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A university counselor sent to provide emergency assistance to triggered students told Breitbart News that the protests that forced the cancellation of the event with MILO and Martin Skhreli were both “completely peaceful and respectful. ”[“The police have been excellent, the students are being completely peaceful and respectful, and they are standing up for the rights of the community,” the woman said. She insisted that “this is a peaceful place” and that there was “no assault happening, this is Breitbart trying to make things an extreme situation,” before walking off. The woman told Breitbart she was a mental health professional for the university and had come to the event to provide emergency care to students attending the event. The event was cancelled after police said that the security of the speakers, the audience, and the officers could not be guaranteed. Reports showed protesters jumping barricades and attempting to storm the building, spitting on a cameraman, and dumping hot coffee on a photographer in their attempt to stop the event from happening. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com | 1 |
PITTSBURGH (AP) — With just one black person seated among the first 11 jurors chosen for Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial, defense lawyers are crying foul and accusing prosecutors of trying to systematically keep blacks off the jury. [The lawyers returned to court on Wednesday in Pittsburgh to pick a 12th juror and six alternates. Cosby arrived Wednesday just before 8 a. m. For now, Judge Steven O’Neill has rejected the race bias argument. Prosecutors said race was not a factor in their decision to strike two black women from the panel this week. They said one was a former Pittsburgh police detective who sued the city after she was arrested in a public scandal. O’Neill pledged to revisit the issue if defense lawyer Brian McMonagle, who had accused prosecutors of “a systematic exclusion of ” presented statistical evidence to back that up. The 100 people summoned to the Allegheny County courthouse for juror consideration so far have included 16 people of color. A new jury pool will be summoned on Wednesday. The jurors selected on Tuesday included a black woman who said she knew only “basic information” about the case, a young white man who initially expressed a tendency to believe police and two people who said they don’t read or watch the news. The jury now consists of seven men and four women — all but one of them white — in a case that Cosby has said may have racial undertones. The once known as America’s Dad for his beloved portrayal of Dr. Cliff Huxtable on “The Cosby Show” is charged with drugging and molesting a Temple University women’s basketball team manager at his home near Philadelphia in 2004. He has called the encounter consensual. Dozens of other women have made similar accusations against Cosby, 79, but O’Neill is allowing only one of them to testify at the June 5 trial in suburban Philadelphia. The jury from Pittsburgh will be sequestered nearly 300 miles from home. Cosby, in an interview last week, said race could be a motivating factor in the accusations against him. “Race plays a role in every trial, but it shouldn’t eclipse … the evidence,” Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson said. “This case is frankly more about gender, celebrity, how women are treated (and) Bill Cosby’s credibility. But race may take a more focused perspective because the defense has (raised it) recently. ” The trial will take place in Montgomery County, where Cosby had invited Andrea Constand to his home in 2004. Constand said she went seeking career advice. She said Cosby gave her wine and pills that put her in a stupor before molesting her on his couch. Constand was 30 and dating a woman at the time, while Cosby was 66 and long married to wife Camille. Cosby in sworn testimony has said he put his hand down Constand’s pants, but said she did not protest. Cosby has said he does not expect to testify. The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are the victims of sexual assault unless they come forward, as Constand has done. Cosby was arrested Dec. 30, 2015, days before the statute of limitations expired. He has pleaded not guilty and remains free on $1 million bail. | 1 |
Elton John famously collects eccentric eyewear. He is less widely known as a collector of photography — and yet the owns close to 8, 000 pieces dating from 1910 to the present. Highlights from that collection are now being shown here at Tate Modern. For the next six months (through May 7) “The Radical Eye” presents 191 works from the 1920s to the 1950s by a hit parade of photographers including André Kertesz, Edward Steichen, Man Ray, Irving Penn and Dorothea Lange. (Parts of the collection have been shown at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta in and at the Pinchuk Art Centre in Ukraine in 2007.) Mr. John and David Furnish, his husband and the collection’s are in talks with Tate over which works they will make available to the national collections as a “gift or promised gift,” said Simon Baker, senior curator of photography at Tate Modern. “This is undoubtedly one of the world’s most important collections of photography,” said Phillip Prodger, head of photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, who is not involved in the exhibition. “It contains many of the very finest examples of the most famous photographs in the world, particularly in that modern period between the wars. ” Mr. John began collecting photographs in 1990, shortly after coming out of rehab for alcohol addiction, he said in an interview published in the show’s catalog. While staying with friends in southern France, he attended a photography festival met a gallerist from Los Angeles who had brought photographs with him. “I’d never really noticed photography as an art form before,” he said in the interview. “I looked at them and thought, oh my God, these are so beautiful. I bought about 12 on the spot. ” The timing “couldn’t have been better,” Mr. John said. “Photographs were very undervalued then. ” He began by buying early photographs, including some that had caught his eye as a child, and hunted for vintage prints. In 1993, he paid $193, 895 for a print of Man Ray’s “Glass Tears” (1932) the most expensive photograph sold at auction at the time. “When he found his sobriety, he saw life with new eyes,” said Newell Harbin, the director of Mr. John’s collection since 2012. “He realized, going back to when he was a child and looking at posters of these famous photographs, that this was his moment, and that he could really start from there. ” “The Radical Eye” is like a crash course in photography: it includes nearly every major photographer from the period, and presents their works thematically rather than chronologically. Most of the pictures are in gilded, or painted wooden frames made for Mr. John in Atlanta, where he has a home. A room of portraits at the start features photographs by Man Ray of Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brancusi, and the Surrealist poet André Breton, among others there are a total of 25 Man Ray works in the show. The same gallery contains a wall of Irving Penn “corner portraits” — in which famous figures like Spencer Tracy, Joe Louis, Duke Ellington and Salvador Dalí were photographed squeezed into the corner of a room. Elsewhere in the show are significant works like Paul Strand’s “Wall Street, New York” (1915) and Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother” (1936). But the exhibition also contains many gems, such as an image of a winding staircase taken around 1928 by Werner Mantz, or the Surrealist stills of Josef Breitenbach. “The really amazing thing about this collection is the provenance of some of the key works,” said Shoair Mavlian, the Tate assistant curator who organized the show together with Mr. Baker and Ms. Harbin. Ms. Mavlian said that the tiny image of Kertesz’s “Underwater Swimmer” was the very first contact print made by the artist in 1917, and the 1932 Herbert Bayer photomontage “Humanly Impossible ( )” was the first print that Bayer painted and which “every subsequent reproduction was made from. ” Ms. Harbin, who was previously manager of the photography collection at the Art Institute of Chicago, said Mr. John collected from all periods, including contemporary, and had recently acquired works by Christopher Williams and Sally Mann. “It has to speak to him,” she said. “He doesn’t just get that photographer because it has to tick a box. ” Mr. Prodger of the National Portrait Gallery’s said Mr. John was “very uncompromising in his collecting, and always sought out those examples that thrill when you see them. ” “It’s incredible not just that he has a print of such and such,” he added, “but he has the print. ” | 1 |
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Broc West joins us once again for our ongoing look at news from across the Asia-Pacific. This time we cover: how countries across the Asia-Pacific are inching out from under the American umbrella; how the Japanese and the Russians may (or may not) be on the verge of formally concluding a WWII peace treaty; and Australia and Indonesia’s potential joint exercises in the South China Sea.
SHOW NOTES: | 0 |
As the year end closed out in one Texas county, the remains of human smuggling victims had been recovered in what has become known as the Brooks County killing fields. [Brooks County is not a border county. In fact, it is located about 80 miles north of the border. Yet it is the focus of human smuggling activity in South Texas that often leads to death for many of those who have paid for illegal transportation around a Border Patrol checkpoint. “The Border Patrol checkpoint is located right in the middle of our county,” newly Sheriff Benny Martinez told Breitbart Texas Sunday morning. “There is no way to move through the county for these human smugglers other than to attempt to sneak their human cargo through the checkpoint, or march them around the checkpoint and through the dangerous ranch lands in the county. This is where the deaths occur. ” Martinez told Breitbart Texas his county has recovered the bodies or remains of 61 people in 2016. “This happens because the human smugglers have no regard for human life,” Martinez said. “They will simply abandon anyone who cannot keep up with the group — leaving them to die from heat exhaustion, dehydration, or exposure to the elements. ” Breitbart Texas has accompanied Sheriff Martinez and other Brooks County deputies to the scene of body recoveries in the past. The rotting bodies and picked apart bones tell a tragic story of what must have been a horrifying and excruciating death for these people who paid as much as $6, 000 to human smugglers to get them safely to their destination. “The treatment of these illegal immigrants by their human smugglers is horrific,” Sheriff Martinez told Breitbart Texas in June 2016. “The people they take on these marches around the checkpoint are for the heat and hazardous terrain of these ranches. When they can’t keep up, they are left behind where they will die quickly if they don’t get help. ” The county, already strapped for cash, must deal with the cost of processing the remains and burial of the bodies. This can cost the county taxpayers up to $2, 000 per body, Breitbart Texas previously reported. Martinez is responsible for patrolling an area about the size of Rhode Island with a handful of vastly underpaid deputies. Communications capabilities are sketchy in many areas of the county where cell phones and police radios won’t work because of the lack of equipment. “We need help in establishing better communications for our deputies,” Martinez said. “It is important for officer safety, but it is also important when deputies come across someone in need of assistance. The migrants will frequently walk out of the fields and into the roadway after days of wandering lost in the fields. Many need help right away. ” Martinez said thing may soon get worse as the Border Patrol is expanding the checkpoint to eight lanes. “They are creating a smuggling superhighway right in the middle of our county,” Martinez expressed. “This could create even more pressure on our resources as more smuggling vehicles make their way north from the border. ” The new sheriff said they have seen an increase in traffic through the ranches. Increased presence from Border Patrol search and rescue teams, Texas Department of Public Safety troopers, and Texas State Guard search teams have helped keep the numbers of deaths down. Breitbart Texas has reported extensively on the rescues of migrants who have been abandoned and left to die by the ruthless smugglers in the area. Border Patrol agents rescued an illegal immigrant woman trying to bypass a checkpoint in Brooks County in November, Breitbart Texas reported. She was found unconscious after being abandoned by human smugglers. In April, two teenage girls were rescued from a ranch in Brooks County after being abandoned. One of the girls, a Mexican national, was found unconscious and clinging to life. She had to be transported by helicopter to a Corpus Christi hospital. “These heartless criminals take ruthless steps to exploit the multitude of poor immigrants from Mexico and Central America trying to reach the United States at any cost and the problem is getting worse,” Chief Patrol Agent Manuel Padilla, Jr. said at the time in a written statement. “No one wants to see their loved ones being violated or abandoned in this manner. ” Death is not the only risk to the migrants being smuggled through Brooks County. Breitbart Texas previously reported, “about the specific kinds of horror faced by these illegal immigrants because of the open border policies of the federal government. Rape, abuse, abandonment and death are often the treatment these people receive from their human smugglers who are often connected to Mexican cartels. ” Now the task of stopping the human smugglers and ending the needless deaths of illegal immigrants in this South Texas county fall on Sheriff Martinez. “We appreciate the help with get from other agencies and from the volunteer police officers who give their time to help patrol our county,” Martinez said. “We have limited resources, but we will continue to push to stop the human smugglers and to find the lost migrants before they succumb to the elements. ” 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. | 1 |
18 SHARE The Amish in America have committed their vote to Donald Trump guaranteeing him the Presidency. (AP Photo / Dennis System)
COLUMBUS, OH (AP) — History was made today in Columbus, Ohio when more than 3 million Amish poured into the city to see the American Amish Brotherhood (AAB), an organization which acts as an informal governing body for the Amish community, endorse Donald Trump for president. That number represents a significant portion of the total Amish population, which the United States Census Bureau says numbers more than 20 million men and women nationwide all pledging their vote to Trump for President. With the full force of the Amish community behind him, Donald Trump is now mathematically guaranteed to win the presidency in November.
The organization typically meets once a year and the meetings usually consist of about 300 Amish leaders who meet to discuss the challenges, such as urban sprawl, that face the community. This year, however, the organization wanted as many people in attendance as possible so they can effectively instruct all Amish men and women of legal voting age to cast their vote for the flamboyant Republican nominee.
The Amish, who are direct descendants of the protestant reformation sect known as the Anabaptists, have typically stayed out of politics in the past. As a general rule, they don’t vote, serve in the military, or engage in any other displays of patriotism. This year, however, the AAB has said that it is imperative that they get involved in the democratic process.
“Over the past eight years, the Democratic Party has launched a systematic assault on biblical virtues,” said AAB chairman Menno Simons. “We have seen more and more Christians being persecuted for their faith; we have seen the state defile the institution of marriage. Now, they want to put a woman in the nation’s highest leadership role in direct violation of 1 Timothy 2:12. We need to stop this assault and take a stand for biblical principles. Donald Trump has shown in both action and deed that he is committed to restoring this country to the Lord’s way.”
According to statistician Nate Silver of the website fivethirtyeight.com, there are no possible scenarios in which Hillary Clinton can win with Donald Trump carrying the Amish vote.
“The Amish have their highest numbers in perennial swing states like Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa,” Silver noted. “They also have strong numbers in reliably Democratic states like Michigan, Illinois, and New York, meaning that Hillary will lose those states as well. There is also a sizeable community in Florida which, while not as large as it is in the Midwest, is still large enough to turn Florida for Trump. Over the next two weeks, you can expect Hillary to enter into a state of freefall in all of my predictive models.”
The Clinton campaign issued a written statement to the AAB asking them to reconsider their decision.
“I don’t believe that Donald Trump is the person who best represents your interests,” Clinton wrote to the AAB. “As a career real estate developer, he represents a clear threat to your simple way of life. As former first lady of Arkansas, I understand the concerns of rural Americans more than any candidate in this election. I implore you to consider all of the facts before voting for my opponent.”
Most pundits believe that Mrs. Clinton’s plea is too little too late.
During a press conference in Manhattan, Trump thanked the AAB for their support and promised to put the Amish to work maintaining government buildings, which he said would save taxpayers millions because “the Amish do great work for a very low price.”
Though Clinton has pledged to stay in the race until the very end, many of her campaign workers have already resigned. According to the Associated Press, it is expected that the Clinton campaign will lose 50% of its staff over the next two weeks. There is a general mood of hopelessness and despair in the Clinton camp, and many simply want to cut their losses.
“It looked like she was going to win this election easily,” said Paul Horner, a campaign worker in Ohio, “But this is what happens when you wake a sleeping giant. Cleary, Mrs. Clinton took far too much for granted in this race, and we are all now paying the price. It’s really sad to see the campaign end this way.”
If you are interested in learning more about the Amish community and the AAB, you can contact the Pennsylvania Amish Heritage Museum at (785) 273-0325. TAGS | 0 |
Drew Stratton November 19, 2016 Prep Blog Review: About Living Off-grid
People today have become overly dependent on energy and this is the main reason why starting living off-grid seems difficult. But it is not. Think about the fact that people lived before the grid even existed.
As we all know, an EMP attack is a disaster most of us are preparing for. When our electricity driven society will suddenly fall, how long will you survive?
From today’s Prep Blog Review you will find out how it is like to live off-grid for 37 years, how to build a faraday cage or how to build your off-grid cooking stove. Confessions Off A Man Who Lived 37 Years Off-grid
“Imagine if you can, a homestead nestled deep in the forest, fronting a beautiful lake. Oh sure… that sounds dreamy and might be reality for a lucky few.
But now let’s take it a step further. The homestead sits on the shore of a remote, pristine lake which is located 100 miles in the wilderness.
No roads, no trails, no neighbors. Only forest, water, animals and silence. Float plane is the only way in and out. When the float plane drops you off, accelerates down the lake, lifts off the surface and becomes a speck on the horizon, you then realize your last physical connection with humanity just left.
Standing on the dock, you have the overwhelming sense you are the only person left on the planet. Exciting!”
Read more on Ask A Prepper . The Smokeless & Easy-To-Build Off-Grid Cooking Stove
“Outdoor cooking is a major part of my off-grid experience, and so a reliable outdoor stove was a must-have. And with many options of wood-burning stoves out there, fuel-efficiency and minimal smoke were at the top of my list.
After much research, the rocket stove because our outdoor stove of choice. In this article, I will share with you the concept of the rocket stove, how we built two of them, and its advantages and disadvantages.
A wood-burning smokeless stove sounds impossible, right? Let me explain it this way. Smoke is un-burned fuel. The rocket stove makes use of all the fuel. Everything gets burned in the combustion chamber before leaving the chimney. This concept is also seen in the Dakota fire pit.
The rocket stove, when fired up, sounds similar to that of a rocket taking off – hence, its name.”
Read more on Off The Grid News . How To Build A Faraday Cage To Protect Your Electronics
“One of the things that gives us the most troubled sleep of all is the risk of, and outcomes from, an EMP attack on the US. In case you’re not fully up to speed on this draconian danger, we discuss EMP attacks – what they are, how fearsome their impacts would be, and how easy they are to stage – in several articles here.
Our sense is that the danger of an EMP event is steadily increasing. To be blunt, the world is becoming an increasingly unfriendly place, and with growing sophistication of both nuclear weapons and their associated delivery systems (ie missiles) by both North Korea and Iran (as well as other countries that aren’t being quite so public about their actions) and some threats that translate quite clearly to ‘if we need to, we’ll use an EMP device to bring your country to its knees’, the thought of an EMP attack is far from impossible to countenance.
At the same time, our lives continue to become more and more dependent on electronics for everything we do.”
Read more on Backdoor Prepper . 10 Widespread Disaster That Could Happen At Any Time
“When preparing for a widespread disaster, it’s helpful to have a specific type of disaster in mind. Envisioning a particular survival scenario helps you to be more focused and think of preparations that might not have occurred to you otherwise.
How would a pandemic play out in your town? Or a terrorist attack? Or an economic collapse? What specifically would happen to your community, and how would it affect you and your family? And based on that, are there any other preparations you could make to ensure your family’s safety?
As you can see, mentally walking yourself through various types of disasters will help you to be more prepared. With that in mind, here is a list of the 10 most likely widespread disasters. You should seriously consider the possibility of experiencing these events. I’m not saying you should obsess over them–don’t spend your life in fear–but you should do your best to be ready for them.”
Read more on Urban Survival Site . Starting Your Off-grid Living With Solar Power
“Harnessing the sun’s power has become a popular trend in the last ten years and we now have a large array of options for powering our homes using solar power.
Living off the grid requires a lot of work and innovation in order to reach a certain level of self-sufficiency. Things get easier if you are able to harness the power of the sun and use it for all your needs.
From passive cooling to batch solar water heaters, everything is now available when it comes to DIY solar power projects.
People are beginning to understand that solar power is not as complicated as certain individuals would want you to believe.
This is a technology that has become extremely accessible in our modern times and you just need a few basic skills in order to make your own project.”
Read more on Prepper’s Will .
You can generate power and keep your loved ones safe with the right power generator. You can choose your right now.
This article has been written by Drew Stratton for Survivopedia. 49 total views, 49 views today | 0 |
WASHINGTON — In recent days, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and South Africa joined the growing list of countries hunting down tax evaders among citizens who own offshore accounts. The French bank BNP Paribas said it would shut its Cayman Islands branch. In Pakistan, a cricketer turned politician who had attacked the prime minister over his family’s offshore accounts admitted that he, too, had used a shell company. And the Group of 7 nations, meeting in Japan, agreed to crack down on illicit finance. It was the latest fallout from the Panama Papers, the largest leak of secret documents to journalists in history. In the eight weeks since the publication of the first articles by some 370 reporters in 76 countries, an effort organized by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the impact of the revelations on the shadowy world of offshore finance has been striking — even as prospects for reform remain uncertain. Investigations are underway in dozens of countries, including the United States. Proposed laws requiring disclosure of the true owners of offshore companies to tax collectors or to the public have new momentum. Cartoonists have had a field day, reflecting the widespread anger and disgust pressuring governments to act. “The reaction around the world has been pretty spectacular,” said Gabriel Zucman, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has estimated that 8 percent of the world’s personal wealth is hidden in tax havens. “The demand for financial transparency and tax reform is really growing. It’s the first time there’s been public outrage at the global level on these issues. ” The disclosure by an anonymous leaker of 11. 5 million documents from a Panamanian law firm at the center of the offshore industry to a German newspaper was a landmark in another way as well. It was the latest and biggest in a series of recent megaleaks, establishing the unauthorized disclosure of government and corporate secrets as a contagious phenomenon that is unlikely to go away. Since 2010, when a intelligence analyst in Iraq copied thousands of classified files onto CDs labeled as Lady Gaga songs and gave them to the antisecrecy organization WikiLeaks, it has become clear that technology has revolutionized leaking. Pfc. Chelsea Manning, then known as Bradley, disclosed hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and military field reports. In 2013, Edward J. Snowden, citing Private Manning as an inspiration, gave a similar number of highly classified National Security Agency documents to a few journalists. About a year ago, a using the name John Doe contacted Bastian Obermayer, a reporter for the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung in Munich, and eventually passed to him a far greater volume of material from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca: The trove totaled 2. 6 terabytes, more than 1, 000 times the size of the Manning files. In a subsequent manifesto issued by way of the German newspaper, John Doe cited the precedent of Mr. Snowden, who he said deserved “a hero’s welcome. ” Trevor Timm, the executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which supports what it calls transparency journalism, said the impact of each leak had inspired the next leaker. “Especially with the Panama Papers, I think it’s now a trend,” Mr. Timm said. “When people inside organizations see the impact that on this scale can have, they follow that example. ” None of this would have been conceivable in the photocopier era, when the Panama Papers would have required a fleet of to deliver. “These are disclosures not of documents but of databases — entire libraries,” said Steven Aftergood, who tracks government secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists. John Doe’s manifesto was tellingly titled “The Revolution Will Be Digitized. ” Of course, what many advocates cheer, the organizations exposed by the leaks denounce. In a series of statements, Mossack Fonseca has criticized journalists’ use of “information stolen from our files,” asserted that news reports “misrepresented the nature of our work” and threatened legal action. It is not clear whether John Doe is a disgruntled insider or a hacker who broke into the law firm’s files, as the firm has suggested. The same tools that are being used by activists and journalists for what they consider to be purposes can be used by others. Hackers stole nude photographs from celebrities’ Apple accounts in 2014 and posted them on the web. A computer later that year, attributed to North Korea, obtained hundreds of Sony Corporation emails, many of which were made public. The hacker group known as Anonymous has released voluminous email files of two security firms, Stratfor and HBGary Federal. For Mr. Obermayer and a colleague at Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frederik Obermaier, the fact that anonymous companies created by Mossack Fonseca were being used to evade taxes and launder illicit money justified publication. They shared the Panama Papers with the international journalists’ group to bring strength and local expertise to the data. When the articles were published, their newspaper’s web servers crashed from the initial volume of readers. Mr. Obermayer said it was “a really strange feeling — that something that started with you has led to mass demonstrations in several countries. ” Within days, Iceland’s prime minister, whose offshore company was revealed by the papers, had stepped down. So had a Spanish government minister, an Armenian justice official and a member of the ethics committee of FIFA, the world soccer association. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whose friends had moved $2 billion through offshore companies, denounced the disclosures as an American plot to smear his country. A Mexican cartel suspect was arrested in Uruguay at an address disclosed in the documents. Sierra Leone began to investigate mining contracts. The Swiss police raided the European soccer headquarters. The art market was rocked by revelations of subterfuge in the sale of valuable paintings. The list went on. In the United States, the revelations of hidden wealth have resonated amid growing public concern about economic inequality the word yacht appears in the documents 19, 380 times. President Obama has deplored how the rich and some companies are “gaming the system,” as he said the documents showed, and has proposed multiple reforms. In fact, some experts believe the “Panama” label is misleading, obscuring the central role of several states, including Delaware, Wyoming and Nevada, in registering companies with hidden ownership. Mossack Fonseca probably represents just 5 or 10 percent of the industry creating anonymous companies, Mr. Zucman of Berkeley said, so the disclosures have left the vast majority hidden. And no matter where shell companies may be registered, he said, much of the wealth they own is invested in the United States, in real estate, stocks and bonds. “The U. S. could find out who the true owners are,” Mr. Zucman said. But the United States may illustrate the difficulty of moving from splashy revelations to serious change. States with a stake in the lucrative corporate registration business are likely to resist serious changes, and Congress appears unlikely to act anytime soon on comprehensive reform bills. “The offshore system is incredibly resilient, with a ton of smart lawyers and accountants to find new ways to hide money,” said Marina Walker Guevara, the deputy director of the international journalists’ consortium. David Marchant, the editor of OffshoreAlert, a news site that covers offshore finance, called the Panama Papers “an extraordinary event” that dwarfs past exposés of the industry. A session on the leak at the annual OffshoreAlert conference in Miami this month grew heated, he said, as champions of transparency debated industry players who said privacy had been trampled. Mr. Marchant said he believed the reform push from the leak would fade. “The people using the offshore system to evade their financial responsibilities tend to be very wealthy and influential people,” he said. He predicted that any changes in laws and regulations after the disclosures would be “mostly window dressing. ” On the other hand, Mr. Marchant said, the example of John Doe will probably be followed by other leakers. “This is the age we live in,” he said. “This record will be broken before long. ” | 1 |
Russia Vitaly Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the UN (Photos by AFP)
Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin has accused the United Nations aid chief of arrogance and bias after he told the UN Security Council that Russian and Syrian airstrikes have turned Aleppo into a "kill zone."
During a Wednesday Security Council meeting, Churkin accused Stephen O'Brien of making "arrogant” and "outrageous" remarks and failing to recognize that Russia and Syria have been observing a humanitarian pause, which has been in place for the last eight days.
“The moratorium on flights has been in place for eight days. Give us at least one proof or leave those narratives for a romance you would probably write later," he said.
"If we needed to be preached to, we would go to a church," the Russian envoy added. UN aid chief Stephen O'Brien speaks during a press conference in the Saudi capital Riyadh on October 5, 2016.
On Tuesday, Russia announced plans to extend the week-long suspension of airstrikes targeting foreign-backed Takfiri terrorists in Aleppo.
Lieutenant General Sergei Rudskoi of the Russian military's General Staff said that Russian and Syrian jets had stayed 10 kilometers away from Aleppo since October 18, and that humanitarian corridors out of Aleppo remained open.
Rudskoi further expressed Moscow’s readiness to organize more ceasefires on the ground in Aleppo to allow wounded civilians to be evacuated. Smoke rises from buildings hit by militant shelling in a government-held neighborhood of the Syrian city of Aleppo on October 20, 2016.
Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city, has been divided between government forces in the west and the militants in the east since 2012. In an attempt to free the trapped civilian population and to end the militants’ reign of terror in the east, the Syrian army, backed by Russian fighter jets, began a major offensive on September 22.
Since March 2011, Syria has been hit by deadly militancy it blames on some Western states and their regional allies. Loading ... | 0 |
WASHINGTON, D. C. — President Donald Trump, First Lady Melania Trump and their son Barron greeted participants at the 139th annual White House Easter Egg Roll on Monday as Attorney General Jeff Sessions read a bunny story to a group of children.[ Waves of little ones lined up to take their turn at racing their eggs to the finish line with the prodding of their wooden spoons. Hundreds came forward to make their dashes. The festivities went on through the morning despite spurts of rainfall. Eggs are rollin at the White House rain or shine #EasterEggRoll #WhiteHouseEasterEggRoll pic. twitter. — Michelle Moons (@MichelleDiana) April 17, 2017, President Trump greeted the crowd after some fanfare from the Marine Corps Band and the National Anthem. He thanked all in attendance, saying “We will be stronger and bigger and better as a nation than ever before and we are right on track … Thank you, everybody, for coming. ” “We’re going to do cards for soldiers. Melania and Barron and myself are going to sign some cards for some great troops … We’re going to come out and join you … for a great Easter egg roll,” the president continued. “I’ve seen those kids and they’re highly, highly competitive. ” President Trump thanked the First Lady for her diligent work on the event, “She’s been working on this for a long time to make it perfect … I want to congratulate her on this wonderful, wonderful day. ” First Lady Melania Trump then addressed the crowd, “First time my husband and I are hosting this wonderful tradition. It’s great that all of you are here with us today. I want to thank the military band, staff and all the volunteers who worked tirelessly to make sure you enjoy the activities. ” She gave great thanks to the military, “all around the world who are keeping us safe. ” FLOTUS at #WhiteHouseEasterEggRoll thanks the troops and ”We wish you great fun” pic. twitter. — Michelle Moons (@MichelleDiana) April 17, 2017, The President, First Lady and their son Barron walked down to a craft table to spend some time with the children. President Trump spoke with the children for a bit after which he stood up, thanked those gathered, and took his leave with his wife and son. Near the end of the race finish line, Attorney General Sessions and the First Lady took their turns reading books to some of the kids. Sessions read a story about a bunny that was briefly interrupted for the address from the President and First Lady, but resumed quickly thereafter. First Lady Melania read Kathie Lee Gifford’s children’s book entitled “Party Animals”. Gifford’s book tells the story of a goose who finds fault with everyone she can think of to invite to her birthday party, but after seeking counsel from an owl, decides to invite everyone, differences and all. AG @jeffsessions reads a bunny story to kids at #WhiteHouseEasterEggRoll pic. twitter. — Michelle Moons (@MichelleDiana) April 17, 2017, FLOTUS @MELANIATRUMP reads @KathieLGifford children’s book Party Animals to kids @WhiteHouse #EasterEggRoll @FLOTUS pic. twitter. — Michelle Moons (@MichelleDiana) April 17, 2017, Just after the First Lady finished her reading the rain returned and many took their leave from the festivities. Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana | 1 |
The release on websites this week of what appears to be computer code that the National Security Agency has used to break into the networks of foreign governments and other espionage targets has caused deep concern inside American intelligence agencies, raising the question of whether America’s own elite operatives have been hacked and their methods revealed. Most outside experts who examined the posts, by a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers, said they contained what appeared to be genuine samples of the code — though somewhat outdated — used in the production of the N. S. A. ’s malware. Most of the code was designed to break through network firewalls and get inside the computer systems of competitors like Russia, China and Iran. That, in turn, allows the N. S. A. to place “implants” in the system, which can lurk unseen for years and be used to monitor network traffic or enable a debilitating computer attack. According to these experts, the coding resembled a series of “products” developed inside the N. S. A. ’s highly classified Tailored Access Operations unit, some of which were described in general terms in documents stolen three years ago by Edward J. Snowden, the former N. S. A. contractor now living in Russia. But the code does not appear to have come from Mr. Snowden’s archive, which was mostly composed of PowerPoint files and other documents that described N. S. A. programs. The documents released by Mr. Snowden and his associates contained no actual source code used to break into the networks of foreign powers. Whoever obtained the source code apparently broke into either the highly compartmentalized computer servers of the N. S. A. or other servers around the world that the agency would have used to store the files. The code that was published on Monday dates to when, after Mr. Snowden’s disclosures, the agency shuttered many of its existing servers and moved code to new ones as a security measure. By midday Tuesday Mr. Snowden himself, in a Twitter message from his exile in Moscow, declared that “circumstantial evidence and conventional wisdom indicates Russian responsibility” for publication, which he interpreted as a warning shot to the American government in case it was thinking of imposing sanctions against Russia in the cybertheft of documents from the Democratic National Committee. “Why did they do it?” Mr. Snowden asked. “No one knows, but I suspect this is more diplomacy than intelligence, related to the escalation around the DNC hack. ” Around the same time, WikiLeaks declared that it had a full set of the files — it did not say how it had obtained them — and would release them all in the future. The “Shadow Brokers” had said they would auction them off to the highest bidder. “I think it’s stuff, repackaged for resale now,” said James A. Lewis, a computer expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. “This is probably some Russian mind game, down to the bogus accent” of some of the messages sent to media organizations by the Shadow Brokers group, delivered in broken English that seemed right out of a bad spy movie. The N. S. A. would say nothing on Tuesday about whether the coding released was real or where it came from. Its public affairs office did not respond to inquiries. “It certainly feels all real,” said Bruce Schneier, a leading authority on breaches. “The question is why would someone steal it in 2013 and release it this week? That’s what is making people think this is likely the work of Russian intelligence. ” There are other theories, including one that some unknown group was trying to impersonate hackers working for Russian or other intelligence agencies. Impersonation is relatively easy on the internet, and it could take considerable time to determine who is behind the release of the code. The Shadow Brokers first emerged online on Saturday, creating accounts on sites like Twitter and Tumblr and announcing plans for an auction. The group said that “we give you some Equation Group files free” and that it would auction the best ones. The Equation Group is a code name that Kaspersky Labs, a Russian cybersecurity firm, has given to the N. S. A. While still widely considered the most talented group of hackers in the world, the N. S. A. is still recovering from Mr. Snowden’s disclosures it has spent hundreds of millions of dollars reconfiguring and locking down its systems. Mr. Snowden revealed plans, code names and some operations, including against targets like China. The Shadow Brokers disclosures are much more detailed, the actual code and instructions for breaking into foreign systems as of three summers ago. “From an operational standpoint, this is not a catastrophic leak,” Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, Calif. wrote on the Lawfare blog on Tuesday. But he added that “the big picture is a far scarier one. ” In the weeks after Mr. Snowden fled Hawaii, landing in Hong Kong before ultimately going to Russia, it appears that someone obtained that source code. That, he suggested, would be an even bigger security breach for the N. S. A. than Mr. Snowden’s departure with his trove of files. However, the fact that the code is dated from 2013 suggests that the hackers’ access was cut off around then, perhaps because the agency imposed new security measures. The attack on the Democratic National Committee has raised questions about whether the Russian government is trying to influence the American election. If so, it is unclear how — or whether — President Obama will respond. A response could be public or private, and it could involve sanctions, diplomatic warnings or even a counterattack. “The real problem for us is that the Russians seem to have taken the gloves off in the cyberdomain,” said Mr. Lewis, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “and we don’t know how to respond. ” | 1 |
September New Homes Sales Rise Back To 1992 Level! By David Stockman. Posted On Wednesday, October 26th, 2016
David Stockman's Contra Corner is the only place where mainstream delusions and cant about the Warfare State, the Bailout State, Bubble Finance and Beltway Banditry are ripped, refuted and rebuked. Subscribe now to receive David Stockman’s latest posts by email each day as well as his model portfolio, Lee Adler’s Daily Data Dive and David’s personally curated insights and analysis from leading contrarian thinkers. | 0 |
Some would say that the true stars of this year’s Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, which arrived in New York this week, are the cats. Featured as part of a collaboration with the International Cat Association, the cats drew consternation from some dog handlers, who felt the parvenus did not belong. The cats, being cats, did not care. They dressed up or dressed down, leapt through the occasional hoop and gazed witheringly on the efforts of their human and canine compatriots. Oh, to be a cat and be above it all. For the photographer Vincent Tullo, the cats offered another attraction as well: They brought him and his camera to the show’s fringes, where the discipline of the main events gave way to curious hoodies and whimsy. “The cat people were much more playful than the dog people,” said Mr. Tullo, who is a dog owner. “I’d go to the cat section, and all the owners were laughing. The judges were laughing. Then I’d go to the dog section, and people would get mad at you for taking pictures of their dog. It’s a little strange that people take a puppy this seriously. The dogs want to relax and play. They try to walk over to you and sniff you, and the owners pull them back. ” The truly exotic creatures at the event, of course, are the handlers, who spend four hours or more wetting and drying their dogs’ hair for the grooming competition. Before the dogs’ agility competition, handlers were given the opportunity to practice the obstacle course — but without their dogs. “It was the weirdest thing,” Mr. Tullo said. “There were 20 or 30 people running in circles, saying, ‘Good boy,’ and not a single dog in sight. ” The cats, no doubt, had a good chuckle at that one. Meow. | 1 |
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Mary O’Malley – A friend of mine was gifted a vacation on a river barge through France and Germany. She was really excited because she could never afford to do this on her own. Her itinerary included a flight from Seattle to New York and the next day, she and her cousin would fly to Europe together.
As they were getting ready to go through the international security checkpoint, the TSA officer would not let my friend through because her passport had expired. At that moment, a feeling of panic came over her when she realized she had grabbed the wrong passport. As the panic began to intensify, she tuned into her body and used her breath to calm herself down and think rationally.
Having done awakening work for some time, she realized that reacting to whatever Life is offering only creates suffering. She said, “Mary, I can’t believe it. If this happened years ago, I would have had a temper tantrum and been in tears all day. Instead, I calmly told my cousin to go on without me and I would have a friend in Seattle overnight my passport so I could take a flight the following day.”
This is the power of accepting whatever Life brings. She added “I did not react or panic when I realized I would have to pay for a new ticket and stay in New York by myself. It all turned out so differently than what I thought, and it was all okay.”
Whenever we are faced with a challenge, whether it is a cut on our finger, a raging boss, or an expired passport, we all react in our own unique ways. One of the core ways we can heal ourselves is by getting to know our own patterns of reaction. Some of the standard modes of reaction are the stoic, the pleaser, the worrier, the rager, the freezer, the rescuer, the victim, the judger and the self-absorbed one. We put these reactive parts of ourselves together into our own particular style.
Our patterns of reaction can bring so much heartache into our lives. My primary mode of reaction was to freeze, and like all patterns of reaction, it would tighten me, isolate me and cut me off from the flow of love that is Life. It got stronger as I got older, and it became much more entrenched when I tried to make it stop. Then I learned how to see it and meet it with understanding and mercy. Only then was I able to free-up this frozen energy and learn how to respond to Life rather than always living in reaction.
This process of seeing, loving and letting go of your patterns of reaction happens in three phases.
First phase: You are caught. You either can’t see your patterns or, if you do, you have little willingness to do anything about them. You also don’t recognize the consequences that come from living out of your repetitive reactions. When you decide you don’t want to live this way anymore, you usually declare war on the pattern, trying to wrestle it to the ground. This only works for a short period of time because you haven’t done the work needed to dissolve the pattern.
When the pattern comes back again, you then get caught in self-judgment (I did it again) and despair (I will never get out of this). You begin to move into the second phase when you see that the price you pay for taking care of yourself in your old ways isn’t worth it, and you understand that trying to wrestle it to the ground doesn’t work.
Second phase: As you come to realize that living out of your old patterns isn’t how you want to live, and trying to get rid of them seems to only empower them, you begin to become curious about what is going on and feel the possibility of living another way.
At the beginning of this phase, when your patterns of reaction are triggered, you will get lost in them most of the time. But slowly, you become more curious and more merciful with yourself. Even when you get completely lost, there comes a time when you can let go of judgment and despair, and simply notice how you are reacting.
This may be right in the middle of the pattern, a few minutes afterwards, or a few days afterwards. You become more curious than controlling and more compassionate than judgmental.
You finally come to the place where you can actually stand with the discomfort of not following your pattern. This almost feels like detox, and it is good to have the support of other people as you learn how to be with your experience rather than running away from it. The more you can be with yourself, the more it opens your heart. And that is really what you have been longing for all along – the ability to live from your own heart.
Third phase: As your ability to see and let go of your old patterns increases, you enter the third phase. This is where your primary relationship with yourself is one of compassion and curiosity. You still may get caught in your patterns, but only for short periods of time, and rather than bringing up judgment or despair, they become an invitation to open back into Life.
The more you can meet yourself exactly as you are, the more you discover how to live from your own truth. You can now let go of the idea that a good life is one where everything is under control. Instead, you learn how to ride the ups and downs of your life, trusting yourself, trusting your life. You then become the awakened heart that heals not only yourself but also the world.
There isn’t a clear delineation with these three phases. On any particular day, you may touch into all three phases. But the more you can be curious and merciful with yourself, the more you will naturally gravitate toward the third phase – the place of truly becoming yourself. This is the greatest gift you can give to yourself and to Life. SF Source Mary O’Malley | 0 |
Hillary Campaign Manager Gets $7K a Month from Hillary Donor Linked to Economic Collapse
Clintonworld is a giant sewer. Nothing about it can surprise. It plummets to infinite depths of slime, mold and rotting carrion. This is just another day in Clintonworld .
John Podesta, who draws no salary from the campaign, is making $7,000 per month from the Sandler Foundation, run by Herb Sandler, Politico reported.
The Sandlers ran World Savings Bank, which was sold to Wachovia in 2006 for $25.5 billion and which was accused of offering adjustable-rate mortgages that contributed to the housing collapse.
Saturday Night Live got into trouble when it depicted the Sandlers as people who should be shot. Time Magazine listed them as one of 25 people to blame for the financial crisis.
In the early 1980s, the Sandlers' World Savings Bank became the first to sell a tricky home loan called the option ARM. And they pushed the mortgage, which offered several ways to back-load your loan and thereby reduce your early payments, with increasing zeal and misleading advertisements over the next two decades. The couple pocketed $2.3 billion when they sold their bank to Wachovia in 2006. But losses on World Savings' loan portfolio led to the implosion of Wachovia, which was sold under duress late last year to Wells Fargo.
Notorious right wing comedy show Saturday Night Live also featured the Sandlers
On October 4, 2008, however, Saturday Night Live aired a skit in which the Sandlers were depicted as predatory lenders. Under their names, SNL placed the caption “people who should be shot.” Compounding the Sandlers’ negative press was a Time magazine list that identified them as two of the “25 people to blame for the financial crisis.” The New York Times also labeled the Sandlers “pariahs” -- and on December 24, 2008, the Times reportedthat their mortgages were the “Typhoid Mary” of the housing crisis. On February 15, 2009, CBS’s 60 minutes also aired a segment that featured the Sandlers’ World Savings Bank as one of the primary examples of how the mortgage industry had destroyed itself and unleashed an economic collapse.
