder Bay, Mr. Morriseau said in an interview, he had little concern. Two cousins worked at the high school, and an uncle coordinated programs for indigenous students in the city. “We had family there,” he said. Mr. Morriseau planned trips to Toronto and Ottawa to meet with art collectors so that he could change planes in Thunder Bay and spend time with Kyle. One night in October 2009, while they shared a hotel room, Kyle told his father that he wanted to return to Keewaywin, only to abruptly reverse himself the next day, promising to “tough it out,” Mr. Morriseau said. Kyle was found dead less than a month later. Mr. Morriseau said he has agonized over Kyle’s change of mind ever since. “He was just lonely, I guess,” he said. He said the evidence at the inquest showed that there were bruises on Kyle’s body, suggesting that his son may have been attacked. The jury also heard how at least one other indigenous student had been assaulted by young white men and thrown into the river. That student, fearing for his life, left Thunder Bay and returned home. Regardless, Mr. Morriseau said he was convinced that Kyle had not committed suicide. While many Canadian aboriginal communities have exceptionally high rates of suicide and attempted suicide, statistics presented at the inquest showed that hanging is overwhelmingly the most common method. Drowning is not even a category. The inquest jury listed the means of Kyle’s death as “undetermined. ” Asked what he thought had happened, Mr. Morriseau, 46, looked down, replying: “Who knows, man. Only he does — him and the creator knows what happened. ” “Somebody else does know something out there,” he continued, “but I don’t think it will ever come up, or maybe it’s too late to come up. ” Educating indigenous Canadians has long been considered one of the country’s most troubling issues. For much of Canada’s early history, native children were forcibly removed from their families and sent to residential schools largely run by churches. Physical, mental and sexual abuse were widespread. The program was less about education, a national Truth and Reconciliation Commission found last year, than it was about “cultural genocide. ” Today, schooling for most Canadians is financed with a mix of provincial and local taxes, and the federal government is responsible for educating only indigenous children who live on reserves. The result is a stark disparity. The inquest found that Thunder Bay’s Roman Catholic school board has a budget of roughly 27, 000 Canadian dollars, or about $20, 000, per student. Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School, where six of the dead students were enrolled, gets 11, 000 Canadian dollars per pupil. Not every high school student on a reserve in northwestern Ontario attends Cromarty, or D. F. C. as it is commonly known. Many attend the Pelican Falls First Nations High School, a boarding school nearer to the reserves. But Jonathan Kakegamic, the principal at D. F. C. said that he believes its location provides greater learning opportunities and makes it easier to attract and retain good teachers. The school partly compensates for the budget disparity with that helps pay for extra teachers, student meals and sports. But as he used a stationary bicycle late one afternoon in the school’s weight room, Mr. Kakegamic said that what the school really needed was a dormitory. “When you have 150 kids staying in private citizens’ boarding homes throughout the city, that’s a difficult thing to maintain,” he said. “There’s so many injustices at every level. ” Mr. Kakegamic’s home community is Keewaywin. He taught elementary school there, and is a cousin of Kyle Morrisseau’s family. As he recalled the school’s searches for each of its students who were ultimately found dead, tears mixed with the sweat on his face. “I don’t know if I could handle losing another kid,” he said. | 1 |
From BizPac Review:
Newly released emails from Wikileaks show Hillary Clinton staffers debating how they can best use the death of a black man to further their agenda.
The email began as a request for an essay by Clinton from Marie Claire who was partnering with Harvard University on a study about women and guns but it quickly devolved into brainstorming ideas on how to push the campaign’s anti-gun and racial narratives.
The team began discussing an article published in “The Guardian” where the mother of Jordan Davis, a black teenager murdered by a white man for playing music loud, called the killing a “legal lynching” despite the fact that the murderer, Michael David Dunn, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
De’Ara Balenger, the director of engagement for “Hillary for America” could hardly contain her excitement.
“This is great,” she wrote. “The only flag here is that Jordan Davis was killed by a white man, so arguably – this crime was racially motivated, which takes this outside the discussion of gun violence.
See the email below:
Imagine if a Republican staffer had said this. shares | 0 |
Over ten million Bernie supporters wanted to establish an Medicare For All single payer healthcare system in the United States, so it is far more likely that could happen under a Hillary Clinton Administration than under any Republican Administration. | 0 |
American cooks have frequent affairs with spiralizers, dry fryers and other shiny new toys. But they also have a deep, lasting relationship with one of the oldest cooking tools in the kitchen: the skillet. “There aren’t many things in modern life that are passed down through generations and remain both beautiful and useful,” said Ronni Lundy, a historian of the food and agriculture of Appalachia, where cooking in a heirloom skillet is a touchstone of heritage. It’s true that my grandmother’s china is gathering dust. Your ’s gold watch (admit it) lies unused in a drawer. But my parents’ pans, with their glassine black cooking surfaces, are the inheritance I crave. “I have two that are just coming along now,” Ms. Lundy said in the nurturing tone usually reserved for children, sourdough starters and rosebushes. pans are the new jeans: proof of both good taste and hard use. In just the last five years, three new companies promising to make improved skillets with a combination of traditional handwork and modern technology have begun production. And collecting has taken off. Buyers seek rare skillets like the Erie Spider, the Griswold Slant and the Wapak Chickenfoot an elusive Sidney No. 8 is listed on eBay for $1, 500. With cast iron’s mystique comes mystery. The responsibility of seasoning a pan can be daunting the idea of a pan that is never washed with soap can be alarming. But it is worth overcoming these obstacles because a skillet is truly an pan: nonstick enough to cook eggs, hot enough to sear anything and completely functional for roasting, stewing, simmering and baking. “You can caramelize a crust in cast iron in a way that would never happen in a sheet pan,” said Charlotte Druckman, who has just written a book on baking. The nonstick surface of a pan is achieved with natural ingredients like flaxseed oil, lard and time, not with synthetic coatings like Teflon or Thermolon. For all these reasons, even cooks without a tradition of cooking in cast iron now want to start one. Finex in Portland, Ore. Borough Furnace in Syracuse and the Field Company all got initial funding on Kickstarter from hundreds of small backers, who eventually receive pans in return for their sponsorship. The Field Company, run by Chris and Stephen Muscarella (neither of whom is trained in metallurgy, casting or cooking) raised more than $1. 6 million their first pans will ship soon from a foundry they adapted in the Midwest. Finex is making 200 skillets a day and barely keeping up with demand from the United States and abroad, according to Mike Whitehead, a founder. The Finex skillet sells for $165 the Borough Furnace equivalent for $280 the Field skillet for about $100. Why would anyone pay nearly $300 for a modern “artisanal” skillet when a perfectly functional equivalent, made in South Pittsburg, Tenn. by the venerable Lodge company, costs $16 at Walmart? The answer lies in the craftsmanship of the past. The pots — skillets, spiders (which sit in the embers of a fire) and Dutch ovens — made in the United States from the 18th century through the first half of the 20th, were different from today’s: lighter, thinner and with a smoother cooking surface. The Muscarella brothers grew up cooking with their mother’s old pans — far from being collectors’ items, rusty skillets used to be offered two for a quarter at barn sales — and wondered why the pans they bought when they went out on their own were so comparatively unwieldy. To find out why, “we went down a rabbit hole,” said Chris Muscarella, and came out determined to produce new pans in the old style. Modern casting, he said, cannot produce pans that are as thin and smooth. Those pans were cast by makers like Griswold, Wagner, Sidney — and by dozens of foundries located in every sizable American town that also usually produced farm tools and weapons. Each pan was poured and polished by hand, a process that required hours of human labor but yielded a noticeable difference. “I fell in love with that smoothness,” said Mr. Whitehead of Finex. “But now that I make them, I realize why it went away. Labor is just so expensive. ” Most of the new pans have smooth interiors and are sold preseasoned, which also explains their appeal to modern consumers. (There is a wealth of confusing and often contradictory information about seasoning online.) Each of the new makers has its own preferred system of cleaning and reseasoning, described on its website. But the basic principle is simple: Treat the pan as if you were a cook, because the way people back then cooked and cleaned automatically seasoned their pans. Instead of plastic polymers, their skillets had natural coatings formed by cooking with fat and bonding fat molecules to the metal surface. So use the pan often, especially for projects like shallow frying or cooking bacon or browning chicken. Scrape the cooking surface clean with a stiff brush, a bench scraper or salt rinse with very hot water and, if needed, a drop of soap put it back on the stove over low heat until completely dry. It is not necessary to make a science project of creating the patina: Under these circumstances, it will simply happen. (If the pan is long unused, however, even the loveliest patina will become sticky, rusty or both. Store dry skillets in a cupboard or the oven to protect them from dust, with paper towels between them if stacked.) Nostalgia for old ways of cooking is powerful, but in this case it is also practical. “Cast iron is not responsive, but it is relentless,” said Nathan Myhrvold, the food scientist. No common cooking material has such a high “thermal mass,” or ability to absorb and store heat. Mr. Myhrvold, who runs a research center in Bellevue, Wash. called the Cooking Lab, which also produces the “Modernist Cuisine” books, said the common notion that cast iron is a good conductor of heat is a myth in fact, the opposite is true. Cast iron grabs heat and holds on to it. “After you put the steak in contact with it, there’s a lot of spare heat left to cook with,” he said. “Cast iron doesn’t drop in temperature as much as thinner pans with better conductivity,” like aluminum and stainless steel. pans evolved for use in charcoal embers and on wood stoves, when maximizing limited heat was the priority. In Appalachia, cast iron survived when many modern cooks switched to lighter pans, which heat up quickly on gas and electric stoves, Ms. Lundy said. “That skillet became part of the imagery of the Appalachian woman,” said Ms. Lundy, who identifies herself as a member of the “hillbilly diaspora” and has just published a cookbook called “Victuals. ” She grew up in Louisville, Ky. and lives in North Carolina. Her family lived for at least four generations in Corbin, Ky. making everything from pork chops to cornbread, cobblers and even biscuits in cast iron. “The first thing any mountain cook will tell you is the history of her skillets,” she said. Soon, the same may be true of all cooks. Mr. Whitehead said a customer had recently come in to buy a Finex skillet after his first son was born. “The dad wants to start using it now,” he said, “so it will be ready for the boy when he turns 18. ” Recipes: Flattened Chicken Thighs With Roasted Lemon Slices | Crisp Toffee Bars | 1 |
Hollywood may experience one of the worst slumps at the box office in the last decade this summer as Americans grow tired of the seemingly endless number of sequels and tentpoles churned out by the film industry. [Multiple reports by the Los Angeles Times and the Hollywood Reporter show box office revenues are on track to decline by five percent this summer season when compared with last year, and could drop by as much as ten percent. In real dollars, that could calculate out to a net loss of $450 million for Hollywood’s film industry, with summer earnings for movies expected at about $4 billion, which would make box office performance during this year’s summer season the worst in at least ten years. The summer season kicked off with a bang with the release of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 on May 5. The ensemble superhero sequel starring Chris Pratt, Kurt Russell, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista and Bradley Cooper opened to a robust $145 million in its domestic debut, and is expected to top the box office in its second frame with an estimated $60 million haul. The James film has already crossed the $500 million mark in international sales. But the second weekend of summer hints at more trouble to come, as Warner Roadshow’s pricey tentpole King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is set to debut to around $25 million in its opening weekend, a disastrous projection when compared with its reported $175 million budget, before marketing costs. But the real test will come later this summer, when Paramount trots out Transformers: The Last Knight and Disney releases Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, both of which represent the fifth entries in their respective, franchises. Other key tests will include the sequel Alien: Covenant, War for the Planet of the Apes, and the third reboot of the Spiderman franchise, : Homecoming. Of course, Americans’ sequel fatigue also comes at a time when there are more programs available to watch on demand and in the comfort of one’s home than one could ever hope to watch in a lifetime. These options include hits like Game of Thrones and newly created cult classics like Netflix’s Stranger Things and Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Studios are looking to avoid a repeat of last summer’s uneven season, which saw numerous major releases — including Independence Day 2, Alice Through the Looking Glass, The BFG, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, The Legend of Tarzan, and Warcraft — either underwhelm or else outright bomb at the box office. There appear to be at least a couple of bright spots this summer, as the animated family film Despicable Me 3 and Christopher Nolan’s World War II drama Dunkirk are expected to perform well for Universal and Warner Bros. respectively. But some executives are already blaming the upcoming season’s with sequels for the projected decline in box office. “Some of the tent poles are just not as strong this year,” 20th Century Fox domestic distribution chief Chris Aronson told the Times. “Pirates of the Caribbean? It’s the fifth one. Transformers? It’s the fifth one. ” John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 1 |
President Donald Trump is expected to sign a pair of executive orders on Friday afternoon aimed at identifying and combatting abusive foreign trade practices. [The orders direct the government to launch a study of the massive and persistent U. S. trade deficit and instruct regulators to strictly enforce U. S. policies aimed at preventing foreign manufacturers from undercutting U. S. companies with unfairly low prices. They mark the latest step in the administration’s efforts to bolster U. S. manufacturing and prevent trading partners from taking advantage of the U. S.’s free trade stance. The signing of the orders comes a day after an eruption of trade policy intrigue surrounding a leaked draft memo from the U. S. Trade Representative’s office to members of Congress. The memo outlined proposed changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement that were far less sweeping than Trump’s statements on the campaign trail appeared to imply. Hours after the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News reported that the memo signaled a softening of the administration’s stance on NAFTA, White House press Secretary Sean Spicer said the memo did not reflect the administration’s views. “That is not a statement of administration policy. It is not a statement of administration policy,” Spicer said. The memo was leaked to journalists by members of the U. S. Senate, according to people familiar with the matter. Despite the statement from Spicer, the memo showed that some in the Trump administration are pushing to soften its stance on trade issues, these people said. In a briefing with reporters on Thursday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said that one of the orders instructs Commerce and the U. S. Trade Representative to work together to conduct a sweeping review of the causes of U. S. trade deficits. While trade deficits with some countries — particularly those with oil exporting countries — are to be expected and not the result of abusive practices, persistent trade deficits in manufactured goods may be the result of unfair trade practices. Examples of abusive trade practices include manufacturers selling goods below their cost of production and unfair subsidies aimed at undercutting U. S. manufacturers. The report produced by the study will be the basis for the administration to implement policies cracking down on these abuses, according to Commerce Department officials. The orders come a week before Trump is set to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. While China is the largest source of the U. S.’s trade deficit, Ross and Peter Navarro, director of the National Trade Council, insisted Thursday that the directives were not aimed at China in particular. Sources in the administration say the orders could allow Trump to avoid detailed trade discussions with the Chinese leader by citing the ongoing study. The second order will address the failure of U. S. agencies to collect penalties. Foreign manufacturers often avoid paying these by exporting to the U. S. through shell companies that lack the funds to pay the penalties. The order will require foreign companies exporting to the U. S. to have financial resources that can be drawn upon to pay penalties for trade abuses. | 1 |
The New York Times’s Moscow bureau was the target of an attempted cyberattack this month. But so far, there is no evidence that the hackers, believed to be Russian, were successful. “We are constantly monitoring our systems with the latest available intelligence and tools,” said Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for The Times. “We have seen no evidence that any of our internal systems, including our systems in the Moscow bureau, have been breached or compromised. ” On Tuesday, citing United States officials briefed on the matter, CNN reported that The Times, along with other news organizations it did not identify, had been the victims of computer breaches by hackers thought to be working for Russian intelligence. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into the attempted attack on The Times, a government official briefed on the inquiry said, but has no investigations underway of such episodes at other news organizations. Kelly Langmesser, a spokeswoman for the agency, said the F. B. I. had no comment. Ms. Murphy said The Times had not hired outside firms to investigate the attempted intrusion, contrary to the CNN report. Evidence that hackers had targeted The Times came to light two months after private investigators concluded that Russian hackers, apparently connected to two of the country’s intelligence agencies, had broken into the networks of the Democratic National Committee. The F. B. I. ’s investigation into that episode has since widened to include breaches at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is the arm for the House Democrats. So far, the Obama administration has not blamed the Russian government publicly for that attack, though intelligence officials have said they have “high confidence” that the attack on the Democratic National Committee was the work of two Russian intelligence agencies, the F. S. B. and the G. R. U. The first is the successor to the K. G. B. and the second is the leading military intelligence unit. Once the federal investigation into the hacking of the Democratic National Committee is complete, senior administration officials say, President Obama will have to decide whether the evidence of Russian responsibility for the breach is strong enough to warrant an American response. If so, he would also have to determine whether that response would take the form of quiet warnings, economic sanctions or even a counterattack of some kind. | 1 |
Barbra Streisand says she could have had a shot at even more awards glory if not for the sexism of Academy voters. [In an interview Saturday at the Tribeca Film Festival, the singer and actress said she was snubbed by Academy voters for her directorial efforts on Yentl and The Prince of Tides because Academy voters did not want to see a “woman director. ” “There were a lot of older people. They don’t want to see a woman director,” Streisand told director Robert Rodriguez at the festival on Saturday, according to Variety. “I don’t know how many women wanted to see a woman director. ” 1983’s Yentl, about a Jewish woman (Streisand) who dresses as a man so she can study Torah in a yeshiva — was nominated for five Oscars and won one, for Best Original Score. 1991’s The Prince of Tides — in which she also starred as a New York therapist who becomes unwillingly involved in a client’s messy personal life — was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture for Streisand, but came away . According to Variety, Streisand appeared to still be bothered by a 1983 review of Yentl by New York Times critic Janet Maslin, who wrote, among other things, that the film used a “ designer yarmulke. ” “None of [the female critics] talked about what the movie was trying to say,” Streisand told Rodriguez, according to the outlet. “It was not about what the movie was about — a celebration of women and all they could be. ” When Rodriguez told Streisand that she had paved the way for contemporary female directors, including The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty helmer Kathryn Bigelow, Streisand disagreed. “Not enough women are directing now,” she said. “I love when I see a woman’s name on the film, and then I want to see it be good. ” Streisand — who has also won ten Grammys, nine Golden Globes, five Emmys, a Tony award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom — spoke out against rampant sexism in an interview with WNYC Wednesday, telling the outlet’s Leonard Lopate that misogyny cost former Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton the White House. “Women are still so underestimated it’s incredible to watch even this last election with Hillary, the kind of strong woman, the powerful woman, the educated woman, the experienced woman, being thought of as the other, or too elite, or too educated,” Streisand said then, adding: “Strong women have always been suspect in this country. ” Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 1 |
Comey Investigation a Red Herring to Cover Up Wikileaks Dump 11/01/2016 In today’s video, Christopher Greene of AMTV explains why the Comey Investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails is a Red Herring to Cover Up Wikileaks Data Dump. 10/10/2016 Citizen Quasar
Publishing news about one of the candidates before an election is NOT “interfering” with an election.
The criminal gang that controls the United States today is systemically inherent in representational government. NO government will be constructed that protects rights until people know what rights are. For Americans, this is decades, if not centuries, in the future from now.
In the meantime, Americans will continue saying the Pledge of Allegiance and continue thinking this is patriotic and puzzling over how Americans couldever be taught the definition of a right on such a wide scale. Citizen Quasar
Further, here is some speculation:
Somebody shoots Hillary Clinton dead two days before the election. This gives President Obama an excuse to “temporarily” delay the election. Follow AMTV! | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Judge Neil M. Gorsuch presented himself on Monday as a creature of consensus during a sharply partisan Supreme Court confirmation hearing, clouded throughout by the bitter nomination fight that preceded it over the past year. Democrats, seething from the hearing’s opening moments, made clear that they would not let the public forget about Judge Merrick B. Garland, President Barack Obama’s nominee last year, whom Republicans refused to even consider at a hearing, saying the seat should be filled by the winner of the presidential election. But when it was his turn, Judge Gorsuch reached often for comity during a speech, insisting that he favored no party above the law and appearing to brace for attacks from critics who have said his rulings tilt toward corporate interests. “I’ve ruled for disabled students, for prisoners, for the accused, for workers alleging civil rights violations and for undocumented immigrants,” he told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Sometimes, too, I’ve ruled against such persons. ” Beginning four days of planned hearings over Judge Gorsuch’s nomination, the proceedings on Monday — light on direct confrontation, heavy on senatorial windiness — set the contours of the debates to come: Democrats raised questions about Judge Gorsuch’s record on issues like workers’ rights and aired concerns about President Trump’s often dim view of the judicial branch. Republicans sought to insulate a plainly jurist whom they hope to install as the court’s next conservative stalwart. And Judge Gorsuch took pains to position himself above politics, on the eve of formal, rigorous questioning from senators on Tuesday. Leaning often on biography in his speech, Judge Gorsuch cast himself as a humble Westerner, reared on with malice toward none in his decade as a federal appellate court judge based in Denver. “My decisions have never reflected a judgment about the people before me, only a judgment about the law and the facts at issue in each particular case,” he said. “A good judge can promise no more than that. And a good judge should guarantee no less. ” A judge who is pleased with every ruling he reaches, Judge Gorsuch added, “is probably a pretty bad judge, stretching for policy results he prefers rather than those the law compels. ” Judge Gorsuch thanked Mr. Trump and did not mention the president’s attacks on the judiciary since taking office, leveled against judges who have ruled against the administration in its push to enact a travel ban from certain predominantly Muslim countries. He spoke generally of the hard and noble work of judges, perhaps signaling an indirect rebuttal to Mr. Trump’s comments, which he called “disheartening” during private meetings with senators last month. Judge Gorsuch did not mention Judge Garland on Monday. Democrats, still grappling with how aggressively to oppose this nomination, were eager to fill the void. “I just want to say I’m deeply disappointed that it’s under these circumstances that we begin our hearings,” Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the committee’s top Democrat, said at the top of her remarks, citing the “unprecedented treatment” of Judge Garland after the death last year of Justice Antonin G. Scalia. Senator Michael Bennet, Democrat of Colorado — who introduced Judge Gorsuch, his constituent, alongside the state’s Republican senator, Cory Gardner — said that while it was “tempting” to deny Judge Gorsuch a hearing as well, “two wrongs never make a right. ” Mr. Bennet said he had taken no position on Judge Gorsuch, despite his glowing introduction. Another introductory speaker, Neal K. Katyal, an acting solicitor general under Mr. Obama, endorsed the nominee explicitly, in what Gorsuch allies hope will be a powerful testament to his résumé. By choosing Judge Gorsuch, Mr. Trump has forced Democrats to reckon with the kind of obstructionism they long lamented from Republicans. In their opening statements, Democratic senators made no attempt to quibble with Judge Gorsuch’s qualifications or temperament. While several members have already said they will vote against him, the prospect of an fight has concerned some more moderate Democrats, particularly those who face in states that Mr. Trump won. If Judge Gorsuch cannot meet the threshold needed to overcome a filibuster, Republicans could change longstanding rules and elevate him on a simple majority vote. Even some criticisms seemed to hint at the likelihood of Judge Gorsuch being seated, one way or another. “You’re going to have your hands full with this president,” Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said at one point during a discussion of executive branch overreach, seeming at least briefly to assume Judge Gorsuch’s confirmation. “He’s going to keep you busy. ” Leading up to the hearings, Democrats had gotten little traction for their arguments against Judge Gorsuch. Even on Monday, the proceedings were overshadowed at times by a hearing across the Capitol, where the F. B. I. director, James B. Comey, confirmed an investigation into contacts between Russia and members of the president’s orbit. But skeptics of Judge Gorsuch hope to amplify several concerns, turning particular attention to his case history on corporate issues and the rights of employees. Repeatedly, the example of a stranded truck driver was invoked: Judge Gorsuch had written a dissent arguing that a trucking company was permitted to fire a driver for abandoning his cargo for his own safety in subzero temperatures. The weather was frigid, Mr. Durbin said, but “not as cold as your dissent, Judge Gorsuch. ” Ms. Feinstein said it remained to be seen whether Judge Gorsuch could acquit himself as “a reasonable mainstream conservative. ” Other Democrats argued that Judge Gorsuch was handpicked by conservative groups like the Federalist Society rather than principally by Mr. Trump. Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, said Judge Gorsuch was “selected by interest groups. ” In their own opening remarks, Republicans often sought to accuse their counterparts of hypocrisy, suggesting they were only now awakening to anxieties over executive authority. “Some of my colleagues seem to have rediscovered an appreciation for the need to confine each branch of the government to its constitutional sphere,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the committee’s chairman. Republicans also rejected any claim that the seat belonged to Judge Garland. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said that believing in a purported “great plan to get a Trump nominee on the court” required an expectation that “Trump was going to win to begin with. ” “I didn’t believe that,” said Mr. Graham, who has often criticized Mr. Trump. Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, extended the argument considerably. This nomination carried “” he said, because “the American people played a very direct role” in the outcome by electing Mr. Trump amid a fight over an open seat. Before the election, Mr. Cruz suggested that if Hillary Clinton won, Republicans might seek to preserve the court vacancy indefinitely. | 1 |
Kelsey Harkness, senior news producer and reporter at the Daily Signal spoke with Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam on Wednesday regarding the hijacking of International Women’s Day by America’s radical feminists, as detailed in her recent article, “Why It’s ‘Devastatingly Selfish’ For Strikers To Hijack International Women’s Day. ”[Below is an excerpt from Harkness’s Federalist item found here: For more than a century, March 8 has been globally recognized as International Women’s Day. The movement is celebrated by the United Nations, which works to “create a historic legacy of strategies, standards, programs and goals to advance the status of women worldwide. ” While American women still have plenty worth fighting for, the status of women internationally doesn’t compare. Women’s strikers’ decision to hijack this day shows just how far out of touch they are with the more serious problems facing hundreds of millions of women worldwide — problems ranging from human trafficking, sexual exploitation, forced marriage, and female genital mutilation to brutal murders masked in “honor. ” Our foreign sisters need our help, and International Women’s Day should be about them. Not us. Said Harkness to Kassam regarding today’s protests ignoring many issues that plague the Muslim world, such as genital mutilation, “I think one of the reasons we don’t often hear about it from these women’s march feminists is because it’s a very inconvenient narrative to what they stand for … . Harkness continued, a lot of these injustices are actually occurring in Muslim countries and they don’t want to being attention to it. One of the founders of the women’s march is Muslim. Why aren’t we hearing from her on International Women’s day about this issue?” Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. | 1 |
Behind the headlines - conspiracies, cover-ups, ancient mysteries and more. Real news and perspectives that you won't find in the mainstream media. Browse: Home / Ken Adachi – Why Trump Will Win Essential Reading “WIPED OFF THE MAP”– The Rumor of the Century By wmw_admin on January 21, 2008
How President Ahmadinejad’s words were mistranslated and deliberately distorted. So that the term “wiped off the map” has now become synonymous with the Iranian leader’s attitude to Israel – even though he never uttered those words 9/11 and Zion: What Was Israel’s Role? By Nick Kollerstrom on August 31, 2012
When Netanyahu said the very next day, ‘This is very good for Israel”, he wasn’t just blurting out something indiscreet, he was publicly congratulating the various agents who had worked so hard The “Six Million” Myth By wmw_admin on April 16, 2011
Long before it became a crime in some countries to question the Holocaust, in fact before it is even supposed to have happened, Zionists were invoking the figure of “Six Million” and talking of a sacrifice for Israel Juri Lina – In the Shadow of Hermes By wmw_admin on July 15, 2011
Fixed and a “must see” for all serious students of REAL history. This outstanding video from the author of “Under the Sign of Scorpio” challenges many modern myths. With English subtitles Back to the Future!!! Part 1 By wmw_admin on May 21, 2007
Geological evidence points to an cataclysmic event that almost defies comprehension. The problem is that it may just happen again … and soon too. Affidavit of Richard Tomlinson By wmw_admin on February 14, 2008
“I firmly believe that there exist documents held by the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) that would yield important new evidence into the cause and circumstances leading to the death of the Princess of Wales.” Who Really Murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman? By wmw_admin on February 28, 2015
Revelations that a US soldier was the killer would have jeopardised public support for the “War on Terror”. Hence a frame-up was required. A Joe Vialls classic recovered. | 0 |
Senator Ted Cruz ( ) introduced a bill calling for the use of $14 billion seized from cartel drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to be used to pay for the President’s border wall between the U. S. and Mexico. [“Fourteen billion dollars will go a long way toward building a wall that will keep Americans safe and hinder the illegal flow of drugs, weapons, and individuals across our southern border,” Senator Cruz stated, according to a statement obtained by Breitbart Texas from the senator’s office. “Ensuring the safety and security of Texans is one of my top priorities. ” The Texas senator said that leveraging criminally forfeited assets from El Chapo and other Mexican cartel members and drug dealers can “offset the wall’s cost and make meaningful progress toward achieving President Trump’s stated border security objectives. ” Senator Cruz introduced the Ensuring Lawful Collection of Hidden Assets to Provide Order (EL CHAPO) Act on Tuesday. “The U. S. Government is currently seeking the criminal forfeiture of more than $14 billion in drug proceeds and illicit profits from El Chapo, the former leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel who was recently extradited to the U. S. to face criminal prosecution for numerous alleged crimes, including conspiracy to commit murder and money laundering,” Cruz stated. The Mexican government extradited the former Mexican drug kingpin in January, Breitbart Texas’ Ildefonso Ortiz reported. The move to an American prison cell followed months of court battles in Mexico and multiple escapes from prison by Guzman. As part of the agreement with Mexico, Guzman will not face the death penalty in the U. S. for his crimes. Prosecutors filed murder charges against the former drug lord in relation to the killings of a U. S. citizen and two relatives. Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook. | 1 |
Cincinnati Bengals cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones was arrested Monday night on multiple charges, Fox 19 reports. [Jones was booked into the Hamilton County Justice Center in Cincinnati, OH at 12:25 a. m. Tuesday on misdemeanor charges of assault, disorderly conduct and obstructing official business. He was later charged with felony charge of harassment with a bodily substance after police say he spit on a jail nurse. Jones is accused of yelling and banging on a glass door and cursing at a security guard. He then reportedly pushed the guard and poked his eye. Police say when they tried to arrest the he tried to pull away from officers and take off. Jones is also accused of kicking, and refusing to enter a police car. “Pacman” has a lengthy history of arrests over his long career, missing the entire 2007 season and half of 2008 for incidents. Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 1 |
VIDEO : Bernie Supporter Hijacks Hillary Crowd and Tells them NOT to Vote For Her VIDEO : Bernie Supporter Hijacks Hillary Crowd and Tells them NOT to Vote For Her Videos By Amy Moreno November 5, 2016 Hillary got trolled at her own rally by a scheduled speaker!
