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The New York Times has deftly adapted to the demands of digital journalism, but it needs to change even more quickly, according to an internal report that recommends the company expand training for reporters and editors, hire journalists with more varied skills and deepen engagement with readers as a way to build loyalty and attract the subscriptions necessary to survive. The report, released to The Times newsroom on Tuesday, culminates a year of work by a group of seven journalists who were asked by Dean Baquet, the executive editor, to conduct a review of the newsroom and determine a blueprint for its path forward. Titled “Journalism That Stands Apart,” and known internally as the 2020 report, the document provides a set of broad principles to accelerate the transformation while maintaining a commitment to journalism. The report comes at a particularly sobering time for the legacy media industry. The steep and continuous decline of print advertising has led to significant financial challenges for most newspapers, which in turn are cutting costs and trying to find new revenue sources. News organizations, including The Wall Street Journal and Gannett, have made significant cuts in staffing The Journal is currently conducting a newsroom review similar to that of The Times, called WSJ2020. Among the other recommendations in The Times’s report were reducing duplicative layers of article editing, and having visual experts play “the primary role covering some stories” — part of an urgent call for more visual journalism. The report also calls for a renewed focus on diversity within The Times as a way of ensuring that the paper’s journalists “reflect the audience we seek. ” “The world is changing really rapidly,” David Leonhardt, a columnist who led the group’s work, said in an interview. “We have to keep up, and even get ahead of it. ” In a note to the newsroom, Mr. Baquet and Joseph Kahn, The Times’s managing editor, endorsed the group’s recommendations, saying they outlined an “opportunity we have to produce an even more vital, more authoritative, more indispensable” news report. The 2020 group acknowledged “budget realities” that would affect newsroom turnover, but it did not identify specific areas to be cut. Mr. Baquet and Mr. Kahn, however, went beyond the report and more bluntly addressed the need for staff cuts, saying that moving away from “duplicative and often line editing” would lead to reductions in the editor ranks. “Let’s not be coy,” they wrote. “The changes will lead to fewer editors at The Times. ” In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Baquet acknowledged that The Times had long valued its meticulous editing, and reducing its editor ranks represented a “significant cultural transformation. ” But, he said, “I do not believe that eliminating some of that editing will make us a lesser institution. ” The plan to cut back on editors reflects a broader effort by legacy publications to streamline their operations and align themselves with leaner digital media companies, which built their newsrooms without the kind of multilayered editing process inherent in print production. “If you look at any newsroom that was built for a digital environment, they don’t have anything like the editing structure that The Times has,” said Joshua Benton, the director of the Nieman Journalism Lab. “On the one hand, that is something that The Times is differentiated through. But on the other hand, if you do need to become more efficient, then some reduction there does make sense. ” Mr. Baquet and Mr. Kahn said in their note that the shift to digital publishing demanded a “smaller and more focused newsroom,” but added that the reconfiguration should be viewed as “a necessary repositioning of The Times’s newsroom, not as a diminishment. ” An announcement about downsizing in the newsroom will come in the first half of the year, Mr. Baquet said. Their note also laid out some concrete steps for various projects, including a plan to invest $5 million toward covering the incoming president, Donald J. Trump, and his administration. The report coincides with a series of broader changes at The Times, including a reimagining of the print newspaper an aggressive international expansion a heightened emphasis on graphics, podcasts, video and virtual reality the $ purchase of the product recommendation site The Wirecutter and its sibling, The Sweethome and changes in top newsroom management. The Times also recently appointed A. G. Sulzberger as deputy publisher, positioning him to succeed his father, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. as publisher. Many of the initiatives are intended to support an ambitious goal that The Times laid out in October 2015: to double its digital revenue, to $800 million in 2020 compared with $400 million in 2014. Last year, the report says, The Times generated nearly $500 million in purely digital revenue. The Times and other news organizations are also bracing for the challenges of covering an administration that is openly hostile to the news media, while trying to forge a stronger connection to the large bloc of voters who swept Mr. Trump to the presidency. At The Times, the election threw the newsroom into a period of as it grappled with criticism that it had missed the signs pointing to Mr. Trump’s victory. In the days after the election, Mr. Baquet and the elder Mr. Sulzberger sent notes to the newsroom and readers reassuring them that The Times remained committed to holding powerful people and institutions accountable. Mr. Baquet initially planned to release the report in November, but it was pushed back after the unexpected election results, which demanded the organization’s full attention. Within The Times’s newsroom, where the impending staff cuts have some employees on edge, the report did not satisfy those looking for specific guidance on their future. Several employees said much of the report merely confirmed many of the initiatives that were already underway. Some expressed frustration that the report did not provide details about layoffs and that there was little information about how individual departments might be altered or how specific jobs might change. Instead, the report emphasizes The Times’s strengths and lays out a series of broad recommendations intended to ensure the company’s survival for years to come. Mr. Baquet said the goal was to put in place as many recommendations as possible this year. Several of them have been introduced, including the creation of newsroom teams and a restructuring of the copy desks. Most important, the report affirms The Times’s commitment to its revenue model, a departure from many other publications, both traditional and online, whose businesses are built on visitors and clicks. “We are, in the simplest terms, a business,” the report says. “We are not trying to maximize clicks and sell advertising against them. We are not trying to win a arms race. ” Among the report’s recommendations is that The Times improve and expand its training efforts and accelerate hiring to shift the balance away from roles. The goal is to reconfigure the news report so that it aligns with the range of digital offerings audiences now expect. “It’s the single biggest message the committee delivered,” Mr. Leonhardt said. The 2020 committee also recommends that The Times continue to reduce the role the print newspaper plays in determining the daily rhythms of its journalism, while maintaining it as a valuable attraction to readers. “Our future is much more digital than print,” Mr. Leonhardt said, “and so the question then becomes how do you accomplish both of these at once?” | 1 |
A Catholic apple grower in Michigan has been barred from a city farmers’ market over his views on marriage, after he refused to host a lesbian couple’s wedding at his orchard. [Stephen Tennes, the owner of Country Mill Farms, has sold his fruit and vegetables at the East Lansing Farmer’s Market for the past seven years. After city officials learned of his Christian belief that marriage is the union between one man and one woman, they invoked a policy to exclude him from being able to sell at the farmers’ market. Tennes says he was barred from selling his produce after his business, Country Mill Farms, refused to host a lesbian couple’s wedding at its orchard in Charlotte, 22 miles outside East Lansing. Explaining his position on Facebook, Tennes cited his “Catholic belief that marriage is a sacramental union between one man and one woman. ” In a statement, the city of East Lansing said the farmer’s decision not to host a wedding violated a “ ordinance that protects sexual orientation as well as the Supreme Court’s ruling that grants the right for couples to be married. ” In point of fact, the city introduced a modification to the city’s farmers market vendor agreement just this year requiring sellers to comply with East Lansing’s Human Relations Ordinance. Among other things, the ordinance prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and expression. The city’s punitive action targets the farmer’s use of his own private property, 22 miles outside the city and well outside its jurisdiction. Mr. Tennes has declared that he does not discriminate against LGBT customers at the farmer’s market, and gladly sells his produce to all comers. “It’s our faith that informs us how to treat all who come to our farm and the farmers market with dignity and decency … serving customers of many races, religions, cultures and those who identify with the LBGT community,” he said. When it came to actually hosting a marriage that contradicts his biblical understanding of the nature of marriage, Tennes felt obliged to decline. “Our faith and beliefs on marriage and hosting weddings at our home and in our backyard of our farm have nothing to do with the city of East Lansing,” Tennes said at a press conference. According to Gay Star News, the biblical view of marriage is “homophobic” and the City of East Lansing barred Tennes for his “homophobic religious views. ” On Wednesday, May 31, Tennes filed a federal lawsuit against the city of East Lansing seeking his reinstatement at the market. According to the lawsuit, Country Mill is the only business to have been prohibited under the market’s policy. The Alliance Defending Freedom, a nonprofit legal organization specializing in religious liberty cases, is representing Tennes. They have asserted that his religious views on marriage have no bearing on his involvement at the market and said the city’s actions amounted to a First Amendment violation. “Steve and his farm have been singled out and excluded from full participation in the life of the community for only one reason,” said ADF counsel Kate Anderson. “Steve expressed a viewpoint the city did not like. ” “If the government can shut down a family farmer just because of the religious views he expresses on Facebook … then no American is free,” Anderson said. Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome | 1 |
BRUSSELS — The United States and the European Union stepped up pressure on Monday on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey to not use an attempted coup as an excuse for an authoritarian crackdown. Officials even suggested that Turkey’s continued membership in NATO and its aspirations of joining the European Union could be at stake. Meeting in Brussels, Secretary of State John Kerry and European Union foreign ministers called on Mr. Erdogan to show restraint in the wake of the failed coup, even as he continued to round up political opponents and as Turkey debated whether it should reinstate the death penalty to deal with the plotters. “Obviously, NATO also has a requirement with respect to democracy, and NATO will indeed measure very carefully what is happening,” Mr. Kerry said. “And my hope is that Turkey is going to move in ways that do respect what they have said to me many times is the bedrock of their country. ” On Monday, NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, condemned the coup attempt but added, “Being part of a unique community of values, it is essential for Turkey, like all other allies, to ensure full respect for democracy and its institutions, the constitutional order, the rule of law and fundamental freedoms. ” And the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, called for “the full observance of Turkey’s constitutional order, and we, as the European Union, stress the importance for the rule of law prevailing in the country. ” Mr. Erdogan’s government has detained more than 6, 000 military personnel since an attempted coup Friday night, and there are signs he is using the moment to widen a crackdown on perceived enemies. Turkey has been a crucial ally in the region for the United States and NATO, and it has also long sought membership in the European Union. The aftermath of the coup could present European Union leaders with particularly vexing . In return for helping to curb the flow of migrants from Syria and other countries in the region into Western Europe, Turkey is expecting travel to the European Union for its citizens this year, but the country must first meet benchmarks on protecting freedoms and upholding the rule of law. The flow of migrants across the Aegean Sea to the European Union has slowed to a trickle since leaders of the bloc and the government in Ankara reached a deal this year that gives funds to aid organizations in Turkey, along with other concessions. But the scale of the crackdown in the wake of the attempted coup in Turkey has rattled Western leaders. Alongside the members of the military, the Turkish government also dismissed thousands of judges, who seemingly played no role in the military revolt. “Obviously a lot of people have been arrested and arrested very quickly,” Mr. Kerry said, appearing to echo allegations by some Europeans that the Turkish authorities had prepared lists of people for reprisals even before the coup. “I think the level of vigilance and scrutiny is obviously going to be significant in the days ahead, and we’ll work very closely, and hopefully we can work in a constructive way, that prevents a backsliding, and that is our hope. ” Mr. Erdogan has urged the United States to extradite one of his former allies, the cleric Fethullah Gulen, to Turkey. Mr. Erdogan has accused Mr. Gulen of inspiring the coup attempt, which Mr. Gulen has denied. “I made it clear to the foreign minister there is indeed a very formal process for that, and there has to be a formal extradition request submitted through the appropriate channels, legal channels,” Mr. Kerry said of his Turkish counterpart, adding that he had urged the Turkish authorities to “send us evidence, not allegations. ” Separately, the United States ambassador to Turkey, John R. Bass, denounced as “categorically untrue” speculation “that the United States in some way supported the coup attempt. ” As American officials sought to manage the situation in Turkey, European officials grappled with calls from Erdogan supporters to reintroduce the death penalty, which Turkey abolished in 2004. Negotiations to bring Turkey into the European Union are already proceeding at a glacial pace, and Ms. Mogherini said the reintroduction of the death penalty would be a as did a spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. “No country can become an E. U. member state if it introduces the death penalty,” Ms. Mogherini said at the news conference. The death penalty would also be incompatible with Turkey’s membership in the Council of Europe, a human rights organization with nearly 50 member states that operates separately from the European Union, she said. Formal negotiations on Turkish membership in the bloc started a decade ago, but there has been resistance from France and Germany, among others, as well as strong opposition from Cyprus, a member of the union that has been divided since Turkey invaded the north of the island in 1974. Boris Johnson, the newly appointed British foreign secretary, told reporters before the ministers’ meeting that there needed to be “restraint and moderation on all sides” in Turkey. The meeting in Brussels is Mr. Johnson’s first as foreign secretary after his successful campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, in a referendum on June 23. He was named to the position by Prime Minister Theresa May last week. Mr. Johnson was a divisive figure during the referendum campaign well beyond Britain, after he compared efforts by the European Union to unite the Continent with those of Adolf Hitler. Ayrault, the French foreign minister, accused Mr. Johnson of telling lies to the British people during the campaign. On Monday, Mr. Johnson insisted that Britain would continue to play a part in shaping the region’s foreign policy, even without a formal tie to the European Union. “We have to give effect to the will of the people and leave the European Union, but that in no sense means that we are leaving Europe,” Mr. Johnson told reporters. “We not going to be in any way abandoning our leading role in European cooperation and participation of all kinds,” he said. Ms. Mogherini met briefly Sunday night with Mr. Johnson, and she emphasized that there could be no formal negotiations on a British departure from the bloc until the government began the legal process of leaving. Ms. Mogherini said that ministers were also expected to discuss the terrorist attack in Nice, France relations with China and the situation in Venezuela, as well as in Turkey. | 1 |
Carol Adl in News , World // 0 Comments
Australia is to allow individuals and business’s to cultivate medicinal cannabis crops under strict government license and guidelines in an effort to substitute imports with a domestic supply.
The recreational use of marijuana will however remains a criminal activity.
RT reports:
The commencement of the Narcotic Drugs Amendment Act 2016 on October 30, 2016, marks a milestone for Australia’s medicinal cannabis prospects. The new regulations allow for the licensing of cannabis cultivation and the production of cannabis and cannabis resins for medicinal and scientific purposes. RELATED CONTENT British Government Admits Marijuana Has ‘Medicinal Value’
Until now, it has been difficult for patients to access medicinal cannabis products from overseas sources,” Federal Health Minister Sussan Ley said in a statement released on Sunday.
“These new laws change that situation by providing for a domestic supply of medicinal cannabis products that are not readily available for import.”
However, while pharmaceuticals will gain an advantage from the new law, recreational pot smokers are left disappointed, as consuming marijuana still remains a criminal activity.
“I want to emphasize that the changes to the Narcotic Drugs Act do not decriminalize cannabis for recreational use,” Ley said.
Under the act, those companies ready to grow their weed plants must comply with state and territory drug legislations which would allow companies to classify their harvest in accordance with the Therapeutic Goods Administration.
To hold a license for cannabis production, business will need to pass “strict fit and proper persons requirements and other legislative tests relating to security.” It is left up to individual states and territories to award licenses and outline the types of cannabis plants that can be cultivated and the quantities that can be produced. | 0 |
Donald J. Trump was in a state of shock: He had just fired his campaign manager and was watching the man discuss his dismissal at length on CNN. The rattled candidate’s advisers and family seized the moment for an intervention. Joined by his daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, a cluster of Mr. Trump’s confidants pleaded with him to make that day — June 20 — a turning point. He would have to stick to a teleprompter and end his freestyle digressions and insults, like his repeated attacks on a Hispanic federal judge. Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey argued that Mr. Trump had an effective message, if only he would deliver it. For now, the campaign’s polling showed, too many voters described him in two words: “unqualified” and “racist. ” Mr. Trump bowed to his team’s entreaties, according to four people with detailed knowledge of the meeting, who described it on the condition of anonymity. It was time, he agreed, to get on track. Nearly two months later, the effort to save Mr. Trump from himself has plainly failed. He has repeatedly signaled to his advisers and allies his willingness to change and adapt, but has grown only more volatile and prone to provocation since then, clashing with a Gold Star family, making comments that have been seen as inciting violence and linking his political opponents to terrorism. Advisers who once hoped a transformation would refashion a crudely effective political showman into a plausible American president now increasingly concede that Mr. Trump may be beyond coaching. He has ignored their pleas and counsel as his poll numbers have dropped, boasting to friends about the size of his crowds and maintaining that he can read surveys better than the professionals. In private, Mr. Trump’s mood is often sullen and erratic, his associates say. He veers from barking at members of his staff to grumbling about how he was better off following his own instincts during the primaries and suggesting he should not have heeded their calls for change. He broods about his souring relationship with the news media, calling Mr. Manafort several times a day to talk about specific stories. Occasionally, Mr. Trump blows off steam in bursts of boyish exuberance: At the end of a on Long Island last week, he playfully buzzed the crowd twice with his helicopter. But in interviews with more than 20 Republicans who are close to Mr. Trump or in communication with his campaign, many of whom insisted on anonymity to avoid clashing with him, they described their nominee as exhausted, frustrated and still bewildered by fine points of the political process and why his incendiary approach seems to be sputtering. He is routinely preoccupied with perceived slights, for example raging to aides after Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, in his announcement, said he would stand up to the next president regardless of party. In a visit to Capitol Hill in early July, Mr. Trump bickered with two Republican senators who had not endorsed him he needled Representative Peter T. King of New York for having taken donations from him over the years only to criticize him on television now. And Mr. Trump has begun to acknowledge to associates and even in public that he might lose. In an interview on CNBC on Thursday, he said he was prepared to face defeat. “I’ll just keep doing the same thing I’m doing right now,” he said. “And at the end, it’s either going to work, or I’m going to, you know, I’m going to have a very, very nice, long vacation. ” Jason Miller, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said the Republican nominee was still determined to win, and dismissed accounts that he was downcast. Mr. Miller pointed to the crowds Mr. Trump attracts as a sign of strength. “Behind the scenes we have a very motivated and very focused candidate in Donald Trump, who knows what he needs to do to win this race,” Mr. Miller said. People around Mr. Trump and his operation say they are not ready to abandon hope of a turnaround. But he is in a dire predicament, Republicans say, because he is profoundly uncomfortable in the role of a typical general election candidate, disoriented by the crosscurrents he must now navigate and still relying impulsively on a pugilistic formula that guided him to the nomination. His advisers are still convinced of the basic potency of a sales pitch about economic growth and a in Washington, and they aspire to compete in as many as 21 states, despite Mr. Trump’s perilous standing in the four states — Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina — likely to decide the election. Charles R. Black Jr. an influential Republican lobbyist supporting Mr. Trump, said the campaign was in a continuing struggle to tame him. “He has three or four good days and then makes another gaffe,” Mr. Black said. “Hopefully, he can have some more good days. ” Of Mr. Trump’s advisers, Mr. Black said, “They think he is making progress in terms of being able to make set speeches and not take the bait on every attack somebody makes on him. ” Mr. Trump’s advisers now hope to steady him by pairing him on the trail with familiar, more seasoned figures — people he views as peers and enjoys spending time with, like former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York and former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas. Mr. Giuliani, who campaigned with Mr. Trump early in the week, said he did not see the candidate as unmoored or unhappy. If anyone was disconcerted, Mr. Giuliani suggested, it was the people steering his campaign. “He doesn’t seem to be as unnerved by these things that go wrong as the people around him,” Mr. Giuliani said. Still, he allowed, “I think it is true that maybe it took him a little while to realize that we’re moving from a primary campaign to a presidential campaign. ” Mr. Trump, he said, had become “a little bit more realizing there are certain days left and you’ve got to get messages out on those days. ” Even before Mr. Trump’s most recent spate of incendiary comments, Republicans who dealt with him after the primaries came away alarmed by his obvious unease as the de facto party leader. After a meeting in late May between Mr. Trump and Karl Rove, the architect of George W. Bush’s presidential victories, Mr. Rove told associates he was stunned by Mr. Trump’s poor grasp of campaign basics, including how to map out a schedule and use data to reach voters. Sitting with Mr. Rove in the Manhattan apartment of a mutual friend, the casino magnate Steve Wynn, Mr. Trump said he would compete in states like Oregon, which has not voted Republican since Ronald Reagan’s 1984 landslide. Mr. Rove later told people he believed Mr. Trump was confused and scared in anticipation of the general election, according to people who have heard Mr. Rove’s account. A few weeks later, when Governor Christie brokered a meeting at Trump Tower between Mr. Trump and governors from around the country, Mr. Trump offered a desultory performance, bragging about his poll numbers, listening passively as the governors talked about their states and then sending them on their way. Mr. Trump never asked them for their support, three people briefed on the meeting said. With donors, Mr. Trump has been an indifferent ambassador for his campaign. He has resisted making calls and, during at least two major events in July, in New York and Chicago, burned valuable hours with potential contributors by asking them to go around the room, one by one, giving him their thoughts on whom he should pick as his running mate. That left little time for the donors to query Mr. Trump about policy or strategy, or for him to reassure them about his campaign. Jay Bergman, an Illinois oil executive who attended the event in Chicago, said he wondered if Mr. Trump had taken that approach “to avoid answering questions. ” On matters of policy, too, Mr. Trump has engaged only fleetingly, and idiosyncratically. Before delivering a policy speech in Detroit on Monday, he delegated the formation of an economic plan to a few conservative economists outside his campaign, who consulted him from time to time and ultimately haggled over the details in his office as he followed their conversation. Stephen Moore, a Heritage Foundation fellow, said he and Arthur Laffer, the economist, had tangled over the top tax bracket while Mr. Trump observed from behind his desk, eventually siding with Mr. Moore. Mr. Trump, he said, also expressed strong views about the taxation of interest on business loans, citing his experience as a developer. “He’s a typical businessman, right?” Mr. Moore said. “He lets people argue it out, and Arthur made his case and others made their case. ” “He’s not the world’s expert on the tax code,” Mr. Moore added, “but he has very good intuition about how these things will affect real people. ” At the last minute, Mr. Trump interjected to direct his advisers to incorporate a tax deduction for the cost of child care in his economic plan. The issue, which Mr. Trump had not discussed on the campaign trail, is a favorite of his daughter Ivanka. Mr. Trump’s reliance on his family has only grown more pronounced. Mr. Kushner, Mr. Trump’s who has no background in politics, has expanded his role: He now has broad oversight over areas including the campaign’s budget, messaging and strategy, with the power to approve spending. Mr. Trump has also continued to seek advice from Corey Lewandowski, the campaign manager whom Mr. Trump ousted in June at his children’s urging. Efforts to bring in experienced hands have been fruitless. Mr. Kushner had suggested enlisting Steve Schmidt, Senator John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign manager, but despite having met once with Mr. Trump during the primaries and speaking with him a few times, Mr. Schmidt never signed on. Mr. Trump’s advisers believe he is nearly out of time to right his campaign. On Tuesday, hours before his explosive comment about “Second Amendment people” taking action if Mrs. Clinton is elected, his brain trust reassembled again at Trump Tower in a reprise of their stern meeting in June. They again urged Mr. Trump to adjust his tone and comportment. The top pollster, Tony Fabrizio, gave an unvarnished assessment, warning that Mr. Trump’s numbers would only move in one direction, absent a major change. Mr. Trump, people briefed on the meeting said, digested the advice and responded receptively. It was time, he agreed, to get on track. | 1 |
Part 1: Introduction 10 Shares
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For the last 30 years, I have witnessed and experienced the severe restraints on any free and balanced discussion of the facts. This reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American-Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant contrary voices.
— Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter [1]
How the Interviews Came About
The Marxian thesis that the dominant culture and ideology of a society (here referred to as Social Base or just Base) are those of the dominant class (here referred to as System) is a sharp tool to probe how political systems work and how they stay in power. Does this tool work in the U.S. model? Certainly, , the relation between the System and its Social Base has been regular since the inception of the thirteen colonies. Because of that sustained regularity, System and Base acted in convergent patterns of dependency. In historical perspective, it was not possible for the System to transform those colonies into states, and thereafter expand its conquests to form a continental empire without a solid social base that shared its purpose and visions for expansion. From that time onward, an ideological symbiosis ran between the System and the Base. Not only that, but each time the System modifies direction, philosophy, or ideology, the Base would adapt by modifying its attitudes and perception.
The patterns of ideological association between the U.S. System and its Social Base extended into modern times, and the yardstick to measure them is the presidential elections. If you look at voters' turnout since 1960 , you will notice that a relative-to-large majority of Americans had voted in those elections. My interpretation of the vote in relation to Marx's thesis is the following. Voting for a system that is known for its aggressive imperialist policies, crimes around the world, overthrowing foreign governments not in line with Washington, and countless military interventions and invasions that left millions of people dead means one thing: Voting for that system while knowing its attributes, policies, and actions amounts to active sharing in its ideology, culture, and violence.