And this is whom Hillary's campaign chief is taking cash from. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — In December 2005, Congress handed President George W. Bush a significant defeat by tightening legal restrictions against torture in a law called the Detainee Treatment Act. Soon afterward, Neil M. Gorsuch — then a top Justice Department official — sent an email to a White House colleague in case he needed “cheering up” about the administration’s setback. The email from Judge Gorsuch, nominated by President Trump to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court caused by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, linked to articles about a provision in the act that undercut the rights of Guantánamo Bay detainees by barring courts from hearing their habeas corpus lawsuits. “The administration’s victory is not well known but its significance shouldn’t be understated,” wrote Judge Gorsuch, who had helped coordinate the Justice Department’s work with Congress on the bill. The email about the provision — which the Supreme Court later rejected — is among more than 150, 000 pages of Justice Department and White House documents involving Judge Gorsuch disclosed by the Trump administration ahead of his Senate confirmation hearings next week. Judge Gorsuch’s time in the executive branch was brief. He joined the Justice Department in June 2005 as the principal deputy associate attorney general, meaning he was the top aide to the No. 3 official in the department. He left in August 2006, when Mr. Bush appointed him as a federal appeals court judge in Denver. But those 14 months were tumultuous ones for the Bush administration amid controversies over detainee abuses, military commissions, warrantless surveillance and its broad claims of executive power. Judge Gorsuch’s job put him at the center of both litigation and negotiations with Congress over legislation about such topics. References to those efforts may offer clues to Judge Gorsuch’s approach to the sort of and executive power issues that rarely come before his appeals court but can be crucial at the Supreme Court. In November 2005, for example, Judge Gorsuch visited Guantánamo for a briefing and tour. Afterward, he wrote a note to the prison operation commander, offering a glowing review. “I was extraordinarily impressed,” Judge Gorsuch wrote. “You and your colleagues have developed standards and imposed a degree of professionalism that the nation can be proud of, and being able to see first hand all that you have managed to accomplish with such a difficult and sensitive mission makes my job of helping explain and defend it before the courts all the easier. ” During the negotiations with Congress over the Detainee Treatment Act, Judge Gorsuch helped persuade lawmakers to weaken a provision that permitted a civilian appeals court to review decisions by military tribunals. The original draft let judges scrutinize whether a tribunal had “applied the correct standards,” but the revised one only let them look to see whether the tribunal had applied standards set by the Pentagon. The change, “in response to our concerns,” Judge Gorsuch wrote, “reduces significantly the potential for judicial creativity. ” In June 2006, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling that not only struck down the administration’s military commissions system, but also implied that officials involved in abusive interrogations might be vulnerable to prosecution for war crimes. Judge Gorsuch helped draft a proposal for legislation that would address both matters, the files show, although he left before the eventual bill, the Military Commissions Act, was enacted. He was also part of teams that helped draft speeches on national security for Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and an published by USA Today, under his supervisor’s byline, defending President Bush’s warrantless surveillance program and his use of a signing statement to claim a right to bypass the Detainee Treatment Act’s provision banning torture. And, in his role overseeing the department’s Civil Division, Judge Gorsuch handled all “terror litigation” for his office, an email from a colleague said. Such national security cases included the government’s defense against a lawsuit seeking disclosure of photographs of detainee abuses after the Abu Ghraib scandal, he wrote in a description of his work for a performance review. They also included a lawsuit by a German man, Khaled against the former C. I. A. director and companies suspected of being involved in the agency’s extraordinary rendition flights. The plaintiff said the agency had abducted him, beaten him and taken him to a “black site” prison in Afghanistan, and then let him go after realizing it was a case of mistaken identity. But the Bush administration argued that the case must be dismissed lest it endanger “state secrets. ” When the district court judge overseeing the rendition lawsuit agreed to dismiss it, David Addington, the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney, sent a congratulatory email to his former deputy, Courtney Simmons Elwood, who had since become a counselor to Mr. Gonzales. Ms. Elwood — who is now President Trump’s nominee to be C. I. A. general counsel — forwarded it to Judge Gorsuch and a few other top officials on the team handling the case. “Your department did a great job with” the C. I. A. case “in protecting the ability of the institution of the presidency to protect the American people under the Constitution in the war on terror,” Mr. Addington wrote. “Well done. ” But while Judge Gorsuch spent those 14 months immersed in executive power and national security disputes from the Bush administration’s perspective, his own comments in the documents rarely sounded overtly ideological notes like Mr. Addington’s. Peter Keisler, who worked with Judge Gorsuch on several such matters as the head of the Civil Division at the time, argued that his role during that period should be understood as representing a client: He helped shape arguments and litigation strategy, but not the underlying national security policy decisions which “had already been made. ” “The emails just reflect the fact that he was gratified when the department would win and disappointed when it would lose, which is not surprising because these were cases he was working on as an attorney for the government and advancing its positions,” Mr. Keisler said. The files have not yet been systematically examined, and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have complained that they appear to be incomplete. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the panel’s ranking Democrat, sent a letter to Judge Gorsuch this week saying that the committee needs additional documents by 5 p. m. on Thursday. For example, her letter noted, one document in the tranche indicated that Judge Gorsuch made a “proposal for a seminar on torture policy” to the Council on Foreign Relations, but the proposal itself was not included in the documents given to the committee. “Please provide to the committee any materials related to any involvement you had in the issue of torture (including ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’) including this proposal,” she wrote. | 1 |
“Tactical Augmented Reality” will provide a video display to soldiers for superior situational awareness in the field. [It looks similar to a pair of night vision goggles but is far more. Tactical Augmented Reality (TAR) replaces both NVGs and GPS while offering visual cues and vital data directly to soldiers. Richard Nabors is an associate for strategic planning at U. S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command’s Research, Development and Engineering Center, or CERDEC. He spoke about TAR at the Pentagon’s most recent Lab Day. Nabors described the GPS system that most soldiers currently employ. It depends on a technology which allows soldiers to approximate their position if they have aligned an image they can observe with a reference image. The TAR system will handle this process automatically, allowing soldiers to more precisely know not only their own position but that of allied and enemy forces. Staff Sgt. Ronald Geer, a counterterrorism officer at CERDEC’s Night Vision and Electronics Sensors Directorate, said soldiers won’t even need an independent GPS device at all. Instead of fiddling with the accessory, they will simply see a map overlaid on the terrain in front of them through a eyepiece. The TAR is connected to a tablet on their belt, as well as the thermal sight on their rifle. This creates a seamless HUD with more similarities to video games than to anything we’ve seen in military tech thus far. The soldier can use the gun as a deadly periscope, lifting it above cover without exposing themselves to danger. The device can split its screen to give feedback from both the eyepiece and the sight, so a soldier can also look in multiple directions simultaneously. In fact, these visuals can be shared with other soldiers, giving the entire squad a level of collective intelligence that could change the entire way in which we approach tactical situations. David Fellowes, an electronics engineer at CERDEC, expects the devices to both save lives and contribute to the success of future missions. It’s not hard to see why. They have been working since 2008 to develop the necessary miniaturization technology to allow for these dynamic visuals to fit on the display. After nearly a decade of development, the U. S. Army is turning Ghost Recon into reality. Follow Nate Church @Get2Church on Twitter for the latest news in gaming and technology, and snarky opinions on both. | 1 |
Solar Panels In The UK Surpass Coal-Powered Electricity Nov 16, 2016 1 0
According to research from Carbon Brief , electricity coming from solar panels in the UK surpassed the amount that came from coal-power. The solar panels across the UK generated about 7,000 gigawatt hours of electricity between April and September, while coal produced about 6,300 gigawatt hours. Solar power continues to trend positively.
According to James Court, who is the head of the Renewable Energy Association , this is an incredible accomplishment:
“Solar overtaking coal this summer would have been largely unthinkable five years ago.”
However, now that winter is approaching, coal will take over again in production as there is a greater need for more heating and lighting through the cold months.
Juliet Davenport, who is the CEO of Good Energy , recently said :
“When I started my company 15 years ago, you could fit the whole UK renewable energy industry into a small room, and now nearly 25% of the UK’s power comes from renewables. As clean technology advances, Britain is bidding fair-well to coal. The transition to a 100% renewable future is within Britain’s grasp.”
This is a great step forward and another sign of the times we are living in. It is becoming cheaper to use solar every year that passes. In fact, according to the Renewable Energy Institute , the cost of solar energy will be cheaper than fossil fuel energy by 2025, with it decreasing every year until that point. “The answer rises every morning.”
In another sign of the continuing trend towards clean and renewable energy, it has been reported by the U.S. Energy Information Administration that U.S. oil companies last year lost $67 billion, at a time when oil prices took a major dive. On the opposite end of that spectrum, Elon Musk’s Tesla company made $22 million in the first quarter of this year . Again, we see the trend moving towards clean energy.
Throughout the eastern hemisphere of the world, there is another large sign that renewable energy is here to stay and is advancing quickly.
In September of this year, leaders from China, Russia, Japan and South Korea met to sign an agreement to begin building what is known as the Asian Super-Grid . The grid is set to become the world’s largest collaboration of sustainable, renewable and clean energy, which will provide energy to the four countries involved, as well as throughout Southern Africa, Europe and Southeast Asia.
How soon do you think the world will be running off of entirely renewable energy? What will be the obstacles? What are the current obstacles? What other renewables exist outside of solar, wind, wave and geothermal that excite you? What other stories are out there that are yet more proof that the world is moving in a positive direction with it’s energy usage?
Lance Schuttler graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in Health Science and does health coaching through his website Orgonlight Health . You can follow the Orgonlight Health facebook page or visit the website for more information and other inspiring articles. | 0 |
Erica Garner blasts Clinton campaign over discussions staffers had about Eric Garner page: 1 One Podesta email has Clinton Campaign people discussing the death of Eric Garner in ways his Daughter Erica dislikes. She went on Twitter and gave them a piece of her mind. Seems they saw a newspaper story that may have been interpreted as a liability. This exposure could hurt the Campaign. The whole Campaign is based on political profits and losses, not Human dignity. Erica Garner blasts Clinton campaign over discussions staffers had about her father’s death in WikiLeaks emails Erica Garner, the daughter of police chokehold victim Eric Garner, ripped the Hillary Clinton campaign in a series of tweets Thursday after new campaign emails released by WikiLeaks showed how the Democratic nominee's staffers discussed the death of her father. “I’m troubled by the revelation that you and this campaign actually discussed ‘using’ Eric Garner … Why would you want to ‘use my dad?” Garner tweeted along with a link to emails released by WikiLeaks. “These people will co opt anything to push their agenda. Police violence is not the same as gun violence. “I'm vey (sic) interested to know exactly what @CoreyCiorciari meant when he said ‘I know we have an Erica Garner problem’ in the #PodestaEmails19,” added Garner. “I know we have Erica Garner issues but we don't want to mention Eric at all? I can see her coming after us for leaving him out of the piece,” Clinton’s traveling press secretary Nick Merrill wrote in a March 17 email. edit on Oct-27-2016 by xuenchen because: politicalmoneyisntgreen | 0 |
Range of BrahMos cruise missile to be doubled 28 October 2016 Sputnik The range of BrahMos missile may be extended up to 600 km. Facebook brahmos , defence , indo-russian cooperation BrahMos is capable of hitting targets beyond the radar horizon and can be launched from sea based and land based weapon systems. Source:EPA
India and Russia have approved the proposal to double the range of the BrahMos, world’s first supersonic cruise missile at the 16th Russia-India intergovernmental commission on military cooperation meeting.
FGFA may be armed with BrahMos cruise missiles
Sources told Sputnik that during the annual summit in Goa, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached an agreement to develop different range of the BrahMos.
One of the ranges agreed upon was to double it from current range of 300 km which received final nod on October 26 during the Russia-India intergovernmental commission on military cooperation meeting co-chaired by Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu.
“Russia is India's time tested and closest partner and it will continue to remain our primary defence partner,” Manohar Parrikar, Indian Defence Minister, said after the meeting on Wednesday.
The proposal to increase the range of BrahMos was under consideration for a long time and now it is formalized after India became a member of Missile Technology Control Regime this year. It is said that only minor changes will be enough to extend the range of BrahMos up to 600 km.
Why the BrahMos armed Sukhoi is bad news for India’s enemies
Currently, BrahMos is capable of hitting targets beyond the radar horizon and can be launched from sea based and land based weapon systems. Test fire of an air-launched version of Brahmos cruise missile expected to be held in February next year. The 2.5 metric ton Brahmos air-to-ground missile will be fired from an IAF (Indian Air Force) Sukhoi-30 MKI fighter aircraft that has undergone modifications to accommodate the new weapon. A successful preliminary trial has already been carried out, and two more dummy trials are in the pipeline before the actual test.
First published by Sputnik . | 0 |
On Tuesday, China slammed the United States’ deployment of an aircraft carrier to conduct “routine operations” in the South China Sea, calling it a pretense to undermine its sovereignty. [“China always respects the freedom of navigation and overflight all littoral countries enjoy under international law,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a daily news briefing, according to Reuters. “But we are consistently opposed to relevant countries threatening and damaging the sovereignty and security of littoral countries under the flag of freedom of navigation and overflight,” Geng said. “We hope relevant countries can do more to safeguard regional peace and stability. ” China has built multiple islands in the sea and claims almost all its waters — although Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam all claim parts of it — and about $5 trillion worth of trade passes through the sea each year. The U. S. has criticized China’s construction of the islands, as well as a of military facilities on the islands. The U. S. Navy sent the USS Carl Vinson, along with its strike group, through the South China Sea on Saturday, to conduct “routine operations. ” Prior to arriving in the South China Sea, the strike group conducted training off the islands of Hawaii and Guam, the Navy said. “The training completed over the past few weeks has really brought the team together and improved our effectiveness and readiness as a strike group,” said Rear Adm. James Kilby, commander of the strike group. “We are looking forward to demonstrating those capabilities while building upon existing strong relationships with our allies, partners, and friends in the region,” he said. The last time the Vinson deployed to the South China Sea was in 2015, to conduct a bilateral exercise with the Royal Malaysian Navy and Royal Malaysian Air Force, the Navy said in a statement. The Vinson first operated in the South China Sea in 1983 and has operated there during 16 previous deployments over its history, it added. Other U. S. ships have navigated the South China Sea last year, to counter China’s claims of sovereignty, but this deployment was the first under President Trump. The Vinson’s deployment to the area comes about two weeks after a Chinese aircraft that patrols the skies and detects threats flew within 1, 000 feet of a U. S. surveillance aircraft. Pentagon officials had played that event down as unintentional. It also comes after a Navy plan was sent up to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to increase operations in the area, although it’s not clear if it has been approved yet. The plan would see the U. S. conducting “Freedom of Navigation Operations,” or FONOPs, within 12 nautical miles of the islands, within what China claims is its territorial waters. Mattis signaled support for a potential increase in FONOPs during a press conference on Feb. 4 while in Japan. “Freedom of navigation is absolute, and whether it be commercial shipping or our U. S. Navy, we will practice in international waters and transit international waters as appropriate,” he said. | 1 |
The Hungarian government has passed a new regulatory law on foreign organisations (NGOs) such as those funded by billionaire George Soros. The law means tougher rules to make the organisations more transparent. [The new legislation, passed by 130 votes to 44 in the Hungarian parliament, will see NGOs with an annual revenue of more than 7. 2 million Hungarian forints ($ £20, 000) be made to register as a “ organisation. ” The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (TASZ) has expressed outrage at the new law and has already announced plans for civil disobedience the Budapest Business Journal reports. The spokesman for the Hungarian government Zoltan Kovacs defended the new law noting the government had gone to the European Commission for Democracy through Law, also known as the Venice Commission, who had seen no problems with it. The Venice Commission wrote a report on the new law saying it, “pursues a prima facie legitimate aim and can be considered to be necessary in a democratic society in the interest of national security or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. ” Kovacs also rejected accusations that the law was mimicking a similar law in Russia saying that the Hungarian law does not require NGOs to register as “foreign agents” and does not take away their public funding. The does, however, force NGOs to say where their funds are coming from and be more transparent. The law is largely seen by many as a continuation of the Hungarian government’s crackdown on international NGOs financed by billionaire George Soros. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has slammed Soros in the past saying that he has agitated within Hungary through NGOs to open the borders for the mass migration of millions into Europe. In a speech at the European Parliament in April, Orban said, “George Soros and his NGOs want to transport one million migrants to the EU per year. He has personally, publicly announced this programme and provides a financial loan for it. You could read this yourselves. ” The Hungarian government has also passed a law that some have charged as targeting the Central European University (CEU) which was founded by Soros. Orban said that it was unfair for the university to be able to issue U. S. degrees without having a campus in the U. S. as it gave it an advantage over all other Hungarian universities. Hungary joins a growing number of other Eastern European countries who have come out against Soros and his NGO network including establishment figures in Romania, Poland, Serbia, Bulgaria and Slovakia. The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (TASZ) have said they will plan civil disobedience in reaction to the NGO law saying it goes against the constitution of Hungary itself. | 1 |
Kiah Stokes celebrated New Year’s Eve at a nightclub in Istanbul, where she plays basketball for Besiktas of the Turkish league. But a night of revelry turned alarming when club employees told patrons they had to shut down early for security reasons. As Stokes and her friends left the building, they saw roads. They cautiously walked for about 10 minutes before finding a taxi to take them home, not knowing that a gunman had killed 39 people at another club down the street and was still at large. “You don’t think something can happen,” said Stokes, who, in September, finished her second season with the Liberty of the W. N. B. A. “Now I’m like, ‘Wow, this is just scary. ’” Players like Stokes have long packed up after the W. N. B. A. season and spent their winters abroad, competing with teams that offer larger paychecks than the women can earn in the American league. This more W. N. B. A. players ended up in Turkey than in any other country. There are now 26, according to the league’s players’ association. The unrest there — an attempted coup last summer and multiple terrorist attacks — has led some players to question the costs of taking a second job overseas. It has also added urgency to efforts to keep W. N. B. A. players in the United States in the . “It’s kind of sad we can’t stay home,” said Liberty guard Sugar Rodgers, who played for the Turkish club Osmaniye but returned to Virginia in November because she did not feel safe. About two weeks after the Liberty were eliminated from the playoffs, Rodgers joined Osmaniye, which is based about two hours from the Syrian border. Shortly after her arrival, a car bombing killed at least 17 people at a checkpoint in Syria’s Aleppo Province. “That right there shook me,” said Rodgers, who has also played in France, Israel and Slovakia. She acknowledged that the United States was not immune to such violence, but in Turkey, the threat of danger felt almost constant. “Getting emails saying families from embassies are leaving — the consulate or embassy were leaving — that rings a bell,” Rodgers said. She soon got out of her contract. “My team was understanding,” Rodgers said, adding, “I’m not going to play to my full potential always watching over my back. ” As Turkey became increasingly unstable last year, the W. N. B. A. and the players’ association arranged new security measures for the women who would go overseas in the . In late December, the league provided an app that would allow players to communicate easily with the W. N. B. A. office from anywhere in the world. In an emergency, the office can give information about safe areas and contacts. Jayne — the union’s associate director of player relations, who competed in China and Turkey as well as in the W. N. B. A. — set up and maintained a group chat for the league’s players in Turkey. When Terri Carmichael Jackson, a former N. C. A. A. executive, became the director of operations for the players’ association last May, she focused on improving security for players overseas. The union met with the league’s director of security, Eric Rhodes, who suggested more collaboration with the State Department and some relatively simple measures, like pointing players to the department’s Smart Traveler Enrollment Program. The program, a State Department spokesman said, allows travelers to “receive messages from the nearest U. S. Embassy or Consulate, which stand at the ready to assist U. S. citizens abroad. ” “We get news of an incident,” Jackson said, “and we kind of have a plan in place, informally, here in the office. ” She added, “There’s always a concern there might be a blackout with media and news services. ” Lisa M. Borders, the W. N. B. A.’s president, was attending church services when she heard about the Istanbul attack. Last season, her first as president, Borders gave her personal cellphone number to every player in the league. Until New Year’s Eve, it was seen primarily as a gesture of good will. Borders said that after contacting the league’s security officials that night for instructions, she reached out to players individually. She declined to name which players had communicated with her. “I feel compelled to be deeply engaged with my players overseas, as well as domestically,” she said. “Speaking to players immediately in harm’s way is very relieving to me — that I can reach them with a phone call, that they will answer me or FaceTime me and let me know what’s happening. ” Players have noticed the league’s increased efforts to ensure their safety abroad. But many pointed out that they would not feel the need to leave the United States if their W. N. B. A. salaries were higher. According to the most recent agreement, players in the W. N. B. A. received a base salary of $39, 676 to $50, 617 in 2016, not including performance bonuses, housing stipends and other benefits. A player in her third year made as much as $54, 609. The most recent agreement also included a $50, 000 bonus for each team to distribute among players who limit their overseas competition to three months or less. Aside from relieving security fears, an athlete who stays in the United States avoids the physical stress of an extra basketball season. The league also offers professional internships and programs for the and it is considering other ways to keep players home in the winter. “I get it,” Borders said. “You want to make sure you are having one job making enough money to pay bills, sustain family and do things we all want to do. That day will come. ” The league needs more revenue for that to happen, she said, adding that her chief operating officer, Jay Parry, met early this month with executives from each team to explore ways to increase attendance. Stokes, who did not disclose her Besiktas salary, said she would probably forgo her second job if the W. N. B. A. could replace most of her overseas income. An ESPN article in 2012 quoted an agent’s estimate that the average overseas salary for a female basketball player was $72, 000. For now, Stokes plans to remain in Turkey until the season ends in early May, despite the hazards. A few weeks before the New Year’s Eve attack, dozens of people were killed in a double bombing outside Besiktas’s soccer stadium, about a mile from where Stokes lives. “It freaked me out,” she said. She had read about the country’s turmoil during the summer, but she took comfort in knowing that a Liberty teammate who had played in Turkey before, Shavonte Zellous, would also be on the Besiktas team. But Zellous said her past experience in the country did not match what she was seeing this season. “The cities they’re bombing, I never imagined terror groups doing something in these cities,” Zellous said. “I think stuff is really getting real now. ” Stokes said that security measures had become noticeably stronger at games and that the team had more frequent police escorts on the road. She also said that she had become attached to her Turkish team and felt a certain level of commitment to it, even if friends and family yearn for her to return. “My mom wants me to come home right now,” Stokes said. “She said it’s too dangerous, it’s scary. She knows the money is good, but it’s not worth it. It definitely crossed my mind. ” | 1 |
MEXICO CITY — It might have been any other day in El Salvador, but as the hours ticked into evening it became notable not for what happened, but for what didn’t. An entire day had passed without a single murder in one of the world’s most violent places. There was no particular reason the count was zero on Wednesday, Howard Cotto, the director of the National Civil Police, told local reporters the next day. Indeed, the police had registered 99 murders in the first 10 days of 2017 — an average of almost 10 a day. Gang violence in El Salvador, an impoverished Central American country of 6. 5 million, has given it one of the highest murder rates of any nation that is not at war. Youth gangs battle one another over extortion rackets that extend to the smallest of businesses, and no one seems to be immune from the bloodshed, which is also exacting a toll on the police. Mr. Cotto noted that violence began to decline last year, which ended with 5, 278 murders. Although the average was more than 14 a day, it was still 20 percent fewer than in 2015. Yet even with the decline, the murder rate was more than 80 homicides per 100, 000 residents last year, compared with five per 100, 000 in the United States in 2015, according to the most recent F. B. I. figures. Two years ago, the government of President Salvador Sánchez Cerén threw out a fraying truce that the previous government had worked out with the gangs. A crackdown sent heavily armed security forces into the streets. Police commanders gave their officers virtually free rein to shoot “if they must” in encounters with criminals and promised legal support in cases filed against them. The most powerful gangs, Mara Salvatrucha and two rival factions of Barrio 18, responded with a new wave of violence and targeted police officers and soldiers. The violence has fueled an exodus. Each year since 2013, tens of thousands of Salvadorans, many of them women and children, have braved the journey across Guatemala and Mexico to seek protection in the United States. About 40 percent of Salvadorans would like to leave the country, according to a survey published this week by the Institute of Public Opinion at the Central American University José Simeón Cañas in San Salvador. The percentage is the highest in a decade, the institute said. More than 17 percent said that somebody in their family had been forced to leave El Salvador because of threats and violence. The survey is based on interviews with 1, 262 Salvadoran adults, with a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points. Wednesday’s pause in killing did not last. On Thursday, two gunmen riding a motorcycle fatally shot an police officer in a town north of San Salvador, the capital, according to the attorney general’s office. That night the owner of a car wash in the capital was killed in a violent San Salvador suburb, and the police suspected that her death was related to extortion payments often demanded of business owners, according to local news reports. Spokesmen for Mara Salvatrucha, the nation’s largest gang, recently proposed a dialogue with the government that they said could ultimately lead to the gang’s dissolution, according to the online newspaper El Faro. Such negotiations are deeply unpopular with Salvadoran citizens. “They have to stop murdering citizens, extorting families, killing police, murdering soldiers,” Vice President Óscar Ortiz told the local newspaper El Mundo in response the gang’s overture. He promised that the government would continue its crackdown. “We will not stop, we will continue attacking those who insist on acting outside of the law, and this year we will do it even harder,” he said. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — President Trump, once the master pitchman for namesake vodka, steaks and casinos, seems disinclined to attach his surname to the health care bill some allies have derided as “Ryancare. ” He assured Americans on Thursday of the “improvements being made” to legislation that Speaker Paul D. Ryan initially suggested would scarcely change, amid grumblings that the White House is fuming over the plan’s rollout. And Mr. Ryan, Mr. Trump’s partner in the endeavor after a year of campaign criticisms and mistrust, is insisting that all is going according to plan. “I would say that there is no intrigue, palace intrigue, divisions between the principals,” Mr. Ryan told reporters on Thursday, allowing that perhaps some “ staffers” felt differently. “We have a president,” he added, brandishing a fluency in the language of Trump, “who likes closing deals. ” For months, the halting union of Mr. Trump and Mr. Ryan has weathered a stark divide in political ideology and style — a mutual acknowledgment, at least so far, that each man was critical to the other’s outsize governing ambitions. But with the health care bill staggering through the House, its fate uncertain, their alliance is facing an essential test, as White House officials and congressional leaders stare down the prospect of failing at their first major legislative heave. In less than two months, the party divisions that Mr. Trump exploited in his thundering campaign have resurfaced in the health care fight, even as Republicans control the White House and Congress. Already, some allies of Mr. Trump are moving to distance him from the potential fallout, privately suggesting that the speaker was never to be trusted in the first place. Administration officials have expressed frustration that there was not a better explanation of the approach described by the House Republican leadership after the bill was unveiled, lamenting the resulting confusion. In recent days, Mr. Ryan has blitzed the news media, including several outlets often hostile to the speaker, to make the case for the bill more forcefully than the president has seemed interested in doing himself. But Mr. Ryan has made clear that he alone does not bear the weight of the present challenge. “It’s not my bill,” he told CNN, noting that the White House had helped Congress draft it. “It’s our bill. ” As if for emphasis, he also noted that he talks to the president almost every day. For the president and the speaker, passage of the bill is about more than the health care debate it is a matter of demonstrating that major legislation — with the weight of the White House behind it — can sweep through a Republican Congress. On Capitol Hill, Republicans are already confronting concerns that a stumble on the first major agenda item would imperil future efforts on tax reform and a border wall. “The legislative window closes a lot sooner than people imagine,” said Peter Wehner, a former director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives under President George W. Bush, who has known Mr. Ryan for two decades. “It’s open the first year, and you better get things done. If you win, that builds on itself. And if you lose, that builds on itself. ” In an effort to appease conservatives, the White House is warming to a shortening of the Medicaid phaseout period in the current bill, among other changes, aiming to move the bill through the House and daring moderate Senate Republicans to stand in its way. Soon, Mr. Trump could take to the road himself to pressure potentially reluctant members in their states, according to a person briefed on the discussions. On Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence sought to galvanize House Republicans at a session in the basement of the Capitol, where members dined on and sought reassurances. Mr. Pence insisted that Mr. Trump was “spoiling for a fight” to see the process through to completion, according to an attendee. But while the White House has said publicly that collaboration has been smooth, the bill’s struggles have not gone unnoticed in Mr. Trump’s orbit. On Monday, a curiously timed report appeared on the website Breitbart, often a repository of tea leaves for members of Mr. Trump’s circle. (It was once run by Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, a vocal Ryan critic in his old job.) Hours after the release of a damaging analysis on the health bill from the Congressional Budget Office, the site published leaked audio of Mr. Ryan telling House members last October that he could no longer defend Mr. Trump’s campaign. The content of the tape was not news Mr. Ryan’s view at the time was clear, just after the release of the “Access Hollywood” video in which Mr. Trump boasted of sexually assaulting women. But to admirers of Mr. Ryan, the message of the leak was unsubtle. “An audience of one,” Charlie Sykes, the longtime Wisconsin radio host and friend of Mr. Ryan’s, wrote on Twitter. It is not yet clear if the criticisms of Mr. Ryan are resonating with Mr. Trump. The president has been in regular contact with some Republican opponents of the bill in Congress, such as Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus. And while Mr. Trump has suggested that he will be able to blame Democrats for installing the Affordable Care Act in the first place, some of his advisers are dubious. Mr. Trump has also told people that if this effort fails, he will try again in two years. Christopher Ruddy, a friend of Mr. Trump’s and the chief executive of Newsmax Media, said the current plan betrays how the president has traditionally viewed government programs. “Trump should trust his own instincts,” said Mr. Ruddy, who wrote a column suggesting that Mr. Trump seek a bipartisan consensus bill. The administration figure perhaps the most invested in finding a legislative fix is Reince Priebus, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, who is close with Mr. Ryan. While in Detroit on Wednesday, Mr. Trump pointed to Mr. Priebus and said he “may one day run a car company or maybe not,” before adding that he was doing a “great job. ” At a later event in Tennessee, after failing to mention the bill earlier in the day, Mr. Trump promised to “repeal and replace horrible and disastrous Obamacare,” repeatedly plugging the current legislation. Mr. Ryan — who during the campaign called Mr. Trump’s attacks on a judge of Mexican heritage “the textbook definition of a racist comment” — has scarcely said a cross word about him since the election. (He did allow on Thursday that he had “seen no evidence” to support Mr. Trump’s claim that President Barack Obama had wiretapped him.) The president’s assessment of Mr. Ryan has vacillated at least as much. In 2012, Mr. Trump thought Mr. Ryan was a dangerous choice as Mitt Romney’s running mate, and he was deeply critical of the congressman’s budget proposals to trim entitlement programs. After Mr. Ryan distanced himself in October, Mr. Trump savaged him as a “weak and ineffective leader. ” But by December, the two had reconciled. At a rally together in Wisconsin, Mr. Trump compared Mr. Ryan to “a fine wine” whose “genius” he had grown to appreciate. Then came the hedge: “Now, if he ever goes against me, I’m not going to say that. ” | 1 |
Toxins, Vaccines, and a Strategy to Keep Kids Healthy Toxins, Vaccines, and a Strategy to Keep Kids Healthy: A Chiropractor Reviews The Vaccine-Friendly Plan
by Karen Lee, D.C. drkarenslee.com
When the long-awaited book, The Vaccine-Friendly Plan by Paul Thomas, M.D. and Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., was finally published, I couldn’t wait to download it to read it.
My iPad stayed next to me wherever I went and when my husband and I watched our regular weekly TV show, I “pretended” to watch TV while I was actually reading it on the iPad.
I knew Jennifer was working tirelessly on writing this potentially controversial book since last year when I interviewed her for my Wellness Wednesday Webinar , and I applauded her for her tenacity to set the facts straight.
Now that I’ve finished the book, I’m honored to share my thoughts with you here. Don’t judge a book by its cover
I have to admit; I was a bit confused when I read the Table of Contents and the first few chapters. From the title of the book, I expected the book to be only about vaccination, but it was much more than that.
Dr. Paul educates new moms on how to make sure their children are as healthy as possible, so that toxic exposures, including the toxic ingredients in vaccines, will not harm them. Vaccination can be preventative to many diseases if done right, and there is more to it than just getting the shots as recommended, and Dr. Paul’s comprehensive plan for keeping children healthy prior to getting the shots was a new holistic approach I didn’t expect.
As a mom and a retired chiropractor, I appreciated Dr. Paul’s, a medical doctor, views on raising children as naturally as possible.
I am a firm believer in letting the body heal itself and doctors being only a tool to help the healing process when needed. So I appreciated Dr. Paul’s holistic advice on raising healthy children and not blindly following the usual allopathic methods.
Unfortunately, medical doctors often neglect to look at the whole body and the environment when treating patients, relying instead on potentially harmful drugs or unnecessary procedures. You can’t blame them since that’s how they were trained in medical schools and after their formal training they are pressured from the medical associations and pharmaceutical companies.
The Vaccine-Friendly Plan is a classic case in point in applying the old saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” as there’s so much more to the book than the title.
And if you’re a new mom, the information in this book will save you from sleepless nights and unnecessary late night phone calls to your pediatrician. So what is exactly “The Vaccine-Friendly Plan”?
Well, for one thing, Dr. Paul tries to make you understand the whole picture of what it takes to raise a child as healthy as possible. You, as a young parent, need to apply many aspects of a child’s internal and external environments and not just what doctors tell you or what the internet says.
Take the vaccine schedule, for example. There are genetics, environmental, and cellular differences that you have to consider. Just as what the CDC recommends can be harmful, even a flexible schedule can also be harmful if it’s applied to a “wrong” child. That’s why Dr. Paul lays out the health challenges a child may face and explains what his holistic recommendations are in dealing with those health conditions.
And because healthy immunity is the best way to fight any external assaults, as with diseases and vaccines, keeping your child healthy is the key to preventing diseases and vaccine injuries, regardless of what schedule you follow.
And to explain why you need to pay attention to toxins your child will be exposed to, he starts the book with the first chapter on toxins, toxins, toxins, and how you can help your child to avoid toxic contamination.
I found this chapter to be really helpful in helping new moms understand what the toxins mean and what they can do to a healthy person.
The rest of the book covers developmental stages starting with pregnancy all the way up to the teen years, discussing various milestones, conditions, situations, and, of course, what vaccines are required and what Dr. Paul recommends you do and which you should avoid.
Physical and mental statuses of each stage are discussed in each chapter, and the vaccine information is discussed at the end of each chapter with references.
Even general topics like “Car Seat Safety,” “Swim Safety,” and whether you should have a dog or not if you have a toddler are discussed in this book.
When I was a new mom, that kind of information would have been very helpful. The emphasis throughout is that keeping your baby healthy is a key to fighting any toxic contamination. So what does Dr. Paul say about vaccines specifically?
I knew Dr. Paul and Dr. Margulis were not anti-vaccine. At the same time, they are both strong and outspoken proponents of medical freedom , vaccine choice , and flexible and delayed scheduling in some cases.
Dr. Paul mentions at the end of each stage which types of vaccines are usually recommended and why he doesn’t recommend certain ones. I don’t want to mention which ones because you have to read the book to get the full details, but I would have liked his recommended schedule to be even more flexible—perhaps not starting any vaccines until age two .
I also do not think it is safe to vaccinate if the child’s family has a history of certain diseases, like autism or MTHFR mutation.
The reason I believe in this “flexible” schedule is that one of my closest friends has an autistic child. He is the older fraternal twin, and he was diagnosed with autism when he was about a year and half old. Personally, I believe this was a vaccine injury case, despite the mom’s refusal to believe that it was. In this case of twin brothers with same genes, one develops serious, low-functioning sensory issues with autism but his brother did not.
It couldn’t have been just genetics.
His symptoms started to show after one of their visits to the pediatrician. And despite his diagnosis, they continued to receive vaccine shots every visit.
Obviously, I completely agree with Dr. Paul’s emphasis on autism when talking about vaccines because of my personal connection to autism but also because one out of forty-five children is diagnosed with this terrible condition that could be prevented.
However, I don’t believe vaccine injuries only manifest as autism but also as a myriad of other health problems like autoimmune diseases, allergies, eczema, and neurodevelopmental problems like ADD and ADHD.
I had hoped Dr. Paul would cover more referenced cases like these as I think the prevalence of those cases caused by vaccines is even higher than autism. Final Thoughts
The Vaccine-Friendly Plan has 12 chapters on children’s developmental stages with vaccine information in the back of the chapters. It also has 9 appendices, including one that lists the vaccine schedule in 1983 and the schedule in 2016 (this was a shocker!), one that lists the ingredients in each vaccine, clinical data from Dr. Paul’s practice, how to file a vaccine reaction, references, aluminum information, and Dr. Paul’s vaccine schedule at a glance. It’s not as detailed with a bazillion references but it cites over 300 peer-reviewed articles in the blind endnotes, giving every reader enough information to help you understand the dangers of certain vaccine ingredients and possible triggers of vaccine injury. You can look up to research further if you want to.
The Vaccine-Friendly Plan is an easy-to-read book on how to raise a healthy child despite vaccines, so don’t expect to learn just about vaccines.
Be ready to learn everything from what chemicals to avoid while pregnant to how to breastfeed to how to talk to your teenagers about alcohol and even intimacy.
As a mom to grown children, I can see how this book can help new moms not to be overwhelmed while educating them so they can make informed decisions.
I wish I had this book when I was an anxious new mom, along with other books I read.
You can never learn enough when it comes to the health of your child.
Comment on this article at VaccineImpact.com .
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Topics: Bible Thursday, 17 November 2016
The original Holy Text was discovered this week at a remote Middle Eastern location no one has ever heard of. Using radio carbon dating, researchers were able to determine that the bible was approximately 4,000 years old, eerily close to two times 2,000 years old.
"I knew right away this was the original," said Henry Schliemann, chief digger. "You could tell this book had had a lot of wear and tear, so I half expected the 'Original Edition' printed on the inside page."
When asked if there were any surprises in the text, Schliemann replied, "We did find a couple of extra chapters. Right after 'Proverbs', there was a book titled 'Jokes' and right after 'Genesis' there was a book titled 'Evolution.' We figure those books were left out of later editions." Make wasabiphil's | 0 |
In every office, every corporate executive suite, and every law firm across this great land, the men who had got pantsed and received numerous swirlies at the hands of jocks in high school finally have their chance at redemption against their brawny tormentors. [According to a press release from CBS, “The Big Bang Theory,” the brainy sitcom which references pyramids and autotrophs in its theme song, beat out NBC’s Sunday Night Football as the live, primetime same day show. For the past five years Sunday Night Football had owned that coveted, top spot. Now, there’s a caveat to this. According to The Comeback, “ … this data factors in live+3 and live+7 viewings (from later in the week) so given how close it is and how sports are typically watched more live than scripted TV, SNF is probably ahead in live+sameday still. That’s important for advertisers, so it may still pull in more per spot. However, it’s worth mentioning that SNF won the overall crown last year even with live+7 factored in, and TBBT has passed it there now. ” “The Big Bang Theory” has at drawn statistically even with the NFL, if not surpassed it, which represents a clear change from the past where SNF dominated thoroughly. Steven Perlberg of The Wall Street Journal wrote about this trend in November, “A pair of CBS programs were the shows of 2016, dethroning NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” as the primetime program on television, according to a new report from Nielsen. “The Big Bang Theory” averaged 19. 94 million viewers this year, followed by 19. 89 million for “NCIS” and 19. 28 million for “Sunday Night Football,” which last year topped the list with an average of 23. 29 million people tuning in. The report measured live viewing plus seven days of delayed viewing. “NBC said that “Sunday Night Football” is averaging 20. 08 million viewers this year when factoring in live and same day viewing for games through Dec. 12, while the Nielsen report only covered contests through Nov. 6. ” Even if “The Big Bang Theory” wasn’t breathing down SNF’s neck, the fact that one of the NFL’s premier television offerings has lost over three million viewers from last year should cause major concern for the league. In fairness, it’s not like Sunday Night Football lost to “The Real Housewives of Sheboygan,” or whatever. “The Big Bang Theory” has consistently been one of the most watched shows on television. Given that, the NFL should not feel ashamed by any of this. However, what the league absolutely should freak out about is the clear loss of their “favored nation” status among viewers. In 2016, the NFL got taught the lesson that they can’t just wheel out a bad product, court player activists, and expect people to salivate over watching their games. That’s the lesson, will the jocks learn from it? Well, that’s another question entirely. For now though, it appears the nerds have gotten their revenge. Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter: @themightygwinn | 1 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. There are new twists in the investigation into Russian meddling in the election. The day before the congressman leading the House inquiry announced that President Trump or his associates may have been “incidentally” swept up in surveillance of foreigners, he met with someone on the White House grounds who showed him secret intelligence reports. Democrats called the timing suspicious. And Senate investigators plan to question Mr. Trump’s and adviser, Jared Kushner, above, about his discussions with Russian officials. _____ 2. The bruising failure of the Republican bill to overhaul health care will complicate Mr. Trump’s next challenge: trying to remake the tax code. Stocks briefly tumbled on Monday over concerns that he may not prevail there, or with infrastructure spending. The grand plans of lower rates, fewer loopholes and a tax on imports may have to be scaled back to a big corporate tax cut and possibly an individual tax cut. A lot of people think Mr. Trump will settle for an easy win. “They have to have a victory here,” said an economist with the Heritage Foundation. _____ 3. The United States is sending 240 more soldiers to Iraq to help the Iraqi military recapture the city of Mosul from the Islamic State. That will push the United States deployment to well over 5, 000 troops. A wave of civilian casualties is raising questions about changing military priorities. Our reporters found a scene of horror and weary survivors at one block flattened by bombing runs by the United coalition. Some counts put the toll at up to 200. _____ 4. Disruption after disruption for Russia. The opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, above, was jailed a day after the largest antigovernment protests in more than five years. More than 1, 000 demonstrators were arrested in Moscow alone. And truck drivers across the country appeared to be preparing to set up roadblocks near major cities to protest a new highway toll system. _____ 5. Drought and war are heightening the threat of four concurrent famines. In Somalia, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen, aid agencies are scrambling to prepare for what they say could become one of the largest humanitarian crises since World War II. _____ 6. Since taking office last summer, the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, has made it open season on drug dealers and users, calling for the police and vigilantes to kill suspects. We sent a video crew to get a closer look. Their documentary, “When a President Says, ‘I’ll Kill You,’” follows a local photojournalist struggling to capture the death, grief and fear filling the streets. _____ 7. A really big heist: The world’s largest gold coin was stolen from a museum in Berlin. Investigators suspect it took more than one burglar to haul away the Canadian Big Maple Leaf, worth more than $4 million. _____ 8. The Raiders are leaving Oakland. Again. N. F. L. owners voted overwhelmingly to let the team move to Las Vegas, no longer worried that proximity to the gambling world could corrupt the game. The Raiders are the third N. F. L. team to move, or announce a move, in just over a year, as owners hunt for bigger markets and more public financing for new stadiums. _____ 9. Art or appropriation? Some in the art world are outraged over a white artist’s painting of Emmett Till lying in his coffin, on display at the Whitney Biennial. And in our latest newsletter, Times journalists list phrases that make them cringe — like “exotic,” “urban” and “ethnic. ” (Sign up for the newsletter here.) _____ 10. Finally, let’s get out of here. Check out this video collection of sea creatures that look positively otherworldly. Have a great night. _____ Photographs may appear out of order for some readers. Viewing this version of the briefing should help. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s Friday night’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
Jerry Seinfeld has lent his support to Kathy Griffin after the comedian came under fire last week for a photo in which she posed with a fake, bloodied head meant to resemble President Donald Trump, saying in an interview he believes Griffin simply made a “bad joke. ”[“Yes, it was a bad joke. Every comedian tells bad jokes,” the Seinfeld star told People magazine Tuesday. “We all do it. That’s how we find the good jokes. So someone told a bad joke — so what, I don’t understand the big deal,” he added. Griffin sparked a firestorm last week when a photo taken during a shoot with L. A. photographer Tyler Shields was published by TMZ. The photo showed the My Life on the star holding a decapitated prosthetic head meant to resemble that of the president in her outstretched arm. Griffin quickly apologized after the viral photo drew strong condemnation from both sides of the political aisle, writing in a Twitter message that she had gone “too far. ” In his own response, Trump called the photo “sick,” while First Lady Melania Trump described it as “very disturbing” and “simply wrong. ” In a press conference Friday, Griffin fought back tears as she accused the Trump family of bullying her and attempting to ruin her career. The comedian was fired from her role on CNN’s New Year’s Eve Live coverage in the wake of the controversy, while at least five venues on her comedy tour scrapped her scheduled performances. The Secret Service also opened an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the photo shoot. Seinfeld wasn’t the only celebrity to come to Griffin’s defense in a speech at the premiere of his new Showtime series last week, actor Jim Carrey advised Griffin to double down on the photo by holding up Trump’s “severed leg,” adding that comics represent the “last line of defense” in a a environment. Actor and Saturday Night Live Trump impersonator Alec Baldwin also reached out to Griffin on social media following the backlash, and advised her to ignore her critics. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 1 |
VIDEOS Globalist plan for human control The New World Order structure of global submission basically wants to remove free will from the human condition By Sartre 12:11 PM EST
Recognizing that there is and has been a century’s long shrouded plan to mastermind a worldwide Weltanschauung that puts a diabolical elite mastery over the billions of human beings, which make up the vast hordes of divinely created life on this planet, is a taboo topic in most cultures. The entire system of socially manufactured perception is a plot to keep people in line and docile. Mass societal pressure is dumped on anyone, who dares to put forth a confederacy organism of global rule explanation for understanding political, social and economic affairs. Keeping the enigma program for extending a cruel and deadly supremacy over mankind cannot be kept secret any longer.
A brief and concise definition of The Globalist Agenda follows:
“Simply put, the globalist movement is an alliance based on self-interest of the private international financiers and the royal, dynastic and hereditary land owning families of Britain, Europe and America which over the years have intermarried to create a self regenerating power structure that through lies and deception seeks to control everything and everyone on earth.”
Review the glaring elements that make up the demented mindset and ultimate objections of these demonic demons devoted to their satanic master.
This summary of attitudes and aims might not be earth shattering for dedicated observers of the power elite, but for those who avoid any appearance of being tagged as a tin foil wearing conspiracy kook, mustering up the courage to confront the facts of real history may be too much to contemplate. Nullifying one’s comfort zone, even if it is totally false, is not an attribute for those who never developed character of sincerity or intellectual honesty.
Prof. Dr. MUJAHID KAMRAN provides a well documented account of Who Really Controls the World? Coming from a non Western perspective, it is most encouraging that the exposure of the force beyond the scene is resonating in every corner of the planet.
“The wealthiest families on planet earth call the shots in every major upheaval that they cause. Their sphere of activity extends over the entire globe, and even beyond, their ambition and greed for wealth and power knows no bounds, and for them, most of mankind is garbage – “human garbage.” It is also their target to depopulate the globe and maintain a much lower population compared to what we have now.”
When The Communist Takeover Of America – 45 Declared Goals from “ The Naked Communist ,” by Cleon Skousen was published, most people were diverted to thinking that a Marxist ideology was the primary enemy during the cold war. Left to the perceptive and astute, the most informed understand that the totalitarian creed of collectivism was originated and implemented by Jews. The influence of designed destruction for Western institutions and heritage, which facilitate and spreads the New World Order power structure, is the sacred canon of the privileged Globalist elites.
A serious researcher cannot ignore or circumvent this historic fact. Academic censorship would have the timid stay clear of this detail to avoid being smeared as a critic of the “so called” chosen tribe. Those who buy into this asinine prerequisite, which is the height of chutzpah, would be petrified to actually review the sentiments of What world famous men said about the Jews .