During a small, lackluster Clinton rally a scheduled speaker took the stage and urged everyone NOT to vote for Hillary Clinton.
Ha ha ha!
The young man is a college sophomore and Bernie supporter.
He told the small crowd of people NOT to vote for Hillary because of her strong ties to crooked Wall Street before he was escorted off stage.
Awesome!
Watch the video: Bernie Sanders supporter and college student speaker calls out Hillary Clinton at her own rally, security pulls him off stage 11/5/2016 pic.twitter.com/EKMV15ZScd 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 |
If you were to look for one ingredient that binds together the nation’s chief executives, top managers and boards of directors, you’d find a remarkably consistent commonality, now and in generations past: A disproportionate number of them are graduates of Harvard Business School. An M. B. A. from H. B. S. as those in the know refer to it, has long been the ultimate Good Housekeeping stamp of approval on any résumé. Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric, Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook — and the list goes on and on. The number of Fortune 500 chief executives who earned their business degrees at Harvard is three times the total from the next most popular business school, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. It is hard to overstate the school’s influence on corporate America. That’s why a new, exhaustive history of the school is causing a stir before it is even out. The book, “The Golden Passport,” by the veteran business journalist Duff McDonald, is a richly reported indictment of the school as a leading reason that corporate America is disdained by much of the country. “The Harvard Business School became (and remains) so intoxicated with its own importance that it blithely assumed away one of the most important questions it could ask, which was whether the capitalist system it was uniquely positioned to help improve was designed properly for the long term,” Mr. McDonald writes in the book, to be released in two weeks. His answer? “With economic inequality at a high and meaningful progress on climate change and other social and environmental issues embarrassingly paltry, the answer to that question is obvious. It is not. ” Citing a report from the Aspen Institute, Mr. McDonald explains that “when students enter business school, they believe that the purpose of a corporation is to produce goods and services for the benefit of society. ” “When they graduate,” he continues, “they believe that it is to maximize shareholder value. ” Mr. McDonald brilliantly tells the story of the school’s creation in 1908, when its mission was to educate the next generation of business managers. Edwin Gay, its first dean, defined business as the “activity of making things to sell at a profit — decently. ” But, the author says, somewhere during the something went very wrong: “The money got too good. ” The money he refers to is the tsunami of job offers that Harvard students received from Wall Street, and the funding the school raked in from its alumni. In fairness, Harvard Business School makes an easy punching bag, given its stature as the top feeder for big business. This is hardly the first time the institution has been criticized. And it is too much to paint all alumni as being ethically challenged, as Mr. McDonald appears to imply. Indeed, many of the school’s vaunted alumni are among the most talented executives in the country, and many are trying to think about stakeholders holistically. Yet in example after example, Mr. McDonald sets out his thesis that money and influence have distorted both the school’s curriculum and the worldview espoused by its professors, who themselves are on the payroll of corporate America as advisers and consultants. “For a whole semester, for example, the school is basically bought and paid for by the consulting firms,” Mr. McDonald writes, quoting Casey Gerald, a member of the class of 2014 whose rousing speech at the school went viral on YouTube. The moneyed interests of employers prompted Harvard, Mr. McDonald contends, to hire the economist Michael C. Jensen, a financial economics specialist, in 1985. Mr. Jensen is famous for advocating the “ theory” — the idea that investors, rather than corporate managers or the board of directors, should have the most influence. Mr. McDonald describes Mr. Jensen’s arrival as “the moment of peak paradox for H. B. S. ,” contending that Mr. Jensen’s “ideologically driven hijacking of the study of finance served as a cynical repudiation of everything that had come before him at the school. ” With the elevation of Mr. Jensen, Mr. McDonald writes, “H. B. S. had nurtured the professional manager from his birth and then helped to kill him. ” The book is filled with anecdotal evidence of Mr. McDonald’s argument. In once instance, he draws from a paper Mr. Jensen in which the professor recounted a story about the playwright George Bernard Shaw. As the story goes, Shaw had asked “an actress if she would sleep with him for a million dollars,” Mr. McDonald writes. “When she agreed, he changed his offer to $10, to which she responded with outrage, asking him what kind of woman he thought she was. His reply: ‘We’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling about the price. ’” To Mr. McDonald, Harvard teaches its students that “we’re all whores. ” Continuing his train of logic, he writes: “If everybody assumes you’re a whore, you might as well grab as much money as possible while you’re still in demand. ” Mr. McDonald’s book also makes a provocative argument that Harvard Business School, and, by extension, the American business school complex, is responsible for compensation schemes for top management. He quotes Julian Birkinshaw, professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at the London Business School, saying, “There’s no doubt that business schools are complicit” in the exorbitant pay packages in boardrooms. “We benefit financially from it as well,” the quotation continues. “Clearly, the fees we can charge M. B. A. students are correlated with the salaries they can get when they go get jobs. ” In the end, Mr. McDonald acknowledges that “one shouldn’t expect Harvard Business School to be teaching courses on how to overthrow the capitalist economy. ” But Mr. McDonald does raise enough salient questions that maybe the school should be asking: Should we create a case study about ourselves? | 1 |
Being part of the global billionaire class is beyond the imagination of most people. At the threshold of $1 billion, a 5 percent return would yield an annual interest payment of $50 million — without ever touching the principal. But how billionaires, from those in the single digits to near the top, invest shows a range of options for the very wealthiest in the world. One thing they all have in common is a large amount of money in cash or equivalently liquid securities. Here’s a look at how 10 billionaires have made and invested their money, according to public filings gathered by the financial research firm . Chairman of LVMHEstimated net worth: $38. 1 billion Bernard Arnault, 67, is the richest man in France. Trained as a civil engineer, he got his start in business from his father, who had a successful construction company. He shifted the focus of his father’s company to real estate and then turned his eye to luxury goods. Through his Groupe Arnault, the Parisian sits at the helm of the luxury goods companies Christian Dior and LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. He is also a major art collector, having acquired works by Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. His vast wealth sits predominantly in companies he controls. He has $34. 8 billion held among Christian Dior, LVMH and Carrefour, a French retail chain. The next largest distribution is in cash at $2. 9 billion this is money from salaries, dividends and holdings that give him liquidity when he needs it. Then come the homes. He has a mansion in Paris worth $55 million and a home in the Bahamas worth $30 million, as well as yachts and art. His wealth shows how a single concentrated position in a company can increase your worth tremendously. Former chief executive of MicrosoftEstimated net worth: $30. 8 billion Steven A. Ballmer, 60, scored a perfect 800 on the mathematics portion of the SAT and punched his ticket from an elite private school in Detroit to Harvard University. In his sophomore year, he lived in the same dorm as Bill Gates, the of Microsoft. In 1980, he dropped out of Stanford University’s business school to start working for Mr. Gates. He was paid $50, 000 but given a stake in the nascent company. He rose to become chief executive in 2000 — a post he held for nearly 14 years. Shortly after stepping down, he bought the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team for a record $2 billion. The team had been mired in controversy with a previous owner, Donald Sterling. Even though Mr. Ballmer left Microsoft, the vast bulk of his wealth remains in company stock — $21. 4 billion. He has $7. 3 billion more in cash. It makes his stake in the Clippers seems paltry. He also has $450 million in Twitter shares. He owns a $14 million home in Hunts Point, Wash. and properties on Whidbey Island worth about $4 million. Deputy chairwoman of AltanaEstimated net worth: $20 billion Susanne Klatten, 54, the richest woman in Germany, can trace the source of her wealth to “the ultimate driving machine,” BMW. Her grandfather founded an industrial conglomerate that owned the German automotive company — and had a stake in its more staid rival, . The company also owned the chemical giant Altana. Her father, Herbert Quandt, took over the family businesses when his father died in 1954. When he died in 1982, Ms. Klatten received stakes in BMW and Altana, of which she is now the sole owner. As her father was credited with saving BMW from bankruptcy, she is credited with making Altana a top company in Germany. She is also chairwoman of the SGL Group, which produces graphite and products. Her wealth is tied up in her companies, with over half, or $12. 1 billion, in the BMW Group. An additional 16 percent is in Altana, and 1 percent is in the SGL Group. She has 22. 5 percent in cash. She has a family office that creates privacy around the breakdown of her wealth. Chairman of WiproEstimated net worth: $10 billion Azim Premji, 71, was born into the family that started Western India Vegetable Products, which produced hydrogenated oils. When Mr. Premji was at Stanford University, his father, who started the company, died, and he left college to take it over. At 23, he became chief executive. He diversified the company’s offerings into soap and baby care products. In 1981, he ventured into information technology. The company boomed through the 1980s and ’90s, and in 2000 the renamed Wipro went public in New York. In 2009, Mr. Premji handed over the running of the company. He devotes time to philanthropy, having given half his Wipro shares to a charity that supports education and health causes in India. His wealth appears to remain fairly concentrated, with 64 percent of it in Wipro shares. An additional 13 percent is in a related company, Wipro Enterprises, and 20 percent is shielded by his family office. Public records show that he has a $20 million stake in JM Financial (about 0. 2 percent of his wealth) $180 million in cash and $1 million in property in Mumbai. Given his total worth, his properties and holdings are probably much greater, but he has structured his wealth to protect his privacy. Director of 3G Capital Estimated net worth: $8. 6 billion Carlos Alberto Sicupira, who turns 69 this year, hails from São Paulo, Brazil, which ranks just behind New York City (where he keeps a residence) for the most billionaires in the Americas. He began his career in finance at Banco de Investimentos Garantia. He later served as chief executive of Lojas Americanas, a Brazilian shopping chain. He is a founder of 3G Capital, a private equity firm that has become known in recent years for partnering with Warren E. Buffett, the man in the world, on deals like the acquisition of Heinz in 2013 and, two years later, its merger with Kraft. Much of Mr. Sicupira’s wealth rests in a series of deals 3G did with breweries starting in 1999. He has a $5. 8 billion stake in the combined InBev, which accounts for nearly 67 percent of his wealth. He has nearly $1 billion more in 3G itself. He still holds a $220 million stake in Lojas Americanas, where he remains chairman. He has an additional $1. 6 billion in cash and a $2. 5 million apartment on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Owner of the Arison GroupEstimated net worth: $5. 6 billion Shari Arison, 59, was born in New York but splits her time now between Tel Aviv and Miami. Her father, Ted Arison, started Carnival Cruise Line in 1972. In 1990, he moved back to Tel Aviv, where he was born, and established Arison Investments. It later acquired Bank Hapoalim, Israel’s largest bank, and renamed itself the Arison Group. It has investments in finance, real estate, infrastructure, renewable energy and water. When her father died in 1999, Ms. Arison inherited 35 percent of his wealth. (She has a brother, Micky, who owns the Miami Heat basketball team.) As owner of the Arison Group and a philanthropist, she promotes good deeds. The investment group’s motto is “Doing good is good for business,” and through her charity she has sponsored Good Deeds Day, which encourages people to volunteer. Ms. Arison’s wealth is divided fairly evenly among different investments. She owns $1. 6 billion of stock in Carnival Cruise Line, $1. 6 billion of stock in Bank Hapoalim, $1. 1 billion in the Arison Group itself and holds $1 billion in cash. She has a stake in an Israeli housing and infrastructure company and homes in the Bal Harbour section of Miami and in Tel Aviv. Executive chairman of Shenzhou International Group HoldingsEstimated net worth: $4. 3 billion Ever worn Nike, Adidas, Puma or Uniqlo? Those items may have come from one of Ma Jianrong’s factories. His company is the leading textile manufacturer in China. Mr. Ma, 52, began working in the textile industry as a teenager and later earned a master’s degree from Zhejiang University of Technology. His father, Ma Baoxing, was chairman of the weaving company that became Shenzhou International Group Holdings. In the late 1990s, the younger Mr. Ma took over the company and increased its revenue and net profit by 23 times in seven years. A member of the Chinese Communist Party, he is an official in the Zhejiang Provincial People’s Congress. The exact composition of his wealth is hard to determine. He seems to have about $340 million in cash, with the rest in Shenzhou International Group Holdings. Executive chairman of African Rainbow MineralsEstimated net worth: $2. 1 billion Patrice Motsepe, 55, was born in Johannesburg and began his career as a lawyer with American firms in South Africa. He attended university and law school during the apartheid era and practiced law for six years, becoming the first black partner in a South African law firm. In 1994, after Nelson Mandela became the country’s first black president, Mr. Motsepe quit law to start Future Mining, a mining services company. With that as his start, he began acquiring mines and other mining companies. By 2004, the accumulated entities became African Rainbow Minerals. He owns the Mamelodi Sundowns Football Club, a soccer team in South Africa’s premier league, and last year he started a private equity firm and financial services company. His wealth, which places him among South Africa’s richest people, is well diversified. The largest portion of his wealth, 36 percent, is in cash and its equivalents. He has nearly 30 percent in Africa Rainbow Minerals, and a similar amount in Sanlam, a financial services firm of which he is deputy chairman. Some 5 percent of his wealth is in the Harmony Gold Mining Company. Two homes are worth $7 million, or of 1 percent of his wealth. of the Panda Restaurant GroupEstimated net worth: $1. 5 billion In search of quick Chinese food? Panda Express, with its 1, 900 locations around the United States, is there to serve some up. Peggy Cherng, 69, founded the chain with her husband, Andrew. When the restaurant began expanding from Glendale, Calif. into the chain it is today, she used her science background to make the business early on and then applied her knowledge of logistics to streamline the process. Ms. Cherng, who was born in Myanmar (then Burma) was raised in Hong Kong and met her husband at Baker University in Kansas. She holds a master’s degree in computer science and a Ph. D. in electrical engineering, and began her career at the defense contractor McDonnell Douglas. She and her husband live in California. Her largest holding is in the Panda Restaurant Group, which also owns Panda Inn. It is worth $1. 2 billion, or 77 percent of her wealth. Nearly 19 percent of her wealth is in cash. She also has a large position, some $60 million, in the Golden Eagle Retail Group, a real estate development company. The rest of her wealth is in three homes in California. Chief executive of InstagramEstimated net worth: $1. 2 billion Smile, you’re a billionaire. Kevin Systrom, 33, is a founder of the site Instagram, on which Beyoncé announced her latest pregnancy and set a record for most shares. Mr. Systrom went to Stanford University and, after graduating in 2006, put in time at Google before venturing out on his own. In 2010, he and a friend got the idea for Instagram. Two years later, the company was acquired by Facebook for $1 billion in cash and stock. He owned 40 percent of the company. He remains the chief executive. Mr. Systrom’s wealth is tied to Facebook — at 88 percent. But he has about $160 million in cash. He also has $600, 000 in Walmart stock from his role as a director of the company and the chairman of its technology and committee. | 1 |
Editors’ note: We’re resurfacing this story from the archives to show you that you should be taking more time off. IN the Midwest we’re all very aware of seasons and seasonal change. The cold, the warm, the wet, the dry, the hot — we have it all every year. Some seasons are more welcome than others, but they’re all good about one thing: change. Change is important. When we were growing up, we got summers off from school. Summer vacation was change. It was something to look forward to. A few months of something different really meant a lot. We grow out of a lot as we grow up. One of the most unfortunate things we leave behind is a regular dose of change. Nowhere is this more evident than at work. Work in February is the same as work in May. June’s the same as October. And it would be hard to tell August from April. Yes, some businesses are more seasonal than others, but ultimately the stuff we do at work isn’t that much different — it’s just busier some times than others. That isn’t change, it’s just more volume. I wanted to do something about this. So, at 37signals, the software company I’ve run for the past 13 years, we take inspiration from the seasons and build change into our work schedule. For example, from May through October, we switch to a workweek. And not 40 hours crammed into four days, but 32 hours comfortably fit into four days. We don’t work the same amount of time, we work less. Most staff workers take Fridays off, but some choose a different day. Nearly all of us enjoy weekends. Work ends Thursday, the weekend starts Friday, and work starts back up on Monday. The benefits of a schedule with weekends are obvious. But there’s one surprising effect of the changed schedule: better work gets done in four days than in five. When there’s less time to work, you waste less time. When you have a compressed workweek, you tend to focus on what’s important. Constraining time encourages quality time. At 37signals there’s another thing we do to celebrate the seasons: we cover the cost of a weekly agriculture share for each employee. We enjoy this benefit but fresh fruit and produce really glisten in the summer months. It’s a simple way to celebrate change. In the spirit of continual change, this summer we tried something new. We decided to give everyone the month of June to work on whatever they wanted. It wasn’t vacation, but it was vacation from whatever work was already scheduled. We invited everyone to shelve their nonessential work and to use the time to explore their own ideas. People worked independently or joined up with other employees on team projects. The only rule was: explore, see if there are ways to make our existing products better, or come up with a new product idea, create a new business model, or do whatever is of most interest. Then, in July, we asked each person to share, with the rest of the staff, whatever idea he or she came up with, on a day we set aside as “Pitchday. ” The experiment led to the greatest burst of creativity I’ve seen from our staff. It was fun, and it was a big morale booster. It was also ultraproductive. So much so that we’ll likely start repeating the project a few times a year. Are you thinking of introducing change to your business or work life? Try following the seasons. There are few things that are as regular and predictable, yet so fresh and different. | 1 |
Murder is a cold, hard fact. A con job, long or short, is more of a — suggestion. It’s open to interpretation. You could argue that it’s the better analogy for a time of rampant uncertainty and alternative truths. To buttress the argument, you could point out the arrival of five new television series about con artists in the last year, all of interest and entertainment value. “The Catch” on ABC, “Good Behavior” on TNT, “Imposters” on Bravo, “Shut Eye” on Hulu and “Sneaky Pete” on Amazon all deserved more attention than they received, and merit a binge now. That would be especially timely for “The Catch,” which begins its second season on Thursday night. (If you wanted to go to extremes, you could even catch up on all five — you’re only looking at 45 episodes.) Con artist stories provide an ideal framework for a problematic love story, with their natural focus on duplicity and the question of whether someone can be trusted in the long run. And all five of these shows make the love connection, “The Catch” and “Imposters” most centrally. They also work well as a vehicle for the secrets and simmering competition of family drama, on display most prominently here in “Good Behavior” and “Sneaky Pete. ” Here’s a quick guide to this in what I consider ascending order of bingeability. (The first four are available on multiple streaming services “Sneaky Pete” is only on Amazon Prime.) Each one can steal 10 hours of your life before you know it. A married couple (Jeffrey Donovan and KaDee Strickland) manage a string of Los Angeles storefront psychics, while working a complicated con on a rich bereaved mother (Mel Harris) without the knowledge of their dangerous Roma boss (Angus Sampson). CON Mr. Donovan’s character starts to have visions after hitting his head, an unnecessary complication that makes the show feel like the wrong kind of HBO drama. Crime appears to be the sole occupation of Los Angeles’s Roma and Hispanic populations. PRO It looks great, Mr. Donovan is just about ideally cast, and the anthropology of flimflammery feels authentic. Ditched and cleaned out by his fiancée (Inbar Lavi) a man (Rob Heaps) discovers that he’s only the latest in a string of victims. Three of the woman’s marks set out to find her. CON Through four episodes, the performances are, for the most part, just good enough, though Uma Thurman joined the cast in Episode 3 as a happily violent enforcer named Lenny. PRO The only comedy in this group, “Imposters” is funnier, in both broad and subtle ways, than you would expect from a Bravo show. The head of a firm (Mireille Enos) discovers that the con man she’s been chasing is actually her fiancé (Peter Krause) who disappears with all her money. CON It has the slick superficiality of a Shonda Rhimes factory product. Ms. Enos and Mr. Krause, both fine actors, don’t really work as romantic leads. PRO It has the propulsive, addictive watchability of a Shonda Rhimes factory product. John Simm, as a British gangster deeply involved in a bromance with Mr. Krause’s character, is hilarious. A seductive con artist (Michelle Dockery) who’s trying to regain custody of her son stumbles into a relationship with a softhearted, sexy hit man (Juan Diego Botto). CON A pronounced tendency to melodrama. PRO It’s good on Southern atmosphere, and Ms. Dockery, free of her role as Lady Mary on “Downton Abbey,” is terrific as a cynical, American grifter. She and Mr. Botto are easily the hottest couple on this list. Released from prison as the show begins, a scam artist named Marius (Giovanni Ribisi) pretends to be his longtime cellmate, Pete, moving in with Pete’s family and becoming a key member of the family business while dodging a violent New York gambler (Bryan Cranston). CON The story, shifting between the city and Pete’s new upstate home, is more complicated and heavily populated than it needs to be. PRO The writing is sharp, and the cast is phenomenal: In addition to Mr. Ribisi and Mr. Cranston, the regulars include Margo Martindale, Peter Gerety, Marin Ireland, Jay O. Sanders, Michael O’Keefe and Alison Wright. | 1 |
When Lindsay Abt was pregnant with her first child, she remembers reading a book for expectant mothers that cautioned against making too many big life changes at once. She went ahead and made three anyway. “I broke all of the rules,” she said. Not only did she take on a job with greater responsibility — she is a partner at the accounting firm Ernst Young — she had to move her family to Florida from New York to do it. She moved in July 2014 while her husband stayed behind to sell their house. Her son was born that October. Throughout the transition, she had a dedicated coach, Delaine, provided by her employer, as part of a new program at the firm to help parents prepare for parental leave — and ease the transition when they return. In phone sessions each month, Delaine helped Ms. Abt think through what was important to her — being home by bath time every evening? Working from home once a week? — and how to set limits during a long workweek to make that happen. “You can have a grand plan, but it’s something that needs to be figured out on a basis because no two days are the same,” Ms. Abt, 39, said. At a time when new parents may find themselves overwhelmed — even sobbing late at night as they deal with their new responsibilities while trying to hold down a job — a growing number of companies are making efforts to soften the blow. They are providing employees with coaching sessions, either in person, over the phone or through small group sessions that may be broadcast over the web. The services are often available to new fathers, too. But employers are not doing this entirely out of the goodness of their corporate hearts: They are hoping to retain more women by helping them through a stressful time, while eventually improving gender diversity among their senior employees. Other companies that are introducing more generous parental leave policies realize the benefits need to be managed more thoughtfully. Perhaps not surprisingly, the employers who started offering these benefits are organizations that often demand long hours from employees or are competing for talent: The big accounting firms, Ernst Young, KPMG and Grant Thornton, as well as MetLife, Deutsche Bank and Etsy all offer some level of coaching to workers, whether in person or online, regardless of gender. Proskauer Rose offers coaching to its female lawyers, KKR to its female investment professionals, while Kohl’s is running a pilot for all of its workers at its corporate headquarters. BDO, another accounting firm, is introducing a coaching program conducted over the web next month. “There are more and more companies every month looking into this, but we are still probably one to three years away from getting to any critical mass,” said Kyra Cavanaugh, president of Life Meets Work, a consulting firm that provides coaches and training to employers. Companies have strong financial incentives to make their coaching and transition programs work. Ernst Young, which expanded its policy this month to 16 weeks of paid leave for all new parents, said it typically costs the firm 1. 5 times an employee’s salary to replace them. “When we train supervisors about how to be supportive, we see effects for the company,” said Leslie Hammer, an industrial organizational psychologist and professor at Oregon Health Science University. That might be from reduced turnover costs, less absenteeism and fewer health expenses as well as workplace safety issues, even among employees working in offices, she said. But another reason employers are introducing these programs, consultants say, is to illustrate that it’s all right to take advantage of newly announced or existing leave programs. “What they are finding is they need to change the culture,” said Karen Rubin, managing director of Talking Talent, a consultancy that provides coaching to organizations. “It is not enough to say employees have a year’s maternity leave available, but demonstrate that it is safe to take it. This is where managers and senior leadership make the difference. ” For a parent coaching program to be successful, academics, psychologists and consultants say, it cannot be an isolated benefit involving just an employee and the coach, or simply a perk that companies offer for competitive reasons. Instead, it needs to be part of a broader change that involves and trains supervisors. Twitter — which recently extended its leave policy for all parents to up to 20 weeks of full pay — is offering formal coaching services to its managers. “At the end of the day, it’s helping us reshape how we think about our business since we have an active population of parents going out,” said Laura Brady, vice president of compensation and benefits at Twitter. “It’s making us think about workplace planning and development opportunities for those who may want to cover for someone going out. So not only is this a parent and manager issue, but I think ultimately it extends to all employees. ” Every employer takes a slightly different approach to parental leave programs. Etsy recently expanded its leave policy to 26 weeks for all parents and formally introduced a coaching program in April. Employees at its Brooklyn headquarters can meet with a coach in person, typically several weeks before they go on leave and after they return. Managers are also provided with training, and workers in other locations can participate remotely. Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and O’Melveny Myers, a law firm, all offer support to some employees. Amy Beacom, founder and chief executive of the Center for Parental Leave Leadership, has developed a parental leave support program that uses technology to reach more employees and involve all affected parties: the employee, managers and any team members. “Using assessment tools as a guide, the work culminates in an action plan that is shared with all stakeholders before they go on leave,” she said. For now, parent coaching has not been extended to the types of jobs held by workers, who have less control over when and where they work and for whom these programs may have the biggest impact. And because these programs are still largely in their infancy, it is hard to determine what sort of effects they will have. But for now, some programs appear to provide the perception of support while reshaping the thinking of at least some members of an influential group: fathers. Jerry Whelan, a partner at Ernst Young, said his wife had twin boys in April. He said he spoke to the twins — in utero — each night, pleading with them to make their debut after his busy tax season. They complied, arriving 11 and 12 minutes after the tax day deadline. His wife had an emergency cesarean section and needed time to recuperate, meaning he was the primary caregiver for two weeks. Mr. Whelan started preparing with his coach in January. “By the time the twins arrived, we were ready to go,” he said. “The ability for me to disconnect from work and focus exclusively to take care of the babies was a godsend. ” After being a workaholic for so long, Mr. Whelan said, he and his coach discussed questions such as what kind of father he wanted to be, as well as how to deal with delegating more to his colleagues, which he said made him a better manager. He said the sessions also helped him realize that he shouldn’t call his time away vacation, but “parental leave,” to send a message to both his team and his clients. “I thought it was important to do the coaching program, to take formal leave and get involved in the fathers’ network and the women’s network in a new way,” Mr. Whelan said. He now plans to take another month of leave when his wife returns to work. “It really opened me up as well to talk about these things in an emotional way that people have been hesitant to in the past. ” | 1 |
My newest podcast discusses the role of modern travel on the development of men. After reviewing how travel is most commonly used, I share the specific benefits travel can offer along with the mistaken ideas of what naive people think travel can accomplish. I discuss seven of my favorite travel rules for men and also take an aside to discuss the growing phenomenon of finding a foreign wife, which is harder than many men think. I close out the podcast by prescribing a strategy of using travel to maximum your strength and potential.