MORE... Zionism is Racism Zionism goes from bad to worse, taking Judaism with it How modern is Israel? Green Party of Canada calls to revoke Jewish National Fund charitable status Caveat! That does not necessarily mean that all voters share the System's imperialistic values of violence and destruction of foreign peoples. The pertinent meaning of voting interpreted in relation to the System's foreign policy objectives versus the objectives of the Base resides in two concepts. Discarding immediately the notion that the Base has been cohabitated by the system, the first concept has it that the Base has given a mandate to the System to carry out its ideology of empire and imperialism based on the undeclared condition to spare the people from the horrors of foreign wars. A dichotomy sets in here. The System has its way of life, and the Base has its own. The second concept has to do with the basic tenets of colonialism. Meaning, if the System could be successful to obtain unspecified benefits through wars, then the base could share in these benefits despite aversion to violence and opposition to the institution of war as a means to resolve problems between nations.
A question: Would abstaining from voting resolve the issue of "active sharing" in the policies of the system? This subject is open for debate . . .
The relation between the American System and its Base was uniform up to a certain point in history (late 1920s). Until that point, the American state was still busy completing its structural transformation into a big power status. That uniformity, however, managed to keep the patterns of the political power unchanged. To be exact, despite persistent immigration that should have altered the relations between the Base and government, as well as the composition of the latter, the dominance of the traditional ruling elites was 1) not open for challenge, and 2) shaped by an exclusive American Anglo-Saxon experience.
But when Franklyn D. Roosevelt showed signs of surrender to the Zionist pressure on the issue of establishing a "Jewish" state in Palestine, he opened a large crack in the System. That was the first time in U.S. history where the powerful American imperialist state yielded to a foreign ideology that was not part of its basic project. With that, a movement with a limited religious social base began penetrating the files and ranks of the U.S. power. The rest is history. As a result, the unrelenting entrenchment inside the political structures of the United States coupled with accumulated changes in the configuration of the U.S. power, the dominant American System itself fell under the domination of one of its social factions—American Jewish Zionists.
When Franklyn D. Roosevelt showed signs of surrender to the Zionist pressure on the issue of establishing a "Jewish" state in Palestine, he opened a large crack in the System.
As a group, American Jewish Zionists have all attributes of an independent establishment. They possess efficient organizational structures, have a monolithic political presence across the American system, and they know how to finance their activities with U.S. tax money. I must note that their alignment with the global agenda of U.S. imperialism is a two-point expedient. The first is focused on being recognized as earnest operators at the service of America's interests. The second is tactical. To reap, on behalf of Israel, the benefits of alignment with slogans such as "Israel is our only trusted ally in the Middle East".
The American Jewish Zionist experience is agenda driven. As such, their domestic and foreign agendas have precedence over any other Jewish-related consideration.
On the domestic front, the focus could not be more evident: to consolidate Zionism and turn it into a means to 1) perpetuate Israel as an American national issue, and 2) make of them the principal factor in defining American politics. You can notice the endeavor clearly during U.S. elections when the Zionist media question whether this or that candidate is good for the Jews, and for Israel. Today, voicing dissent against the policies of American Jewish Zionism or criticizing Israel amounts to crime. Jimmy Carter experienced this firsthand. When he published his book: Palestine: Peace not Apartheid , American Jewish Zionists unleashed the fire of hell upon him.
As for the Jewish Zionist foreign agenda, this is clear-cut and leaves no space for misunderstanding. It aims to induce, control, or lead the United States to 1) adopt hostile policies toward the Arab nations because due to their rejection of the Zionist state, and 2) undertake military actions against any country that appears as posing a potential or direct threat to Israel. Equally important, it demands that the United States keep denying the Palestinians rights for nationhood through American diplomacy. What is the rationale? Recognition of the Palestinian national rights means the invalidation of the Zionist state and its claim on Palestine.
Because the Jewish Zionist control of the U.S. System is real and dominant, how does the American society figure vis-à-vis this dominance? Based on observations of the American society and its multiple cultural and ideological patterns, there can be but one answer: Zionism is not the dominant culture and ideology of the American people. It is, however, the dominant culture and ideology of the U.S. political system.
OBSERVATIONS
First, despite gargantuan Zionist propaganda apparatuses directed to the American people, Jewish Zionists have consistently failed to create interest or sympathy for Zionist issues and for Israel,
Second, due to historically developed indifference to foreign issues, a majority of Americans have only vague ideas on what Zionism is,
Third, to establish roots for their political dominance, Jewish Zionist activists invariably focus not on the American people, but on ways to control the American system from inside by controlling first the institutions that matter: White House and Congress.
Fourth, this control did not happen because of elections. It is preponderantly due to the practice of appointing Jewish Zionists to important positions inside the administrations,
Fifth, among the stratagems employed by Zionists when they run for elective offices, one was particularly effective: Take advantage of the reverence of the population for the idea of election. To do that, Jewish Zionist candidates rarely, if ever, talk about Israel or Zionism. Instead, they only debate matters of interest to the voters. Once elected though, promoting Israel via American legislations becomes the top hidden agenda,
Sixth, and to conclude this particular argument, the fact that one administration after another succumbed to the diktat of Jewish Zionists (thus indirectly to Israel) in matters of foreign policy and wars proves that the culture and praxis of those administrations are those of the dominant ideology and culture—Zionism.
Another point to discuss is the expansion of the Jewish Zionist power. By all accounts, such an expansion is not a phenomenon but an incremental process. In his book, The Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite , Robert D. Kaplan defined the issue that I framed as a process in terms of gradual replacement of traditional diplomatic elites with new ideological elites that had no interest in the ways of the old school of diplomacy. Kaplan was unambiguous. He called these new elites by their names: Irish-Americans and Jewish-Americans.
Kaplan's viewpoint on this replacement is important to our discussion. He argued that the old elites approached the U.S.-Arab relations with an open mind and readiness for dialog, all while keeping an eye on the U.S. imperialist interests. His argument opens the door for a veritable conclusion. The two groups of post-WWII American society that Kaplan mentioned had in fact changed the dynamics of U.S. foreign policy. (It is public knowledge that both groups are known for their hostility toward Arabs and Muslims—each for his own set of religious, political, and ideological rationales.). As for the successive shares of African-Americans and Hispanics in the making of the national policy of the United States, this is another argument.
As a witness to history, in early 2012, I began drafting a comprehensive analysis on the role of American Jewish Zionists in the making of U.S. policies and wars in the Arab world. In May of that year, as my work became broad in scope, I decided to seek more views on the subject. I came up with the idea to conduct several interviews where I pose the same questions. While some of the prospective interviewees declined, and others accepted but then withdrew, three prominent thinkers acclaimed for their knowledge, scholarship, and outstanding political activism graciously gave me their views.
They are Francis Boyle, a professor of international law, University of Illinois, College of Law; James Petras, a professor emeritus, University of Binghamton, New York; Canadian writer and former co-editor of the online publication of Dissident Voice Kim Petersen. Professors Boyle and Petras answered my questions via phone conversations, and, Petersen via email correspondence.
However, in the weeks following the interviews, my work swelled up to such a length that it became unsuitable for internet publishing. In short, I was unable to honor my commitment to publish the interviews as planned. Today, as I thank Prof. Francis Boyle, Prof. James Petras, and Kim Petersen for sharing their invaluable insight, I apologize to them for the delay in putting the interviews out there to read.
INTRODUCTION
The turning point in the emergence of Jewish Zionism as a dominant American political force came about when Iraq invaded Kuwait. (Discussing the origins and strategic complications of that invasion goes beyond the scope of this introduction.) The Jewish Zionist establishment seized the occasion, mobilized its omnipresent propaganda operatives, and led colossal media campaigns to promote military actions against Iraq. To bring their war mania to fruition, they unleashed their "experts" in all directions. They talked about Iraq's "formidable" military capabilities and about Saddam's one-million-man standing army ready to invade Saudi Arabia and seize its oil. They told stories about Saddam Hussein's personal life, his bunkers, and his mortal "nuclear threats" to Israel. And they talked about Iraq's threats to U.S. interests and "allies" in the Middle East. . . . Here is a brief account of those events.
On July 25, 1990, Iraqi president Saddam Hussein met with U.S. ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie. It is on record that Glaspie gave Hussein an unambiguous but indirect greenlight to resolve Iraq's problems with Kuwait militarily. On August 2, Iraq invaded Kuwait. On August 3, George H. W. Bush ordered the freezing of Iraqi and Kuwaiti assets and immediately placed Iraq under hermetic embargo. Considering the prompt, extraordinary anti-Iraq measures that the United States took in the first 24 hours of that invasion, one wonders what was pushing the U.S. to move so quickly on Iraq knowing that only two days earlier, this was conducting a U.S. proxy against Iran. The observation that the U.S. did not take similar actions when Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, or when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 raises many questions. What were the U.S. rationales in taking such measures? Who conceived them? Did the U.S. entrap Iraq? Why? . . .
The atmosphere that followed the invasion was surrealistic. Like a lightning bolt, U.S. imperialist and Zionist forces instantly mobilized their media, talking heads, retired generals, and bogus experts on the Middle East. The deafening uproar they made and all lies they told about atrocities committed by Iraq in Kuwait hid a definite scheme: Incite for war . In the period August 2, 1990 – January 14, 1991, Israelis and Jewish Zionists from all fields appeared en mass and in every possible medium available to urge the Bush regime to give up diplomacy in favor of war. On January 15, 1991, a 30-member "coalition" in which the U.S. had the lion share—ninety-seven percent of the total force—attacked Iraq. By every standard and minutia of details, the war on Iraq in 1991 was an American War .
At the end of a war that destroyed one of Israel's Arab adversaries, George H. W. Bush might have thought of himself as America's "laureate hero". He did not predict though that his temporary freezing of the U.S. loan guaranties to Israel, would have unleashed the Jewish Zionist establishment against him. The fact that he lost to Bill Clinton (who opposed Bush's freeze, and who stated that Israel was the "only country that paid back its debts") indicated that American Jewish Zionists had finally reached their objective: To perfect ways to control the U.S. politics from the inside . In retrospect, it can be said that George H. W. Bush was the last non-Zionist American president. From Bill Clinton forward, U.S. presidents and their vice president became pawns in the Jewish Zionist play of power.
Now, as the United States was preparing for war with Iraq to "liberate" Kuwait, thousands of antiwar activists and intellectuals from a wide spectrum of political convictions spoke loudly against it. But no one could have ever beaten Patrick J. Buchanan's memorable words about how American Jewish Zionists and Israel were pushing for that war. He said, ''There are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in the Middle East - the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner .'' [2] With that, Buchanan hit the proverbial nail on the head. A.M. Rosenthal, a ringleader of U.S. Zionist journalism could not bear what he heard. In a rebuttal, he unleashed an acerbic attack against Buchanan. His weapon of argument, so to speak, was the stale and trite accusation of "antisemitism".
Whining, Rosenthal twisted Buchanan's clear words and went on to imply that Buchanan was in effect engaging in an "anti-Jewish" tirade. He re-interpreted Buchanan's words and cast them in a standard Zionistic fashion. He wrote that Buchanan's intention was ''The Jews are trying to drag us into war. Only Jews want war. Israeli Jews want war to save Israel's hide. American Jews who talk of military action against Iraq want war because it would suit Israeli interests. They are willing to spill American blood for Israeli interests." [3]
By inserting the word, "Jew" in his reply, Rosenthal and the New York Times behind him spat on the face of U.S. political reality under the tight grip of Zionism. We need not waste our breath on Rosenthal's petty tactic. His clear objective was to distract from the central issue, which is, Buchanan's opposition to the planned war against Iraq was unrelated to the religious denomination of those who were promoting it. Rather he was unmistakably referring to their political identity.
Still, Buchanan was honest. He pointed the finger to Israel and its "Amen corner" because that was the truth. The fact that most Israelis and "Amen corners" happened to be of Jewish faith was nonissue. To conclude, it is evident that Buchanan, a dreamer of an American "republic" not "empire", could not stand by idle while seeing the United States sheepishly fastened to the yoke of Zionism and gutlessly prostrating before a tiny settler state, Israel.
Buchanan did not stop there. Truthful and resolute, he dared to describe in categorical terms the pitiful condition of the U.S. Congress vis-à-vis Israel and American Jewish Zionists. He dubbed it as "An Israeli-occupied territory" [4]. Buchanan powerfully hit the target in such a way that countless cowardly American politicians would dare not think, let alone say. Notice that Buchanan had placed Israel before its U.S. "amen corner". I view this as a statement. He clearly implied that Israel is the primary decision maker. Did that also imply that U.S. Zionist groups (amen corner) are puppets moved by Israel? Most likely, if so, which has more power in setting the U.S. world agenda and policies: Israel or American Jewish Zionists? Dialectically, the answer should be Israel by means of its "amen corner'.
Now, in December 1991, Jim Lehrer (a former co-anchor of The Macneil/Lehrer NewsHour, and later sole anchor of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer ) interviewed Pat Buchanan. It is important to mention, that Jim Lehrer has monopolized a significant position funded by federal tax money for over 30 years starting in 1975. Is that an issue? Yes, and to debate it, the following applies. Whenever a specific group of people, be they Christian, Muslim, Jewish, atheist, duopoly party apparatchiks, etc., keeps an important public post for such a long duration, the implication is unescapable: the group controls that post because of its embedded importance. . . . But more important, they have the power to keep it.
Nonetheless, when a specific group continues to hold, throughout time, important positions inside public corporations, agencies, and branches of the U.S. government, a paradigm emerges. Either the group controls said corporations directly—that is why it is able to do what they want. Or, it controls them indirectly by controlling first who appoints the board of trustees and sets corporate policies and appointees. At any rate, considering this type of control, the assumption that such group has power over the government and its public corporations is reasonable.
Additionally, the issue of monopoly of news is critical in another respect. It means that someone within the context of U.S. imperialism has decided that the U.S. public discourse must conform to predetermined patterns. In these patterns, issues such as Israel, Zionism, Palestine, U.S. imperialism in the Middle East, wars, etc., are designed to move only on linear grounds without ever touching the core of the matter.
Before continuing, I must state that Lehrer's political views are not a subject to discuss vis-à-vis his program. For one, the NewsHour program is not about the personal views of presenters—it is about information prepared for the public from a public corporation. Second, whether Lehrer had sympathies for Israel or Zionism is nonissue because most viewers expect neutral discussions regardless of who delivers them. Nevertheless, a situation such as this has a consequence affecting the special relations between the narrated news/comments, the people who deliver them, and the people who hear them.
Firstly, planning news delivery to attain specific results is a good technique for those in the business of indoctrination. Psychology and perception are the areas of expertise that news planners depend on to disseminate certain news and analyses. To be sure, these planners know that most viewers have no special or personal stakes on events happening in other countries. Still, the immediate consequence that controlled news and commentaries could generate is easy to predict. They also know they can seep to the viewers pre-conceived ideas through pleasant dialogs, affable manners, appearance of neutrality, and clever circumlocutions.
To be fair to Lehrer, he was consistent in making intelligent questions. However, he was also consistent at doing something else. He would calibrate his questions in such a way as not to reveal new truths or solicit critical replies that could go beyond boundaries deliberately conceived so as not to be crossed. It is pragmatic to say that the observance of these boundaries would nicely serve the Zionist and imperialist discourse. In essence, a practice thusly followed is a preemptive mechanism of control cloaked as a professional presentation.
Now, in his interview, Lehrer played dumb when he asked Buchanan about his bold characterization of the Congress. He phrased his question as follows, "You have also said that Congress is an Israeli-occupied territory. Now, what do you mean by that ?" [Italics are mine]
COMMENT: Semantically as much as politically, Buchanan's figure of speech was terse and unequivocal. He plainly meant that the Congress observes Israel's agenda and acts accordingly. There was no need for Buchanan to say anything further because what he said had (and still has) basis in verifiable facts. With a question such as, "what do you mean by that" Lehrer was not seeking a rational reply from Buchanan. The form and content of the question had the objective of wanting to entrap Buchanan, make him retract, or at least contradict himself to show inconsistency. In essence, Lehrer had simply tried to deny that Israel controls the Congress through its "amen corner" because his "what do you mean" indicated astonishment rather than request for explanation. [5]
To wrap up the issue, without exclusion, any denial of the Jewish Zionist control of the United States is a farce. Take Abraham H. Foxman of the infamous Anti-Defamation League as an example. Foxman authored a master‑deceptive propaganda book that he called, " The Deadliest Lies : The Israeli Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control. [Italics are mine]. First, Foxman lied. He knew very well that the Jewish [Zionist] control is not a myth but a pervasive reality. Second, but most important, the problem is not the abstract "Jewish control" but the specific—Jewish Zionist control. This can be explained using a current universal truth: hundreds of thousands of Jews from all nationalities actively oppose Zionism on political, religious, ethical, historical, and ideological grounds.
Foxman's denial means one of two things. Either he is a parochial charlatan when the subject is the undisputed power of American Jewish Zionism, or he is very ignorant of the history of Zionism , which is impossible. Either way, Foxman's business is propaganda, demagogy, and deception. Incidentally, Foxman's denial looks very similar to what some Arabs do in the Middle East. Villagers—but even some city folks—try to fend off "envy" by following an eon-old superstition. They fix a drawing on a wall in their shops or homes showing the palm of an open hand with an open eye in its center. It appears that Foxman and his associates have their own superstition. By decrying the "deadliest lies" against American Jewish Zionists, they try to fend off the accusation or the "envy" that Jews—specifically, Jewish Zionists—have power and influence.
Of substance, did Foxman not learn or did anyone inform him about what John Foster Dulles told William Knowland (a pro-Zionist senator from California) back in February 1957? In an exchange about the proposed sanctions to get Israel out of Egyptian territory occupied by Israel in the Suez War, Dulles pronounced these prophetic words, "We cannot have all our policies made in Jerusalem . . ." [6]. That was in 1957. Today, all those who deride or deny the charge that Israel has a say on U.S. foreign policy and wars in the Middle East must prove that those who are making this charge are misinformed or just lying.
Interestingly, years after Buchanan made that statement, the successive events proved his sharp assessment and political perspicacity. Two people vindicated his characterization of Capitol Hills as an Israeli-occupied territory" and both used his words to make the point. The first is a former CIA officer Philip Giraldi, and the second is Philip Weiss, founder of MondoWeiss Website. In an article he wrote in 2011, Giraldi pointed to the Congress as, " It’s Still Occupied Territory ". Weiss titled a piece he wrote in 2015 as such: " Capitol Hill — still Israeli-occupied territory ".
At this point, do American Jewish Zionists control the United States? Do they control it as polity or only the political system? Do they have real influence in setting U.S. foreign policy and wars against the Arab and Muslim nations? Or maybe all this talk is no more than baseless allegations?