Now not every wicked globalist is exclusively Jewish. However, the proportion of Judaic race identity and Talmud proponents within the Globalist circle of black magic is overwhelmingly disproportionate to their population numbers. Also, there is no one single mythos viewpoint among globalists as The Two Jewish-led Globalist Camps… In Competition For Global Control illustrates. “There are two distinct ideological globalist camps, both led by Jews — each camp competes with the other for global control: 1) THE LIBERAL CAMP 2) THE NEOCON CAMP”
The inquiry into the influence of Jewish Faces in the Government can fill several books. Yet, the bias against covering this topic is so strong that only brave souls venture into the cauldron of popular culture ostracization.
If you have the courage to venture where most will not dare, take a close look at the lists provided on THE GLOBALISTS site. The lead rundown presents: “The global elite march in four essential columns: Corporate, Academic, Political and Organized Religion . In general, the goals for globalism are created by Corporate . Academic then provides studies and white papers that justify Corporate goals. Political sells Academic’s arguments to the public and if necessary, changes laws to accommodate and facilitate Corporate in getting what it wants. Organized Religion along with church and state secures corporate, academic and political rule into a global order.”
The lists of oligarch families, Committee of 300 and organized groups of the ruling class is a combination of dynasty elements that make up their cabal syndicate of power and dominance. The Rothschild linage bears the most attention for the central blood line of the international finance and the global cartel. Nevertheless, the choreographed architecture for governance goes well beyond an analysis of money, politics and force.
In order to restrict the world view and impose a rigid abidance into an occult Babylonian religion, The Globalist Agenda contends: New Religion Based on Earth Worship
“Today, the elite are seeking to destroy the old religious belief systems and replace them with a “new age” religion based on a form of earth worship. Doing so will accomplish multiple objectives – to get people to accept lower standards of living; to accept voluntary sterilization to save mother earth thus helping to depopulate the planet; and to accept restrictions on rights and freedoms in the name of saving the environment.”
The Globalist Plan to take-down the whole World by Preston James, Ph.D postulates:
“ Set up a comprehensive multi-level secret Luciferian matrix used to induce and promote selected individuals who are willing to do anti-human debased acts in exchange for extreme rewards of fame, money and power in return for their willingness to give up their souls. This provides a cadre of deeply committed sold-out top controllers who can be later disposed of when no longer needed. With abject secrecy their whole system becomes exposed and crumbles.”
This certainly sounds similar to the way the Plutocrat Jewery deviltry operates. For an evaluation on how The Dark Agenda Behind Globalism And Open Borders works, Zero Hedge sounds a familiar theme.
“ The people behind the effort to enforce globalism are tied together by a particular ideology, perhaps even a cult-like religion , in which they envision a world order as described in Plato’s Republic. They believe that they are “chosen” either by fate, destiny or genetics to rule as philosopher kings over the rest of us. They believe that they are the wisest and most capable that humanity has to offer , and that through evolutionary means, they can create chaos and order out of thin air and mold society at will.”
Now what group of self proclaimed super elites does this most scrupulously describe?
The globalist plan for human servitude and ultimate liquidation is a direct result of the hubris from these deranged omnipotent imposters. Only through a sincere and dedicated investigation into the working of the “ Khazarian Mafia ”, a term penned by Dr. James, can one begin to comprehend the nature of the pandemic ethos that is at the core of the globalist cult.
Who better to conclude a dissecting of the Globalist Plan for Human Control than the teaching of Texe Marrs? From his Exclusive Intelligence Examiner Report you get an account you will not read in the controlled media.
“Children of hell, that’s what Jesus called the Jewish religious teachers. That was almost 2,000 years ago. Well, guess what? The Jewish religionists are even worse now, in the 21st century. They’ve had almost 2,000 years more to practice and perfect their evil religion. Today, those who practice satanic cabalism and believe in the Talmud are the children of hell a hundred times over.”
The globalists adopt the practices and mores of this perversion from the Old Testament faith of Moses, Isaac, Jacob, and the prophets. Their design for a soulless existence and final mass annihilation is the essence of archfiend wickedness. The New World Order structure of global submission basically wants to remove free will from the human condition.
Every thinking and God fearing person must resist and oppose the autocracy of the Tempter for global secularization. As more individuals assimilate into a reprobate culture that lacks faith in the divine word of God, the end collapse of society and all decency is inevitable. | 0 |
Taki's Magazine October 29, 2016
PALM BEACH, Fla.—Maybe you missed this little item, but last month Obama shut down 130 colleges in a single day.
That’s one-three-oh campuses in 38 states that failed to open for the fall semester even though everybody was already enrolled.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think anything even remotely similar to this has ever happened in the history of the Republic. Education is the religion of the country. It’s the one thing that all politicians put on their list of bromides (always saying we need more, not fewer, colleges). Education ranks right up there with sick babies and flogged pit bulls for things people will donate money to. If Obama had shown up in, say, Dayton, Ohio, in 2008 and said, “By the way, part of my platform is that I might shut down 130 colleges,” I think he would have needed a security escort to get out of the Wright Brothers Banquet Hall.
So why are there no riots?
Because the victims of this Orientation Day Surprise are all students at the ITT Technical Institute.
ITT Tech is one of those for-profit chains that offer degrees in rarefied skills like automobile mechanics and refrigeration repair and medical billing—they’re not afraid to get specific with their curriculum—but historically it’s the Oxford of that group. It grew out of an Indianapolis company called Howard W. Sams that was a publisher of electronics textbooks and service manuals. Sams Technical Institute was formed in 1963 to teach electronics to students who wanted to forgo the typical liberal-arts curriculum of the day and learn how to work with emerging technologies, usually in the service end of the business, and it proved so popular that STI soon merged with Teletronic Technical Institute in Evansville, Acme Institute of Technology in Dayton, and another Sams in Fort Wayne, before being acquired in 1966 by ITT, the diversified international conglomerate that got started in the ’20s by consolidating phone companies.
In the ’60s and ’70s these were sneered at as “trade schools” or “vo-tech schools,” but ITT turned them into actual colleges, a fact recognized in 1973 when the original ITT Technical Institute in Indianapolis became the first “nontraditional” school allowed into the federal tuition loan and grant program. It was considered good policy since these programs were extremely popular with Vietnam War veterans trying to re-enter society. ITT Tech expanded rapidly in the ’70s, pulled back slightly in the ’80s, expanded again in the ’90s, then became publicly traded after the Starwood hotel group bought ITT and decided it didn’t want to be in the education business. | 0 |
Sacred Medicine Wheel of Four Brothers(image by open) DMCA "The elders knew peace would not come on the Earth until the circle of humanity is complete; until all four colors sat in the circle and shared their teachings." The sacred medicine wheel of the four directions is for all extents and purposes a mandala, a visual depiction of the universe, our Earth and our inner universe . It's symbolism is simple and primal, and through these qualities it is powerful and meaningful. Representing the intersection of duality and polarity , four is recognized as symbol for completion. In nature this symbolism is illustrated in the cycle of four seasons -- spring, summer, winter and fall -- derived from the flow of cycles between two solstices and two equinoxes of our orbit, as well as the elements of nature: air, fire, water and earth. Four is also reflected in the four aspects of the self: the mental, physical, spiritual and emotional. Mathematically, the symbolism of four it is represented in the four forms of arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) while philosophically, comprehensive human thinking encompasses four dimensions: the thesis (is it so?), antithesis (is it not so?), synthesis (are both so?) and nullesis (are neither so?) Correspondingly, this matrix of four is presented in the beginning of practically every creation story, from Genesis to the Popol Vuh (the Mayan creation story). Nearly all creation stories start with the polarities of Heaven and Earth, and male and female. In this respect, this matrix of four is the basis of most creation stories as well as being depicted in every cross-like symbol shared by so many religions (the Christian cross, the Hindu swastika, the Egyptian ankh etc.) The four Vedas (Sanskrit for "knowledge") are the foundational scriptures in Hindu theology, while the cross symbol adopted by Christianity, Judaism and Islam, its presence in the creation story, and its basis in the four worlds of the Kabbalah reflect its major significance to those teachings. Indeed, all peoples share traditions that include the symbolism of four directly (or subtlety) as part of their core belief systems -- as I explore in detail in the article, The Common Origin of Religions and Theology . And it is this universality of the cross symbol and the unanimous celebration of the matrix of four, symbolically and philosophically, in Hindu, Taoist, Native American, Egyptian, Celtic and Judeo-Christian theology and symbolism that most clearly illustrates its commonality to human spirituality and understanding of our world. - Advertisement - But perhaps no group has lived so completely in unity and reverence to the seasonal cycles of Earth Mother and the universal system, as the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island, now known as North America. Most significantly, the Hopi believe we are living in the fourth world. Hopi tradition states the first world was Endless Space, the second was Dark Midnight, the third was the Age of Animals and the fourth is the World Complete. Four migrations were written upon four sacred tablets which man was supposed to undertake once in this fourth world -- to separate into smaller tribes, divided by color, and began to migrate in four different directions, settling in new lands. The Medicine Wheel Prophecy: The Polarity of Institutions vs. Individuals
"At the beginning of this cycle of time, long ago, the Great Spirit made an appearance and gathered the peoples of this Earth together, and said to the human beings, "I'm going to send you to four directions, and over time I'm going to change you to four colors, but I'm going to give you some teachings, and you will call these the Original Teachings; when you come back together with each other, you will share these so that you can live and have peace on Earth, and a great civilization will come about"
"And so He gave each of us a responsibility, and we call that the Guardianship. To the Indian people, the Red people, He gave the Guardianship of the Earth" To the South, He gave the yellow race of people Guardianship of the Wind" To the West, He gave the black race of people Guardianship of the Water" To the North, He gave the white race of people Guardianship of the Fire" Each of the four races went to their directions and learned their teachings" [but] some of the brothers and sisters had forgotten the sacredness of all things, and all the human beings were going to suffer for this" The elders knew peace would not come on the Earth until the circle of humanity is complete; until all the four colors sat in the circle and shared their teachings -- then peace would come on Earth."
~ Source : A Cherokee Legend by Lee Brown, Cherokee
I have watched with dismay and horror over the last few years especially, and my lifetime in total, as the powers that be, every institution of each type -- religious, government, corporate and media -- have interjected and overwhelmed the discourse of the collective conversation, stifling the development of the discussion and thus the development of our thinking and being. This happens concerning practically every subject -- topics are reduced to a consideration of limited polarities. This reinforces polarity in the human mind, which is trained from birth to look for opposites: Good/Evil, Right/Wrong, Left/Right, Thesis/Antithesis. - Advertisement -
The very inquiry into the origins of human thinking and being is posed through the duality of polarity, and yet it is most often considered a singular polarity. Why are we the way we are? Is it the result of nature, or nurture? The debate of nature versus nurture is posed in a single distinct polarization, yet the best question itself supersedes the mindset of the singular polarity. Traditionally, the question is viewed philosophically as a trinity of options -- the thesis (nature), antithesis (nurture) and synthesis (both) of one and the other. And yet, in its natural state, this mode of thinking is more comprehensively a matrix of four: thesis, antithesis, synthesis (both) or neither -- the mindset of infinite alternative potential.
Such comprehensive thinking is uncommon today, as the institutions of the status quo have worked to maintain limited, polarizing collective narratives (particularly through the corporate media) so as to keep control of the way we think, and therefore, behave. But, when we understand how duality and polarity can be used against us, we soon come to see there are many holes in the institutional faรยงade. Sometimes it is their actions that expose them, but quite often it is what they say and how they say it -- or what they don't say -- that provides clarity into their real motivation: domination. Four Types of Institutional Lies
There are four basic types of institutional/political lies, which directly correlate to the four basic forms of arithmetic. Like all effective lies, each type involves some nugget of truth. The first type of lie is the addition of information: Sometimes the addition of a small bit of (generally false) information can change the story entirely. The second type of lie is the subtraction of information: The removal of small key components can result in entirely different meaning. The third type of lie is the multiplication of information: Exaggerations of situations and related information are included in its presentation, to dilute or emphasize. The fourth type of lie is the division of information: The facts are interlaced with 'disconnects' which separate or underplay the significance of information.
This approach is often used to cover institutional prejudices and bias; to maintain the appearance of objectivity among institutional leaders. The four main categories of human prejudice are racial, religious, institutional/national and cultural heritage/history. Often prejudice is simply based on the pigment of one's skin, or other inherited features, but sometimes it is much more nuanced and complicated than that, particularly where a history of conflict exists. And while human prejudice is typically based on these four distinctions, the specifics of each are near limitless. | 0 |
Although my dad was one of the friendliest people I’ve ever known, his life seemed to be fully focused on his family and his businesses. My father had two companies: Music Makers Productions, where he promoted the likes of Prince and Bobby Womack, and Hockett Construction and Demolition Company, where he made the bulk of his living for his wife and five kids. We all worked for my father. Mr. Red, one of my father’s best and only friends, was his foreman. He didn’t drive, so we’d all load into the van and head to Bemis, Tenn. to pick him up. Then we’d gather a few more workers and drive to the job site with our hammers and helmets, ready for a long day of labor beneath the steamy, Southern sun. Mr. Red kept us on our feet. As kids, my brothers would drive forklifts and operate bulldozers and backhoes. I can remember pulling bricks from the walls of the buildings we demolished. We’d roll them out in a wheelbarrow to be cleaned, knocking away the mortar with a hatchet. Then, after loading them onto the back of my father’s we’d head to Memphis to sell them to the brickyards. My father salvaged everything from the demolition jobs: tubs, scrap metal, lumber, sinks. He even found a baby grand piano once. As we made our way back home to Jackson, Tenn. in the dark of night, I’d always pray for him. My parents were not silent about the obstacles they faced as black owners in the South. They shared their journey with us to make us stronger and to inspire us to live our dreams regardless of the challenges. They made us work for the things we wanted. But my father worked so hard that it broke my heart. I was worried that his body would not be able to take the labor much longer. Three years ago, my fears came true. He suffered a major heart attack and learned he had heart disease. The doctors commanded him to stop working, and he was put on a left ventricular assist device to keep his heart beating. A year later, he had a stroke that greatly affected his brain. Our hopes of a heart transplant went out the window. He had around three years to live. I was determined to make them the best. I’d been living in New York for years, but I returned home every month or two just to take him out for an ice cream cone or a drive. He loved to be on the open roads of Tennessee. The stroke left him with early signs of dementia, so we often had a hard time telling if he knew what was going on. On the road one day, he directed me to a trailer in Obion County, Tenn. He told me to knock on the door to see if his friend Bubba was there. As dogs were wildly barking, a man came to the door and said that Bubba had been dead for 10 years. I told my father the news, and we drove to Union City, Tenn, his birthplace. Once again, he directed me to a house and asked me to see if Frank was there. He was dead, too. Both Bubba and Frank had been his workers. When we got home, I pulled into the driveway and turned off the car. My father sat there for a while and then said, “I guess all my friends have died and gone. ” It was as if he was trying to decide whether to stay or to go. On Nov. 14, my father passed away. He was 63. Luckily, we were all able to fly home to be with him that day in the hospital. I come from a singing family. We held hands in a circle around him and sang songs from our childhood. We sang songs we used to sing at church and songs we used to sing to get through the hard work days. I was holding my father’s hand when I felt his spirit leave his body. Looking back, I see that my father’s companies were his form of art, and I find myself still learning lessons from the years we worked side by side. Music promotion was his passion, but construction was his source of financial stability. So many times on the path toward manifesting my own musical dream, I have leaned on the work foundation he and my mother laid for us. The things we are passionate about are fueled by mundane tasks. All is necessary. My father’s goals fed each other. Without construction, there would have been no music promotion. Without his music promotion, I never would have followed a musical path myself. His dream became my own. Always supportive of me, he sang on my song “Shake Down,” one of the greatest gifts he left me. As a vocalist, I treasure the sound of his voice. And I am in awe of his limited time on earth. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump is making his influence felt on government funding deliberations in Congress, pressing Republican leaders to postpone action on spending bills until after he takes office. Speaker Paul D. Ryan said on Thursday that the House would go along with the incoming administration’s request and pass a stopgap spending bill that would keep the government running at current spending levels until March. “I think they would like to have a on how money’s going to be spent going into the next year,” he told reporters. But Republican leaders in the Senate did not immediately sign on to the plan, reflecting their desire to get contentious spending battles out of the way this year. Congress had been working toward agreement on spending bills by Dec. 9, when the current funding agreement expires. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, left open the possibility of an agreement with the House. “Discussions are also ongoing about how to fund the government and for how long,” he said on the floor on Thursday. But signaling that the longstanding tensions between the House and Senate may not abate under a more unified Republican government, some Senate Republicans expressed concern that waiting until early next year could distract them from other legislative priorities. “My opinion is that it would be better to get this year done now,” said Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri and a member of the Appropriations Committee. “My preference is to do it now and not get bogged down early next year. ” The issue flared as both parties on Capitol Hill continued to adapt to Mr. Trump’s victory and his promise to shake up the way Washington works. Vice Mike Pence visited the Capitol to meet with Republican and Democratic leaders, as well as House Republicans. And the House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi of California, drew a challenger on Thursday in her campaign to retain her post, as Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio said the election outcome required Democrats to take a new approach. Startled by the number of voters in states like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania that shifted their support to Republicans — particularly Mr. Trump — Democrats have spent the week contemplating how to recapture those voters. Mr. Ryan, 43, who represents the quintessentially Rust Belt area of Youngstown, Ohio, said he believed he could help Democrats reach them. “The American people need to know we understand that they elected us to fight for economic opportunity for all,” he said in a statement. “We need to create America 2. 0 — a multicultural, progressive and innovative country that fights every day for ordinary people. ” Not selecting new leadership, Mr. Ryan said, would lead to “more disappointment in future elections. ” Ms. Pelosi, 76, has led House Democrats since 2003. In a letter to Democrats on Wednesday, Ms. Pelosi announced her bid for and issued a warning to potential challengers, arguing she already had the support of of House Democrats. And that was before she had even asked for any votes, Ms. Pelosi said on Thursday. “When somebody challenges you, your supporters turn out,” she said. “It almost did me a favor. ” Ms. Pelosi’s confidence is not without basis. A prodigious and effective negotiator, she has a strong and vocal base of support that on paper should help her easily defeat any challenges. However, members have noted a restlessness in recent days within the conference, where Mr. Ryan’s message seemed to be resonating, which could end up blindsiding the leader. Further, her loss in a similar, far struggle two years ago demonstrated cracks in her power. In 2014, a proxy battle between Ms. Pelosi and Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland, broke out over a top spot on the Energy and Commerce Committee. Ms. Pelosi’s pick, Representative Anna G. Eshoo of California, was defeated by Mr. Hoyer’s choice, Representative Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey, stunning Ms. Pelosi. But Mr. Trump’s early intervention on spending issues also highlighted the many challenges facing the Republican majority as it adapts to the priorities of a new administration. Referring to Mr. Trump’s desire to “drain the swamp,” Mr. Ryan halted an effort at a procedural meeting on Wednesday that would have lifted a ban on earmarks — the practice of allowing lawmakers to allocate money to specific projects in their states or districts — promising instead to hold a vote on the proposal early next year. It has been several years since lawmakers passed a spending bill in time for the beginning of the fiscal year. Since Congress passed a stopgap measure in September, appropriators have been working to wrap up an agreement that would extend through the end of the government’s fiscal year next Sept. 30 before the new Congress assembles in January. Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, another Republican on the Appropriations Committee, was critical of continued reliance on spending bills, which have become a regular fallback as lawmakers have failed to cobble together legislation palatable to both President Obama and the right wing of their own party. They are “a really lazy way to govern,” Mr. Alexander told reporters. “I would think the last thing the Trump administration would want to do is spend time cleaning up an appropriations bill that was supposed to have been passed in the previous year under Obama,” he said. | 1 |
Brilliant! | 0 |
Good morning. Here’s what you need to know: • Syria’s deadliest chemical attack in years. Dozens of people were killed, including women and children. Witnesses described traumatic scenes. Graphic photographs and videos posted online showed people struggling to breathe. The U. S. and European powers have blamed President Bashar ’s government, which denied responsibility, and are expected to seek condemnation from the U. N. Security Council. A White House spokesman dismissed regime change as impractical. _____ • A Spanish judge ordered the seizure of properties controlled by Rifaat an uncle of the Syrian president. The order came out of a money laundering investigation, carried out jointly by France and Spain, that has traced his wealth to Syrian state coffers. Mr. Assad is known as the Butcher of Hama, a reference to his possible role in the suppression of an uprising in that Syrian city in 1982. _____ • A man from Kyrgyzstan who had a Russian passport was responsible for the deadly subway blast in St. Petersburg, the authorities said, as the toll from the attack rose to 14 dead and more than 60 wounded. Investigators were seeking a young man and woman from Central Asia, according to some news reports, but there was no official confirmation. _____ • Russia’s Supreme Court is scheduled to consider today whether to ban Jehovah’s Witnesses. The pacifist denomination has more than 170, 000 members in the country and has been targeted in a growing government campaign to banish religious groups that compete with the Russian Orthodox Church. _____ • Hungary’s Parliament approved a law that appeared to be written to force the closing of a university founded by George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist. In Budapest, thousands protested the law as yet more restraint on free expression. Steinmeier, the German president, denounced the move. “Europe should not remain silent,” he said. _____ • Meet Duop. He is one of boys, some as young as 10, who have been forced to fight in South Sudan. Duop is 16 now, give or take, and what he has experienced seems to have robbed him of the ability to speak. Our correspondent went with him to see his mother for the first time in six years. _____ • TV news giants: We explore how CNN has become central to the American national conversation largely thanks to a presidency it helped create. • BMW and are among a wave of companies that pulled advertising from Fox News in response to sexual harassment allegations against Bill O’Reilly, the network’s host. • Boeing said its tentative agreement to sell up to 60 737s to an Iranian airline would create 18, 000 American jobs, but it still requires U. S. government approval. • Here’s a snapshot of global markets. • In France, a snap poll suggested that Emmanuel Macron, a centrist presidential candidate, performed better than Marine Le Pen, his rival, in the second presidential debate. [Reuters] • After years of quiet seas, Somali pirates have waylaid four ships in the past month, raising fears that the pirate menace has returned to the Indian Ocean. [The New York Times] • Russian spies tried in 2013 to recruit a businessman who is now a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign — and part of the F. B. I. investigation into Russia’s interference into the U. S. election. [The New York Times] • The Dutch Supreme Court has approved the extradition to Canada of a convicted cyberbully who faces charges in the case of a Canadian teenager who killed herself after being bullied online. [Associated Press] • The Trump administration axed U. S. funding of the U. N. Population Fund, the world’s leading provider of family planning services, including contraception. [The New York Times] • North Korea tested a missile only a day before President Xi Jinping of China was set to arrive in the U. S. for talks with President Trump. [The New York Times] • “It’s impossible to know what to get Your Holiness!” — That was Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, speaking to Pope Francis in Rome as he handed the pontiff a picnic basket full of tea and chocolate. [Associated Press] • The best way to get more done may be to spend more time doing less. • Beginning a new exercise regimen, but gaining weight? Starting to exercise often means we eat more and move less than we did before. • This recipe for flounder with mustard greens puts bold tastes front and center. • A dispute between Gigi Becali, above, a and Romania’s Ministry of Defense threatens to destroy the country’s most successful soccer team, Steaua Bucharest. • The : Hundreds of thousands years ago, a cataclysmic flood destroyed Britain’s last physical link, a land bridge, with the European continent, according to a new study. • The hippies have won: In what may seem like a 1970s throwback, products surrounding healthy eating and wellness have gone mainstream. • Researchers say it is more efficient if nobody walks on escalators. Good luck persuading people as pressed as your Briefing reporter. Even a schoolchild can tell you that matter can exist as a solid, a liquid or a gas. But humanity’s hope for clean energy may hinge on a fourth state: plasma. A giant plant now under construction in the south of France will be the testing ground, if the project’s partners — which include the European Union, the U. S. Russia and China — stay on course for billions of dollars of investment and a couple of decades of painstaking work. The kind of plasma we’re talking about was named by an American scientist, Irving Langmuir, who saw a resemblance to blood plasma. It emerges when energy is added to gas, leaving a cloud of positively charged ions and negatively charged electrons zipping around. That’s what makes up the sun and other stars. Under the right conditions, some superheated ions can fuse. And as they join, they shed a tiny amount of mass that translates into vast amounts of energy. Hence all that heat and light from the sun. The French plant aims to create the right conditions by using magnetic fields to contain the plasma and radio waves and microwaves to make it unimaginably hot — and then see if fusion will work. Andrea Kannapell contributed reporting. _____ This briefing was prepared for the European morning. We also have briefings timed for the Australian, Asian and American mornings. You can sign up for these and other Times newsletters here. Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings and updated online. What would you like to see here? Contact us at europebriefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
I was born in the shadow of the 21st century, so I never knew O. J. Simpson as an athlete or as an actor. I wasn’t quite a year old on Jan. 1, 1989, the day Simpson beat his wife, Nicole so badly that she fled their house screaming, “He’s going to kill me!” I was only 6 on June 17, 1994, when the N. B. A. finals broadcast cut away to a shot of Simpson’s white Ford Bronco creeping down a California highway, escorted by a line of as if in a funeral procession. That was four days after 35, and her friend Ronald Goldman, 25, were found dead in pools of blood, nearly decapitated. Some of my earliest memories are of that white Bronco, and of the “Trial of the Century” that followed, and of my parents’ happiness when Simpson was acquitted. I understand now that I was watching Simpson’s fall. As recently as a few months ago, though, I still couldn’t contextualize Simpson, the things he had accomplished or the lofty position he occupied in America — in white America. I approached older friends, people who had grown up watching Simpson move from a Hall of Fame N. F. L. career to mainstream megastardom, and asked them who his modern equivalent would be. But there aren’t any. Few American athletes have been as widely beloved as Simpson was. Even today, his popularity seems inconceivable. “O. J.: Made in America,” the ESPN “30 for 30” documentary directed by Ezra Edelman that is airing this week, busies itself with the making of the man at the myth’s center and with the country that helped him become a monster. It’s the best thing ESPN has ever produced. And it answers my question: Simpson’s story is that of a black man who came of age during the civil rights era and spent his entire adult life trying to “transcend race” — to claim that strange accolade bestowed on blacks spanning from Pelé to Prince to Nelson Mandela to Muhammad Ali. Which is to say, it’s the story of a halfback trying, and failing, to outrun his own blackness. This country was built on the backs of black slaves whose lives and labor were stolen by their white masters. That theft created a caste system in which both groups of people could occupy the same spaces yet have completely different experiences: a white America and a black America. This was true in 1619, in 1865 and in 1947, when Simpson was born it holds true today. Yet there are a few blacks — the most singular and spectacular among us — who have unique and priceless gifts to offer. Racial transcendence happens when white America takes these gifts for itself, in exchange for acceptance within white culture. It is the mechanism through which whites acknowledge the humanity of black superhumans and which allows these few to move, supposedly, beyond blackness, their talents granting them safe passage through white spaces, mouths and memories. Every black person, successful or not, has to overcome a steep handicap the idea of racial transcendence is anchored in the fallacy that the handicap is blackness itself, rather than a society that terrorizes and undermines blacks at every turn. Racial transcendence is a lie, but it’s one that Simpson believed in deeply. In the first installment of “O. J.: Made in America,” a sociologist and activist named Dr. Harry Edwards describes his efforts to recruit Simpson into a collective of black athletes working for civil rights in the late 1960s — people like Muhammad Ali, Lew Alcindor (later Kareem ) Jim Brown and the Olympic sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who raised their fists in a salute at the 1968 Olympics. Simpson refused. After just one season at the University of Southern California, it was obvious that he was a priceless talent. It wasn’t just that he was stronger and faster than everyone else was Simpson ran almost daintily, tiptoeing through seams visible only to him, leaving defenders diving at air. He had emerged from nowhere, fully formed, already one of the best college running backs of all time and already more famous than most of the athletes in Edwards’s collective. “His response,” Edwards remembers in the documentary, “was, ‘I’m not black, I’m O. J.’ ” In 1968, the same year Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Simpson believed he could escape race in America. For as long as there have been Negroes in the country, there have been “exceptional Negroes. ” When Joe Louis was boxing in the 1930s and 1940s, his talent and humility allowed him to be thought of, his son claimed, “as an American, not as a black. By winning, he became white America’s first black hero. ” The sportswriter Jimmy Cannon called Louis “a credit to his race — the human race. ” This is the same fraudulent that remains widespread today, found in people who claim that they “don’t see color” or that “All Lives Matter” it’s a nasty bit of gaslighting — the denial of racism through the denial of race itself. At its best, Edelman’s documentary reveals what made Simpson unique: not simply that he tried to outrun his blackness, but the herculean efforts he made to do so. Simpson, with his team of friends and erected a universe, one he inhabited for much of his adult life. At no point is this more obvious than when the documentary recounts the shooting of his famous 1978 Hertz commercial. To advertise the giant’s speed of service, the company’s chief executive, Frank Olson, enlisted Simpson to run through Newark International Airport. That simple conceit required that an entire false reality be built to support it. No other black people could be included in the shot. Fred Levinson, who directed the scene, instead added white bystanders, who cheered on Simpson as he sprinted through the empty hallways, telegraphing that he was safe, and therefore that they were, too. Hertz’s universe was like Simpson’s, held together with lies, ever on the verge of collapse. Levinson was able to look at a man with hickory skin, full lips, a wide nose and a nappy Afro, and say this: “He’s African, but he’s a man. He almost has white features. ” Olson continues: “For us, O. J. was colorless. None of the people that we associated with looked at him as a black man. ” One of the most alarming anecdotes in the documentary comes from Robert Lipsyte, a former sportswriter for The New York Times. “He was telling me a story about being at a teammate’s wedding with his wife and sitting at a table of mostly, as he said it, mostly Negroes,” Lipsyte recounts. “And he overheard a white woman sitting at the next table saying, ‘Look, there’s O. J. sitting with all those niggers.’ And I remember in my naïveté saying, ‘That must have been terrible for you.’ And he said, ‘No, it was great. Don’t you understand? She knew that I wasn’t black. She saw me as O. J.’ ” In a time of black revolution, Simpson was a counterrevolutionary as blacks embraced black power and Simpson surrounded himself with white people. There were plenty of great black football players around his time, but Simpson was special: Not only did he play better than most, he also used his wit and charm in the service of making white people feel safe. In a period of nationwide change and unrest, he was “one of the good ones. ” He played the role happily, and it brought him a level of fame as unprecedented as his eventual fall. “O. J.: Made in America” makes it very plain that Simpson almost certainly committed the murders and that he almost certainly was going to be acquitted from the beginning. The Los Angeles Police Department’s collection of evidence from the crime scene was botched, as was the prosecution itself. The trial was held just two years after Rodney King’s beating by L. A. P. D. officers, their acquittals and the ensuing riots. The two cases further divided the city along racial lines, laying bare the way that blacks and whites could occupy the same space yet live in separate worlds. When Simpson left the courthouse a free man, blacks across the country rejoiced, his white friends and fawners abandoned him and the universe around him crumbled. Simpson seems to have understood many things about how racial transcendence works. He understood how black talent could be for white gain and how, by denying his blackness, he could exercise a perverse control over his image. He understood that racial transcendence is less about who you are and more about who you aren’t. In this country, racially transcendent blacks are used as exemplars, direct foils to creeping black counterculture. Some blacks are complicit in the caper Simpson was the perfect portrait of an black athlete. When Richard Pryor was lacing his sets with the word “nigger,” Bill Cosby was beginning to peddle respectability politics he remained transcendent until the world was reminded of allegations that he had spent his career drugging and raping women. When Allen Iverson was popularizing cornrows, baggy shorts and tattoos in the N. B. A. Tiger Woods was the respectable black athlete on the golf circuit. Even now, the N. B. A. ’s most valuable player, Steph Curry — who transforms from a showman during the game to a humble, introvert minutes after — is the subject of all manner of racial projection and notes on skin tone. A white friend of mine once called him the league’s first Great White Hope since Larry Bird. What Simpson may not have recognized, though, is that the United States’ history is a story of theft, and theft doesn’t require cooperation. Talents you don’t trade can be stolen through your silence, through your absence or after your death. And once you’ve been marked as having “transcended race,” the success you’ve earned in spite of white racism can be twisted into an example of white magnanimity. Muhammad Ali was a menace, a black fighter who engaged in psychological warfare with his opponents, changed his name after joining a sect and gave up the best years of his career in exile rather than killing for a country he decried as racist — yet after his death, the sportscaster Chris Myers could tweet that “When you saw #Ali, you didn’t see color, you didn’t see religion. ” Martin Luther King Jr. harassed by the F. B. I. and ultimately assassinated, is now deployed as a symbol of a nation that has achieved colorblindness. Whitney Houston, a black woman who made black music after finding her voice in a black church, was congratulated on transcending race after her death. You can imagine the Barack Obama obituaries to come. I grew up in a different America from the one in which Simpson did, but one thing still unites our two worlds: The highest compliment America will pay black people today is to say they escaped their blackness, which is to say they escaped themselves. As long as Simpson’s shortcomings were kept to cheating in golf against wealthy, white businessmen, and his physical abuse of was kept behind closed doors, he could pretend that he wasn’t black — just O. J. But when he stood trial for murder, he did so as a black man. Racial transcendence is, above all, probationary. | 1 |
at 12:38 pm 2 Comments
A few days ago the Wall Street Journal published a very powerful piece titled, The Million-Dollar Donors . What you’ll see should sufficiently dash any and all fantasies that Hillary Clinton is for the average person.
Here are a few of the graphics:
For additional graphics and more detailed information, click here .
So are you ready? | 0 |
Louisiana Election Officials Seize Voting Machine Illegally Placed In Private Room For ‘VIP Voters’ (VIDEO) By Stephanie Kuklish
Election officials in Louisiana seized a voting machine on Wednesday that’s purpose was to serve “VIP” voters so that they could skip voting lines, an illegal and suspicious tactic by the longtime Jeffrey Parish Registrar Of Voters, Dennis DiMarco.
The unique voter machine was kept in a conference room and only allowed “special” citizens to use it. Allegedly it was meant for the purpose of allowing citizens such as police officers, fireman, emergency physicians, and anyone else with a job that may keep them from being available during voting hours.
Meg Casper, a spokeswoman for Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler’s office, told the Huffington Post that the machine was seized immediately and the user’s names have been retrieved. Schedler wrote a letter to DiMarco stating : “I feel this action is necessary to preserve the transparency and integrity of early voting and to promote confidence within the general public regarding the voting process.”
Louisiana state law says that : “Each voting machine shall be placed inside the polling place and shall be in full view of the public from the time the election begins until the last elector has voted. The commissioners and watchers shall be stationed near the voting machines, and the commissioners shall regulate the admission of the voters thereto, and each shall always be in full view of the other election commissioners and watchers and, as far as possible, of the public.”
Apparently the Registrar of Voters, DiMarco, wasn’t aware of his own laws and replied with a statement saying:
“There was no fraudulent votes; they’re no allegations about that. No allegations of anyone voting who was not entitled to vote. Now, we’ve turned down everybody. So no one gets preferential treatment. But again, that means that those firemen, those policemen, are standing up rather than maybe doing their duty on the streets.”
If Louisiana requires every police officer, firemen, and other emergency personnel to work every day all day long then maybe we should be taking a look at that instead of refusing to acknowledge the law.
Or maybe the Republican party should stop pushing so hard for limited early voting hours after fanning the flames of Republican presidential nominee’s unfounded claims that the election is rigged. Featured Image Via Gambit About Stephanie Kuklish
I am a 30 something writer passionate about politics, the environment, human rights and pretty much everything that effects our everyday life. To stay on top of the topics I discuss, like and follow me at https://www.facebook.com/keeponwriting and https://facebook.com/progressivenomad . Connect | 0 |
It’s all old news to those of us who, unlike Democrat LIVs (low information voters), pay attention to the Alternative Media. But it’s still significant because the information made it to Fox News’ Hannity Show .
His name is Jeff Rovin .
After decades as one of Bill and Hillary Clintons’ many retainers, Rovin is outing himself as the Clintons’ “ fixer ” — defined by Oxford Dictionaries as “ A person who makes arrangements for other people, especially of an illicit or devious kind. ” In Rovin’s case, he claims to have been employed by the Clintons to suppress and remove from the media any scandalous news of their sexual affairs. Note: For a few of the Clintons’ other retainers, see “ Hillary Clinton’s medical handler, cleaner, & prompter were all at the last presidential debate ”.
Rovin says he was paid $4,000 a month to keep the Clintons’ open marriage and their respective adulteries from the news. In Hillary’s case, she had “affairs” with Vincent Foster and with a female Hollywood honcho. Note: On July 20, 1993, Foster — who was Bill Clinton’s deputy White House counsel at the time — was found dead on a park bench in D.C.’s Ft. Marcy Park, supposedly from a self-inflicted gun shot. See “ FBI files linking Hillary Clinton to Vince Foster suicide vanished from National Archives “. Note: According to the Clintons’ former assassin Larry Nichols, when she was First Lady, Hillary regularly went to California on weekends to be with Hollywood producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and other women to “worship” Satan at “a church”. See “ Clinton friend and assassin Larry Nichols: Hillary is a satanist ”. Linda Bloodworth-Thomason , 69, is a television producer who, with her husband Harry Thomason, is best known for creating, writing, and producing the TV series, Designing Women . The couple are notable for their friendship with Bill and Hillary Clinton, which dates back to Bill’s days as governor of Arkansas. The Thomasons created several short-subject political propaganda films for Bill, the most famous of which was The Man from Hope that introduced Bill at the 1992 Democratic Convention. The Thomasons did similar propaganda films for Hillary’s run for the U.S. Senate and for other candidates, such as General Wesley Clark’s presidential bid. Clark has endorsed Hillary for president. (See “ Obama-supporter Gen. Wesley Clarke: Disloyal Americans should be put in concentration camps ”)
Here’s Rovin on Hannity , on Oct. 24, 2016:
The National Enquirer first broke Jeff Rovin’s story. Here’s what Rovin told the Enquirer :
During the 1980s and 1990s, I was working in Hollywood as a reporter for several national magazines and newspapers. Because of my good relationship with stars, publicists and the press I became “a fixer”: someone who helps stars keep embarrassing stories out of the press. I helped keep secrets safe for some of Hollywood’s leading men.
In 1991, my reputation was such that I was asked to work on behalf of a fast-rising figure on the national stage: Arkansas Gov. William Jefferson Clinton. I attended a meeting in Hollywood where I was told by an intermediary: “There will be a lot of stories coming out in the tabloid press. We want them buried.”
I was informed that these stories would involve rumors of Bill Clinton‘s many sexual dalliances and an alleged ongoing affair of Hillary Clinton with a male member of her law firm, Vince Foster, as well as a female mover-and-shaker in Hollywood.
For a retainer of $4,000 a month — paid by a third party, not the campaign — I was told to keep these stories hush-hush in one of two ways: by trading access to the Clintons for “positive” interviews, or by paying the reporters.
The payments were always cash, usually delivered in a movie theater or restaurant on Sunset Boulevard, and came in two denominations: $100 for a heads-up that a bad story was coming; or considerably more to kill the piece.
It did not appear that the job would be terribly time-consuming: After all, Hillary reportedly had just one lover, and Bill’s girlfriends were all in the past.
Not so. The sexual dalliances were ongoing — and so my communications with the West Wing, Air Force One and Camp David continued through 1998 — a stunning length of time when one considers that both the president and the first lady were supposed to be devoting their full energies to the business of the people of the United States!
The gravest example of a Clintonian lack of judgment occurred in March 1994. Presidential brother Roger Clinton was marrying his eight-months-pregnant bride Molly. There was a bachelor party. Prostitutes were involved. Recordings were made. Recordings involving Bill Clinton.
Arrangements for a meeting between Bill and a 26-year-old brunette were discussed when the president was to arrive in Dallas for the ceremony.
The tape recording was offered, for sale, to The National Enquirer . Before the publication and its then-editor could publish a transcript, I swooped in and negotiated for the White House to give this paper exclusive access to the ceremony itself. Not even The Washington Post or The New York Times had that. The Enquirer was given leave to publish exclusive White House photographs.
At the reception, while Bill Clinton sang with the piano player, Hillary was introduced to The Enquirer reporter. Her expression fierce, voice tight, she took and tightly held the reporter’s hand and demanded, “Are we done now?” The reporter replied, “Madam First Lady, with this incident, yes.”
Of course, we were not done. This was one of many in an endless string of sexual stories arising from what effectively was the Clintons’ open, polyamorous marriage.
I have kept these secrets for a quarter-century because Bill Clinton had become an elder statesman with heart trouble and Hillary Clinton seemed to be focused, at last, on the business of doing her job — for better or for worse.
I am coming forward now because of the endless attention the alleged indiscretions of Donald Trump have received. Nothing I have heard comes close to the sexual and moral corruption of the Clintons — many of which have yet to be revealed.
Predictably, the liberal media is focusing on one man’s alleged misdeeds and ignoring another’s proven sins.
I mention some of these here and now because we have only two serious candidates for the presidency. In the few weeks remaining until the election, we should not be weighing whose corruption is worse (the Clintons win by a landslide, if all were to be told), but who has the best ideas and leadership skills to become president of the United States. Hillary Clinton is transfixed by Christina Aguilera’s boobs, confirmed by the singer on the Ellen Degeneres Show in May 2016.