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Bloomberg’s U. S. Consumer Comfort Index has reached its highest point in a decade following positive assessments about the economy and the buying climate, according to Bloomberg Markets. [The consumer comfort index rose to 50. 6 as of March 5, the highest it has been since March 2007, from 49. 8. The index has surpassed 50 only six times since April 2002. A measure of the economy rose to 48. 2, the highest since August 2001, from 46. 8, while a measure of buying climate rose to 44. 5, the highest since April 2002, from 43. 7. The stock market has jumped to record highs and the job market has been particularly strong since President Trump’s inauguration, causing the consumer comfort index to rise. Respondents to the index view the buying climate as the most favorable it has been in 15 years, a sign that there might be an uptick in household spending after a slow start in 2017. Sentiment has been strong among Republicans as well as political independents, who were the most confident about the economy and the buying climate since July 2001. Republicans’ sentiment has surpassed that of the Democrats by the most since September 2013. Confidence among people in the South and Midwest, employees, and married Americans rose. For employees, they were the most confident since October 2015, while married Americans saw the highest levels of comfort in a decade. Confidence did, however, fall for people living in the West and Northeast. | 1 |
posted by Eddie As night begins to fall across East Java, Indonesia, the color palette of the world grows more subdued. That is, except in one area, where one of the most spectacular shows on Earth is about to take place. This is Kawah Ijen, a living volcano in eastern Java. It looks just like any other active volcano. That is to say: nothing grows on it, nor, if it can be helped, goes near it. Yet there are people who often have to venture to the volcano, regardless of the danger it may cause. This is because of the hot vents around the volcano slope, which pump out sulfur – something that can be extracted and sold and which, as a result, can help earn locals a living. This means that sometimes around Kawah Ijen a number of sulfur miners can be seen hanging around the vents. Some of them hold damp rags to their mouths to act as barriers against breathing in the toxic sulfur gas. It’s a necessary precaution for those who aim to harvest this bright yellow element. This process, however, is made easier by the addition of ceramic pipes, which were attached to one of the volcano’s vents. When the sulfur gas comes up through the Earth’s crust, then, it enters the pipes, cools into a liquid and eventually becomes solid. That’s when the workmen fragment the sulfur and heave the resulting deposits onto their backs to transport it away. Still, the miners don’t get much for their labor. Each pound of hard-earned sulfur, in fact, earns them less than 25 cents’ return. Still, there are some perks to the backbreaking work –particularly for those who graft when the sun is set. That’s when night finally does fall, an amazing change takes place. The deadly sulfur gas that was hardly visible before suddenly erupts in blue blazing flame. And those hot flames trickle down the mountainside – like a river. This amazing feat of nature works like this. The gaseous sulfur that pumps up through the Earth is extremely hot, at 1,112 degrees Fahrenheit, and that makes it very, very combustible. And once this heated sulfur comes in contact with oxygen, it bursts into flames – specifically, electric blue-colored ones. These cobalt fires, moreover, leap out of the vents to heights of up to 16 feet. Even as it burns, though, some of the gas begins to condense. And as it condenses, it forms liquid, yet continues to burn. That’s why you get liquid rivers of blue flame sometimes flowing down Kawah Ijen – and why it is also known as the Blue Fire Crater. But this eyecatching spectacle isn’t totally unique to the East Java volcano. After all, similar “rivers” of blue fire occur at Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, when forest fires mix with sulfur from vents. The result, then, is a brilliant blue burst of flame. One of the most intriguing aspects of the blue flame phenomenon, however, is that it can only be witnessed at night. During the day, even though the fires burn just the same, they’re pretty much invisible to the naked eye. Indeed, finding molten sulfur around hot vents, which are also known as fumaroles, is not uncommon. This is because sulfur has a low melting point compared to other subterranean elements. As a consequence, the heat of the vent is often enough to turn the sulfur into a gas. What’s more, there are legends of this kind of fire that stretch back thousands of years. Ancient people living in Italy described this phenomenon, saying that they saw molten blue fire flowing down Mount Vesuvius as well as on a small island near Sicily called – aptly enough – Vulcano. And according to French photographer Olivier Grunewald, those old reports may have some basis in fact. “Blue flames may also be observed at the base of the plume of erupting volcanoes, when ash explosions occur,” he told National Geographic in January 2014. Indeed, Grunewald has explored other parts of the world where similar phenomena occur. In the Afar region in Ethiopia, for example, there is a volcano called Dallol which sometimes emits a blue-tinged light. And Grunewald is just one of the photographers who has braved Kawah Ijen to document its bright lights on film. Another is Reuben Wu, whose astonishing images here intimately show the power and danger of the sulfurous mountain. Speaking of danger, there’s yet another peril to be found at Kawah Ijen, in the form of its crater lake. That just happens to be the largest body of water featuring hydrochloric acid on the planet, at 650 feet deep and almost half a mile wide. But where does the acid come from? It comes from the volcano itself, in fact, which releases hydrogen chloride gas. This gas in turn reacts with the water in the crater and turns it into an acid. The acid is extremely concentrated and the pH is almost 0 – as acidic as it can be. There are fears, then, that if the crater bursts like a dam on its weakest side, it could be disastrous. But fortunately for those who don’t want to risk seeing the blue fire in person but who still clamor to see it in action, there’s a French documentary showcasing the amazing lights produced at Kawah Ijen. The film uses Grunewald’s footage to explore the sulfuric volcano in detail, along with – of course – shots of its stunning night-time displays. Source: | 0 |
TOKYO — The missile that North Korea from a submarine off its east coast on Wednesday momentarily brought together three nations that have recently had reasons to squabble. At a previously scheduled meeting in Tokyo, the foreign ministers of the three nations — China, Japan and South Korea — criticized the missile test, which appeared to demonstrate a significant advance in North Korea’s efforts to build a means to strike American and allied forces. The missile flew 310 miles toward Japan, much farther than previous tests. Tensions between the three countries have risen in recent months: Chinese vessels have repeatedly entered disputed waters surrounding a group of islands in the East China Sea, setting off protests from Japan. Tokyo opposed a visit this month by South Korean lawmakers to islands both nations claims. And China has harshly criticized South Korea’s agreement to host an advanced missile defense system that the Chinese believe could be used against their missiles. But North Korea’s missile launch briefly united the three other nations on Wednesday. “If there was a silver lining, it would be the fact that it provided the three an opportunity to have something in common, which is rare,” said J. Berkshire Miller, an international affairs fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations. If the North Korean threat is to be truly defused, experts say, the three East Asian neighbors will need more common ground. “We all know that on days when North Korea doesn’t test missiles, tensions may be above the surface,” said Scott A. Snyder, senior fellow for Korea studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “But longer term, if you’re looking for conditions that would suggest real stability in the region, that is the sort of cooperation that would be needed. ” The latest missile test came two days after the United States and South Korea kicked off their annual joint military exercises. North Korea condemns all such drills as rehearsals for an invasion, and it has often responded with warlike words, or with missile tests. At a news conference in Tokyo on Wednesday, Japan’s foreign minister, Fumio Kishida, said North Korea’s action “is simply not tolerated. ” His South Korean counterpart, Yun said the three countries “confirmed our common view that we must deter North Korea’s further provocative actions. ” Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, said, “China opposes the development of North Korea’s nuclear program, and any words or deeds that create tensions in the peninsula. ” He also reiterated China’s opposition to American efforts to build the missile defense system in South Korea. Chinese commentators argued that the United States was partly to blame for the North’s aggressive behavior. An opinion article published on Wednesday by the Chinese news agency Xinhua, denounced the United States and its allies for “risking turning the region into a powder keg. ” “ leads to nowhere but a more anxious, more agitating and thus more unpredictable Pyongyang,” the commentary said. Still, on social media in China, many posts placed the blame squarely on Kim the North Korean leader, describing him as an erratic and untrustworthy leader and urging the government to do more to rein him in. President Park of South Korea also denounced the North Korean leader in remarks during a visit to a military unit on Wednesday. “Given the fact that North Korea has an irrational system under a dictatorship,” Ms. Park said, “and that Kim is an unpredictable character, there is a high possibility that this threat could become a reality. ” The latest North Korean provocation comes at a time when Japan, under the leadership of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is debating its military future after roughly 70 years of pacifism mandated by a postwar Constitution that was largely written by American occupiers. Already last year, Mr. Abe pushed through a series of security laws that permit Japan’s forces to participate in overseas combat. On Wednesday, as Mr. Abe denounced the North Korean missile launch as an “an unforgivable act of violence,” his newly appointed defense minister, Tomomi Inada, said Japanese forces would begin training for overseas missions, including rescuing captured troops from peacekeeping missions. Setsu Kobayashi, a law professor emeritus at Keio University and the leader of a group that opposes the security bills passed last year, called the new training drills a “historic turning point” and a violation of the country’s Constitution. “Now people outside of Japan will question if Japan can become a country that can wage war,” Mr. Kobayashi said. But other analysts said that the Japanese, who mostly opposed the security laws passed after a parliamentary struggle last year, might start to accept the incremental escalation of military activity that Mr. Abe is pushing. “The more that there are dangers in the neighborhood — a rising China, a threatening North Korea — that puts wind in Abe’s sails,” said Jeff Kingston, the director of Asian Studies at Temple University in Tokyo. Ultimately, Mr. Abe wants to revise the pacifist clause in the Constitution. But the public — as well as members of Parliament, including some in Mr. Abe’s governing coalition — would most likely oppose him. “Even with this more threatening environment, it’s not going to be easy at all,” Mr. Kingston said. “There is a deeply embedded attachment to the peace Constitution as part of Japanese national identity. ” Mr. Abe, Mr. Kingston added, “understands that he has a deep hole to climb out of to try to convince the public that that is necessary. ” Public reaction in Japan to the North Korean missile test was relatively subdued, although several politicians strongly protested it.. Hideaki Omura, the governor of Aichi Prefecture in central Japan, which includes the city of Nagoya, said on Twitter that the missile launch was a “grave provocation. ” Renho Murata, a member of the upper house of Parliament and a candidate to lead the opposition Democratic Party, said she “firmly protested” North Korea’s action. The significance of North Korea’s missile launch may take some time to sink in, as the Japanese have become somewhat accustomed to the missile tests. “For Japanese people, the picture of the Chinese vessels surrounding the Senkakus is more shocking,” said Tsuneo Watanabe, a senior fellow at the Tokyo Foundation, a research group, referring to the Chinese incursions around the disputed islands in the East China Sea. The North Korean missile launches, Mr. Watanabe said, sometimes “look like animation. ” | 1 |
The number of Swedes claiming to have been sexually assaulted has risen by 70 per cent in two years, with more than 13 per cent of women reporting to be too fearful to go out in the evening. [In 2014, just 1 per cent of Swedes said they had been sexually attacked, jumping to 1. 7 per cent of the population in 2015 — equivalent to about 129, 000 people. In 2013, 1. 3 per cent of Swedes said they were victims, and before that, between 2005 and 2012, the level of reported sexual crimes had remained relatively stable, hovering around the 1 per cent risk mark for seven years. The data comes from the 2017 annual survey [page 47] of the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå) an agency under the Ministry of Justice, which produces Sweden’s official crime statistics. Almost 12, 000 people were contacted by telephone and through questionnaires. The category of sexual assault in the survey includes a wide range of crimes, ranging from more minor misconducts such as indecent exposure to the most serious of crimes such as rape. Exposure to such sexual crimes is more common among women than men, and most frequent in the age bracket. According to Yleisradio Oy (Yle) Finland’s national public broadcaster, the survey identified a rise of more than 100 per cent in reported sexual attacks among women, increasing from 1. 4 to 3 per cent. Anxiety about sex attacks, particularly among young women, has also increased. Around 22 per cent of women surveyed said they were worried about sexual assault and abuse, as well as around 8 per cent for men. This fear is affecting the way many women are living their lives. Between 13 and 14 per cent of surveyed women said they did not venture out in the evenings because they felt insecure. The most common location for sexual assaults is in a public place, the survey found, and most often the perpetrator is unknown to the victim. | 1 |
Report: Friend Has Been Going By Middle Name This Whole Fucking Time CALABASAS, CA—Astounded that it had never come up at any point in the six years they had known each other, local woman Lucy Reed, 25, reported Tuesday that her friend Nicole Silberthau had apparently been going by her middle name this whole fucking time. Cake Just Sitting There Take It CHICAGO—Assuring you that there was nothing to worry about and not a soul around who would see you, sources confirmed Tuesday that a large piece of chocolate cake was just sitting there and that you should go ahead and take it. Man Approaches Box Of Powdered Doughnuts Like Snake Discovering Unguarded Clutch Of Bird Eggs ASHEBORO, NC—Quietly slinking into his office’s break room after spying the unattended confections from afar, area marketing associate Dan Keegan reportedly approached a box of powdered doughnuts Monday like a pine snake discovering an unguarded clutch of bluebird eggs. Reality Of Fatherhood Never Truly Dawned On Man Until He Held Newborn Son’s Hospital Bill MISSOULA, MT—Describing how he suddenly found himself overwhelmed by a flood of intense emotions, local man Mike Bentzen told reporters Monday the reality of fatherhood didn’t truly set in for him until the moment he held his newborn son’s hospital bill. All-Business Adult In Halloween Shop Beelines It Straight For Pinhead Mask BROOKLINE, MA—Without so much as glancing at the seasonal store’s wide selection of other Halloween-themed merchandise, all-business 34-year-old Brian Aubin reportedly strode right past several aisles of costumes and accessories Friday and beelined it straight for the Pinhead masks. | 0 |
. The Hulk Actor Mark Ruffalo Has Joined Standing Rock to Protest DAPL Mark Ruffalo has graced our screens for years. Starring in movies such as Shutter Island, Zodiac and... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/the-hulk-actor-mark-ruffalo-has-joined.html Mark Ruffalo has graced our screens for years. Starring in movies such as Shutter Island, Zodiac and The Avengers as The Hulk, the Hollywood star is no stranger to fame and publicity. Ruffalo is also renown for using his celebrity status to highlight the more important causes and issues that we as a race, confront. The self-confessed climate change advocate has recently made headlines again, while joining in with the DAPL protestors. The DAPL protestors have been covered extensively here, at Anon, as the North Dakota oil pipeline continues in its construction.This week, Ruffalo was seen standing in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe facing off against police kitted up in riot gear. The underground pipeline has been a strong point of contention over the last months. Developer Energy Access Partners has claimed they have the proper permits to pursue the pipeline development in what they claim is private land. However, the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and many of their supporters say the pipeline, planned to span some 1,134 miles through North Dakota to Illinois, is running through sacred Native American land. A photo posted by Mark Ruffalo (@markruffalo) on Oct 26, 2016 at 3:06pm PDT Ruffalo and Native renewables founder Wahleah Jones went to Cannon Ball, ND, to present the Sioux tribal elders with gifts of solar collection arrays in mobile trailers, to provide the protestors with clean energy. It is with this gift, Ruffalo hopes to help the Native American tribes remain firm at their protest encampment and further their cause – particularly to protect their sources of clean water, something the oil pipeline very much threatens. (The pipeline is listed to run directly under the Missouri River.)“We know from experience that pipelines leak, explode, pollute and poison land and water. But it doesn’t have to be that way,” Ruffalo said, who has been campaigning the anti-fracking movement since 2008.“This pipeline is a black snake that traverses four states and 200 waterways with fracked Bakken oil.” As per The Free Thought Project , the solar trailers will assist the Sioux tribe and other Native American tribes standing in the protest with medical facilities amongst other necessities, with an endless source of renewable energy. An irony not lost on the actor. Mark Ruffalo is another example of an individual not just simply staying in the by lines, donating money, but rather, he is using his celebrity status and time to display yet another injustice against the citizens of the world. He understands the lack of media attention this protest is receiving – and the lack of support. A photo posted by Mark Ruffalo (@markruffalo) on Oct 27, 2016 at 7:04pm PDT A video posted by Mark Ruffalo (@markruffalo) on Oct 27, 2016 at 8:44am PDT “There’s people being really hurt there; it’s very scary,” said Ruffalo on CNN. “The National Guard has been called in. This is not an emergency. This is not a national emergency. These are peaceful protesters.“Every single person you see there was trained in peaceful resistance. They spend basically the entire day doing prayers, chanting. I’ve never been around so peaceful a stand.”“This particular issue has brought together five hundred tribes from all over the nation,” the actor said. “Never in the history of our nation have all of the Native American tribes come together under one issue. They see this as a very special historic moment for them.“We can’t forget our humanity in the face of these kinds of things.” Reference: Anonhq | 0 |
I’ Two of Mohammed'
Generally, I use Mohammed’s words, quoting him in a first person narrative. He told the story of their desperate life-threatening journey over a year ago. They went to Finland with the hope that fewer refugees would travel so far, that they would get asylum quicker and be reunited with their family, Mohammed’s wife and the other six children in Iraq. Together with a small group of friends, Kathy Kelly and I were able to visit them in Finland in the deep winter cold this past January. We were able to bring them for a few days from the camp to Helsinki where they were warmly r
In late June, Mohammed wrote us about the depression and frustration among refugees in their camp as many of them were getting rejected for asylum. He wrote that even Iraqi refugees from Fallujah, Ramadi and Mosel were getting rejections. “I don’t know what I will do if I get a bad answer. For the last three weeks only bad answers are coming.”
“Today I got the immigration decision that my case was rejected. Me and Ahmed are not welcomed to Finland. Thanks for everything you did.” The next day he wrote again. “Today is one of the heaviest days of my life. Everybody, my son, my cousin and myself . . . we just kept silent. We are shocked from the decision. Losing my brother, jailed for 2 years, kidnapped, tortured, losing my house, parents, father-in-law, death threat letter and assassination attempt. Over 50 relatives killed. What more must I give them for them to believe me? Only one thing I forgot, to submit my death certificate. I feel I am being slaughtered. I don’t know what to tell my wife and children [in Baghdad].
We have since learned that Finland is granting residency to only 10% of asylum seekers. An appeal is in progress, and several people have written letters on Mohammed’
In the meantime, the situation in Iraq and in Baghdad continues to worsen in terms of daily explosions, suicide bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, ISIS, police, army and militia activity. His wife lives in a particularly open and vulnerable rural area. His brother, who used to live a stone’s throw away, had to flee with his family several months ago due to death threats. This left Mohammed’s wife and children without protection. During Ramadan Mohammed wrote, “The situation is really terrible during these days. My wife was planning to take the kids to her mother’s village during EID but she cancelled this idea.” On another occasion he wrote, “My wife is very worried about our second oldest son, afraid he will be kidnapped. She is thinking of moving from the village. Today we argued very hard as she blames me, telling me that I said we would be reunited within 6 months.