NEXT
Part 2: Discussion
Part 3: Interview with Francis Boyle
Part 4: Interview with James Petras
Part 5: Interview with Kim Petersen
NOTES
Jimmy carter, Speaking frankly about Israel and Palestine , Los Angeles Times, 8 December 2006 Pat Buchanan, The McLaughlin Group, Aug 26, 1990, Quote: d in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, What They Said: Israel and Its "Amen Corner" , February 1992 ON MY MIND; Forgive Them Not , The New York Times, 14 September 1990 Quote: d in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Is Congress an Israeli-Occupied Territory ?, July 1995 The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, What They Said: Israel and Its "Amen Corner" , Feb. 1992 David Tal, editor, The 1956 War: Collusion and Rivalry in the Middle East, Frank Cass Publishers, 2001, p. 40 | 0 |
LOS ANGELES — The first full year of the Affordable Care Act brought historic increases in coverage for workers and others who have long been left out of the health care system, a New York Times analysis has found. Immigrants of all backgrounds — including more than a million legal residents who are not citizens — had the sharpest rise in coverage rates. Hispanics, a coveted group of voters this election year, accounted for nearly a third of the increase in adults with insurance. That was the single largest share of any racial or ethnic group, far greater than their 17 percent share of the population. workers, who did not have enough clout in the labor market to demand insurance, saw sharp increases. Coverage rates jumped for cooks, dishwashers, waiters, as well as for hairdressers and cashiers. Minorities, who disproportionately worked in jobs, had large gains. The health care law was one of the most bitterly contested pieces of legislation in the country’s history. It remains controversial because of its costs to both taxpayers and insurance customers. The high premiums and high deductibles of many plans still make coverage a crushing financial burden for some families. And the law is not close to achieving the goal of universal coverage, in part because 19 states have declined to expand their Medicaid programs for the poor, an option the Supreme Court granted them in a landmark 2012 case. Nevertheless, the Times’s analysis shows that by the end of that first full year, 2014, so many people gained coverage that it halted the expansion of the gap between the haves and the in the American health insurance system, a striking change at a time when disparities between rich and poor are growing in many areas. “The law has clearly reduced broad measures of inequality,” said David Cutler, an economics professor at Harvard, who served in the Clinton administration and advised the 2008 Obama campaign on health issues. “These are people who blend into the background of the economy. They are cleaning your hotel room, making your sandwich. The law has helped this population enormously. ” Until now, the impact of the law has been measured mostly in broad numbers of newly insured people — about 20 million by the administration’s most recent account. But the Times’s analysis of census data from 2014, the first year the heart of the law was in full effect, provides a finely detailed look at who the newly insured actually are — by race, education, occupation, immigration status, and family structure. The analysis shows how the law lifted some of the most vulnerable citizens. workers gained insurance at a higher rate than workers, and people with high school degrees gained it at double the rate of college graduates. Adults living in households headed by relatives, such as siblings or cousins — often a marker of economic distress — gained insurance at double the rate of those in traditional households. The law’s passage, without a single Republican vote, capped decades of efforts to enact a broader health insurance system. Medicaid and Medicare passed in the 1960s, but did little to help workers who did not receive insurance through their jobs. Presidents Nixon, Carter and Clinton all tried and failed to win approval for expanded coverage, and the number of uninsured Americans grew to nearly a fifth of adults under the age of 65 by 2010, the year the Affordable Care Act passed. The findings from the census data could inform the national dialogue, especially in this election year. Hispanics are a powerful voting force and the law is viewed favorably in Hispanic neighborhoods. But whether the sharp increase in coverage rates for Hispanics will translate into votes for Democrats who supported the law, or whether some Republicans might temper their vows to repeal it, is not clear. And the fact that so many who benefited under the law were not citizens (or voters) — 1. 2 million out of the total 8. 7 million who got health insurance in 2014 — could set off a new round of debate in a year when immigration has become a deeply polarizing issue. About 60 percent of those noncitizens were Hispanic, mostly natives of Mexico and Central America who had been living in the United States for decades. Another third were Asian, mostly newer arrivals living in states like California, New York and Texas. Illegal immigrants are not eligible for insurance under the law, but legal immigrants can qualify for subsidies in the insurance exchanges and those who have been in the country for more than five years can qualify for Medicaid. The vast majority of the country’s 11 million illegal immigrants, about 70 percent of whom are Hispanic, still lack coverage, said Mark Hugo Lopez, director of Hispanic research at the Pew Research Center. Though the law has withstood two Supreme Court rulings that would have undermined its central elements, it continues to face challenges. It requires most Americans to have health insurance and gives subsidies to those who cannot afford it. Even so, many still cannot afford policies. While it expanded Medicaid to cover more of the country’s poor, the Supreme Court allowed states to opt out and 19 have, leaving millions of people still uncovered. But in neighborhoods like this one in South Los Angeles, a historically poor patch of the city dotted with palm trees, small ranch houses and home to a growing Hispanic population, the law is having a big effect. “From the vantage point of the poor and working poor, Obamacare has been profound,” said Jim Mangia, president of the St. John’s Well Child and Family Center, a federally funded health clinic in South Los Angeles that has enrolled 18, 000 new patients under the law, nearly all of them Hispanic or black and the vast majority in Medicaid. The clinic reported a 44 percent increase in cervical cancer screenings, a 25 percent increase in tobacco cessation therapy, and a 22 percent increase in the share of patients with controlled hypertension since 2014, the result, he said, of more patients having insurance. One new patient, Angela Cruz, 60, is a typical example of a winner under the law. A legal immigrant who is not a citizen, she came to this country from El Salvador in 1990. She had never had health insurance in her 25 years of working in the United States, most recently as a nanny. She stitched together medical care through emergency rooms, free clinics and home remedies. When she needed to pay for medicine for a painful bout of kidney stones, she stopped buying meat. Then she got coverage under the health law’s expansion of Medicaid in California. Now, she said, “I don’t have the stress of wondering — can I pay this — when sometimes I didn’t have anything to pay it with. ” Hispanics remain the least insured Americans, with only 67 percent having coverage in 2014, in part because so many illegal immigrants are uninsured. Gains for blacks were muted because they disproportionately live in states that chose not to expand Medicaid. About 60 percent of poor blacks live in states that did not expand Medicaid. While the share of poor blacks covered by Medicaid did rise by two percentage points in those states, the rate rose by six points in states that expanded the program. In all, minorities gained more than whites, making up of the increase in insured adults across the country, and 70 percent of the increase in private insurance. Minority men who work as groundskeepers and janitors saw substantial gains, rising to 59 percent insured, up from 51 percent in 2013. Hispanic male construction workers rose to 43 percent insured, from 36 percent in 2013. One such worker, Sergio Ortega, 51, a legal immigrant from Mexico who had never been insured before getting covered by Medicaid in 2014, said making a doctor’s appointment seemed unthinkable without insurance, so he often simply ignored his health problems. Several years ago, he started feeling tired, a condition that eventually drove him to quit his job demolishing buildings and start selling fruit from a street cart. By the time he sought treatment through his new coverage and discovered he had diabetes, his lower leg had to be amputated. “I realized it was getting really bad because my foot started turning purple,” said Mr. Ortega, who is a patient at St. John’s. Perhaps the biggest unmet promise of the law is that many it was supposed to help still cannot afford insurance. Alberto Torres, 50, a driver for a garment company in Los Angeles who could not afford insurance before the law, had signed up for a plan in 2014 for $41 a month. But this year his monthly premium jumped to $106 — too much, he said, for his meager salary. “I’m feeling not so good,” he said recently, waiting in line for help to look for a less expensive plan. High deductibles are another big obstacle. “If you are living paycheck to paycheck and have nothing in the bank, insurance with a $3, 000 deductible might feel like no insurance at all,” said Larry Levitt, a senior vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation. Having insurance does not necessarily mean better health, but experts hope it could start to ease some of the worst disparities that have kept the United States close to the bottom of health rankings of rich countries. Mr. Ortega has been fitted for a prosthetic leg. He is still learning how to use it. “Now I don’t worry,” he said. “It’s a security, a comfort that I feel. ” | 1 |
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The printers buzzed to life in every firehouse in New York City last week, and each spit out an identical bulletin. It bore the worst sort of news the Fire Department must relay to its members, the Code . A death in the line of duty. “With regret, the department announces the death of Battalion Chief Lawrence T. Stack,” the note read, “as a result of injuries sustained while operating at Manhattan Box . ” That box number was grimly familiar to all firefighters. It was followed by the time of the call from that box — 8:47 a. m. — and the date: “September 11, 2001. ” The announcement and the “four fives,” as the code is known, had not, until now, been made for Chief Stack for an important reason: His remains had not been found. For his family, this is the end of a frustrating and ultimately fruitless wait of nearly 15 years. Chief Stack, 58, had served almost 33 years. His funeral will be held Friday at SS. Philip and James Church in St. James on Long Island, with the expansive pageantry and huge turnout of firefighters and officers that accompany all departmental ceremonies. Its timing this week, alongside the first funerals of the shooting victims in Orlando, Fla. is accidental, but weighted, bringing an added poignancy. As the country mourns the latest victims of a terrorist attack on its soil, a funeral in New York lays to rest another. Chief Stack’s family came to learn where and how he perished that day. But they put off the funeral, hoping that some trace of him would be identified from what was recovered at ground zero. “Weeks turned into months,” said Lt. Michael Stack, 46, one of Chief Stack’s two sons, both firefighters. “Months turned into years. Two years turned into five, turned into 10. Now it’s 15. ” The Catholic funeral Mass requires the presence of remains of the deceased. This requirement was satisfied, unknowingly, by Chief Stack, in an act of generosity 18 months before his death. “Mom came home and said: ‘There’s a little boy in East Islip and he has cancer. I’m going to donate blood. He needs it,’” Lieutenant Stack recalled. Chief Stack joined his wife, Theresa. He added his name to the bone marrow registry as a possible donor on March 6, 2000, and, in doing so, gave a blood sample for type matching. Chief Stack’s marrow was not a match for an immediate transplant, and the blood sample was put into cold storage. On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Chief Stack was in his office in Brooklyn near the waterfront, filling out a report on a recent fatal fire that brought three Code transmissions. That fire, in an Astoria warehouse on June 17, 2001, became known for the day it happened: the Father’s Day fire. Word arrived at the office immediately after the first plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center. Chief Stack and others hurried to the roof with binoculars. They saw the second plane strike the south tower. “He lowered his binoculars and said, ‘Guys, I think they’re going to need us,’” Lieutenant Stack said, recalling what he has been told of that day. Chief Stack and others hurried to the scene. He wound up in the lobby of the Marriott World Trade Center, which was being evacuated. Wreckage collapsed into the lobby, nearly striking Chief Stack and leaving him momentarily trapped, his coat stuck. He wiggled free and left the coat behind. It would be recovered three months later. “A lieutenant came up to him and said, ‘Can you help me? I was with someone, and I can’t find him,’” Lieutenant Stack said. “They go back to this collapsed mess and start calling his name out. ” They heard a faint voice in the rubble — the missing man, a firefighter. The lieutenant grabbed his ankles, and Chief Stack grabbed the lieutenant’s, and they pulled the firefighter out. “My dad is like, ‘It’s time to leave, we’ve got to get out of here,’” Lieutenant Stack said. They stepped outside. “You can see bodies jumping, falling. My dad said, ‘There’s the command post. Go there. ’” Those firefighters, who lived to tell this to Lieutenant Stack, did so. Chief Stack stopped. He had come across a fallen businessman from Iowa, injured. The firefighters looked back as the north tower fell. “The last thing they remember seeing is my dad on one knee with this man,” Lieutenant Stack said. “Staying with him. ” Lieutenant Stack hurried to the World Trade Center site that day. “I came up, and I go, ‘Oh my God,’” he said. “It was just so vast. So big. ” He knew from the accounts of others that his father was dead, and he returned to the pit, day after day. “Dig and look, search, hope,” he said. “That’s what I had in mind. I’m going to find him. ” Nothing. “I always wanted that department phone call,” saying remains had been found, he said. The family visited a memorial site in Hauppauge, N. Y. on his birthday and sang to him. But it wasn’t like visiting a grave. Finally, last year, Mrs. Stack said enough. “She drew a line in the sand where she said, ‘We’re not doing it past 15 years,’” Lieutenant Stack said. The Office of Chief Medical Examiner has identified 65 percent of remains recovered from the World Trade Center. The rest is damaged enough that current identification technology is of no use, and remains in storage. The New York Blood Center examined its list of donors after Sept. 11, and discovered that 143 firefighters who died that day had signed up to be marrow donors, most of them while still in training as rookies. The center notified the families, and set aside their blood samples over the years, it has given the small vials of blood to some relatives. Some put the vials in their freezers at home. Some bury them at funerals, as with Firefighter Michael Paul Ragusa in 2003. Mrs. Stack and her sons visited the blood center last year. The center located Chief Stack’s blood in a storage facility in Minnesota. The vial will be buried on Friday at Calverton National Cemetery in recognition of Chief Stack’s service in the United States Navy. “We will have someplace to go,” Mrs. Stack, 71, said on Thursday. The family chose June 17 because it would have been the Stacks’ 49th wedding anniversary. Coincidentally, it is the 15th anniversary of the Father’s Day fire, the event front and center on Chief Stack’s mind before the first plane hit. It is the first funeral for a firefighter killed that day in 10 years. “My mother, she just wanted a nice, small Catholic Mass,” Lieutenant Stack said. He and his brother, Brian, took this idea to Commissioner Daniel A. Nigro in May. “He said, ‘We’re doing it the right way,’” Lieutenant Stack said. “‘We’re going to have a funeral. ’” There would be full departmental honors. “Brian and I looked at each other like, ‘Mom’s not going to like this,’” Lieutenant Stack said. “But in the weeks since, it feels right. ” He noted the timing of the Orlando massacre. “Who knew the war was going to come to us on Sept. 11?” he said. “No one knew the war was coming. And then we wake up June 12 and find out the war is still here. ” | 1 |
By Jason Easley on Thu, Oct 27th, 2016 at 12:16 pm Rep. Paul Ryan could be out of a job after the election, as divided House Republicans are already plotting to fire their Speaker if Trump's defeat triggers a big enough loss of House seats. Share on Twitter Print This Post
Rep. Paul Ryan could be out of a job after the election, as divided House Republicans are already plotting to fire their Speaker if Trump’s defeat triggers a big enough loss of House seats.
If Democrats pick up 15 House seats or more, Speaker Ryan is going to have a major problem because his job will be in jeopardy. Politico reported that Ryan’s enemies in the House Freedom Caucus are divided over whether or not to support him.
Conservative House Republicans are plotting with one another and openly pining for Ryan’s ouster because he refuses to change the House rules to all more conservative legislation to be passed. The Hill is also reporting that conservativeHouse Republicans are deeply divided on keeping Ryan, but Donald Trump could be the wild card that mobilizing an opposition effort to the Speaker, “The businessman has repeatedly criticized Ryan’s leadership and was stung after the Speaker said he would not longer defend Trump after a 2005 tape emerged in which the GOP nominee speaks lewdly about groping and kissing women. Win or lose on Nov. 8, Trump could put pressure on House Republicans to oppose Ryan in a speakership contest.”
Ryan is certain to be leading a smaller House majority in January. The size of Trump’s defeat on election day will help decide how many seats Republicans lose.
Eight of the nine House Republicans who cast votes against Ryan for Speaker initially will still be around to vote against him again in January.
Those close to Ryan say that he would step down as Speaker before getting into a protracted fight with his own party, but the walls are closing in on Speaker Ryan.
The damage Trump is causing isn’t limited to their White House dreams. Trump may also cost Paul Ryan his job as Speaker of the House. | 0 |
PHILADELPHIA — Hillary Clinton stepped into history. Her daughter, Chelsea, lent a hand. And supporters of Bernie Sanders packed up their signs, some of his admirers still unmoved by Mrs. Clinton as the clock ran out on the Democratic National Convention. Our takeaways from the convention’s final night: Bill Clinton took pains this week to cast his wife as a “change maker. ” You will not hear Mrs. Clinton object. But under the brightest spotlight of an election brimming with outsider fervor — powering Donald J. Trump to the Republican nomination and Mr. Sanders to unexpected success — Mrs. Clinton presented herself as something different. She is a creature of the system and unapologetic about her résumé. “Sometimes the people at this podium are new to the national stage,” she said, preparing to tick off her many titles. “I am not one of those people. ” It is a gambit premised in part on her atypical Republican opponent — and a hope that promises of incremental change might sound more palatable when the alternative is viewed as truly dangerous. “I sweat the details,” Mrs. Clinton said. Voters might not. But she is betting, at least, that they think someone should. Demonstrations inside and outside the convention hall this week made clear that Mrs. Clinton had some work to do to persuade at least some supporters of Mr. Sanders. On Thursday, she seemed to acknowledge as much, quickly addressing them directly with a simple message: I hear you. “Your cause is our cause,” she said, thanking Mr. Sanders for placing issues of economic and social justice “front and center, where they belong. ” Total unity has been elusive, and could remain so. As Mrs. Clinton accepted the nomination, some Sanders delegates stood occasionally booing or silently protesting. During the Republican primary race, Mr. Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigration appeared to do nothing but help at the polls, even as rivals objected with varying degrees of outrage. Democrats appear convinced they can win the argument among the wider electorate. And they may have found their most potent voice: Khizr Khan, an American Muslim whose son, Humayun S. M. Khan, was killed in Iraq. In a stirring address, his stoicism building to a controlled simmer, Mr. Khan challenged Mr. Trump on behalf of “patriotic American Muslims” everywhere. “You have sacrificed nothing,” Mr. Khan said, his wife standing silently beside him, “and no one. ” For organizers, the choice to showcase Mr. Khan amounted to a pointed dare: Are these people not American enough for you, Mr. Trump? Mr. Trump has presented himself as something of a plan, arguing that he is the lone force standing between the United States and dystopia. Republican leaders have accused Democrats of giving terrorism issues short shrift in Philadelphia. But as Thursday’s slate made clear, Mrs. Clinton’s team believes that Mr. Trump, with his scattershot defense policies and often erratic statements, has supplied an opportunity. For much of the evening, matters of public safety took center stage, with testimony from a retired Marine general — to chants of “U. S. A. !” — a Texas sheriff and the relatives of fallen officers. It was consistent with a theme of the week: No presumed Republican motif — from an emphasis on national defense to conspicuous invocations of faith to warm quotations of Ronald Reagan — is safe from Democratic encroachment in the age of Trump. In her presidential runs, Mrs. Clinton has at times struggled with how, and how often, to highlight her gender. No more. First Chelsea Clinton paid tribute to her maternal compassion, saying that Mrs. Clinton’s own mother would be proud. Then Mrs. Clinton, calling herself “my mother’s daughter and my daughter’s mother,” stopped to cheer her nomination as “a milestone in our nation’s march toward a more perfect union. ” There is a risk in turning off male voters, with whom she has fared poorly in surveys. Mrs. Clinton argued explicitly that they, too, had a stake in her success, whether or not they recognized it. “When any barrier falls in America,” she said, “it clears the way for everyone. ” | 1 |
Topics: Harry Potter , Culture Sunday, 13 November 2016
Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Karen Bradley, has been asked by MPs to reconsider approval of the printing of J.K. Rowling's latest novel, 'Harry Potter and the Nipple Pumps'.
"OK", explained the Culture Secretary, "BDSM is spreading, I guess, especially if you look to Westminster, and they've all grown up, and I can see Rowling's open mind here. Hagrid as perpetrator, or the executor, of bondage ceremonies in his little bungalow. And the discipline, dominance and submission rituals exerted by teaching staff. However, sadism and masochism on the part of pupils is somewhat disturbing though I would like to see the screen version for assessment purposes only, of course...."
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is taken to a new level by Rowling, with Hagrid tormenting and torturing his beloved schoolkids, and Ron Weasly being forced to solitary confinement: he has to watch endless repeats of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Sadism in the extreme.
Hermine Granger, stretched out with wrist and ankle restraints, is subjected to speeches by Donald Trump and Tony Blair, while Harry Potter is revealed as a masochistic freak, locking himeslf into a time warp zone with Gary Glitter.
"It's pretty hefty stuff, but....well, I like it," commented Bradley. "It's different. I mean, we all had to handle Nigel Farage for months, so this is really nothing in particular. And, you should see what we get up to at our Cabinet meetings " Make T. Loaf's day - give this story five thumbs-up (there's no need to register , the thumbs are just down there!) | 0 |
WASHINGTON, Conn. — In 1999, a television writer named Amy vacationed at the Mayflower Grace, a inn built high on a hill here. In true Hollywood fashion, Ms. returned to her hometown, Los Angeles, and from her brief visit spun Stars Hollow — a charming New England small town with its own resident troubadour. Stars Hollow would become the setting for “Gilmore Girls,” her cultishly popular dramedy that ran for seven seasons on the WB (and later the CW). Last weekend, more than 1, 300 fans, most of them women, many of them mothers and daughters, descended on this rural town in western Connecticut (population: 3, 500) for the first Gilmore Girls Fan Fest. They had come from Oklahoma and Minnesota and as far away as Brazil — and paid as much as $250 per ticket — to see the “real” Stars Hollow and meet some of the actors who play its residents. In a way, they wanted to do the impossible: to experience in waking life a dream town built on a studio backlot. In Stars Hollow, for instance, it would not have been chilly and pouring rain, and the community green would not have become a mud field. There would have been a gazebo in the center of town, something Washington Depot, one of the villages within the town, conspicuously lacks. But faced with these and other realities, the attendees cheerily persevered. They stood holding umbrellas in a line that stretched clear out the door of the Hickory Stick Bookshop to get signed copies of the cookbook “Eat Like a Gilmore” by Kristi Carlson. They queued up in droves on the plaza to get a selfie with the character Jackson (Jackson Douglas). They gathered in front of the stately town hall building, where three Gilmore cast members made an impromptu appearance on the steps to sing an acoustic rendition of “Where You Lead,” the show’s theme song. Brittany White, 31, a schoolteacher, drove two hours from Rhode Island with her mother, Nancy. She was carrying a coffee mug she made that read “Luke’s,” a reference to the greasy spoon diner run by the show’s resident heartthrob, Luke Danes. Both women were on a high from having just met Kirk, another Stars Hollow resident. “This is Stars Hollow for us,” Brittany White said. “I keep saying that little food market is like Doose’s Market. Even the hardware store” — the Washington Supply Company — “is amazing. ” Sean Gunn, who played Kirk, was one of 20 or so actors and crew members to fly in for the fan fest (he hosted a cat adoption at 9 a. m. on Saturday). He believes the lasting popularity of “Gilmore Girls,” which went off the air nine years ago but will return next month with new episodes on Netflix, is due in part to the community togetherness it presents. Stars Hollow, Mr. Gunn said, is “an idealized version of the way a small town could function. ” The town of Lorelai Gilmore, a single mom, and her daughter, Rory, has a walkable main street lined with businesses, a manicured village square, an soda shop, a cozy inn, a decent public high school, a “Churchogogue” for both Christian and Jewish worshipers, and a citizenry of quirky, literate, engaged residents who participate in local government. It is a civic formula that has proved elusive for fans who have sought a version to move to. Amy Do, a videographer and graphic designer who lives in the Bay Area, spent a week two years ago around Connecticut, including in Washington Depot, a quest she chronicled on her blog, Finding Stars Hollow. “I went during Christmastime because I thought it would give me a good magical feel with the towns blanketed in snow,” Ms. Do said, adding that each place she visited lacked some crucial element. “I noticed these main streets had a couple of boutiques here and there, but there wasn’t a diner where you could get a burger,” she said. “Or there weren’t people walking around. In Stars Hollow, you always see people walking around. ” (Indeed, they’re called extras.) Vanessa Marano, another former cast member who was at the fan fest, is aware of the illusory quality of Stars Hollow whenever she auditions on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, Calif. where the set remains more or less intact. “It does look like a small town,” Ms. Marano said, “but you know you’re on a set because there’s equipment everywhere. ” Washington Depot does not have a strollable main street or a diner either, but since it is where Ms. stayed, it was the natural setting for a gathering of the Gilmores. The festival was dreamed up by Jennie Whitaker and her husband, Marcus, fans of the series who run a public relations firm based in Austin, Tex. As frequently happens in Connecticut, they were stuck in traffic near Hartford during a road trip this past summer and got to wondering about Washington Depot and why it had never honored its claim to fame. Back home, Ms. Whitaker contacted the town’s board of selectmen and soon found herself sitting in Washington Depot’s town hall and meeting with its community leaders, many of whom were men over 65 who had never watched the show. “There are many cults to which I have been drawn, but this was not one,” said Dan Sherr, 75, a resident who met with the Whitakers and supported their idea. While the head selectman, Mark Lyon, eventually gave the Whitakers approval for the festival, he and the others were doubtful that anyone would show up. There were also some residents opposed to the festival altogether. But “we sold out the event in 10½ hours,” Ms. Whitaker said. “People have wanted something like this for so long. ” As if aware they were suddenly extras in a large production, many of the town’s residents, particularly its savvier business owners, threw themselves into the festival. Jim Kelly turned over his law firm office to serve as a media hub and cast green room, while Liz Page offered free homemade chili and cornbread outside her gift shop, Newbury Place. Thanks to his resemblance to Luke, Ms. Page’s brawny husband, Alan, found himself wildly popular as he manned the slow cooker. Jay Combs, an owner of the Washington Supply Company, set up a Formica table with place settings and transformed a corner of the hardware store into Luke’s Diner. All day, the shop owner greeted Lorelais and Rorys, borrowing their smartphones and trudging outside in the rain to snap souvenir pictures of them through the window. “The fans are nuts, but not in a crazy way,” Mr. Combs said. He added that “because I’m under siege, so to speak,” he and his wife, like many town residents, have been watching “Gilmore Girls” and are on Season 3 (the year Rory graduates from high school). Throughout the day, Mr. Combs did hear rumblings from some fans who were disappointed that Washington Depot did not look more like Stars Hollow. A theory circulated that Ms. had taken aspects of several nearby towns (the gazebo in New Milford, the main street of Kent) and Frankensteined the mythic community. It’s a likely truth that Ms. Do, who did not attend the festival, had already discovered during her road trip. As in a wholesome TV show, though, in the end she learned a lesson. “It told me the only way to visit Stars Hollow,” Ms. Do said, “is to play an episode of ‘Gilmore Girls. ’” | 1 |
Iran announced on Thursday that another underground missile production facility is up and running, as it vowed to continue developing missile technology despite warnings from the United States and United Nations. [“Iran’s third underground factory has been built by the Guards in recent years … We will continue to further develop our missile capabilities forcefully,” said Iranian air forces commander Amirali Hajizadeh, as quoted by the UK Daily Mail. “It is natural that our enemies America and the Zionist regime are angry with our missile programme because they want Iran to be in a weak position,” Hajizadeh added, referring to the United States and Israel. Reuters notes Hajizadeh stated the new facility would be Iran’s third underground missile factory. He said it was constructed over the course of “recent years,” but evidently did not specify exactly when it began producing weapons. “Along with improving our defense capabilities, we will continue our missile tests and missile production. The next missile to be produced is a missile,” the Iranian commander said. The new missile series will be named “Dezful,” after the site of the largest tank battle in the War. According to Hajizadeh, the name is meant to convey Iran’s commitment to avoiding ground wars by achieving missile superiority over its regional rivals. Iran’s Mehr news agency quotes Hajizadeh boasting of Iran’s in missile production, and also its advances in drone technology and electronic warfare. “We will never forget the United States supported Saddam’s Baath regime in its war against Iran, shot down our passenger flight, backed MKO, created ISIL and fueled war in Syria, Iraq and Yemen,” he declared. The passenger flight he referred to was Iran Air Flight 655, shot down by a U. S. Navy missile cruiser in 1988. “MKO” is the Khalq Organization, an insurgent organization opposed to the government of Iran. A 2015 broadcast on Iranian television showed a network of tunnels with “ missiles on the back of trucks,” which was supposedly one of hundreds of underground bases supplied by Iran’s missile factories. Sky News notes the announcement of this new missile factory came only days after the White House called upon newly Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to end Iran’s ballistic missile program. | 1 |
آخر إنسان حي منذ عام 1899!
تاريخ النشر: 26.10.2016 | 05:00 GMT | انسخ الرابط http://ar.rt.com/i5em أصبحت الإيطالية إيما مورانو رسميا أكبر معمرة على وجه الأرض بعد وفاة الأمريكية سوزانا موشات جونز، كونها تبلغ من العمر 116عاما.
ولدت إيما في منطقة بييمونتي بشمال ايطاليا يوم 29 نوفمبر، 1899، وهي الآن تعيش في بلدة صغيرة على ضفاف بحيرة بالقرب من الحدود السويسرية، ورغم أن عمرها 116 عاما إلا أنها في حالة صحية جيدة.
وقال الأطباء المشرفون على الحالة الصحية للمعمرة الإيطالية إن سبب طول عمرها يعود إلى نظامها الغذائي وحصولها على قدر كاف من النوم، حيث قالت إنها تتناول البسكويت مع الحليب أو الماء في وجبة الإفطار، ثم تتناول خلال اليوم بيضتين إحداهما نيئة والأخرى مطبوخة، طبقا لتعليمات الطبيب الذي نصحها بذلك بعد أن أخبرها أنها مصابة بالأنيميا وهي في العشرين من عمرها، أما وجبة الغداء فتتكون يوميا من "الباستا" الإيطالية مع اللحم المفروم، وفي العشاء تكتفي بكوب من الحليب بدلا من وجبة.