See also: | 0 |
A college student in Michigan has been charged with hazing, accused of smearing peanut butter on the face of a friend who had a serious peanut allergy, the student’s lawyer said on Wednesday. The student, Dale Merza, turned himself in to the authorities after a warrant was issued last week. He pleaded not guilty in Isabella County District Court on Friday, his lawyer, Bruce Leach, said in a telephone interview. The charge, a misdemeanor that can carry a jail sentence, was reported in the Detroit Free Press and other news outlets this week. Mr. Merza, who was released on a personal recognizance bond, is a student at Central Michigan University, Mr. Leach said. He was charged in connection with the incident that took place in October at an party. There a fellow student, Andrew Seely, who was 19 at the time, passed out, he said. He woke up with peanut butter on his face and a severe reaction that his mother said could have been deadly. Mr. Leach said no one at the party knew that Mr. Seely had a peanut allergy. He gave no further explanation of what happened that night. “This is a total misunderstanding,” he said. “It was only learned the day after the incident that he had an allergy. I don’t think this had anything to do with hazing. ” “It was a big misunderstanding that has been blown out of proportion,” he added. The episode came to light in March, when the police in Mount Pleasant, a city of about 26, 000 people two and half hours northwest of Detroit, said they were investigating the encounter involving members of the Alpha Chi Rho fraternity. Mr. Seely’s mother, Teresa Seely, contacted the police after her son told his family what happened, and she posted a photograph of his distorted face on Facebook. “He could have been killed,” she wrote, adding that he carried medicine to counteract accidental exposure to peanuts. Ms. Seely wrote in the post that her son had passed out at the party. When he came to, he discovered that his eyes, nose and lips had ballooned because peanut butter had been rubbed on his face, she wrote. He was treated at a campus clinic. Mr. Seely’s father, Paul Seely, told CBS News last month that it could have been fatal had the peanut butter gotten into his mouth. The national headquarters of Alpha Chi Rho said in a statement last month that it had revoked the chapter’s charter in 2011 because of hazing, adding that those involved in Mr. Seely’s case “were not members” of the fraternity and “acted independently. ” Citing privacy rules, Heather L. Smith, a spokeswoman for the university, said on Wednesday she could not comment on a possible university investigation into violations of the student code of conduct. Peanut allergy is one of the most common causes of severe allergic attacks, according to the Mayo Clinic. The allergy can cause a potentially condition in which the blood pressure drops and airways narrow, blocking breathing. | 1 |
“My career was never based on pretty,” one of the world’s most beautiful women was saying recently, straining a listener’s credulity. The woman was Gisele Bündchen. And if what should have seemed disingenuous or else a bad case of false modesty somehow rang true, that is because the listener had already heard the tale of the nose. People in the business often repeat, as an example of the ways in which fashion is deeply disordered, the story of how two decades ago when Ms. Bündchen was starting out in a field she has dominated ever since — becoming not just the most highly paid model in the world but the richest, according to Forbes — some misguided types routinely advised her to correct what they saw as a glaring feature flaw. “It’s true,” Angela Missoni, creative director of her family company, said last week from Milan. “Gisele did our first campaign with Mario Testino and we used a beautiful shot, but with Gisele’s hair all across her face. ” For that 1998 Missoni campaign, the Brazilian with the complexion, the wide toothy smile, the symmetrical although slightly face appears almost entirely concealed behind a veil of hair. Imagine, if you can, Ms. Bündchen with a . “Mario wasn’t 100 percent sure about her,” Ms. Missoni said. “He was worried about her nose. ” What can you do about moments like that, Ms. Bündchen asked. You keep the nose nature gave you and move on. “Even before I got into the business, I was used to being bullied because I was always tall and skinny and stuck out,” she said. “I got really red all the time from playing volleyball, red like a pepper. So I thought bullying was just the way life is. ” Shrugging, she scoops up Fluffy, a rescue mutt she found online, and snuggles her into the folds of a designer sweatshirt so deliberately tattered it looks as if the puppy had a role in its fabrication. Ms. Bündchen and I are seated on a deep white sofa in her $14 million, Madison Square aerie. Beyond a window wall at her back lies a landscape that might have been drawn by Saul Steinberg, with views encompassing much of Manhattan and, across the Hudson, New Jersey and possibly the border between Missouri and Kansas. It says something about Ms. Bündchen’s command of any space she inhabits that after roughly two minutes in her company the panorama has all but disappeared. Along with her husband, Tom Brady, the New England Patriots quarterback, and their three children — a boy and a girl from their marriage and a son from Mr. Brady’s previous relationship — Ms. Bündchen divides her time among this place, a house in Boston and a vacation compound in coastal Costa Rica. Neither Mr. Brady nor the children are anywhere to be seen today and, thus, all is quiet in a room where a scented candle emits the fragrance of sandalwood. Ms. Bündchen, whose diet once skewed improbably toward Coke and hamburgers, now observes the more stringent dietary practices favored by her athlete husband. Roughly 80 percent of what she consumes is vegetable in origin her family’s meals are prepared by a private chef. She is a practiced yogini and, Ms. Bündchen said, a deeply spiritual person, so much so that after reading the legend printed on her chamomile tea bag, she urges a reporter to record what it says. Put that in the article, she said. And so let the record show that love, compassion and kindness are the anchors of life. Then the woman who has appeared 11 times on the cover of American Vogue who has a personal net worth estimated in excess of $300 million who enjoys a daily income flow Forbes calculated at $128, 000 who, during a year she refers to as her sabbatical, maintains contracts with Pantene, Procter Gamble, Under Armour, Chanel No. 5, Carolina Herrera, Emilio Pucci and Balenciaga and whose name appears on products from jelly sandals to underwear explained how it was for her when she first appeared on the scene as a gangly tomboy from the south of Brazil. “In the beginning, you know, everyone told me, ‘Your eyes are too small, the nose is too big, you can never be on a magazine cover,’” Ms. Bündchen said. “But, you know what? The big nose is coming with a big personality. ” No one anymore would dispute that the enduring success Ms. Bündchen has had in a cruelly objectifying business (one in which the average shelf life of the talent is optimistically five years) owes much to her beauty. And yet there are “many, many beautiful girls,” in the world, whose names no one remembers, as Ms. Missoni rightly observed. “With Gisele, there is something different, her energy,” the designer added. “Of course, she is super beautiful, but she also has this charisma, this presence, this very sexy normality. ” Sexy normality is a curious way of describing someone whose Amazonian strut on a thousand runways, a walk she recently taught on television to Jimmy Fallon, had the effect of making other models look like automatons. And it seems a far cry from the images on display in “Gisele Bündchen” (Taschen, $69. 99) a new monograph that assembles, in one volume, images of the model from throughout her career. Here, for instance, is Ms. Bündchen as a bronzed and sexpot in a shot by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, clad in vertiginous platform sandals and a studded Versace bustier as she descends a ladder into an empty swimming pool. Here she is a sexy goofball photographed against cheap motel curtains by Terry Richardson, unaccountably lending innocence to the scene though clad in just underpants and bra. Here she is a tawny adventuress with a butterscotch mane leading a brace of donkeys along a Sicilian dirt path in Steven Meisel’s images for some long forgotten Dolce Gabbana campaign. Here she is Kabuki princess hugging tight the Polish model Malgosia Bela in a Richard Avedon studio portrait, orphans dressed in Dior haute couture. Here she is again and again, captured by the lenses of Helmut Newton, Juergen Teller, Peter Lindbergh, Bruce Weber, David LaChapelle, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, Michel Comte, Mario Sorrenti, Nino Muñoz and David Sims. And what is striking about these images created by a lustrous roster of prominent photographers and artists is that the most compelling element of any photograph she appears in is not the clothes, the setting or the backdrop but the preternatural vitality of Ms. Bündchen herself. “I always knew that, even if I was not the most beautiful girl, I’d be the most energetic and ” the model said. “If you want to know the truth, that’s the reason for my success. ” When industry insiders talk about Ms. Bündchen, the praise most commonly proffered has less to do with her beauty than with her indomitable good spirits, a canny though untutored intelligence and an almost animal energy. “Gisele always struck me as being and likable, but with an understanding of her role that went beyond merely turning up and delivering the goods,” said Joe McKenna, a stylist behind some of the more influential fashion campaigns of recent decades. “She always understood that ‘Gisele Bündchen’ could be a business, too. And, though I loathe the word branding, that’s exactly what she’s always been aware of. ” When the woman Gisele Bündchen speaks of the global brand Gisele Bündchen, she tends to attribute its success to a kind of Horatio Alger ethos, a drive that has been with her since she was young. “I’m a twin, I’m a Cancer, I’m always taking care of other people,” she said, offering to pour bottled water or make tea or fetch anything else a guest might desire. “I’ve always been the fixer in the family, the responsible one,” she said. “I’ve always been a hard worker, never late for a job in my life. Really, ask anyone. ” And, while — unlike, say, the multimillionaire Russian model Natalia Vodianova, whose story began with her peddling apples by the road in Nizhny Novgorod — Ms. Bündchen comes from a modest, though solidly background, she is acutely conscious of the psychic and economic distance between the provincial world she was born to and the imposing one she inhabits today. Raised by a real estate agent and a bank cashier in a midsize municipality in Brazil’s southernmost state, Ms. Bündchen is a fraternal twin born to a family of six girls who grew up wearing their sisters’ . “When I was a kid, I never even thought about fashion,” Ms. Bündchen said. “I had one pair of jeans. ” The story of Ms. Bündchen, who was discovered in a mall food court, is one that hews to all the modeling industry clichés. It happened that she was there that day on an outing with classmates from a modeling school her mother had urged her to attend in the hope that her posture would improve. “This guy came up to me and said: ‘Do you want to be a model? Come with me to the agency right now,’” Ms. Bündchen said, adding that she resisted the idea for predictable teenage reasons. “We were supposed to go to Playcenter that day,” she said, referring to a popular Brazilian amusement park. “The guy said, ‘Oh, I promise you when you come to the agency in São Paulo, I’ll take you to the Playcenter there,’” Ms. Bündchen added. “And you know what? He never took me there!” With a $50 grubstake from her father, Ms. Bündchen set off alone on a bus ride to São Paulo and an improbable lifelong journey. “Modeling was the farthest thing from what I ever thought I would do with my life,” she said. “From the beginning, looks did not define me in any way. I have a different idea of what I am. I wanted to be Jane Goodall. In my mind, I’m still Jane Goodall in bare feet. ” It should surprise no one to learn that a profession the writer Michael Gross once characterized as the “ugly business of beautiful women,” is often less glamorous than tedious and boring, that even the most successful model’s life is frequently grueling and lonely, and that among the job requirements are a high threshold for emotional abuse and an ability to cope with being shuttled about the planet like a parcel to settings where enforced passivity is the norm. “This opportunity was given to me when I left home at 14 and I was not going to come back ” Ms. Bündchen said. “What else can a do to make money? I was determined to make it work. ” Thus, if she found herself modeling winter clothes on a shoot in Death Valley in heat, she would remain, she said, “totally, 100 percent committed. ” And if stylists dressed her in “impossible clothes, things I can’t breathe in,” or photographers transported her to “extreme settings,” or if she found those around her “saying the most horrendous things right in front of your face,” she said she was determined to seek “what is positive here, how to make something good out of this. ” Ms. Bündchen is surely conscious that grit and inner beauty are far from the first qualities that come to mind when people see pictures of her parading down a catwalk wearing Victoria’s Secret angel wings, or doing a in the arms of her husband at the annual spring Met Gala, or in the paparazzi photographs of her with celebrities she dated before marriage, like Leonardo DiCaprio. “To me, the idea of being famous is irritating,” Ms. Bündchen said. “The attention is strange. Everyone has an opinion. ” Those opinions can be noxious, as when the social media mob piled on after a video capturing her emotional reaction when the Patriots fell to the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLVI was posted to a gossipy website. “It can overwhelm you when people attack you or make comments,” she said. “But when people are saying those things, the haters, I try not to let it in. Given what is, I tell myself, what am I to do?” She jumps up from the sofa then and scoops up Fluffy, a dog she adopted as a reminder of Vida, the Yorkshire terrier she carried along on her ceaseless global travels early in her career. And when she rises from the sofa with an athlete’s easy grace, a reporter is reminded of a remark the designer Anna Sui once made about Ms. Bündchen: “Gisele has that effervescence only certain girls have, an energy you look for that is really rare. ” Two decades ago, when Ms. Bündchen was barely 16 and relatively unknown, she found herself cast for a Harper’s Bazaar editorial to be shot on the French island of St. Bart’s. The photographer was a man famous himself for having photographed the biggest celebrities and most compelling faces in the world — including Madonna and Diana, Princess of Wales. “Some people on the sitting were saying, ‘Oh, she’s not too pretty, she has a big nose,’” that photographer, Patrick Demarchelier, said last week, about the youthful Ms. Bündchen. “But I said, ‘No, no, I like her.’ She was smart and outgoing, always happy, and clearly already knew what she was doing. ” Throughout the shoot, the naysayers continued to disparage the young Brazilian. Then the contact sheets came in. “Immediately, right away, you could see that the girl was special,” Mr. Demarchelier said. “She got 20 pages right away. ” | 1 |
“Beaches,” directed by Garry Marshall and released three decades ago, was a curio even in its own time: a pastiche of 1950s that was set, strangely and uncomfortably, in the 1970s and ’80s. Portraying the lifelong friendship of two women, one of whom dies too young — you could say that’s a spoiler, but it’s really the only thing the movie’s about — it was a shamelessly retrograde and soap opera with a veneer of fake feminism. (Careers and single motherhood were fine as long as they involved constant suffering.) Depending on your susceptibilities, it could inspire cultish devotion or impel you to yell at the screen. It was not, by any measure, a movie that needed to be remade. But here we are, 29 years later, with a new television version of “Beaches” on Lifetime on Saturday night. Idina Menzel has taken the Bette Midler role of C. C. Bloom, the brassy Jewish (originally from the Bronx, now from Venice Beach) and Nia Long succeeds Barbara Hershey as Hillary Whitney, who originally was a lawyer. The Lifetime “Beaches” is a reduction of the original — smaller emotions, smaller performances, fewer songs, shorter running time (about 87 minutes versus 123) — and while that could have been an improvement, it’s not. The things that made the original worth sitting through, whether you were or are mostly gone. Stuffing the story into 70 percent of the time makes C. C. and Hillary’s cycle of fights and reconciliations feel more arbitrary than ever, especially in the absence of Ms. Midler, whose vivid portrayal of C. C. provided motivations that weren’t in the script. The new things in the Lifetime film, written by Bart Baker and Nicole Beckwith (based on a novel by Iris Rainer Dart) and directed by Allison Anders, add nothing to the story. Casting Ms. Long, who’s black, would seem to add diversity, but so much of the (admittedly clichéd) and California flavors have been stripped away from C. C. and Hillary that the characters feel more indistinguishable than they did before. Some of the film’s precious time is devoted to a new character, Hillary’s lawyer father, so that when he dies, she can make a statement about black men and the justice system. Meanwhile, you watch it noting the things that are missing, even those that made you cringe. No more Ms. Midler singing “Under the Boardwalk. ” No more Mayim Bialik as the frighteningly confident C. C. belting out “The Glory of Love. ” No more John Heard supplying a touch of grace as the theater director whom both C. C. and Hillary love. No more “That’s my robe. ” There is one improvement: Ms. Menzel sings “Wind Beneath My Wings” a sooner than Ms. Midler did. Just in case that’s what you’re waiting around for. | 1 |
TEL AVIV — Radio talk show star Mark Levin slammed President Donald Trump for playing “footsie” with “known terrorist” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, saying, “This is turning into Obama 2. 0. ”[On his program on Monday, Levin also criticized Trump for seemingly being on the road to backtracking on his campaign promise to move the U. S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Listen below: “Why is the president of the United States playing footsie with Abbas, who is a known terrorist?” Levin asked. “Abbas dresses nicely, he comes to the U. S. and he makes what people consider reasonable demands and then when he goes back, the [PA] continue[s] to fund terrorism, they continue to encourage their children in elementary schools — and even in preschool — to become suicide bombers. I’m not even talking about Hamas, I’m talking about Fatah — the moderates!” Abbas, who Levin notes received his PhD for a thesis denying the Holocaust, is a “gruesome, loathsome, genocidal maniac who is treated as if he’s some kind of statesman. ” Trump met with Abbas on May 3 in Washington and is due to meet him again next week in Bethlehem during his visit to Israel. According to Levin, Trump “may not be informed” and instead has been placing his trust in people like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and “military bureaucrat” H. R. McMaster, Trump’s national security advisor, both of whom, Levin argued, are “pushing the agenda” that a two state solution is still possible. Levin said, “So quickly and easily has the president of the United States fallen into the lap of the leftists, of the bureaucrats, of the State Department, of the swamp. ” Moroever, Levin said, despite Trump’s “vigorous and unequivocal” campaign pledge to move the U. S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, he now appears to be “betraying that promise. ” “Why did the president say he would move our embassy to Jerusalem when he didn’t mean it?” he asked. Levin referred to Tillerson’s remarks to NBC’s Meet the Press — an interview the radio host said was “an abomination” — in which the secretary of state said the impact of an embassy move on a future peace deal was being considered and the president “was listening to input from all interested parties. ” “What is the president’s obsession now with a peace negotiation? Where did this come from? In many respects a two state solution for Israel is a final solution for Israel,” Levin said. Later on the show, Levin lambasted Tillerson for using the phrase “Israel and Palestine” when the latter does not yet exist, saying Tillerson “has just given the Palestinians, effectively, a country. ” “I am stunned. I am shocked at how quickly the president of the United States reversed course and appears to have sold out. “I hope I’m wrong. I hope I’m wrong. Nothing effectively has been done yet, but this is really quite shocking to me. ” | 1 |
LOS ANGELES — The homeless population in Los Angeles County jumped 5. 7 percent last year, with a sharp increase in tents and homeless encampments offering daily evidence of the problem sweeping this region, county officials said Wednesday. Yet the findings, based on a census of homeless people living on the street, also described reason for optimism: a 30 percent drop in the number of homeless veterans and an 18 percent decrease in homeless families. Officials said that these reductions were a result of spending on housing vouchers for veterans and increasing temporary shelters for homeless families, and that the success showed that there were ways to achieve even broader cuts in the homeless population. “Where we invest, we see results,” said Peter Lynn, the executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which oversees the homeless fight in the region. Still, he said, “homelessness is a crisis in Los Angeles. ” Jerry Jones, the director of policy at the Inner City Law Center here, and a longtime advocate for homeless people, said the figures confirmed the importance of spending on housing. “Homelessness is responsive to targeted housing subsidies, which is why we saw fewer veterans on the streets,” he said. “Second, the overall problem continues to get worse in the absence of those resources. ” Still, this was the second year that the count tracked a jump in homelessness in Los Angeles. From January 2013 to January 2015, the homeless population increased 12 percent, though that report covered two years. Officials said the increase reflected, in part, a more aggressive effort to count younger homeless people, a more daunting target because unlike older homeless people, they did not tend to be concentrated in one place like Skid Row. They said that accounted for some but not all of the increase. “The youth count definitely had an impact,” Mr. Lynn said. The overall homeless population increased from 44, 359 in January 2015 to 46, 874 in the count in January 2016 in all of Los Angeles County. There was a 20 percent increase in tents, encampments and vehicles there, not counting the cities of Glendale, Long Beach and Pasadena. The number of homeless veterans in the county dropped from 4, 362 in the 2015 count to 3, 071 this year the number of homeless families slipped from 8, 103 to 6, 611 this year. Los Angeles has the homeless problem in the nation, after New York City, but because of the warmer climate, there are more unsheltered homeless here. The findings come as the Los Angeles City Council and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors have moved to increase spending on housing for the homeless. The county has proposed a $98 million spending increase, while the city has proposed spending an additional $138 million. It is not clear where the money would come from, and officials estimated it would cost more than $1 billion to find housing for everyone living on the streets. Mayor Eric Garcetti, who had pledged to end homelessness among veterans by the end of last year, seized on this latest report as a sign of progress, saying the findings “show that when we target our resources to help specific populations, such as homeless families and veterans, we get results and save lives. ” “Despite our progress, Los Angeles is facing a historic housing shortage, a staggering mental health crisis, and veterans are becoming homeless every day,” Mr. Garcetti said, adding, “We need all hands on deck to tackle this crisis. ” | 1 |
by MICHAEL TENNANT
Seen any walnuts in your medicine cabinet lately? According to the Food and Drug Administration, that is precisely where you should find them. Because Diamond Foods made truthful claims about the health benefits of consuming walnuts that the FDA didn’t approve, it sent the company a letter declaring, “Your walnut products are drugs” — and “new drugs” at that — and, therefore, “they may not legally be marketed … in the United States without an approved new drug application.” The agency even threatened Diamond with “seizure” if it failed to comply.
Diamond’s transgression was to make “financial investments to educate the public and supply them with walnuts,” as William Faloon of Life Extension magazine put it. On its website and packaging, the company stated that the omega-3 fatty acids found in walnuts have been shown to have certain health benefits, including reduced risk of heart disease and some types of cancer. These claims, Faloon notes, are well supported by scientific research: “ Life Extension has published 57 articles that describe the health benefits of walnuts”; and “The US National Library of Medicine database contains no fewer than 35 peer-reviewed published papers supporting a claim that ingesting walnuts improves vascular health and may reduce heart attack risk.”
This evidence was apparently not good enough for the FDA, which told Diamond that its walnuts were “misbranded” because the “product bears health claims that are not authorized by the FDA.”
The FDA’s letter continues: “We have determined that your walnut products are promoted for conditions that cause them to be drugs because these products are intended for use in the prevention, mitigation, and treatment of disease.” Furthermore, the products are also “misbranded” because they “are offered for conditions that are not amenable to self-diagnosis and treatment by individuals who are not medical practitioners; therefore, adequate directions for use cannot be written so that a layperson can use these drugs safely for their intended purposes.” Who knew you had to have directions to eat walnuts?
“The FDA’s language,” Faloon writes, “resembles that of an out-of-control police state where tyranny [reigns] over rationality.” He adds:
This kind of bureaucratic tyranny sends a strong signal to the food industry not to innovate in a way that informs the public about foods that protect against disease. While consumers increasingly reach for healthier dietary choices, the federal government wants to deny food companies the ability to convey findings from scientific studies about their products.
Walnuts aren’t the only food whose health benefits the FDA has tried to suppress. Producers of pomegranate juice and green tea, among others, have felt the bureaucrats’ wrath whenever they have suggested that their products are good for people.
Meanwhile, Faloon points out, foods that have little to no redeeming value are advertised endlessly, often with dubious health claims attached. For example, Frito-Lay is permitted to make all kinds of claims about its fat-laden, fried products, including that Lay’s potato chips are “heart healthy.” Faloon concludes that “the FDA obviously does not want the public to discover that they can reduce their risk of age-related disease by consuming healthy foods. They prefer consumers only learn about mass-marketed garbage foods that shorten life span by increasing degenerative disease risk.”
Faloon thinks he knows why this is the case. First, by stifling competition from makers of more healthful alternatives, junk food manufacturers, who he says “heavily lobb[y]” the federal government for favorable treatment, will rake in ever greater profits. Second, by making it less likely that Americans will consume healthful foods, big pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers stand to gain by selling more “expensive cardiac drugs, stents, and coronary bypass procedures” to those made ill by their diets.
But people are starting to fight back against the FDA’s tactics. “The makers of pomegranate juice, for example, have sued the FTC for censoring their First Amendment right to communicate scientific information to the public,” Faloon reports. Congress is also getting into the act with a bill, the Free Speech About Science Act (H.R. 1364), that, Faloon writes, “protects basic free speech rights, ends censorship of science, and enables the natural health products community to share peer-reviewed scientific findings with the public.”
Of course, if the Constitution were being followed as intended, none of this would be necessary. The FDA would not exist; but if it did, as a creation of Congress it would have no power to censor any speech whatsoever. If companies are making false claims about their products, the market will quickly punish them for it, and genuine fraud can be handled through the courts. In the absence of a government agency supposedly guaranteeing the safety of their food and drugs and the truthfulness of producers’ claims, consumers would become more discerning, as indeed they already are becoming despite the FDA’s attempts to prevent the dissemination of scientific research. Besides, as Faloon observed, “If anyone still thinks that federal agencies like the FDA protect the public, this proclamation that healthy foods are illegal drugs exposes the government’s sordid charade.” | 0 |
By Sean Colarossi on Mon, Oct 31st, 2016 at 7:56 pm CNN has obtained audio of North Carolina GOP Senator Richard Burr joking about gun owners putting a "bullseye" on Hillary Clinton. Share on Twitter Print This Post
CNN has obtained brand new audio of North Carolina Republican Senator Richard Burr joking about gun owners putting a “bullseye” on Hillary Clinton.
The despicable comments come as Burr faces a close Senate race against Democratic opponent Deborah Ross. Both candidates are within a point of each other, according to RealClearPolitics.
More of the CNN report :
The North Carolina Republican, locked in a tight race for reelection, quipped that as he walked into a gun shop “nothing made me feel better” than seeing a magazine about rifles “with a picture of Hillary Clinton on the front of it.”
“I was a little bit shocked at that — it didn’t have a bullseye on it,” he said Saturday to GOP volunteers, prompting laughter from the crowd in Mooresville, North Carolina. “But on the bottom right (of the magazine), it had everybody for federal office in this particular state that they should vote for. So let me assure you, there’s an army of support out there right now for our candidates.”
This type of rhetoric is hardly uncommon when it comes to Republican leaders in 2016. As the campaign has gone on, the hateful and violent rhetoric, particularly from the man at the top of the Republican ticket, has become increasingly worse.
At one point this year, Donald Trump suggested that “Second Amendment people” should take up arms against Clinton if she nominates a Supreme Court justices they don’t like. He also said that he’d like to “see what happens” if the Democratic nominee’s bodyguards were disarmed.
As CNN notes, Trump has never issued a genuine apology for his dangerous language – or anything he’s ever said or done – but Burr quickly came out with a statement once the audio was revealed, although it does not excuse what he said.
“The comment I made was inappropriate, and I apologize for it,” the Republican senator said, according to CNN.
This type of imagery has no place in our politics, regardless of whether it’s being said in public or private, especially given the heightened level of anger and hatred toward Hillary Clinton from Trump supporters.
Whether it’s Trump or Burr, voters should remember their irresponsible language when they go to vote in just one week. | 0 |
Good morning. We’re trying something new for our readers in Asia and Australia: a morning briefing to your day. What do you like? What do you want to see here? Email us with your feedback at asiabriefing@nytimes. com. Here’s what you need to know: • With Election Day looming Tuesday, Hillary Clinton is holding her polling lead and celebrating an announcement from the F. B. I. that its latest review of her State Department email shows nothing in her handling of classified information that would merit further action against her. Donald J. Trump is crisscrossing the country in a rush. Mr. Trump received a scare at a rally in Reno, Nev. when a person in the crowd shouted — falsely, as it turned out — that someone had a gun. We’re offering unlimited access to NYTimes. com for the election, from now through Thursday morning. _____ • China’s National People’s Congress issued a rare interpretation of Hong Kong’s aimed at disqualifying two young lawmakers from taking office. The intervention could undermine the territory’s judicial system. On Sunday, in a confrontation that recalled the enormous demonstrations of 2014, the police used batons and pepper spray to drive off thousands of protesters attempting to storm the Chinese government’s Hong Kong headquarters. _____ • American warplanes are flying bombing missions on the Islamic State’s “leadership, command and control and resources” in the group’s Syrian base of Raqqa, while a force of at least 30, 000 Kurdish and Arab fighters marches toward the city. _____ • Schools in New Delhi are closed, construction has been halted, and a power plant has been shut as the city copes with choking smog for at least another day. Are you there? Let us know how you are coping. _____ • Some 190 countries are members of Interpol, the international police organization based in France. But some — notably Russia, Iran and Zimbabwe — have used the system’s international “wanted” notices to extend their reach against political foes. A major meeting of Interpol members opens in Bali today with heavy security, after Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, was roiled by enormous protests over a city official’s supposed insults to Islam. _____ • South Korean prosecutors are circling closer to President Park in the scandal engulfing the Blue House. The country has reacted with fury and shame to revelations that indicate that top leaders have been in thrall to a family of religious charlatans for decades. • Volkswagen’s $15 billion emissions fraud case has reached the top of the company. The chairman of the automaker’s supervisory board, Hans Dieter Pötsch, is being investigated by German prosecutors on suspicion of failing to notify shareholders quickly enough of the financial risks of the diesel emissions cheating scandal. • Apple’s App Store has been infiltrated by hundreds of fake shopping apps that expose customers to potential fraud and identity theft. • Oracle, the software giant, said its acquisition of NetSuite, a cloud storage company, for $9. 3 billion will be completed Monday, ending weeks of negotiations over the price. • Investors will be watching the American election closely. Here’s a snapshot of global markets. • Europe, Iran and Pakistan are forcing hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees to return to Afghanistan. [The New York Times] • The unexpectedly rapid approval of the Paris climate accord means that negotiators meeting this week in Morocco must speedily sort through a host of technical issues. [Reuters] • attacks on Hindu sites in Bangladesh worsened tensions set off by a Hindu youth’s Facebook post showing the god Shiva appearing in Mecca. [The New York Times] • Iranians, some eager to jeer at the “Great Satan,” tuned into live broadcasts of all three debates between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump. [The New York Times] • China’s Guangdong Province has banned exams, homework and writing assignments in kindergartens and ordered schools to make sure students play outdoors for two hours a day. [Asia Times] • Britain’s prime minister, Theresa May, is digging in for a “Brexit” battle if her government loses its appeal of a ruling requiring Parliamentary approval for the move. [The New York Times] • A Philippine court is expected to rule Tuesday on petitions to block President Rodrigo Duterte’s attempt to transfer the remains of Ferdinand E. Marcos, the country’s former dictator, to a heroes’ cemetery. [The New York Times] • The Philippine boxer Manny Pacquiao’s lopsided victory over Jesse Vargas for the WBO welterweight title was strong enough to revive talk of a rematch with his old foe Floyd Mayweather Jr. • The New York City Marathon was won by Mary Keitany of Kenya for a third consecutive year. A Eritrean, Ghirmay Ghebreslassie, took the men’s division, becoming the youngest winner in the race’s history. • A bus being tested in Finland holds promise for reducing city dwellers’ dependence on cars. • Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art, MONA, opens a new exhibition, “On the Origin of Art,” examining whether art has helped humans survive. The musings of four guest curators — “ ” — are here. How about a ghost story to start the week? The Mary Celeste, an American merchant ship, set sail from New York on this day in 1872, bound for Italy. About a month later, the vessel was found adrift in the Atlantic, less than two weeks after the last dated entry in the boat’s log. The captain, his wife and young daughter, and the crew were gone. The discovery set off one of the world’s most enduring maritime mysteries. Pirates, mutiny, a waterspout, a seaquake and even a giant squid attack have all been posited. A short story by Arthur Conan Doyle fueled more speculation. Foul play was possible, according to an 1873 account in The Times, citing a bloody sword found on board. Also left behind were personal items and the Mary Celeste’s cargo of denatured alcohol. Missing were navigational tools and the ship’s lifeboat, lending support to a theory put forward in the 2007 documentary “The True Story of the Mary Celeste. ” Some machinery was inoperative, leaving the captain no way to check whether the ship had taken on water in a recent storm. He might have mistakenly thought the ship was sinking and ordered an evacuation. “There’s so much nonsense written about this legend,” the director said when her film was released, adding, “The research goes on. ” Des Shoe contributed reporting. _____ Photographs may appear out of order for some readers. Accessing this version of the briefing should help. Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings. What would you like to see here? Contact us at asiabriefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
Linda Sarsour is a principal organizer for Woman’s March on Washington following President Donald Trump’s inauguration. [Her rise to liberal stardom following the march has occurred in spite of her support for views and outrageous attacks on women leaders. Sarsour, who serves as the executive director of the Arab American Association of New York (AAANY) and who was honored by Obama’s White House as a “champion of change,” seems as if she makes it a point to attach herself to every social justice cause known to man and tie it to Palestine. For example, in November, she attached herself to the cause of blocking Dakota Access Pipeline and made sure to bring her Palestinian flag. This shameless promotion could also be seen at the Women’s March as well. When addressing the crowd, she made sure to inject some Palestinian solidarity into the cause, stating “you can count on [her] your Palestinian Muslim sister to keep her voice loud. ” She also made sure to note that she was her “Palestinian grandmother’s who lives in occupied territory wildest dream. ” However, her biggest splash that weekend was when the level of her hypocrisy towards the cause espoused by the Woman’s March was pointed out to the public. Specifically, a tweet of Sarsour’s dismissing the misogynistic views of Saudi Arabia simply because the country has a paid maternity leave program, has been making the rounds on social media. Sarsour dismisses the fact that women in Saudi Arabia are treated as citizens who are unable to drive, interact with men, and dress as they please as inconsequential. In addition to her dismissal of Saudi subjugation of women, she has attacked a documentary calling attention to the plight of women in the Islamic world. Sarsour has been a vocal critic of the executive producer of the film, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Dutch Parliamentarian, and vocal critic of Islam who was also the victim of female genital mutilation. In 2011, Sarsour took to twitter and vulgarly berated Hirsi Ali and ACT for America founder, Brigitte Gabriel, and said, “I wish I could take their vaginas away — they don’t deserve to be women. ” This is especially in vulgar considering the suffering Hirsi Ali has endured. Shortly after the tweet was uncovered, instead of owning up to the vulgar tweet and apologizing, she tried to delete it before it was seen by too many people. Sarsour also has a long history of criticizing Israel in ways that cross the line into and terrorist sympathizing. She supports the discriminatory and BDS Movement and has claimed that “nothing is creepier” than Zionism. She called for solidarity with Muhammad Allan, a member of the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad who has a history of recruiting suicide bombers. After her hypocrisy towards Woman’s issue’s was exposed, she defended herself by describing attacks on her as fascist, claiming “Fascism is here” and that “[w]e cannot allow them to criminalize our leaders and movements using baseless claims … Remember, we are and can be the true #NeverAgain generation. ” She describes those supporting her as her “Love Army. ” To them, legitimate criticisms of both her views and her associations ring hollow. Groups that sponsored the march — including the official twitter account of Woman’s March, Human Rights Watch, Black Lives Matter, Amnesty International, and the Southern Poverty Law Center — have launched a full scale defense of Sarsour. The hashtag #IMarchWithLinda trended on Twitter. Cable news personality Sally Kohn issued several tweets defending Sarsour, including calls for people to donate to the AAANY. I don’t think Kohn is aware that the AAANY used to receive financial support from Qatar Foundation International, an organization closely linked to the Qatari government. Additionally, because of her ties to New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, the AAANY was able to secure $500, 000 in funding for the AAANY. Sarsour also received several celebrity endorsements from, among others, Susan Sarandon, Mark Ruffalo, and Russell Simmons. Hey, if Mark Ruffalo likes her she must be good, right? While personal attestations are nice, they are not proof that someone’s even a good person. Even terrible people can find someone who thinks they’re nice. Those supporting her do not care that she promotes terrorists they don’t care that she vulgarly called for a victim of female genital mutilation to have her genitalia removed and they are not concerned that she downplays misogyny in Saudi Arabia. As far as they’re concerned, she helped set up a March so therefore she’s the bees knees. Sarsour is seen as a rising star in leftist circles and the Democratic Party. The left needs to take the blinders off and take a long, hard look at the people they’re propping up as role models. Alex VanNess is the director of the Middle East Peace Security Project at The Center for Security Policy. | 1 |
125, 000 illegal immigrants have won new or updated work permits and residency permits since January 2017, according to data published by the U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). [Officials at the agency accepted new requests from 17, 275 illegals from January 1 to March 31 and approved extensions for 107, 524 of the illegals who earlier got work permits, Social Security cards and federal financial aid via the “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” created by former President Barack Obama in the to the 2012 election. President Donald Trump was inaugurated January 2o, ensuring most of the new and renewed DACA work permits were approved during his presidency, despite his campaign promises to halt the DACA program which now includes roughly 765, 000 younger illegal immigrants. Trump’s supporters should use their political clout to make Trump do the right thing, said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “Now we have data, and there’s no question that he’s issuing thousands of work permits to new illegal aliens … so probably the correct approach [for Trump supporters] is a determined insistence on [Trump] doing the right thing,” he said. “The administration is doing a lot of good stuff” on immigration, Krikorian added, noting that Trump is under constant pressure from liberals who won’t give him any credit even when he does something they prefer. The DACA population is large, given that 4 million young Americans enter the job market each year to face job competition from up to 1 million new immigrants, from 1 million temporary contract workers and from the resident population of 8 million working illegal immigrants. Immigration reformers denounced the news: HOW TRUMP LOSES THE NEXT ELECTION. Nearly 100, 000 ‘Dreamers’ Granted Amnesty In Trump’s Opening Monthshttps: . — Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) June 8, 2017, WHAT?! The real scandal? Trump has granted amnesty to 125k illegals under Obama’s unconstitutional order https: . — Conservative Review (@CR) June 9, 2017, “Issuing new work permits to illegals who don’t have them already makes no sense at all, either from a P. R. perspective or politically,” wrote Krikorian wrote: Renewals, at least for a time, I can understand — the [media] orgy of sob stories that would result from ending the work permits of some of a million people would be a wonder to behold … Though I was initially skeptical, it might even make sense to try to trade a real, lawful amnesty for the DACAs in exchange for important immigration changes only Congress can pass — specifically, universal and cuts in legal immigration. In that case, announcing that renewals would continue until, say, the end of the year could be a powerful motivator for congressional Democrats. My speculation is that the White House has no idea what to do about DACA and so is just letting it continue on autopilot — amnestying 192 new illegals a day. John Kelly, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said June 7 that officials are not seeking to repatriate DACA illegals. “We are not, not, not, targeting DACA registrants right now,” he said. Critics say the DACA program may be vulnerable to a lawsuit by immigration reformers. “We will immediately terminate President Obama’s two illegal executive amnesties in which he defied federal law and the Constitution to give amnesty to approximately five million illegal immigrants, five million,” Trump said August 31, 2016, referring to the DACA and the ‘DAPA’ amnesty, which was struck down by a federal court in Texas. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com | 1 |
By Clint Siegner Most of us consider this year’s presidential election as the wildest and most unpredictable we’ve ever seen, but you wouldn’t know it... | 0 |
It Is Up To Us
Paul Craig Roberts
Did Donald Trump win the election because he is a racist and misogynist and so are the American people?
No. That’s BS from the Oligarchs’ well-paid whores in the media, “liberal progressive” activist groups, think tanks and universities.
Did Trump win because he stole the election?
More BS. The Oligarchs controlled the voting machines. They failed to steal the election, because the people outsmarted them and told the pollsters that they were voting for Hillary. This led to the presstitutes’ propaganda that Hillary was the certain winner, and the Oligarchs believed their own propaganda and didn’t believe it necessary to make certain of their victory.
Trump won the presidency because he spoke directly and truthfully to the American people, telling them what what they knew to be true and had never before heard from any politician:
“Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American people. The establishment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election. Those who control the levers of power in Washington and the global special interests they partner with, don’t have your good in mind. The political establishment that is trying to stop us is the same group responsible for our disastrous trade deals, massive illegal immigration and economic and foreign policies that have bled our country dry.
“It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities. The only thing that can stop this corrupt machine is you. The only force strong enough to save our country is us. The only people brave enough to vote out this corrupt establishment is you, the American people.”
Trump did not promise voters a bunch of handouts. He didn’t say he would fix this and that. He said that only the American people could fix our broken country and identified himself as an agent of the people.
The people won the election, but the Oligarchy is still there, as powerful as ever. They have already launched their attack using their whores in the media and liberal progressive groups in attempts to delegitimize Trump with protests, petitions, and endlessly false news reports. George Soros, using the money he made by his attack on the British currency, will pay thousands of protesters to attempt to disrupt the inaugeration.
What about Trump’s government? As Trump discovered, finding appointees who are not part of the Oligarchy’s economic and foreign policy establishment is very difficult.
Washington is not a home for critics and dissidents. Consider Pat Buchanan, for example. As a White House official in two administrations and a two-time presidential candidate, he is experienced, but Washington has marginalized him.
Moreover, even if there were a stable of outsiders, they would be eaten alive by the insiders. Trump will have to take insiders. But he has to pick insiders who are to some extent their own person. General Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor is not a bad pick. Flynn is the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency who advised the Obama regime against employing ISIS against Syria. Flynn has publicly stated on television that the appearance of ISIS in Syria was a “willful decision” of the Obama regime. In other words, ISIS is Washington’s agent, which is why the Obama regime has protected ISIS.
Trump’s chief of staff (Priebus) and chief strategist (Bannon) are reasonable choices.
Sessions (Attorney General) and Pompeo (CIA) are disturbing appointments based on their media-created reputations. But in the US where there is no honest media, we don’t know the truth of the reputations. Nevertheless, if Sessions does support torture, he is disqualified as attorney general, because the Constitution prohibits torture. The US cannot afford yet another attorney general who does not support the US Constitution.
If Pompeo actually is so poorly informed that he opposed the Iran settlement, he is not fit to be CIA director. The CIA itself said that Iran had no nuclear weapons program, and with Russia’s help the matter was resolved. Does Trump want a CIA director who neoconservatives could use to restart the conflict?
The views of Sessions and Pompeo could be products of the time and not visceral. Regardless, Trump is a strong and willful person. If Trump wants peace with the Russians and Chinese, appointees who get in the way will be fired. So let’s see what a Trump government does before we damn it.
Presstitute reports of extreme neoconservative John Bolton and former US attorney and NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani being candidates for Secretary of State do not seem credible. If Trump intends to get along with Putin, how can he do that if his Secretary of State wants war with Russia? Trump should find an experienced diplomat who negotiated with the Soviets. Richard Burt, who had a major role in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, is the sort of person it would make sense to consider. Another sensible candidate would be Jack Matlock, Reagan’s Ambassador to the Soviet Union.
If Trump wants peace with Russia, the Secretary of State is the important appointment.
If Trump wants to stop the Oligarchy’s rip off of the American people, the Secretary of the Treasury is the important appointment.
Under the last three presidents, treasury secretaries have been agents for the banks-too-big-to-fail and for Wall Street. It is now a tradition for the financial gangsters to own the Treasury. It remains to be seen if the tradition is too strong for Trump to break.
The Oligarchy is trying to discredit the Trump Presidency before it exists. This effort is discrediting liberal and progressive groups by identifying them with nonenforcement of the immigration laws and with homosexual and transgender rights, issues not on the agenda of an electorate whose economic fortunes have been declining and who are tired of 15 years of war that serves only the hegemony agenda of the neoconservatives and the profits and power of the military/security complex.
According to The Saker, Putin has begun removing the Atlanticist Integrationists, Russia’s Fifth Column, from influence. Let’s see if Trump can remove our fifth columnists—neoconservatives and neoliberal economists—who have sold out the American people and America’s integrity.
If Trump fails, the only solution is for the American people to become more radical.
The post It Is Up To Us — Paul Craig Roberts appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org . | 0 |
Why NATO is put on war footing against Russia 07.11.2016 Jens Stoltenberg claimed that given growing tensions in relations with Russia, hundreds of thousands of the NATO military men would be brought to higher level of readiness. Before that he stated that there's no danger and constructive relations with Moscow should be built. Now, according to him, the NATO authorities intend to prepare significant ground forces, which would be capable of containing 'Russian aggression'. What for are these acts?Andrey Koshkin, Ph.D. in Political Science:'First of all, it should be noted that we've caught the US at double standards in politics, and policy of the NATO military political alliance is the same. They react to Washington's order, which says that they should build-up potential, as Russian aggression is to be shown constantly. And how can it be shown? In order to show Russia's aggression, its own residents and armed forces should be shaken up. How can they be shaken up? Just switched to a more high level of readiness. That is what they are doing. If the Armed Forces are switched to a more high level of readiness, common residents of the Western states will react immediately. Yes, the danger is real if the Armed Forces are put on a war footing, and these are funds after all. The funds should be taken from taxpayers, that is why a new wave of anti-Russian hysteria has been set off in the mass media. Pravda.Ru | 0 |
Right. Starting with a war against Syria. Hillary must overthrow another government. She gets a high out of destroying other nations. | 0 |
Bill Clinton Inc: Billions for the Foundation, $116 Million for the Clintons October 27, 2016
Call it the unintended revenge of Doug Band.
Band used to be Bill's Huma, the guy that the big guy couldn't go to the bathroom without, let alone perform the simplest tasks. The Clinton Foundation was a Band project. The waters grew murkier, but the recent email leaks revealed a rather devastating Doug Band memo on how he was making money for the whole infrastructure of what he called, running Bill Clinton Inc.
And Band was also organizing personal income directly for Clinton. Under the heading, “For-Profit Activity of President Clinton (i.e. Bill Clinton, Inc.),” Band wrote, “We have dedicated our selves to helping the President secure and engage in for-profit activities—including speeches, books, and advisory service engagements… In support of the President’s for-profit activity, we also have solicited and obtained, as appropriate, in-kind services for the President and his family—for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like. Neither Justin nor I are separately compensated for these activities (e.g., we do not receive a fee for, or percentage of, the more than $50 million in for-profit activity we have personally helped to secure for President Clinton to date or the $66 million in future contracts, should he choose to continue with those engagements).”
Band mentions four such “arrangements” without naming them. Bill Clinton was paid nearly $18 million to be “honorary chancellor” of a for-profit college, Laureate International Universities, according to reports and the family’s tax returns. A Dubai-based firm, GEMS Education, paid Bill Clinton more than $560,000 in 2015, according to the tax returns. Band also lists a variety of speaking fees, previously disclosed by the Clintons, including hundreds of thousands of dollars each from UBS, Ericsson, BHP and Barclays. In 2011 alone, according to the Clinton’s tax returns, Bill Clinton earned $13,454,000 in speaking fees.
Of course there was lots of "synergy" between the for profit stuff and the non profit stuff, between Doug's Teneo interests and the entire Clintonworld octopus.
"We have dedicated ourselves to helping the President secure and engage in for-profit activities," Band wrote. He also said he had "sought to leverage my activities, including my partner role at Teneo, to support and to raise funds for the foundation."
Band's memo provided data showing how much money each of Teneo's 20 clients at the time had given to the Clinton Foundation, how much they had paid Bill Clinton and, in some cases, how he or Kelly had personally forged the relationships that resulted in the payments.
Band wrote that Teneo partners had raised in excess of $8 million for the foundation and $3 million in paid speaking fees for Bill Clinton. He said he had secured contracts for the former president that would pay out $66 million over the subsequent nine years if the deals remained in place.
Band also described how Kelly helped expand a fruitful relationship with UBS Global Wealth Management, introducing Bill Clinton to a top executive at a 2009 charity dinner. In the ensuing years, UBS upped its giving to the foundation, signed on as a Teneo client and agreed to pay Bill Clinton for speeches, Band wrote.
Band was actually making the case that the entire network of the Clinton Foundation is completely entangled with the private financial interests of the Clintons. Not to mention the interests of people around them.
Banks and major corporations were doing business with Bill's toady, paying Bill money and donating to the Clinton Foundation through arrangements made by the party of the first part,
Band described in the memo how he combined his work for CGI and Teneo. He wrote that he had used a hotel room upstairs from the 2011 CGI gathering to meet with Teneo clients. He also acknowledged giving free CGI memberships to "target Teneo clients" being cultivated as potential foundation donors. Memberships generally cost $20,000 a year.
Teneo, meanwhile, named Bill Clinton its "honorary chairman." Clinton had been initially tapped for a three-year arrangement in which he would provide advice to Teneo "regarding geopolitical, economic and social trends," according to a separate June 2011 memo that Band wrote to the State Department seeking ethics approval for the former president's employment.
Bill Clinton was initially paid $2 million by Teneo, according to "Man of the World," a book written with the former president's participation by author Joe Conason.
And here's where it gets appropriately entertaining.
But Band outlined that Kelly, his Teneo co-founder, had served simultaneously between 2009 and 2011 as an unpaid economic envoy to Northern Ireland appointed by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and as head of a separate consulting company whose clients included Coke, UBS and Dow. Band wrote that the arrangement was consistent with Kelly's State Department ethics agreement.