On two recent occasions armed uniformed men came to Mohammed’s house seeking information about Mohammed and Ahmed. Mohammed wrote, “Yesterday at 5 a.m., the house was raided by armed official military guys in uniforms. Maybe the police? Maybe the militia or ISIS?” It is hard to imagine the fright of Mohammed’s defenseless wife and the children, the youngest of whom is only 3 years old. It is hard to imagine Mohammed and Ahmed’s fright being so far away. At times Mohammed’s wife has hidden the oldest boy in the reeds by their house, afraid he will be recruited by force by ISIS or the militia! She has also been afraid to send the children to school because the security situation is so dangerous. She is angry at Mohammed, scared and not understanding why they have not been reunited after a year’
Recently Mohammed emailed, “Honestly, Cathy, every night I am thinking of returning home and ending these arguments. Living away from your beloved kids is really hard. If I get killed alongside of my family, then everyone will understand why we had to leave and the arguments will finish. Even the Finnish immigration will understand that what I told them was true. But the next morning I changed my mind and decided to await the court’s final decision.
“Every night I am afraid from the next morning’s news from my family. My daughter asked me by phone last week ‘Dad, when can we live together again. I am now 14 years and you have been away so long.’ She broke my heart.
Just a few days ago he wrote, “I’m so happy because the ice has melted between my wife and I. My little boy, 6 years, and his youngest daughter, 8 years, went to school today. My wife is so brave. . . . She decided to pay for a school bus for all of the kids. She said, ‘I believe in God and I am sending the children and taking the risk.’
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The polls are beginning to trickle in, and it already seems clear that Hillary Clinton has received a bump after the first presidential debate. A wave of battleground state surveys released on Friday showed her with a comfortable advantage in New Hampshire, Nevada, Florida and Michigan. The gains suggest she might lead by as much as five percentage points nationwide, up from about two to three points before last Monday’s debate. It’s hard to know whether the shift will last. If you’ve been following The Upshot’s coverage of polling over the last two years, you know that we’re pretty circumspect about shifts in the polls. But no matter how you cut it, the debate is bad news for Donald J. Trump. As we wrote ahead of the debate, it has been hard to make sense of the polls over the last few months. Mrs. Clinton’s lead has bobbed up and down, between two and eight percentage points since the spring. To oversimplify, there are two basic ways to interpret it. One possibility is that every little twist and turn in polls represents a real shift in a volatile race. If that’s the case, perhaps we’ll look back and say that the debate was decisive: The race was very close before, and Mrs. Clinton took a clear lead after. The other interpretation is that the race is stable but that the polls are volatile, as changes in news media coverage affect the likelihood that people respond to surveys or are judged to be likely voters. If this idea is right, it’s harder to evaluate Mrs. Clinton’s debate bounce. From this point of view, big media events — like debates and the conventions — raise equally large questions about volatility in the polls. After all, the polls really can change for good after a debate or a convention. But other times, the overwhelming news coverage surrounding a debate performance or a political convention is exactly the sort of thing that would cause an illusory shift. Mitt Romney took a narrow lead after the first presidential debate in 2012, but there is considerable evidence that his gains were exaggerated. For that period, the Democrats became less likely than Republicans to respond to surveys — what pollsters call differential nonresponse. After the first presidential debate in 2000, George W. Bush surged in the polls — going from an deficit among likely voters to an lead in the Gallup tracker. But half of the swing was because of changes in who was assessed to be a “likely voter. ” A postelection study found that those swings in intention had no predictive value it was just noise. So there’s good reason to be cautious about Mrs. Clinton’s rise in the polls. But that doesn’t mean it should be dismissed out of hand. After the first presidential debate in 2004, John Kerry truly did rally to make it a close race. Usually, a good way to test the durability of a swing in the polls is to ask whether it brings the race closer or farther from the fundamentals, like the president’s approval ratings. A shift that brings the polls in line with the fundamentals might be a little likelier to last than one that cuts the other way. Mr. Kerry’s recovery, for instance, brought the tighter race implied by Mr. Bush’s approval ratings. Barack Obama’s gains in 2008 gave him the considerable advantage implied by the economy and Mr. Bush’s low approval ratings. The opposite could be said of Mr. Bush’s and Mr. Romney’s surges in 2000 and 2012. This year, it’s a lot harder to tell. That’s in part because there is no incumbent president on the ballot, which always makes it a little harder to tell where the natural resting point of a race sits. But it’s also because Mr. Trump is such an extraordinary candidate that many analysts believe the fundamentals will be less significant than usual. In lieu of the traditional fundamentals, here’s something to consider instead: Over the longer term, Mrs. Clinton has led Mr. Trump by around five percentage points nationally. The debate has bumped her poll standing back closer to her average, and it seems plausible it could stay in that range. The debate has also reinforced doubts about whether Mr. Trump is prepared for the presidency. No matter how you interpret polls, Mrs. Clinton is in a decent position with less than 40 days to go. | 1 |
Politics Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei (R) and Finnish President Sauli Niinistö meet in Tehran on October 26, 2016. (Photos by leader.ir)
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei says Saudi Arabia’s killing of Yemenis is "the worst type of terrorism."
“Terrorism is not limited to terror acts committed by some unofficial groups, and mass killings of people by certain governments, such as the Saudi attack on people in a mourning procession in Yemen, which left hundreds killed and injured, are the worst type of terrorism,” the Leader said in a meeting with visiting Finnish President Sauli Niinistö in Tehran on Wednesday.
Ayatollah Khamenei also described terrorism as one of the “painful” sufferings gripping the human society, and called for a sincere fight against the scourge.
“Countering terrorism needs the serious resolve of all those who have an influence within global powers,” the Leader said, calling on world pundits and governments to take measures to deal with the phenomenon. Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei (R) receives Finnish President Sauli Niinistö (C) in the presence of Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani in Tehran on October 26, 2016.
Ayatollah Khamenei also said the US and certain Western countries are not sincere in the fight against terrorism.
“These governments calculate all issues based on their own interests, and they do not think about eradicating the malady of terrorism in Iraq or Syria,” the Leader added.
Ayatollah Khamenei further criticized UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s failure to condemn the Saudi war on Yemen.
“The UN secretary general said explicitly that it is not possible for the body to condemn the killing of Yemeni children as the UN depends on the Saudi government’s money,” the Leader said, stressing that this approach is indicative of the “deplorable moral state” of politicians at the helm of international organizations. Loading ... | 0 |
Donald J. Trump has made it clear that he views the central basis for diplomatic relations between Washington and Beijing — known as the “One China” policy — as ripe for review. Under that policy, the United States severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan as part of its recognition of the People’s Republic of China. But in early December, Mr. Trump stunned officials across the globe by becoming the first president or to speak to a Taiwanese leader since at least 1979. Then on Sunday, he suggested that adhering to the One China policy could be used as a bargaining chip on contentious issues like China’s currency and its activity in the South China Sea. “I don’t know why we have to be bound by a One China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade,” he said in an interview. In trying to use Taiwan that way, Mr. Trump hit the most sensitive of what the Chinese Communist Party calls its “core interests. ” If Washington formally recognizes Taiwan, the Chinese are expected to break off diplomatic relations. Though the United States officially ended relations with Taiwan in 1979, it maintains an unofficial embassy there called the American Institute in Taiwan. It has also sold Taiwan advanced military equipment and has worked to promote its democracy. Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, rejected Mr. Trump’s suggestion that American support for Taiwan was negotiable. “Taiwan is not a source of leverage,” Mr. Earnest said Monday. “It’s a close partner of the United States. ” The Global Times, a Chinese tabloid, put the matter more bluntly, saying Mr. Trump was “like a child in his ignorance of foreign policy. ” It added: “The One China policy cannot be bought and sold. Trump, it seems, only understands business and believes that everything has a price. ” Here are five ways the Chinese could make life difficult for a Trump administration: Chinese analysts say China has plenty of leverage to retaliate against Mr. Trump. One prominent target is Boeing, whose Seattle plant Xi Jinping, China’s president, visited in September 2015. In 2016, Boeing is expected to complete plane deliveries to China worth $11 billion, mostly 737s that have become the workhorse of China’s rapidly expanding airlines. The Global Times warned that it would be easy for China to switch orders to Boeing’s European competitor, Airbus. “On economic issues, China has more and more leverage,” said Wu Xinbo, the director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University. “If we feel he is still pushing the Taiwan issue, we will take action. If he wants to keep it up on Taiwan, it will only backfire. ” American trade officials worry that China could intensify its discrimination against American technology firms by using the country’s antimonopoly laws. Last year, the Chinese government slapped a $975 million fine on Qualcomm, a San chip maker, for what it said were licensing infractions. A few years ago, there were worries that China might suddenly dump a large portion of its holdings of Treasuries, pushing up interest rates in the United States. Those fears ebbed as China pared its holdings gradually. Its holdings of Treasuries peaked at $1. 65 trillion in March 2014, declining to about $1. 3 trillion, said Brad Setser at the Council on Foreign Relations. Experts say that even if the country sold more, it may not have much effect because interest rates are already low, global demand for Treasuries has been strong, and the Federal Reserve could buy more bonds if needed to offset action by China. China could also weaken its currency, something Mr. Trump has argued it already does to make its products cheaper. But that could also result in more Chinese taking their money out of the country, as well as inflation for a nation that increasingly buys what it needs from abroad, like oil, because a weak currency means China must pay more for imported goods. Finally, China could order its companies and private enterprises to slow their investments in the United States. A recent study by the Rhodium Group, a New economic policy outfit, showed that since 2015, the amount of Chinese direct investment in the United States has outweighed the amount of American investment in China. Mr. Trump said on Sunday, “And frankly, they’re not helping us at all with North Korea. ” China has in fact cooperated with some American initiatives on curbing North Korea’s nuclear program, specifically backing United Nations economic sanctions last month aimed at checking the North’s foreign exchange earnings from coal, its biggest export earner. China could switch from being a reluctant ally of North Korea to a friendly neighbor. China is already angry at Washington for the recent decision to deploy a defense shield in South Korea, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, known as THAAD, which China argues is aimed at limiting its military capabilities. Among the tools China could use would be improved trade, aid and investment to strengthen the North’s rudimentary economy, said John Delury, an American analyst in Seoul, South Korea. As a longstanding ally, China could conduct joint military exercises with the North, he said. In return for promises by North Korea not to proliferate, Mr. Delury said, China could go beyond improved trade, and provide substantial economic backing in a Marshall initiative. President Obama spent much of his political capital with China ensuring that Beijing would agree to the international climate change agreement that committed the world’s two biggest carbon emitters to lower greenhouse gases. Critics of Mr. Obama say he failed to force China to open up its markets, stood by while China fortified islands in the South China Sea and remained largely silent while Mr. Xi carried out repressive human rights policies in order to save the climate change accord. Moreover, China’s agreement to the international deal was less a concession to American pressure than a restatement of its own goals. It was relatively easy for Mr. Xi to agree to a reduction in emissions given the outcry among the Chinese public about air pollution and contaminated food. The accord calls for China’s carbon emissions to reach a plateau or decline “around 2030” but without any specific target for reductions like those Mr. Obama pledged for the United States. Mr. Xi would be unlikely to touch the climate accord because of the popularity of the prospect of cleaner air among the Chinese public. But if he did decide to ignore it, Mr. Trump would probably not care. At one point, Mr. Trump said climate change was a “hoax” invented by China to hurt American trade. Later, he said he was joking. If Mr. Trump supports Taiwan, China’s first response may be to punish Taiwan rather than the United States, in an attempt to diminish its value to Washington. It could begin by intensifying efforts to persuade the 22 small sovereignties around the world, including the Vatican, that still maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan to sever them and recognize China instead. China might then take aim at Taiwan’s economy by restricting Chinese investments and limiting the number of Chinese tourists to Taiwan. Taiwan already has de facto independence, but China has warned that it will go to war to prevent it a formal separation from the mainland. From Beijing’s perspective, the fear is that Mr. Trump’s moves could encourage Taiwan to declare independence or that other nations might follow the United States in recognizing Taiwan. If President Tsai of Taiwan declared independence, “and the whole world says Taiwan is independent,” then China “will take military action,” said Shi Yinhong, professor of international relations at Renmin University. “But I don’t believe that is Tsai’s intention,” he added. China was a signatory to the nuclear accord reached with Iran in 2015 that lifted sanctions in return for Iran’s getting rid of 98 percent of its nuclear material. China now has unfettered access to its longtime friend’s economy. Through Iran, Beijing will seek to enhance its influence in the Middle East, with the goal of weakening American prestige in the region. But if the deal is scrapped and renegotiated, as Mr. Trump has called for, China would keep trading with Iran, isolating the United States, said Edward C. Chow, senior fellow for energy and national security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. About of Iran’s oil exports go to China, and China is Iran’s top importer of goods. Thus China is Iran’s top trading partner, a position that would not change in the event of Mr. Trump’s renouncing Washington’s participation in the nuclear deal. “If anything, China would redouble trading and investment in Iran now that Trump has started on the Taiwan front,” Mr. Chow said. | 1 |
If you listened much to Ted Cruz over these last furious months, you heard him talk frequently about “the abyss,” as in what this country was teetering on the edge of. If you listened to him over these last furious hours, you heard him mention the “yawning cavern of insecurity” that motivates Donald Trump and other bullies. Cruz should take up spelunking. He’s obviously fascinated by unfathomable depths, and with his loss in Indiana on Tuesday, his candidacy for the presidency is finished, giving him a whole lot of extra time. A new hobby is definitely in order. As we bid Cruz adieu, we should give him his due: He took a mien and manner spectacularly ill suited to the art of seducing voters about as far as they could go. He outlasted the likes of Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. He outperformed Rick Santorum in 2012 and Mike Huckabee in 2008. Like him, Santorum and Huckabee won the Iowa caucuses and built from there, courting the religious right with particular fervor. But they lacked the intensity of Cruz’s professed disdain for Washington, which was his other big sales pitch, made at its moment of maximum potency. He peddled extravagant piety and extreme contempt in equal measure. If that sounds paradoxical, it is, and the tension between contradictory Cruzes is what ultimately did him in. He spoke out of both sides of his scowl, itching to be the voice of the common man but equally eager to demonstrate what a highfalutin, intellect he possessed. He wed a populist message to a plummy vocabulary. And while the line separating smart and smart aleck isn’t all that thin or blurry, he never could stay on the winning side of it. He wore cowboy boots, but his favorites are made of ostrich. Two peacocks in a pod, he and Trump, and what ghastly plumage they showed on Tuesday. Trump somehow saw fit to bring up a National Enquirer story linking Cruz’s father to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Cruz exploded, branding Trump a “pathological liar” and “serial philanderer. ” He also brought up an interview from many years ago in which Trump told Howard Stern that his effort to steer clear of sexually transmitted diseases was his “personal Vietnam. ” Where was this rant six months ago, when the Republican field was crowded and Cruz played footsie with Trump? Back then he was wagering that Trump would fade, and he wanted to be in a friendly position to inherit the billionaire’s supporters. But by Tuesday, Trump was the main obstacle between Cruz and the Republican presidential nomination, and Cruz has just one true compass: his own advancement. The nakedness of his vanity and transparency of his ambition were always his biggest problem. He routinely excoriated other politicians for while repeatedly hogging center stage, his remarks interminable — after his Iowa victory, for example, or when he presumptuously introduced Carly Fiorina as his running mate — and his pauses so theatrically drawn out that you could watch the entirety of “The Revenant” during some of them. He trashed “the establishment” and wore its rejection of him as a badge of honor only until it stopped rejecting him and its help was his best hope to wrest the nomination away from Trump. At that point he did dizzy cartwheels over every prominent endorsement that came his way. He took great pride in an adversarial relationship with the media, decreeing us irrelevant, until he went in hunt of a fresh excuse for losing to Trump and decided over the last few days that it was all our fault. We didn’t matter and then we did, depending on which estimation flattered him. He purported to be more than his peers but pettily mocked Michelle Obama for urging schoolchildren to eat leafy greens. When Heidi Cruz is first lady, he pledged, “French fries are coming back to the cafeteria. ” Heidi Cruz is not going to be first lady, so she’ll need some other platform for the promotion of calorie bombs and second chins. And where in her husband was the humility that a Christian faith as frequently proclaimed as his should encompass? It wasn’t evident when he stormed into the Senate in early 2013, an upstart intent on upstaging the veterans. There were flickers of it on Tuesday night, as he conceded defeat not just in Indiana but in the presidential contest, announcing that he was suspending his campaign “with a heavy heart. ” He articulated gratitude to those Americans — no small number of them — who had buoyed him. He went overboard in his praise of Fiorina, merely reminding us all of what an odd and oddly timed alliance theirs was. “An incredible, phenomenal running mate,” he called her, as if they’d been on some epic journey. It was less than a week long. How many phenomena could she accomplish in that time? He left Trump out of his remarks. There were no congratulations. There was no indication of whether he’d publicly back Trump in the months to come. There was nothing to purge the memory of what he’d said earlier Tuesday, when he described Trump as “a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country has ever seen. ” Yes, we have, and so has he, every day, in the mirror. That’s why he’ll undoubtedly be back to try for the presidency again. But this bid is moribund. It’s time for Cruz to rest in peevishness. | 1 |
Video of the controversial aid group Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the “White Helmets,” has leaked showing the staging of a fake rescue. The video shows White Helmet workers and a trapped “victim” getting into position and preparing for a scene, laying completely still as the camera move around them.
Then the action kicks into gear with a flurry of activity and shouting off-camera with the “victim” suddenly screaming in agony as White Helmet workers/actors remove debris from his body and carry him away.
It is unclear if this video was meant to be released, or at least all parts of it, but images of the “victim” after the rescue appear to show him in rather good spirits.
Before & After #WhiteHelmets #MannequinChallenge pic.twitter.com/09K1xGYjnS
— Navstéva (@Navsteva) November 22, 2016
This is not the first time the White Helmets have come under scrutiny for not acting like the apolitical rescue workers they claim to be. Other videos have shown the White Helmets carrying weapons and aiding in jihadist executions.
Journalist Max Blumenthal recently published a two-part series at Alternet exposing the White Helmets as being part of a campaign, funded in part by the US government, to push for regime change in Syria.
The White Helmets have partnered with The Syria Campaign, which is dedicated to overthrowing the Assad government in Syria. The Syria Campaign relentlessly promotes the White Helmets in hopes of influencing Western public opinion against the Assad government and for regime change.
If the video is faked, The Syria Campaign and the White Helmets seem perfectly fine with putting out fraudulent material to push for regime change in Syria. The question then becomes: how many of their other videos are also fake?
The post Video Shows White Helmets Staging Fake Rescue In Syria appeared first on Shadowproof .
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The Art of the Deal: Trump's phone calls provoke hysteria in Kiev and panic in Brussels November 16, 2016 - Fort Russ - Ruslan Ostashko, PolitRussia - translated by J. Arnoldski - Until recently it was believed that Donald Trump’s main media weapon is his Twitter account, through which the president-elect of the US fights his political opponents, beats the media, and “trolls” foreign politicians. But this was true only until Trump won the elections. Since his victory, the American billionaire now uses his phone as his main weapon of mass (information) destruction. For example, just recently we learned it was enough for Trump to simply talk with Putin on the phone to drive all top European officials to hysterics and panic. Only one conversation, and the British media is already talking about nervous breakdowns among Brussels politicians who simply don’t understand how to live in this terrifying new reality in which the US president-elect easily finds opportunities to reach understanding with Putin. This means that many European politicians who built their careers on selling Russophobia might be left without a job, career, and money. The Financial Times writes that British diplomats are preparing for a “diplomatic crisis” caused by a possible rapprochement between the US and Russia. Between the lines, it can be read that London has simply no ready-made solutions for this problem. The reactions of American and European media are suddenly creating some kind of aura of a miracle around Trump and Putin’s conversation, or a universal catastrophe from the perspective of Clinton’s supporters and ISIS fans. For example, the popular American newspaper USA Today has released a thoughtful article entitled “After Trump chat, Putin's airstrikes pound Syria” which hints that it is Trump’s fault that Russian aircraft have stepped up bombardments against the Syrian terrorists so near and dear to the heart of every true American liberal. It seems like American journalists are telling us that “this wouldn’t happen under Clinton” which, of course, is a shameless lie. Everything would be the same, the only difference being that Syrian militants would die from Russian bombs only after receiving their paychecks from the CIA or Pentagon. And now they are completely terrified, as the Americans aren't paying out and the Russians are bombing them. Let them at least feel comforted by the fact that they have sincere sympathy from Clinton’s pool of American journalists. In fairness, it should be noted that Trump’s phone conversations are provoking not only unhappiness, but are also a real treat. Kiev’s political club is now filled with euphoria over the fact that Poroshenko managed to get through to talk to the US president-elect. This really is a great achievement. That Poroshenko didn’t get told off after what official Kiev did during the American election campaigns is a real success. It is a pity that the only description of the conversation is on Poroshenko’s website. Trump’s official website doesn’t say a word about it. Trump’s website features the news of his conversation with Putin, while nothing is said of the chat with Poroshenko. Nothing at all. Poroshenko’s website doesn’t deserve much confidence as a source. After all, Poroshenko has already been caught in prank conversations, but even if we can assume that the two really did talk, then Kiev’s euphoria is still not quite logical. Sure, official Ukrainian propaganda says that the two presidents agreed to meet, but no specifics in terms of dates were given. Does anyone really believe that Poroshenko is such a genius in psychological maneuvers and such a titan in political negotiations that he will be capable of changing the opinion of the US president-elect on Crimea, Ukraine, and the need to cooperate with Russia? It will be interesting to see how this looks. On the one hand, Trump is a billionaire, businessman, and a man with a very difficult character. On the other hand, so is Poroshenko, who quickly needs to convince Trump to pour money into the geopolitical project known as “Ukraine.” It’s a pity that they won’t sell tickets to see this show. I would pay to see such with my own eyes even though I think that the conversation will not be very long. Most likely, it will end with Trump’s famous catchphrase: “You’re fired!” Bloomberg has published an article headlined “Trump, Putin and Sluggish Reforms Push Ukraine Toward Russia.” In this piece, American journalists gathered the opinions of Western politicians and experts on Ukraine’s future, among which it is difficult to find anything optimistic. Overall, the interviewed experts agree that Ukraine is out of luck. For example, the ardent Russophobe and Vladimir Putin critic Ian Bremmer articulated his vision of Ukraine’s future in the following words: “Trump will want to put points on the board and I think it is highly likely the U.S. under Trump will move quickly to re-establish the relationship with Russia, on Syria in particular. That clearly throws Ukraine under a bus.” This time, I don’t even want to argue with this American political scientist. Only one thing interests me: will Trump put all of Ukraine up for sale or only parts of it? Follow us on Facebook! | 0 |
The head of the Scottish Episcopal Church has said he is “deeply distressed at the widespread offence” caused by the reading of a passage from the Quran denying the divinity of Christ during an Epiphany service, but no apology has been issued. [In a statement posted to his blog site, David Chillingworth, the Primus of the Church appeared to strongly rebuke Kelvin Holdsworth, the Provost of St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, Glasgow, where the reading took place, arguing that interfaith work, “like all works of reconciliation, must be founded on truth. ” He continued: “We approach others with open hearts but we stand in the truth of the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. ” However, no apology for the reading has been forthcoming Chillingworth reasoning that the “The decisions which have led to the situation in St Mary’s Cathedral are a matter for the Provost and the Cathedral community. ” He added that the church will “bring together all those who are involved in the development of interfaith relations” to explore how the work can be carried out “in ways which will command respect. ” Holdsworth himself is unrepentent, writing in a blog post that “local Muslim friends” were invited “as we were reflecting on the arrival of the mysterious Magi at Bethlehem”. The significance is unclear, as the Magi, predating Islam by some six centuries, were Zoroastrian. He continued: “Having a recitation from the Qur’an in a Christian cathedral in worship is not a new thing. “So it has indeed come as something of a surprise to find accounts of last week’s service appearing online and stirring up the most most incredible pot of hatred I’ve ever encountered. “This same Qur’anic reading has been given before in services and no outcry has happened. Is it because this is in a cathedral run by a gay man? Is it because the recitation was given by a young woman? “Clearly those things are factors as they feature in some of the abuse. ” Confirming that some of the messages received by the church had been reported to Police Scotland, Holdsworth added: “They assure me that intolerance and prejudice will not be tolerated in Scotland. To put it simply, I thank God for them and their work. ” The matter came to light after St Mary’s posted a video of verses of the Quran being sung in Arabic during a service to Facebook, along with a message calling it a “wonderful event. ” Both the Facebook post and a YouTube version of the reading have since been removed by the Cathedral, after it provoked widespread anger and criticism from Christians, who pointed out that the verses chosen denied the divinity of Jesus Christ as the Son of God. The reading can still be viewed elsewhere on Facebook via Madinah Javed, who sang the passages during the service. There was further anger as it emerged that a translation of the verses printed in the Order of Service and handed out to congregants omitted the last two, in which the denial came, leading to confusion. Commenting on matter on the Archbishop Cranmer blogsite, the Rev’d Dr Gavin Ashenden, Chaplain to the Queen, said: “It’s hard to know what was in the mind of the Provost of Glasgow Cathedral when he arranged for this assault on Jesus and the apostles. “The accusation of lying or deception [contained within the verses] was not just directed towards Jesus and the Apostles but is also [ … ] to those, too, who have been martyred at the hands of Islam, because they refused to renounce this deception when confronted with it. ” Refuting Holdworth’s claims that the reading was part of an interfaith dialogue between Islam and Christianity, Ashenden continued: “There was no dialogue in the Epiphany Eucharist only a refutation of what Christians hold most dear and upon which salvation depends. “In over 30 years of interfaith conversations, I have never yet come across a Muslim community which allowed those passages in the Gospels acclaiming the divinity of Christ to be read in Friday prayers. ” | 1 |
Catherine Engelbrecht, president of True the Vote, talked with Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam on Friday regarding President Trump’s executive order establishing the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which will investigate voter fraud and offer recommendations. [Engelbrecht said of voter fraud in America, “We are, in my opinion, on the verge of a systemic crisis for a lot of reasons. The first is, we are not evaluating the people that we are allowing to register to vote. We are not doing any sort of reconciliation for identity, residency, citizenship. … We don’t know that these people are who they say that they are. ” Engelbrecht added that with the data and technology available today, “there’s no reason that we wouldn’t have a better handle on that. ” “We have willfully chosen to let our voter rolls run amok,” she said. Engelbrecht continued, “We will soon have a major outcome where we cannot trust the outcome, and at that point, you can’t unring that bell. At that point, things start to crumble and crumble fast. ” Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. | 1 |
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Having soared to fresh 13 year highs in a quiet overnight session on thin liquidity due to the US Thanksgiving holiday, which sent the USDJPY just shy of 114 and the Yuan to 6.96, the dollar pared back its weekly advance with modest profit taking after traders wondered if the rally has gotten “too stretched.” European shares were fractionally higher, with Asian stocks and US equity futures rising and both the Dow Jones and the S&P set for new all time highs. Oil followed the USD lower, down fractionally ahead of next week’s OPEC meeting where negotiations now focus on whether non-OPEC led by Russia nations will cut or freeze.