ولم يكن زواج إيما سعيدا حيث انفصلت عن زوجها في عام 1938 ولم تتزوج أبدا بعد ذلك، قائلة إنها لم تكن ترغب في أن يسيطر عليها أي شخص، ولم تتقاعد من عملها إلا عند بلوغها سن 75 .
المصدر: "انديبندنت" | 0 |
A bar in Portland, Oregon has offered a lifetime supply of free whiskey to any customer that punches White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon. [A patron of the Paydirt Bar in Portland, Oregon recently posted a photo of one of the bar’s receipts to Twitter, noting that the bottom of the receipt featured the proclamation, “Punch Steve Bannon, Get Free Whiskey For Life. ” The tweet, which earned thousands of likes and retweets, has since been deleted, but a photo of the receipt can be seen below and a link to an archive of the tweet still exists. The Paydirt Bar has a history of posting messages to their various social channels. A tweet from the bar’s Twitter account in 2015 links to an Instagram post which reads: ” “Tonight’s whiskey pairing: ‘Thanksgiving Dinner Conversation With Your Racist Uncle About Donald Trump’ (a shot of Wild Turkey 101 and a cold tall boy of @olympia_beer) #paydirtbar #pdxdrinks #movingtocanada” Tonight’s whiskey pairing:”Thanksgiving Dinner Conversation With Your Racist Uncle About Donald … https: . — Paydirt (@paydirtpdx) November 25, 2015, Tonight’s whiskey pairing: ”Thanksgiving Dinner Conversation With Your Racist Uncle About Donald Trump” (a shot of Wild Turkey 101 and a cold tall boy of @olympia_beer) #paydirtbar #pdxdrinks #movingtocanada, A post shared by Paydirt (@paydirtbar) on Nov 25, 2015 at 2:30pm PST, Breitbart News reached out to the Paydirt Bar to ask why it is that they offer prizes for the assault of Steve Bannon and whether or not they had offered similar prizes for other political figures. In response, a representative for the bar stated: The text is a series of comments that we leave at the bottom of our receipts. We change the receipts nearly daily and they touch on all sorts of politicians on both sides of the aisle, plus (mostly) our beloved Portland Trail Blazers. We’re surprised as anyone that these image went viral since it’s clearly a joke. We went private on all our accounts since after this happened we were inundated with a series of very serious death threats. Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart. com | 1 |
BEIJING — When Flappy McFlapperson and Skybomb Bolt sprang into the sky for their annual migration from wetlands near Beijing, nobody was sure where the two cuckoos were going. They and three other cuckoos had been tagged with sensors to follow them from northern China. But to where? “These birds are not known to be great fliers,” said Terry Townshend, a British amateur bird watcher living in the Chinese capital who helped organize the Beijing Cuckoo Project to track the birds. “Migration is incredibly perilous for birds, and many perish on these journeys. ” The answer to the mystery — unfolding in passages recorded by satellite for more than five months — has been a humbling revelation even to many experts. The birds’ journeys have so far covered thousands of miles, across a total of a dozen countries and an ocean. The “common cuckoo,” as the species is called, turns out to be capable of exhilarating odysseys. “It’s impossible not to feel an emotional response,” said Chris Hewson, an ecologist with the British Trust for Ornithology in Thetford, England, who has helped run the tracking project. “There’s something special about feeling connected to one small bird flying across the ocean or desert. ” But to follow a cuckoo, you must first seduce it. The common cuckoo is by reputation a cynical freeloader. Mothers outsource parenting by laying their eggs in the nests of smaller birds, and the birds live on grubs, caterpillars and similar soft morsels. British and Chinese bird groups decided to study two cuckoo subspecies found near Beijing, because their winter getaways were a puzzle. In an online poll for the project, nearly half the respondents guessed they went somewhere in Southeast Asia. “We really didn’t know for sure,” said Yu Fang, a coffee importer, a prominent member of the Beijing community and a volunteer on the project. “We knew that the cuckoos breed around here. But where do they go over winter? I guessed it was India,” Mr. Yu said. “I’ve been in India, and they are often spotted there. I thought that’s where they stopped. ” To tag the birds, the team set up soft, barely visible nets in May to safely catch the birds. A stuffed female cuckoo was attached to a tree or bush, and a recording of the bird’s mating call was played out. They responded lustily. “The male cuckoos just can’t resist. They come in from a long way,” said Mr. Townshend, who works as a consultant on a variety of environmental projects. Unexpectedly, female cuckoos also came to the party, seemingly jealous about an apparent rival in their patch, he said. After excluding birds too light to safely carry the sensors, the team attached tags weighing 0. 16 ounce to the backs of five birds, each weighing around 3. 5 ounces, and freed them into the wild, where satellites followed the signals from their tags. Such technology has revolutionized the study of migratory birds since the 1990s. “Tracking technology has ushered in a new age of exploration,” Mr. Hewson said. But the project was also intended to raise awareness of wild birds and their needs, especially in China, where expanding cities, pollution and commercial capture with huge nets threaten the creatures. Schools in Beijing for local and foreign children gave the birds their names. As well as Flappy and Skybomb, there was Hope, Zigui and Meng Zhi Juan, a poetic Chinese phrase meaning “dream bird. ” The wait began. As blazing summer arrived, time approached for the birds to begin their migration. But not all could. Cuckoos often have brief lives. The trackers ran out of contact with Hope after she flew north to Russia, possibly dying or losing her tag. And Zigui’s signal stopped near Beijing, where he probably perished. Then in early August, Flappy struck south, followed weeks later by Skybomb and then Meng Zhi Juan. Each day, Mr. Townshend checked the satellite data to see whether any other birds were on the move. Their journeys, chronicled on Twitter, drew in more and more fans, including me. By Skybomb and Flappy were in India. That more or less ruled out the idea that they were headed to Southeast Asia, and they appeared likely to head west. But by which route? The first answer came in late October. Skybomb struck out boldly from central India and, without stopping, headed across the northern Indian Ocean, apparently aiming to reach Africa in one lunge. It was a breathtaking gamble for one of these small birds. “When Skybomb set out across the ocean, it was like, Whoa! He’s going for it,” Mr. Townshend said. Skybomb had fattened on grubs, but Africa was thousands of miles away without the prospect of a stop or meal in between. “It was a real celebratory moment,” Mr. Townshend said. “But fingers were crossed that he was going to make it across the ocean. ” There was an implacable logic in the cuckoos’ seeming folly, said Mr. Hewson, who had guessed that they would go to Africa. They stopped over in India when rains had still left plenty of food there and waited for the monsoon winds to make a drastic turnaround, so the birds could fly onward with the help of the breeze. Cuckoos that summer in Europe also head to Africa to avoid the winter. Skybomb plowed on. Flying at roughly 2, 600 feet above the sea, he held to an astonishingly straight path, apparently calibrating for shifts in the wind and conditions. By the second day, he was halfway across. After a third day, the east coast of Africa, and food and rest, beckoned. For much of the flight, tailwinds helped Skybomb. But as land approached, crosswinds and then a headwind struck. It was a moderate breeze, but maybe enough to exhaust a cuckoo after days without stopping. On Oct. 31, Mr. Townshend announced on Twitter that Skybomb “is in Africa!” days after he had begun his migration, the cuckoo had reached the coast of Somalia about an hour after dusk. He had flown nonstop for 2, 300 miles from central India. “What a bird!” Mr. Townshend declared. But even then, Skybomb was not done. Right away, he flew for another 190 miles until he reached an area where recent rains would have brought a proliferation of caterpillars and grubs to eat. Somehow, he knew where to follow the rain. The other birds began their long flights later than Skybomb. Flappy took a more cautious path, crossing the Arabian Sea from India to Oman. That made for a shorter flight over water, but also meant she hit land in northern Africa, farther from the lusher terrain to the south. By Friday, Meng Zhi Juan had jumped to just a few miles from the Indian coast and appeared poised to follow Skybomb’s swoop across the ocean to Somalia or thereabouts. The birds appear likely to edge south in Africa, following the rains. If they survive, they are expected to arrive back in Beijing in May. Mr. Townshend and his colleagues hope to follow more cuckoos next year, if they attract enough donations to pay for the tags and satellite services. More knowledge will help protect the areas where the birds need to stop. “They’re birds that are shared by China, India, Myanmar, Somalia and wherever else they go,” Mr. Townshend said. “With that comes a shared responsibility to protect them. ” | 1 |
Por Tomás Fuentes
En la noche del lunes se pudo ver la Luna llena más grande de los últimos 70 años, la más grande hasta la fecha en el siglo XXI, según informa la NASA. Este fenómeno ha dejado auténticas maravillas fotográficas por diversos rincones del mundo: desde la India a Egipto, así se ha visto la Superluna.
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Vista de nuestro satélite desde el Taj Mahal. Espectacular.
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La Luna se vio preciosa desde Polonia.
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Egipto. ¿No es idílico? Apenas nada pudo hacer ayer por la noche que los egipcios apartaran la vista de nuestro maravilloso satélite.
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Una noche para la paz en la que todos los humanos pudieron olvidarse de sus problemas.
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¿Qué puede haber más maravilloso que un espectáculo astronómico? Nada, absolutamente nada.
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¿No es bellísima? Millones de personas de todo el mundo compartieron anoche fotografías de la Luna más grande que podrá verse en treinta años.
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La silueta de un águila frente a la Luna en Katmandú (Nepal).
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Una fotografía un poco movida de la de personas miran la Superluna en Fremantle, Australia.
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El término “superluna” se utilizaba originalmente en la astrología moderna para referirse a una Luna nueva o llena que ocurre cuando la Luna se encuentra dentro del 90% de su máximo acercamiento a la Tierra en una órbita determinada.
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La Luna vista desde un lugar privilegiado: la Luna. Etiquetas | 0 |
Military Operation to Retake Mosul From Daesh ( 93 ) 0 7 0 0 Daesh militants have executed at least 232 civilians near the Iraqi city of Mosul, the chairman of the Iraqi parliamentary human rights committee said on Wednesday.
BAGHDAD (Sputnik) — On October 17, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi announced the start of a military operation to retake Mosul from Daesh, a jihadist group outlawed in Russia and a number of other states. © AFP 2016/ AHMAD AL-RUBAYE Some 60 Iraqi Soldiers Killed in Mosul Offensive, 250 Wounded - CENTCOM
According to local media, about 30,000 Iraqi soldiers and 4,000 Kurdish Peshmerga fighters are taking part in the operation, backed by airstrikes carried out by the US-led international coalition. "IS [Daesh] militants continued to commit atrocities in the province of Nineveh, they executed 190 people in the area of Hammam al-Alil after taking them hostage in different areas of Mosul ," Abdel Rakhim Shamri said as quoted by his press service.
According to the lawmaker, another 42 people in the nearby village of Arij became victims of the terrorist group because of their refusal to cooperate with the militants. ... | 0 |
HERNDON, Va. — Stung by the recent Supreme Court decision that overturned Texas abortion clinic restrictions, leaders of the country’s largest group are redoubling their efforts for restrictions on abortion that they claim will prevent fetal pain and that they believe can fare well in the public eye and, they hope, in the courts. The group’s leaders said they remained confident in their strategy of undermining Roe v. Wade one step at a time, with their main focus less on rules for clinic safety of the kind that were just overturned, and more on what they call the “humanity of the unborn child,” based on assumptions about fetal development that are sharply disputed by mainstream scientists. “Our people have had setbacks before, but they’re going to keep on fighting,” Carol Tobias, the president of the group, the National Right to Life Committee, declared at the organization’s annual meeting that was held here Thursday through Saturday — a combination of pep talks, tactical training and sharing of legislative strategies. “The movement is optimistic and excited about the future,” Ms. Tobias told hundreds of delegates from across the country. In public meetings, at least, the Supreme Court decision, which was described by many legal experts as a landmark victory for abortion rights, received only passing mention here. States have passed more than 300 measures since 2011, from mandatory ultrasounds to rules for burial of fetal remains. While the Supreme Court ruling could change the terms, it is already clear that pitched battles over abortion will continue in many states in the year ahead. But amid a continued flurry of bills, National Right to Life and its affiliates will give the highest priority to two measures in particular, the leaders here said. One is to promote state and federal bans on abortion at 20 weeks after conception, based on the claim, which mainstream medical scientists say is unfounded, that the fetus can feel pain at that point. The second is to outlaw the most common method of abortion, a form of dilation and evacuation, on the grounds that it is brutal and cruel. The Supreme Court decision on June 27, ruling that stringent clinic and physician regulations in Texas were unconstitutional, is widely seen as the most important abortion ruling in decades. The Texas regulations required doctors to have admitting privileges at local hospitals, and required clinics to meet the physical and staffing requirements of surgery centers — measures, the state argued, that protected women’s health. But the court ruled that the state had failed to show significant benefits for women’s health and safety and placed such onerous burdens on clinics that many would have to shut down. And so, the court held, in a decision, that the state had placed an illegal “undue burden” on women’s basic right to abortion up to the point that the fetus is viable outside the womb. The ruling, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, has already led courts to block similar clinic and physician rules in other states and is expected to figure in lawsuits over other restrictions, like bans on remote prescribing of pills for abortions, or waiting periods that cause hardship for poor women who must travel to reach a clinic. But how broadly the ruling will apply to abortion laws that do not involve claims about clinic safety or women’s health will emerge from lower court decisions over a period of years, legal experts say. Jennifer Dalven, the director of the Reproductive Freedom Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, predicted in an interview that the decision will have effects on any abortion restrictions that are based on scientifically dubious claims, whether related to clinic safety or not. “The court was crystal clear that politicians can no longer rely on flimsy justifications for abortion restrictions,” she said. “You have to have evidence that it serves a claimed interest, then weigh it against the burden. That has application to virtually any regulation. ” But leaders are hoping and predicting that the effect will be more narrow. They believe that the Supreme Court, and particularly Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has provided the swing vote in past cases, may look more favorably on laws that focus on the life of the fetus. “The Supreme Court case was focused on the health of the mother, but we take a different approach,” said Mary Spaulding Balch, the director of state legislation for National Right to Life, noting that clinic safety regulations had mainly been promoted by other groups. “Our legislation focuses on the humanity of the unborn child. ” Olivia Gans Turner, the executive director of the Virginia affiliate of National Right to Life, said that the Supreme Court decision, if anything, “really did energize a large part of our constituency. ” “Our people were anxious to find out, ‘Can we still move ahead? ’” she said. “It was a chance to educate people,” she said, adding that other priority laws such as the proposed ban should not be affected. Promoted by National Right to Life and other groups, bans based on the fetal pain theory have been adopted by 15 states and are under consideration in several more. It was telling, Ms. Balch said, that when abortion rights groups challenged the Texas clinic laws, they did not include the state’s ban, which was adopted at the same time and remains in effect. Legal experts for abortion rights say that the laws are a clear violation of existing Supreme Court rulings that women have a right to an abortion until the fetus is viable outside the womb, which is often about 22 weeks after conception. They say they are waiting for the right occasion to bring a court challenge to these bans, which affect relatively few women, and that fending off the regulations that closed down clinics was a higher priority. But Ms. Balch said groups welcomed the chance to test the bans before the Supreme Court, possibly leading it to change the existing dividing line for abortion rights based on fetal viability. In a more recent push, six states have acted to ban the most common method used in abortions, in which the fetus is torn and extracted with tools. In two of those states, Oklahoma and Kansas, the courts have temporarily blocked the bans, which many doctors have called an intrusion into medical decisions that could expose women to unneeded or more dangerous procedures. As disappointed as they were by last month’s Supreme Court decision, groups are far more concerned about the November elections for the Senate and the presidency, and the effects on the future makeup of the court. While Donald J. Trump has in the past expressed support for abortion rights, the leaders here said they took at face value his statements that he had converted to their cause and would appoint conservatives to the Supreme Court. A victory by Hillary Clinton and the appointment of one or more justices who share her strong support for abortion rights “would be catastrophic,” for the movement, said Anthony J. Lauinger, the chairman of Oklahomans for Life and a vice president of National Right to Life, creating “a very grim situation. ” But whatever happens, Mr. Lauinger said, “We view the glass as half full. ” Mr. Lauinger, 72, who has been an activist since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, said he felt encouraged in the face of periodic setbacks because “young people are picking up the battle. ” | 1 |
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“We don’t force our faith on anybody else,” Chuck Wingate, executive director of Bethesda Mission, told PennLive.com . “But we find the whole idea that the government’s going to come in a[nd] tell us what we can and cannot do in our own facility to be out of bounds, especially in matters of faith.”
Wingate, who says his Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, ministry serves 100,000 people a month, was referring to a new U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulation forbidding recipients of USDA food from requiring “a beneficiary to attend or participate in any explicitly religious activities that are offered by the organization.” A USDA press release stated that the rule was established pursuant to an executive order issued by President Barack Obama and would “provide new religious liberty protections for beneficiaries of federally funded social service programs.”
Bethesda, which has been helping the poor and homeless in the Keystone State capital for nearly 102 years, formerly received about 1,000 pounds of USDA food per month via the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank. But given the choice between taking Uncle Sam’s freebies and continuing to offer thanks to God before serving meals, the mission’s leaders decided on the latter.
“We can no longer take the food on principal [sic] because prayer is an integral part of everything we do at Bethesda Mission,” Scott Dunwoody, the shelter’s vice president of business development, told Harrisburg’s WHTM-TV .
“The USDA revised regulations regarding this food distribution to say that no religious services or religious activities could occur during the distribution of the food,” Wingate told CNSNews.com . “Well, we pray before meals, so if there’s a meal being served — and we serve 3,000 meals a week — if there’s a meal being served with USDA food somewhere in it, then we would be prohibited from praying. We just said ‘nope’ that’s too onerous for us and we’re not going to continue to accept the food if that’s a condition of receiving it.”
Many religious charities are now faced with the same dilemma as Bethesda. So far, few seem willing to cut the umbilical cord to Washington — or perhaps they long ago made the necessary compromises to get USDA comestibles. Jennifer Powell of the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank told PennLive that “only a handful” of the bank’s 900 program partners have chosen either to stop taking the USDA food or to change their practices — by, say, conducting prayers outside the room in which the food is served — to fall in line with the new rule.
Eric Saunders, executive director of Harrisburg-area New Hope Ministries, told PennLive his ministry didn’t need to change its practices because they have never required people to participate in prayer or a religious service in order to obtain food. “When the new rule came out,” reported the website, “Saunders said he simply reminded staff to make sure any religious activities were done at a different time or place from when people were being served.”
Bethesda doesn’t require participation in religious activities, either, but anyone there for a meal is going to be in the presence of an audible prayer. This, apparently, does not comport with the Obama administration’s definition of religious freedom, whereby passively causing someone to hear a prayer before giving him free food is unacceptable but forcing a Christian charity or business to pay for contraceptive coverage for its employees is worth defending all the way to the Supreme Court.
Saunders said of Bethesda, “I have a lot of respect for them and the principled stand they took.”
Bethesda will probably not be hurt much by declining the USDA’s food. Although 1,000 pounds a month sounds like quite a bit of food, it really only amounted to about 0.5 percent of the food distributed by the shelter, according to Wingate. He claimed the announcement has already led to an increase in donations to the ministry. In addition, Powell said the food bank has plenty of other food the mission could use.
All of these problems could have been avoided, of course, if the federal government had not strayed from its enumerated powers under the Constitution. Nowhere in that document is the government delegated the authority to distribute food, no matter how noble its intentions may be in doing so. As James Madison, the father of the Constitution, so eloquently put it, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
Charities, especially Christian ones, ought also to be mindful of the fact that the “free” food they get from Washington and other levels of government is paid for by the expropriation of the citizenry; “Thou shalt not steal” contains no exceptions for either government or charities. Furthermore, they should recognize that by accepting the government’s largess, they are also accepting its control, even to the point of denying their faith. It may be more cumbersome and less reliable to subsist on voluntary contributions, but it is the only sure way to maintain a charity’s religious character over the long run. Please review our Comment Policy before posting a comment
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WASHINGTON — Tuesday, the Supreme Court will begin its first sitting in which the U. S. Department of Justice (DOJ) will reflect the views and priorities of President Donald Trump, inaugurating a new direction in American law. [The Supreme Court hears roughly 80 cases per year, divided into seven monthly sittings. The annual term begins with its first sitting on the first Monday in October, and the last sitting for each annual term is conducted over two weeks in April. The Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) represents the United States before the U. S. Supreme Court. The office is led by a solicitor general (SG) who is nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, assisted by a principal deputy solicitor general who is a presidential appointment not subject to Senate confirmation. These two appointees oversee a team of close to twenty attorneys who are mostly career staff, the senior ones holding the rank of deputy solicitor general, and the junior members being called assistant to the solicitor general. Together, they constitute one of the finest appellate legal teams in the nation. President Trump has not yet nominated an SG but has already named a deputy, Noel Francisco, as the at OSG. Francisco is a Supreme Court rock star, a former clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia and former partner at powerhouse firm Jones Day who has argued a number of major cases before the justices. Francisco has control over OSG until such time as Trump’s pick for the top spot is chosen and confirmed, which might not occur for another couple months. Although OSG has already filed its legal briefs for most of the year’s remaining Supreme Court cases, changes or updates can be made during oral argument or with certain supplemental filings, so the Trump DOJ can make the new president’s views known as the justices tackle a number of issues involving the federal government. This Tuesday, the Court will hear arguments in Hernandez v. Mesa, a case in which a Mexican teenager on the Mexican side of the U. S. border was fatally shot by a U. S. Border Patrol agent on the U. S. side of the border. The teenager’s family said he was playing pranks by touching the Mexico side of the border barrier, while DOJ insists that the young man was part of a group of teenagers throwing large rocks at the agent, posing a serious risk to the officer’s safety and disregarding repeated warnings to drop the rocks and back away. DOJ will be represented by Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler, a career veteran at OSG who has argued more than 100 times before the High Court, representing both Republican and Democrat presidents. The second case on Tuesday will be McLane v. EEOC. The private litigant is represented by Dallas attorney Allyson Ho, a partner at Morgan Lewis Bockius, who, like Francisco, is a favorite among conservatives and an accomplished Supreme Court litigator who previously clerked for a Supreme Court justice. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will be presented by an assistant to the solicitor general, Rachel Kovner. The makeup of the nation’s highest court is also changing. One of its nine seats has been vacant since the February 2016 death of Justice Antonin Scalia. But President Trump’s nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch, appears unstoppable for confirmation, and is expected to join the Court this April. Between new lawyers leading OSG and new justices joining the nation’s highest court, February 2017 marks the beginning of a new trend in the legal arguments and decisions at the Supreme Court, a trend that will continue for at least the next four years. Ken Klukowski is senior legal editor for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @kenklukowski. | 1 |
The National Bureau of Economic Research published a paper on Monday showing how widespread unemployment pushes many American men and women towards deadly drug addictions. [Titled “Macroeconomic Conditions and Opioid Abuse,” the report says: We use mortality data for the entire U. S. from and state and county level ED data covering from a subset of states. We find that as the county unemployment rate increases by 1 percentage point, the opioid death rate (per 100k) rises by 0. 19 (3. 6%) and the ED visit rate for opioid overdoses (per 100k) increases by 0. 95 (7. 0%). We also uncover statistically significant increases in the overall drug death rate that are mostly driven by increases in opioid deaths. These results also hold when performing a state, rather than county, level analysis. In most specifications, the results are primarily driven by adverse events among whites. Additionally, the findings are relatively stable across time periods they do not pertain only to recession years, but instead represent a more generalizable and previously unexplored connection between economic development and the severe adverse consequences of substance abuse. That is a remarkably consistent and steep relationship between unemployment rates and deaths from opioid drug abuse, The painkiller drugs have become an important contributor to the growing mortality among whites because it is theorized that prescription painkillers are heavily dispensed to and white people, who can become dependent on them or graduate to illegal substances. Use of pain medication among unemployed men approaches fifty percent, according to some studies. To be sure, not everyone using pain medication, even potent prescription drugs, is abusing it. There are people in significant distress who need medication. The tremendous increase in both drug use and mortality rates is the problem. It’s sobering to see that problem linked as firmly and precisely to unemployment rates as in the National Bureau of Economic Research study. Also, given the generosity of welfare programs, it really is a question of needing work rather than money, with all of the physical and spiritual gains delivered by productive activity. Of course there are many individuals who can cope with unemployment in healthy ways, but projected across a vast population, the decline of the workforce casts a distinct Grim Reaper shadow. Another intriguing study is called “When Work Disappears: Manufacturing Decline and the Falling Value of Men. ” Here again, the researchers have calculated a pronounced relationship between unemployment and an unhealthy social trend: single parenting. It’s difficult to discuss single parenting as a social phenomenon because individual single parents and their children are not comfortable with the notion there is something “wrong” or inferior with the arrangement. Of course there are many single parents doing well, and children raised in such households who flourish. Our society has been conditioned to devalue traditional marriage and reject the notion that it has inherent advantages. But again, the negative trend across large populations is indisputable, as authors David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson acknowledge in their introduction, and describe more extensively in the body of the report: As predicted by a simple model of marital under uncertainty, we document that adverse shocks to the supply of ‘marriageable’ men reduce the prevalence of marriage and lower fertility but raise the fraction of children born to young and unwed mothers and living in in poor households. The falling value of young men appears to be a quantitatively important contributor to the rising rate of childbearing and childrearing in the United States. In other words, it’s not a good thing for society to be producing large numbers of young single women struggling to raise children. It is objectively good for stable young couples to have children and raise them. (Yes, it’s important for them to have children at fairly young ages because demographic growth demands a sizable number of families with three or more children, and that’s very difficult to achieve if couples don’t meet and marry when they’re young.) The introduction of the study also quotes a but vitally relevant, observation from William Julius Wilson in When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor: The consequences of high neighborhood joblessness are more devastating than those of high neighborhood poverty. A neighborhood in which people are poor but employed is different from a neighborhood in which people are poor and jobless. Many of today’s problems in the ghettos — crime, family dissolution, welfare, low levels of social organization, and so on — are fundamentally a consequence of the disappearance of work. This is proving to be universally true of human nature, in both urban and rural environments, for people of every racial and cultural background. The loss of manufacturing jobs is painted as especially significant by Autor, Dorn, and Hanson, which is very different from the conventional view that such lost jobs are easily replaceable by Information Age employment. Their study argues that manufacturing jobs have some unique virtues, one of which is giving men the kind of earnings advantage that makes them attractive marriage partners to women. That observation will not sit well among elites now crazed for “gender neutrality” and determined to use whatever policy hammers and chisels are needed to outlaw male and female biology by next year. Those elites will find it difficult to argue with the data presented in this report, which portrays a cascade of damaging social ills descending from the loss of male earning power relative to women: “Shocks to manufacturing industries are particularly destabilizing to . ” The authors are quite blunt about what the decline of the manufacturing sector has done to American society: Adverse shocks to local employment opportunities stemming from rising international competition from China in manufactured goods yield a fall in both male and female employment a reduction in men’s relative earnings, particularly at the lower tail of the earnings distribution an increase in the rate of male mortality from risky and unhealthful behaviors a reduction in the net availability of males in affected labor markets a reduction in the fraction of young adults entering marriage a fall in fertility accompanied by a rise in the fraction of births to teen and unmarried mothers and a sharp jump in the fraction of children living in impoverished and, to a lesser degree, households. If that paragraph doesn’t sail far enough into politically incorrect waters for you, the authors later argue that shocks to industries “have more modest effects on overall fertility but reduce the share of births to teens and unmarried mothers, thus raising births and reducing the fraction of children living in households. ” (It should be noted, as the authors do many times throughout the course of the paper, that these relationships between employment and marriage for the two sexes are significant but not and other forces often come into play.) Negative trends multiply each other in a downward spiral. The demise of stable homes sends a growing number of children into life with huge economic disadvantages. Dissolution of the family also dissolves family wealth, such as property passed from parents to children. Men who don’t have wives and children in their lives are missing important resources when they confront midlife despair. Young people are missing bright examples of what the future could hold for them, contributing to the growing sense that “the American Dream is over. ” | 1 |
A CBS Denver voter fraud investigation has exposed dozens of cases in the state ahead of the November 8th presidential election.