Kelly's multiple roles came together during one State Department event in 2010, when then-Secretary Clinton recognized Dow, among other companies, for creating jobs in Northern Ireland and thanked Kelly for his work on the issue.
Dow became one of Teneo's first major clients. According to Band's memo, Dow chief executive Andrew Liveris had been introduced to Bill Clinton over a round of golf with Kelly in August 2009.
That's not consistent with mafia ethics agreements, but it's all good in Clintonworld. | 0 |
MADRID — The Spanish minister of industry, energy and tourism resigned Friday morning after documents in the Panama Papers linked him to offshore investments in the Bahamas, and news reports then connected him to a company in the tax haven of Jersey. The minister, José Manuel Soria, a member of the acting government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, is among the most figures to suffer politically since the release of the leaked papers, which identify companies and people suspected of using offshore bank accounts and shell companies to conceal their wealth or avoid taxes. Last week, Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson of Iceland said he was temporarily stepping aside after documents showed that he and his wife had set up a company in the British Virgin Islands in 2007. Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain has also been the subject of scrutiny after acknowledging that he and his wife had owned shares in an offshore trust, inherited from his father, that were sold before he became prime minister in 2010. The resignation of Mr. Soria, who has not been charged with wrongdoing, comes at a time of turmoil in Spanish politics, after inconclusive elections in December. Mr. Rajoy’s Popular Party won the most votes but lost its majority in Parliament, making it likely that new elections will be held in late June. Fernando a senior official in the Popular Party, told Spanish national television that Mr. Soria’s resignation was linked to “a professional activity prior to his entrance in politics. ” “Mr. Soria has been a politician for more than 20 years and has led his political activity in exemplary fashion,” Mr. said, describing the move as a “very logical decision. ” Mr. Rajoy’s party has been entangled in several corruption scandals. This week, the conservative mayor of Granada, José Torres Hurtado, was briefly detained by the police as part of an investigation into kickbacks tied to construction projects. Mr. Soria, who initially denied any connection to offshore business activities, gradually backtracked after his name appeared in the Panama Papers. The Spanish news media reported this week that the leaked documents identified him as one of the directors of UK Lines, a company registered in the Bahamas in the 1990s. Mr. Soria initially said he would not appear before Parliament to discuss his business dealings, and he described the inclusion of his name in the Panama Papers as “a mistake. ” “It is completely false that I had a relationship with any company, business or function based in Panama, in the Bahamas or in any other tax haven,” he said in a statement. But on Thursday, the Spanish daily newspaper El Mundo revealed that Mr. Soria and his brother had been, until 2002, on the board of another offshore company, based in the English Channel island of Jersey, linked to his family’s business activities. At that time, Mr. Soria was mayor of the city of Las Palmas, in the Canary Islands. Mr. Soria is considered a close confidant of Mr. Rajoy, who has not commented on the departing minister’s finances. “We have to put an end to the government of shame,” Pedro Sánchez, leader of the opposition Socialist party, said on Friday after Mr. Soria’s resignation. Still, Mr. of the Popular Party highlighted that even though Mr. Soria had stepped down, he had not been charged with financial crime. “In Spain, where people talk about nobody resigning, here we have a clear example,” Mr. said. “A resignation is not something easy. ” | 1 |
by PAUL FASSA
Chris Kilham once did a segment with Doctor Oz on the Five Tibetan exercises. In 2011 he wrote a book called: The Five Tibetans: Five Dynamic Exercises for Health, Energy, and Personal Power . Chris Kilham is a well-known “medicine hunter, author, educator, and world-traveler researching and promoting plant-based medicines. He is the founder of Medicine Hunter, Inc., and is a Fox News integrative alternative medicine TV personality and columnist.” (Wikipedia)Kilham told Dr. Oz and his audience that a daily five minute practice of the Five Tibetans will result in adding an entire decade to your life span. The exercises are done repetitiously on a gradient. The beginner starts out doing 1 to 5 repetitions for each exercise. It’s advisable to always listen to your body in order to avoid injury and never ever force your body to continue the exercises if your body is signaling pain.
Some soreness and minor discomfort is expected but beyond that is a danger zone that can lead to injury. The goal is to work up to twenty or some say 21 repetitions of each exercise at a comfortable pace.
The advised best times to practice are sunrise or sunset but anytime is better than never. Be sure to use a carpeted area, yoga mat, towel or throw rug to ease the discomfort of the body moving against a hard surface.
The room should be well ventilated. Choose a quiet area where you are not distracted by others and can easily concentrate. Click here for a text and graphics description of the exercises. A video demonstration by Chris Kilham is presented at the bottom of this article.
History
According to legend, the Five Tibetans originated form Tibetan Llamas around 2,500 years ago. Anti-aging expert Ellen Wood, stresses the importance of doing the 5 Tibetans very slowly for maximum longevity results. The exercises were a secret practice handed down from generation to generation to a select few –the initiated.
The Tibetan monasteries guarded the practices as they were considered as part of a pathway to higher levels of consciousness. But a noted side-effect of the exercises was increased longevity and the restoration of youthfulness. This is what Chris Kilham is promoting.
Esoteric Benefits
In the 1930’s, American Author Peter Kelder shared the secret of the Five Tibetans with the West. He explained that the true value of the exercises transcended the physical realm. In his book, The Eye of Revelation (later released as The Ancient Secret of the Fountain of Youth ).
He states: “I would like to make it clearly understood that these are not physical culture exercises at all. They are only performed a few times a day; so few times that they could not possibly be of any value as physical culture movements.
What the Rites actually do is this: They start the seven Vortexes, also known as the chakras of the subtle body, spinning at a normal rate of speed; at the speed which is normal for, say, a young, robust, strong, virile person of twenty-five years of age.”
These exercises are comprehensive and dynamic; they positively enhance and restore the body, mind, and emotions and the spirit or soul. Esoterically the exercises activate and tone the 7 major energy vortexes in what the yogis call the subtle body.
The chakras or wheels of energy have been mapped put in yogic texts. These energy centers are the primary energetic interface between the individual and the larger universe. It is believed in esoteric circles that when these energy centers are functioning properly health and spiritual evolution are the result.
Physical Health Benefits
These exercises, like Qi-gong or Chi-Gong, restore energy, unlike calisthenics which expend energy without restoration.They enhance overall strength, balance, energy, metabolism, digestion, brain and nervous system, cardiovascular and pulmonary systems and overall health.
So here’s that video demo:
Paul Fassa is a contributing staff writer for REALfarmacy.com. His pet peeves are the Medical Mafia’s control over health and the food industry and government regulatory agencies’ corruption. Paul’s valiant contributions to the health movement and global paradigm shift are world renowned. Visit his blog by following this link and follow him on Twitter here .
Sources: | 0 |
Home / Badge Abuse / Community Outraged After Video Shows a Cop Throwing Down a 16yo Girl Community Outraged After Video Shows a Cop Throwing Down a 16yo Girl Matt Agorist September 8, 2016 32 Comments
Asheville, NC — A video posted to Facebook this week has the internet in an uproar as it shows an Asheville police officer allegedly assaulting a 16-year-old girl.
The video shows a short interaction between 16-year-old Kacee Fleming and officer Shalin Oza. According to Cherrell Mooney, the woman who took the video, Fleming approached police as they were arresting her brother, Dominic Fore. According to APD, they had a warrant for Fore’s arrest.
“She was asking them, ‘Why are y’all arresting my brother?'” Mooney said. “The officer was being rude, they didn’t want to talk to them.”
The video apparently shows the aftermath of this questioning as the officer grabs Fleming and throws her to the ground.
According to police, Fleming yelled at officers and allegedly reached into her brother’s pockets to retrieve his personal items as he was being arrested. Fleming’s actions then caused officers to have to “deal with” her. The video is the result of Fleming apparently being dealt with.
According to police, Fleming was arrested and charged as an adult for resisting, obstructing or delaying an officer. Sgt. Noland Brown, who was on the scene, also told News 13 that she is charged with misdemeanor assault on a government official.
“I have no trust in the police anymore,” said Crystal Fleming , Kasee’s mother. According to News 13, she says her daughter was trying to communicate with police before the incident, to tell them that Fore had just gotten “out of (the) ICU.”
“She is not trying to be disrespectful,” said Crystal Fleming. “But y’all are not listening. They were not listening.”
“You wonder why people are running around here saying ‘Black lives matter,'” she continues. “That’s why. Because they really don’t think our lives matter, because he could have pulled her to the side, talked to her. He didn’t even do none of that.”
According to police, they were there for another incident, but when they saw Fore, they decided to arrest him too.
The Asheville Police Department released the following statement:
The Asheville Police Department has viewed the video circulating on social media regarding the arrest of a 16-year-old female on the evening of September 5, 2016.
The nine second video is only a small portion of a much longer incident.
The Asheville Police Department is in the process of conducting a full administrative investigation that will review all evidence, including the video circulating on social media and body worn camera footage, in our review.
The Asheville Police Department is dedicated to providing the best possible police service and upon completion of the review will take appropriate action, if deemed necessary.
Anyone with additional video footage or information regarding this incident is encouraged to contact our Professional Standards Office at (828) 259-5907.
According to News 13, when they requested the body cam video from the scene that night, they were denied. Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter and now on Steemit Share Google + Keysbum
ooooh…. the adrenaline rush that brave heroic cop must have enjoyed after overpowering that dangerous villainous little girl. he can proudly puff his chest out after that one! Nishi
The disturbing thing is that they actually do that. They feel good about doing this kind of thing. They are convinced that what they are doing is morally just and necessary. Reminds me of Hobbes:“To this war of every man against every man this also is consequent, that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.” Jonathan Sabo
This is NOT about black ! It is about getting involved in a legal arrest ! Razedbywolvs
No it’s about black, because if it wasn’t white people might get pissed enough to do something about it. That would not work out to well for the officers involved in “legal” arrests. James Michael
She had every right to require he state why he was being arrested ……and the officer had no lawful arrest……. she also had every right to free the man from being kidnapped by a traitor you retard…..
NOW why was HE being arrested…. bruismenot
What a lovely mouth that mother has! No wonder the kid has no respect for the law. Also, it looks like the kid was resisting including standing/stepping/stomping on the cop’s left foot. Oh, well… gininitaly
I looked at that video 4 times and never saw her ‘stomp’ on his precious foot… she was 16 and hardly 100lbs soaking wet, you’re telling me that a big adult male couldn’t contain her ‘threat’ without shoving her to the ground? bruismenot
Unfortunately, Cops aren’t psychic and they have to react quickly to protect themselves. The girl was obviously highly emotional when she approached the situation. One of the most dangerous times to interfere with police activity is during the arrest of a family member.
It’s easy to sit back and criticize the cop, but he doesn’t know her intent, nor if in the dim light, she’s carrying a weapon of some sort. You can’t just go stomping up on an arrest situation, ignoring orders to stay back.
Have you ever fought an emotionally charged 16 year old girl? They fight like wild cats! Just watch a video on you tube some time if you haven’t. Age doesn’t always matter and 16 year olds are adult sized.
Cops don’t put on the uniform to get hurt. Teach your children to respect the law, show respect yourself, and you won’t have to worry about adult sized teenagers being thrown down by big mean cops.
Also, maybe your device is better than mine, but it looks to me like the girl’s foot lands on his left foot. I could be wrong in that. I’ll look at it, again. gininitaly
Hogwash, spoken like a cop of today who needs an excuse to brutalize, for profit or the pleasure of being a bully against the defenseless.
Lumberjacks, farmers, EMTs, firemen and fishermen have more dangerous jobs than cops and I happen to be old enough to see my towns 30 years of service police chief retire without ever having fired a shot at a human being… and that was 30 yrs of drunks with guns, broken bottles or knives, belligerent, mouthy kids, family disputes and all the rest. So what’s the difference between then and now, his talent and yours? ATTITUDE and the desire to deescalate situations, NOT intensify them to the point of murder.
Since 9/11 and the Patriot Act they seem to have been given permission to make US citizens their victims instead of their friends, family and neighbors that they were once supposed to protect and serve.
You will get no get out of jail free or pity cards from me. Cops today… or rather what’s left after the good cops get fed up and quit or were drummed off the force. Because those that remain are drunk on their own power over people and revel in the violence that they create.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xF7AIf_a_E bruismenot
I didn’t say the cop did a great job. I didn’t say that I would have reacted the same way. I didn’t say that I thought the video looked fine. I was simply trying to give an explanation for what we saw on the video. gininitaly
And just who gave you that job or why you thought that cop needed defending? You invented an aggression by that 16 yr old, complained about language, defended the cop no matter what the video actually showed and projected your prejudices onto the entire situation…. in my book that makes you a worthless witness who deals in fantasy not fact. No different than a lot of chicken chit Americans who think defending the police or government will get you a free ticket off of the Auschwitz express. You should never defend the indefensible.
“All it takes for evil to prevail is for a few good men to do nothing.” bruismenot
I take it we can’t be friends, then? Stir up the SJWs all day long if you must. Who does anyone call if they get jacked, shot, stabbed or whatever? Next time you are the victim of a REAL crime, go ahead and call those same SJWs to save your bacon. See how many show up and how far you get.
Lady, don’t assume you know me. You don’t know my story. If you did,we might could be friends. gininitaly
I have no idea what a SJW is….. is that police jargon? I know one thing, I wouldn’t be calling an American cop, they’d end up shooting my dog, my kid or me if they even managed to make it to the right address.. in some steroid induced adrenaline rush… I don’t need those kinds of jacked up people in my life. You/they’ve lost all credibility as anything that could or would ‘help’, I’d ask a bystander for assistance before calling a cop any day.
Your words are quite indicative of where your loyalties lie and if you think I’m assuming, then you should come clean and tell your story and at that point I might reevaluate my take on who you are and why you seem to need to defend the indefensible in what used to be the formerly free USA.
http://killedbypolice.net/ Free_Willey
Your explanation is bogus and it clearly indicates that you are the problem. The cop should have been arrested on the spot for assault. This is what makes ALL cops criminals. They fail to arrest and charge crimes against their buddies in blue. You included. It astounds me that you guys continue to make your job, on a daily basis, more and more dangerous. Putrid ignorance and arrogance and a complete non caring attitude for people in general is what is on display at today’s PD’s. This is not the “service” that we hired you for. Cops work an entire lifetime to avoid disdain for the people they have sworn to serve only to have PD’s hire the lowest of IQ and then train them to see the public as the enemy. Once you start to justify the violent actions of today’s cops, you need to leave the force. Furthermore you do not have to be a psychic as you claim to see that the cop simply became upset, lost control and used violence to assault this less than 100 lb person. bruismenot
Sure! Arrest all the cops! Then, whose going to keep all the people safe who don’t have or know how to defend themselves from the predators in the world?
What would you do? James Michael
Kops have NO duty to keep anyone safe moron…Look up the hundreds of cites…..Stating exactly that…. James Michael
If you have respect for xops these days you either have your head up your ass or are stupid. Badcopwatch
This cop should be taught a lesson bruismenot
Why, for doing his job? And just what “lesson” would you have him “taught”? Do you know him, his training, or his history? If so, please enlighten us. elropo
His job my ass! I am in complete agreement with gininitaly in my town we have the same situations with no brutality from the police. They are pretty much respected here, some rare exceptions. It all depends on the mayor, chief, council, hiring policies and just whether they keep assholes on the job gininitaly
Thx and glad to see that you are blessed with a rational community… good to know there are a few left out there ;-). bruismenot
Ok. So you can tell this cop is an ass hole from this short clip? You can tell that this upset girl is an angel? Bravo for you, then. Bravo for you!
Fine, now I’ve wasted enough time on here. Time to go to work. Peace. James Michael
She asked why her brother was being kidnapped the cop is required to inform her why….or it is unlawful….We the People she is one…Him sworn servant…..MORON…. haauwnk
You need to be strung up for fellating pigs. It’s against your religion. James Michael
The Nzis were doing their jobs committing treason and murder also moron…. Ibcamn
cops are such cowards and pussys,…”step on my feet and im gonna arrest ya’ll”…cowards,cops only feel like real men when they are beating up women…all cops are just plain criminals.. gina
You all make me sick. The problem today is that we raise children to disrespect authority, and then feel we can call moral high ground against those that are in place to help.
Our youth need to be taught that they are not able to do whatever they want. They need to understand that laws apply to them, and if not followed, prepare for consequences.
The point of no return that I see in this video is a 16 year old female that feels she has the right to interfere in an arrest in progress.
And before anyone touts unlawful bull, it is clearly stated that a warrant was in place for the arrest, and as such, she was wrong for interfering.
Mom is equally to blame, filming it hoping to make a quick buck or news scandal, instead of correcting her daughter for her behaviour. Ibcamn
so is what your saying is bow down to these retarded criminals and follow orders without question and raise our children to be just like you and never question authority and be a slave……sucks to be you StopKingObama
Here’s an idea. DON’T INTERFERE WITH THE COPS WHEN THEY ARE TRYING TO ARREST SOMEONE. You fucking creampuff libtard crybabies just don’t get it. Fucking morons think they can adjudicate a case in the streets while the arrest is taking place. Try protesting real abuse instead of cases like these, where morons get what they deserve for being stupid. James Michael
You have the RIGHT and the duty to stop any sworn servant unlawfully arresting someone…..That is an act called aggravated kidnapping and is an act of treason….. StopKingObama
You have the right to resist an UNLAWFUL arrest. They had a warrant for her idiot brothers arrest. Even resisting an unlawful arrest is a good way to get killed. Let them cuff you, and if they were acting as egregiously as you think they were, tell it to the judge. If you have video to support your probably unfounded claim, all the better.
All you fucking limp-wristed cream puff milquetoast libtard cop-hating social justice warriors with no respect for law and order should just be rounded up and shot, or at least sent to Iran. It would make THIS country a hell of a lot better off. James Michael
Resisting and obstructing are non sequiturs for we have nothing because there can be NO resisting or obstructing without a real charge to resist or obstruct…Another aggravated assault and battery kidnapping false imprisonment by a another traitor felon with a badge… Ten thousand videos of the same exact thing on youtube alone….Dallas was deserved no cop can be trusted…. Social Trending Breaking: Podesta Told Mills ‘Dump All Those Emails’ on Day News of Clinton’s Private Email Server Broke November 1, 2016 | 0 |
Three Quarters Of Americans Oppose Gun Control Record numbers say no to proposed handgun ban Steve Watson | Infowars.com - October 27, 2016 Comments
A new poll released by Gallup has found that a record amount of Americans are opposed to gun control measures .
The survey found that 76 percent of respondents, over three quarters, believe that a ban on civilian ownership of handguns should not be made law.
The findings represent a four-point increase on the same survey from last year, in addition to an all-time high for the past three decades.
The poll also found that almost two thirds, 61 percent, are “against” a ban on semi-automatic rifles, or “assault weapons”as the corporate media refers to them.
That figure represents a full ten-point increase on previous findings, and is an all time record high since polling began on the issue 20 years ago.
Just 27 percent, less than a third, say they support a ban on handgun ownership, while only 36 percent, support a semi-automatic ban. an eight-point decline on previous findings.
In addition, gun sales have been hitting record highs for months on end.
In a summary of the new poll, Gallup seemed surprised, by the findings, describing waning support for a gun ban as a “paradox”:
Perhaps paradoxically, opposition toward a ban has increased against a backdrop of multiple mass shootings and terrorist attacks in which the perpetrators used assault rifles. These guns were used in high-profile incidents, including the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, California, and Orlando, and the mass shootings in Aurora, Colorado, and Newtown, Connecticut.
The findings reveal just how out of step Hillary Clinton’s position on gun control is with the majority of Americans.
Hillary is a staunch gun control proponent. Wikileaks releases have revealed that Hillary plans to implement strict gun control measures by executive order.
Clinton purportedly plans to open gun manufacturers to lawsuits by crime victims, a move that critics say would do nothing to reduce crime, but would bankrupt–and eventually end–gun manufacturing in the United States. NEWSLETTER SIGN UP Get the latest breaking news & specials from Alex Jones and the Infowars Crew. Related Articles | 0 |
By Joachim Hagopian October 29, 2016
The Western media seizes every chance to twist the truth in favor of another round of Putin-bashing as it’s worn out flimsy excuse to escalate further hostilities against Moscow in order to trigger World War III. The pathological liars of the West never fail to deceitfully add fuel to their propaganda war machine fire. The latest hype is blaming a Russian airstrike for destroying a school in the rebel-held Idlib Province in northern Syria, killing 22 children and six teachers.
Immediately the UN as the Washington vassal it is, through the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) for added sensational effect no less began opportunistically milking the tragedy for all it‘s worth, denouncing the killing as “an outrage” and probable war crime, adding that it’s the deadliest attack on a school in the near six years Syrian conflict. What’s being left out of this heavily biased narrative is that the war in Syria was maliciously started by the United States, specifically, the CIA funding protests in 2011 (actually as far back as 2005 ) targeting Assad as part of its infamous Arab Spring uprising in accordance with Empire’s illegal regime change policy. As an independent, secular leader unwilling to succumb to Empire’s pressure to allow a 2009 proposed Qatar gas pipeline to Europe be built through his country, the fixated neocons have been gunning for Assad’s removal ever since.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov explained that after closer examination and careful analysis, the video released to Western media allegedly depicting the airstrike in Idlib Province consists of more than ten separate pieces of footage fragmented together. Thus, it appears to be a hoax designed to incriminate the Russian aerospace group for killing innocent kids. He added:
As one can see on a photo from the Russian drone, the roof of the school is not damaged and there are no bomb craters in the area adjacent to the school… All this means that the UNICEF leadership fell a victim to a new deception of swindlers in White Helmets. That is why, before making loud statements, UNICEF officials should check sources of their information in order not to undermine the reputation of a respected organization.
Of course this latest false flag isn’t the first time Russia’s been falsely blamed for attacks in Syria. Through CIA and military intelligence, the West has an elaborate network of anti-Russian and anti-Assad provocateurs waging staged events to implicate and vilify Putin and Assad as the enemy. General Konashenkov mentioned the White Helmets as part of the organized setup of US false flag operations in Syria. A former UK military intelligence officer owns the private security company responsible for training and handling the so-called White Helmets, discredited Syrian provocateurs pretending to be Syria’s Civil Defense corps regularly staging fake photo-ops after US-backed terrorist groups kill innocent civilians making it appear that Assad and Putin are willfully and inhumanely murdering them. This latest school tragedy appears no different as incident after incident has been exposed in recent months.
Like last month’s attack on that UN humanitarian aid convoy north of Aleppo several weeks ago, engineered by Western intelligence working with the terrorists to accuse Russia of yet another airstrike that didn’t happen, covering up the a rocket attack perpetrated by the US-backed al Nusra Front (forget their recent name change designed to distance themselves from being US proxy war terrorists no different from al Qaeda or ISIS/Daesh/Islamic State). Bottom line, Terrorists-R-US, Inc .
In this latest propaganda ploy, on-the-ground eyewitness reports vis-à-vis White helmets state that 10 airstrikes around midday on Wednesday were responsible for striking the residential compound containing two schools in session at the time resulting in the bloodbath. Of course the go-to propagandist organization out of London that the Western media never fails to quote, the already outed fraudulent Syrian Observatory for Human Rights consisting of one anti-Assad expatriated Syrian, began immediately pointing the finger at Russia, like Clinton, Obama and all the Western axis-of-evil liars determined to demonize Putin and Russia as false justification for starting their next world war .
In response to the tragedy, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova on Thursday called for an urgent international investigation without delay. She had this reaction to the Western presstitutes blaming her nation:
This is not surprising, but at the same time, it deserves the strongest criticism. Al-Jazeera, The Independent, and other mass media sharing the same attitude to the journalistic profession at once blamed the tragedy on Russia, on the Russian aerospace group and on the Syrian armed forces. They claimed outright that it was a bombardment carried out by Russia and Syria. This is a lie. Russia has nothing to with that terrible tragedy, with that attack.
Zakharova also mentioned a concern that the UN humanitarian relief in Syria has not nearly been enough to evacuate the wounded and sick from East Aleppo after Russia and Syria agreed to a humanitarian pause there several days ago. However, US backed rebels and snipers fired on civilians attempting to leave the city. Moreover, the US took full advantage of the lull in the Russian-Syrian fighting by opportunistically resupplying their terrorists on the ground with 50-ton airdrops of fresh ammo and weapons. Again, clearly it’s the US that’s the war crime culprit, needlessly causing only more war and more deaths in the war-ravaged nation reeling from nearly a half million lives lost.
Another reality check for the Washington neocon war maniacs determined to blame Russia for all the ills of the world (including the corrupt US political system responsible for the rigged election ) as their deceptive sleight of hand brainwash to feebly cover up their own slaughterhouse carnage raping our planet, just one day prior to the Idlib school violence, the Beirut branch of Amnesty International (AI) chastised the US-led coalition pretending to fight the terrorists for its wanton killing of civilians in Syria as “collateral war damage.” The inhumanities that Empire commits is never admitted or acknowledged but instead constant lies claiming that Russian and Syrian forces are cold-bloodedly mowing down innocents continue nonstop. The hubris and hypocrisy stemming from Washington’s rotten core are American exceptionalism at its diabolical worse.
Deputy Director for research at the Beirut Amnesty International office Lynn Maalouf , stated:
It’s high time the US authorities came clean about the full extent of the civilian damage caused by coalition attacks in Syria. We fear the US-led coalition is significantly underestimating the harm caused to civilians in its operations in Syria.
AI estimates that in 11 US coalition airstrikes since September 2014 killed more than 300 civilians in Syria. Maalouf maintains that in each case, “the coalition forces failed to take adequate precautions to minimize harm to civilians and damage to civilian objects.” So who’s really the inhumane kid-killing bad guy in Syria? Definitely not Russia nor the Syrian government but once again the enemy of the world US Empire.
Ultimately to silence this never-ending US blame game against Moscow, the Russian ambassador to the UN on Thursday began circulating the original September 9 th US-Russian peace treaty to the UNSecurity Council as well as to the UN Geneva branch. This document clearly shows that Russia has exhausted every sincere effort to bring an end to the war in Syria and stop global terrorism but the United States and its Western lackeys have willfully and deceitfully sabotaged that process at every turn in order to save their precious terrorists and endless war on terror. The evildoers behind the lifted curtain are exposed and guilty as charged.
Or how can we forget the Obama staged false flag attack in August 2013 when the liar-in-chief falsely blamed Assad for sarin gassing his own Syrian children in the nearby Damascus suburb of Ghouta . Despite the real child murderers being Obama and his backed rebels he and Hillary created soon to be named ISIS, the Manchurian president given the mission to destroy America and his then recently resigned Secretary of State designated to be his successor to finish the job were trying to launch airstrikes on Syria to start World War III over three years ago. Putin outsmarted the US traitors in charge by brokering the last minute deal for Assad to turn in his chemical weapons arsenal. But with White House approval, US-backed terrorists guilty of the Ghouta massacre are still using their Saudi and Turkish supplied chemical weapons to kill Syrian civilians even to this very day. Where are the humanitarian cries about those war crime atrocities?
Or what about all the civilians dying in Syria from mortar shelling of residential neighborhoods in West Aleppo? A mere one day after the Idlib school bombing, the US-backed al Nusra fired rockets in two locations in West Aleppo, one a school killing six children under the age of 16 and injuring more than a dozen others. In response to the Thursday school bombing in West Aleppo by US-backed terrorists, the Aleppo police chief Zuher Said Aldin commented:
There are no military units there, only schools. Nevertheless, militants carried out a strike in this area, moreover, when classes were underway. Innocent children were killed, they just wanted to study.
But where are all the humanitarian cries against the US financed and supported terrorists constantly murdering innocents throughout the Middle East and North Africa? Conveniently absent, because the US plotters of wars around the world couldn’t care less about any dead children anywhere on this planet.
Or the 10,000 civilians in Yemen slaughtered by the US-backed Saudi coalition consisting of US Special Force boots on the ground and more al Qaeda and ISIS terrorists deployed there as well, in addition to Israeli and Gulf State airstrikes and now US destroyers pounding the Yemen coast killing more civilians with cruise missiles after yet more US false flag claims that the Houthis fired missiles at the US Navy without any evidence to prove it. Where are the sanctimonious humanitarian cries over dead Yemen children?
This historic, incessant use of false flags designed to bring about yet more war, terror and carnage to further destabilize the world for Empire hegemonic unipolar control needed to usher in the elite’s one world government tyranny that the puppet masters have been plotting for over a century has been and currently is Washington’s fulltime modus operandi. Because the globalists are getting desperate knowing that the world is now onto their demonic genocidal bloodletting and is now seeking justice and accountability in their relentless crimes against humanity, they’re racing against time to bring us all down with Hillary as their rigged presidential choice launching WWIII and their preplanned global economy collapse as justification to finalize global governance using the climate change hoax and the Trojan horse excuse of protecting survivors with Agenda 2030 mass relocation as their prime vehicles to make it happen. By the way, this elitist plan includes preemptive nuclear first strikes against the Eastern nuke powered nations Russia and China while leaving humanity at the earth’s surface to die from fatal exposure to radioactive fallout. For decades they’ve been planning for this nightmarish endgame scenario, quietly building their subterranean luxury bunkered homes that include several years of survival supplies, deep underground military bases (DUMB’s) and elaborate transcontinental transport systems. The Best of Joachim Hagopian Tags: Joachim Hagopian [ ] is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. In recent years he has focused on his writing, becoming an alternative media journalist. His blog site is at http://empireexposed.blogspot.com . | 0 |
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TEL AVIV — The New York Times was roundly condemned for publishing an by Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti while originally failing to mention that that author is a terror mastermind who was convicted of planning multiple attacks against Israelis. [Barghouti, who is serving five life terms for the murder of Israelis and a Christian monk, was initially described by the NYT only as “a Palestinian leader and parliamentarian. ” Barghouti is also an architect of the deadly Second Palestinian Intifada, or terrorist war responsible for the deaths of scores of Israeli civilians. Following public outrage, the newspaper added the following editor’s note to the oped: This article explained the writer’s prison sentence but neglected to provide sufficient context by stating the offenses of which he was convicted. They were five counts of murder and membership in a terrorist organization. Mr. Barghouti declined to offer a defense at his trial and refused to recognize the Israeli court’s jurisdiction and legitimacy. Ostensibly, Barghouti penned the article to explain why he launched a hunger strike among Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, claiming abuse by prison guards, including his own claim of being kicked in the genitals. Barghouti served as chief of the Tanzim armed wing of Fatah and the founder of terror group the Martyrs Brigade. In 2004, he was found guilty of ordering terror attacks in three different locations and was implicated in a further four. At the time, the Washington Post reported, “the panel said there was insufficient evidence to prove Barghouti’s guilt in another 21 deaths that were originally part of the indictment. [ ]Israeli Justice Minister Yosef Lapid said, however, that the verdict ‘demonstrates the independence of the Israeli courts. The fact that in most of the accusations he was found not guilty is clear evidence that his case was given a fair trial. ’” Lapid’s son, Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid, wrote an oped in the Times of Israel claiming that the New York Times was guilty of “intentional deception” by failing to provide a full biography of Barghouti. “Anyone who reads the column without prior knowledge of the facts will come to the conclusion that Barghouti is a freedom fighter imprisoned for his views. Nothing is further from the truth. The missing part of the column is that Marwan Barghouti is a murderer,” he wrote. “The attempt by the New York Times ‘to be balanced’ amuses Barghouti. He understands that this sacred attempt at balance creates equal standing between murderer and murdered, terrorist and victim, lie and truth,” added Lapid. Former Israeli ambassador to Washington Michael Oren slammed the NYT for publishing “a journalistic terror attack” that “was full of lies. ” Former U. S. ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro tweeted: “It’s debatable if Marwan Barghouti has a political future. Pals Israelis debate it. But NYT was wrong not cite his terrorism conviction. ” The Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) responsible for civilian issues in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, also slammed the paper for failing to point out that “Barghouti is a murderer of Israeli civilians. ” “By referring to him only as a political figure, the Times failed to point out that after a fair trial in 2004, Barghouti was convicted of murder and carrying out terrorist acts and was therefore sentenced to five life sentences and an additional 40 years in prison,” a post on COGAT’s Facebook page read. The American Jewish Committee tweeted that the NYT “must have forgotten to mention that Marwan Barghouti is a convicted terrorist, responsible for the murder of innocent civilians. ” Former presidential adviser Elliot Abrams wrote that the NYT’s omission of Barghouti’s history was “a shameful abdication of responsibility to readers. ” On Tuesday, New York Times’s public editor Liz Spayd criticized the newspaper for failing to note Barghouti’s crimes. “I see no reason to skimp on this, while failing to do so risks the credibility of the author and the pages,” Spayd wrote. The piece was titled, “An Author Omits His Crimes, and The Times Does Too. ” Barghouti launched a mass hunger strike on Monday to coincide with Palestinian “Prisoners Day,” a day of solidarity with more than 6, 000 Palestinian terrorists incarcerated in Israeli jails. The goal of the hunger strike is supposedly to improve prison conditions. Demands include resuming a second monthly visit by family members (originally cancelled by the International Committee of the Red Cross over budgetary concerns) restoring academic studies for prisoners, and allowing additional TV channels and cell phones in security wings. | 1 |
Assad’s Opposition in Syria Favors Clinton Win for President October 31, 2016 Assad's Opposition in Syria Favors Clinton Win for President
Syria's political opposition hopes Hillary Clinton wins the U.S. presidential election next week because she has a better understanding of the conflict than Donald Trump, according to members of a delegation holding talks at the United Nations . Khaled Khoja and Hind Kabawat, in Geneva on Monday to press for U.N.-led negotiations on the release of Syrian detainees, said they trusted Clinton, a former U.S. Secretary of State, to deliver on the opposition's top priority - protecting civilians. Clinton has called for the establishment of a no-fly zone and "safe zones" on the ground in Syriato protect non-combatants. Trump says this could "lead to World War Three" due to the potential for conflict with Russia, which is providing military support to President Bashar al-Assad. Kabawat said Trump, who has never held public office and has no foreign policy experience, saw Islamic State, also known as ISIS, as the only alternative to Assad in Syria. "For us a woman's leadership at this time would be a good thing. Also for many, like Trump and others, they think that the Syrian conflict is comparing Assad with ISIS and they have to take one side or the other, and of course for them Assad will look more prominent than ISIS," said Kabawat. "She (Clinton) knows that is wrong. She knows that there is this moderate opposition that believes in democracy and freedom. This is what we are aiming for, to have a president of the U.S. with good experience who knows the difference between the different oppositions." Assad, whose forces have regained much territory against their opponents with the help ofRussian warplanes, has branded all those opposed to his rule as "terrorists".
(SYRIA) - Trump has said defeating Islamic State should be a higher priority than trying to persuade Assad to step aside, a departure from a long-held U.S. policy objective.
Khoja, leading the Syrian opposition delegation in Geneva, disagreed with this viewpoint.
"Dealing with only the ISIS issue will not help with solving the crisis in Syria or the region because the root cause of the crisis is the (Assad) regime itself," he said.
Kabawat, an attorney and a member of the opposition High Negotiations Committee, added that the Syrian political opposition wanted to see women playing an equal role to men in the nation's politics.
READ MORE: ONLY RUSSIA CAN SAVE THE WEST FROM ITSELF IN SYRIA
The opposition delegation, which has links to the Free Syrian Army but not with Islamic State or al Qaeda-linked groups, is in Geneva this week to revive the issue of prisoner releases, sidelined during months of fruitless peace talks.
Khoja said more than 100 armed groups had shown their willingness to cooperate but there had been no sign of cooperation from Assad's government or Russia, adding that the United Nations should form a committee on the matter.
"If it's needed, if there is a response from the regime side to release the detainees and stop killings inside Syria, then we can have the representative of the military groups also in this committee, and if the regime wants to send someone to this committee, we can discuss it," Khoja said.
The Syrian Network of Human Rights has documented more than 90,000 detainees held by the Syrian government, 6,000 held by Islamic State and 2,400 held by the rest of the opposition, but estimates the real numbers are twice as high. Article by Doc Burkhart , Vice-President, General Manager and co-host of TRUNEWS with Rick Wiles Got a news tip? Email us at Help support the ministry of TRUNEWS with your one-time or monthly gift of financial support. DONATE NOW ! DOWNLOAD THE TRUNEWS MOBILE APP! CLICK HERE! Donate Today! Support TRUNEWS to help build a global news network that provides a credible source for world news
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Wednesday on the “Tom Joyner Morning Show,” while discussing President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch, activist Al Sharpton quoted a James Brown song to urge Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to give the Republicans the “big payback,” for refusing to give Judge Merrick Garland a hearing. Sharpton said, “As I watched last night President Trump nominate Judge Gorsuch be in the Supreme Court — first of all let’s be clear, Gorsuch is a very conservative, go by the Founding Fathers kind of interpretation of how you deal with Constitutional law and would sit on that court and would rule in a way that would be against the interests of those of us that clearly when the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, was not considered full human beings and full citizens. So when you deal with the mentality and the legal profile of Judge Gorsuch, it is not a good one. But even beyond that, let us not forget he is not sitting, and being nominated to sit in Scalia’s seat, he’s being nominated to sit in Garland’s seat. President Barack Obama nominated Judge Garland, who has got as much or more qualifications as this nominee, to have been the Supreme Court judge. ” “Nominated him almost a year ago, Febuary of 16 when Scalia died,” he continued. “They stalled, they filibustered, they would not even give a hearing to Judge Garland. It is time for the Democrats now to say since you changed the rules, you’re going to have to live by the rules you applied to President Obama’s nominee, and we are not going to allow you to change it and we will use those rules to block this nominee, Gorsuch. The Bible says that you sow that — that same thing shall you also reap. But Bill Bellamy had a better idea — they should come in the Senate and replay “The Big Payback,” James Brown song. Bill was right, just take one of them old blasters, Chuck Schumer, and blast out The Big Payback. You took my judge. That ain’t right. Wouldn’t give a hearing. You know that I’m tight — the big payback. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
Last week marked the fifteenth anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan, the longest war in US history. There weren’t any victory parades or photo-ops with Afghanistan’s post-liberation leaders. That is because the war is ongoing. In fact, 15 years after launching a war against Afghanistan’s Taliban government in retaliation for an attack by Saudi-backed al-Qaeda, the US-backed forces are steadily losing territory back to the Taliban.
What President Obama called “the good war” before took office in 2008, has become the “forgotten war” some eight years later. How many Americans know that we still have nearly 10,000 US troops in Afghanistan? Do any Americans know that the Taliban was never defeated, but now holds more ground in Afghanistan than at any point since 2001? Do they know the Taliban overran the provincial capital of Kunduz last week for a second time in a year and they threaten several other provincial capitals?
Do Americans know that we are still wasting billions on “reconstruction” and other projects in Afghanistan that are, at best, boondoggles? According to a recent audit by the independent US government body overseeing Afghan reconstruction, half a billion dollars was wasted on a contract for a US company to maintain Afghan military vehicles. The contractor “fail[ed] to meet program objectives,” the audit found. Of course they still got paid, like thousands of others getting rich off of this failed war.
Do Americans know that their government has spent at least $60 billion to train and equip Afghan security forces, yet these forces are still not capable of fighting on their own against the Taliban? We recently learned that an unknown but not insignificant number of those troops brought to the US for training have deserted and are living illegally somewhere in the US. In the recent Taliban attack on Kunduz, it was reported that thousands of Afghan security personnel fled without firing a shot.
According to a recent study by Brown University, the direct costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars thus far are nearly five trillion dollars. The indirect costs are virtually incalculable.
Perhaps Afghanistan is the “forgotten war” because to mention it would reveal how schizophrenic is US foreign policy. After all, we have been fighting for 15 years in Afghanistan in the name of defeating al-Qaeda, while we are directly and indirectly assisting a franchise of al-Qaeda to overthrow the Syrian government. How many Americans would applaud such a foreign policy? If they only knew, but thanks to a media only interested in promoting Washington’s propaganda, far too many Americans don’t know.
I have written several of these columns on the various anniversaries of the Afghan (and Iraq) wars, pointing out that the wars are ongoing and that the result of the wars has been less stable countries, a less stable region, a devastated local population, and an increasing probability of more blowback. I would be very happy to never have to write one of these again. We should just march home. | 0 |
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I visited Mosul on the day it fell to Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and a small detachment of US Special Forces on 11 April 2003. As we drove into the city, we passed lines of pick-up trucks piled high with loot returning to the Kurdish-controlled enclave in northern Iraq. US soldiers at a checkpoint, over which waved the Stars and Stripes, were shooting at a man in the distance who kept bobbing up from behind a wall and waving the Iraqi flag .
If there had ever been any sympathy between liberators and liberated in Mosul, it was disappearing fast. Inside the city, every government building, including the university, was being systematically looted by Kurds and Arabs alike. I saw one man who had stolen an enormous and very ugly red and gold sofa from the governor’s office dragging it slowly down the street. He would push one end of the sofa a few feet forward and then go to the other end and repeat the same process. The mosques were soon calling on the Sunni Arab majority to build barricades to defend their neighbourhoods from marauders.
We parked our vehicle near a medieval quarter of ancient stone buildings while we went to see a Christian ecclesiastic. When we got back, we found that our driver was very frightened and wanted to get out of Mosul as fast as possible. He explained that soon after we left a crowd had gathered, recognised our number plates as Kurdish and debated lynching him and setting fire to his car before being restrained by a local religious leader moments before they took action.
The oil city of Kirkuk was captured at about the same time by the Peshmerga, despite having promised the Americans and Turks that they would do no such thing. Again, there was looting everywhere and I saw two Peshmerga stand in the middle of the road to stop an enormous yellow bulldozer that was being driven off. Instead of slowing down, the driver put his foot on the accelerator so the Peshmerga had to jump aside to avoid being crushed.
Inside the newly established Peshmerga headquarters, I ran into Pavel Talabani, whose father Jalal Talabani headed the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the political party whose militia now held the city. He stressed the temporary nature of the Kurdish occupation of the city. “We came to control the situation,” he said. “We expect to withdraw some of our men in 45 minutes.”
Some Peshmerga, but not all: 13 years later the Kurds still hold Kirkuk, whose population is Kurdish, Arab and Turkoman, and to which the Kurds claim an historic right saying they have only reversed anti-Kurdish ethnic cleansing by Saddam Hussein.
By now the rest of the world has forgotten that there was a time when the Kurds did not hold the city. The Kurdish leaders had understood that the US-led invasion and the fall of Saddam Hussein had created conditions of unprecedented political fluidity and it was an ideal moment to create facts on the map, which would become permanent whatever the protestations of other players.
The current multi-pronged offensive aimed at taking Mosul is producing a similar situation as different countries, parties and communities vie to fill the vacuum they expect to be created by the fall of Isis, just as in 2003 the vacuum was the result of the fall of Saddam Hussein.
The different segments of the anti-Isis forces potentially involved in seizing Mosul – the Iraqi army, Kurds, Shia and Sunni paramilitaries, Turks – may be temporary allies, but they are also rivals. They all have their own very different and conflicting agendas. Presiding over this ramshackle and disputatious alliance is the US, which is orchestrating the Mosul offensive and without whose air power and Special Forces there would be no attack.
The Shia-dominated Iraqi government needs to take and hold Mosul, Iraq’s main Sunni Arab city, if it is to be convincing as the national government of Iraq. To achieve this, Baghdad’s rule must be acceptable to the Sunni majority in the city in a way that was not true when Isis took it in 2014. It needs to establish its rule while it still has full military and political support from the US.
The Kurds, for their part, want to solidify their control of the so-called “disputed territories” claimed by both the central government and the Kurdish regional authorities. The Kurds opportunistically used the defeat of the Iraqi Army in northern Iraq by Isis two years ago to take these territories inhabited by both Kurds and Arabs, thereby expanding by 40 per cent the area of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). They know that once Isis is defeated, the Kurds will no longer get international and, above all, American backing to hold this expanded version of the KRG.
These problems have only begun to surface because Mosul is still a long way from being besieged or even encircled.
The Shia militia forces are surprisingly calm about being excluded from a military role in the siege. They may calculate that the Iraqi army, if it gets sucked into street fighting, will not be able to take Mosul on its own and will have to look to them for support. The Shia paramilitaries are making up for their lack of participation in the battle for Mosul by sending reinforcements – some 5,000 men, according to reports – to join the Syrian Army in the siege of East Aleppo.
Turkey wants to be a player and, as a great Sunni power, the defender of the Sunnis of Mosul. To this end, it has soldiers based at Bashiqa, north east of Mosul, and claims to be taking part in the attack. But so far at least, Turkish ambitions and rhetoric in Iraq and Syria have exceeded its performance. Both interventions may be designed to impress a domestic audience which is deluged with exaggerated accounts of Turkish achievements in the government-controlled Turkish media.