With the US offline yesterday, American markets are set for another early close on Black Friday: U.S. equity markets close at 1pm, bond markets close at 2pm.
The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index fell from the highest level in more than a decade, while emerging-market currencies clawed back gains after India’s rupee and Turkey’s lira fell to record lows on Thursday. U.S. equity-index futures signaled stocks will edge higher as trading resumes following the Thanksgiving holiday. European shares were little changed, oil pared a weekly gain and Treasuries fell.
The recurring story every day since Trump’s election is that as a result of the upcoming debt-funded fiscal stimulus, inflation is poised to jump which in turn has fueled a surge in bets on Federal Reserve rate hikes, propelling the greenback higher against all but two of it peers this month. Traders see an increase in borrowing costs in December as a certainty, while the odds of additional moves by June have risen to more than 60 percent, according to futures data tracked by Bloomberg .
As shown virtually every day on these pages, the “Trumpflation” bet on global reflation has sent the USD soaring, while slamming EM currencies, fading the prospect of future rate cuts by these economies, while industrial metals like copper continue to soar.
Expectations of rises in U.S. inflation and interest rates have driven the greenback to a gain of more than 6 percent in October and November combined, its strongest performance over a similar period since its rally in early 2015 . Most investors expect those gains to continue, but a combination of the Thanksgiving break in the United States, market participants’ need to process corporate flows at the end of the month and a raft of risks in the first half of December all speak for cashing in some of those gains now.
“The dollar bull run had perhaps become a little stretched,” said Lee Hardman, a currency strategist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in London. “We’ve had a very strong run since the election and it’s just a bit of a pull back.”
It is Black Friday in the US, and the National Retail Federation projects that about 137.4 million consumers will make purchases in stores or online over the four-day weekend that starts on Thanksgiving, marking the kickoff to the holiday shopping season. U.S. retail spending is expected to rise 3.6% to $655.8 billion in November and December, the Washington-based NRF estimates. Retailers are poised to take full advantage of the Thanksgiving holiday period, now known by some as Black Week, which accounts for about 15 percent of holiday spending, according to the trade group. However, the amount Americans have spent has declined in the last three years, slipping 26 percent from 2013 to an average of $299.60 per person last year, according to the trade group, so there are risks.
This holiday season is expected be better for retailers with unemployment, gasoline prices and inflation low, while wages, home values and the stock market continue to rise. Companies such as Kohl’s Corp., Gap Inc. and Barnes & Noble Inc. have said the U.S. presidential election was a major cause of consumers’ recent reluctance to open their wallets. With the outcome settled, they’re expecting the dollars to finally flow. “We’ve had some, we believe, pent-up demand — just based on the economics of our consumer,” J.C. Penney Co. Chief Executive Officer Marvin Ellison said in an interview this month. “We’re anticipating we’ll see pent-up demand released, and it being post-election will only help that.”
As the following chart of retail stock performance shows, the market is as optimistic as the retailers coming into Black Friday.
The MSCI world equity index, which tracks shares in 46 countries, was up 0.2% in early European trading and headed to close the week around 1 percent higher. In Asia, MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan added 0.7 percent. European equities were steady in morning business, with a rally in defensive sectors such as healthcare and utilities offsetting weaker banking and commodities stocks. The pan-European STOXX 600 index was unchanged, on track for a third straight week of gains.
European shares have gained 4.5 percent since Donald Trump’s surprise victory in this month’s U.S. presidential election. “It looks as if the market is taking a breather after a good run. The market view is that Trump is going to spend more and will shield the U.S. more so that we get higher inflation and higher domestic growth,” Ronny Claeys, senior strategist at KBC Asset Management, said. “ The market has reacted positively on Trump, but this could change as his policies are vague at this stage. Investors will react more on his policy details ” Claeys added cited by Reuters . Emerging-market shares are poised for the first weekly increase in more than a month, led by commodity and energy producers.
In rates, U.S. yields gapped higher at the open, rising as high as 2.411%, “but have been unable to hold those gains and that has encouraged some profit-taking,” said Jeremy Stretch, head of currency strategy at CIBC in London, and the 10Y was last trading at 2.37%. “There is a degree of consolidation (but) there is still a consistent bias that means the dollar will remain pretty much supported into the Fed meeting next month. The message seems to be to take some profit and we will be looking to go again.”
In the European bond market, short-dated German government bond yields set a new record low and were on track for their biggest two-week fall in more than three years, highlighting demand for top-rated assets. Demand for German debt for use as collateral for short-term lending in repo markets has helped drive two-year bond yields lower this week . Jitters ahead of an Italian referendum on Dec. 4 has also bolstered demand for German bonds, regarded as among the safest assets in the world. Rates on 10-year German bunds fell two basis points on Friday to 0.24%. Yields on 40-year Japan government bonds slid five basis points to 0.715 percent, reversing an earlier climb after an auction of the debt saw 499.7 billion yen ($4.4 billion) of securities sold at a highest yield of 0.725 percent. “The 40 year bonds were well received in the auction, triggering a bout of bond buying,” said Masahiko Sato, an analyst at Nomura Holdings Inc. in Tokyo.
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Bulletin Headline Summary from RanSquawk Price action in Europe thus far has been muted amid ongoing holiday-thinned conditions and a lack of notable newsflow A day of profit taking and position adjustment, while month end (real money) flow is also starting to kick in with the USD rally taking another pause Looking ahead, highlights include UK GDP and US Services PMI. Note there are also early US closures today for yesterday’s Thanksgiving Holiday
Market snapshot S&P 500 futures up 0.2% to 2205 Stoxx 600 up less than 0.1% to 342 FTSE 100 down less than 0.1% to 6828 DAX up less than 0.1% to 10690 German 10Yr yield down 2bps to 0.24% Italian 10Yr yield down less than 1bp to 2.12% Spanish 10Yr yield down 2bps to 1.57% S&P GSCI Index down 0.3% to 370.2 MSCI Asia Pacific up 0.6% to 136 Nikkei 225 up 0.3% to 18381 Hang Seng up 0.5% to 22723 Shanghai Composite up 0.6% to 3262 S&P/ASX 200 up 0.4% to 5508 US 10-yr yield up 2bps to 2.37% Dollar Index down 0.26% to 101.44 WTI Crude futures down 0.7% to $47.63 Brent Futures down 1% to $48.53 Gold spot up 0.3% to $1,188 Silver spot up 0.9% to $16.44
Global Headline News J&J Said to Make Takeover Approach for Drugmaker Actelion: Actelion shares soar by most in more than 2 years; deliberations said to be at early stage after initial offer Amazon Said in Talks to Buy Dubai’s Souq.com in $1b Deal: no final decisions have been made, talks could still falter; MidEast e-commerce site initially planned to sell a stake Black Friday Merchants See Americans Exhaling After Election: with uncertainty gone, stores see consumers poised to spend; Thanksgiving weekend accounts for 15% of holiday sales Holiday Price War Intensifies as Wal-Mart, Target Pursue Amazon: brick-and-mortar chains offering bigger discounts than in 2015 U.S. Boosts Refiners’ 2017 Biofuel Quotas to Record Levels: EPA mandates above levels the agency proposed in May Chevron to Pick Winner of Indonesian Geothermal Bid in Dec./Jan.: co. reviewing bids from 5 companies, including Marubeni, Pertamina Trump Expected to Pick Ross for Commerce Job, Person Says: President-elect Trump is expected to nominate as secretary of commerce investor Wilbur Ross OPEC’s Last Push for Oil Deal Shifts Focus to Iran, Russia: Algerian minister to meet his counterpart in Tehran Saturday GoDaddy Said in Exclusive Talks to Buy Host Europe: Reuters KKR Said to Partner With Arrow Pharma for INova Bid: AFR Samsung Bioepis Nasdaq IPO May Be Delayed: Maeil Business U.S. equity markets close at 1pm, bond markets close at 2pm
In Asia, stock markets traded mostly positive, although gains were reserved after a small lead from Wall St. where US participants were absent due to Thanksgiving holiday. Nikkei 225 (+0.3%) traded choppy throughout the session with the index driven by JPY fluctuations, while ASX 200 (+0.4%) was also higher despite upside being limited by weakness in gold. Hang Seng (+0.5%) conformed to the positive tone while Shanghai Comp (+0.6%) initially lagged amid quiet news flow and after the PBoC reduced its weekly net liquidity injection by around 90% from the prior week. 10yr JGBs were initially pressured amid gains in riskier assets and as yields rose alongside their US counterparts. However, JGBs then recovered from their lows in the wake of a firmer 40yr auction leading to outperformance in the super-long end and curve flattening. PBoC injected CNY 120bIn in 7-day reverse repos, CNY 70bIn in 14-day reverse repos, CNY 25b1n in 28-day reverse repos for a weekly net injection of CNY 40bIn vs. last week’s CNY 425b1n net injection.
Japan reported its latest consumer price data, which met or beat most expectations: Japanese National CPI (Oct) Y/Y 0.1% vs. Exp. 0.0% (Prey. -0.5%) Japanese National CPI Ex. Food (Oct) Y/Y -0.4% vs. Exp. -0.4% (Prey. -0.5%) Japanese Tokyo CPI (Nov) Y/Y 0.5% vs. Exp. 0.2% (Prey. 0.1%) Japanese Tokyo CPI Ex-Food (Nov) Y/Y -0.4% vs. Exp. -0.4% (Prey. -0.4%).
Top Asian News Macquarie, ANZ to Pay $11 Million Over Malaysia Rates Probe: Australian banks admit attempted cartel conduct in 2011 In Asia Currency-Reserve Checkup, Two Countries Come Out on Top: IMF gauge shows Thailand, Philippines offer resilience China Bad-Loan Disposal No Easy Task With Slowdown, Survey Shows: Only 4% of bad-loan managers find it easy to dispose of NPLs JAL Plans First Post-Bankruptcy Bond to Fund Airbus Purchases: Airline plans to sell about 20 billion yen of notes next month Angry Soldiers Another Headache for Modi Amid Rupee Note Crisis: Suspected suicide of voluntary reservist highlights concerns
In Europe, as expected, given yesterday’s US thanksgiving holiday, newsflow and price action has been light today. European equities trade flat, with Actellion higher by almost 10% amid talk of a potential merger, with Shire touted as a bidder. To the downside, Banca Monte Paschi traders got their usual morning break as Co. shares were halted limit down once again, this time as a consequence of the EUR 5bIn capital raising. Fixed income and commodity markets have been equally dull, with Bunds marginally higher today amid light volumes and little to drive price action. The energy complex has seen modest softness as all eyes focus on next week’s OPEC meeting, with participants becoming somewhat saturated with comments from the different nations in the build up.
Top European News U.K. Economy Shows No Sign of Brexit Effect as Spending Rises: consumers and businesses increased their spending in 3Q as the U.K. economy registered resilient performance after Brexit vote Brexit May Take Decade So Give the Pound a Rest, Investors Say: Pound already reflects changing economy, Standard Life says; Kames Capital now “slightly more optimistic” on currency Nordea Chairman Says Talks With ABN Amro Are Unlikely to Resume: Nordea isn’t tempted to buy ABN shares, Wahlroos says Greece’s Biggest Bank Sees Trump Boost to Country’s Economy: Piraeus Bank chair Handjinicolaou speaks in interview, declines to give timeframe for pending CEO pick Lufthansa Condemns ‘Emotional’ Pilots as Strike to Span Weekend: union has extended action, claiming company aims to destroy it
In currencies, the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index fell 0.3 percent at London morning trading, leaving it up 0.3 percent this week. Japan’s currency gained 0.4 percent to 112.80 per dollar. It’s down 1.8 percent in the week, the worst performance among major currencies. The rupee strengthened 0.4 percent after sinking to a record low Thursday, while the Turkish lira gained 0.3 percent. China’s yuan, which fell to an eight-year low against the dollar this week, was little changed. The yuan rose this week to an August high versus a basket of peers, signaling that its declines against the greenback have been more moderate than those of other currencies. South Africa’s rand headed for its first weekly gain in three weeks before a credit-rating review by Moody’s Investors Service.
In commodities, West Texas Intermediate crude oil slipped 0.8 percent to $47.58 a barrel. OPEC’s focus has shifted to negotiations with Iran and non-member Russia for production curbs after Iraq’s prime minister signaled it will agree to cut output. Gold for immediate delivery rose 0.7 percent to $1,190.24 an ounce, the first advance in four days. Copper slipped less than 0.1 percent in London and has surged 8.2 percent this week. The industrial metal has soared 21 percent this month.
Looking at today’s events, the main focus this morning was on the UK where we got the second estimate of Q3 GDP which came in at 0.5%, as expected. Also in the UK today was the CBI’s Distributive Trades Survey for November which soared from 21 to 26, smashing expectations of a 12 print, while French consumer confidence data is the early print this morning. Markets in the US should be quiet again today but there is some data due out including the remaining flash November PMI’s (services and composite), wholesale inventories and the advance goods trade balance for October. It’ll also be worth keeping an eye on any retail sales data for Black Friday sales in the US. A reminder that this Sunday the second and final round of the French centre-right primary is due to be held. The run-off is between Francois Fillon and Alain Juppe, the former coming out on top in the first round, with the winner going on to be the chosen Republican candidate. We should know the winner around 9pm GMT on Sunday evening.
US Event Calendar 8:30am: Advance Goods Trade Balance, Oct., est. -$59b (prior -$56.5b) 8:30am: Wholesale Inventories m/m, Oct P, est. 0.2% (prior 0.1%); Retail Inventories m/m, Oct. (prior 0.3%) 9:45am: Markit US Services PMI, Nov. P, est. 54.8 (prior 54.8)
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DB’s Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap
Good luck to all those braving the sales today. It’s staggering to see the number of ‘How to Survive Black Friday’ articles out there now and how many more stories there are with tips and strategies to get the best bargains on the day. Apparently it now takes weeks of precise planning and preparation. It sounds like you’ll need a decent plate of leftover turkey this morning to build up the energy first.
If the last 24 hours is anything to go by then it’s likely to be another fairly quiet day ahead with the US scheduled for an early close. While there wasn’t much to shout about in markets yesterday the most interesting story concerned a Bloomberg report about the ECB possibly putting off decisions about the future of its bond-buying program until next year. The crux of the story concerned the parameters of the program and how the technical issues relating to bond scarcity may have eased with the recent rise in yields. The story also suggested that ‘some’ policy makers would consider a delay on the QE extension decision but we’d also caveat that with the mention of ‘most’ policymakers still seeing a need to send a dovish message at next month’s meeting given the inflation outlook. Indeed we’d highlight that the recent message from ECB officials has been just that including President Draghi’s recent comments. A reminder too that the 2019 staff forecasts will be available for the first time at the meeting next month. That said, it is worth noting that expectations were fairly high for a QE announcement in December 2014 and we had to wait for January 2015 for the decision to eventually be made so you can’t entirely rule out the possibility a delay.
With that Bloomberg report coming as markets in Europe closed we didn’t get to see too much of a reaction. 10y Bund yields finished little changed at 0.251% with yields, if anything, a couple of basis points higher following the story. The periphery was a bit more mixed (Portugal and Spain 1bp lower and Italy 1bp higher) but again moves were fairly modest. This morning we’ve seen 10y Treasury yields rise nearly 5bps however. There was also some focus on FX markets yesterday with a number of EM currencies making new recent lows including currencies in India, Malaysia, Vietnam and Philippines. The Turkish Lira (-1.44%) was also under pressure despite Turkey’s central bank raising rates for the first time in nearly three years. Following that though the European Parliament then voted overwhelmingly in favour of suspending EU membership talks with Turkey.
Elsewhere, equity markets in Europe yesterday were generally a touch firmer despite volumes some 50% or so below the usual daily average The Stoxx 600 closed up +0.31% as healthcare and tech stocks led the move higher, while credit indices were marginally tighter. A bit of stability in the Oil complex seemingly helped too with WTI continuing to hover around the $48/bbl level ahead of the OPEC meeting next week.
Back to the ECB, Vice-President Constancio also added to the recent chorus of dovish communication from the Bank yesterday. He said that ‘we want our policies, including unconventional policies, in place until we are convinced there is a sustained path toward our objective of inflation’. The ECB’s twice-yearly Financial Stability Review was also released yesterday with the report warning about the risk of a possible abrupt global correction on the back of political uncertainty and elevated geopolitical tensions which is posing risks to stability, banks, confidence and economic growth.
This morning in Asia, with the exception of China it’s been a broadly positive session for equity markets. The Nikkei (+0.77%), Hang Seng (+0.38%), Kospi (+0.10%) and ASX (+0.62%) are all up although in China the Shanghai Comp (-0.43%) has dipped lower. US equity index futures are also a smidgen higher while sovereign bond markets are generally weaker. 10y JGB yields in particular are a couple of basis points higher at 0.053% and the highest yield since mid-February. The Yen (-0.25%) however is under pressure and approaching ¥114 following the latest leg higher for the Dollar. The latest CPI data was also out in Japan overnight. The good news is that headline CPI return to positive territory at +0.1% yoy versus -0.5% in September, however the core remains rooted in deflation at -0.4% yoy (from -0.5%). The core-core did also improve to +0.2% yoy from 0.0%. Our economists noted that the increase in overall CPI was mainly due to a sharp increase in the price of fresh vegetables due to unfavourable weather.
The only other snippet to mention from yesterday was the economic data. The most significant came from Germany where there was no final revisions made to the Q3 GDP print of +0.2% qoq, leaving the YoY rate at +1.7%. The components of the report showed that growth mainly came from domestic demand, especially private and government consumption. Meanwhile Germany’s November IFO survey revealed a business climate reading of 110.4 which was unchanged from the month prior. A slight increase in the current assessment component was offset by a modest decline in expectations. In France business confidence was also unchanged in November at 102.
Looking at today’s calendar the main focus this morning in the European session will likely be on the UK where we’ll get the second estimate of Q3 GDP and where the Office for National Statistics is expected to confirm that GDP grew at +0.5% qoq during the quarter. We’ll also receive the wider components of the GDP report which will be interesting to see. Also due out in the UK today is the CBI’s Distributive Trades Survey for November while French consumer confidence data is the early print this morning. Markets in the US should be quiet again today but there is some data due out including the remaining flash November PMI’s (services and composite), wholesale inventories and the advance goods trade balance for October. It’ll also be worth keeping an eye on any retail sales data for Black Friday sales in the US.
A quick reminder before we sign off that this Sunday, the second and final round of the French centre-right primary is due to be held. As a reminder the run-off is between Francois Fillon and Alain Juppe, the former coming out on top in the first round, with the winner going on to be the chosen Republican candidate. We should know the winner around 9pm GMT on Sunday evening. Related | 0 |
Monday on Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer reacted to the latest controversy involving the Trump White House, which top Trump aide Jared Kushner is alleged to have had improper back channel communications with the Russian government. Krauthammer dismissed the controversy and noted the timing of the allegations of the effort to open communications, which are said to have happened during the transition and not the campaign. “I don’t trust this story,” Krauthammer said. “The Russians are leaking it clearly on a channel they know we’re going to pick up. The Russians are masters of disinformation. They already have Washington with its knickers in a twist with a Russian conspiracy. This is an added twist. Somebody’s going to get a hernia here. I think I’ll stop the metaphor with that point. But we have no idea if it’s true. Let’s say it is true. Isn’t the problem here, the accusation here that there was some collusion during the campaign with the Russians? Well, everyone agrees if the story is true, it occurred after the campaign during the transition. So, unless there’s some sort of nefarious connection here, there’s no connection to what was alleged to have happened during the campaign. ” “And lastly, we’ve had backchannel connections with adversaries for generations,” he added. “Henry Kissinger had them with the Russians and the Chinese. Hillary had a backchannel to establish the opening with the Iranians in what ended up as the opening in what ended up as the Iranian nuclear deal … This happens all the time. I don’t quite understand where is the crime other than it is another piece that has Russia in the headline, Trump people in the headline and thus, it is supposed to be scandalous. Show me. ” Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor | 1 |
Hillary Clinton Is DEFINITELY Going To Win. Here’s How We Know (DETAILS) By Carrie MacDonald
The famous electoral prognosticator Larry Sabato recently shocked a CNN host when he boldly proclaimed that he believed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton would win the presidency with 352 electoral votes. Looking at the math, though 352 may be a stretch, we WILL inaugurate the first woman president on January 20, 2017. The Road To 270
As I discussed in detail in my Electoral College 101 piece for Liberal America , a presidential candidate must win 270 of the 538 total electoral college votes in order to win the presidency. It is possible for this to happen even when a candidate does not win the popular vote, as we saw in the election of 2000.
As it stands now, with fewer than two weeks to go, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump could win all the states that are expected to vote red, including the ones that just “lean” Republican, AND every single swing state, and he still will not win the election. All those states would give him just 245 votes. That’s 25 short of a win.
On the other hand, if Clinton wins every state that is expected to vote blue, as she is expected to do, she will have 293 electoral votes. The Cook Political Scorecard And FiveThirtyEight
The Cook Political Report , a non-partisan newsletter, published the following scorecard on October 27, 2016: Screenshot via The Cook Political Report
As you can see, the math looks grim for the Donald. If he wins the 179 votes he’s expected to win PLUS the 66 that are the tossup votes, he’s still short.
The Cook report still has Florida as a tossup (swing) state. However, Nate Silver’s current projection for that state — the most coveted of all swing states in any presidential race — has Clinton winning. Screenshot via Fivethirtyeight.com
The New York Times has a great interactive tool on The Upshot portion of their website as well. The tool assumes certain electoral votes going to each candidate, and you can try different scenarios to see how many paths to victory each candidate has. As the math goes, if you give every blue state shown above to Clinton, she wins. The Upshot puts Clinton’s chances of winning at 92 percent.
Basically, only something monumentally catastrophic will cause her to lose this election. You Still Have To VOTE
Of course, despite our headline here, everyone still has to vote to make this a reality. If Democrats get complacent, then that map could get a lot redder. That’s what tends to happen in “off-year” elections, since the Republicans are a lot more likely to get out and vote. It’s why we have a House of Representatives that has been gerrymandered to the point that it’s nearly impossible for the Democrats to regain control of it.
In 2012, House Democrats received more votes than Republicans, yet the Republicans retained control. Why? Redistricting. Had more Democrats voted in 2010, we may not be in such a predicament. Districts are redrawn at least once every 10 years, and the party that controls each state’s legislature generally tends to redraw them to their party’s favor. While some (myself included) may argue that districts should be drawn in a much more equitable manner, the fact remains that, currently, the party in power draws the district to their favor.
So go out and vote. Not just this year, but in every election. Every time. Vote in your local elections. Vote in primaries and general elections. Make your voice heard.