According to CBS4, they discovered dozens of irregularities during their ongoing investigation such as ballots cast by the deceased and individuals voting twice. CBS4 explains that they have additionally found individuals voting in Colorado as well as other states in the same election cycle, this of course all at a time where the fear of voter fraud weighs heavily in the minds of the American electorate.
More on voter fraud: Uh Oh… Texas Voting Machines Reportedly Changing Votes from Republican to Democrat
Via CBS4
In six of the new cases, voting records show the same people voting twice in Colorado elections. In another six cases, people are suspected of voting in Colorado and another state during the same election cycle.
“You’d be surprised how often people double vote,“ said Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. “Two of the cases are serial double voters. I think people discover they can get away with it and keep doing it.”
Kobach says his office is “aggressively prosecuting” double voting cases because it’s a crime that “can’t be caught ahead of time.”
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Dale Earnhardt Jr. found himself in the back seat of a black S. U. V. on the streets of Manhattan on Tuesday morning, a gracious passenger. He was glad someone else had to deal with the noisy taxis and the antsy drivers who used their horns as if they got paid by the honk. On Sunday afternoon, Earnhardt, 42, will begin his 18th full season at Nascar’s top level by driving in the Daytona 500, racing’s premier race. But this, he said, will be a somewhat different Dale Earnhardt Jr. than has driven before. He was married on New Year’s Eve to his longtime girlfriend, Amy Reimann, and he is also returning from a serious concussion that sidelined him since July. “I do feel like this is a new chapter, for whatever reason,” Earnhardt said. “I don’t have a vision for what’s going to happen. I don’t know how to explain it, but it feels like a new me. ” It is believed that Earnhardt sustained the concussion — his second in four years — in an accident during a June race in Brooklyn, Mich. He drove in three more races, but then did not return to the track for the rest of the 2016 season, missing 18 races in all. Earnhardt was medically cleared to resume racing on Dec. 8. Earnhardt, the son of Dale Earnhardt Sr. the Nascar champion who died at the 2001 Daytona 500, has won the series’ most popular driver award 14 straight times, largely because of his talent, bloodlines and demeanor, seemingly and . Success came at a cost, he said. “I feel like I am maybe a little less stressed out, a little less hassled, I guess, by living now,” he said. “I guess I was wound up, wound pretty tight. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been out of the car for so long that I’ve had this inadvertent vacation, I guess you could say, that it got my batteries really, really recharged. ” He stopped himself suddenly and added: “Only thing is, does it go away? Do I hang on to this feeling of ‘All right, man’? I know I’ll get competitive when I get in the car. It’ll be hard not to get short with my patience. That’s the biggest thing — just keeping patient. But I feel more calm and comfortable and not so wired up and strung out. ” Earnhardt has 26 victories in his career at the top level of racing, which is being called the Monster Energy Nascar Cup Series for the first time this year. But he has not won a series championship. Claiming one is certainly a driving force for him. But he has other priorities. He has a much deeper appreciation of the sport and its heritage than when he made his Nascar debut, in 1999, in a car owned by his father. He said he wanted the sport to be viable after he is done driving — though he has no idea when that will be. “I used to have an agenda: I wanted to do whatever made my car go faster,” he said. “I’m over that, knowing I’m on the back side of my career. When I’m done driving, I want the sport to be healthy. I’m done taking and taking. I’m ready to give, give. I try to think of what’s the best thing for the sport instead of the best thing for the driver. ” Acknowledging that Nascar has encountered a recent dip in racetrack attendance and television ratings, Earnhardt, like others, believes the sport would benefit from an influx of new, and young, fans. One way to draw attention and keep it, he said, might be to tweak the rules, as Nascar has done this year by awarding points to leaders after designated stages of races. The public’s accessibility to drivers was not what it was in his father’s heyday, but Earnhardt Jr. has made a hard push through Twitter and a podcast — the Dale Jr. Download — to keep people in the loop. It helped him recover from his injury. “To heal from the concussion, I needed to be to get that stress as low as possible,” he said. “I worried a ton about people’s perception about what my problem was. I didn’t want any guesses out there. That’s the reason I was so transparent. I was worried about, Is it O. K. I’m this transparent? But I couldn’t think of any reason it could blow up in my face. The only thing that was bad about it, I guess, is that anytime anybody doesn’t agree with you, they hit you with, ‘You hit your head, so you don’t know what you’re talking about.’ ” He smiled. Although he has continued to emphasize that concussion symptoms can differ from one person to another, he knew his Twitter feed, podcast and news conferences could provide more information about concussions. He is fine with becoming a case study. “When I got my first concussion, in 1998, it was like, Wow. I feel dizzy, ha ha. I think I’ll go home and lay on the couch,” he said. “It was almost like I was braggadocios about it: ‘Man, I’m tough. I hit my head on the car.’ “It’s scary now, knowing everything we know. There’s still a ton to learn. We’re going through such a transition how we talk about concussions, how we treat concussions. It’s very interesting to me. Very educational. ” Just last week, Nascar announced an update to its concussion protocol. The protocol now requires doctors at every venue to use the same concussion test, expands when drivers must visit the infield care center after an accident and increases the use of neurological consultants. After driving 600 to 800 laps after he was cleared medically, Earnhardt said he felt comfortable in a racecar now and was eager to see how he would do on Sunday. His career hung in the balance for a while last summer, so he is grateful for another chance to race. “When you’re young and naïve, you’re doing it for certain reasons, but when you get older and understand your life and what you want to be doing down the road, your priorities all change,” he said. “If it was not fun, I wouldn’t be doing it. I’ve done well with my finances. I don’t need to be racing for money. I don’t know what we get paid for each race. I don’t know what the winner gets for the Daytona 500 — no idea. It’s just a great job. It’s better than any other job I can think of right now. ” | 1 |
Saudi Arabia poised to be reelected to UN Human Rights Council Source: RT
As the death toll in Yemen surpasses 10,000, Saudi Arabia, one of the principal parties in the conflict, is poised to be reelected to the UN human rights body. Saudi airstrikes are responsible for the majority of the nearly 4,000 civilian deaths in Yemen.
A secret ballot vote at the UN General Assembly on Friday will select the 14 members of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), or a third of its 47 members. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, China, and Japan are running for the four seats from the Asia-Pacific region, and are all expected to secure seats.
Riyadh’s term at the UNHRC would be the third in a row, and its presence at the body has been increasingly puzzling to human rights groups, given its record of twisting arms at the UN to hush up its rights abuses.
In June, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon publicly admitted that Saudi Arabia threatened to withdraw funding from numerous programs due to an upcoming report on violations of children’s rights. The report would list the Arab kingdom among violators over the toll its military campaign and blockade of Yemen has taken on children. The threat resulted in Saudi Arabia’s removal from the blacklist, even though Riyadh’s tactics had been exposed.
“The report describes horrors no child should have to face,” Ban Ki-moon told reporters at the time. “At the same time, I also had to consider the very real prospect that millions of other children would suffer grievously if, as was suggested to me, countries would defund many UN programs.”
“It is unacceptable for UN member states to exert undue pressure,” the secretary-general added, pledging to review the removal of the Saudis from the list.
This incident of Saudi Arabia working against UN human rights efforts is far from being isolated. In Yemen, the kingdom used control of air traffic to prevent foreign journalists, employees of international aid organizations, and UN officials from visiting the war-torn country and reporting on the situation there.
In September, it used diplomatic pressure against the Netherlands after it introduced a resolution at the UNHRC that would launch an independent investigation into airstrikes on Yemen. The Dutch proposal failed and an Arab version was passed, one which entrusted the probe to the exiled Yemeni government, which the Saudis want to put back into power through its military actions.
Domestically, Riyadh’s policies often run against those of the UN human rights body. Seven petitions to allow special rapporteurs for the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights to investigate abuses in Saudi Arabia remain pending , some for over a decade.
The kingdom was also reported to persecute its own subjects who cooperate with UN investigations. For instance, human rights defender Mohammed al-Qahtani, who contributed to several UNHRC reports, was accused of things like “distorting the reputation of the country” and “provoking international organizations to adopt stances against the kingdom.” He is currently serving a lengthy prison term.
While far from being the only authoritarian regime with a seat at the UNHRC, Saudi Arabia maintains some of the most restrictive domestic policies. Homosexuality and conversion from Islam to another religion are punishable by death. Sentences include corporal punishment, as highlighted by the case of blogger Raif Badawi who is to be flogged 1,000 times while serving a 10-year sentence for “insulting Islam.”
Saudi Arabia is also one of the world’s most enthusiastic executors. The number of beheadings spiked under King Salman with 157 executions reported in 2015, and 124 between January and September 2016. Share This Article... | 0 |
The Russian parliament has ordered an investigation into U. S. media organizations, including CNN and the Voice of America, “for compliance of their activities with Russian legislation,” according to a statement made on its website Friday. [The State Duma, or lower house in Russian parliament, ordered an “audit” of Radio Liberty, the Voice of America, CNN, and other U. S. media to see if they are breaking any of the nation’s laws, USA Today reported. The decision was reportedly made in retaliation against a bill introduced by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen ( ) earlier this week that would allow the Department of Justice to use more tools to investigate Russian media outlet RT America for potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). “We have good reason to believe that RT News is coordinating with the Russian government to spread misinformation and undermine our democratic process,” said Shaheen in a press release. “The American public has a right to know if this is the case. RT News has made public statements boasting that it can dodge our laws with shell corporations, and it’s time for the Department of Justice to investigate. ” Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the the Russian Foreign Ministry, criticized Shaheen’s bill, saying that the senator should have also drawn up a list of books for burning, Reuters reports. Margarita Simonyan, RT’s told the Russian newspaper Izvestia that the legislative action to investigate the news outlet was akin to Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s campaign against communism in the 1950s. The Russian parliament’s decision came just two days after U. N. Ambassador Nikki Haley told NBC News that the Russian government cannot be trusted. “We cannot trust Russia,” Haley said on Wednesday. “We should never trust Russia. ” Haley made those comments shortly after the Department of Justice charged two Russian spies for allegedly hacking into and stealing data from more than 500 million Yahoo users. | 1 |
Trending Articles: Trending Articles: 21 Things We’ve Learned About Hillary Clinton from Wikileaks That the MSM Won’t Share…But YOU Can! Daisy Luther
Let’s talk about Wikileaks.
First of all, the organization was founded by Julian Assange back in 2006. Their website explains what they are all about:
“WikiLeaks specializes in the analysis and publication of large datasets of censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving war, spying, and corruption. It has so far published more than 10 million documents and associated analyses.”
In the 11 years that they’ve been publishing documents, they have not been disproven a single time. Their record for authentication is perfect. (Learn more here and here .)
So this means that a person would be pretty silly to disregard anything in the reams of information about Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party, the Clinton Foundation, and the political shenanigans that would put the Machiavellis to shame.
Here are 21 of the most important things that have come out about Hillary Clinton, that unfortunately, no one is reporting on in the mainstream. In the interest of brevity, each topic has a link to an article that goes deeper into the leak. (In no particular order.) John Podesta, the chairman of the Clinton campaign had a nice cozy dinner with Peter Kadzik, one of the top officials in the Department of Justice…the day after the Benghazi hearing . Kadzik’s son also asked for a job on the Clinton campaign, and, the icing on the corruption cupcake? Kadzik led the effort to nominate Loretta Lynch, who famously met with Bill Clinton on her private plane right before Hillary’s interrogation about Emailgate. ( source ) We all knew that the Clinton Foundation was just a way for the Clinton family to launder money, and now there’s proof. Zero Hedge writes, “…today’s Wikileaks dump included that memo which reveals, for the first time, the precise financial flows between the Clinton Foundation, Band’s firm Teneo Consulting, and the Clinton family’s private business endeavors.” A pundit called this leak “The Rosetta Stone of the Clinton Foundation,” meaning that with this document, all of their shady financial dealings could be unraveled and translated. ( source ) Clinton is unable to speak for very long without a podium to lean on . Numerous leaked emails reference how certain interviews have to be kept short because she’d be without one. And this article references a very interesting reason why this may be the case – surprisingly it isn’t related to her health. ( source ) The leaks also show that Clinton intends to do her best to restrict the Second Amendment. Brian Fallon, the national press secretary for the Clinton campaign, wrote, “ Circling back around on guns as a follow up to the Friday morning discussion: the Today show has indicated they definitely plan to ask bout guns, and so to have the discussion be more of a news event than her previous times discussing guns, we are going to background reporters tonight on a few of the specific proposals she would support as President – universal background checks of course, but also closing the gun show loophole by executive order and imposing manufacturer liability .” According to an analysis on The Daily Sheeple, “Imposing manufacturer liability means that after Sandy Hook, Bushmaster and Remington Arms would have been prosecuted for having a hand in the murder of children and school staff members for firearms that were legally sold.” ( source ) The campaign was concerned that the sexual escapades of Bill Clinton could be likened to those of another disgraced celebrity, Bill Cosby . Political operative Ron Klain sent an urgent email saying that Hillary should anticipate the following questions, ” How is what Bill Clinton did different from what Bill Cosby did? Is his conduct relevant to your campaign? You said every woman should be believed. Why not the women who accused him? Will you apologize to the women who were wrongly smeared by your husband and his allies?” ( source ) Clinton’s campaign deliberately leaked an embarrassing photo of a swimsuit-clad Bernie Sanders to the press, ironically insinuating that it was proof he was bought off by Wall Street. Perez Hilton wrote, “ Bernie Sanders lounges at elite Martha’s Vineyard pool, summer 2015 after helping raise money from Wall Street lobbyists .” ( source ) Clinton admitted she is out of touch with the middle class in a speech to Goldman-Black Rock in 2014. “And I am not taking a position on any policy, but I do think there is a growing sense of anxiety and even anger in the country over the feeling that the game is rigged. And I never had that feeling when I was growing up. Never. I mean, were there really rich people, of course there were. My father loved to complain about big business and big government, but we had a solid middle class upbringing. We had good public schools. We had accessible health care. We had our little, you know, one-family house that, you know, he saved up his money, didn’t believe in mortgages. So I lived that. And now, obviously, I’m kind of far removed because the life I’ve lived and the economic, you know, fortunes that my husband and I now enjoy , but I haven’t forgotten it.” ( source ) She made this rather NWO remark at a 2013 paid speech to Brazilian bank Banco Itau: “ My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders , some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.” ( source ) In a leak of yet another paid speech, this time to the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago in 2013, Clinton said that Jordan and Turkey “ can’t possibly vet all those refugees so they don’t know if, you know, jihadists are coming in along with legitimate refugees.” Meanwhile, if Clinton has her way , we will be warmly welcoming 65,000 refugees a year, which makes Obama’s 10,000 a year look like small potatoes. ( source ) Clinton blackmailed the Chinese by telling them that the US would base missiles in the region if they didn’t exert some control over North Korean aggression. “ So China, come on. You either control them or we’re going to have to defend against them ,” she purportedly told the audience at a Goldman Sachs conference in June 2013. ( source ) In May 2015, Clinton was no longer Secretary of State but was ready to announce she was running for President when she was invited to attend a summit in Morrocco. The implication from the leaked emails was that a $12 million “donation” from the king of Morocco was dependent on Clinton attending the summit. Human Abedin, usually loyal to her boss, had concerns . “ If HRC was not part of it, meeting was a non-starter. She created this mess and she knows it. Her presence was a condition for the Moroccans to proceed so there is no going back on this,” Abedin wrote to Robbie Mook in a November 2014 email. Incidentally, Clinton didn’t attend. Bill and Chelsea went instead and the $12 million donation was not forthcoming. (source ) Podesta attacked Clinton’s primary election rival Bernie Sanders for criticizing the Paris climate change agreement. “ Can you believe that doofus Bernie attacked it? ” said Podesta. ( source ) Clinton told a Goldman Sachs conference she would like to intervene secretly in Syria . “ My view was you intervene as covertly as is possible for Americans to intervene,” she told employees of the bank in South Carolina, which had paid her about $225,000 to give a speech. “We used to be much better at this than we are now. Now, you know, everybody can’t help themselves. They have to go out and tell their friendly reporters and somebody else: Look what we’re doing and I want credit for it. ” (source ) There is indeed a definite link between the Clinton campaign and what MSM is allowed to say. The campaign has colluded directly with media spokespersons that read like a Who’s Who in American Media : Dan Merica from CNN, Haim Saban of Univision, John Harwood of CNBC and the NY Times, Rebecca Quick of CNBC, Maggie Haberman of NY Times and Politico, John Harris of Politico, Donna Brazile formerly of CNN, Roland Martin of TV-One, Marjorie Pritchard of The Boston Globe, and Louise Mensch of Heat Street. ( source ) As everyone knows, the DNC deliberately screwed Bernie Sanders out of the nomination ( Bonus: Wikileaks also released some of the DNC’s voicemails on the topic ). There are emails that prove who is actually pulling HRC’s puppet strings and that puppeteer is George Soros . The shadow government is not just a conspiracy theory – it really exists and Hillary’s job is to keep George Soros happy. ( source ) Excerpts from her speeches to Wall Street read like a guide to two-faced treachery. In them, she clearly points out that sometimes you “need” to lie. “If everybody’s watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position.” ( source ) Wikileaks emails show that back when she still worked for CNN and before she became an employee of the Clinton campaign, Donna Brazile gave Hillary the questions in advance for her “impromptu” CNN Town Hall questions. ( source ) The campaign got to “approve” articles in influential publications like NY Times, HuffPo, CNN, NBC, CBS, NYT, MSNBC, and Politico, showing a massive collusion with the mainstream media, who has hounded Trump relentlessly in an effort to distract from HRC’s abysmal candidacy. ( source ) Through the treasure trove of Wikileaks emails, we can gain an accurate picture of how Hillary really feels about us all (spoiler: basket of deplorables, basement dwellers and right wing conspirators) ( source ) President Obama knew the whole time that her emails were not coming from the secure State Department server. Cheryl Mills wrote to John Podesta, “W e need to clean this up – he has emails from her – they do not say state.gov .” You see, Obama’s emails all have to be from”whitelisted”addresses. So someone, somewhere, added her nonsecure email to his whitelist. ( source )
And finally, here’s the real reason that treacherous shrew is involved in politics. And let me tell you, it isn’t because she yearns to make things better for anyone but herself. (emphasis mine.)
At the Goldman Sachs Builders and Innovators Summit, Clinton responded to a question from chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, who quipped that you “go to Washington” to “make a small fortune.” Clinton agreed with the comment and complained about ethics rules that require officials to divest from certain assets before entering government. “ There is such a bias against people who have led successful and/or complicated lives, ” Clinton said. ( source )
Together, we cannot be ignored.
I am on a mission between now and the Presidential Election on November 8th and I hope that you will join me.
I am going to work day and night to provide the coverage that the mainstream media is not. It isn’t until we combine all of our voices that we can make people listen to the scandals, the rigging, and the corruption, not only in this election but in the system in general. Please join your voice with mine by liking, sharing, and spreading the word.
Together, we cannot be ignored. Together, we are an army. Share This Article... | 0 |
Liberal cities across the globe are getting all symbolic in the wake of President Trump’s decision to pull the U. S. out of the Paris climate accord — by shining green lights on buildings. [Trump announced Thursday that he will pull the U. S. out of the 2015 Paris accord, causing dismay among liberal politicians and media outlets across the globe. Some mayors and governors have said they intend to carry on with the agreement in their cities. But now, some of those liberal enclaves are expressing their support for the accord by turning their buildings green as a sign of their environmentalism. In New York City, Boston and Washington D. C. buildings turned green at the behest of the cities’ liberal politicians. City Hall shines green tonight because New York City will honor the goals of the #ParisAgreement. pic. twitter. — Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) June 2, 2017, City Hall is green tonight. Boston stands with the environment. We must protect our future. #ParisAccord pic. twitter. — Mayor Marty Walsh (@marty_walsh) June 2, 2017, Exiting the #ParisAgreement may make us see red feel blue, but the Wilson Building’s lit up green tonight to prove the fight endures pic. twitter. — Council of DC (@councilofdc) June 2, 2017, Abroad, Paris, Montreal and Mexico City also got in on the fun. Regardless of #Trump’s decision, cities will apply #ParisAgreement. #Climate pic. twitter. — Anne Hidalgo (@Anne_Hidalgo) June 1, 2017, Les Changements climatiques existent! Montréal supporte #AccorddeParis Montréal supports #ParisAccord @c40cities pic. twitter. — DenisCoderre (@DenisCoderre) June 2, 2017, 🇲🇽Mexico City lighted city hall monuments green to express his commitment to the #ParisAgreement 🇲🇽 #Cities4Climate pic. twitter. — C40 Cities (@c40cities) June 2, 2017, The push by liberal cities across the globe may not be surprising. Despite Trump’s openness to negotiating the accord, local and world leaders reacted angrily to the announcement. The governments of Italy, France, and Germany on Thursday rejected the offer, saying in a joint statement that the agreement “cannot be renegotiated, since it is a vital instrument for our planet, societies and economies. ” Adam Shaw is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter: @AdamShawNY | 1 |
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Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is clearly not in good health, and for a couple of campaign events she actually managed to do, we have more video of her failing health which the liberal mainstream media tries to sweep under the rug .