These participants in the struggle for Mosul may be dividing the tiger’s skin before the tiger is properly dead. Isis showed that it still has sharp claws when it responded to the assault on Mosul with raids on Kirkuk and Rutbah on the main Iraq-Jordan road. It is fighting hard to slow down the anti-Isis advance towards Mosul with a mix of suicide bombers, IEDs, booby-traps, snipers and mortar teams. But it is unclear if it will make a last stand in Mosul where, at the end of the day, it must go down to defeat in the face of superior numbers backed by the massive firepower of the US-led air forces.
The likelihood is that Isis will fight for Mosul, the site of its first great victory, in order to prolong the battle, cause casualties and to let divisions emerge among its enemies. But its strategy over the last 12 months has been not to stage heroic but doomed last stands in any of the cities it has lost in Iraq and Syria.
At Ramadi, Fallujah, Sinjar, Palmyra and Manbij it has staged a fighting withdrawal at the last moment. The same may now happen in Mosul. | 0 |
Carrie Fisher, the actress, author and screenwriter who brought a rare combination of nerve, grit and hopefulness to her most indelible role, as Princess Leia in the “Star Wars” movie franchise, died on Tuesday morning. She was 60. A family spokesman, Simon Halls, said Ms. Fisher died at 8:55 a. m. She had a heart attack on a flight from London to Los Angeles on Friday and had been hospitalized in Los Angeles. After her “Star Wars” success, Ms. Fisher, the daughter of the pop singer Eddie Fisher and the actress Debbie Reynolds, went on to use her perch among Hollywood royalty to offer wry commentary in her books on the paradoxes and absurdities of the entertainment industry. “Star Wars,” released in 1977, turned her overnight into an international movie star. The film, written and directed by George Lucas, traveled around the world, breaking records. It proved to be the first installment of a blockbuster series whose vivid, even preposterous characters — living “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” as the opening sequence announced — became pop culture legends and the progenitors of a merchandising bonanza. [ What Carrie Fisher’s career meant ] Ms. Fisher established Princess Leia as a damsel who could very much deal with her own distress, whether facing down the villainy of the dreaded Darth Vader or the romantic interests of the roguish smuggler Han Solo. Wielding blaster pistols, piloting futuristic vehicles and, to her occasional chagrin, wearing strange hairdos and a revealing metal bikini, she reprised the role in three more films — “The Empire Strikes Back” in 1980, “Return of the Jedi” in 1983 and, 32 years later, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” by which time Leia had become a general. Lucasfilm said on Tuesday that Ms. Fisher had completed her work in an eighth episode of the main “Star Wars” saga, which is scheduled to be released in December 2017. Winning the admiration of countless fans, Ms. Fisher never played Leia as helpless. She had the toughness to escape the clutches of the monstrous gangster Jabba the Hutt and the tenderness to tell Han Solo, as he is about to be frozen in carbonite, “I love you. ” (Solo, played by Harrison Ford, caddishly replies, “I know. ”) Offscreen, Ms. Fisher was open about her diagnosis of bipolar disorder. She gave her dueling dispositions the nicknames Roy (“the wild ride of a mood,” she said) and Pam (“who stands on the shore and sobs”). She channeled her struggles with depression and substance abuse into fiercely comic works, including the semiautobiographical novel “Postcards From the Edge” and the show “Wishful Drinking,” which she turned into a memoir. For all the attention she received for playing Princess Leia, Ms. Fisher enjoyed poking wicked fun at the character, as well as at the fantastical “Star Wars” universe. “Who wears that much lip gloss into battle?” she asked in a recent memoir, “The Princess Diarist. ” Having seen fame’s light and dark sides, Ms. Fisher did not take it too seriously, or consider it an enduring commodity. As she wrote in “The Princess Diarist”: “Perpetual celebrity — the kind where any mention of you will interest a significant percentage of the public until the day you die, even if that day comes decades after your last real contribution to the culture — is exceedingly rare, reserved for the likes of Muhammad Ali. ” Carrie Frances Fisher was born on Oct. 21, 1956, in Beverly Hills, Calif. She was the first child of her highly visible parents (they later had a son, Todd) and said in “Wishful Drinking” that, while her mother was under anesthetic delivering her, her father fainted. “So when I arrived,” Ms. Fisher wrote, “I was virtually unattended! And I have been trying to make up for that fact ever since. ” In 1959, Ms. Reynolds divorced Eddie Fisher in the wake of his affair with Elizabeth Taylor, whom he married that same year. (Ms. Taylor later left him to marry Richard Burton.) Any semblance of a normal childhood was impossible for Ms. Fisher. At 15, she played a debutante in the Broadway musical “Irene,” which starred her mother, and appeared in Ms. Reynolds’s Las Vegas nightclub act. At 17, Ms. Fisher made her first movie, “Shampoo” (1975) Hal Ashby’s satire of politics and the libidinous Los Angeles culture of the time, in which she played the precocious daughter of a wealthy woman (Lee Grant) having an affair with a promiscuous hairdresser (Warren Beatty). She was one of roughly two dozen young actresses considered for the role of Princess Leia in Mr. Lucas’s marathon casting sessions for “Star Wars. ” (Cindy Williams, Amy Irving, Sissy Spacek and Jodie Foster were among those who also read for the part.) Many of Ms. Fisher’s line readings from that film have since become part of the cinematic canon: her repeated, almost hypnotic exhortation, “Help me, Kenobi, you’re my only hope” her wryly unimpressed reaction when Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) arrives in disguise to rescue her from a detention cell: “Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?” “Star Wars” became a financial and cultural phenomenon, launching more movies and a merchandising machine that splashed Ms. Fisher’s likeness on all manner of action figures and products while casting her into an uneasy limelight. She partied with the Rolling Stones during the making of “The Empire Strikes Back,” hosted “Saturday Night Live” and had romantic relationships with Dan Aykroyd (with whom she appeared in “The Blues Brothers”) and Paul Simon. She and Mr. Simon had a marriage that lasted less than a year, and he was inspired to write his song “Hearts and Bones” about their time together. As its lyrics go: In “The Princess Diarist,” she admitted what many fans had long suspected: During the filming of the first “Star Wars” movie, she and Harrison Ford (who was married at the time) had an affair. Ms. Fisher acknowledged taking drugs like LSD and Percodan throughout the 1970s and ’80s and later said that she was using cocaine while making “The Empire Strikes Back. ” In 1985, after filming a role in Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters,” she had a nearly fatal drug overdose. She had her stomach pumped and checked herself into a rehab program in Los Angeles. Those experiences later became grist for her caustic, comic novel “Postcards From the Edge,” whose chapters are variously presented as letters, diary entries, monologues and narratives. As the main character, Suzanne, writes of her rehab stay: “Mom brought me some peanut butter cookies and a biography of Judy Garland. She told me she thought my problem was that I was too impatient, my fuse was too short, that I was only interested in instant gratification. I said, ‘Instant gratification takes too long. ’” The book was later made into a movie, directed by Mike Nichols from a script by Ms. Fisher. Released in 1990, it starred Meryl Streep as Suzanne and Shirley MacLaine as her mother. On film, Ms. Fisher also played the best friend of Meg Ryan’s title character in the 1989 romantic comedy “When Harry Met Sally … ” On television, she played satirical versions of herself on shows like “Sex and the City” and “The Big Bang Theory. ” She had a recurring role on the British comedy “Catastrophe” (seen here on Amazon) as the mother of the character played by Rob Delaney, one of the show’s creators. Her survivors include her mother her brother, Todd her daughter, Billie Lourd, from a relationship with the talent agent Bryan Lourd and her half sisters, Joely Fisher and Tricia Leigh Fisher, the daughters of Eddie Fisher and Connie Stevens. Ms. Fisher had a Dorothy presence on Twitter, where she ruminated on the inexplicable mania surrounding “Star Wars” and on her French bulldog, Gary, in playful messages filled with emoji. Last year, after the release of “The Force Awakens,” she wrote, in part: “Please stop debating about whether OR not [eye emoji] aged well. unfortunately it hurts all 3 of my feelings. My BODY hasn’t aged as well as I have. ” | 1 |
Montag, 14. November 2016 Katastrophenschutz warnt: Werwölfe heute Nacht bis zu 15 Prozent größer Berlin (dpo) - Der "Supermond" begeistert. Für viele Deutsche ist der größte Mond seit 1912 ein Spektakel. Doch das seltene Phänomen hat auch gefährliche Auswirkungen: So warnt der Katastrophenschutz davor, dass Werwölfe heute Nacht bis zu 15 Prozent größer und 33 Prozent stärker sind als normal. "Wir empfehlen allen Menschen dringend, sich heute Nacht zu Hause zu verbarrikadieren, wenn sie nicht von einem besonders großen und wilden Superwerwolf zerfetzt werden wollen", warnt Parazoologe Wolfgang Beckmess vom Bundesamt für Bevölkerungsschutz und Katastrophenhilfe. "Wer sich dennoch nach draußen wagen will - etwa, um den sogenannten Supermond zu beobachten -, sollte unbedingt mindestens eine Waffe aus Silber mit sich führen." Wer sich mit Silber-Kugeln ausrüstet, sollte daran denken, ein um 15% größeres Kaliber zu verwenden. Menschen, die selbst unter Lykanthropie leiden, rät der Katastrophenschutz, sich heute Nacht besonders fest an das Bett fesseln lassen, da sie mutmaßlich über erheblich größere Kräfte verfügen als in einer gewöhnlichen Vollmondnacht. Zudem sollte darauf geachtet werden, möglichst dehnfähige Schlafkleidung zu tragen. Beckmess, der als Koryphäe auf dem Gebiet der Werwolfforschung gilt, erklärte außerdem: "Achten Sie auch darauf, dass es in dieser Jahreszeit schon früh dunkel wird, wodurch der Supermond schon ab… ach du Scheiße, ist es schon so spät? U RGHHH! U RGH! h!" ssi, dan; Foto oben [M]: Shutterstock Artikel teilen: | 0 |
Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” while discussing President Donald Trump’s order halting immigrants from seven countries from entering the United States, newly elected Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez called it an “ and frankly racist executive action against Muslims. ” Perez said, “We see no evidence, Chuck, of anything constructive from this president. Hours into his presidency he made it harder for homebuyers to buy a home. A few days later he tried to make it harder for people to save for retirement. He nominates someone to head the Labor Department who wants to gut overtime pay. He is continually talking one way, but I judge people by their actions. Look at the and frankly, racist executive action against Muslims. He has governed from the far right in everything he has done. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
Posted on October 28, 2016 by Dr. Eowyn | 3 Comments
Four days ago, on October 24, 2016, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joe Dunford sent a fascinating piece of communication, titled “ Upholding Our Oath ,” to every member of the U.S. Armed Services.
Note: General Joseph Dunford Jr. , 60, was the 36th Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps. Nominated by Obama, Dunford became the 19th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on October 1, 2015.
This is what Gen. Dunford wrote :
“As the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff…as our country again prepares for a peaceful transfer of power to a new administration, I write to share my views regarding our mutual obligations as military professionals and rights as citizens during this election season.
Every service member swears “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States” and to “bear true faith and allegiance to the same.” This oath is embedded in our professional culture and underpins the values that shape and define our all-volunteer force. Beginning with General George Washington resigning his military commission, our deliberate and disciplined commitment to upholding the principle of civilian control of the military underpins not only our warrior ethos but also the expectations of how we conduct ourselves while in uniform.
While we must always safeguard our professional integrity, extra vigilance is required during any political transition. Our individual and collective obligation during this election season is twofold. First, we must recognize that we have one Commander in Chief, and until authority is transferred on January 20, 2017, the Joint Force must remain clearly focused on and responsive to the existing National Command Authority. Second, the Joint Force must conduct itself in such a way that the new administration has confidence that it will be served by a professional, competent, and apolitical military. This is especially important in the context of delivering the best military advice.
Every member of the Joint Force has the right to exercise his or her civic duty, including learning and discussing — even debating — the policy issues driving the election cycle and voting for his or her candidate of choice. Provided that we follow the guidance and regulations governing individual political participation, we should be proud of our civic engagement. What we must collectively guard against is allowing our institution to become politicized , or even perceived as being politicized, by how we conduct ourselves during engagements with the media, the public, or in open or social forums.
We are living in the most volatile and complex security environment since World War II. Whether confronting violent extremist organizations seeking to destroy our way of life or dealing with state actors threatening international order, threats to our national security require a Joint Force that is ready, capable, and trusted. To that end, I have a duty to protect the integrity and political neutrality of our military profession. But this obligation is not mine alone. It belongs to every Soldier, Marine, Sailor, Airman, and Coastguardsman. Thank you for joining me in honoring our history, our traditions, and the institutions of the U.S. Armed Forces by upholding the principle of political neutrality .”
Even without reading between the lines, General Dunford clearly has concerns about politicization of the military and its obligation and commitment to political neutrality and noninterference in politics. That the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff must remind members of the Armed Forces that they must “uphold” their oath both suggests and implies that the opposite is going on, i.e., the military is politicized and there are fears that it will intervene in civilian politics.
If this pic (below) of a young U.S. Marine is any indication, Gen. Dunford has good reasons to issue the “Upholding Our Oath” communication.
A year ago, a Rasmussen Reports national survey of active and retired military personnel found that only 15% had a favorable opinion of Hillary Clinton, with just 3% who viewed her very favorably. A staggering 81% had an unfavorable opinion of her , including 69% who had a very unfavorable view of her.
A similar survey today is sure to find even higher unfavorable ratings for Hillary among those whom she would command as their Commander in Chief.
H/t GiGi and TruthFeedNews | 0 |
She compared him to Hitler, likened his campaign to a “racist” version of “Fun with Dick and Jane” and even said he evoked the murderous child star in “The Bad Seed. ” “I just think he’s” an idiot, Cher said of Donald J. Trump, adding a decidedly unprintable modifier. The crowd on Sunday in Provincetown, Mass. one of the country’s gay capitals, roared its approval at Cher’s succinct and salty assessment. But the famed singer and actress was not just riffing between songs at a concert: She was introducing Hillary Clinton at a for her presidential campaign. Cher did more than just blister Mr. Trump. She also offered a blunt appraisal of Mrs. Clinton’s strengths and weaknesses. “This chick is just tougher than Chinese algebra,” Cher said of the Democratic nominee. Prompting a mix of nervous laughter and applause, she added, “She is shy, and she’s not the greatest speaker in the world. ” Cher said Mrs. Clinton had told her of being deeply affected by her failed effort to spearhead an overhaul of the nation’s health care system in 1993. “She got so crushed by the G. O. P. just for trying to set up health care, and she never thought it would be so personal, and she said it made her kind of pull in. ” “I hope she doesn’t mind my telling this story,” Cher said, adding: “Too late now!” Her remarks, recorded by an attendee and posted on Facebook, offered a colorful glimpse at a part of the presidential campaign that has been mainly to the general public and journalists this election cycle. Both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump have generally barred reporters from attending their . As Cher demonstrated, the language used in private settings like the event on Cape Cod — which brought in more than $1 million for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign — can be more inflammatory and raw than what is said with a bank of television cameras present. And it was not just the entertainer, whose Twitter posts often employ a toilet emoji instead of Mr. Trump’s name, who spoke bluntly. Mrs. Clinton, who often discusses how well she was able to work with Republicans during her tenure in the Senate, took the stage and acknowledged former Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, noting that he has been promoting a new bumper sticker. “I think it is something like, ‘Democrats Aren’t Perfect — but They’re Nuts! ’” said Mrs. Clinton. “You understand that. ” But Mrs. Clinton, a portion of whose remarks was also posted online, was not onstage when Cher, 70, arrived to loud applause, a few lines of her song “Woman’s World. ” Cher warned that Mr. Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” was only a guise for a more divisive message. “He means, ‘We want to make America straight and white,’” she said. And she belittled Mr. Trump for his stumbling reference at the Republican convention to the “L. G. B. T. Q. ” community. “It’s like he just learned it, you know?” she said to laughter. Speaking without notes, Cher’s performance was more of an routine than a traditional political speech. “Do you remember ‘Fun with Dick and Jane? ’” she asked, referring to the 1970s comedy. “It’s like ‘Racist Fun with Dick and Jane.’ We’re going to build walls!” Mr. Trump, she added, reminded her of the pigtailed blond actress Patty McCormack from “The Bad Seed. ” “Consummate liar, doesn’t care who she hurts, insane and, you know, sociopathic narcissist,” she said. “I just wish he’d fall off the face of the earth. ” Veering into more incendiary territory, Cher invoked “old despots” and received a subdued response when she mentioned Hitler and Stalin. “We’re going to make Germany great again,” she said, before digressing to a bit on Britain’s vote to leave the European Union. Even as she sought to use her closing comments to praise Mrs. Clinton — “I believe in her so much,” she said — Cher could not help but return to the object of her ire, Mr. Trump. “I know that if he got into office, our world would be the worst place,” Cher said. “I don’t think we could imagine how bad it could get. ” She added that, “if breaking news ever happened and he had to go to the podium, we would just all go . .. ” She finished her thought with a expression of disgust. Then she walked off to a roar of applause. | 1 |
French lifestyle magazine ELLE has claimed that the publisher Simon Schuster’s decision to offer MILO a $250, 000 book deal is irresponsible as it will “endanger human lives. ”[Joining in the mass media outrage over the book deal, ELLE columnist Sady Doyle made a range of extraordinary claims about Breitbart’s senior editor, such as the idea that “he openly despises people who play video games,” and that he has become “a key player in the rise of . ” Here’s me! On Milo’s book deal, professional abusers, and the ethics of : https: . — Sady Doyle (@sadydoyle) January 3, 2017, However the most shocking part of Doyle’s article was her claim “there is good reason to believe that publishing it [the book] will endanger human lives. ” Doyle argued that the book will be weaponised by MILO in order to target certain individuals, whose lives will consequently “go up in flames. ” “The harassment that follows a brush with Milo isn’t light teasing it’s violent assault,” she wrote. Doyle also claimed that “Yiannopoulos’ tactics are becoming increasingly widespread, simply because terror and the fear of bodily harm is a very effective way to silence opposition,” adding that “on the Internet, the line between words and actions is terminally blurry. ” DANGEROUS is available to now via Amazon, in hardcover and Kindle editions. And yes, MILO is reading the audiobook version himself! You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com | 1 |
For the past six months, a man named Francisco Hernández has been sleeping in a public shelter due to losing his job and becoming homeless. To figuratively get back on his feet, the 43-year-old has... | 0 |
Digital Currency Alliances Building from Strong Asian Base November 01, 2016 Digital Currency Alliances Building from Strong Asian Base
(HONG KONG) Ant Financial Services Group, the world's biggest financial technology company, plans to focus its expansion plans in Asia before looking to go more global, a senior official said on Tuesday. Ant, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's online finance arm, will offer its insurance and investment management products outside of China, senior vice president Douglas Feagin said at an event to mark a tie-up with Thai payment firm Ascend. The Thailand deal marks Ant's first significant expansion effort into foreign payments in Asia since last year's partnership with India's PayTM, which raised over $500 million in a round led by Alibaba in September. Ant's payment platform Alipay has been tussling with major local rival Tencent Holdings Ltd, whose Tenpay has also been making an overseas push by targeting thousands of retailers particularly around Asia.
Ant plans to replicate the Alipay model in Thailand, with a goal of reaching more than half of the country's internet users in five years, it said.
"We are leading first with payments and related services but we may very well offer other products and services market by market," Feagin said.
The move extends a global push that has seen the firm move into the United States and Europe. Last month Ant expanded its mobile payment app service into the U.S. market in a bid to reach Chinese consumers traveling abroad.
Ant said in a statement that it has 450 million users, of which 40 million are outside China. It also has another 150 million when users of its PayTM tie-up are included.
In August both Alipay and Tenpay secured licenses to operate their mobile payments services in Hong Kong.
Ascend, which allows users to deposit their cash into a digital wallet, and Ant Financial are counting on the huge number of people without bank accounts in Southeast Asia to turn to their payments, lending and other services.
LISTEN MORE: TRUNEWS HOST RICK WILES SPEAKS WITH MICHAEL SNYDER AND TERRY SACKA ON THE COMING DIGITAL FIAT CURRENCY
The region has nearly 370 million people without bank accounts and who use cash on a day-to-day basis, Ascend Group CEO Punnamas Vichitkulwongsa said.
Feagin, a former Goldman Sachs banker who leads Ant's international business, added there were no set plans currently for the timing or venue of a potential initial public offering, though there were benefits to going public.
Ant Financial raised $4.5 billion in a record funding round in April, valuing the company at about $60 billion, the same as American Express Co or insurer Chubb Ltd and more than any other privately held fintech company. Article by Doc Burkhart , Vice-President, General Manager and co-host of TRUNEWS with Rick Wiles Got a news tip? Email us at Help support the ministry of TRUNEWS with your one-time or monthly gift of financial support. DONATE NOW ! DOWNLOAD THE TRUNEWS MOBILE APP! CLICK HERE! Donate Today! Support TRUNEWS to help build a global news network that provides a credible source for world news
We believe Christians need and deserve their own global news network to keep the worldwide Church informed, and to offer Christians a positive alternative to the anti-Christian bigotry of the mainstream news media Top Stories | 0 |
One more demonetisation death; stone-pelter commits suicide after being out of work for 9 days Posted on Tweet ( Image via intoday.in )
Ninth day into demonetisation and the death toll has reached 48. These are confirmed deaths reported on Huffington Post India. The number of unreported deaths may be higher if we can link all deaths in the past 10 years to demonetization. While most deaths are of elderly waiting in long bank queues as their sons and daughters patiently waited at home for the news channels to arrive and interview them, there are quite a few suicides, the latest being an innocent stone-pelter in Kashmir who was forced to take the drastic step owing to financial constraints.
While Modi was engaged in a chit-chat with Bill Gates over a cup of tea yesterday, Yakub Ali, a stone- pelter by profession had put an end to his life after he ran out of valid currencies. Sources say he was distressed as his employer urged him to accept 500 and 1000 rupee notes and resume the noble work he was associated with.
“But I can only exchange 4000 rupees,” implored Mr. Ali as his employer gave him a bundle of currency notes in 500 denomination.
“Yes, but you can deposit the rest in your account.”
“But do you know how long the queues are? It takes hours to reach the counter.”
“Here,” he handed him a memory card.
“What is it?”
“Jodha Akbar by Ashutosh Gowariker. I have copied the file in it. By the time it gets over, you should reach the counter, but if you still don’t then there is one more file in it as backup.”
“And which file is it?”
“Sri Lanka’s national anthem. Now go and deposit the money in your account.”
He went to the nearest bank branch and saw the queue. He already heard about people dying in bank queues.
“Let’s deposit the money,” his friend suggested.
“But have you seen the queue? We might die before reaching the counter.”
“But if that happens, you will at least feature on Huffington Post.”
“Do you realize how embarrassing the headline would be for us? Terrorist dies while standing in bank queue.”
“Then what would you do?”
“I will commit suicide. There are better facilities in heaven than a bank queue. And I will feature on the front page anyway.”
The news of his death has cast a gloom over the proceedings of some of the news channels. The journalists abandoned their interviews with politicians in the disguise of traders and hurriedly aired the news, demanding an answer from the Prime Minister.
We tried to contact Arvind Kejriwal and Rahul Gandhi but they were not available for comments. Sources reveal that they have already left for Kashmir to meet the bereaved family members of the deceased. | 0 |
By Gordon Duff, Senior Editor on October 29, 2016 Several Iraqi Soldiers killed by US Airstrike Near Mosul With a blocking force in place preventing ISIS from moving into Syria, reported by Iranian press, the US is doing everything possible to slow down the Iraqi Army and prevent successful operations. There have long been suspicions that the Kurds, who let thousands of ISIS oil trucks through their region each week, have been working with ISIS all along. It was the Kurds, not the real Kurds, but Barzani’s Saudi run dictatorship in Erbil, that invited Turkey into Iraq. Deputy Chief of the Nineveh Provincial Council Noureddin Qablan announced that the US-led coalition warplanes have launched airstrikes on army base in Nineveh province, killing several soldiers. “The US fighter jets hit one of the military bases of Iraqi Army’s 16th Division in a region North of Mosul, and the attack left at least four Iraqi soldiers dead,” Qablan said. According to FNA, He said that the US army has confirmed the attack, calling it a “mistake”. Qablan said that it is not the first time the US warplanes hit the Iraqi army and volunteer forces (Hashd al-Shaabi) military positions, adding, “The US-led coalition has each time said that air raids were not deliberate.” It is reported that another peshmerga convoy accidentally hit by an USA-led coalition airstrike near Mosul today. That’s was 3 “Mistakan Raid” in 24 hours. Related Posts: No Related Posts The views expressed herein are the views of the author exclusively and not necessarily the views of VT, VT authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, technicians, or the Veterans Today Network and its assigns. LEGAL NOTICE - COMMENT POLICY Posted by Gordon Duff, Senior Editor on October 29, 2016, With Reads Filed under World . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 . You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. FaceBook Comments
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On the City College of New York’s handsome Gothic campus, leaking ceilings have turned hallways into obstacle courses of buckets. The bathrooms sometimes run out of toilet paper. The lectures are becoming uncomfortably overcrowded, and course selections are dwindling, because of steep budget cuts. The faculty of the college’s engineering school is so “disengaged and beaten,” an assessment last year warned, that if “serious shortcomings” were not rectified, the school could fail to earn reaccreditation. On Friday, Michelle Obama will deliver a commencement address at the college, the flagship school of the City University of New York system, which is the largest urban public university in the country. She is likely to celebrate its proud legacy of creating opportunity for New York’s striving class. Established in 1847 as the Free Academy of New York to educate “the children of the whole people,” as its founder Townsend Harris said, City College has been called “the poor man’s Harvard. ” until 1976, it has produced 10 Nobel Prize winners. It was a hotbed of Jewish intellectuals in the 1930s, and today it welcomes the ambitious children of families from around the world, many of them poor and working class. But any evocation of the past by Ms. Obama will mask a troubled present. “We have gone backwards,” said Frederick R. Brodzinski, a senior administrator and adjunct professor in computer science who plans to retire in September after 30 years at the university. “Morale is horrible on campus. There are too many highly paid administrators, and there’s a lack of clear leadership. We have stepped down on the ladder that we were climbing for about 10 years. ” The troubles at City College, and throughout the entire CUNY system, are representative of a funding crisis that has been building at public universities across the country. Even as the role of higher education as an engine of economic mobility has become increasingly vital, governments have been pulling back their support. Since the 2008 recession, states have reduced spending on public higher education by 17 percent per student, while tuition has risen by 33 percent, according to a recent report by the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Arizona is spending 56 percent less, while students are paying 88 percent more. In Louisiana, students are spending 80 percent more on tuition, while state funding has been cut by 39 percent. The University of California system relied on state funding for almost a quarter of its budget as recently as 2002, according to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Now, that figure is 9 percent, after $1 billion in cuts. CUNY, a collection of 24 community, undergraduate and graduate schools, where 45, 000 employees help to educate 274, 000 students annually, has been caught in the political feud between Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, both Democrats. The governor proposed shifting some $485 million in costs to New York City from the state, which has paid for the bulk of the senior colleges since a fiscal crisis in the 1970s. The city eventually won, but the governor’s $1. 6 billion appropriation did little to stem the chronic underfunding of the system. While enrollment has climbed by more than 12 percent over the last eight years, Albany’s funding of operating costs — the main source of public money for the 11 colleges, where of students are enrolled — has dropped by 17 percent adjusted for inflation, according to Stephen Brier, a CUNY professor of urban education and of the forthcoming book “Austerity Blues: Fighting for the Soul of Public Higher Education. ” The 25, 000 faculty and staff members represented by CUNY’s biggest union, the Professional Staff Congress, have not had a raise in six years. They have vowed to walk out in the fall if the contract dispute is not resolved — knowing that a strike could lead to arrests and fines. And students are paying more. The share of CUNY’s $3. 2 billion budget that comes from tuition has climbed to 45 percent from 20 percent in 1989. In the last five years, tuition at its colleges has risen by $300 per year, to $6, 330 for New York State residents. Undergraduates must also pay an extra $280 a year, at least, in fees. It is a daunting burden to students, more than half of whom report family incomes below $30, 000, according to school data. “This is the kind of crisis that’s been brewing for a while,” said Mr. Brier. “We were a tad complacent in New York getting by, and now we’re not. But this is also part of a much larger set of developments nationally where public universities are in severe crisis. ” State officials have argued that support from Albany, when including items such as debt service, employee benefits and tuition assistance, has risen by 20 percent since 2011. They also contend that CUNY has too much administrative bloat. Yet the system’s overhead costs have increased at a slower pace since 2007 than other area public institutions, according to Howard J. Bunsis, a professor of accounting at Eastern Michigan University, who has researched government and nonprofit accounting. More than anything, though, it has been the compounding nature of the fiscal pressures, year after year, with this year being the worst, that has eaten away at the experience of CUNY’s students and faculty, from canceled electives to instructors improvising in the face of shortages. Some even fret that the university may lose the momentum it has gained in the last two decades, after it ended an policy for its colleges, and successfully raised academic standards and launched new programs. Joseph Awadjie, an immigrant from Ghana, earned a bachelor’s degree at Brooklyn College in 2007. After working for a while at a physical therapy practice, he returned to the college in 2013 to pursue a master’s degree in kinesiology. He said he was struck by a rapidly deteriorating campus — some call it “Brokelyn College” — where students were often unable to get into the courses they needed to meet requirements. One of his courses, cardiac rehabilitation, lacked essential materials such as inhalers and carbon dioxide masks. “It’s like two different worlds,” he said. Mr. Awadjie has become even more aware of the systemwide problems from his perch as chairman of the CUNY University Student Senate. He fielded no more than five complaints a month when his term began in 2014, but this year, he said, he has gotten more than 60 a month, many about overcrowded classes. At City College, Anais McAllister, 22, a senior from Yonkers, said she had planned to major in English with a concentration in education, which would have allowed her to become a teacher after graduation. When some of her required education classes were canceled, she realized she would need another year — and another $6, 000, at least — to graduate with the education credential. With her scholarship expiring at the end of this academic year, and a younger brother entering trade school in the fall to obtain his plumber certification, she dropped the education concentration. “The fact that this can happen, where your department can be cut financially where you have to think about dropping it, is ridiculous,” she said. Technical problems are common, with elevators, escalators and copy machines frequently out of order. Computers and other equipment often do not work in classrooms. signals are a tease. At Lehman College in the Bronx, Robert Farrell, an associate professor in the library department, said the library’s entire book budget this academic year was $13, 000, down from about $60, 000 a decade ago. Because the roof has been chronically leaky, about 200 books were damaged during a rainstorm three years ago a tarp still covers some volumes. Mr. Farrell also said that the library has had to reduce its spending on academic journals and database subscriptions. “We can’t be a serious institution of higher learning without providing our faculty and students with access to these kinds of things,” he said. Senior professors said CUNY’s woes have hampered its ability to retain and recruit faculty. So the university has relied increasingly on adjuncts: while the number of faculty at CUNY’s colleges has been flat since 2009, the number of adjuncts has climbed by 23 percent. The bigger class sizes have made it harder to grade papers. papers are now more common, students and instructors said, versus the five or six pages. Classes, overstuffed, have become more impersonal. Michael Batson, an adjunct lecturer who has taught history at the College of Staten Island since 2000, said that he traditionally gave his freshmen, many from immigrant families, “ assignments” at first, in order to offer intensive instruction. But his classes have steadily increased in size, while staying in the same cramped classrooms. Group projects — which he favors, as a way to get small clusters of students to work together — have also become impossible. “It’s a workload issue, and it does affect the kind of things you can do,” he said. Nowhere has the frustration been more keenly felt than at City College, which has had five provosts in the last six years, since the arrival of Lisa S. Coico, the first CUNY alumna to serve as college president. A former provost at Temple University with a background in microbiology and immunology, she was chosen to lead an ambitious expansion of the college’s science programs. She has also polarized the campus. Last fall, with Albany’s budget uncertain, the CUNY administration asked its colleges to cut their budgets by at least 3 percent. City College, citing increased personnel costs and declining enrollment, particularly in graduate programs, imposed a 10 percent cut, or $14. 6 million. Programs with the steepest enrollment declines suffered the most, with the humanities and education departments cut by more than 40 percent each. “It is a good budget model, and it’s better than the way we used to do it for the past 40 years, which was arbitrary, very political and you had to go and beg for everything,” said Gordon A. Gebert, the interim dean of the architecture school. Many others disagreed. In October, nearly two dozen department leaders and faculty members active in governance, in a letter to CUNY’s chancellor, James B. Milliken, warned that “these cuts could mean the closing of programs for undergraduate majors and graduate students, forcing students to transfer in order to complete their degrees and producing a consequent decline in City College’s graduation rate. ” Not long after, a group of senior staff members urged the chancellor to investigate “generous bonuses, unusually high starting salaries and disproportionate salary increases” to unnamed employees, according to a letter obtained by The Times. According to public data analyzed by The Times, the college paid administrators classified as “executives” a total of $7. 25 million in the last year, up 45 percent from 2009. Eleven of the 18 biggest salary increases, by percentage, came in 2015, even as the college was slashing its budget. The provost’s office and government relations operations, in particular, have expanded. When asked about the personnel moves, the college, in a statement, said it had “invested in hiring new faculty and staff as well as moving existing staff to the executive level consistent with increased responsibilities for these areas. ” The school’s use of foundation money has also been questioned. Documents obtained by The Times indicated that the college’s 21st Century Foundation paid for some of Ms. Coico’s personal expenses, such as fruit baskets, housekeeping services and rugs, when she took office in 2010. The foundation was then reimbursed for more than $150, 000 from CUNY’s Research Foundation. That has raised eyebrows among governance experts, because such funds are typically earmarked for research. The college did not make Ms. Coico available for an interview. In response to written questions, the college said that Ms. Coico “does not owe monies” to either foundation. One thing that Ms. Coico has accomplished, according to the college, is repairing campus facilities and starting new projects, such as a 200, 000 Center for Discovery and Innovation, which was finished in 2015, to facilitate research in fields such as nanotechnology, neuroscience and photonics. Still, during a recent visit to the college’s North Academic Center, water tumbled from the ceiling, because of an apparent plumbing leak, into 10 buckets on the first floor. Christine Li, a biology professor, recalled a genetics class in a lecture hall notorious for water leaks, where she has been “worried about plugging my computer” when it rains. One day, she was surprised when she heard students gasp. “All these enormous water bugs were coming at me,” she said. “Another professor sitting in on the lecture got up on stage and started stomping on them. Not a very conducive learning environment. ” Even as enrollments in the college’s more technical programs grow, they have endured problems. The engineering school is set to have its accreditation renewed this fall. To get an assessment, the school in October invited in national experts in various engineering fields. While the experts praised the students, they found “poor” and unsafe lab conditions “not conducive to good learning,” according to reports obtained by The Times. Computers used outdated technologies, such as floppy disks and archaic operating systems. Public places teemed with “rodents, roaches, bedbugs and other vermin,” and the computer science department reported “experiencing a water leak for over 18 years. ” In its response, the college said it welcomed “constructive and valuable suggestions,” such as “upgrades for laboratory, computer and equipment and renovation of teaching spaces. ” It also said that “the curriculum remains strong and many aspects have been strengthened since the last visit. ” But just a few weeks ago, the college proposed — then scrapped, after student protests — a new $300 “excellence” fee for engineering undergraduates to help defray lab costs. “It is not possible to meet the needs of the undergraduate program,” the proposal read, “without a reliable new income stream as a means to address the shortfall. ” | 1 |
In the park, there are 9, 485 of them. You sit on them. To rest. Read a book. Sip coffee. Polish off a sandwich. Feed the pigeons. Wait for a friend, maybe a spy. Or it’s a sluggish day when you have nothing to do, and this is a delicious place to accomplish absolutely nothing. Or you can drift off and muse on the plaque affixed there, representing a story behind the bench. The Central Park bench. You aren’t just sitting on wood. You are sitting on memories. There is, for instance, a bench on the Mall that reads, “Two Red Foxes and a Pup. ” What could that possibly mean? It means this. Last year, Karen May wanted to adopt a bench as a surprise gift for her husband, Tony, a retired investment banker. She inscribed it: “Tony, win, lose or break even, you always have me. Love Karen. ” When their two sons were young and he came home from his work on Wall Street, they would rush to greet him and ask, “Hey, Poppy, did you win, lose or break even?” And he would reply that he broke even, because that was what much of life was about, breaking even. While Ms. May was so inclined, she figured she would adopt an adjoining bench for her children. When her elder son, Theodore, proposed to his girlfriend, Lucinda, he wrote a brief children’s book for her called “Two Red Foxes,” because foxes were a recurring theme in her upbringing (as when a fox sped across the field when her father proposed to her mother). The foxes were for Ms. May’s son and his fiancée. And there was the fact that her younger son, Thornwell (Ms. May’s maiden name) went by the nickname Pup. So she adopted the benches and engraved them with memories. People will sit there and not know. But she knows. Caitlin LaMorte was in the park one morning, the weather obligingly balmy though rain was possible later. As development manager for the Women’s Committee of the Central Park Conservancy, which manages the park, she runs the program. It began in 1986, as a way to finance the maintenance of the benches and their immediate surroundings. (For those with different park preferences, orphan benches are up for adoption in parks elsewhere in New York and some other cities.) If you can afford it, it’s simple enough. Pay $10, 000 (it began at $5, 000) and you get to put a plaque on a bench, saying almost whatever you want (within limits of decorum: no cursing, no advertising) up to a suggested maximum of four lines of 30 characters each. And then it’s there forever. Ms. LaMorte consulted her tablet for the latest count: 4, 223 of the benches adopted. About 250 go each year, she said. While plenty of benches remain unadopted, some areas are sold out. For instance, all the benches facing the lake. The ones lining the Mall. Those near the Great Lawn. Those along Wien Walk. There are three styles of benches: the simple version the World’s Fair style, with its circular armrests, dating to 1939 and the Central Park settee, based on the benches used during the park’s creation, circa 1858. There are also several dozen handmade rustic benches. With those, you have to fund a restoration of an entire park area and the cost starts at about $500, 000, not something to rush into. Quite often, Ms. LaMorte said, benches are adopted to remember a relative or friend who has died. Or on occasion, a pet, generally a dog, though a few cats are honored as well. Something like 840 of the plaques have “memory” in their wording. There are some Sept. 11 remembrances. Three years ago, a woman chose a bench in memory of herself for when her final date comes. It hasn’t yet. The plaque, set to go, sits in one of Ms. LaMorte’s desk drawers. Increasingly, Ms. LaMorte said, “we have more plaques that are happy. ” Graduations or birthdays or birth wishes or wedding gifts. A Japanese couple, when they returned to Japan after a lengthy stretch in the city, adopted a bench that reads: “We leave our hearts in New York after 23 years of our adventure here. ” There are a lot of benches in the playground areas commemorating births. One man adopted five benches, one for each of his grandchildren, who received them on their 16th birthdays. Last year, Victor Schiller required a birthday present for his wife, Nancy. She told him, emphatically, no jewelry, thereby ruling out his category. He thought and thought, and then he had it. Give her one of the benches. They didn’t even live in New York. They lived in Charlottesville, Va. but they had bought a place in Manhattan that they inhabited roughly a week each month. They think Central Park is truly wonderful. Mr. Schiller, 59, is retired from creating technology . Ms. Schiller, 57, is retired from investment work focused on Bulgaria. He gave her the bench, and was she happy. He waited on the inscription so she could have a say. They conferred and agreed on: “We Would Make the Same Mistake All Over Again! Vic Nancy Schiller. Still Best Friends. ” They did not reveal what the mistake was. Understandably, their three mystified children asked them, but lips sealed. Each has guessed, Umm, did you mean me? Well, of course not. No! Was it waiting so long — 11 years — to have children? Wrong. How about buying the apartment in New York? Incorrect, not even close. So they don’t know. That’s what reporters are for. To crack open mysteries, shine flashlights into dusty corners. Sometimes that’s very hard. Other times, less so. In this case, the Schillers were ready to give it up. It was possible to find out in the most ordinary way — by asking them. The two met when she was 20 and he was 22. They got engaged a year later. Mr. Schiller called his mother to break the good news. His mother dropped the phone. When she calmed herself enough to pick it up, she told him, “You’re making a big mistake!” Ms. Schiller called her mother. Her mother said, “What are you thinking?” Those withering cautions, of course, are what mothers are legally required to say. And, of course, are under protocol to ignore them. Which is what the Schillers did. Went ahead and got married and never looked back. Lou Young is a rugged, affable man of 59, with a bald head and a beard. For 33 years, he has worked for the parks department, almost all of that time immersed in Central Park. He gives his title as Bench Guy. He affixes the plaques to the benches. A few at the beginning were handled by others, but since then they’ve been all his doing. In the stinging sun the other day, he was out getting it done on a bench in the Ramble. As usual, the park was bubbling with activity. Wordlessly and with focused attention, he lined up a spot in the direct center, meticulously routed out a hole, then screwed in the plaque. Four screws. In less than 10 minutes, he was done. The inscription read: “You are the image of the rose shining within me like the flame within a lamp … ” a line modified from “The Little Prince. ” Mr. Young paints the benches too, spiffs them up, fixes them when weather chews them up. He came to New York from Birmingham, Ala. after the plant he worked in, making slats for train boxcars, shut down. Not long after he got to New York, he was riding in an elevator and noticed that it passed the 12th floor and then went to 14. No 13th floor. The unlucky thing. Now wait a minute, Mr. Young thought, I was born on the 13th. On a Friday no less. To him, it’s a lucky number. So he went to a dentist and had a front tooth plated with gold and 13 engraved on it. He likes to play the numbers. Every day for 25 years, he has played 1313 at $5 a pop. Never hit, but he keeps at it. How did he like his work? “I just love the park,” he said. “Best place to be. Since I’m from the South, it reminds me of home. ” Once he put on a plaque that a man had ordered to propose to the woman he was dating. The man must have missed some important signals. Her answer was a flat no. Benches aren’t returnable. Lou Young had to remove the failed plaque and replace it with one bearing nonmatrimonial expectations. (You can always change your plaque, but that’s another $1, 000.) One day about 10 years ago the Bench Guy was out in earnest with newly arrived plaques. He had one to do at the southwest corner of the Great Lawn. He screwed it on, then took a look and saw it said Louis Young. He thought, “Interesting, this guy has the same name as me. ” Turned out, one of the recurrent donors to the park, who had adopted 18 benches and given them as gifts, had gotten to know and admire Lou Young from watching him do his bench work. So she gave him a bench. The plaque reads: “LOUIS YOUNG FOR HIS CARE AND DEDICATION TO CENTRAL PARK SINCE 1985. ” It’s not cheap to adopt a bench you could buy a decent used car for the cost. But there is . Nicole Vest battled leukemia for two and a half years before she died in February 2015. She was 34. Her family and friends debated what to do to honor her memory. She was cremated, and there was no place to go and pay respects. Someone suggested a bench, and everyone liked that idea. They set up an appeal on a website. Family and friends chipped in, as did others, people who had never met Ms. Vest but knew one of her friends or relatives. The effort kicked off on March 10 of last year. It attained its goal by April 1. About 90 people donated, some giving as little as $20. They adopted a bench just north of the sailboat pond. What to put on it? They wanted something original. “I didn’t want something that was used all the time, like beloved sister and daughter,” said Michelle Lapworth, Ms. Vest’s sister. Ms. Vest loved butterflies. She had a butterfly tattoo on her ankle, wore a butterfly necklace. Her best friend found a quotation from Hans Christian Andersen, and that met with approval. “‘Just living is not enough,’ said the butterfly. ‘One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.’ In Memory of Nicole E. Vest . ” Another story, pet included. When Chris Branca died much too young in an accident at 33 last April, his family wanted to remember him with a bench. They also wanted to remember his dog. Buddha, a bulldog, had died a year earlier. Mr. Branca delighted in going to the park with Buddha. He lived further downtown. He drove there with Buddha. He was particularly fond of the Sheep Meadow. Dogs are prohibited from the grass there. Nonetheless, that expanse beguiled Mr. Branca. Weekend after weekend, he went there with Buddha. “He would get a ticket all the time and just pay it,” said Lindsey Branca, his sister. “That was his personality. He was a little bit defiant. ” So, the family, which runs a real estate company, adopted adjoining benches, one for Mr. Branca and one for Buddha. Mr. Branca was an abiding fan of Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are. ” With great frequency, he wore a Wild Things . His best friend suggested a Wild Things line that was adapted for the inscription: “For Chris Branca. In all of us there is Fear, Hope and Adventure. In all of us there is a Wild Thing. ” The adjoining bench bears the plaque: “For Buddha Branca Chris’s Bulldog forever by his side. ” A memorial service was held at the benches. Some 80 people attended. Subsequently, friends have visited the benches, taken pictures, sent them on to the family. A few weeks ago, his mother went to check on the benches and two of his childhood friends were sitting on them, chatting away. She sat down, slipped into the conversation. Another time, she looked in on the benches and a high school friend of Mr. Branca’s was resting there. It turned out that he was in town visiting. He lives in Puerto Rico. Benches. Benches. Benches. They can serve many purposes. He came to New York from Bogotá, Colombia. She arrived from St. Petersburg, Fla. They met in March 2014, at a friend’s birthday party. Chrissy Crawford made such an impression on Enrique Corredor that on the way home in a cab, he texted her to ask her out. Things went excellently from then on. As a boy he used to play in the park, dissolving into the Ramble. For years, he had had a dream that when he proposed to a woman, he would do it with one of the benches whose inscriptions he read. Right where he used to play. He just needed the woman. Now he was set. What to put on it? He trawled the internet, looking up love poems, romantic sayings. “I was surprised, but some of the best love lines were in letters written by Henry Kissinger,” he said. Yes, of course. Nonetheless, he kept going. He came across something from “Gone With the Wind,” Rhett Butler proposing to Scarlett O’Hara: “Say you’re going to marry me. Say yes. Say yes. ” Ms. Crawford was from the South. That would do it. He altered it somewhat and made the plaque: “My dearest Chrissy. Say you will marry me. With all my love and promise. Enrique. June 2015. ” He picked a day for the surprise. He had gotten the engagement ring of Ms. Crawford’s grandmother that he was going to use. But it rained. He had to push it back. He didn’t know, but the new date was the wedding anniversary of her grandmother. He suggested they run in the park. Ms. Crawford made it clear they had to leave by a certain time, for she had a business meeting. She has an online art gallery. He is an investment banker. They ran. “He kept stalling and wanting to walk around and get coffee, explore,” she remembered. “I was so angry with him by the time we got to the bench. ” He told her, “Hey, Chrissy, look at that bench. ” The anger dissipated. He dropped to his knee. She said yes. It was an expensive way to propose, considering it can be done free, but he didn’t see it that way. “Well, I didn’t have to pay for an engagement ring, so I get off on that,” he said. “But I looked on it as a creating an heirloom. Leaving our mark on the city. ” Something like 43 million people visit the park every year. Once a month or so, the couple will swing by, sit on the bench, their bench, and amid the park’s placidity, contentedly gaze at the humanity filing past, and feel good. | 1 |
The New York Times reported Tuesday evening that President Donald Trump had a private conversation with former FBI director James Comey in which the president allegedly expressed his “hope” that Comey would “let go” of the investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn had reportedly resigned the day before. [It turns out that Comey documented the conversation in a memorandum, “part of a paper trail” he reportedly created to release later to tell his side of the story in the event things went awry — which, as the world now knows, it did. (The White House has rejected Comey’s version of the conversation, which took place in the Oval Office.) The Times identifies its source as “one of Mr. Comey’s associates,” who did not provide a copy of the memo but read it aloud on the telephone. The Drudge Report calls the story “Comey’s revenge,” and thus it would seem to be. If anything justifies President Trump’s decision to fire Comey, it would be this effort to leak details of their private conversations to the media with the obvious intention of causing the maximum political damage to the president. But this dagger is a rather dull blade. It lacks any apparent “quid pro quo” — a sense that Trump was offering something to Comey in exchange for dropping the investigation. Trump had already suggested in January that he would keep Comey on in his job as FBI director the conversation in the memorandum happened in February. Moreover, the Times seems to oversell the story, interpreting the word “hope” as a request. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the Comey memo is accurate, what Trump says — “I hope you can let this go … I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go … He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go. ” — is never actually framed as a request at all. Yet the Times calls it a “request” and an effort to interfere in the investigation. That is a rather liberal (pun intended) spin on Trump’s words. Democrats, predictably, are pouncing on the story. But so far, is just the latest hysterical episode in their effort to deny the legitimacy of the November election. If this is the best that Comey’s “paper trail” can produce, his “revenge” may backfire, at least in political terms. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. | 1 |
Michael On Television Election Not Over? Money Is Being Raised To Challenge The Election Results In Wisconsin, Michigan And Pennsylvania 23rd, 2016
Just when you thought it was safe to celebrate Trump’s victory, the left is hatching a plan to try to steal the election right from under his nose. A group composed of “prominent computer scientists” and “election lawyers” is urgently asking the Clinton campaign to challenge the election results in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. They claim that there is “persuasive evidence” that the election results in those states were “manipulated or hacked”, and they are pushing Clinton to file formal challenges to those results while there is still time to do so. As I write this article, the final result in Michigan could still go either way, and if Hillary Clinton does end up winning Michigan all she would have to do would be to flip the results in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to become the next president of the United States.