And let’s make this map even more blue. | 0 |
HA HA! Look At Arkansas Today Trump +28 If the election were held in Hillary's home state today, Trump would be winning by a landslide. 02/08/16 5 08/14/15 11 Mail with questions or comments about this site. "Godlike Productions" & "GLP" are registered trademarks of Zero Point Ltd. Godlike™ Website Design Copyright © 1999 - 2015 Godlikeproductions.com Page generated in 0.008s (8 queries) | 0 |
When the San Francisco Symphony canceled an upcoming pair of concerts in North Carolina to protest the state’s law curbing protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, it suddenly found itself with a hole in its calendar. It found a pointed way to fill it. Michael Tilson Thomas, the orchestra’s music director, is planning “Symphony Pride,” a gala concert to highlight the musical contributions of lesbian and gay composers, with the money it raises going to four nonprofit organizations that provide services for L. G. B. T. people. Given the contributions gay composers have made to American music, from the to Broadway, Mr. Thomas said in an telephone interview that he was surprised to discover that the orchestra had not done a similar concert before. “It just seemed to me to be something that would have happened a number of times,” said Mr. Thomas, who is gay. “But as it turns out, no, as far as we know it hasn’t happened. ” The pride concert, which will be held on April 4 at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, will feature music by composers including Lou Harrison, Henry Cowell, Meredith Monk and John Cage. Audra McDonald will perform a selection of songs by Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Kander and Ebb she will also narrate Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait. ” In December, the San Francisco Symphony canceled concerts it had planned to give on April 5 and 6 in Chapel Hill, N. C. joining a growing list of artists who have shunned the state, including Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr and the violinist Itzhak Perlman. The orchestra did so to protest a law, commonly known as House Bill 2, that nullified local ordinances establishing protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and required people in public buildings to use restrooms that correspond with the gender listed on their birth certificates. Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina, a Democrat who was elected in November, has been trying to persuade the legislature to repeal the measure, which he has called a hindrance to attracting business to the state. “It’s the old story,” Mr. Thomas said. “Once people in society figure out a way of depriving this group of people of their rights, well, it’s very easy to go on and think of some other group they can deprive of their rights next. ” Most of the proceeds of the “Symphony Pride” concert will go to Larkin Street Youth Services, the Transgender Law Center, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and the Trevor Project. Asked if the orchestra might host future pride concerts or galas, Mr. Thomas replied, “As my mother would have said, ‘From your lips to God’s ears. ’” | 1 |
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Ohio has become the second state – after Nevada – to order the Trump campaign to appear in court and answer charges of voter intimidation and suppression in urban areas.
A federal judge ordered Republican nominee Donald Trump, his longtime political advisor Roger Stone and the Ohio Republican Party into court this week to face charges of violating the Voting Rights Act and the remaining provisions of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which makes it illegal to conspire to deprive citizens of their civil rights, specifically voting rights. Cleveland.com reports :
The order entered Tuesday by U.S. District Judge James Gwin in Cleveland says the defendants’ response must include any objections to an order “limiting voter intimidation” or “limiting people at polling locations who are not authorized poll watchers or outside the polling stations.”
The speed in which Gwin ordered the response, while not necessarily signaling how he feels about the case, shows that the judge is taking the accusations of voter intimidation seriously before Nov. 8 Election Day.
The candidate may use a wink and a nod, but that doesn’t allow anyone to circumvent the federal laws governing elections. The US Constitution places all federal elections under the realm of congressional control, and the Voting Rights Act makes it illegal to intimidate or pressure anyone seeking to exercise their right to vote.
As the lawsuit indicates, even Ohio Republicans are reporting Trump supporters using illegal intimidation tactics in Cuyahoga County, the home of Cleveland’s large minority population:
According to Pat McDonald, the Republican Director of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, Trump supporters have already visited the county elections board identifying themselves as poll observers, even though they did not appear to be credentialed as poll observers as required under Ohio law. Indeed, Trump’s fearmongering has caused Cuyahoga County election officials to express concerns of instability on Election Day and to raise the prospect of deploying law-enforcement officials to the polls if necessary to address polling place issues.
Democrats filed suit late Sunday night to enjoin Republicans from efforts which have included fake poll watcher badges and verbal conduct by the Trump campaign and nominee, plus efforts by Roger Stone’s Super PAC to exit-poll minority polling places, when in fact Stone doesn’t run a polling operation and hasn’t during this year’s campaign:
The lawsuit cites several examples of such comments by Trump made in Ohio, including a statement made at an Aug. 22 rally in Akron. “You’ve got to get everybody to go out and watch, and go out and vote,” Trump said at the rally. “And when I say ‘watch,’ you know what I’m talking about, right?” It also references an unnamed senior Trump campaign official who told Bloomberg News that “we have three major voter suppression operations under way.”
It also takes aim at Stone and a group he controls, Stop the Steal Inc., and seeks to stop them from conducting “exit polling” in nine cities that historically vote Democrat. These include Cleveland, Philadelphia and Las Vegas. Stone said in an emailed statement that the polls his organizations will conduct will be scientific. “We seek only to determine if the election is honestly and fairly conducted and to provide an evidentiary basis for a challenge to the election if that is not the case,” he said in the statement. “I assume the purpose of this bogus lawsuit is to distract from the voter-fraud the Democrats have traditionally engaged in.”
Stone did not provide any evidence to back up his fraud claim.
Ohio isn’t the only battleground state in the fight against Republican dirty tricks at the polls. Lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona are also being fought over the same issues , but with each local problem, such as the 94 vigilante poll watchers Roger Stone has signed up in Arizona for his Super PAC.
The Democratic National Committee is also suing its national counterpart, and just received extensive information about the RNC’s poll watching plans and geographic targeting which is still being held under seal by the federal court. A federal judge is hearing that case in Newark, N.J. tomorrow at 10am and a decision is expected sometime later in the day.
Ironically, the multi-state litigation is happening because the national Republican Party successfully separated state level parties from the 1982 court monitoring agreement , so now the Democratic Party must file new lawsuits in multiple states in addition to the national case. However, two state party chairmen that are also RNC members have become embroiled in the national case, as well as some of the Ohio issues have been cited in the national case against the RNC.
The Ohio federal court has greatly expedited this case, so expect more news before election day about rulings meant to protect the general public from vigilante “ballot security” operations. | 0 |
Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe told senators that there has been “no effort” to impede the bureau’s investigation of Russian interference in the election and any Trump campaign collusion. [“There has been no effort to impede our investigation to date,” McCabe said. His comment came in response to a question by Sen. Marco Rubio ( ) about whether President Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey has impacted the investigation in any way. McCabe added, “Simply put, sir, you cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing, protecting the American people, and upholding the Constitution,” he said. Democrats have accused Trump of firing Comey to stymie the investigation. The Wall Street Journal reported that the FBI’s investigation had begun to pick up steam in the last few weeks, and Comey had asked for more resources from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores told the WSJ that Comey last met with Rosenstein on May 1 and “there was no discussion of resources or funds related to the Russia investigation at that meeting. ” Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe told senators on Thursday that he could not confirm that such a request was made, but said such a request would have been made to Congress, not through the Justice Department. “It’s not consistent with my understanding of how we request additional resources,” he said. | 1 |
In assuming the leadership of Fox News last month, Rupert Murdoch pledged a fresh start at a network reeling from accusations that its longtime chairman, Roger Ailes, had overseen a culture of harassment and intimidation. But on Friday, Mr. Murdoch made clear that — for now at least — Fox’s new era will be led by its old guard. Two veteran executives with deep ties to Mr. Ailes were named of Fox News, the network announced, a nod toward corporate stability that was also taken as a sign that Mr. Murdoch was not yet prepared to fully overhaul management at one of his most profitable franchises. Bill Shine, an affable Ailes loyalist who is well liked by some of the network’s anchors, like Sean Hannity, will oversee programming at Fox News and Fox Business Network. Jack Abernethy, a trusted Murdoch hand who runs Fox’s television station group, was placed in charge of business operations, including finance and advertising sales. The appointments are Mr. Murdoch’s first major personnel moves at the network since the ouster of Mr. Ailes, whose tenure was upturned by sexual harassment allegations by a former anchor, Gretchen Carlson. And it suggested that Mr. Murdoch and his sons, James and Lachlan, are now focused on calming an unsettled newsroom, even as more women come forward with troubling stories about the network’s culture under Mr. Ailes. “Anybody who expected seismic changes was wrong,” said Andrew Heyward, a former president of CBS News. “This sends a strong signal to a jittery, shaken staff that Fox News plans to stay the course. ” Mr. Murdoch, 85, who named himself executive chairman of Fox News on Friday, is expected to take a role there at least through the presidential election in November. Since becoming acting chief executive in July, Mr. Murdoch has been a constant presence in the Manhattan newsroom, piping up at news meetings and greeting employees in the hall. He recently moved into Mr. Ailes’s corner office on the second floor. Still, the fallout from the scandal is not over: An investigation by the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton Garrison into other allegations against Mr. Ailes is continuing. The inquiry has expanded into whether other executives knew of any improper behavior and failed to act on it. On Friday, Fox also announced that its longtime chief financial officer, Mark Kranz, would retire. His departure was linked to his oversight of the network’s finances during a period when financial settlements were made with women who had complained of harassment, according to two people who requested anonymity to describe internal matters. Fox News is a significant source of profit for its parent company, 21st Century Fox, and the Murdochs would prefer smooth operations at the cable channel during a tumultuous election season that has resulted in record ratings. The elder Mr. Murdoch has said he is committed to maintaining Fox’s “distinctive, powerful” voice, curbing the predictions of those who thought that the views of Fox’s opinion anchors might soften in the absence of Mr. Ailes. Mr. Shine, 53, has been with Fox since shortly after the channel debuted in 1996. He is a favored figure among some veteran anchors, including Mr. Hannity, who first recommended him to Mr. Ailes for a job. A Long Island native, Mr. Shine cut his teeth at the network producing Mr. Hannity’s program and working closely with personalities like Bill O’Reilly. His appointment was widely viewed as a sign of stability at a chaotic time, particularly with newsroom gossip focused on whether anchors could leave in the wake of Mr. Ailes’s departure. Since Ms. Carlson went public with her allegations on July 6, a schism has developed within Fox News between Fox News loyalists — some of whom owe their careers to Mr. Ailes — upset at his ouster and others who either did not come forward or were dismayed by those who were defending Mr. Ailes before the investigation was complete. “I could not be happier with the new management team at Fox News Channel,” the anchor Greta Van Susteren, who also worked closely with Mr. Shine, wrote on Twitter on Friday. “Each is well liked and well respected Thank you Rupert!” Still, Mr. Shine was considered one of Mr. Ailes’s most loyal lieutenants. And his name, along with those of other executives, surfaced in recent accounts by two women who came forward to describe difficult experiences at Fox News. Andrea Tantaros, a daytime host, told The New York Times that when she complained to Mr. Shine about being harassed by Mr. Ailes, he told her, “Don’t fight this. ” Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Shine said that Ms. Tantaros never complained to him about Mr. Ailes harassing her. Laurie Luhn, a former Fox booker, told New York magazine that Mr. Ailes enlisted aides, including Mr. Shine, to recommend doctors and make travel arrangements for her while she was involved in a relationship with Mr. Ailes. Mr. Shine has told associates that he did not know that Mr. Ailes was in a relationship with Ms. Luhn. In a statement on Friday, Mr. Murdoch wrote: “Bill Shine has developed and produced a signature prime time that has dominated the cable news landscape for 14 of his 20 years with Fox News. His leadership and keen eye for programming has played a fundamental role in the success of both Fox News and Fox Business Network. ” Of Mr. Abernethy, who is 60, Mr. Murdoch wrote that his appointment “will ensure continued growth of Fox News and Fox Business Network for generations to come. ” Fox News also announced that Suzanne Scott had been named executive vice president of programming and would oversee the network’s daytime and opinion shows. Jay Wallace will remain in charge of the news division. Ms. Scott and Mr. Wallace will report to Mr. Shine. Dianne Brandi, the general counsel, is expected to stay on as well. | 1 |
By Tai Amri Spann-Wilson / 400yearsinbabylon.blogspot.com
Dear Youth,
On this day after the election, many are asking themselves how this could have happened. Regardless of who anyone close to you voted for, and regardless of how you yourself might vote, in a democratic country, the questions still remain: How could so few be allowed to vote? Why do so few who are eligible vote? How can we call ourselves a country when there seems to be so much hatred between those with differing ideologies? Do we care at all for people who are not like us? These questions can be maddening, but I beg you, don’t give up hope. I promise you that just the thought of you gives so many of us so much hope. Especially me. And also, please don’t fall into the temptation to hate those who may hate you. These times we are living in are reminding me, oddly enough, of the Empire Strikes Back. Luke, reacting to the violence of the world tries to combat it with more violence and ends up getting his hand cut off. It’s only after he goes and studies the intricacies of justice that he is able to confront Darth Vader and the Emperor in triumph. If I were to pick a Grandmaster Jedi of our world, it would be Dr. Howard Thurman, the “pastor” of Martin Luther King. Dr. Thurman wrote of hate, “The logic of the development of hatred is death to the spirit and disintegration of ethical and moral value.” While hatred is a natural emotion, acting from it and allowing it to take root will never accomplish the goals we want them to. I call you StillSpeaking Youth to combat what I have seen older generations do to younger generations throughout my lifetime and into history. Each generation seems to think that their generation was the one that knew how best to fight. I’m afraid that the older I get the more I might start saying to younger folkx, “At least MY generation had the Occupy Movement.” or “At least my generation was involved in the Black Lives Matter Movement.” But the truth of the matter is that every generation gets their chance to shine and be a part of creating what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called, The Beloved Community. We hear a lot about Dr. King’s Dream, but what we hear are the little specifics, white children and Black children holding hands and blah, blah, blah. We often miss the big picture. The big picture was that Dr. King believed, as I do, that there is a world possible right here that is far different than the world we live in today. In that world: there is no hatred over religious and political differences; everyone is loved and cherished for who they are, no matter the color of their skin, their sexual orientation, their gender expression; and people aren’t treated differently because of how much money they make or what job they work. That Dream is possible, but only when we all put our hands into making this Beloved Community come true. I love each and every one of you so much, even when you get on my nerves I want to protect you from every harmful oppression. But the best way I know how to do that, is to try and help you be survivors in a world of hate. I always want to show you the survival tools I learned, and also the tools I’ve learned to help create a Beloved Community. Because I know, that just as I will someday be among the eldest generation of this world and that I hope to eventually be an ancestor that you call upon in your struggles, you will someday have to step up to the responsibilities of creating the Beloved Community in your own world just as me and my generation have. You don’t have to do it like us, in fact I really hope you don’t, we’ve made a lot of mistakes, but I want you to be those Love Warriors, I need you to be those Love Warriors, and I vow to be the Elder that you need. Just keep holding on and know this, the ancestors, including Dr. Thurman and Dr. King, are ALWAYS there when you call. You know I love you, Tai Amri (Baby Pastor and Jedi Master) Spann-Wilson 4.0 · | 0 |
IT’S CONFIRMED! MICHIGAN GOES RED! IT’S CONFIRMED! MICHIGAN GOES RED! Breaking News By Amy Moreno November 9, 2016
Donald Trump’s historic victory in the 2016 election is arguably one of the most amazing political victories of our lifetime.
Donald Trump broke the “blue wall” by taking Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and now, Michigan!
This is what Donald Trump’s electoral map looks like:
This looks like a country united.
The last time Michigan went red was 1988. Special thank you and SHOUT OUT to Michael Moore. We couldn’t have won Michigan without YOUR HELP. This viral video was a game-changer. Thanks, Mike! 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 |
BATON ROUGE, La. — A gunman fatally shot three law enforcement officers and wounded three others here on Sunday before being killed in a shootout with the police. The attack’s motive was unclear as of Sunday evening, leaving an anxious nation to wonder whether the anger over recent police shootings had prompted another act of retaliation against officers. What was clearer were the waves of worry that rushed across the United States as sketchy details emerged of a bloody melee Sunday morning on a workaday stretch of highway in Louisiana’s capital — a city that had already been rocked by the police shooting on July 5 of a black man, a purported murder plot against the police that was apparently foiled and many racially charged nights of protest and rage. State and local officials speaking at a news conference here on Sunday afternoon did not address whether the law enforcement officers who were killed and wounded — three members of the Baton Rouge Police Department and three deputies from the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office — had been lured to the scene. Police officials said the officers had responded to a call about a man carrying a gun. Officials initially believed that other people might have been involved in the attack, but the superintendent of the Louisiana State Police, Col. Michael D. Edmonson, said at a news conference that it was the act of a lone gunman. Some details about the gunman began to emerge late Sunday: Officials identified him as Gavin Long, an military veteran. According to military records released by the Marine Corps, Mr. Long served as a data network specialist and was a sergeant when he left the Marines in 2010. He enlisted in his hometown, Kansas City, Mo. in 2005, and was deployed to Iraq from June 2008 to January 2009, his records show. They also show a number of commendations, including the Good Conduct Medal. On a social media site registered under the name Gavin Long, a young man who refers to himself as “Cosmo” posted videos and podcasts and shared biographical and personal information that aligned with the information that the authorities had released, so far, about the gunman. In one YouTube video, titled, “Protesting, Oppression and How to Deal with Bullies,” the man discusses the killings of men at the hands of police officers, including the July 5 death here of Alton B. Sterling, and he advocates a bloody response instead of the protests that the deaths sparked. “One hundred percent of revolutions, of victims fighting their oppressors,” he said, “have been successful through fighting back, through bloodshed. Zero have been successful just over simply protesting. It doesn’t — it has never worked and it never will. You got to fight back. That’s the only way that a bully knows to quit. ” “You’ve got to stand on your rights, just like George Washington did, just like the other white rebels they celebrate and salute did,” he added. “That’s what Nat Turner did. That’s what Malcolm did. You got to stand, man. You got to sacrifice. ” In one of a string of podcasts the man posted, titled, “My Story,” he expounded on the recurrence of the number seven in his life. “My father was born in 1947. My mother was born in 1957. And I took physical form on . ” Sunday was the man’s 29th birthday. Around the country, political leaders, police officers and activists focused their attention, and their mourning, on the slain officers. They also sought to calm the tensions that welled up this month over the killings of black men by the police and the retaliatory violence directed at officers, including the July 7 killings of five officers in Dallas, carried out by a black man who said he wanted to kill white police officers. Just last week, President Obama was in Dallas for a memorial service, and on Sunday afternoon, he was at the White House, again addressing the nation after an assault on police officers. He said the killings were “an attack on all of us. ” “We have our divisions, and they are not new,” he said, noting that the country was probably in store for some heated political speech during the Republican National Convention this week in Cleveland. “Everyone right now focus on words and actions that can unite this country rather than divide it further,” the president said. “We need to temper our words and open our hearts, all of us. ” Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana said, “The violence, the hatred just has to stop. ” Colonel Edmonson said a call came in to police dispatch early Sunday reporting “a guy carrying a weapon” in the vicinity of the Hammond Aire Plaza shopping center on Airline Highway — a commercial thoroughfare dotted with carwashes, car dealerships and chain stores that cuts through a leafy residential neighborhood. It is also about a mile from the Baton Rouge Police Department headquarters, where protesters had held numerous rallies since July 5, when the police here fatally shot Mr. Sterling, after a confrontation in front of a convenience store. On Sunday, around 8:40 a. m. law enforcement officers observed the man, wearing all black and holding a rifle, outside a beauty supply store, the colonel said. In the next four minutes, there were reports of shots fired and officers struck, said Colonel Edmonson, whose agency will take the lead on the investigation, helped by local and federal investigators. Mark Clements, who lives near the shopping center, said in a telephone interview that he was in his backyard when he heard shots ring out. “I heard probably 10 to 12 gunshots go off,” he said. “We heard a bunch of sirens and choppers and everything since then. ” Avery Hall, 17, who works at a nearby carwash, said he was on his way to work when the gunfire erupted. “I was about to pull in at about 8:45, and we got caught in the crossfire,” he said. “I heard a lot of gunshots — a lot. I saw police ducking and shooting. I stopped and pulled into the Dodge dealership. I got out and heard more gunshots. We ducked. ” On the police dispatch radio, a voice could be heard shouting: “Shots fired! Officer down! Shots fired. Officer down! Got a city officer down. ” Around 8:48 a. m. officers fired at the suspect, killing him, Colonel Edmonson said. On Sunday afternoon, officials said that two of the slain officers were Baton Rouge city police officers, and that the third was from the Sheriff’s Office. One city police officer and two sheriff’s deputies were wounded, including one who was in critical condition. The shooting was the latest episode in a month of violence and extraordinary racial tension in the country. The night after the police shooting of Mr. Sterling, who was selling CDs outside a convenience store here, a black man was killed by the police during a traffic stop in a St. Paul suburb. The next night, five police officers were killed by a gunman in Dallas. Violence against the police, Mr. Edwards said, “doesn’t address any injustice, perceived or real. ” He continued, “It is just an injustice in and of itself. ” Speaking at the news conference, the police chief here, Carl Dabadie Jr. called the shooting “senseless” and asked people to pray for the officers and their families. “We are going to get through this as a family,” he said, “and we’re going to get through this together. ” The police in Baton Rouge had in recent days announced that they were investigating a plot by four people to target police officers, and they cited the threat to explain why their presence at local protests, which had been light at first, had grown heavy. The police said a was arrested this month after running from a burglary of the Cash American Pawn Shop in Baton Rouge. He and three others, including a arrested on Friday, were believed to have broken into the pawnshop through the roof. It was unclear whether the burglary was connected to Sunday’s shooting. Chief Dabadie told reporters at the time that the had told the police “that the reason the burglary was being done was to harm police officers. ” The explanation, however, was met with skepticism on social media sites, where many people believed the report was concocted by the police to justify their militarized response to the protests after the death of Mr. Sterling. “That was bull — it was a scare tactic to calm things down,” Arthur Reed of Stop the Killing, the group that first released the video of Mr. Sterling’s shooting, said on Sunday. “And it worked. I ain’t going out there if people are going to be out there trying to kill police. ” The intense protests had started to lose steam. Sima Atri, a lawyer who represented some of the protesters who were arrested last weekend, said recently that many protesters were afraid to hit the streets after the authorities’ aggressive approach last weekend, which included nearly 200 arrests. (Nearly 100 charges were dropped on Friday.) A protest on Saturday afternoon attracted fewer than a dozen people, who huddled on the side of the road under a tent to escape the blazing sun and flashed signs at passing cars. They were mostly white the protesters at large demonstrations shortly after Mr. Sterling’s death had been nearly all black. Louisiana has lately taken a harder line to defend its police officers, who this year will become a protected class under the state’s hate crimes law. The killing of the officers on Sunday occurred as hundreds of police officers trained in tactics braced for protests outside the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Cat Brooks, the of the Anti Project, cautioned against criticizing activists after the attack on Sunday in Baton Rouge. “I think anytime that there’s a loss of life — black, white, police officer, otherwise — it’s cause for us to take a moment and be sad about that life,” she said. “And I think we have to be really careful about where these shootings of police officers steer the conversation. I think it’s absurd to insinuate that a movement that is doing nothing more than demanding that the war on black life come to an end is in any way responsible for these police officers getting shot. ” Stephen Loomis, the president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association, has urged people not to bring their guns anywhere near Cleveland’s downtown during the convention because officers are in a “heightened state. ” In Cleveland on Sunday, Steve Thacker, 57, of Westlake, Ohio, stood in the city’s Public Square holding a semiautomatic assault rifle — allowed under the state’s law — as news broke that several officers had been killed in Baton Rouge. When asked about Mr. Loomis’s comments and the Baton Rouge shooting, Mr. Thacker said that despite the attack, he wanted to make a statement and show that people could continue to openly carry their weapons. “I pose no threat to anyone. I’m an American citizen. I’ve never been in trouble for anything,” said Mr. Thacker, an information technology engineer. “This is my time to come out and put my two cents’ worth in, albeit that it is a very strong statement. ” | 1 |