On Thursday, Clinton struggled to climb the steps of her campaign plane on her way to a rally in Winston Salem, North Carolina.
The rainy day had Clinton holding an umbrella as she labored her way up the stairs. Live Satellite News posted the video and noted that Clinton appeared to be “mumbling to herself.”
Clinton almost missed a stair, and as The American Mirror pointed out, from the time she left her motorcade all the way up the plane stairs, Clinton seemed “wobbly and unsteady.”
Watch the video below yourself where Clinton appeared to be pained as she climbed the campaign plane stairs:
The American Mirror posted another video, this time from The Last Stand, in which Clinton couldn’t tackle an approximately 18-inch step without assistance. The title of the video referenced Clinton’s “Stronger Together” campaign slogan — one that she apparently has taken literally thanks to her clearly failing health.
As you can see in the second video, the man who assisted Clinton didn’t just happen to be there and thought it would be nice to extend a hand to the elderly woman. No, he bounded over to Clinton when she neared the step. He stood nearby in what looked like an effort to be ready to help her descend the single step or steady her on the platform.
Now, some who haven’t followed the campaign closely may think that this is nit-picky, but it isn’t. It’s a little odd on its own, but when you add it to the mountain of evidence over the years of Clinton’s failing health, it says a great deal.
Can you imagine the media uproar if Donald Trump exhibited a tenth of the issues Clinton has on the campaign trail? You don’t have to — just this week Trump took 90 minutes “off” of the campaign trail to open his new Washington hotel, Washington Trump International, and CNN’s Dana Bash managed to ask a question that served as a dig.
“For people who say you’re taking time out of swing states to go do this,” Bash asked. Trump, with his hectic schedule that more than puts Clinton to shame, wasn’t having it: “For you to ask me that question is actually very insulting, because Hillary Clinton does one stop and then goes home and sleeps. Yet you’ll ask me that question.”
He’s right. There have been numerous examples of Clinton’s failing health that have barely gained media attention aside from her collapse at a Sept. 11 memorial this year that forced the biased media to reluctantly cover it.
The media is in the bag for Clinton, there’s no doubt about it . They may not note her clear health issues that she refuses to disclose the public, but we will. | 0 |
PARIS — Last November, immediately after the Bataclan terror attacks here, France’s national anthem took on a global significance that few would have predicted. “La Marseillaise” was sung at rallies across the country, in English soccer stadiums and American concert halls. But it was actually a song transformed — throwing off its appropriation by the far right to become an anthem of unity and hope. That change had begun to occur after the earlier Charlie Hebdo attack — something noted by President François Hollande, who named 2016 the Year of the “Marseillaise. ” This month, about 100 academics, government officials and military personnel gathered at a daylong conference at the French Defense Ministry to help mark an end to that commemoration. They debated the song’s meaning, especially its climax that calls on people to “water the fields with impure blood” (the debate was over whose blood it was). They discussed how its melody had inspired revolutionaries from Russia to Chile. And they listened to countless versions of it, a feminist “Marseillaise” going down particularly well (its chorus — “Tremble, tremble, jealous husbands” — was met with laughter). Todeschini, who is responsible for veteran affairs at the Defense Ministry, said that the Year of the Marseillaise was declared precisely so that the French, especially the young, could the republican values of the song, which was written by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in 1792 during the French Revolution. “I am thinking in particular of freedom, resistance and fraternity,” he said. “It belongs to all the French, not to one political party or sectarian ideology. It’s important in the current context of terrorism and risk to our social cohesion to unite all French people around our hymn. ” At the same time that the government has been promoting its reappropriation, others in France have been debating the value of the song — and its ability to unite — in less formal settings. “I didn’t grow up with the mentality of singing it,” said Philippe Fragione, better known as Akhenaton, one of France’s most popular rappers. “I’m from Marseilles and there’s always been a feeling there that we have to rebel against the state. My view changed a bit after the attacks when people in other countries were singing it — that showed solidarity — but sometimes politicians and fake philosophers use it to point out differences, and that’s a problem. ” Magyd Cherfi, a writer and frontman of the band Zebda, said that in his view, “things have evolved in France” over the past year, changing people’s relationship to the country and the anthem. “Fear lives on every street now and people lose confidence in the nation. They take refuge in extremes. ” Mr. Cherfi has a long, complicated history with the “Marseillaise. ” In the late 1990s, he made an album of covers of revolutionary songs, but chose not to include the anthem, saying at the time, “France, in some ways, does not want us,” referring to immigrants like himself. However, after the Paris attacks, he wrote in a widely republished Facebook post: “There are days like this when we love France, when we want to sing the ‘Marseillaise.’ ” He went on: “It was carnage and it’s my day of baptism. I become solemnly French. ” He feels the same connection today, he said, but seems less certain about the anthem. “The Marseillaise is lost in modernity,” he said. “It addresses the French of more than two centuries ago. I think it is good to change the text to make it more universal, because now France’s children are black, Asian, North African. They must find themselves in it. ” There are no surveys to reveal how common such views are, but it is just as easy to find people who celebrate the song. Georges Salines of the victim association 13onze15: Fraternité et Vérité lost his daughter, Lola, in the attack at the Bataclan concert hall and soon afterward heard the “Marseillaise” at a national remembrance ceremony. “I’m not really a fan of the tune, but it was the version by Berlioz, and it was most beautiful I’d ever heard,” he said. He buried his daughter on the same day. “I can’t separate it from those memories now. It’s taken a different meaning to me, beyond an anthem. ” He said the “Marseillaise” has probably helped unite the country since the attacks thanks to its lyrics “against tyranny, absolutism and intolerance. ” He said he understood why some disliked it, since he used to share many of their reservations. But he disagrees with calls to change the words. “I don’t like this idea of correcting pieces of art for political correctness purposes,” he said. “There are racist phrases in ‘Tom Sawyer,’ but you will not change ‘Tom Sawyer.’ ” The Year of the Marseillaise has not put questions of national identity at its forefront, preferring initiatives focused on educating children about the anthem’s origins. Not all have been successful. A competition for musicians to cover the anthem, for instance, largely received joke entries. One simply involved Google Translate reading out the lyrics. Even the winner turned the anthem into a stark soul song. (The singer behind it, Student Kay, said this was because he found its call for sacrifice “quite tragic. ”) Speakers at the conference this month agreed that the anthem was playing perhaps its largest role since World War II, when it helped motivate people against German invaders and the collaborationist Vichy government. “In recent years, the Front National were the only party to use these republican symbols,” said Hervé Drévillon, a professor of modern history at Paris 1 university, referring to the party. “The attacks gave legitimacy to the other parties to it. ” All the candidates for next year’s French presidential election have been singing it at rallies, he added. But several speakers noted that some in France were still uncomfortable with the anthem. They either find its lyrics calling citizens “to arms” outdated and violent, or find the line about “impure blood” inflammatory given France’s colonial history. and Corsicans booed the anthem at football matches in the 2000s. Mathieu Schwartz, a documentary maker who spoke at the conference, said such objections were not about “La Marseillaise” itself. “I don’t think it’s any different from other national hymns,” he said. “If you have a problem with the nation, you have a problem with it. If you changed the music or words, you’d still have a problem. ” Ismael El Iraki, a Moroccan filmmaker who has been living in Paris for 15 years and escaped the Bataclan during the attacks, said the lyrics did not need to be changed. “That infamous line about impure blood is my favorite,” he said, sharing an unusual interpretation from his high school history teacher: Rouget de Lisle was calling on people to shed their own impure blood in defense of the French Revolution — purity having been something previously associated with the aristocracy. “That’s why I love the ‘Marseillaise,’ ” he said. “In a moment in history where purity is used as a horrible goal by jihadists and fear mongers alike, I think it’s a cool line to keep in mind, reminding us that impurity is our own, and our strength. ” | 1 |
She explains :
Hillary Clinton wants to start an air war with Russia. Let’s be clear: That’s what a no-fly zone means. It is tantamount to a declaration of war against Russia.
***
Clearly the Democrats are incredibly embarrassed about the nature of these [email] revelations, and they’ve created a smokescreen here to try and distract from that. But that smokescreen is pushing us to the brink of warfare with Russia now, where you have the U.S. head of defense, Ashton Carter, talking about nuclear war. We just did a dry run dropping fake nuclear bombs over Nevada. This is really dangerous stuff; this is not pretend. So we need to take a deep breath here, we need to step back and stop beating the war drums. In this context, Hillary Clinton is talking about starting an air war with Russia. Which could slide—you know, we’re on the verge of nuclear war right now.
***
The most likely nuclear threat right now is with Russia. There’s no doubt about that. When you have Mikhail Gorbachev, who was the prime minister of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, saying that the threat of nuclear war is hotter now than it has ever been in all of history, you’ve got to take that pretty seriously. And when you have Hillary Clinton then beating the war drums against Russia, and essentially saying that if she’s elected that we will declare war on Russia—because that’s what a no-fly zone over Syria amounts to. Shooting down Russian warplanes.
***
Hillary Clinton is a disastrous nuclear threat right now in a context where we’re already off-the-charts in the risk of nuclear war. She has stated in this context that she’s essentially opening up a battlefront with Russia. So to my mind, this emerges as the clearest and most present danger.
Prominent liberal economist Jeffrey Sachs writes in the Huffington Post, in an essay bannered “ Hillary Is the Candidate of the War Machine “:
It is often believed that the Republicans are the neocons and the Democrats act as restraints on the warmongering. This is not correct. Both parties are divided between neocon hawks and cautious realists who don’t want the US in unending war. Hillary is a staunch neocon whose record of favoring American war adventures explains much of our current security danger.
Just as the last Clinton presidency set the stage for financial collapse, it also set the stage for unending war. On October 31, 1998 President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act that made it official US policy to support “regime change” in Iraq.
It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.
Thus were laid the foundations for the Iraq War in 2003.
Of course, by 2003, Hillary was a Senator and a staunch supporter of the Iraq War, which has cost the US trillions of dollars, thousands of lives, and done more to create ISIS and Middle East instability than any other single decision of modern foreign policy. In defending her vote, Hillary parroted the phony propaganda of the CIA:
“In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members…“
After the Iraq Liberation Act came the 1999 Kosovo War, in which Bill Clinton called in NATO to bomb Belgrade, in the heart of Europe, and unleashing another decade of unrest in the Balkans. Hillary, traveling in Africa, called Bill: “I urged him to bomb,” she told reporter Lucinda Frank.
Hillary’s record as Secretary of State is among the most militaristic, and disastrous, of modern US history . Some experience. Hilary was a staunch defender of the military-industrial-intelligence complex at every turn, helping to spread the Iraq mayhem over a swath of violence that now stretches from Mali to Afghanistan. Two disasters loom largest: Libya and Syria.
Hillary has been much attacked for the deaths of US diplomats in Benghazi, but her tireless promotion of the overthrow Muammar Qaddafi by NATO bombing is the far graver disaster. Hillary strongly promoted NATO-led regime change in Libya, not only in violation of international law but counter to the most basic good judgment. After the NATO bombing, Libya descended into civil war while the paramilitaries and unsecured arms stashes in Libya quickly spread west across the African Sahel and east to Syria. The Libyan disaster has spawned war in Mali, fed weapons to Boko Haram in Nigeria, and fueled ISIS in Syria and Iraq. In the meantime, Hillary found it hilarious to declare of Qaddafi: “We came, we saw, he died.”
Perhaps the crowning disaster of this long list of disasters has been Hillary’s relentless promotion of CIA-led regime change in Syria. Once again Hillary bought into the CIA propaganda that regime change to remove Bashir al-Assad would be quick, costless, and surely successful. In August 2011, Hillary led the US into disaster with her declaration Assad must “get out of the way,” backed by secret CIA operations.
Five years later, no place on the planet is more ravaged by unending war, and no place poses a great threat to US security. More than 10 million Syrians are displaced, and the refugees are drowning in the Mediterranean or undermining the political stability of Greece, Turkey, and the European Union. Into the chaos created by the secret CIA-Saudi operations to overthrow Assad, ISIS has filled the vacuum, and has used Syria as the base for worldwide terrorist attacks.
The list of her incompetence and warmongering goes on. Hillary’s support at every turn for NATO expansion, including even into Ukraine and Georgia against all common sense, was a trip wire that violated the post-Cold War settlement in Europe in 1991 and that led to Russia’s violent counter-reactions in both Georgia and Ukraine. As Senator in 2008, Hilary co-sponsored 2008-SR439 , to include Ukraine and Georgia in NATO. As Secretary of State, she then presided over the restart of the Cold War with Russia.
It is hard to know the roots of this record of disaster. Is it chronically bad judgment? Is it her preternatural faith in the lying machine of the CIA?
Is it a repeated attempt to show that as a Democrat she would be more hawkish than the Republicans? Is it to satisfy her hardline campaign financiers? Who knows? Maybe it’s all of the above. But whatever the reasons, hers is a record of disaster. Perhaps more than any other person, Hillary can lay claim to having stoked the violence that stretches from West Africa to Central Asia and that threatens US security .
Jakob Augstein notes in Der Spiegel:
Trump would probably be the better choice in the question of war and peace than Clinton.
Clinton has expressly expressed the wish to establish a flight ban on Syria, or parts of it. *** In truth, it would be an act of war. The risks are unpredictable. Above all, the risk of a military conflict with Russia.
***
The highest soldier of the United States of America, General Joseph Dunford, President of the United States General Staff of the United States Forces, is certain. To control the entire airspace over Syria would mean war with Syria and Russia. Dunford’s predecessor in office estimated a few years ago that an effective flight bomb over Syria would involve the use of 70,000 soldiers and a monthly cost of $ 1 billion.
But the bottom line is Clinton’s proven historical track record … she’s at least partly responsible for war after catastrophic war and coup after disastrous coup in Libya, Syria, Kosovo, Haiti, Honduras and other countries around the world.
Trump might speak in a crude, knee-jerk manner … but Clinton is probably more likely to actually get us into war. | 0 |
=By= Zoë Carpenter from The Nation
A fter a weekend of mass arrests, people protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline are preparing for another clash with a growing and increasingly militarized police force near Cannon Ball, North Dakota. On Sunday, demonstrators set up a new camp, called Winter Camp, in the pathway of pipeline construction, on what they consider unceded territory belonging to them under the 1851 Laramie Treaty. But Dakota Access LLC, the pipeline developer, said in a statement that they would be “removed from the land,” which the company purchased from a local rancher last month. Police said on Wednesday that they are prepared to carry out that threat. “It’s obvious we have the resources, we have the manpower, to go down there and end this,” Cass County Sheriff Paul Laney said in an interview.
As the prospect of a raid on the Winter Camp looms, human-rights groups are increasingly concerned about law enforcement’s use of force against peaceful pipeline protesters (who call themselves “water protectors”), as well as journalists and legal observers. Demonstrators reported being pepper sprayed, beaten with batons, and strip searched in custody during the weekend’s arrests. Journalists were also arrested, and had their equipment confiscated.
In a Facebook post, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier described Saturday’s demonstration as a “riot,” and wrote that the “situation clearly illustrates what we have been saying for weeks, that this protest is not peaceful or lawful.” But it wasn’t immediately clear what he meant by a riot: The photo that accompanied the Facebook post showed protesters walking calmly through a field carrying banners and signs. Video footage showed people standing together, backing up as police approached. The only supposedly aggressive acts that the sheriff’s department described in any specific form included that two arrows were shot towards law enforcement, one officer was spit on, and that a drone that protesters were using to monitor police activity “attacked” a helicopter.
On Sunday, the Morton County Sheriff called for additional law-enforcement personnel from outside North Dakota. Officers from at least six other states—Wisconsin, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wyoming, Indiana, and Nebraska—have arrived so far. In his call for more resources, the sheriff cited “escalated unlawful tactics by individuals protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.” State and local officials also requested, and received , temporary flight restrictions from the Federal Aviation Administration in a seven-mile radius around the protest camps, which may be an attempt to keep away news helicopters, as it was during the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri.
“We have heard reports of escalation [from law enforcement], and we continue to be concerned with a number of issues,” said Tarah Demant, the senior director of Amnesty International’s Identity and Discrimination Unit. She cited the “sheer number” of police that have been brought into the area; their use of military-style equipment including riot and camouflage gear, semi-automatic weapons, and armored vehicles; and the force that they’re using to make arrests. “If police are making arrests—for example, for trespassing—they must be done in a way that upholds the rights of the people who are being arrested. And they need to be commensurate with the crime. The idea that police need to come out with pepper spray…is worrisome,” Demant said. “If there is a riot, then police or authorities have to provide evidence of that.”
Demant is also concerned with rhetoric coming out of the Morton County Sheriff’s office. The department has repeatedly emphasized that protesters are violent, though there is little evidence to back up its claim. In September, for instance, Kirchmeier spread a rumor that demonstrators were threatening to use pipe bombs against officers. “We’ve seen this in multiple places across the world, and in dictatorships. Declaring that something is a riot is a way to shut down protests,” Demant said. “If there is a riot, then police or authorities have to provide evidence of that.” She said the response from North Dakota officials fits a pattern of increasing militarization of law enforcement across the country, but that it also echoes a long history of official, state-sanctioned violence against indigenous people.
Law enforcement officials have said that they are only responding to illegal activity on private property. “We’re having our hand forced…. we have to defend rule of law, and we have to make those arrests,” Sheriff Laney said in the Wednesday interview. But Jennifer Cook, the policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of North Dakota, said that, while trespassing is illegal, it’s not a crime that warrants a militarized response. “Even if [demonstrators] are on private land, and the private landowner requests that law enforcement eject them, it is in no way justified for law enforcement to come out and use excessive force against them,” Cook said. She said that officials have been “ramping up” the seriousness of the charges they’re filing against protesters (and against journalists: Democracy Now! ’s Amy Goodman was arrested on a “riot” charge). She sees that as an attempt to “justify the militarized response,” rather than a reflection of demonstrators’ actually acting aggressively themselves.
On Saturday, Standing Rock Sioux chairman David Archambault II called on the Department of Justice to investigate the “strong-arm tactics, abuses and unlawful arrests by law enforcement” in North Dakota. Though officials have consistently denied that they’ve used excessive force, on Wednesday the Morton County sheriff’s office did admit that the dog handlers whose animals attacked protesters in September “were not properly licensed to do security work in the state of North Dakota.” It took nearly two months for them to reach that conclusion. | 0 |
This is how it works in the Clinton Cabal...or is it the Mainstream Mafia. 1) Qatar supports ISIS (just by the way) 2) Qatar wants to buy advanced U.S. missile defence systems, Apache attack helicopters and other military materiel 3) Ratheon (a big defence contractor) wants to sell said U.S. Military goods to Qatar 4) These kinds of foreign military sales have to be approved by the State Department 5) Hillary becomes Secretary of State 6) Hillary has a "Charitable Foundation" 7) Hillary has a former POTUS as her spouse 8) Hillary has a network of aides, confidants, bundlers and fundraisers at her beck and call (all part of the Clinton Organized Crime Family) 9) John Podesta (at that time)...yeah the same John Podesta who is having all of his emails released right now... held dual titles at the State Department: as a "senior advisor", and as a member of a foreign policy advisory board Secretary Clinton created. 10) Ratheon hires John Podesta's sister-in-law (Heather Podesta), along with John Merrigan and Matt Bernstein (both major donors or bundlers to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 and 2016 campaigns). This guaranteed them access to Hillary Clinton. 11) Qatar, meanwhile, donated millions to the Clinton Foundation. They hired Bill Clinton to make 2 speeches that paid him between $500,000 and $1 million dollars. They gave Slick Willy another $1 million as a birthday gift...aaahhh, isn't that sweet? 12) The $19 billion dollar sale from Ratheon to Qatar was...wait for it - approved by Hillary Clinton! Yeah!! 13) Heather Podesta, John Merrigan and Matt Berstein were paid $460,000 in Lobbying Fees by Ratheon 14) Hillary Clinton left the State Department 15) Ratheon released Podesta, Merrigan and Bernstein...as they no longer had direct and personal access to the Secretary of State. This is how it is done folks. This is pay-for-play. The ISIS supporting nation of Qatar gets advanced U.S. Military gear, the Clintons, the Podestas, and assorted others in the Clinton Crime Family get rich(er). There are still a lot of Americans who need to wake up, pay attention, and then make the right decision on November 8th. | 0 |
Rosie O’Donnell is set to lead a rally in protest of Donald Trump in front of the White House Tuesday, just hours before the president delivers his first address to a joint session of Congress. [“Following the first disastrous month of his administration, Trump is expected to articulate a discriminatory agenda that continues to put people in harm’s way, undermines equality and our shared values, and damages our environment,” the group Advocates Resisting Trump Agenda said in a statement announcing the rally. “The rally will feature speakers from diverse organizations and groups of people who have been impacted and harmed by the Trump administration’s policies, including women, people of color and members of the LGBTQ community, as well as environmental and immigrants’ rights groups,” the statement read. The rally — dubbed “A Resistance Address: Defending American Values in a Time of Moral Crisis” — is set to begin Tuesday at 6 p. m. Eastern. O’Donnell’s public feud with Trump reached a new low after the election when the former View host shared a video on social media that questioned whether or not Trump’s youngest son, Barron, was autistic. While O’Donnell eventually apologized to Melania Trump for attacking her the comedienne ratcheted up her criticism of Trump’s administration. O’Donnell’s participation in the rally comes on the heels of her failed bid to play Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon on Saturday Night Live. Among the list of organizations participating in Tuesday’s protest outside the White House in Washington’s Lafayette Park are the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and websites DailyKos and MoveOn. org. The event starts at 6pm EST and will stream live online. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson | 1 |
Posted on October 28, 2016 by Baxter Dmitry in News , US // 1 Comment
Hillary Clinton spent a whole afternoon drunk and unresponsive while her campaign staff tried to reach her, a new WikiLeaks email reveals.
An Aug. 8, 2015, email exchange with the subject “ Have you sent her the docs? ” between campaign chairman John Podesta and top aide Jennifer Palmieri revealed the two discussing whether to call Hillary and “ sober her up some .”
John Podesta also suggested Hillary’s judgement might be impaired considering her drunken state.
“ Should I call her and talk this through or better leave with you? ” Podesta asked at 2 p.m.
“ I’m worried she’ll get on with Cheryl [Mills] and we’ll end up in a bad place. ”
Two hours later Palmieri decided it was time drunk Hillary was roused from her unresponsive state.