Many on the left are absolutely incensed that Donald Trump is going to be the next president even though it looks like Hillary Clinton is going to win the popular vote by a very wide margin. In fact, as I write this article Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular vote has expanded to more than 1.8 million votes .
After all of the votes have been counted, it is entirely possible that Hillary Clinton may finish more than 2 million votes ahead of Donald Trump.
In a desperate bid to try to salvage the election, an attempt is being made to push for recounts in the key swing states that Clinton lost. This is being talked about all over the mainstream media today, but it was first reported by New York Magazine …
Hillary Clinton is being urged by a group of prominent computer scientists and election lawyers to call for a recount in three swing states won by Donald Trump , New York has learned. The group, which includes voting-rights attorney John Bonifaz and J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society, believes they’ve found persuasive evidence that results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have been manipulated or hacked . The group is so far not speaking on the record about their findings and is focused on lobbying the Clinton team in private.
Last Thursday, the activists held a conference call with Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and campaign general counsel Marc Elias to make their case, according to a source briefed on the call. The academics presented findings showing that in Wisconsin, Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic-voting machines compared with counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots. Based on this statistical analysis, Clinton may have been denied as many as 30,000 votes; she lost Wisconsin by 27,000.
The race in Michigan is even closer, and the truth is that Clinton may be able to close the gap of about 11,000 votes there without a recount.
In Pennsylvania, the gap is currently about 68,000 votes, and so that would present much more of a challenge for the Clinton campaign.
At this point it is questionable whether Hillary Clinton is willing to formally request recounts in those states before the deadlines arrive, but she doesn’t have to be the one to do it.
In fact, according to MSN another presidential candidate is already raising the money needed to submit her own requests for recounts in those key battleground states…
Jill Stein, the Green party’s presidential candidate, is prepared to request recounts of the election result in several key battleground states, her campaign said on Wednesday.
Stein launched an online fundraising page seeking donations toward a $2m fund she said was needed to request reviews of the results in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Stein said she was acting due to “compelling evidence of voting anomalies” and that data analysis had indicated “significant discrepancies in vote totals”.
But if Stein wants to do something, she needs to act very quickly.
The deadline to officially file for a recount in Wisconsin is Friday, in Pennsylvania it is Monday, and in Michigan it is next Wednesday.
Meanwhile, six former Bernie Sanders supporters are engaged in a last ditch effort to use the Electoral College to deny Trump the presidency on December 19th. Just like the attempt to recount the votes in key battleground states, this plan is not likely to work either, but right now it is receiving a lot of attention from the mainstream media. The following comes from a Daily Caller article entitled “ Sanders Electors Vow To Vote Against Clinton In Wild Attempt To Keep Trump From White House “…
The group asserts that in order to succeed in their goal, they would have to convince 37 Republican electors to vote against Trump, a number the groups understands is unlikely. The ultimate goal, the group says, is to reduce the overall faith the average american voter has in the electoral college system.
Until the actual votes are tallied, it will be very difficult for either Democrats or Republicans to ascertain just how effective the movement is, because there is no organized whip effort to gauge how many electors intend to vote they way they are instructed.
There is no remedy for a faithless elector.
It is extremely unlikely that 37 Republican electors would betray Trump at this point.
What is far more likely is that these former Bernie Sanders supporters will bring enough attention to “faithless electors” that it will cause an even bigger push to abolish the Electoral College.
But because it would require changing the Constitution in order to abolish the Electoral College, it is something that is not likely to happen any time soon.
Ultimately, all of these last minute moves by the left seem destined to fail, and there doesn’t seem to be anything that they can do at this point to keep Donald Trump out of the White House.
And the truth is that so many of the things that I warn are coming to America in my new book are far more likely to happen if Trump is in the White House rather than if a Democrat is residing there.
We have reached a critical moment in U.S. history, and right now optimism about the future of this country among conservatives is off the charts .
But is that optimism justified?
We shall see, but without a doubt this optimism is not shared by Democrats, and many on the left are preparing to fight against Trump every step of the way. November 23rd, 2016 | Tags: 2016 , 2017 , Debt , Debts , Donald Trump , Extreme Pain , Intense Pain , Lawyers , Michigan , Pain , Painful , Pennsylvania , Trump , Wisconsin | Category: Commentary Half Of The Population Of The World Is Dirt Poor – And The Global Elite Want To Keep It That Way » Cinderella Man
Fear mongering…it’s not gonna happen jeez there’s no way in hell they steal this from us..they think protests from leftist crybabies is bad just wait and see 60 million pissed off Deplorables not gonna happen James Staten | 0 |
INTERVIEW WITH THE SYRIAN PRESIDENT BASHAR AL-ASSAD
“Syria is paying the price of its independence” by Bashar al-Assad Interviewed by the Cuban journalist Roberto Garcia on behalf of the agency Prensa Latina, the President of the Syrian Arab Republic highlights the cohesion between the different groups within Syrian society and popular participation in defense of the Nation. After noting that preserving national independence was a fundamental factor in the struggle that today is liberating the Syrian state, Bashar al-Assad recognizes the historical similarity between this battle and the recent struggles between Latin American nations.
Voltaire Network | Damascus (Syria) | 2 November 2016 Español President Bashar al-Assad receives the special envoy from Latina Prensa, Roberto García, 21 July 2016. Prensa Latina : Mr President, thank you very much for granting Prensa Latina this historic opportunity to communicate to the world your perspective on the situation in Syria given that, as you know, much information has been manipulated on the foreign aggression your country faces.
How do you assess the current military situation in Syria and what are the main challenges that the Syrian armed forces on the ground face in their struggle against the anti-governmental groups? If possible, we would like your opinion on the current situation on the combat fronts in Aleppo and Homs.
Bashar al-Assad :Obviously, the terrorists have received massive support from different corners of the world. There are more than 100 nationalities participating in the aggression against Syria, relying on the support of countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, that fund them and Turkey that undoubtedly offers them logistical support, as well as the approval and supervision of Western States led by the United States, France, the United Kingdon and other allies.
But since the Russians decided to combat terrorism in Syria, essentially the Al-Nusra Front, the Islamic State (Daesh) and other groups associated to these two extremist entities, the balance of powers has now shifted in our favour and against these groups.
The Syrian Arab Army has succeeded and continues to succeed in making advances in different parts of Syria and is determined to topple them.
The situation in Homs, since the terrorists abandoned it more than a year ago, has improved and is far more stable now. There are some districts in the city infiltrated by extremists where a reconciliation process is now underway. On the basis of this reconciliation process, terrorists have the possibility of laying down their arms and then returning to their normal lives, benefitting from the governmental amnesty. Alternatively they leave Homs for another part of Syria, which is exactly what happened more than a year ago in the centre of this city.
But the situation is different in Aleppo given than the Turks and their Saudi and Qatarian allies have lost many of their cards on the battle fields in Syria, so that Aleppo is its final card, especially for the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has tried his best with the Saudis to send there the largest possible number of terrorists that now totals around 5,000. This they did in the last two months, from Turkey to Aleppo in the hope of occupying this city, but they failed.
In actual fact, our army has succeeded in making advances in Aleppo and the surroundings areas, seeking to find terrorists, then to negotiate with them so as to return them to their normal life. Alternatively they will abandon this zone, or in some other way will be destroyed because they have no other option.
Prensa Latina : What are the priorities of the Syrian armies in their struggle against the terrorist groups? What role do the popular defense groups play in the theatre of operations?
Bashar al-Assad : The priority of the Arab Syrian Army is fighting Daesh [the Islamic Emirate], the al-Nusra Front and groups such as the Ahrar Al-Sham and Yeish al-Islam (the Islamic Army).
These four groups are directly linked to al-Qaeda, given that they share its ideology. They are Islamic extremists that want to eliminate everything that is contrary to their way of thinking and that is not aligned to them.
Regarding the groups of popular defense, at the beginning of the conflicts, the terrorists unleashed a non-conventional war against our army that is a conventional organization, such as any other army in the world.
As a consequence, the support that these groups of popular defense offered was of utmost importance to destroying the terrorists with non-conventional tactics. This has been a great help for the Syrian Arab Army given that the combatants of the popular defense fight in their own zones, cities and towns - places that they are very familiar with. I mean, they really dominate the roads, paths and geography of these zones and for this reason are a great help to the Syrian Arab Army. This is their mission.
Prensa Latina : How does the resistance of the Syrian people materialize against foreign aggression on the economic front? Which sectors in this sphere continue to function despite the war, the international sanctions and acts of sabotage?
Bashar al-Assad :In actual fact, the war against Syria is integral because it is not limited to the support offered to the terrorists but furthermore unleashed a containment policy against our country at the international level…
The third factor is the economy. They give orders to extremists and mercenary agents to destroy the infrastructure that grew the Syrian economy and satisfied the daily needs of its citizens.
At the same time, they began to impose a direct embargo on the borders of our nation, making use of these irregular armed elements from abroad, harnessing the banking systems in the whole world.
Despite this, the Syrian people is determined to pursue a normal life, within the realms of what is possible. This situation has led to many businessmen, essentially medium and small industrials, abandoning the most unstable conflict zones and making their way to other areas where there is greater stability. There they establish their businesses at much-reduced levels, as a way of continuing to exist, to maintain economic activity and to continue to satisfy our citizens’ needs.
In this context, most sectors are still functioning. For example, the pharmaceutical industry is working at more than 60% of its manufacturing capacity and this is very important for our economy in the circumstances that we are going through.
I think that despite our current situation, we are not cutting back on the efforts to broaden once again our economic base, especially following the advances that the Syrian Arab Army is making in different zones of combat.
Prensa Latina : Mr President: let us speak a little about the international environment. What is your opinion on the role the UN is playing in the Syrian conflict and the attempts of Washington and its allies to impose their will on the Security Council and the Geneva Talks?
Bashar al-Assad :Talking about the role of the UN and the Security Council could be ambiguous and confusing given that in actual fact, the United Nations is an instrument that the United States can use to suit its needs.
Washington is able to impose on the [UN] its norms of double standards thereby preventing the organization acting according to the provisions of the UN Charter. They can use it just as they do with any other institution under US administration.
Were it not for the positions taken by Russia and China on certain causes, the UN would be a wholly US institution. But Russia and China have achieved a certain equilibrium in these institutions over the last 5 years, especially on the Syrian cause.
But if you wish to speak of the role of the UN through its mediators and its envoys, such as Mr Staffan De Mistura most recently and before him Koffi Anan, Lakdar Brahimi and others, we can say that these mediators are not independent.
These officials reflect the pressures that Western countries exercise, or, in some cases, the dialogue existing between the main powers, principally Russia and the United States. They are not stable and due to this, you cannot speak of the UN playing a role.
It is a reflection of this equilibrium. So, the UN is not playing a role in the Syrian Conflict. There is only US – Russian dialogue and we know that the Russians are not cutting back on their efforts and that they are working with all sincerity and honesty to topple the terrorists.
However, the US is manoeuvring to use the terrorists rather than to destroy them.
Prensa Latina : Mr President: How do you currently see the co-existence between Syrian ethnic and religious groups in relation to this foreign interference? How does this factor impact the current economic climate?
Bashar al-Assad :The most important matter with respect to this harmony between the different components of the Syrian social fabric, is that it is true and authentic. This is because it has been constructed throughout History and throughout the centuries. This means in this sort of conflict it is impossible to destroy this social fabric.
If you take a tour in the different zones under government control, you can see all the colours of the social fabric of Syrian society living together.
I can add that during the conflict, this harmony improved and was further strengthened. This is not just words - it is a reality that has different reasons. The conflict is a lesson and this diversity that characterizes a society can enrich the country or can be converted into a problem. There is no other outcome.
The people have learnt that we have to work very hard to retain this harmony given that the first argument that the terrorists and their allies in the region and in the West used in relation to the conflict in Syria was of a sectarian character.
They would like to divide the people so that they will fight among themselves with the aim of stoking the fire in Syria but they have failed. The Syrians learnt the lesson how to live in harmony and they were enjoying this harmony before the conflict exploded. Now we have to try to strengthen it.
And for this reason, without any exaggeration, I can say that where this issue is concerned, all is well.
We can also say that the situation is different in the areas under terrorist control. As you know, those that belong fundamentally to the extremist factions associated with al-Qaeda have not decreased their efforts to introduce their oscurantist ideology into the minds of the new generation, an ideology that asserts death, decapitation and all these horrendous practices. And that had success in some areas.
With the passage of time, it will be more difficult to deal with this new generation of youth, saturated with the doctrine and ideology of Wahabism and al-Qaeda. Here is based the only danger that our society will face in relation to the harmony and coexistence to which you have referred.
Prensa Latina : Mr President, let us return to the international scene. What is your opinion on the role that the US-led coalition plays in relation to the groups deployed in the North of Syria, especially the Kurds?
Bashar al-Assad :As you know, when the US administrations build relations with any group or society in a country, it is not for the benefit of that nation or its people but because it serves the US agenda.
Consequently, we have to ask ourselves: why are the Americans supporting someone in Syria? Clearly they are not doing it for the benefit of Syria, but because they have their own agenda. And this US agenda in all countries always aims at dividing.
They do not work to unite people, but to divide them. Sometimes they choose a sectarian group and at other times an ethnic group and lend its support against other ethnic groups or wedge a distance between it and other components of society. That is its agenda.
Therefore it is evident that all this US support has nothing to do with Daesh, nor with al-Nusra, nor even with the fight against terrorism as from the time the US intervened, Daesh has grown. It only started to shrink when Russia lent its support to the Syrian Army last September.
Prensa Latina : Mr President, what is your opinion of the attempted coup that recently took place in Turkey? How do you think it affects the current situation in this country, at the international level and also the conflict in Syria?
Bashar al-Assad :We have to see this coup as reflecting instability and disturbances within Turkey, especially at the social level. It is possible that the effect is political or any other type, but, certainly, when a country is destabilized, the principal causes are rooted in its own society.
This is independent of who governs Turkey and who is its president/ leader because this is an internal matter. We do not intervene nor will we commit the error of saying that Erdogan must step down from power or that he must stay. This is a Turkish issue and it is for the Turkish people to take a decision on this matter.
But the most important matter in this coup is that we have to see the measures and steps that Erdogan and his group adopted in recent days, when they began to attack the judicial system. They expelled from office more than 2,700 judges, more than 1,500 university professors and more than 15,000 employees in the education sector. What do the universities, the judges and the civil society have to do with the coup?
These measures reflect the evil intentions of Erdogan, his bad character and his real intentions with respect to what has happened. If the investigations are still underway, why take the decision to dismiss all these people?
Thus he has used the coup to execute his extremist agenda, a blueprint of the Muslim Brotherhood’s, on Turkish soil. This is very dangerous for Turkey and for the neighboring countries, Syria included.
Prensa Latina : How do you assess your Government’s relations with the opposition based in the country? What is the difference between these oppositional groups and those based abroad?
Bashar al-Assad :We have good relations with the opposition within Syria, based on national principles. Clearly they have their own political agendas and doctrines and we have our own agenda and doctrine. We can enter into dialogue with them directly or through the ballot boxes, which is another form of dialogue.
This is the situation in all countries. But we cannot compare this opposition with the opposition based outside Syria. This is because the concept of opposition signifies using pacific means and not supporting terrorists. This opposition is not formed outside the country and has a popular base among the Syrians that live here.
The popular bases cannot be directed from the chancelleries of the United Kingdom or France or through the Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United States intelligence services. This is not an “opposition” as they call themselves; we call them traitors because the true opposition, the one working for the Syrian people, is based in Syria and adopts its agenda from this people and functions in the interests of the homeland.
Prensa Latina : How do you assess the insistence of the United States and its allies that you have to abandon power and the media campaign that they unleash to smear the reputation of its Government on the international scene?
Bashar al-Assad :With respect to the proposition that I abandon power, they have been saying this for five years yet we have never given it any importance, nor even responded with any declaration whatsoever.
We have never given it importance. This is a Syrian matter and the Syrian people are the only ones with the power to determine who must stay and who must resign, who must stay in office and who must abandon it. The West is abundantly aware of our position on this matter.
Consequently, we are not very bothered with this issue. We don’t even waste time thinking about what they say. I am here thanks to the support of the Syrian people. Were it not for this support, I would not be here. It is as simple as that.
With respect to sullying reputations or attempts to demonize certain Presidents, this is the US’s modus operandi – at least it has been from the Second World War, since they replaced British colonialism in this region and possibly in the entire world.
From that time, the US administrations and the US politicians have never uttered a word of truth on any issue. They always lie. And with the passage of time, they have been converted into expert liars. This is part of their policy. Their attempt to demonize me is similar to their attempt to demonize President (Vladimir) Putin, in the last two years, and to demonize the Cuban leader Fidel Castro over the last five decades. That is how they operate.
So we must know that this is how the US acts and therefore we must pay no heed to what they say. The important thing is to maintain a good reputation in the eyes of our people. This is what we have to concern ourselves with.
Prensa Latina : Mr President, what is your opinion on Syria’s relations with Latin America, especially its historical ties with Cuba?
Bashar al-Assad :Despite the enormous distance that separates Syria and Latin America, the level of knowledge that the people, not simply the politicians, in that region have, on this part of the world, never ceases to amaze us.
I think a number of factors account for this, one of which lies in the historical similarity and commonalities between Syria and Latin America.
For much time, Latin American countries suffered from direct occupation. Thereafter they suffered the action of US companies, coup d’etats and US interference. This is why, the people of this region know what it means for a country to be independent or not. They understand that the war in Syria hinges upon its independence.
But the most important thing in this part of the world is the role of Cuba, which has always been the launching pad of Independent Movements in Latin America. In this context, Fidel Castro is an icon.
As a result, at the political level and in terms of knowledge-base, we can say that there are strong similarities between Syria and Latin America, especially Cuba.
But I do not think that we are doing enough to improve other aspects of our relationship so that they are at the same level, basically in the sectors of education and the economy. This was my ambition before the crisis. I was in Latin America – Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil– to strengthen our relationship. Then the conflict broke out and and it mutated into a huge obstacle pre-empting any action on this matter.
Even so, I do not think that our relations have to be limited to their historical and political aspects. This is not sufficient. There are several sectors and the inhabitants of both regions have to get to know each other better. Distance could prove an obstacle but not necessarily so, since we have strong relationships with the rest of the world to the East as well as the West.
I mean, today, distance no longer presents an obstacle. I think that if we manage to overcome the crisis and this war, then we will have to work with greater force to revive different aspects of this relationship with Latin America, especially with Cuba.
Prensa Latina : Mr President what are your expectations, what do you think of the current electoral process in the United States, especially the presidential elections? How do you think the result may influence the war in Syria?
Bashar al-Assad :We renewed relations with the United States in 1974, 42 years ago. From that time we got to know various US leaders in different cases.
The lesson that we have learnt is that noone must put their money on a US president. This is the most important thing. Thus the problem is not the name. They have institutions and their own agenda and each president comes to execute this agenda in his own way. But, he must, absolutely, comply with this agenda.
Everyone has military agendas. The only difference lies in the method of execution. One deploys its army, as Bush did, and others send in their mercenaries and agencies as Obama did. But every president has to fulfil this agenda.
I do not think that in the United States, the head of the White House is allowed to fulfil his political convictions. He has to submit to institutions and to pressure groups. And these groups have not changed; nor have the plans of institutions changed. This means that the US will not have in the near future, a president that can bring about a serious and radicial change in US politics.
Prensa Latina : What message do you want to sent out through this interview with Prensa Latina to the governments and peoples of Latin America and the Carribean, as well as the people of the United States, especially on the importance of supporting Syria’s struggle against terrorism?
Bashar al-Assad :Latin America is a good example and important for the whole world on how countries and governments have succeeded in recovering their independence. This region is the backyard of the United States, but Washington has used it to try out its maneouvres and to execute its own agenda.
The Latin American people have sacrificed a great deal to reach their independence and after recovering it, they transformed into countries on the path to development or even developed countries.
Thus independence is something very important and greatly cherished by all Latin Americans. We consider that they must preserve it, because the United States will not stop working to topple any independent government that represents the great majorities in each country in this region.
Cuba is very well aware of this and knows, more than any other country in the world, what I am talking about. You have suffered US manoeuvres more than any other country in Latin America and have successfully dealt with all these attempts for more than 50 years, only because your government represents the Cuban people.
This demonstrates that holding a tenacious grip on this independence is of vital importance, in my judgement, for Latin America’s future.
With respect to Syria, we can say that Syria is paying the price for its independence, because at no point in time have we acted against the United States, France or the United Kingdom.
We have always tried to develop good relations with the West. But the problem with these [countries] is that they do not accept that any country is independent, and I think that this is the position they took with Cuba as well.
You have never tried to damage or harm the people of the United States yet they do not accept you as an independent country. The same happens with the other countries in Latin America. This is why there have always been coups in these countries especially during the years 1960-70.
And this is why I think that preserving self-determination in a country cannot be achieved in isolation. If I want to be independent, then I have to support independence across the whole world, because if one acted alone, then I will be weak.
The support for Syria will principally be in international fora. There are many organizations, notably the United Nations, despite its incapacity. Clearly, the support of these entities can perform an active role in supporting Syria.
The natural [locus for support] is the UN Security Council and its position depends on its non-permanent members. The support of any other organization for Syria will also be important.
Prensa Latina : Mr President, we know that you are a very busy person and for this reason Prensa Latina highly values the time that you have granted us for this interview when your time is invaluable. We would wish to have this type of interview in the future with you. Thank you kindly.
Bashar al-Assad :You will be welcome at any time.
Bashar al-Assad Translation
Anoosha Boralessa
Source
Prensa Latina (Cuba) | 0 |
Monday in an appearance at MacDill Air Force Base’s U. S. Central Command in Tampa, FL, President Donald Trump took aim at the “dishonest press” for the manner which it covers the threats of terrorism or in some cases ignored. Trump went on to vow to defeat those “forces of death and destruction. ” “The challenges facing our nation, nevertheless, are very large — very, very large,” Trump said. “We’re up against an enemy that celebrates death and totally worships destruction. You’ve seen that. ISIS is on a campaign of genocide committing atrocities across the world. Radical Islamic terrorists are determined to strike our homeland as they did on as they did from Boston to Orlando to San Bernardino, and all across Europe. You’ve seen what happened in Paris and Nice. All over Europe it’s happening. It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported. And in many cases the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it. They have their reasons and you understand that. “So, today we deliver a message in one very unified voice: To these forces of death and destruction, America and its allies will defeat you. We will defeat them,” he added. “We will defeat radical Islamic terrorism and we will not allow it to take root in our country — not going to allow it. You’ve seen what’s been going on over the last few days. We need strong programs so people that love us and want to love our country, and will end up loving our country, are allowed in. Not people that want to destroy us and destroy our country. ” Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor | 1 |
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Sound and Vision
It’s pretty simple now. The ZOG has been mortally wounded. They’ve been caught manipulating the news and polls. Basically they have one foot on a banana peel and the other in their graves.
Now the investigation has been reopened.
We stand at the threshold of infinity.
Remember to continue with Operation Endgame Hillary to eliminate all remaining resistance.
Takes a few minutes out of your day to click on this link, and drag a few over to your social media.
If you missed Memetic Monday on Wednesday, check it – instructions are detailed therein.
Operation Endgame Hillary is not optional.
Remember what Andrew said:
“Everybody Memes! Nobody Quits! Or Ill Kill You Myself!”
We are at the threshold, fam.
The Colonel | 0 |
People Can Fly’s gonzo shooter gets a remastered release with all previous DLC included and new content courtesy of Gearbox in Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition. [Originally released in 2011, Bulletstorm gained a cult following thanks to its humor and action, as well as gameplay that rewarded players for creatively dispatching enemies with a collection of devastating and unique weapons. Gearbox’s remaster of the game includes enhanced visuals, all of the DLC released for the original game, a new game mode, and new challenge maps. Players can also now play through the story campaign as Duke Nukem. Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition releases April 7 on Xbox One, Playstation 4, and PC. | 1 |
License DMCA The U.S. healthcare system is produced and fueled by crony capitalism. Activist investor Dave Chase bottom-lined the result ( Forbes ): "the Middle Class is in a 20-year long economic depression that is at least 95% due to healthcare." Studies show our healthcare industry is providing worse care than those of many other wealthy nations, at an astounding 50% per capita higher cost than the next most expensive nation. Ask the price of any service and you always receive the same answer: "What insurance do you have?" Billing is determined by how much can be extracted from each patient on a case-by-case basis, often when the patient is at his or her most vulnerable. By any definition, this is a predatory, non-competitive system. So-called price-transparency initiatives serve to perpetuate this system in which prices can vary by a factor of 100 for the exact same service performed by the same provider. Healthcare is the only consumer industry legally permitted to shield itself from the usual requirement of legitimate pricing and competition. Patients have been rendered powerless. Ethically, this is institutionalized fraud. To stop the bleeding, Congress need only require that healthcare providers publish "legitimate pricing", which means they can continue to set their own rates, but - a different rate for each patient - must be prohibited. Without legitimate pricing, price competition cannot exist and healthcare costs will continue to skyrocket. Consumer-protection laws are applied to virtually every other industry and require both that (i) prices be disclosed; and (ii) prices be stated in a common format. Gas is uniformly priced in gallons (not pints, quarts, ounces or liters). Food is generally priced in ounces and pounds and state agencies protect consumers by inspecting scales. Scores of regulation specify precisely how annual percentage rate must be calculated and disclosed in all credit transactions (i.e., the price of borrowed money). Healthcare's exemption from consumer-protection laws is a national disgrace. Healthcare providers, like other sellers of consumer and financial products, must be required to publish their rates in a uniform format such as industry-standard CPT codes or a percentage of Medicare rates. Every citizen would be empowered to search any medical procedure online and see pricing for all providers within X miles. It would be as easy and familiar as checking the price of any other goods or services. Legitimate prices mean networks will be obsolete, along with the administrative burdens, tremendous costs, and limitations on patient choice that they impose. Health insurance will function like homeowner's, fire or auto insurance. When a house burns down, the price of drywall and paint does not depend on whether the home was insured by State Farm or Allstate. Patients would buy health insurance providing a reimbursement level that they select; for example, 100% of Medicare rates. Consumers could shop every provider in the nation and easily determine their out-of-pocket costs. - Advertisement - High amounts of corporate debt have been incurred acquiring medical facilities on the assumption they could continue to impose predatory pricing. Disruption of current business models will lead to bankruptcies. Just as in all other industries, currently non-competitive providers will be acquired at low cost and be operated by more efficient providers. Ultimately, the industry will adjust to a competitive environment and offer health services at far lower prices. University of California researchers reported that a consumer-oriented incentive to generate competition, known as reference pricing , lowered hospital costs by more than 20% for the 1.3 million members (and their families) of the California Public Employees' Retirement System. The insurance plan stated the maximum amount it would pay for a group of common medical procedures, thereby incentivizing participants to shop prices. Lower-priced hospitals saw market share growth of 28 percent, prompting many higher-priced hospitals to lower their prices. Legitimate pricing would be a far more powerful stimulus to competition than mere reference pricing. Legitimate pricing would compel wide-open free-market competition and would, in this author's opinion, virtually overnight reduce U.S. health expenditures by a minimum 33%. Disposable incomes and prosperity would boom. The U.S. deficit would shrink. Lower underlying healthcare prices is the sole and exclusive way to materially lower health-insurance premiums. Anyone who says otherwise is, to be kind, incorrect. Reform is difficult because the healthcare industry spends more on lobbying than the defense, aerospace, and the oil-and-gas industries combined . The American public understands our predatory pricing system is morally and economically unjustifiable and is demanding change. A Petition to End Predatory Healthcare Pricing and to require legitimate pricing rapidly gained more than 100,000 signatures this year. - Advertisement - To the many polarized groups in our nation, we have added free-market versus single-payer devotees. While this author takes no position on this issue, legitimate pricing is an essential prerequisite to either system. Nobody knows what prices would look like in an open market. For example, a study by The Department of Health and Human Services compared Medicare-allowable prices for lab charges to the negotiated prices paid for 20 high-volume and high-expense lab tests by health insurers. While providers generally complain that Medicare rates are too stingy, the study found that prices paid by Medicare exceeded fair market value: "Medicare could have saved $910 million, or 38 percent, on these lab tests if it had paid providers at the lowest established rate in each geographic area." In the absence of legitimate pricing, bureaucrats administering single-payer would have no basis on which to negotiate or set rates. That will likely leave lobbyists in control of pricing. For many Americans this concept evokes memories like the Pentagons purchase of $1,000 hammers and toilet seats. If we didn't know how much those items cost in hardware stores (i.e., legitimate prices), there would be no reference point and nobody would have even batted an eye. To reverse our nation's financial bleeding and end restrictions on patient choice resulting from restricted provider networks, Congress must empower citizens by mandating legitimate healthcare pricing. | 0 |
On the summit of Haleakala, a dormant volcano on the island of Maui in Hawaii, a telescope began clicking pictures of the night sky in 2010. Over the next four years, short for Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, photographed the entire sky, as seen from Hawaii, 12 times in five colors of visible and infrared light. In December, the astronomers who operate released the first results from their survey. Their big data universe lists the positions, colors and brightness of three billion stars, galaxies and other objects. It amounts to two petabytes of data, roughly equivalent to a billion selfies, according to a statement from the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy. All this information, the universe in a box, now resides in the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (named for Barbara A. Mikulski, the retiring Maryland senator and space champion) at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore where any astronomer can get access to it. In 2017, the team plans to produce a new catalog of how these things are moving and changing. This was an exercise in more than just curiosity. A big goal of the project, run by an international consortium led by the University of Hawaii, is to discover moving objects like asteroids so that we can visit them and perhaps steer them away before they visit us, as well as discover supernovas and other rare violent events while they are still exploding. is the biggest digital mapping effort yet done, but it is not the last. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope now being built in Chile by the National Science Foundation will eventually supersede it, surveying 37 billion galaxies and stars and producing 15 terabytes of data every night for 10 years once it is completed in 2022. | 1 |
WASHINGTON, D. C. — Democratic lawmakers have responded with mixed reactions to President Donald Trump’s decision to carry out military strikes on a Syrian air base that was the site of a chemical attack on Syrian civilians this week. [Approximately 59 Tomahawk missiles targeted Shayrat Airfield near the Syrian city of Homs. “I support the administration’s strike on the air base that launched the chemical attack. I hope this teaches President Assad not to use chemical weapons again,” Sen. Bill Nelson ( ) wrote on his Twitter feed: I support the admin’s strike on the air base that launched the chemical attack. I hope this teaches Assad not to use chemical weapons again. — Bill Nelson (@SenBillNelson) April 7, 2017, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer ( ) praised the strike but chided Trump for not consulting with Congress before carrying it out: Making sure that Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do. It is incumbent on the Trump administration to come up with a strategy and consult with Congress before implementing it. I salute the professionalism and skill of our Armed Forces who took action today. Please see my statement following the US military strike in Syria: pic. twitter. — Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) April 7, 2017, The chemical attack killed least 72 civilians. Many of the victims included small children. Part of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s statement read, “Tonight’s strike in Syria appears to be a proportional response to the the regime’s use of chemical weapons. ” She also sounded off on the president’s decision to proceed without Congress, saying, “If the President intends to escalate the U. S. military’s involvement in Syria, he must come to Congress for an Authorization for Use of Military Force which is tailored to meet the threat and prevent another war in the Middle East. ” However, in a letter, she implored House Speaker Paul Ryan to “call the House back in session immediately to debate any decision to place our men and women in uniform in harm’s way. ” She added, “As heartbreaking as Assad’s chemical weapons attacks on his own people was, the crisis in Syria will not be resolved by one night of airstrikes. ” House Speaker Paul Ryan called the strikes “appropriate and just“: Earlier this week the Assad regime murdered dozens of innocent men, women, and children in a barbaric chemical weapons attack. Tonight the United States responded. This action was appropriate and just. These tactical strikes make clear that the Assad regime can no longer count on American inaction as it carries out atrocities against the Syrian people. Resolving the crisis in Syria is a complex task, but Bashar must be held accountable and his enablers must be persuaded to change course. I look forward to the administration further engaging Congress in this effort. While the strikes were lauded as a stark change from six years of inaction on Syria under former President Barack Obama’s administration, some Americans expressed opposition to the move fearing it might provoke another ground war. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard ( ) said, “It angers and saddens me that President Trump has taken the advice of war hawks and escalated our illegal regime change war to overthrow the Syrian government. ” She added, “This escalation is and will lead to more dead civilians, more refugees, the strengthening of and other terrorists, and a direct confrontation between the United States and Russia — which could lead to nuclear war. ” Progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren ( ) used the occasion to push for greater admittance of Syrian refugees into the United States. “The Syrian regime must be held accountable for this horrific act, and its actions underscore why the United States should embrace innocent people who are fleeing in terror. ” Follow Adelle Nazarian on Facebook and Twitter. | 1 |
MILWAUKEE — Four barbers and a firefighter were pondering their future under a Trump presidency at the Upper Cutz barbershop last week. “We got to figure this out,” said Cedric Fleming, one of the barbers. “We got a gangster in the chair now,” he said, referring to Donald J. Trump. They admitted that they could not complain too much: Only two of them had voted. But there were no regrets. “I don’t feel bad,” Mr. Fleming said, trimming a mustache. “Milwaukee is tired. Both of them were terrible. They never do anything for us anyway. ” As Democrats pick through the wreckage of the campaign, one lesson is clear: The election was notable as much for the people who did not show up, as for those who did. Nationally, about half of eligible voters did not cast ballots. Wisconsin, a state that Hillary Clinton had assumed she would win, historically boasts one of the nation’s highest rates of voter participation this year’s 68. 3 percent turnout was the fifth best among the 50 states. But by local standards, it was a disappointment, the lowest turnout in 16 years. And those were important. Mr. Trump won the state by just 27, 000 voters. Milwaukee’s neighborhoods offer one explanation for the turnout figures. Of the city’s 15 council districts, the decline in turnout from 2012 to 2016 in the five poorest was consistently much greater than the drop seen in more prosperous areas — accounting for half of the overall decline in turnout citywide. The biggest drop was here in District 15, a stretch of fading wooden homes, sandwich shops and restaurants that is 84 percent black. In this district, voter turnout declined by 19. 5 percent from 2012 figures, according to Neil Albrecht, executive director of the City of Milwaukee Election Commission. It is home to some of Milwaukee’s poorest residents and, according to a 2016 documentary, “Milwaukee 53206,” has one of the nation’s highest incarceration rates. At Upper Cutz, a bustling barbershop in a wooden house, talk of politics inevitably comes back to one man: Barack Obama. Mr. Obama’s elections infused many here with a feeling of connection to national politics they had never before experienced. But their lives have not gotten appreciably better, and sourness has set in. “We went to the beach,” said Maanaan Sabir, 38, owner of the Juice Kitchen, a brightly painted shop a few blocks down West North Avenue, using a metaphor to describe the emotion after Mr. Obama’s election. “And then eight years happened. ” All four barbers had voted for Mr. Obama. But only two could muster the enthusiasm to vote this time. And even then, it was a sort of protest. One wrote in Mrs. Clinton’s Democratic opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The other wrote in himself. “I’m so numb,” said Jahn Toney, 45, who had written in Mr. Sanders. He said no president in his lifetime had done anything to improve the lives of black people, including Mr. Obama, whom he voted for twice. “It’s like I should have known this would happen. We’re worse off than before. ” But Mr. Obama did do something important: “He did give black people something to aspire to. That’s a lot. I’m happy my son was able to see a black president. ” Mr. Fleming, 47, who has been trimming hair, beards and mustaches for 30 years, had hoped his small business would get easier to run. But it hasn’t. “Give us loans, or a 401( k),” he said, trimming the mustache of Steve Stricklin, a firefighter from the neighborhood. His biggest issue was health insurance. Mr. Fleming lost his coverage after his divorce three years ago and has struggled to find a policy he could afford. He finally found one, which starts Monday but costs too much at $300 a month. “Ain’t none of this been working,” he said. He did not vote. Mr. Albrecht, of the election commission, said other factors contributed to the decline in turnout. This was the first general election under new state laws that required voters to produce an approved photo ID card, and that stiffened the requirements for new voters to prove their residence. This was particularly onerous for the poor, who move often. Mr. Albrecht said he believed this change had cost several thousand people in the city their vote. “To me that’s very significant,” he said. “It takes away from the fairness and integrity of the election. ” Although two federal district courts had ruled that the photo ID law discriminated against who disproportionately lack the approved IDs, the law was applied on Election Day after an appeals court stayed one of the decisions. Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican who backed the laws, has said they have no impact on voter participation, and Mr. Albrecht allowed that their effect on Milwaukee’s turnout would not have erased Mr. Trump’s victory in the state. Perhaps the biggest drags on voter turnout in Milwaukee, as in the rest of the country, were the candidates themselves. To some, it was like having to choose between broccoli and liver. “I felt cornered,” said Ian Pfeiffer, 25, who works the grill at Jake’s Delicatessen and says he did not vote. “We were stuck between Trump and Hillary. They really left us with no choice. ” Mr. Pfeiffer’s grandmother, an avid supporter of Mrs. Clinton, spent months trying to convince him to vote for her. But he could not get over his revulsion at what he saw as trust issues related to the Clinton Foundation. (Mr. Pfeiffer’s grandfather pushed him toward Mr. Trump, but he found him even less appealing.) He thought Oprah Winfrey would be a good candidate. “Hey, would you vote for Oprah Winfrey?” he said in a loud voice to a line of customers. “Yeah, I’d vote for her,” said Erin Miles, 41, a financial services worker waiting for her sandwich. “She has a level head and skills. ” Few of the men and women interviewed on West North Street last week had voted for Mr. Trump, though many said they admired him. (He spoke his mind. He was rich.) “If I would have voted, I would have voted for him,” said Andre Frierson, 40, a security guard working the evening shift at Jake’s. “From a business perspective, I loved him. ” As for Mrs. Clinton, “other countries probably wouldn’t have respected us because we had a woman running the country,” he said. One exception was Justin Babar, who said he voted for Mr. Trump as a protest against Mrs. Clinton. He blamed her husband’s policies for putting him in prison for 20 years. As for the claims of racism that have dogged Mr. Trump, Mr. Babar wasn’t so worried. “It’s better than smiling to my face but going behind closed doors and voting against our kids,” he said. Tarvus Hawthorne, 45, a program coordinator at a local nonprofit, agreed. “He was real, unlike a lot of liberal Democrats who are just as racist” but keep it hidden, he said, his jaw slathered with shaving cream. “You can reason with them all day long, but they think they know it all. They want to have control. That they know what’s best for ‘those people. ’” Still, he voted for Mrs. Clinton, as did many others here. Upper Cutz gets busier as the day wears on. Children come in after school. Danielle Rogers, Mr. Toney’s sister, stopped by the barbershop for a visit. Everybody agreed they would miss Mr. Obama. Ms. Rogers said Mr. Obama had aged a lot. “It’s like having a bunch of bad kids,” she said. “He’s probably saying: ‘I’m done. Take them back to their mama’s house. ’” Mr. Fleming was trying to imagine Mr. Trump as president. “The White House is going to be the penthouse!” he said, adding that Mr. Trump would be like Al Pacino in “Scarface,” with parties in the mansion and exotic animals roaming around the grounds. “If he comes home and finds his wife cheating on him, he could just say, ‘Let’s go to war! ’” They were laughing. But they were also worried. “He’s going to mess with us on some racist level,” said Otis Jackson, 45, a barber who did not vote. “He’s already appointed a known racist,” he said, referring to Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist and the former head of Breitbart News, which has been denounced as a white nationalist hate site. With so many people sitting in his chair over the years, Mr. Fleming has developed a keen sense of where society is headed. But now he is stumped. “This was a weird election,” he said, holding a set of clippers and looking pensive. “You can’t tell what’s on people’s minds. There are less cars out there. No one wants to come out. No one knows what comes next. ” He added, “Hell, Trump doesn’t even know. ” | 1 |
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As the technology becomes increasingly ubiquitous and far more accurate, facial recognition and the lack of any laws or regulations around the practice is slowly starting to enter mainstream consciousness. It’s a very important issue that isn’t getting the attention it deserves.