PESCARA DEL TRONTO, Italy — Mostly there was silence, virtually the only sound being that of a river flowing peacefully down the mountain that swallowed this tiny hamlet when an earthquake struck early Wednesday. On Thursday, some of the nearly 130 people who once lived here returned, accompanied by firefighters, to try to retrieve a few belongings and mementos of a life that was obliterated in a few violent seconds of shaking. “Where was your bedroom?” a young fireman asked a couple from under his yellow helmet. “It was where you see that white closet,” the woman answered, indicating a few shelves without doors hanging open, over the hill. The sidewall of their house collapsed down the slope, offering a glimpse of the intimacy of their lives. Italian officials now say that at least 267 people were killed in the mountain towns along the fault that erupted. But for the smallest of those places, like this one, the damage will be tallied not only in terms of the lost lives of family, friends and neighbors, but quite possibly the elimination of the towns themselves. Pescara del Tronto is gone. Perhaps five houses are left standing. And whether the place can ever be restored to the map seems an open question. The village is administratively part of the only slightly larger town of Arquata del Tronto, where 46 people are so far counted among the dead. For these largely isolated, hilltop towns in a rural region where the economy was already in decline, and where most of the permanent residents were already aging, the earthquake may be a coup de grâce, its own death knell. “It will be difficult for people to move back into Pescara del Tronto,” Michele Franchi, vice mayor of Arquata del Tronto, said, speaking from the camp near the main town, where half the tower pinnacles collapsed. “We should even wonder whether it’s wise to rebuild it right there, considering that it almost entirely came down. ” “But we need to move people out of tents quickly,” he added. “They need to see a chance for life here to restart, where possible. ” Of the 300 who were in the village when the quake struck, many were people who kept weekend houses to take a break from Rome, about 95 miles away. “I spent my life here,” said Enza, 52, an employee from Rome whose family home has been here for decades. “We are lucky because our house did not collapse. My mom, dad and brother left safely. But our entire lives are gone — so many friends, so many neighbors are no longer. How can we go back?” Enza was in no spirit to provide her full name. Residents do not feel like talking in Pescara del Tronto. The police and rescue officials escorted the few residents who had the courage to come back the day after the tragedy, in silence. Enza came back to recover her elderly parents’ medical devices and some clothes, so that they could feel somewhat less lost, she said. She was in Pescara del Tronto last weekend and went back to her work in Rome on Monday. Her brother took their parents safely into the street on Wednesday morning after the quake. The villages hit by the quake in the Marche region are along the ancient Roman road, the Via Salaria, that leads from Rome to the Adriatic Sea. Along this stretch of road, surrounded by green woods and high rocks, are now only cranes, tents and firefighters’ jeeps and trucks. Officers assigned to different points of the road discouraged travelers from taking it. Pescara del Tronto has been a summer or weekend destination, but many travelers were not strictly tourists. “This place was home to me and to so many others,” Enza said, breaking up in tears. “Not just the physical place — we all knew each other, so we all lost many, many members of our extended family. ” Enza said that, beyond the pain for lost friends and acquaintances, the worst part now was already the creeping nostalgia for a place that may have died with so many of its residents. “There used to be a stone step where we always sat down,” she said, pointing to a spot now buried under collapsed beams, roofs and stone bricks. “Our memories are completely erased. ” An ambulance passed by at full speed, sirens on, in the only narrow street leading into the town. Maybe one of her friends will become famous for being the last survivor taken out of the rubbles in Pescara del Tronto, Enza hoped. “You know, the worst is that this quake did not only take our future, but also took our past,” she said. | 1 |
We are now in the season of little envelopes for the doorman. This is also the season of oversize packages overwhelming the mailroom. And of lobby Christmas trees outshining humble menorahs. For millions of New Yorkers who live in apartment buildings, these things are as much a part of their holiday traditions as plum pudding and potato latkes. Many of the people who navigate these landscapes will spend the next week wondering how much to tip the handyman and whether the decorations affixed to their doors will pass muster with the neighbors. Clutching a glass of chardonnay at the building holiday party, they might roll their eyes at the menu — or, just as likely, balk at the lack of one. So, in the spirit of holiday giving, here’s some advice from a few seasoned New York apartment dwellers. If you want to bake cookies for your doorman, by all means do so, douse them in confectioners’ sugar and pass them around. But remember that sweets (or soap or candles) are no substitute for cash. “Cash is usually what’s expected,” said Paul Gottsegen, the president of Halstead Management. How much should you give? That depends on the size and style of your building. If your condo has a concierge and apartments that fetch eight figures, assume your budget item will dwarf that of someone in a small rental with only a super. Still, it can be a fraught decision. “Whether you make a lot or you don’t make enough, you have to deal with a financial issue at a time when you’re already spending a lot,” said S. Jhoanna Robledo, the editor in chief of Brick Underground, a real estate website. The average tip for a super ranges from $75 to $175, according to the site’s tipping guide. But everyone’s situation is different — and staff members understand that someone living on a fixed income, for example, may give only that plate of cookies. In other cases, you should give more. “When I did an renovation, I quadrupled my tip,” said Louise Phillips Forbes, an associate real estate broker at Halstead Property. Newcomers who signed a lease in September do not get a holiday pass. “If you just moved in at Thanksgiving, make this year a bigger acknowledgment,” Ms. Forbes said, since building staff members often lend a special helping hand to new tenants when they first arrive. Above all, do not stiff the staff, even if the doorman is on your naughty list. “It seems like a glaring slap in the face to not give anything,” Ms. Robledo said. Come December, lobbies turn into de facto post offices as packages roll in from online retailers. This year, some buildings have taken draconian measures to stem the flow. At the Chelsea rental where Rex Gonsalves lives, residents have been told that packages left for more than three days will be returned to the sender. But that rule could prove difficult to enforce since delivery services might not be inclined to retrieve packages that have been delivered to a correct address. Still, Mr. Gonsalves, an associate real estate broker at Halstead Property, learned his lesson when he returned home after Thanksgiving weekend to a pile of eight boxes and a grumpy doorman. “In hindsight, I should have waited until I came back to order it,” he said. Fortunately, none of his packages were returned, but the message was received: “The stress on the staff is so much,” he said. At the exclusive Riverhouse in Battery Park City, staff members now deliver packages directly to the apartments, according to Ingrid C. Manevitz, a litigator and resident. Another Riverhouse policy: Staff members will not leave packages with children, to minimize the risk of ruining holiday surprises. But the package pileup can make a nondoorman building a target. At John Carbone’s Bushwick rental, a number of packages left in the unattended lobby have been stolen since Thanksgiving. “It’s the season of stolen goods,” said Mr. Carbone, an agent at Brown Harris Stevens who unwittingly let a stranger into the building a few weeks ago, only to see her steal the contents of a box and leave. He now instructs carriers to deliver packages straight to his door, if possible, and he no longer holds the door for strangers. This year, the first night of Hanukkah falls on Christmas Eve. So, if ever there was a year to ponder the holiday lobby color scheme, this is it. “If somebody’s coming over for Hanukkah, and they walk into a lobby and they see a very religiously decorated tree with ornaments, they are offended,” said Dan Wurtzel, the president of First Service Residential New York. To keep the peace, avoid overtly religious decorations. “You don’t want a Nativity scene,” Mr. Wurtzel said. Menorahs usually get a pass because they are small, frequently relegated to a corner and usually enjoy a glaringly brief display season. “For the menorah, it’s eight days and you’re out,” said Steven D. Sladkus, a Manhattan real estate lawyer. On the other hand, “you get people saying, ‘Christmas ended a week ago. When is this stuff coming down? ’” Kwanzaa rarely gets even a nod from the decorating team. But beware of breaking tradition. Three years ago, newer shareholders of an Upper East Side decided to invite Mrs. Claus to the holiday party instead of Santa. That did not go over well with the old guard, according to Mr. Gonsalves, whose client was among the newer residents. The decorating committee also made a misstep when it replaced the traditional Douglas fir tree with a futuristic version made of lights and wires, but no greenery. “It blew up into this whole thing about Christmas losing its meaning,” Mr. Gonsalves said. Now, the fir is back and peace is restored. Although most buildings generally prohibit decorations on apartment doors, the Christmas wreath is usually tolerated. But when the family in 4C hangs a picture of baby Jesus for all to see, secular neighbors may object. “If it’s distasteful, then we have to be the bad guy and go to the resident and say, ‘This is not appropriate,’” Mr. Wurtzel said. Ignoring the neighbors is a tradition in New York, except once a year at the holiday party, where we’re expected to bond over croquettes and bubbly. Southgate, a in Midtown East, brings in professional carolers to serenade residents in the garden. Others host more modest affairs. But even a party can be reason to grumble. A Midtown West condo’s party was derailed this year when residents bickered about a menu during an email exchange. Mr. Gonsalves’s client requested nonalcoholic eggnog just to be a pain, he said. The joke fell flat. The board canceled the party (but not just because of the eggnog comment). For the most part, however, building parties go the way of other holiday functions. “Alcohol is usually served,” said Mr. Gottsegen, who offered one last piece of advice for revelers: “You don’t want to get too inebriated. ” | 1 |
Beverly Emers strode through campus with assurance, her son, Jabari, a few paces behind, as she gave the history of each monument at Bronx Community College this fall. Although decades older than most students there, Ms. Emers, 43, cannot walk between the buildings without someone waving, calling her name or inviting her to a party. It was not always this way. About fourteen years ago, Ms. Emers was too consumed with getting high to even consider college. It was winter 2003, and she was with friends strung out on drugs, her mind in a crazed disorientation. They had a word for the feeling: monos, Spanish for monkeys. By this time, Ms. Emers, who had been dealing drugs since she was 13, had lost track of the number of times she had been arrested. She dropped out of high school in 9th grade and spent six years in jail, usually on charges of selling or possessing drugs, according to police records. Ms. Emers knew the consequences, serving nine stints at the Rikers Island jail complex under three different aliases, according to records from the Department of Correction. Every time she walked out of jail, Ms. Emers swore she would never return. But each time she went back to the streets, only to start dealing again. But high on drugs that winter night, with her friends appearing like ghosts all around her, she found clarity. “I thought, ‘What am I doing here? ’” she recalled. “I saw the ugliness of my lifestyle for what it was. I knew where I was going wasn’t where I was supposed to be. And I just walked out. ” For a year, she had eluded officers on a parole violation charge, but no more. She went to the parole office in Midtown Manhattan to turn herself in. The office was closed, but she still banged on the back door. “You’re late,” she recalled an officer as saying. She replied: “You’re right. I’m more than a year late. ” Ms. Emers spent the next few months at Rikers. In a court hearing, she requested treatment for her drug addiction. She sought help from the Dreitzer House for Women and Children in East Harlem, which offers drug treatment and affordable housing. Ms. Emers moved into a shelter, where she was pregnant with Jabari and lived for the next year and a half, she said. But she struggled to disconnect from the toxic yet accepting community that had taken her in after an unhappy childhood. After kicking her drug habit, Ms. Emers said, she spent years “in limbo. ” “Not doing what I’d been doing before,” she said, “but not doing anything else instead. ” She cloistered herself in her Bronx apartment to avoid the temptations outside, but was depressed that her criminal record limited her job prospects. And when Jabari started school, his homework became another stressor for her, prompting verbal abuse. “He bore the brunt of that,” she said. Ms. Emers said she realized she needed to end the abuse, so she turned to Community School 61, an elementary school in the Bronx that partners with the Children’s Aid Society, one of eight organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. There she volunteered and joined the association. She also signed up for parenting classes at the Children’s Aid Society’s East Harlem Center and became more engaged at home. School administrators suggested she enroll in college, but Ms. Emers dismissed the idea until shortly after Jabari’s fifth grade graduation, when the mother and son were discussing his future. Jabari asked her, “When are you graduating?” “It wasn’t planned,” Jabari recalled. “It just came out. ” “And that was an aha! moment for me,” Ms. Emers said. “Because here I was telling him to read and study, and I don’t even have a high school diploma. ” So Ms. Emers “surrendered,” took college prep classes and enrolled in Bronx Community College in spring 2015. Ms. Emers, who is majoring in human services, hopes to work with South Bronx Rising Together, a partner of the Children’s Aid Society, which provides opportunities and educational resources to impoverished children and youth in the South Bronx. She is now on the dean’s list, serves as the executive secretary in student government and has received leadership and service awards from the college. She was also awarded the Kalief Browder Memorial Scholarship, given to students who served time in jail it is named after a man who was sent to Rikers at 16 and spent three years there without trial. In 2015 at the age of 22, Mr. Browder, who had been a student at the college, committed suicide, after struggling to rebuild his life following incarceration. Ms. Emers is the first recipient of the scholarship — $5, 000 for this academic year — which covers most of her costs. But an invitation to the scholarship gala held at the event space Tribeca Rooftop in June posed a problem. “I didn’t have a dress to go to a gala in,” she said. To help, the Children’s Aid Society withdrew $640 from the Neediest Cases Fund for gift cards to pay for Ms. Emers’s and Jabari’s attire for the event, as well as expenses for school uniforms and household items. The family also received $550 from the fund to help with clothing and household goods in 2012. The family receives $194 in cash assistance and $376 in food stamps each month. Dressed for the occasion, they arrived at the industrial penthouse with large windows overlooking Manhattan and the Hudson River. Feeling out of place, Ms. Emers found comfort in her son. “Jabari was the guy in the room,” she said, smiling. “And I’m not just saying that because he’s my son. ” Waiters passed hors d’oeuvres, and she encouraged Jabari, who wants to become a chef, to try a little of everything. “Just getting exposed to certain things could motivate him to work hard, and maybe he won’t make the same choices I did,” she said. Now, Ms. Emers is helping to plan a discussion in the spring on the importance of mental health and suicide prevention at her college. She also wants to develop resources to ease the transition between jail and civilian life for other formerly incarcerated students. Ms. Emers has not forgotten how far she has come, she said. More than a decade after leaving the treatment center, she still attends monthly meetings and visits her caseworker. “It’s an act of gratitude,” she said. “I want people to know we’re doing well, because they invested in me before I was doing well. This is our victory. ” | 1 |
By Sarah Jones on Fri, Oct 28th, 2016 at 8:02 pm Secretary Clinton put pressure on Comey to explain himself saying, "We've heard these rumors, we don't know what to believe. That is why it is incumbent on the FBI to tell us what they are talking about." Asked if she thought this could sink her campaign, Clinton laughed. Share on Twitter Print This Post
Hillary Clinton did a quick presser in Iowa to respond to questions about the FBI Director James Comey’s decision to appear to violate the Hatch Act 11 by participating in political activities 11 days before an election.
Secretary Clinton put pressure on Comey to explain himself saying, “We’ve heard these rumors, we don’t know what to believe. That is why it is incumbent on the FBI to tell us what they are talking about.”
Watch here: Video: Hillary Clinton calls on FBI to release all of the info it has & explain the issue in question without delay https://t.co/rg57U1RqPf
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) October 28, 2016
“The American people deserve to get the full and complete facts immediately. The director himself has said he doesn’t know if the emails referenced in his letter are significant or not,” the Democratic nominee said.
“That’s why it’s incumbent on the FBI to tell us what they’re talking about,” Clinton said.
Clinton pushed for more information to be released “without delay.” She said she found about the investigation from reports and that she wasn’t given advance notice. Clinton said she had not been contacted by Comey on this issue.
When asked what she would tell voters about her emails, Clinton responded, “I think people made up their minds a while ago about the emails.”
This might be the right place to mention the 22 million emails the Bush administration “lost” and the private RNC servers they used, as context for how important this issue really is to Republicans as a value.
Kristen Welker asked if Clinton was afraid that this could sink her campaign, to which Secretary Clinton responded with a big laugh: "Are you worried this could sink your campaign, Secretary Clinton," a reporter shouts as HRC walks out. Clinton only lets out a big laugh.
— Ruby Cramer (@rubycramer) October 28, 2016
The Republican FBI Director James Comey wrote the House on Friday to inform hopeful Republicans that they had found new emails relating to Clinton’s private email that begged further investigation.
It turns out the emails didn’t come from Clinton’s server and there doesn’t seem to be any there there, except for giving Republicans a reason their base needs to get out to vote.
Federal employees are forbidden from participating in political activities under the Hatch Act, and this is why a complaint has already been lodged against Comey .
Hillary Clinton laughed because what else is she supposed to do at this point. How many years on is this? Republicans have mined this hopeful scandal for so long it’s DOA. The press has followed Republicans’ lead with the absurd email story- a story as ridiculous as it is common, and a story that was never a story until Clinton did it.
Republicans and some in the press think this might sink the Clinton campaign. So they think America would rather put Putin’s puppet who laughs about sexually assaulting women in the White House than someone whose emails we’ve all read now and found nothing much but gossip.
Yeah, I don’t think so.
Dead story was dead before it started, but that won’t stop it from being spun into blood match. | 0 |
‘Tired of Waiting’ for Politicians, Voters Put Minimum Wage on Ballot in Four States Posted on Nov 4, 2016
By Lauren McCauley / Common Dreams “We all know that our economy is broken. We have seen that elected officials are just failing to do anything about it,” said Jonathan Schleifer, executive director of The Fairness Project. (Wisconsin Jobs Now/cc/flickr)
Voters, “tired of waiting” for federal lawmakers, will soon be casting their ballot in Arizona, Colorado, Maine, and Washington to raise the grossly inadequate minimum wage and, advocates hope, raise the standard of living for roughly 2.1 million Americans.
While none of the four ballot measures goes so far as to call for the $15 an hour wage that has been the rallying cry of the low wage worker movement and which became a pillar of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, the initiatives signify a determination among Americans that it is high time to demand “an economy that can work for everyone.”
“We all know that our economy is broken. We have seen that elected officials are just failing to do anything about it,” said Jonathan Schleifer, executive director of The Fairness Project. “The best way for us to make the changes that impact working Americans immediately is not to wait for politicians to figure this out but for us to support ballot measures that allow voters to speak out.”
Thus far, polls in all four states show that voters believe a wage increase is “long overdue and desperately needed,” added Schleifer, whose organization helped launch and finance the ballot measures.
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“We are confident that when working Americans see raises in their paychecks even before the next President is inaugurated,” he said, “the success of these measures will inspire even more ballot initiatives in the coming years.”
Arizona Proposition 206
A “yes” vote on Proposition 206 , known as the Fair Wages and Healthy Families Initiative, would raise the state’s minimum wage from $8.05 to $10 in 2017, and then incrementally to $12 by 2020. It also establishes the right to paid sick time off from employment.
Recent polling by Arizona Republic/Morrison/Cronkite News found that roughly 58 percent of voters support the measure, with 31 opposed, and another 10 percent still undecided.
“Enthusiasm for Proposition 206 has only gotten stronger over the course of this election season,” Bill Scheel, campaign manager of Arizona Healthy Families , the organization behind Proposition 206, said in a Wednesday press call. “Over the past three months, we have registered 150,000 new voters. Already, early vote numbers are showing that these Arizonans are crucial to raising wages for nearly a million workers in our state.”
The initiative has the support of a number of labor unions, family support groups, as well as the state Democratic party.
“No one who works 40 hours a week should have to live in poverty and decide between buying groceries, medicine, or paying the bills. Raising the minimum wage offers hardworking families the opportunity to put food on the table, care for their children, and creates a better future for our state,” said U.S. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-1), who is running against incumbent Sen. John McCain (R) for his seat in the U.S. Senate.
McCain opposes the measure, as do corporate lobby groups and the Chamber of Commerce.
Colorado Amendment 70
Colorado’s Amendment 70 , an initiated constitutional amendment, would raise the minimum wage from $8.31 to $9.30 per hour in 2017 and then increase it 90 cents each year until it reaches $12.00 in 2020.
September polling found that roughly 58 percent of voters are in support of the measure, while 36 percent are opposed. “We’ve known all along that Colorado voters support raising the wage to $12 by 2020 and that for many of them, especially lower income voters and women, they are more enthusiastic voters in this election because of our measure,” said Patty Kupfer, campaign manager for Colorado Families for a Fair Wage , the organization supporting Amendment 70.
As Kupfer notes, the initiative’s primary opponents are industry groups and “large restaurant chains who have an interest in keeping wages low.”
Amendment 70 is one of many Colorado ballot measures this year that progressives nationwide are watching, in addition to a measure calling for a single payer healthcare system as well as one that would stiffen requirements for amending the state’s constitution, which, as Common Dreams previously reported , “would transfer power away from voters, making the state more vulnerable to powerful interests.”
Maine Question 4
Question 4 on the Maine ballot asks voters if they “want to raise the minimum hourly wage of $7.50 to $9 in 2017, with annual $1 increases up to $12 in 2020, and annual cost-of-living increases thereafter?”
The citizen-initiated effort also seeks to raise the wages for tipped workers “from half the minimum wage to $5 in 2017, with annual $1 increases until it reaches the adjusted minimum wage.”
A poll conducted between Oct. 20 and Oct. 25 found that 57 percent of Mainers support the wage increase, while just 35 percent oppose it, and eight percent remain undecided. Proponents attribute its wide support to two years of organizing to build grassroots support and “establish a narrative of an economy that can work for everyone, as Mike Tipping, communications director with Mainers for Fair Wages , the organization supporting Question 4, put it in a recent press call.
Noting that the measure has strong support “across every demographic,” including among small businesses and restaurants, Tipping said he’s “proud to see this enthusiasm translate into more young people voting and more Mainers voting early to raise the minimum wage.”
Washington Initiative 1433
The most ambitious of the 2016 ballot efforts, Washington State’s Initiative 1433 supports incrementally raising the state’s minimum wage from $9.47 to $13.50 by 2020 and mandates that employers offer paid sick leave.
“Paid sick leave and minimum wage are issues that have had a deep effect on working families and drive support for our initiative at the polls,” said Carlo Caldirola-Davis, campaign manager for Raise Up Washington , the organization supporting Initiative 1433. “Voters understand that hard working Washingtonians should be able to care for their families and make ends meet.”
The most recent survey from pollster Stuart Elway found that I-1433 is leading 58 to 31 percent, with 11 percent undecided. The initiative has wide support, and has been endorsed by numerous publications, advocacy organizations, labor groups, and public officials, including Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who last spring tweeted: We have to do more to raise wages & support paid leave for hardworking families. I stand with @Raise_Up_WA in their work to do just that. -H — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 4, 2016
In 2014, Seattle became the first major city to approve a $15 minimum wage.
Lauren McCauley is a staff writer at Common Dreams. TAGS: | 0 |
Twitter Freaks Out When White People Spotted Holding “Blacks for Trump” Signs
The Bloomberg Politics Florida Poll surveyed nearly a thousand Florida residents who had either already voted or were committed to vote. The poll’s margin of error was 3 percentage points, according to the New York Post .
Clinton may like to boast of her lead here and in other key states, but the Florida results made it clear that Americans were still in control of choosing the candidate who becomes our next commander in chief.
In fact, 64 percent of Florida voters were quoted as saying that America was “on the wrong track”— and those voters seemed less likely to vote for Clinton, who represents the status quo of establishment politics. Advertisement - story continues below
American voting priorities are clear: 21 percent of Floridians said the biggest crisis facing the U.S. was the terrorist threat from the Islamic State group, while 17 percent believed it was unemployment and jobs, 15 percent health care and 13 percent a decline in real income for American workers.
Clearly, Americans are waking up. They trust Donald Trump to lead us, to keep us safe, to protect the middle class, and to restore an economy that protects the American worker and provides a decent way of life for us all, and for generations to come.
H/T WZ
Please share this article on Facebook and Twitter to help spread the word that Donald Trump is doing better in some swing states than the mainstream media would like you to believe. Advertisement - story continues below | 0 |
US abstains from UN vote calling for end to Cuban embargo Published time: 26 Oct, 2016 21:10 Get short URL U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro gesture after a news conference as part of President Obama's three-day visit to Cuba, in Havana March 21, 2016. © Carlos Barria / Reuters The US government abstained from the UN vote on a resolution calling for an end to the US economic embargo against Cuba, for the first time in 24 years.
The 193-member General Assembly adopted the resolution with 191 votes in favor on Wednesday. The only other abstention, besides the US, was Israel. The vote is non-binding but it can have political weight. U.S. decision to abstain in UN vote condemning Cuba embargo is small but meaningful. The cold war is over, Congress must lift embargo pic.twitter.com/lvjq8JlvNE — Charles Rangel (@cbrangel) October 26, 2016
Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez described the abstention as a "positive step for the future of improving relations between the United States and Cuba," according to Reuters. In case you missed it: Full speech delivered by #Cuba FM at today's vote against #US blockade #YoVotoVsBloqueo https://t.co/EJnmmyvS8J — José Ramón Cabañas (@JoseRCabanas) October 26, 2016
Rodriguez said in September that the embargo cost Cuba $4.6 billion last year, and the full damage over the length of the 50-year embargo was estimated at $125.9 billion.
When it was first announced that the US government would abstain from the vote, the entire General Assembly applauded.
"Abstaining on this resolution does not mean that the United States agrees with all of the policies and practices of the Cuban government. We do not," Samantha Power the US Ambassador to the United Nations told the General Assembly on Tuesday.