“ I think you should call her and sober her up some, ” she said. Is Hillary Clinton’s judgement impaired due to her daytime consumption of alcohol? | 0 |
A new report from the London Borough of Redbridge has revealed almost one in five of all child deaths in the area since 2008 were down to their parents being close relatives. [The statistic was discussed at a meeting of the Redbridge Council Health and Board on Monday, with the matter of child fatality being raised. The council’s report found between 2008 and 2016, 19 per cent of child deaths in the borough were caused by infants being born to “consanguineous relationships” — marriage or otherwise sexual relations between couples who are first cousins or closer. The recording year of saw the highest number of child deaths in the period. Of all deaths in that year, the second greatest cause was “chromosomal, genetic or congenital abnormalities”. Overall, 65 per cent of child deaths occurred before the age of one. The Ilford Recorder reports the remarks of Child Death Overview Panel Chairman Gladys Xavier who told the meeting there were ongoing education programmes targeting Asian communities in the area to address the prevalence of incest, which the paper referred to as a “continued problem”. The council has also asked local schools to emphasise the teaching of genetics to children. The 2011 census found that 41 per cent of Redbridge residents identified as Asian or Asian British, and the religious makeup of the area was 36. 8 per cent Christian, 23. 3 per cent Muslim, and 11. 4 per cent Hindu. Concerns over consanguineous relationships in Redbridge focus around particular communities in the borough, with the report stating the practice “is most common among Pakistani communities” and the same pattern can be observed in Redbridge. Of all child deaths in the area in the time studies, nine per cent were to Pakistani ethnicity parents and were the “result of genetic complications arising from having related parents”. Despite the attempts to reach out to these communities, there was a concern the educational drive was falling on deaf ears. Councillor Joyce Ryan told the board meeting: “Although everyone is battling hard at this it is something that some communities struggle to accept and sometimes do not want to accept. ” | 1 |
Last week, Julian Assange, Editor-In-Chief of WikiLeaks, sat down with John Pilger, Australian journalist and filmmaker, for what is arguably Assange’s most provocative interview ever. During... | 0 |
Conservative street artist Sabo has struck again, this time with a series of posters mocking the upcoming Academy Awards that he plastered all over Hollywood with just 48 hours to go until the big show. [The Los “rebel artist” shared photographs of his handiwork on his Twitter page Friday the work includes a poster with a quote from the Quentin Tarantino film True Romance: “All those assholes make are unwatchable movies from unreadable books. ” DISCOUNTING HOLLYWOOD by SABO https: . pic. twitter. — unsavoryagents (@unsavoryagents) February 24, 2017, Another one of Sabo’s posters was pasted onto a Redbox movie rental kiosk: “Yeah! We wouldn’t have paid full price to watch any Oscar nominated movies either,” reads the caption. In a post on his website, the artist wrote that it was “out of touch actors who rail against my political beliefs” that served as the inspiration for the latest work, which he calls, “Discounting Hollywood. ” “Shia LaBeouf, Bryan Cranston, Cher, Madonna, Ashley Judd, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck … I could go on all day, have shot their mouths off long enough calling people like myself every vile name in the book, again and again, and again, and again,” Sabo wrote. “I used to really love movies and the occasional tv show but not so much these days. I ‘discount’ what goes on in them these days more than ever. ” The artist cited a recent Hollywood Reporter poll that found that 60 percent of Americans cannot name one nominee for Best Picture. “What this tells me is America for the most part is more and more discounting what’s coming out of Hollywood,” he said. “And I’m sure many who do eventually watch these movies are waiting for them to show up on RedBox because $1. 50 is all they think they are worth.
” Sabo told the Hollywood Reporter on Friday that he hopes the posters will remain up outside the Dolby Theater ahead of Sunday night’s ceremony. “These pieces look so legit no one is thinking to take them down,” he told the outlet. “It almost looks like a real Redbox ad. ” Sabo repeatedly used his artwork and the streets of Los Angeles to skewer celebrities and liberal politicians during the 2016 presidential election. In August, the artist targeted former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and actor Leonardo DiCaprio with “money laundering” street art after the election, he placed fake realtor on bus benches that mocked celebrities’ promises to leave the country if Trump won. He has also used artwork to mock Hollywood’s vehement opposition to Trump, and to criticize the Iran nuclear deal. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 1 |
Caitlyn Jenner, formerly known as Bruce Jenner, has undergone successful sex reassignment surgery, according to a book of memoirs set to be released later this month. [According to excerpts published by Radar Online, the Jenner went under the knife for a “final surgery” in January of this year, just over two years after coming out as transgender in a blockbuster interview with Diane Sawyer in 2015. “The surgery was a success, and I feel not only wonderful but liberated,” Jenner reportedly writes in Secrets of My Life, a book of memoirs due out April 25. “I am telling you because I believe in candor,” Jenner reportedly writes in the book. “So all of you can stop staring. You want to know, so now you know. Which is why this is the first time, and the last time, I will ever speak of it. ” In April 2015, Jenner — who earned a gold medal in the decathlon at the 1976 Olympic games in Montreal — told Diane Sawyer in a interview that he had always been confused about his gender identity. “I am a woman,” Jenner said at the time. “It’s not like I’ve been dressing up like a woman, it’s like I’ve spent my whole life dressing like a man. ” Following the reveal, Jenner appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair, was named Glamour magazine’s “Woman of the Year” and was awarded the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the 2015 ESPY Awards. Jenner also starred in the reality series I Am Cait, which ran for two seasons on E!. In the upcoming memoir, Jenner reportedly writes that the decision to go under the knife was “complex,” but ultimately, “it’s just a penis. ” “I just want to have all the right parts,” Jenner reportedly writes. “I am also tired of tucking the damn thing in all the time. ” Jenner still appears regularly on the E! series Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Secrets of My Life is due out April 25. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 1 |
Go to Article Rafael Salamanca’s interview on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” was a major throw down of epic proportions. Reality hit this councilman and he just kept repeating the same talking points. If you want to go up against the brilliant Trucker Carlson then you need to have your facts straight. | 0 |
PR Newswire October 27, 2016
TUCSON, Ariz. , Oct. 25, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Concerns about Hillary Clinton’s health have been subdued after her three debate performances. She presented her ability to survive 4-and-a-half hours on a stage with Donald Trump as proof of sufficient stamina to serve as commander-in-chief.
“She evidently intended this as a joke, although I suspect our combat veterans would not be amused,” states AAPS executive director Jane Orient, M.D.
Videos are, however, circulating on the internet, from her rather brief and rare appearances in public, which are purported to show pathological eye movements.
“These are quick, episodic, and inconsistent,” states Dr. Orient, who is an internist. “So we decided to ask doctors on our email list to have a look at one of the videos . A helpful tool is to paste the URL into http://RowVid.com and watch it at half or quarter speed.”
Nearly two-thirds of respondents said they saw abnormal movements. Only 15% did not, and 21% were unsure. There are long segments in which the eye movements appear normal.
About 60% of those who saw abnormal movements thought “the cause could be a potentially disabling neurological condition,” and none of them were willing to say that it isn’t.
Such movements signify an abnormality in portions of the brain that coordinate the eye muscles. There is a long differential diagnosis. Possibilities the respondents suggested include increased intracranial pressure (she is at risk for that because of her history of head trauma and a transverse sinus clot); a drug effect; or a chronic degenerative neurological condition. Parkinson’s disease is mentioned—with drug treatment concealing most manifestations but causing the eye signs.
Doctors were asked which tests would be helpful, and 37 responded . The most common one was a full neurological examination by unbiased specialists, including a neuro-ophthalmologist.
“A neuro-ophthalmologist could do a structured examination, but it might be normal at a moment in time. The video clips need to be explained,” stated Dr. Orient. “A cardiologist might do an electrocardiogram that is perfectly normal—but he will also look at a 24-hour monitor that may show a transient life-threatening rhythm disturbance.”
A collection of additional clips in slow motion has been posted.
“As Hillary revealed to the public, perhaps illegally, the President may have only four minutes to respond to a nuclear threat,” said Dr. Orient. “The public needs to know whether she is concealing a serious, progressive illness that may impair memory, reasoning, alertness, or ability to think quickly at a critical time.”
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is a national organization representing physicians in virtually all specialties and every state. Founded in 1943, AAPS has the motto “omnia pro aegroto,” which means “all for the patient.”
SOURCE Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) Tags: | 0 |
Trump's Foreign Policy Is Sane While Clinton's Is Belligerent
At least on Syria and Russia relations there's no contest Originally appeared at Moon of Alabama
Some highlights of a recent Donald Trump interview with Reuters: U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Democrat Hillary Clinton's plan for Syria would "lead to World War Three," because of the potential for conflict with military forces from nuclear-armed Russia.
In an interview focused largely on foreign policy, Trump said defeating Islamic State is a higher priority than persuading Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down,..
Trump questioned how Clinton would negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin after demonizing him; blamed President Barack Obama for a downturn in U.S. relations with the Philippines under its new president, Rodrigo Duterte;...
Trump's foreign policy talk is far more sane than Clinton's and her camp's. It is ludicrous to event think about openly attacking Russian (or Syrian) troops in Syria with an al-Qaeda supporting "no-Fly-Zone". Russia would respond by taking down U.S. planes over Syria. The Russian government would have to do so to uphold its authority internationally as well as at home.
The U.S. could respond by destroying all Russian assets in and around Syria. It has the capabilities. But then what? If I were Putin my next step would be a nuclear test shoot in Siberia - a big one - to make a point and to wake up the rest of the world. I would also provide secret support to any indigenous anti-U.S. movement anywhere. China would support Russia as its first line of self defense. "What we should do is focus on ISIS. We should not be focusing on Syria," said Trump as he dined on fried eggs and sausage at his Trump National Doral golf resort. "You’re going to end up in World War Three over Syria if we listen to Hillary Clinton.
"You’re not fighting Syria any more, you’re fighting Syria, Russia and Iran, all right? Russia is a nuclear country, but a country where the nukes work as opposed to other countries that talk," he said. ...On Russia, Trump again knocked Clinton's handling of U.S.-Russian relations while secretary of state and said her harsh criticism of Putin raised questions about "how she is going to go back and negotiate with this man who she has made to be so evil," if she wins the presidency.
On the deterioration of ties with the Philippines, Trump aimed his criticism at Obama, saying the president "wants to focus on his golf game" rather than engage with world leaders.
The last two points are important. Trump, despite all his bluster, knows about decency. What is the point of arrogantly scolding negotiation partner who have the power to block agreements you want or need?
Why blame Russia for hacking wide open email servers when no Russian speakers were involved? Why blame Duterte? It is the U.S. that has a long history of violent racism in the Philippines and FBI agents committed false flag "terrorism" is Duterte's home town Davao. Bluster may paper over such history for a moment but it does not change the facts or helps solving problems.
Trump's economic policies would be catastrophic for many people in the U.S. and elsewhere. But Hillary Clinton would put her husband, the man who deregulated Wall Street, back in charge of the economy. What do people expect the results would be?
The points above may be obvious and one might be tempted to just pass them and dig into some nig-nagging of this or that election detail. But the above points as THE most important of any election. The welfare of the people is not decided with some "liberal" concession to this or that niche of the general society. The big issues count the most. Good or evil flow from them. Trumps principle, and I think personal position, is leaning towards peaceful resolution of conflicts. Clinton's preference is clearly, as her history shows, escalation and general belligerence. It is too risky to vote for her. Did you enjoy this article? - Consider helping us! Russia Insider depends on your donations: the more you give, the more we can do. $1 $10 Other amount
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Suppressed! Why is the Vatican covering up the history of the pre-flood world?
There has been a massive cover-up by the Roman Catholic church to keep the general public from understanding that there was a pre-flood civilization. The history of the pre-flood world has been covered up and glossed over by the Vatican, due to Biblical ideologies and as a way to keep the world from interacting with alien species. Is the Vatican controlling history? Uncovering the suppression of pre-flood world history by the Vatican
History has been overwritten by powerful forces, and artifacts and scholarly articles that would testify for this pre-flood world have been confiscated. Churches were built over pagan sites to both conquer the civilizations and to cover up pre-flood remains. A narrative has been propagated that we were once a Neanderthal species, which then evolved into our current human state. However, with first-hand testimony, it has been uncovered that this is false. But why would the core of the Roman Catholic church orchestrate this cover up?
This is because this pre-flood civilization was in fact seeded by an alien species. This species built an amazing set of monoliths and towering artifacts, simply unparalleled in today’s world. These aliens seeded the early human populations to bring them to where we are today—although the flood wiped away much of this evidence. If the general public knew about this prior civilization, there would be no control over the population. Furthermore, the pagan sites that many churches were built over served as portals for these aliens to travel back and forth between Earth and their areas of the universe .
Some evidence of this lies both in the remains of giants and those with other genetic deformities. These abnormalities were due to the intermingling of non-human species with humans.
Figure 1: Artificial deformation of the cranium https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/D%C3%A9formation_P%C3%A9ruvienne_MHNT_Noir.jpg
The flood attempted to wipe the slate clean of all of these abnormalities but did not fully do the job. Therefore, the Vatican had to come in with the ideologies of the Bible and attempt to cover up the rest of the evidence. It is truly fascinating to see some of this massive cover up exposed as curious researchers dig up more and more evidence of this great civilization.
This article (Suppressed! Why is the Vatican covering up the history of the pre-flood world?) | 0 |
Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” House Intelligence Committee ranking Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff ( ) said it is “way premature” to conclude that members of President Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 presidential election. “I don’t think we can say anything definitively at this point,” Schiff said. “We are still at the very early stages of the investigation. The only thing I can say is that it would be irresponsible for us not to get to the bottom of this. We really need to find out exactly what the Russians did. Because one of the most important conclusions that the intelligence community reached is that they are going to do this again to the United States. They are doing it already in Europe. So we can say conclusively this is something that needs to be thoroughly investigated but it’s way premature to be reaching conclusions. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
Weekly Standard senior editor Christoper Caldwell writes at the New York Times:[President Trump presents a problem to those who look at politics in terms of systematic ideologies. He is either disinclined or unable to lay out his agenda in that way. So perhaps it was inevitable that Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, who does have a gift for thinking systematically, would be so often invoked by Mr. Trump’s opponents. They need him not just as a hate object but as a heuristic, too. There may never be a “Trumpism,” and unless one emerges, the closest we may come to understanding this administration is as an expression of “Bannonism. ” Mr. Bannon, 63, has won a reputation for abrasive brilliance at almost every stop in his unorthodox career — as a naval officer, Goldman Sachs mergers specialist, financier, documentary screenwriter and director, Breitbart News impresario and chief executive of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign. One Harvard Business School classmate described him to The Boston Globe as “top three in intellectual horsepower in our class — perhaps the smartest. ” Benjamin Harnwell of the Institute for Human Dignity, a Catholic organization in Rome, calls him a “walking bibliography. ” Perhaps because Mr. Bannon came late to conservatism, turning his energy to political matters only after the Sept. 11 attacks, he radiates an excitement about it that most of his conservative contemporaries long ago lost. … Many accounts of Mr. Bannon paint him as a cartoon villain or internet troll come to life, as a bigot, an a misogynist, a . The former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, have even called him a “white nationalist. ” While he is certainly a conservative of some kind, the evidence that he is an extremist of a more troubling sort has generally been either massaged, misread or hyped up. There may be good reasons to worry about Mr. Bannon, but they are not the ones everyone is giving. It does not make Mr. Bannon a fascist that he happens to know who the Italian extremist Julius Evola is. It does not make Mr. Bannon a racist that he described Breitbart as “the platform for the ” — a broad and imprecise term that applies to a wide array of radicals, not just certain white supremacist groups. … When Mr. Bannon spoke on Thursday of “deconstructing the administrative state,” it may have sounded like gobbledygook outside the hall, but it was an electrifying profession of faith for the attendees. It is through Mr. Bannon that Trumpism can be converted from a set of nostalgic laments and complaints into a program for overhauling the government. Read the complete column at the New York Times. | 1 |
Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” President Barack Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice addressed reports she was responsible for the unmasking of names of Trump associates after the election during the transition period. Rice said unmaking names in intelligence reports she received is standard procedure insisting, “I leaked nothing to nobody,” adding there is “no equivalence” between unmasking and leaking. Rice said, “The allegation is that somehow Obama Administration officials utilized intelligence for political purposes. That is absolutely false. I was the national security advisor. My job is to protect the American people and the security of our country. That’s the same as the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the CIA director, and every morning to enable us to do that, we receive, from the intelligence community, a compilation of intelligence reports that the intelligence community selected for us on a daily basis to give us the best information as to what is going on around the world. I received those reports as did each of the other officials, and there were occasions when I would receive a report in which a U. S. person was referred to. Name not provided, just U. S. person. And sometimes in that context, in order to understand the importance of the report, and assess it’s significance, it was necessary to find out, or request the information as to who the U. S. official was. ” She continued, “I leaked nothing to nobody and never have and never would. Let me explain this. First, to talk about the contents of a classified report — to talk about the individuals on the foreign side, who were the targets of the report itself, or any Americans that may have collected upon incidentally is to disclose classified information I’m not going to do that. Those people putting these stories out are doing just that. I can’t describe any particular report, and I have no idea what re reports — I don’t know the time frame, the subject matter, and I don’t know who they think was collected upon. ” She added, “When the intelligence community would respond to a request to identify an American, that would come back only to the person requested it, brought back to them directly. To me, or to whoever might have requested it, on occasion, and this is important. It was not then typically broadly disseminated throughout the nation security community or the government. So the notion that some people are trying to suggest that by asking for the identity of an American person, that is the same as leaking it is completely false. There is no equivalence between unmasking and leaking. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
The nation’s health insurers, resigned to the idea that Republicans will repeal the Affordable Care Act, on Tuesday publicly outlined for the first time what the industry wants to stay in the state marketplaces, which have provided millions of Americans with insurance under the law. The insurers, some which have already started leaving the marketplaces because they are losing money, say they need a clear commitment from the Trump administration and congressional leaders that the government will continue offsetting some costs for people. They also want to keep in place rules that encourage young and healthy people to sign up, which the insurers say are crucial to a stable market for individual buyers. The demands are a sort of warning shot to Republicans. While the party is eager to repeal the law as quickly as possible, and many have promised a replacement, its members are sharply divided over what shape any new plan should take. If they do not come up with an alternative, more than 22 million people would be left uninsured, including the more than 10 million who have bought individual plans on state marketplaces. On Tuesday, Marilyn Tavenner, the chief executive of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a leading industry trade group, warned that the state marketplaces were already on unstable financial footing. Failing to continue the funding aimed at Americans, she said, would have consequences because the business would become much tougher for insurers. “The market has already been a little wobbly this year,” Ms. Tavenner said. “If insurance companies believe subsidies will not continue, they are going to pull out of the market during the next logical opportunity. ” Insurers could decide within a few months whether to pull out of the state marketplaces for 2018, a deadline they are pushing to have delayed. The trade group, one of two major groups representing insurers, was a major force in the passage of the law in 2010 and is expected to be influential in its discussions with Republicans. While its clout has been reduced by the departure of large members like the UnitedHealth Group, the organization has a powerful voice in Congress. The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, the other major trade group, has not yet said what it needs from Republican lawmakers to continue operating in the market. Ms. Tavenner, a former Medicare official in charge of overseeing the creation of the state marketplaces, brings deep knowledge of both the government’s and the industry’s roles in health care. She said her group had begun meeting with members of Congress and their staffs. Hospital groups also held a news conference on Tuesday to warn of what they said would be the dire financial consequences of a repeal if the cuts to hospital funding that were part of the Affordable Care Act were not also restored. While insurers say they do not plan to fight the Republicans’ efforts to repeal the law, they are in no hurry to see it unwound. And Ms. Tavenner said the industry would support a delay so it could prepare for the changes. “We would love to see a time frame, as long as possible,” she said. The marketplaces, now three years old, have not become as robust as expected by many of the people behind the Affordable Care Act. Even President Obama, who pushed the law and the marketplaces through Congress, has suggested some improvements. Some of the largest insurers, like UnitedHealth and Aetna, have stopped selling policies on some of the state marketplaces after losing hundreds of millions of dollars, and other insurers say they are still debating whether to stay in the market. Many have raised their premiums sharply. Ms. Tavenner acknowledged that the current law “needed to be improved. ” But she emphasized that there was widespread agreement among Republicans about the need for some the law’s provisions, including covering people with expensive medical conditions. Donald J. Trump has also signaled his support of this popular provision. “There are common starting platforms,” she said. Ms. Tavenner did not give many details about her group’s positions, but she said its top priority was to stop the immediate threat of eliminating the subsidies for plans sold to people. House Republicans have already sued to block these payments, and the lawsuit is now delayed. If the new administration chose not to defend the lawsuit, the money would disappear, and insurers would probably rush to the exits because fewer potential customers would be available. Another of the industry’s concerns is ensuring that enough young and healthy people sign up to stabilize the market. Republicans have discussed eliminating one of the law’s main tools, the individual mandate, a tax levied on those who do not enroll. In talking with Congress, Ms. Tavenner said, her members are emphasizing the need for some alternative, especially after criticism by insurers that the penalty is not large enough to persuade enough people to enroll. “There’s not one magic solution,” she said. She pointed to some of the provisions in Medicare that encourage people to sign up before they become sick. And she discussed some options to ease how insurers price their policies to be able to offer plans that are less expensive to younger people. She also argued that the insurers had no desire to return to the time before the law was passed, when people with conditions were routinely denied coverage in the individual market. Still, the industry seems willing to embrace some of the ideas being discussed by Republicans, including giving individuals more choices of plans and more accountability for the cost of their health care. Republicans also seem eager to put the states in charge of some of the details of how coverage in both the individual market and Medicaid will look. Ms. Tavenner said the industry had a long history of working with state insurance regulators. Republicans are discussing other ways to stabilize the market, including the creation of pools, where people with expensive medical conditions might be covered, bringing down the coverage costs for everyone else. “We would hesitate to rush back to that,” Ms. Tavenner said. In the past, those programs, typically run by the states, have not been adequately funded, she noted. The insurers are also beginning to discuss a potential overhaul of Medicare, pushed by the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, who favors premium support, or vouchers, as a way for people to find coverage. “We’re not big fans of that approach,” said Ms. Tavenner, although she said the industry would be open to discussing it. Ms. Tavenner said the industry wanted to know more about what the Republicans were planning, including information on the fate of the Medicaid expansion under the law. “We still have more questions than answers,” she said. “We don’t want to disrupt individuals who are relying on our coverage,” she said. | 1 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good morning. Here’s what you need to know: • Trump’s military record. Donald J. Trump’s criticism of the parents of a slain Army captain who was Muslim has drawn new scrutiny to his five deferments from the Vietnam draft, including one for bone spurs in his feet. Mr. Trump had criticized the fallen soldier’s mother, Ghazala Khan, for standing silently while her husband, Khizr, spoke at the Democratic National Convention. Ms. Khan is a Gold Star Mother, and we explain the term. Sales of versions of the Constitution are soaring after Mr. Khan’s speech. On the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton is targeting a skeptical crowd: white male voters. The billionaire investor Warren Buffett endorsed her on Monday, as she seeks the support of the business community, which traditionally votes Republican. • U. S. attacks ISIS in Libya. The strikes in Surt on Monday were part of a new military campaign against the extremists’ stronghold in North Africa, the Pentagon said. The militant group’s online posts calling for mayhem at the Olympics have led to a sense of urgency in Rio de Janeiro. • New call for reparations. Dozens of groups tied to the Black Lives Matter coalition have released a series of demands to lawmakers, including reparations for past and continuing harm to . In Chicago, the police department is facing criticism after an officer’s body camera failed to record a fatal shooting of a black teenager. There’s been a surge of interest in joining the ranks of the police in Dallas since the sniper attack last month. And tonight is National Night Out, the country’s “night out against crime,” which aims to strengthen ties and includes more than 16, 000 events. • Top police commander to step down. William J. Bratton, the commissioner of the New York Police Department and one of America’s most recognized law enforcement figures, is leaving his post next month for a job in the private sector. • Health roundup. Researchers are close to bringing to market a daring new treatment: cell therapy that turbocharges the immune system to fight cancer. More locally spread Zika infections have been identified in Miami, leading federal health officials to issue a rare travel warning in the U. S. • Scandals plague Israel’s leader. Leaks of accusations and investigations large and small confront Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is in his fourth term and faces a new inquiry, but he has shown he can slip away from accusations with ease. • The next U. S. president is more likely than not to end up backing, if not embracing, more deficit spending. And both parties are bashing trade deals, after once supporting them. • McDonald’s is taking steps to join the movement, and plans to introduce buns without corn syrup and McNuggets without artificial preservatives. • U. S. companies are increasingly moving headquarters to cities, partly to lure younger employees. • Setting the Olympic stage. We look at athletes who should have won a medal but were deprived by cheaters, and introduce you to Yusra Mardini, a Syrian teenager who will compete on the refugee team at the Rio Games. Two documentaries, “The Nazi Games: Berlin 1936” and “The Boys of 36” air tonight on many PBS stations (8:00 and 9:00, but check local listings). The first details how today’s Games were shaped by the collaboration between the Nazis and the International Olympic Committee. The second is about nine University of Washington rowers who won an unlikely gold medal. • Frightful weather. teams of researchers are analyzing droughts and other extreme weather events to see if global warming played a role. At the same time, climate change is taking on a prominence it has never had before in a U. S. presidential election. • On the music charts. Drake reached No. 1 for a 12th week. His “Views” has matched two other albums for runs at the top: Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill” (1995) and Santana’s “Supernatural” (1999). Anticipation is building for an album by Frank Ocean, the innovative and enigmatic RB singer. “Boys Don’t Cry,” is expected to be released on Friday through an exclusive deal with Apple Music. • In case you missed it. Among our most popular recent articles: Zimbabwe’s vice president lives in a $ hotel suite, on taxpayer money. We talked to about a dozen women who said they had experienced some form of sexual harassment or intimidation at Fox News, and found that San Francisco — once known as the Harlem of the West — has lost much of its black population and culture. • At the White House. President Obama will host Singapore’s prime minister for a state dinner. • Recipes of the day. This soup balances the flavor of sweet, summer corn and tangy yogurt. For another spicy option, try this shrimp dish by Mario Batali. With one month until Labor Day weekend, time for a summer road trip is winding down. And your relaxation time will be even shorter if you get lost. That still happens in this age of GPS. Sometimes it’s even because of the technology. The most famous example might be the woman who drove 900 miles across several countries over two days, even though her destination was just 90 miles away in her own country, Belgium. The most tragic cases, when a device guides drivers down abandoned roads or uses outdated data, for example, can end in death, whether in a rural area like Death Valley National Park, or not far from Chicago. (Learn about GPS mishaps here and here.) A precursor to GPS, the Jones Live Map, had similar troubles keeping up with changes 100 years ago, though, it offered over 500 routes across the country. GPS, which stands for global positioning system, got its start in the U. S. military, which was trying to track Sputnik, the first artificial satellite launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. Scientists learned they could figure out its orbit by measuring the changes in the frequency of its radio signal. Today, satellites controlled from Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado transmit a constant signal emitted by their atomic clocks. Billions of devices, including your smartphone, carry a receiver that locks onto the signals to calculate your location. The first GPS receiver became available in the 1980s, and now the technology is ubiquitous — mostly for the better. Your Morning Briefing is published weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern and updated on the web all morning. What would you like to see here? Contact us at briefing@nytimes. com. You can sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox. | 1 |
Share This 74-year-old Gladys Coego (left), 33-year-old Tomika Curgil (right)
After being entrusted with a room full of votes, two Florida women were on the job when a co-worker showed up and caught what they were hiding at the ballot center. Terrified by what they had just walked in on, the employee immediately reported it to the police, and now, these two are where they belong — in jail.