For example, as I highlighted in the recent post, Half of American Adults Exist in a Government Accessible Facial Recognition Network :
Half of all American adults are already in some sort of facial recognition network accessible to law enforcement, according to a comprehensive new study.
Conducted over a year and relying in part on Freedom of Information and public record requests to 106 law enforcement agencies, the study , conducted by Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology, found American police use of facial recognition technology is a scattered, hodgepodge network of laws and regulations.
“Looking at the sum total of what we found, there have been no laws that comprehensively regulate face recognition technology, and there’s really no case law either,” Clare Garvie, an associate at the CPT, told Vocativ. “So we find ourselves having to rely on the agencies that are using that technology to rein it in. But what we found is that not every system — by a long shot — has a use policy.”
With that in mind, Bloomberg published an interesting article yesterday covering a couple of lawsuits against Facebook and Google regarding their facial recognition practices.
Here’s some of what we learned:
While millions of internet users embrace the tagging of family and friends in photos, others worried there’s something devious afoot are trying block Facebook as well as Google from amassing such data.
As advances in facial recognition technology give companies the potential to profit from biometric data, privacy advocates see a pattern in how the world’s largest social network and search engine have sold users’ viewing histories for advertising. The companies insist that gathering data on what you look like isn’t against the law, even without your permission.
If judges agree with Facebook and Google, they may be able to kill off lawsuits filed under a unique Illinois law that carries fines of $1,000 to $5,000 each time a person’s image is used without permission — big enough for a liability headache if claims on behalf of millions of consumers proceed as class actions. A loss by the companies could lead to new restrictions on using biometrics in the U.S., similar to those in Europe and Canada.
Facebook declined to comment on its court fight. Google declined to comment on pending litigation.
Facebook encourages users to “tag” people in photographs they upload in their personal posts and the social network stores the collected information. The company uses a program it calls DeepFace to match other photos of a person. Alphabet Inc.’s cloud-based Google Photos service uses similar technology.
The billions of images Facebook is thought to be collecting could be even more valuable to identity thieves than the names, addresses, and credit card numbers now targeted by hackers, according to privacy advocates and legal experts.
And just how good is Facebook’s technology? According to the company’s research, DeepFace recognizes faces with an accuracy rate of 97.35 percent compared with 97.5 percent for humans — including mothers.
Rotenberg said the privacy concerns are twofold: Facebook might sell the information to retailers or be forced to turn it over to law enforcement — in both cases without users knowing it.
Now here’s some history on Facebook and facial recognition. Facebook v. Privacy Law
December 2005 — Facebook introduces photo tagging
October 2008 — Illinois adopts Biometric Information Privacy Act
June 2012 — Facebook acquires Israeli facial recognition developer Face.com
September 2012 — Facebook ceases facial recognition in Europe
2015-2016 — Facebook, Google, Shutterfly and Snapchat sued under Illinois biometrics law. Shutterfly settles confidentially.
May 2016 — Illinois lawmaker proposes excluding photos from biometrics law, then shelves bill after privacy advocates complain
October 2016 — Facebook makes second attempt to get biometrics lawsuit thrown out
The Facebook case is In re Facebook Biometric Information Privacy Litigation, 15-cv-03747, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco). The Google cases are Rivera v. Google, 16-cv-02714, and Weiss v. Google, 16-cv-02870, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois (Chicago).
For prior articles on the topic, see: | 0 |
Politics Vintage cars are parked in the forecourt of Buckingham Palace in London, part of a display of 90 historic British-built motor vehicles to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II's 90th birthday. (Photo by AFP)
Thousands of Britons have signed a petition to express their outrage over Queen Elizabeth’s use of £369 million in taxpayers' money to repair the Buckingham Palace.
More than 94,000 people had signed the petition as of Sunday, two days after the government of Prime Minister Theresa May allowed the royal family to repair the palace with public funds.
The UK Parliament should discuss the petition when it hits the 100,000 mark.
On Friday, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond granted the 90-year-old Queen a 66-percent rise in funding required for the palace’s refurbishment over the next 10 years.
The money would be used to replace cables, pipes and boilers installed 60 years ago to prevent a “catastrophic” event that might destroy the palace, according to Master of the Queen’s Household Tony Johnstone-Burt.
Petitioners argued that the royals should foot the massive bill themselves given the vast extent of their wealth.
“The Crown and its estates should be made to fund its own renovations,” wrote Mark Johnson, who posted the petition.
Protesters said the money could be used to mend the faltering National Health Service (NHS) or help families get more affordable homes amid a housing crisis. Britain's Queen Elizabeth II rides a carriage with Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos after the ceremonial welcome at Horse Guards Parade in central London, November 1, 2016. (Photo by AFP)
“It is wholly unreasonable to cut the benefits of the sick and disabled, take away housing benefits from the poor, and then pay for this,” said one signatory of the petition.
The anti-monarchy campaign group Republic also took issue with the announcement, denouncing it as a “disgrace.”
“What's worse is this appalling increase is only a small part of the annual cost of the Royal family, which we put at £334m,” said Graham Smith, a member of the group.
Over the past years, the UK government has been generous towards the royal family despite cutting billions in public money.
Under former treasury minister George Osborne, the Queen’s sovereign grant for 2016 was increased by 7 percent, bringing the total to £42.9 million a year. Now the annual grant would be inflated by two-thirds, rising to £76 million in 2017.
The grant is financed by the profit coming from the royal family’s 350,000 acres of land across the UK. Loading ... | 0 |
Good morning. Here’s what you need to know: • Donald J. Trump is holding meetings with retired Gen. David H. Petraeus, Mitt Romney and Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, in the hunt for a secretary of state, a quest that has divided his loyalists. Mr. Trump drew criticism from across the political spectrum for suggesting without evidence that millions of people voted illegally. California’s top election official called Mr. Trump’s assertion “absurd. ” Mr. Trump also threatened the thaw with Cuba, which has just begun its official mourning for the longtime leader Fidel Castro. From new Israelis brashness to European politics to global markets, Mr. Trump’s election is shaping events around the world. _____ • New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco are among the American cities that have vowed to fight the Trump administration’s promised efforts to deport illegal immigrants. Our profile of the ’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, above, portrays a politically combative populist who has long courted politicians who share his worldview. New York’s Trump Tower, where the transition effort is focused, has been heavily fortified as a kind of White House North. _____ • Syrian government forces and Kurdish fighters took back large sections of eastern Aleppo, a potential turning point in a grinding civil war. Their advance broke a siege and sent thousands of people fleeing amid scenes of chaos and death. _____ • Chinese officials are moving to downsize the world’s largest Buddhist institute, razing houses and reportedly evicting around 1, 000 people from the center in Tibet. The government says it intends to improve infrastructure, but critics see the tightening control as Beijing’s latest effort to diminish the distinct character of Tibet. _____ • The World Trade Organization ordered the United States to end a special tax cut for Boeing meant to ensure that the aerospace giant would manufacture the wings for its new 777X jetliner only in the U. S. • The Standard Chartered bank is expected to begin staff cuts in Singapore and Hong Kong this week as it follows through on plans to eliminate 15, 000 jobs. • Japan releases monthly unemployment figures and household spending data. • Samsung Electronics said it would review whether to undergo a corporate restructuring amid pressure from investors. • The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said fiscal plans by Mr. Trump, along with China and Europe, would invigorate major economies, and lifted its global growth forecast for next year. • Chinese investors are rushing to invest in commodities, even obscure ones such as glass and garlic. • Here is a snapshot of global markets. • An Somali student at Ohio State University was shot dead after he drove his car onto a campus sidewalk and emerged slashing with a butcher knife, injuring 11. Officials said they were trying to determine whether it was an act of terrorism. [The New York Times] • China is taking aim at NASA with heavy investment in its own space program. But it also hopes the funding will spur growth in the technology sector. [Bloomberg] • Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia is coasting into this year’s assembly of the United Malays National Organization after weathering a financial scandal and ousting foes. [The Straits Times] • South Korea’s plan to require schools to use textbooks fell victim to the rolling corruption scandal surrounding President Park . [The New York Times] • Thailand’s Parliament may officially invite the crown prince to take the throne left empty since the king’s death in October. [Reuters] • Japan’s prime minister is still pushing the Partnership through Parliament in a effort to save the pact and his own political capital. [Xinhua] • A Japanese skating rink that had frozen 5, 000 sea creatures into its ice closed after just two weeks amid public horror. “Nothing but insanity,” one critic wrote. [The New York Times] • Nearly 200 professors in the United States appeared on a “watchlist” that claimed they advance “leftist propaganda,” stirring concerns about academic freedom. [The New York Times] • A map circulating on Facebook, showing the names and addresses of Jewish people in Berlin, deepened the debate about how Facebook should regulate content. [The New York Times] • After their 10th draw, Magnus Carlsen and Sergey Karjakin will finish the World Chess Championship in New York with a special tiebreaker on Wednesday. [The New York Times] • The NASA craft that has been circling Saturn and its moons for 12 years is entering its final months. Cassini’s new orbit will be taking it over the planet’s north and south poles and then into a series of dives. It will return to slicing between the planet and its rings, before crashing into the clouds and immolating in September. • The space surrounding Earth has grown so clogged by spent rocket stages, inert satellites and other debris that some scientists fear low orbit could become unusable. But Mitsunobu Okada, a Japanese entrepreneur, believes he has a solution. His company, Astroscale, aims to track and intercept debris with its own satellites, preventing collisions with active spacecraft. • Back on terra firma, a new study of in Tanzania found that the tribe, which engaged in regular activity every day, showed extraordinarily good cardiovascular health. The findings suggest that regular, if moderate, exercise may indeed be crucial to well being, even deep into old age. • Happy 117th birthday, Emma Morano. The world’s oldest person, she was born on this day in 1899. A relative quoted her as saying, “My word, I’m as old as the hills. ” As programs have proliferated in cities around the world, a clear point of friction has emerged for bicycle commuters: How to they protect their fragile skulls? Many are unwilling to share helmets with strangers, because of germs and stuff. And carrying a helmet at all times can be a burden. Luckily, a selection of foldable helmets has emerged to help solve the problem. This month, one such product, the EcoHelmet, won the 2016 James Dyson award. A cheap, recyclable helmet made from cardstock paper, the EcoHelmet was designed by Isis Shiffer, who will receive $45, 000 to “further develop” her invention. The helmet uses a honeycomb pattern to diffuse the impact of a blow, and Ms. Shiffer has said that it is as safe as a standard polystyrene helmet. But if you’re unconvinced, there are other options. The Plixi helmet, from Overade, is more like a traditional helmet, and folds down to a more portable size. A collapsible option from a company called Closca has the added benefit of making you look like a character in a epic. Helmets. org, a helmet advocacy program and nonprofit, has a handy list of foldable helmets, including whether they meet European and American safety standards. You can find that here. Jonah Engel Bromwich contributed reporting. _____ Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings. What would you like to see here? Contact us at asiabriefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
This is an article from Turning Points, a magazine that explores what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. Turning Point: Though the first fatal crash involving an autonomous car took place in July 2016, vehicles have been adopted around the world. In 2016, cars made inroads in several countries, many of which rewrote their laws to accommodate the new technology. As a writer, it’s my duty to warn the human race that the robot revolution has begun — even if no one has noticed yet. When a few autonomous test cars appeared on the roads over the last few years, we didn’t think of them as robots because they didn’t have the humanoid shape that movies taught us to expect. In 2016, they were adopted widely: as buses in the United Arab Emirates and the Netherlands, taxis in Singapore and private cars in the United States and China. There was a fatal accident in Florida involving an autonomous car, which caused some concerns, but this did not significantly affect our embrace of this technology. Instead of arming ourselves against this alien presence, as some of my fellow writers have fearfully suggested, we gawked as the vehicles pulled up to the curb. The driverless vehicles, some of which had no steering wheels or gas pedals, merged into traffic and stopped at stop signs, smoothly taking us to our destinations. We lounged in comfort, occasionally taking selfies. Machine learning has been an important tool for autonomous car companies as they develop the systems that pilot their vehicles. Instead of rigidly following programming as an app on your phone does, an A. I. system can try to learn to do a task itself, using techniques borrowed from human learning, like pattern recognition and trial and error, and may use hardware modeled on the architecture of a human brain. Currently, the responsibilities of artificial intelligence are mostly limited to tasks like translating texts, helping with medical diagnoses and writing simple articles for media companies. But we can expect to see unimaginable progress in this field in future — and the widespread use of the autonomous car is going to accelerate that process as automobile and technology companies invest ever more resources in its development. Let’s try to envision that future. As during every other technological revolution, the robots will first transform our economy. People who drive for a living will lose their jobs — around 3 million in the United States alone. may experience further booms because of automation, and car ownership is likely to become nearly obsolete as more targeted car sharing and public transportation systems are developed. Eventually, the robot cars could be integrated with other transportation systems. Say that you live in New York City and want to go to China’s Henan Province: You will enter the address into an app, a car will take you to your plane at the airport, and after you land, another will take you directly to your destination. Robots will begin to creep into other areas of our lives — serving as busboys or waiters, for example — as our investments in robotic transport improve their prowess in areas such as environmental detection and modeling, problem solving and applications. With every advance, the use of A. I. robots will expand into other fields: health care, policing, national defense and education. There will be scandals when things go wrong and backlash movements from the new Luddites. But I don’t think we’ll protest very much. The A. I. systems that drive our cars will teach us to trust machine intelligence over the human variety — car accidents will become very rare, for example — and when given an opportunity to delegate a job to a robot, we will placidly do so without giving it much thought. In all previous technological revolutions, people who lost their jobs mostly moved to new ones, but that will be less likely when the robots take over. A. I. that can learn from experience will replace many accountants, lawyers, bankers, insurance adjusters, doctors, scientific researchers and some creative professionals. Intelligence and advanced training will no longer mean job stability. Gradually the A. I. era will transform the essence of human culture. When we’re no longer more intelligent than our machines, when they can easily outthink and outperform us, making the sort of intuitive leaps in research and other areas that we currently associate with genius, a sort of learned helplessness is likely to set in for us, and the idea of work itself may cease to hold meaning. As A. I. takes over, the remaining jobs may dwindle to a fraction of what they were, employing perhaps 10 percent or even less of the total population. These may be highly creative or complex jobs that robots can’t do, such as senior management, directing scientific research or nursing and child care. In the dystopian scenario, as jobless numbers rise across the globe, our societies sink into prolonged turmoil. The world could be engulfed by endless conflicts between those who control the A. I. and the rest of us. The technocratic 10 percent could end up living in a gated community with armed robot guards. There is a second, utopian scenario, where we’ve anticipated these changes and come up with solutions beforehand. Those in political power have planned a smoother, gentler transition, perhaps using A. I. to help them anticipate and modulate the strife. At the end of it, almost all of us live on social welfare. How we will spend our time is hard to predict. “He who does not work, neither shall he eat” has been the cornerstone of civilizations through the ages, but that will have vanished. History shows that those who haven’t had to work — aristocrats, say — have often spent their time entertaining and developing their artistic and sporting talents while scrupulously observing elaborate rituals of dress and manners. In this future, creativity is highly valued. We sport ever more fantastic makeup, hairstyles and clothing. The labor of past ages seems barbaric. But the aristocrats ruled nations in the A. I. era, machines are doing all the thinking. Because, over the decades, we’ve gradually given up our autonomy, step by step, allowing ourselves to be transformed into A. I.’s docile, fabulously pampered pets. As A. I. whisks us from place to place — visits to family members, art galleries and musical events — we will look out the windows, as unaware of its plans for us as a poodle on its way to the groomer’s. | 1 |
The growing number of Muslims in Germany represents not a threat but a learning opportunity, said Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, discussing Islam in the wake of the Manchester attack. [“It is fanaticism, not only in Islam, that leads to terrible crimes,” he said, speaking on German public radio station Deutschlandfunk Wednesday evening, when asked about the Islamist attack in which 22 mostly young people, including an girl, lost their lives. “It is certainly a misunderstanding of religion when belief slips into fanaticism or, at worst, violence. “The world’s great religions all preach the message that one must look upon others as their sisters and brothers, and that one must live with the other because man cannot live alone,” Schäuble told presenter Christiane Florin. “‘Islam is part of Germany’ is a sober, factual statement,” the minister remarked, commenting on sentiments voiced by Chancellor Angela Merkel on more than one occasion — which are not shared by the majority of Germans. “Anyone who denies this denies reality and is therefore not suited to being a politician, because politics begins with the confrontation of reality,” he added. The country’s rapidly growing Muslim demographic presents an “opportunity” for “Christians, and all who live in Germany” Schäuble stated, adding: “We can learn from them. “Many human values are very strongly realised in Islam. Think of hospitality, and other things like, what is there … And also tolerance, I believe, for example. ” Discussing his recently published book, Protestantism and Politics, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) minister said the church has no monopoly on truth and criticised voices within who “argue too much in secular matters from a point of religious conviction”. Commenting on how the “star” at the biennial congress of the German Protestant Church on Thursday was to be Barack Obama rather than any figure, Schäuble lavished praise on the former U. S. president, describing him as “a man who can truly inspire people, like few others”. The minister expressed frustration with Obama’s successor Donald Trump, lashing out at the president’s ‘America First’ platform, and asserting that “if Germans could choose between President Obama and his successor, a large majority of them would vote for President Obama”. | 1 |
The Reason Why Jade Helm Is Obama’s Favorite Conspiracy Theory May Surprise You By Kristie on November 22, 2015 Subscribe
President Obama has had to deal with his fair share of conspiracy theories. Even before he was elected he had to deal with questions about his origin of birth. He’s also secretly a Muslim masquerading as a Christian. One of the best is that he is going to unarm Americans by taking our guns. I’m still waiting on that one. But in a recent GQ interview , President Obama revealed his favorite conspiracy theory – Jade Helm. Featured image by Boricuaeddie , available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.
As most will recall, Jade Helm was one of the largest military training exercise ever conducted on U.S. soil. In July of this year, roughly 1,200 U.S. military troops participated in exercises that spanned seven states. Jade Helm included New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. As we all know though, this exercise proved itself to be a great opportunity for the bitter right-wing to start up the conspiracy machine.
While this resulted in great ratings for the likes of Alex Jones , Jade Helm turned out to be a — military exercise — not a military led plot for Obama to take over the country and stay in power as a dictator. No wonder Jade Helm entertained Obama. Only a right-wing nut-job would believe something like that.
But why is that Obama’s favorite conspiracy theory? He explained after GQ asked : “What’s the most entertaining conspiracy theory you ever read about yourself?”
Obama then answered : “That military exercises we were doing in Texas were designed to begin martial law so that I could usurp the Constitution and stay in power longer. Anybody who thinks I could get away with telling Michelle I’m going to be president any longer than eight years does not know my wife.”
You see, even the leader of the free world answers to somebody. About Kristie
Kristie is 22-years-old and resides in Nashville, TN. While reading is a passion, she also has a passion for writing. Reporting on social issues such as LGBT rights, racial injustices, and religious intolerance, she also has a vested interest in the current political climate in America. Connect | 0 |
Good morning. (Want to get California Today by email? Here’s the .) California appeared to witness a rise in hate last year. In 2016, the state was home to 79 organizations with animus toward blacks, whites, immigrants, Muslims and other groups, according to a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an group that tracks extremism. That’s up from 68 the year before. The report found that California had more hate groups than any other state — followed by Florida, with 63, and Texas, 55 — a result presumably of its sheer size. But the data also revealed a notable cluster of activity in the corridor between the Los Angeles area and San Diego, where at least 40 of the groups operate. Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the center, suggested the presence of a heavy Latino population in Southern California played a part in fueling sentiment. To earn a place in the hate index, an organization must publicly espouse the idea that a class of people is inferior by virtue of its characteristics. The Southern Poverty Law Center, founded in 1971, has faced criticism in the past for applying the designation to mainstream conservative groups, such as the Family Research Council. In 2015, it apologized after labeling Ben Carson an “extremist. ” The latest report included many California groups, such as the Golden State Skinheads, Identity Evropa and Islam Threat, whose platforms are explicitly discriminatory. But the classification of other groups drew pushback. Californians for Population Stabilization, a Santa Barbara group with thousands of members, was labeled by the center. Mr. Potok attributed the determination in part to troubling remarks about race and eugenics made by people formerly linked to the group. Benjamin Zuckerman, the group’s president, vehemently objected to the characterization. The organization’s objectives, he said, are twofold: environmental conservation and fairness to working Americans who are harmed by “over immigration. ” “I consider us pretty much just ordinary people,” said Dr. Zuckerman, who is also an astronomy professor at U. C. L. A. “We just have a view that too many people for a given environmental carrying capacity is just not good. ” (Please note: We regularly highlight articles on news sites that have limited access for nonsubscribers.) • Nearly 250 people were rescued from flooding in San Jose after rain combined with water from the overflowing Anderson Reservoir. [The Mercury News] • A water expert on the continuing flood threat: “If you are protected by a rural levee or levees in the delta, you are not sleeping well. ” [Los Angeles Times] • The Trump administration’s new immigration policy greatly expands the categories of people subject to deportation. [The New York Times] • The untold story of how Kevin Leon became Kevin de León, leader of the California State Senate. [Sacramento Bee] • A program in Richmond treats gun violence as an epidemic that spreads by exposure to it. [Opinion | The New York Times] • A California secession advocate has faced scrutiny over where he’s based: Russia. [The New York Times] • “I don’t think I’ve been as sorry. ” Milo Yiannopoulos resigned from Breitbart News after his remarks on pedophilia. [The New York Times] • Kenneth Arrow died in Palo Alto at 95. He was one of the most brilliant economic minds of the 20th century. [The New York Times] • In a momentous the Lakers put Magic Johnson in charge of the team’s front office. [The New York Times] • Candice Wiggins, the former W. N. B. A. player and at Stanford, said she was targeted for being heterosexual. [San Diego ] • Led by Cheryl Boone Isaacs, its first black president, the motion picture academy is trying to solve its diversity problem. [The New Yorker] • A WikiLeaks opera is arriving in San Francisco after a bruising election year. [The New York Times] • With its sunshine, gorgeous beaches, breweries and restaurants, San Diego is the spot for fun. [The New York Times] Congress is in recess this week. That means it’s town hall time. The contentious first month of the Trump administration has left many Californians with questions, and in some cases complaints, as Representative Tom McClintock has learned. On Feb. 4, Mr. McClintock, a Republican from Elk Grove, faced a raucous crowd during a town meeting in Roseville, where he was escorted from the venue by the police. Mr. McClintock was back for another meeting with constituents on Tuesday, this time in Mariposa, where more than a dozen police officers were on hand. According to The Fresno Bee, the questioning from the crowd was boisterous, but peaceful. Have something to say to your representative? He or she may have a town hall scheduled. KQED in San Francisco compiled a list: Wednesday • Representative Jared Huffman in Weaverville. 4:30 p. m. [Details] • Representative Salud Carbajal in Arroyo Grande. 6 p. m. [Details] • Representative Tom McClintock in Sonora. 6 p. m. [Details] • Representative Scott Peters in San Diego. 6:30 p. m. [Details] • Representative Susan Davis in San Diego. 6:30 p. m. [Details] • Representative Ro Khanna in Fremont. 7:30 p. m. [Details] Thursday • Representative Lou Correa in Santa Ana. 6 p. m. [Details] • Representative Mark DeSaulnier in Pleasant Hill. 6:30 p. m. [Details] • Representative Mark Takano in Riverside. 6:30 p. m. [Details] Friday • Representative Brad Sherman in Van Nuys. 3:30 p. m. [Details] • Representative Lou Correa in Santa Ana. 5 p. m. [Details] Saturday • Representative Mike Thompson in Santa Rosa. 9 a. m. [Details] • Representative Nanette Barragán in San Pedro. 1 p. m. [Details] Want to submit a photo for possible publication? You can do it here. California Today goes live at 6 a. m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes. com. The California Today columnist, Mike McPhate, is a Californian — born outside Sacramento and raised in San Juan Capistrano. He lives in Davis. Follow him on Twitter. California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended U. C. Berkeley. | 1 |
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This has been a debate garnering some attention in the UK for several years, mainly under the auspices of a contrast between “Red Tory” and “Blue Labour”.
This debate, which has about the need for a mutualism countering the bureaucratic state and providing collective resources for private individuals abandoned to laissez faire, has not however been significant in the US.
In the US, the function of the state is very much to aid and abet the oligarchy by blurring the line between the government and the private sector to the advantage of the latter, as opposed to being a check on it. US governments have therefore all but abandoned their role as the indispensable and major provider of essential welfare services.
Even “Tricky Dicky” Nixon, knave that he was, went along with such relatively ample provision by the state.
Today, however, American politicians, unless they are super-rich, can’t campaign effectively without monetary heft from a plutocratic private sector, to which they are then utterly beholden. Hillary Clinton anyone?
American politicians who mount the slightest challenge to this rapaciously dysfunctional political system—George McGovern in days of yore, Denis Kucinich a few years ago, and now Sanders– are sent packing by its upholders.
In the UK the Tories and New Labour have advanced on a similar neoliberal path since Thatcher, but encountered more resistance from voters, largely because its Celtic fringe adheres resolutely to the welfare state, and because there is still in the UK a solid bloc of voters to the left of the main parliamentary parties on several major issues (war, environmental protection, ringfencing the NHS, a commitment to public education, and the need for a fairer electoral system, being the most prominent).
The postwar settlements after 1945 in the countries of the west depended on a broadly Keynesian concordat, mediated by the state, between labour and capital.
In the 1970s this concordat fell into a crisis, and was dissolved by the governments of Reagan and Thatcher, whose names are often given to the succeeding neoliberal politico-economic paradigm.
However, neoliberalism, with its emphasis on supposed market forces, has failed to deliver a general prosperity while exacerbating economic inequality, as well as promoting unstable bubble economies as the sole alternative to a widespread stagnation.
In response to these failures of the social-welfare state (on the one hand) and a no-holds-barred neoliberal economic individualism (on the other), there has been a growth of interest in the UK in “mutualist” paradigms emphasizing cooperation, in self-governing and voluntary associations, on a scale smaller than the state but larger and more collective than that acceptable to a market-bedazzled or market-entrapped homo oeconomicus.
These voluntary and self-governing associations will be non-profit making and funded out of the public purse.
In the UK, the Blue Labour “tendency” (for it is no more than that in effective political terms) ratifies a form of mutualism, and in the US Bernie Sanders expressed interest in participatory political forms stressing mutualism, at least when he was still contending with Hillary Clinton for their party’s nomination to be a candidate for the 2016 presidential election.
However, a state-driven social democracy of the kind prevailing until the 1970s will be difficult to revive because the state favoured by neoliberalism is a Market-State in root and branch, with market-imperatives– or rather those of quasi-markets, because neoliberal markets are rigged and rent-seeking (as Michael Hudson , Guy Standing , and others have pointed out) — dominating the State’s core.
This neoliberal Market-State is more about entrenching the parasitic rentier-based oligarchy than promoting the fabled competitive markets extolled by classical liberalism.
So, the key question for us is whether new forms of cooperation and mutualism, socialist in nature, can emerge in an innovative kind of post-neoliberal state, forms which can then exist in concert with crucially-important local and regional formations.
Blue Labour’s proponents have identified a panoply of measures and steps as the way to inaugurate a full-blown associationism: co-operative ventures of all kinds, community banks and credit unions, community-sponsored daycare and eldercare, youth clubs, greatly augmented municipal government, proper apprenticeship schemes (as opposed to largely inconsequential “work your way in the hope you get a job” workfare arrangements), and so on.
However, if neoliberalism remains, there will be no real move to a sufficient mutualism. So, decisive steps must be taken to push neoliberalism to the side. Blue Labour purports to be an alternative to neoliberalism, but does not endorse (at least not explicitly) the revolutionary means needed to supplant the neoliberal order.
A mutualism which does not tackle the overridingly important issue of the ownership of assets, and fails to advance their common ownership, is going to be a paper tiger (to resort to the nomenclature of the Great Helmsman).
Other interim measures will include an overturning of regnant macroeconomic policy, to encompass the greater taxation of wealth; the abolition of opportunities to extract rentier-based incomes (neoliberalism’s modus operandi); the repatriation of capital that has migrated to Wall Street and the City of London; the introduction of capital controls; the reduction of military spending; greater provision of resources on infrastructure, health, and education; converting banks into public utilities whose sole role is the intermediation between buyers and sellers (as opposed to the emphasis on gratuitously unproductive forms of speculation and arbitrage so prevalent today); supporting trade unions; placing important services conducing to our overall good in the public domain, which need not necessarily be statist, since the public domain will perforce now include a variety of formations that are associationist.
Another significant step would be the disruption of the monetary symbiosis now existing between the corporate and political élites.
Also important will be the reduction, and ultimately the elimination, of the for-profit sector when this does not operate for the public good.
An example of how a project undertaken by a private company can easily be placed in the hands of a publicly-owned organization is the upcoming construction of London’s “super sewer” system. Balfour Beatty, the controversial giant construction company , has been awarded a £416m contract to build a section of this “super sewer” (and we can count on the almost inevitable cost overruns doubling and even tripling the sum stipulated in the original deal).
BB is a private company with shareholders and private investors. A project on this scale could easily have been undertaken by a publicly-owned and controlled body, which would return earnings to the public purse, as opposed to feathering the nests of a small group of private citizens.
Today colossally lucrative enterprises, making their originators some of the wealthiest people on earth, exist in a realm that can best be described as virtual.
Uber owns no taxis, Airbnb owns no rental properties, EBay/Alibaba possess no inventory, Facebook generates no content of its own, TaskRabbit and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (the latter’s motto being “giving you access to a scalable workforce”) create no sustainable jobs but use the internet to “match” individuals with substantial incomes needing someone to undertake menial tasks or run small errands, with a hapless “gig” clientele more or less willing to do this for chickenfeed.
In addition, high-speed stock traders sit at desks transmuting algorithms into computer pixels to generate obscene rental returns (“profit” generally being used in classical economics only to characterize gains accruing from actual productive investment) in a few clicks of the keyboard.
Dispensing with the stock-market racket will only require political will, admittedly not an easy undertaking since the political élites have also been allowed to feed at its trough.
At the same time, the other virtual enterprises can be put to social uses: Uber can become a communal car-sharing service, Airbnb can serve the homeless, and TaskRabbit and Mechanical Turk can service the needs of a market providing substantial employment beyond the level of “gig” jobs.
All citizens should have access to common basic entitlements, and associations will be publicly funded only if they are open to all and willing to provide services on the basis of public entitlements.
The removal of neoliberalism, and ultimately capitalism itself, is going to be the surest way to bring about an extended and long-lasting mutualism and associationism.
If neoliberalism and capitalism continue exist, we will be mired in an ethos based on the absurd proposition that we must first “create wealth”, then somehow find ways to prise the loot generated by this process out of the fingers of a fortunate few to “improve the quality of life” for the rest of us.
Is there any greater idiocy, apart from the possible notion that the interests of the generality of the US and the world will be adequately served by a Trump or Clinton presidency?
Kenneth Surin is Professor of Literature and Professor of Religion and Critical Theory Program in Literature and Critical Theory at Duke University. | 0 |
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THEY DID IT! They really did it! The government, against all odds, bravely negotiated until the 11th hour and saved us from total chaos as gardaí agreed to cancel strike action.
Crowds lined the streets late last night to cheer on the government as they made their way down O’Connell St in an open top bus, waving to the crowds invoking memories of the Italia 90 homecoming.
A dire situation that was totally not of the government’s own making, Enda Kenny and his cabinet rescued defeat from the jaws of victory and relabelled it, but how? What offer was placed on the table for the 10,000 plus guards who were ready to withdraw their labour?
WWN sources have furnished us with a complete copy of all that was offered to the guards to avert strike action, and we have the offer listed below:
1) 8 government piggy banks (the government promise the use of piggy banks was not meant to be derogatory) which can be smashed open by gardaí with a hammer. The exact contents of them are unknown, but after shaking them and holding them to their ears, GRA representatives were said to be ‘excited’.
2) A guard will be picked via lottery system and given the chance to use a taser on Leo Varadkar. The Taoiseach was adamant this was included in the deal despite it not being among the GRA’s demands.
3) One new uniform per station, to be worn by officers on a rotation basis.
4) A pat on the back from the government every month with a variation of the phrase ‘well done’ to accompany it.
5) Vague agreement to provide resources to upgrade the force from the 1870s to at least 1960s standards by 2050.
6) €15 premium payment on annual leave but all gardaí will be forced to holiday in a caravan park in Wicklow.
7) Free team bonding trip to Tayto Park, and tickets to the Late Late Toy Show for all 12,500 gardaí who were set to strike on the condition that the GRA tell the public that the government are ‘the best’.
8) 100% mortgages and free pints in exchange for arresting at least one opposition TD on drink driving charges.
9) An increase of 4 cents per year in the shoelace allowance if gardaí turn a blind eye to Simon Harris’s burgeoning Crystal Meth empire.
10) Gardaí will agree to unpaid overtime if the government admit NASA has conclusively proven Fiscal Space is a myth.
11) Gardaí will be given one extra day of annual leave if they agree not to spoil the most recent of season of Game of Thrones as Frances Fitzgerald is only on season 3.
12) Once Gardaí approve the deal, both sides have agreed to paper over the cracks and carry on as normal. | 0 |
FLINT, Mich. — Health care workers are scrambling to help the people here cope with what many fear will be chronic consequences of the city’s water contamination crisis: profound stress, worry, depression and guilt. Uncertainty about their own health and the health of their children, the nature of the crisis, and raw anger over government’s role in both causing the lead contamination and trying to remedy it, are all taking their toll on Flint’s residents. “The first thing I noticed when I got to Flint, quite honestly, was the level of fear and anxiety and distress,” said Dr. Nicole Lurie, an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services who has been coordinating the federal recovery effort here since January. On Wednesday, President Obama will pay his first visit to the city since the lead contamination was revealed. A team of behavioral health specialists from the United States Public Health Service began addressing the mental health problem in February by providing “psychological first aid” training for people interested in helping others cope with the water emergency. Genesee Health System, a local mental health agency, also created the Flint Community Resilience Group, whose members are focusing on the psychological consequences of the water crisis and how to address them. With a $500, 000 emergency grant from the state, the group is offering free crisis counseling at churches and the public library, and has held two community meetings on stress management. Social workers and social work students from around the state are helping with the counseling on a volunteer basis. But the need probably extends far beyond the 400 people who have been helped since the counseling started in February. Diane Breckenridge, Genesee Health’s liaison to local hospitals, said she had seen “people come into the hospitals directly related to breakdowns, nervous breakdowns, if you will. ” “Most of it’s been depression or suicidal ideation directly linked to what’s going on with their children,” she added. “They just feel like they can’t even let their children take a bath. ” Children, too, are traumatized, said Dexter Clarke, a supervisor at Genesee Health, not least because they constantly hear frightening things on television about the lead crisis, including breathless advertisements by personal injury lawyers seeking clients. “I teach a class of little girls every Wednesday, and they’re from Flint,” Ms. Breckenridge said, “and I just get all kinds of questions because they’re terrified. ” A bill in the United States House of Representatives would provide $5 million for mental health needs in Flint as part of a broader aid package, but has not gotten traction. A separate aid package in the Senate appears to have more momentum, but does not include money for mental health. The state, meanwhile, is planning to send mobile crisis teams into Flint neighborhoods and to provide help to local pediatricians through a child psychiatric teleprogram. Michigan’s earlier decision to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act will help more residents get psychological help, although officials at Genesee Health System worry about not having enough licensed social workers to meet the eventual demand. About 15, 000 additional children and pregnant women here will be eligible for Medicaid, possibly starting this month, under a temporary program that government and local officials are rushing to put together. One challenge is convincing people to seek mental health care. The Rev. Rigel J. Dawson, pastor of the North Central Church of Christ and a member of the Flint Community Resilience Group, said his focus was on persuading residents of the city to pursue psychological help if they need it. “There’s a history, especially in the church, of ‘I’m strong enough spiritually to deal with it,’” Mr. Dawson said. “You see the signs of stress and what it’s doing to the community, but we’re conditioned to put on our church face and act like it’s O. K. ” Danis Russell, the chief executive of Genesee Health System, said that while the potential for stigma had kept many here from seeking mental health services in the past, the water crisis might make them more willing. “Now there’s an acceptable reason,” he said. “People may say: ‘This isn’t my fault. Somebody did this to us and everybody’s getting help, so I should, too. ’” Still, Mr. Russell added, “What the demand will look like going forward, I don’t think anyone knows. ” Five Flint residents recently shared their accounts of the psychological impact of the crisis: Janice Berryman spends solitary days in a home scattered with pink pillows and angel figurines, following every twist of Flint’s water crisis on television and trying to keep her anger at bay. Her tap water was found to have extremely high lead levels as recently as February, she said. Family members have stopped visiting, including a niece in Arkansas whose twin toddlers Ms. Berryman, 71, is aching to meet. Sometimes her loneliness brings her to tears, she said. For a while she found it helped to attend protests, and she even took a bus to Lansing in January to march outside the Capitol during Gov. Rick Snyder’s State of the State address. But with heart disease, diabetes and other ailments, “I just said, ‘I’ve got to back down. ’” She began sleeping a lot — too much, her relatives told her. “If you go to sleep, it feels like it’s all going to go away,” she said. “But it don’t. ” Her doctor has persuaded her to try the crisis counseling at the public library. “He said, ‘I think you need to, Jan, just to get your feelings out,’” she said. “But if I don’t feel it’s working? Adios. If they try to start pushing pills on me, I’ll be gone. I don’t need a bunch of pills to drug me up. ” Two of Ms. Berryman’s siblings died young, experiences that she said had forced her to learn endurance. “I think that’s why I handle this a little better than others,” she said. “No matter what your anger level is, God sees you through. ” Bob and Johanna Atwood Brown thought they were doing everything right. When reports of lead in the water supply surfaced last summer, they installed a filter on their faucet, which removes lead up to 150 parts per billion. They used bottled water for drinking, but relied on their filtered tap water for cooking, coffee or to make their son and his friends on hot summer days. But when they had their water tested in January, they learned that it contained lead at 200 parts per billion — more than their filter was designed to handle, and far more than the federal safety threshold of 15 parts per billion. Ms. Brown said she was haunted by thoughts of her son and his friends drinking the lemonade and she had made them. “The guilt is unreal,” she said. “I poisoned other people’s children. ” Mr. Brown said he felt as if he had failed as a father and protector of his family. “You beat yourself up,” he said. “Why didn’t we do something earlier? Why didn’t we test earlier?” Their son received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and attention deficit disorder before the water crisis, and the Browns said they feared that the lead could exacerbate those problems — or produce others. He “has special needs as it is, so it’s hard to tell if there’s a behavioral component,” Ms. Brown said. “Things are not clear. ” She added: “Are we going to get cancer from this? I’m terrified. ” As an outlet, Ms. Brown has started a blog and uses Facebook. She was already seeing a therapist, she said, but now the stress and guilt associated with her home’s water contamination dominate her sessions. Mr. Brown said he did not talk about it much, but as the associate director in Flint for Michigan State University’s Center for Economic and Community Development, he finds it therapeutic to share his story when he speaks at events and meetings. “It never leaves you,” Mr. Brown said. “At some point you just want to jump up and down and yell and scream, and then you just try to move forward. Because what are you going to say?” Too often now, Nicole Lewis cannot sleep. “I’m up until midnight some nights because I can’t shut down,” she said. “Just thinking about my life in general — like really, did I deserve this? Did my kids deserve this?” Ms. Lewis, a accountant and single mother of two boys, said she had also been experiencing chest pains. When they come, she lies down and drinks bottled water. “Yet I’ve been told that this bottled water could have lead, too,” she said, voicing a common concern here. To help her nerves, she recently installed a home water filtration system, paying $42. 50 a month for the service on her main water supply line. She also bought a blender to make her sons smoothies with vegetables, like spinach and kale. But still her mind races, especially late at night. Her was just found to have attention deficit disorder, she said. Her is already showing athletic promise, but she wonders whether lead exposure will affect his ability to play sports. She also worries that living in Flint will brand her as damaged goods if she ever tries to find a job elsewhere. “When they see my résumé will they say, ‘Oh wait, she’s from Flint — she might be a huge liability for us’?” she said. She has no time for a therapist, she said, but regularly talks to her mother in Houston. “I just vent a lot of stuff out to her,” she said. “She’s a listening ear. ” As if there were not enough putting Maelores Collins on edge, her dog will not stop barking. She suspects Flint’s water is to blame. “I think he’s hallucinating,” she said as Wally, a Yorkshire terrier, yapped from a cage near the back door. “We need to get him tested. ” The barking adds to a sense of disorder that has agitated Ms. Collins, 48, for months. She is tired of the water bottles cluttering her house, and of eating only microwaved food because she fears cooking with even filtered tap water. Small kindnesses, like her sister bringing over potpies from Kentucky Fried Chicken, keep her going. Ms. Collins blames the water for a problem that deeply troubles her: Her hair has broken off over the past six months. Her therapy consists of cruising the aisles of Walmart or playing bid whist, a card game, with friends. A few months ago, her doctor also prescribed Xanax, a tranquilizer, which she takes “to get up” in the morning, she said. “I’m depressed, I’m angry, my anxiety is running high,” said Ms. Collins, a former construction worker who has asthma and is on permanent disability. Worse off, she said, is her grandson, who refuses to drink even bottled water and will eat only off paper plates. The family jumped several hurdles to secure a psychiatric appointment for him in early May. “He’s freaking out — he’s like, ‘We’re all going to die from the water,’” Ms. Collins said. “I said, ‘You’re young, you ain’t going nowhere.’ But I can’t convince this boy. ” Ms. Collins called the situation “crazy. ” “Lose your hair, your family tripping about different things, your kids leaving water bottles all over the house,” she said. She laughed sharply. Wally continued his frantic barking, and she cast a withering glance his way. “This thing,” she said, “will never be over. ” | 1 |
Posted on October 28, 2016 by DCG | 2 Comments
This guy is full of hot air.
Via NY Post : The de Blasio administration is trying to limit the number of food trucks in the city by claiming that each hot-dog and kabob cart causes more pollution than a truck ride to Los Angeles.
Deputy Health Commissioner Corinne Schiff made the claim at a City Council hearing Wednesday, in an apparent effort to sink a bill that would nearly double the number of food-vendor permits in the city by 2023 .
“Meat grilling is a significant source of air pollution in the city,” Schiff said. “One additional vendor grilling meat emits an amount of particle pollution in one day equivalent to what a diesel truck emits driving 3,500 miles.”
The new bill would boost the number of permits to 8,000 by 2023 and also create an enforcement team to sniff out violations.
Since 1983, the number of street-food vending permits has remained steady at 4,235. But there are likely more carts than that on the streets, as some vendors simply open shop without a license and work until they are caught.
Schiff argued any increase in the number of food carts needs to come with regulations stipulating that the carts operate in a more environmentally friendly manner.
City Councilman Mark Levine (D-Manhattan), who is sponsoring the bill to increase the permits, wondered if this was already the case. “We have laws in the city about air quality that currently stipulate that any food establishment has got to have a hood over a grill,” Levine said. “Is that not currently the law?”
Schiff, however, said there are no such laws regulating the carts as she suggested the proposals be delayed to ensure better pollution safeguards.
“We really see this as an opportunity to work with the council to think through how we might use this modernization act to improve air quality,” she said. “The current laws don’t actually control the emissions that we’re concerned about.”
Business-improvement districts and residents throughout the city also pushed for delays on increasing vendor permits, saying there are too many already in some neighborhoods, but welcomed increased enforcement.
“The enforcement idea is a great idea,” said Ellen Baer, co-chair of the NYC BID Association. “Let’s see if this works, let’s see how it works, let’s see if it’s sufficiently funded, let’s see how many resources they need — before we start adding to the chaos.”
But street vendors argued they’ve waited too long for reforms that would allow them to transition from operating illegally to legally.
Sean Basinski, director of the Street Vendor Project, described the bills as “far from our dream,” but said he supports most of what they call for. “It is a reasonable compromise,” he said. “Vendors have been waiting 35 years for this change . . . We certainly welcome a study being done, but we don’t think that should delay the progress that needs to be made. The time for reform is now.”
Before the hearing, some vendors rallied outside, demanding that city officials and police stop harassing them and treating them like criminals . The bill will remain before the committee while members discuss possible changes. | 0 |
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