"We are profoundly concerned by the serious human rights violations that the Cuban government continues to commit with impunity against its own people," she said, according to AP. US abstains from UN vote to condemn Cuba embargo for the first time https://t.co/BMLy4VPAYm — The Guardian (@guardian) October 26, 2016
The Obama administration began normalizing relations with the Communist-run country in at the end of 2014, easing trade and travel restrictions. On July 20, 2015, diplomatic relations were restored, and embassies in the two countries were reopened. US approves airlines to fly to Cuba https://t.co/46qAzoxt6u pic.twitter.com/GN9lelYGcE — RT America (@RT_America) June 10, 2016
Lifting the full embargo will take the support of the Republican-run Congress, which remains critical of the administration’s efforts, arguing it offered too many concessions to Cuba and accepted little in return, especially on human rights and the restoration of expropriated property. ‘Making history’: First US cruise ship in nearly 40 years reaches Cuba (PHOTOS) https://t.co/xqu6jbAgBq pic.twitter.com/K9OE5OMaz4 — RT America (@RT_America) May 2, 2016
Obama made the first visit to Havana by a US president in 88 years in March. | 0 |
If you go by what some Twitter users have to say, it’s a wonder I can string together a sentence. I don’t know how I ever manage to get myself to the office given what a “dumb ass” I am — a Jew, no less, and someone who soils his pants out of fear of a Trump presidency. And if you don’t believe that last bit, someone using a pseudonymous Twitter account was kind enough to provide a graphic photograph of the supposed soiling, but not his or her actual name, because it’s just so much easier to hurl bile while cowering behind anonymity. Then again, I don’t know what it’s like to be really savaged by Twitter. No one has threatened to rape me or kill me (unless being advised to kill myself counts). No one has relegated me to a gas chamber. And no one has hit me with anything like the sustained racist and sexist barrage that forced the “Saturday Night Live” and “Ghostbusters” star Leslie Jones to temporarily leave Twitter in disgust. Now that Twitter is contemplating putting itself up for sale, we can only wonder what lucky suitor is going to walk away with such a charming catch. Twitter is seeking a buyer at a time of slowing subscriber growth (it hovers above the 300 million mark) and “decreasing user engagement,” as Jason Helfstein, the head of internet research at Oppenheimer Company, put it when he downgraded the stock in a report last week. There’s a host of possible reasons for this, including new competition, failure to adapt to media habits and an “open mike” quality that some potential users may find intimidating. But you have to wonder whether the cap on Twitter’s growth is tied more to that most basic — and base — of human emotions: hatred. It courses through Twitter at an alarming rate, turbocharged by this year’s political campaigns and the rise of movements that dabble in racist, sexist and tropes across the globe. And this is to say nothing of its use by terrorist recruiters. It’s a lamentable turn that Twitter says it is urgently working to address. Soon after Twitter took its place in the media revolution a decade ago, it proved to be a forceful amplifier of ideas and personalities, one that could be a political game changer. Its role in enabling the Arab Spring movements remains inspirational. It helped foster movements like the Tea Party and Black Lives Matter here in the United States. And, of course, it helped make possible the outsider candidacy of Donald J. Trump, who continues to use it, er, aggressively. The over his candidacy, and the news media’s coverage of it, have added a new cache of material to the uglier side of Twitter’s oeuvre. More often than not, the venom comes from pseudonymous accounts — the white hoods of our time. Just take a gander at @Bridget62945958, who published a series of posts against my colleague Binyamin Appelbaum. One message showed a series of lampshades. Its caption read: “This is your family when Trump wins. Get your Israeli passport ready. ” Twitter suspended the account after Mr. Appelbaum brought it to the attention of Twitter’s and chief executive, Jack Dorsey, by way of his own Twitter feed. A new account sprang right up to continue the vitriol, prompting Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, to write a post asking Mr. Dorsey, “How does it feel to watch Twitter turning into an cesspool?” Mr. Goldberg says he is torn about what Twitter should do, given that its cause — openness and free speech — is a reason he and so many other journalists are drawn to the service. “That’s the fundamental problem,” he told me. “At a certain point I’d rather take myself off the platform where the speech has become so offensive than advocate for the suppression of that speech. ” Twitter clearly wrestles with the same fundamental problem. It warns users they may not “threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender” and various other traits. Yet it often fumbles the enforcement. Charlie Warzel of BuzzFeed News unearthed a doozy last week. After a user who identified herself as Kathleen posted a tweet criticizing the Trump campaign, a Twitter member going by Adorable Deplorable directed a message back at her featuring a photograph of a beheaded man — apparently an ISIS victim — and the words, “Your [sic] heading for a deep hole. ” Twitter forced the photo’s removal after BuzzFeed’s inquiries, but it initially told Kathleen that the post did not violate its policies. This is apparently common. In a BuzzFeed survey of Twitter users, about 90 percent of those who said they had reported abuse said their complaints went unheeded. trolls are a problem for all social media — even Facebook, which keeps a tidier, more contained system. (To wit, the Facebook message a local New Jersey politician wrote to the Daily Beast writer Olivia Nuzzi after she posted something about Mr. Trump that he did not like: “Hope. You. Get. Raped. By. A. Syrian. Refugee. ”) But the openness of Twitter, and the sheer speed and volume of information that moves through it, present a particularly hard challenge that executives there say they are rushing to meet. “Everyone on Twitter should feel safe expressing diverse opinions and beliefs,” the company said in a statement it sent me on Saturday. “But behavior that harasses, intimidates or uses fear to silence another person’s voice should have no place on our platform. ” In a letter to shareholders, Mr. Dorsey said the company was putting in place technology enabling it to more readily detect abusive accounts, make it easier for users to report them and even prevent them in the first place. It’s all a bit tricky for a company founded with an absolutist ethos, once calling itself “the free speech wing of the free speech party. ” Some of its moves to curtail abuse have drawn accusations that it is applying a double standard aimed at conservatives. After Twitter placed the Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos on permanent suspension for his role in the Twitter campaign against Ms. Jones, he accused it of declaring “war on free speech,” specifically against “libertarians, conservatives and anyone who loves mischief. ” Another banned Twitter provocateur, Charles C. Johnson — whom my predecessor David Carr once called a “troll on steroids” — says he is planning a lawsuit to fight his suspension. In an interview, Mr. Johnson said he respected Twitter’s right to ban patently offensive speech but argued that it needed to set a consistent, uniformly applied standard. Still, he said, “the problem of trolls” might be unsolvable. “It might just be a human nature problem,” he said. “Maybe we don’t like each other that much — and that’s what Twitter has revealed. ” We didn’t need Twitter to reveal that. And in the previous two media revolutions — radio and television — the country managed to strike some sort of accommodation between the right to free speech and the greater civic good. That happened because there was an immediate national recognition that these media could have tremendous power to shape culture, politics and government for good and for ill. As Herbert Hoover moved to establish basic standards for radio, he acknowledged that it had “great possibilities of future influence” but was also of “potential public concern. ” He declared radio should be developed with public interest in mind, an idea that carried over to television. What followed were standards that forced broadcasters to devote at least some of their hours to civic affairs while avoiding obscene and “grossly offensive” content. At times, the efforts have wandered dangerously into censorship. But at least there was a big national discussion about what should beam into American living rooms. There was no similarly robust discussion at the start of this, the latest media revolution, and we can only hope that the political mistrust isn’t so great that we can’t have a constructive one now. Each new media development has served as a mirror for the society that spawned it. It sure seems time for a good, hard look. But what does this dumb, Jew know? | 1 |
ISIS has reportedly developed high powered explosives that can be hidden inside laptops and are entirely undetectable by regular airport scanners. [CBS News reports that following the discovery of equipment left behind by ISIS fighters at the University of Mosul in Northern Iraq, the US government believes that sophisticated new bombs could be concealed within laptop computers and may be much harder to detect by traditional airport security scanners. After Iraqi special forces recaptured the University of Mosul in January, it was discovered that ISIS had used the university’s equipment and laboratories to develop these new explosives. Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart. com | 1 |
“I thought I was impervious to hateful leftist rhetoric,” MILO told Breitbart News. “But this makes me rethink everything. Maybe I should just cancel the tour. There’s no coming back from this. ”[ | 1 |
Apart from being a tetchy, hotheaded, rude, bullying, cackhanded, ignorant, malevolent and embarrassingly useless excuse for a scientist, Professor Michael Mann — the guy behind the Hockey Stick — is also the most outrageous liar. [Mann used often to claim that he was a Nobel Prizewinner — till someone unhelpfully pointed out that he was but one of hundreds of scientists who contributed to Assessment Reports by the IPCC (which did win the Nobel Prize in 2007) This week the shyster was up to his old tricks again, telling a string of porkie pies at a climate science hearing of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Given how litigious the mendacious, bloviating poltroon can be — he’s currently engaged in at least two defamation suits: one against Tim Ball, the other against Mark Steyn — I obviously have to tread very carefully here. So I’d just like to say, as delicately and politely as I can to the Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State University: “Liar, liar. Your pants on fire. ” Here’s the evidence: Porkie Number One, Mann told the Congressional hearing he had no association or affiliation with the Climate Accountability Institute (one of the numerous ad hoc organisations formed in order to give the harassment of climate sceptics an air of scientific credibility). Yet according to his CV he sits on the Climate Accountability Institute’s advisory board and has done since 2014. Porkie Number Two, Mann denied having called his fellow climate scientist and special witness, former Georgia Tech Judith Curry, a “denier”. “A number of statements have been attributed to me. I don’t believe I’ve called anybody a denier,” he solemnly told the hearing. To which Judith Curry, sitting next to him, replied: “It’s in your written testimony. Go read it again. ” You can watch the moment where Curry smacks him down below: Mann then proceeded indignantly to quibble that though he might have called Curry a “climate science denier” he hadn’t called her a “climate change denier”. [As if there’s any meaningful distinction between the two slurs]. But this claim — as Stephen McIntyre notes — was also a lie. confronted with written evidence that he called Curry “climate science denier” Mann said he hadnt called her “climate CHANGE denier”. #FAKE pic. twitter. — Stephen McIntyre (@ClimateAudit) March 29, 2017, Porkie Number Three, Mann — busily trying to develop the case that climate scientists like himself are the innocent victims of vicious slurs — was asked whether he’d ever dismissed another of the expert witnesses on the panel, Roger Pielke Jr with the phrase “carnival barker” “You’d have to provide me with the context. I don’t remember everything I have said or done,” said Mann. Here’s one example: Mann said that he didn’t remember calling @RogerPielkeJr a “carnival barker”. But https: . pic. twitter. — Stephen McIntyre (@ClimateAudit) March 29, 2017, And here’s Mann again using the insult — clearly a personal favourite — on Judith Curry: Mann also called @curryja a “carnival barker” pic. twitter. — Stephen McIntyre (@ClimateAudit) March 29, 2017, Porkie Number Four, Mann, in yet another bid to present himself as a persecuted martyr of Republicans, claimed that Joe Barton — the Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee — had demanded all his “personal emails and correspondence with other scientists. ” This, again, was a lie. Barton had asked for Mann’s funding sources — which Mann, in his congressional testimony, said was fair game — but not for his personal emails. Here, once again, Steve McIntyre has the evidence. Mann: #fake claim tht Barton demanded “all of my personal emails and correspondence”. Barton: funding info, which Mann said “fair game” pic. twitter. — Stephen McIntyre (@ClimateAudit) March 29, 2017, Michael Mann claims to be an expert on climate change and is frequently called on by official panels like this Congressional committee to speak on behalf of the scientific establishment. Is there anyone who still takes this guy seriously? | 1 |
President Donald J. Trump killed the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) once and for all on Monday, signing an executive order officially withdrawing from the trade deal negotiations. [It came as a part of series of three separate executive actions that President Trump took on Monday. “The first is a withdrawal of the United States from the Trans Pacific Partnership,” White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said, explaining the first executive action President Trump was taking in the list of three. The other two were one freezing hiring of all federal employees except in the military, and one that restores the Mexico City policy. As President Trump signed the executive action killing the TPP, he announced for the cameras in the oval office that it was a “great thing for the American worker, what we just did. ” Trump campaigned heavily against TPP, so it’s only fitting he’d crush it once and for all on his first business day as President of the United States. It’s his efforts campaigning against it — and the efforts of failed presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders ( ) — that shook Washington’s political establishment, and eventually forced failed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton to come out against the deal that was supposed to be a legacy achievement of now former President Barack Obama. Trump hammered TPP repeatedly throughout his campaign and even leading up to it in speeches and interviews, including many exclusive interviews with Breitbart News. For instance, back in May 2015 — when many Republicans were in favor of TPP and before he announced his campaign — Trump told Breitbart News exclusively in an interview that the TPP was a “disaster” of a deal. “I deal with foreign companies all the time. I do a lot of business with foreign companies and do well with foreign companies,” Trump said in that May 2015 interview. “The trade deal is a disaster for many reasons. Number one, we don’t have any good negotiators in our government. That’s possibly the single greatest reason — we don’t have our best and our brightest negotiating for us. That’s a real problem. Number two, and very, very importantly, it doesn’t take into consideration the currency manipulation because we get beaten in trade more by currency manipulation than any single other factor. So it’s not even discussed in the trade deal. They’re not addressing the number one cause of the unfairness which is the currency manipulation. China manipulates their currency so brilliantly and it’s very, very hard to compete. The other thing they do and they do it despite agreements is they make it impossible to sell product in their countries even after they sign an agreement so we need much stronger penalties if they continue to do that. ” Later, as a candidate in November 2015, now President Trump then candidate Trump called the deal “insanity” in another exclusive Breitbart News interview. “The deal is insanity,” he said in November 2015. “That deal should not be supported and it should not be allowed to happen. ” “The deal is so bad because of the fact they don’t cover currency manipulation,” Trump added in that interview. “It’s the weapon used by foreign countries to hurt the United States and take away jobs. ” He repeatedly hammered it over and over again, and continued throughout the entire campaign. Just a couple weeks before the general election, Trump appeared on Breitbart News Daily and hammered TPP and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) — which he plans to renegotiate now with planned meetings with Canada and Mexico. “I have traveled around this country, and I have seen places that were vibrant 25 years ago,” Trump said in that October 2016 interview. “I’ve seen NAFTA. What NAFTA has done to our country is incredible. Probably 40 percent of our manufacturing jobs have been shipped to other places, and it’s only getting worse. And now they want to do TPP, which will be not as bad as NAFTA, but it’ll be very bad. It’ll be a continuation of the same. ” The move to nuke TPP once and for all, ripping it up, begins to fulfill one of Trump’s biggest promises. Now that he’s crushed the bad deal, it remains to be seen how he will negotiate positive deals for America. Back when Trump became presumptive GOP presidential nominee, he told Breitbart News in his 26th floor Trump Tower office in New York City he wants to negotiate good deals for American workers. “One of the big drastic policies is on trade,” Trump said in the May 2016 interview. “And what I want in trade is great deals. I’m fine with free trade, but all of our trade deals are doing horribly. It’s free trade for the other side, not for us. So I like free trade but all of our trade deals are doing terribly. What I want is great deals. You know what my trade policy is? I want to make great deals for the American people. It’s a very simple policy. You can call it anything you want — you can call it free trade, you can come up with three different names — but it’s a very simple policy: Make great deals for the American people. | 1 |
— Kaydee King (@KaydeeKing) November 9, 2016 The lesson from tonight's Dem losses: Time for Democrats to start listening to the voters. Stop running the same establishment candidates.
— People For Bernie (@People4Bernie) November 9, 2016 If Dems didn't want a tight race they shouldn't have worked against Bernie.
— Walker Bragman (@WalkerBragman) November 9, 2016
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who was one of Hillary Clinton’s most outspoken surrogates during the contentious Democratic primary, blamed Clinton’s poor performance on Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who has so far received a negligible number of votes nationally, saying Stein was the Ralph Nader of 2016 in preventing a Clinton victory. The account @BerniesTeachers threw Krugman’s analysis back in his face. Your candidate was the issue. Take responsibility. https://t.co/KHyOuUSrFS
— Teachers for Bernie (@BerniesTeachers) November 9, 2016
Ana Navarro, a Republican who recently endorsed Hillary Clinton, summed up the preposterous nature of the 2016 presidential election in this tweet: GOP nominated the only damn candidate who could lose to Hillary Clinton. Democrats nominated the only damn candidate who could lose to Trump
— Ana Navarro (@ananavarro) November 9, 2016
Popular left-wing Facebook page The Other 98%, which was pro-Sanders during the primary, responded to Trump’s surge by simply posting a meme of Sanders’ face with the text “All this could’ve been avoided. Thanks for nothing, DNC!” The meme has been shared almost 15,000 times in less than an hour:
Posted by The Other 98% on Tuesday, November 8, 2016
While Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton just before the Democratic National Convention in July, many of his supporters remained adamant in their refusal to support the DNC-anointed candidate, pointing to WikiLeaks’ revelations that top officials at the DNC had been working behind the scenes to tip the scales in Clinton’s favor by coordinating with media figures to circulate anti-Sanders narratives.
Rather than attribute a potential Trump presidency to the GOP nominee’s perceived popularity among voters, the closeness of this election could be credited to Hillary Clinton’s unfavorable ratings. According to RealClearPolitics, anywhere between 51 and 57 percent of voters had a negative opinion of the Democratic nominee.
As of 11 PM Eastern, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin remain too close to call. Clinton has 197 electoral votes to Trump’s 187.
Zach Cartwright is an activist and author from Richmond, Virginia. He enjoys writing about politics, government, and the media. Send him an email at [email protected] | 0 |
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Who knew The Donald had those kinds of magical powers?
Mainstream media bias took a bizarre turn Tuesday when the pro-Hillary New York Times published a report that Donald Trump is now invading the dreams of Muslim children. To illustrate that point, author Samantha Schmidt used anecdotal evidence of a child who said she had a scary dream involving the GOP nominee.
Schmidt wrote:
Bilal Elcharfa was pouring cereal for his children before school this month when his 7-year-old daughter, Maaria, walked into the kitchen, calling for him.
“Baba, I had a scary dream,” she said, hugging him tight. “About Donald Trump .”
It was the morning after the second presidential debate, which the Elcharfa family’s two youngest daughters watched in the basement of their Staten Island home with their parents. In the middle of the night, Maaria went to her parents’ room twice, unable to sleep, and walked to the living room and checked her family’s security camera.
That morning, Mr. Elcharfa, 52, asked his daughter what she saw in the nightmare.
“He was so mean to us,” she said. “He had a scary face, like a zombie or something.” In the dream, Maaria later said, Mr. Trump came to the home of every Muslim family in the country and put each one in jail.
“Many Muslim parents fear that the tensions could push their children away from the faith entirely. “We don’t know how to handle it sometimes,” Elcharfa is further quoted. “Maybe someday they won’t believe in anything,” Schmidt added.
But how is this Trump’s fault? Isn’t it the parents’ job to raise their children?
A post at the American Thinker observed:
Here we have an article blaming Donald Trump for terrorizing children for something he has never said or even intimated. He doesn’t want to put all Muslims in jail; he just wants to reduce immigration from countries that are un-vettable in the Middle East. One does not translate into the other.
But that assumes one deals in facts, logic, and reason. As we’ve seen this election season, the so-called “mainstream media,” known here as the Democrat-media complex, have decided to toss facts, logic and reason out the window in a concerted effort to elect Democrat Hillary Clinton, perhaps the most evil person ever nominated to the White House by a major party, by any means necessary — even using propaganda the likes of which would make Josef Goebbels smile.
There’s no question — if Democrats nominated Satan, the media would worship him and call you a bigot for opposing him.
Related Articles | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Even presidents dip into their savings when they are getting ready to switch jobs. Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, cashed out nearly $1 million in investments last year, according to their 2015 tax return, which the White House released on Friday. The figure suggests that they were preparing to finance large expenses like a home purchase. Mr. Obama said last month that the family would remain in the Washington area after he left the White House in January 2017, while his younger daughter, Sasha, finishes high school. The tax return, released before the filing deadline on Monday, shows that the Obamas earned $436, 065 last year and paid $81, 472 in total tax — an effective rate of about 18. 7 percent. They are getting a refund of $22, 859. The Obamas sold Treasury notes amounting to $994, 941, according to the return. The White House declined to give an explanation for the sales. But it is clear that the Obamas will face an array of new costs over the next year, including a likely home purchase and the first year of college for Malia, their older daughter. She is said to be considering Stanford and Harvard, where tuition and other costs exceed $66, 000 for the coming academic year. Unlike in previous years, the Obamas opted to take their refund instead of applying it to the next year’s tax payment. The return also showed: • Falling income. The Obamas earned about $40, 000 less than in the previous year, largely the result of a steep decline in royalties from the president’s two autobiographies, “Dreams From My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope. ” Their primary source of income was Mr. Obama’s $400, 000 salary, which was unchanged from 2014. But the roughly $60, 000 he earned from sales of the books in 2015 amounts to nearly $35, 000 less than the year before — and a far cry from the $8. 1 million they brought in 2008 and 2009. The family’s charitable contributions totaled more than what the books generated last year. • Giving back. The Obamas donated about 15 percent of their income — $64, 066 — to charity. The largest single contribution, about $9, 000, was to Fisher House, a favorite of the Obamas that provides accommodations to the families of service members who are receiving treatment at military and veterans’ hospitals. | 1 |
The UC Davis police team told the College Republican group who organised the event with MILO and Martin Shkreli that they “could not guarantee the safety of students, the speaker, or their officers. ”[“We were told by the chief of Davis police that they could not guarantee the safety of the students, the speaker, or the police officers if the event should go ahead,” said Gabrielle McDowell, vice chair of the UC Davis College Republicans. “As the organisation hosting the event, we would have been held personally responsible for any harm caused as a result of its taking place. We were therefore forced to cancel the event” she continued. Dozens of police were deployed by the university in an attempt to control the protests, as protestors holding ‘ ’ banners tore down barricades and broke into scuffles in an attempt to stop the event from taking place. University of California, Davis cancels event featuring Milo Yiannopoulos and Martin Shkreli after protests, fights pic. twitter. — BNO News (@BNONews) January 14, 2017, There are also photos of an arrest being made as a protestor attempted to break into the venue. Organizers, UC officials, police discussing safety of holding #SHKRELOPOULOS event @ucdavis #abc7now pic. twitter. — Katie Utehs (@KatieUtehs) January 14, 2017, The event was set to be the first event on the third and final leg of the MILO’s “Dangerous Faggot Tour. ” A day before the cancellation, the university’s interim chancellor released a statement condemning MILO’s allegedly “racist and sexist” beliefs but stating that “as a public university, we remain true to our obligation to uphold everyone’s First Amendment freedoms. “Therefore, we will not ask the Davis College Republicans, a organization, to cancel their event,” he continued. The statement also condemned “messages that promote hate. ” He was probably talking about MILO rather than the protesters, but perhaps now he will reconsider? You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com | 1 |
Only Demented Imbeciles want a Killary Reign of Terror ‹ › Since 2011, VNN has operated as part of the Veterans Today Network ; a group that operates over 50 plus media, information and service online sites for U.S. Military Veterans. Donald Trump Is Winning – Bill Mitchell and Stefan Molyneux By VNN on November 2, 2016 The greater the battle the greater the victory - Bill Mitchell
Stefan Molyneux : Looking at the FACTS
The silent majority for Trump vs The propagandists for Hillary
“The silent majority” vs “the Propagandists”
“The Facts” vs “the Reality”
Take a look at the enthusiastic crowds at the Trump Rallies: Right Side Broadcasting Related Posts: | 0 |
Siobhan McFadyen, Express, October 31, 2016
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing catastrophe over her failed migrant policy, according to a new report.
During the first six months of 2016, migrants committed 142,500 crimes, according to the Federal Criminal Police Office.
And the country has been hit by a spate of horrendous violent crime including rapes, sexual and physical assaults, stabbings, home invasions, robberies, burglaries and drug trafficking.
Adding to the country’s woes is the fact that thousands of people have gone missing after travelling to the country on invitation from the country’s leader.
Germany took in more than 1.1million migrants in the past year and parts of the country are crippled with a lack of infrastructure.
Now the true reality is hitting home ahead of next year’s elections as the far right surges in the polls threatening to topple the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader Mrs Merkel.
According to a report by the international policy council the Gatestone Institute, local police in many parts of the country admit that they are stretched to the limit.
The report states: “The rape of a ten-year-old girl in Leipzig, the largest city in Saxony, has drawn renewed attention to the spiralling levels of violent crime perpetrated by migrants in cities and towns across Germany.
“During the first six months of 2016, migrants committed 142,500 crimes, according to the Federal Criminal Police Office. This is equivalent to 780 crimes committed by migrants every day, an increase of nearly 40 per cent over 2015. The data includes only those crimes in which a suspect has been caught.
“Thousands of migrants who entered the country as ‘asylum seekers’ or ‘refugees’ have gone missing. They are, presumably, economic migrants who entered Germany on false pretences.
“Many are thought to be engaging in robbery and criminal violence.”
According to Freddi Lohse of the German Police Union in Hamburg, many migrant offenders view the leniency of the German justice system as a green light to continue delinquent behaviour, says the report.
He said: “They are used to tougher consequences in their home countries.
“They have no respect for us.”
Meanwhile a female police officer has admitted that officers are under attack and that the courts are a “joke.”
In a new book, Tania Kambouri, a German police officer, said: “For weeks, months and years I have noticed that Muslims, mostly young men, do not have even a minimum level of respect for the police.
“When we are out patrolling the streets, we are verbally abused by young Muslims.
“There is the body language, and insults like ‘s*** cop’ when passing by.
“If we make a traffic stop, the aggression increases ever further, this is overwhelmingly the case with migrants.
“It cannot be that offenders continue to fill the police files, hurt us physically, insult us, whatever, and there are no consequences.
“Many cases are closed or offenders are released on probation or whatever.
“Yes, what is happening in the courts today is a joke.”
Migrants committed 208,344 crimes in 2015, according to a confidential police report leaked to Bild.
This figure represents an 80 per cent increase since 2014 and is equivalent to 570 crimes committed by migrants every day, or 23 crimes each hour, in 2015 alone.
The report added: “The growing sense of lawlessness is substantiated by an October 24 YouGov poll which found that 68 per cent of Germans believe that security in the country has deteriorated during the past several years.
“Nearly 70 per cent of respondents said they fear for their lives and property in German train stations and subways, while 63 per cent feel unsafe at large public events.” | 0 |
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