Evidently, Democrats will trust anyone with a pulse to do a job that requires a lot of honesty and integrity, then turn around and tell voting citizens not to worry about voter fraud because it “isn’t real.” This line, discrediting conservatives’ concern, has been repeated extensively by pro-Hillary Clinton liberal media over the last couple of weeks, assuming that Americans are stupid enough to ignore what they see and take their word for it.
However, the more they say it, the more proof comes out. What happened in the battleground state of Florida should terrify everyone relying on an honest system for Donald Trump to win.
We saw a situation in 2012 that reeked of undeniable voter fraud when Mitt Romney was ahead in the polls by a landslide but lost, which was likely due in part to entire counties strangely missing every single vote for the Republican. We’re supposed to just accept that nothing of the sort will happen this year, even though it seems to occur every election. Two Miami women just proved liberals wrong with what they were caught doing during a Mayoral race and ballot initiative, which you can only assume takes place for presidential elections when the stakes are much higher.
According to the Miami Herald , 74-year-old Gladys Coego was simply supposed to open completed ballots sent in from county voters and set them aside. However, she took this trust as an opportunity to give her mayoral candidate of choice, Raquel Regalado, an unknown number of votes. She apparently wanted Regalado to win bad enough that she was willing to commit a felony to make it happen.
Democrats would excuse this fraudulent voting behavior as a very rare instance that’s not of concern for any other race, however, 33-year-old Tomika Curgil disproved that lie with the voter fraud she also committed in Florida. Curgil is accused of taking liberties to complete ballots for her own agenda, without people’s consent, and also “submitted at least 17 forms for people who apparently don’t exist — and several forms for people who are dead,” the Miami Herald explained.
If voter fraud isn’t real, then these two dishonest ballot-workers wouldn’t have been arrested for it. What they were willing to do in a small election setting, with rather innocuous results, only proves that the same desperate level of dishonesty is bound to occur when it come to ensuring their equally dishonest leader takes office. | 0 |
VERSAILLES, Ky. — He has put on some weight, 170 pounds to be exact, since sauntering off the racetrack and into what has to be the sweetest retirement in all of sports. American Pharoah, however, carries it well: There are no love handles, and his rich bay coat looks barely able to contain the muscles rippling beneath it. His day starts at sunup with a breakfast of organic grains — the equine equivalent of kale and quinoa — and then his work starts in earnest at 7:30 each day. That’s when American Pharoah hooks a left out of the stallion barn and ambles down the path to the breeding shed. Waiting for him is a mare, but not any old nag. No, securing one of the 160 or so spots on American Pharoah’s dance card this season requires a royal pedigree, an accomplished record as a racehorse and, most important, an ownership with the $200, 000 required to have last year’s Triple Crown champion to “cover” (a nicer term than impregnate) its mare. While horse lovers and aficionados had to wait 37 years for American Pharoah to become just the 12th horse to win the three races of the crown, thoroughbred racing’s holy grail, horsemen have hurried to get their mares in the breeding shed with the Big Horse. What’s a stud’s life? Most days, he does double duty, with a 1:30 p. m. lunch date after the morning fling. Often, he is at again for a third time at 6 p. m. It sounds exhausting until you do the math: up to $600, 000 a day, and a $30 million annual haul for his owners, Ashford Stud, over the course of the breeding season. Best of all, American Pharoah has adapted to his new career with the same efficiency, élan and joie de vivre that he demonstrated while winning nine of his 11 starts, electrifying thoroughbred enthusiasts on the track and charming them off it. He is clearly the Matinee Idol of a breeding farm that already boasts one of the most successful sires in the world, Giant’s Causeway, American Pharoah’s neighbor across the barn. On Tuesday, American Pharoah stood like a medieval knight awaiting his armor from his valet as a tour group aimed cameras and admiring gazes at him. He then stepped gingerly around Garfield, the farm’s cat and the animal here (sorry, Giant’s Causeway). “He’s just a joy to be around,” said Scott Calder, one of Ashford’s executives, about American Pharoah. “He does everything so easily. We were the ones that had to adjust. So many people want to come to see him. He is a household name far beyond the sport of horse racing. ” No horse is born a natural stud. Cigar, who died in 2014, was the sport’s leading money winner when he retired, but proved to be sterile in the breeding shed. The 2002 Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes winner, War Emblem, was bought for $17. 7 million by Japanese breeders who discovered — disappointingly — that he did not like girls. They tried several unorthodox therapies, including surrounding him with a harem, to no avail. The folks here at Ashford took no chances when American Pharoah arrived here last fall after ending his career with a triumphant victory in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. He spent his initial weeks alongside Thunder Gulch, the 1995 Kentucky Derby and Belmont winner, now 24 years old. The ’s assignment was to teach American Pharoah about life not on the run. New stallions want to play and sprint — a lot — and company only encourages them. Not Thunder Gulch. He taught American Pharoah the finer things in stallion life, such as eating grass and whiling away an afternoon lounging atop the flower buds that roll over these like a royal carpet. The Hollywood version of American Pharoah’s first day at the office says that it came on Valentine’s Day. Not quite, says Calder. It was the day after, and it was filled with tension for Ashford’s breeding team. American Pharoah’s father, Pioneerof the Nile, had earned a reputation for being something of a prima donna over at WinStar Farm. Pioneerof the Nile preferred peppermints to carrots. He was also sometimes reticent and required a whiff of pheromones from a cup of thawed mare urine to become interested. He also took his time and was prone to false starts, rocking back on his hind legs once, twice, as many as four times before consummating the relationship. Not American Pharoah. “Fortunately, those genes were not passed down,” said Calder, a wry smile curling on his lip. Instead, he has been polite and determined, as well as efficient: So far he has a better than 80 percent strike rate when it comes to successfully conceiving a foal. His book of mares reads like a social registry. There’s the aptly named Judy the Beauty, the Eclipse Champion sprinter Take Charge Lady, the dam of the 2013 champion Will Take Charge and Rags to Riches, who in 2007 became the first filly since 1905 to win the Belmont Stakes. When he is not at work, American Pharoah sometimes lounges in a roomy stall in a barn made from oak or gambols here in the bluegrass. Roaming alone in the paddock, he is framed by limestone fences, the handiwork of 20 master stonemasons, and looks every bit to the manner born. American Pharoah has plenty of visitors — more than 3, 000 so far from 45 states and a other countries. The daily tours have been sold out for months in advance. He had two special tours earlier this week when his Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert came Monday and his rider, Victor Espinoza, came Tuesday. While American Pharoah’s first runners will not hit the racetrack until 2019, there is a strong — if very hopeful — vibe that they will have inherited the speed, mind and talent that their father demonstrated throughout his brilliant career. Until his offspring start crossing finish lines in the afternoon, only a couple of things are certain: American Pharoah is enjoying his retirement and seems to be good at it. | 1 |
Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. Security Question: What is 12 + 15 ? Please leave these two fields as-is: IMPORTANT! To be able to proceed, you need to solve the following simple math (so we know that you are a human) :-) Doom and Bloom | 0 |
At last, Bill Clinton could not help himself. He paced the stage during a speech on Tuesday in North Carolina, holding his microphone close. He raised his left index finger. And at once, the meandering address turned sharply, and without prompting, to his charitable foundation, a magnet for criticism in recent weeks. “We live in a world,” Mr. Clinton lamented, tilting his head theatrically — a septuagenarian embracing his age, decades after reveling in saxophone cool. “It’s so much easier,” he said, “just to discredit people and call them names. ” For Mr. Clinton and his extended circle, this election has at times felt like a campaign devised to discredit the former president and call him names. And after more than a year of uncharacteristic restraint — a notable shift from eight years ago, when his simmering instincts often burdened Hillary Clinton’s first presidential run — Mr. Clinton seems to have had enough. “Did I solve every problem? No,” he told a crowd on Wednesday in Orlando, Fla. “Did I get caught trying? You bet. ” In the Democratic primary race, he mostly held his tongue as Senator Bernie Sanders disavowed his administration’s approach to trade, criminal justice, gay rights and the deregulation of Wall Street, in part because Mrs. Clinton had been compelled to much of his record herself. Yet if the primary race doubled as a of Mr. Clinton’s policies, which his advisers believe history will judge kindly, the general election has touched a different nerve, taking a black light to Mr. Clinton’s legacy. “His reputation has suffered some since he left the presidency,” said David Gergen, a senior adviser to several presidents, including Mr. Clinton. “There’s no desire on the part of Bill Clinton and his followers to make him the center of the campaign. They want to make Hillary the center of the campaign. So he’s had to take some things. He’s had to fight with one hand tied behind his back. ” Friends of Mr. Clinton’s say he has grown impervious to most criticisms, particularly swipes at his personal indiscretions, which could proliferate in the weeks before the election. Donald J. Trump has made winking allusions to Mr. Clinton’s infidelities and other controversies from the 1990s. But the focus on the Clinton Foundation, which has come under escalating scrutiny over potential conflicts of interest and foreign donations, has rankled him far more, according to those close to the former president, because of his deep personal investment in the foundation’s charitable work over the past 15 years. In a series of appearances this week, Mr. Clinton unleashed an impassioned by turns sarcastic and almost pleading. “All we’ve done is save lives,” he told voters on Monday in Detroit. “I got tickled the other day when Mr. Trump called my foundation a criminal enterprise,” he said on Tuesday in Durham, N. C. noting that Mr. Trump had paid a fine for making a political donation using funds from his own foundation. “If creating jobs and saving lives is bad,” Mr. Clinton said in Orlando the next day, “I guess you can zing me with it. ” Moments later, he wondered aloud how much money Mr. Trump had spent to help the people of Haiti. Angel Urena, a spokesman for Mr. Clinton, said that the foundation’s mission and those who rely on it “have been President Clinton’s life” since he left office. “So when someone who doesn’t know the first thing about philanthropy tries to bring the Clinton Foundation into his political sideshow,” Mr. Urena said of Mr. Trump, “President Clinton is going to stand up for it. ” The irritation seemed to have been building for weeks. Mr. Clinton had scarcely appeared on the campaign trail since the Democratic National Convention in July. His most public task in the interim appeared to be clapping behind Mrs. Clinton in several cities on a Rust Belt bus tour. Allies said Mr. Clinton deserved credit for largely holding his fire so far this year, despite persistent bipartisan criticism, avoiding a repeat of 2008, when he seethed over the rise of Barack Obama, then a senator. Most memorably, he appeared to diminish Mr. Obama’s campaign by invoking the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s more quixotic bids in the 1980s. “He understands,” said Paul Begala, a top campaign and White House aide to Mr. Clinton who now advises a “super PAC. ” “He used to say this a lot to me: ‘My mother didn’t have to spank me twice for the same mistake. ’” An exception came this summer, when Mr. Clinton attracted criticism by chatting at the Phoenix airport with Attorney General Loretta Lynch amid a federal investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email practices. Still, the Clintons and many in their orbit have long believed they are held to a double standard on questions of transparency, and friends say they consider the tumult surrounding the family foundation to be among the most egregious examples. They point to the lifesaving work the group has done, particularly in its focus on AIDS and malaria drugs, and they suggest that Mr. Clinton is more deserving of a Nobel Prize than of accusations of impropriety. “It bothers the hell out of me,” said James Carville, Mr. Clinton’s chief strategist on the 1992 campaign. “No one likes to be attacked, and he comes under the category of ‘no one.’ But my sense is that the attacks on the foundation are the most painful. ” As Mrs. Clinton slogs through a stretch of middling polls, with voters still sharply questioning her honesty and trustworthiness, the family has already bowed at least somewhat to pressures: Mr. Clinton told foundation employees last month that the organization would stop accepting foreign or corporate donations if Mrs. Clinton is elected and that he would resign from its board. The foundation has accepted tens of millions of dollars from countries that the State Department has criticized for their records on sex discrimination and other human rights issues. Mr. Trump has also seized on the release of emails from Mrs. Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state that include references to foundation donors, accusing her of favoritism. Speaking to reporters on her campaign plane this week, Mrs. Clinton noted that several watchdog groups had given the charity the highest possible marks. “A lot of what’s been said is not founded in fact,” she said. The coming weeks are unlikely to be kinder to Mr. Clinton. Mr. Trump has said he may bring up Mr. Clinton’s sexual affairs on the debate stage beside Mrs. Clinton, a prospect that some Democrats welcome, hoping it will backfire. “This has been tried,” Mr. Begala said. “The yurts of Mongolia know that Bill Clinton was accused, and in fact was, unfaithful to his wife. ” Other former aides have found less occasion for whimsy, cringing through an election that has felt interminable and ugly. The family name will be fine, they say, as long as Mrs. Clinton can return it to the White House. For some, that cannot happen quickly enough. “I can’t wait for this to be over,” said Mickey Kantor, a longtime friend who served as Mr. Clinton’s commerce secretary, “probably like every other American. ” | 1 |
More than a dozen arrests were made Saturday afternoon during a rally in Berkeley, CA. where supporters of President Trump encountered protesters intent on disrupting the previously scheduled event. [Hundreds of Trump supporters had gathered at the Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park in Downtown Berkeley, about two blocks from the UC Berkeley campus, for a “Patriots Day” rally. But they were soon met with many waving anarchy flags, and clashes ensued. According to the Los Angeles Times, 250 police officers were deployed to the scene. Initially, the sides were separated by makeshift orange plastic barriers, but confrontations soon escalated. Sixteen people were arrested, Officer Jennifer Coats of the Berkeley Police Department told the Times. Nine people were injured, with six taken to a hospital for treatment, including one stabbing victim, she said. AJ Alegria, 31, of Sacramento, told the Times he came to Berkeley to help defend Trump supporters and was surrounded by a dozen protesters in black masks who he said attacked him with sticks and pepper spray. “These people create violence all the time … somebody has to stand up to them,” said Alegria, who was injured in the fight and treated by Trump supporters who bandaged his head, washed off the pepper spray and gave him encouragement, saying, “You’ve earned your stripes, bro. ” Here are some of the prohibited items that have already removed from the park today. https: . pic. twitter. — Berkeley Police (@berkeleypolice) April 15, 2017, Another Trump supporter, Ben Bergquam of Fresno, was also bloodied as the melee moved from the park up Center Street toward the UC Berkeley campus. He held a crumpled “Stop Liberal Intolerance” sign in his hand. “I got hit in the back of the head with some sticks,” Bergquam told the San Francisco Chronicle as another activist wrapped gauze around his wound. “I don’t agree with everything Trump says, but I don’t agree with violence. ” With assistance from the Oakland Police Department, the Berkeley police fared better at keeping the peace than they did in February, when violent demonstrators set fires and destroyed more than $100, 000 worth of property that forced the cancelation of a speech by Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos at UC Berkeley. The Chronicle reported that several liberal groups to disrupt the rally with the intent to shut it down. Defend the Bay, a group that advertises itself as against the “” suggested protesters bring food to share, along with a mask or other covering to conceal their identity from police. Follow Samuel Chi on Twitter @ThePlayoffGuru. | 1 |
Bill Minor, whose courageous reporting helped open Americans’ eyes to everyday racial discrimination in the South in the 1960s and won him recognition as the “conscience of Mississippi,” died on Tuesday in Ridgeland, Miss. outside Jackson. He was 94. His death, at a hospice, was confirmed by his son Paul. Mr. Minor was already a fiercely independent and fearless muckraker, exposing corrupt Mississippi politicians in The of New Orleans, when his news articles and commentary emerged as the region’s lonely but conspicuous witness to the fledgling civil rights movement and the brutal efforts by Southern politicians to suppress it. His voice not only traveled from the newspaper’s bureau at the state capitol in Jackson to neighboring Louisiana, but also reverberated nationwide. While serving as The ’s capital correspondent, Mr. Minor was also a stringer, or reporter, for The New York Times and Newsweek magazine. “No Southern newspaperman has done more for civil rights and civil liberties than Bill Minor,” Claude Sitton, another son of the South who covered the movement for The Times, once said. Historians have credited Mr. Sitton, who died in 2015, and another Times colleague, John Herbers, who died this month, with playing major roles in reporting the civil rights struggle. Gene Roberts, who succeeded Mr. Sitton and was The Times’s chief correspondent in the South, said in a phone interview on Tuesday: “It would be hard to overestimate Bill’s importance to journalism and to keeping the country abreast of what was going on in Mississippi. When you had to barrel quickly into Mississippi, your first stop would be Bill Minor. ” Ellen Ann Fentress, who recently completed a documentary film about Mr. Minor titled — like his weekly column — “Eyes on Mississippi,” called him “the most essential reporter the nation has never heard of. ” Mr. Minor’s first assignment in Jackson was the funeral of Theodore G. Bilbo, a United States senator from Mississippi and an unabashed white supremacist who died in 1947. As Mr. Minor later recalled, he thought at the time that segregation might be buried with Bilbo. As it endured, Mr. Minor covered every benchmark along the way: the revolt of the Dixiecrats in the 1948 presidential election the 1955 murder trial of two white men in the death of Emmett Till, a black boy who was said to have whistled at a white woman James Meredith’s enrollment as the first black student at the University of Mississippi in 1962 the Woolworth’s lunch counter and the murder of Medgar Evers in 1963 and the murder of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County, Miss. in 1964. “Even before there was a movement in civil rights, Minor exposed wide racial disparities in the allocation of state funds for schools in doing so, of course, he debunked the myth of ‘separate but equal’ schools,” said Hank Klibanoff, who wrote “The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation” (2006) with Mr. Roberts. Hodding Carter III, a fellow Mississippi journalist and later an assistant secretary of state, said in a phone interview that Mr. Minor’s understanding of the perniciousness of legal segregation had evolved. “But,” Mr. Carter added, “his evolution, in the face of the society he was covering, looked like a revolution. ” Wilson Floyd Minor was born on May 17, 1922, in Hammond, La. which Mr. Carter, whose father was also born there, said “was not a place that taught you to give a damn about black folks. ” His mother was the former Josie Clement. His father, Jacob, was a newspaper Linotype operator who struggled during the Depression and urged his son to shun journalism. But Bill was hooked early when an English teacher at Bogalusa High School praised his writing. He landed a summer job with The Bogalusa Enterprise, began covering high school sports for The and graduated from Tulane University in 1943 with a degree in journalism. In addition to his son Paul, he is survived by his wife, the former Gloria Marks two other sons, Doug and Dr. Jeffrey Minor six grandchildren and six . Mr. Minor joined The after serving in the Navy as a gunnery officer on a destroyer in the Pacific during World War II. He worked at the paper for nearly 30 years, until it shut its Jackson bureau in 1976. Afterward he bought what became the weekly Capitol Reporter in Jackson and edited it until it closed in 1981. (The paper had lost bank advertising after he revealed that the police had found several pounds of marijuana at the bank president’s home.) He later wrote a weekly syndicated column and a book, “Eyes on Mississippi: A Chronicle of Change” (2001). In 1997, Columbia University gave Mr. Minor its John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism. The author David Halberstam, who began his journalistic career in Mississippi, described Mr. Minor as “the unique conscience of the state. ” Colleagues attributed his empathy to his family’s struggles during the Depression and to his convictions as a Roman Catholic. (In 1963, after he saw black protesters being savagely beaten in Jackson, he retreated to St. Peter’s Cathedral to pray for reason and calm.) “Somewhere along the way, I developed this feeling for the underdog because I was part of that underdog world,” Mr. Minor told students at a predominantly black high school in 1997. “I knew what it was like to be on the bottom. ” After the civil rights protests in the South ebbed, “only Minor stayed,” Mr. Klibanoff wrote in 1997, “continuing to turn up fresh stories in the old soil of the new South. ” Mr. Minor’s wife wanted to leave the state years ago, but he remained, he told Mr. Klibanoff, because “I saw there was hope there, that Mississippi would change. ” “There was always this warmth and gentleness on the part of the people of Mississippi,” he continued, as quoted by Mr. Klibanoff, “and their greatest handicap has always been politicians who provided no leadership and who thrived on the emotional issue of segregation. And the more I saw of those kind of people, you know, pushed in the background, the more hope I had for the state. “So I wanted to stay. I wanted to see how it was all going to come out. ” | 1 |
SpaceX, the ambitious rocket company headed by Elon Musk, wants to send a couple of tourists around the moon and back to Earth before the end of next year. If they manage that feat, the passengers would be the first humans to venture that far into space in more than 40 years. Mr. Musk made the announcement on Monday in a telephone news conference. He said two private individuals approached the company to see if SpaceX would be willing to send them on a weeklong cruise, which would fly past the surface of the moon — but not land — and continue outward before gravity turned the spacecraft around and brought it back to Earth for a landing. “This would do a long loop around the moon,” Mr. Musk said. The company is aiming to launch this moon mission in late 2018. The two people would spend about a week inside one of SpaceX’s Dragon 2 capsules, launched on SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket. The spacecraft would be automated, but the travelers would undergo training for emergencies. Mr. Musk did not say how much the travelers would pay for the ride. “A little bit more than the cost of a crewed mission to the space station would be,” he said. The Falcon Heavy itself has a list price of $90 million. While the trip appears to be within the technical capabilities of SpaceX, industry experts wondered whether the company could pull it off as quickly as Mr. Musk indicated. “Dates are not SpaceX’s strong suit,” said Mary Lynne Dittmar, executive director of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration, a space advocacy group consisting of aerospace companies. The Dragon 2 and Falcon Heavy are years behind schedule and have yet to fly. “It strikes me as risky,” Dr. Dittmar said, adding that autonomous systems are not infallible. “I find it extraordinary that these sorts of announcements are being made when SpaceX has yet to get crew from the ground to orbit. ” Last week, a crewless Dragon capsule taking cargo to the International Space Station aborted its rendezvous because of a glitch. It successfully arrived a day later. Mr. Musk said the two private space travelers wished to remain anonymous for now. He declined to describe them, except to say they knew each other. Seven space tourists have paid tens of millions of dollars to fly on Russian Soyuz rockets to visit the International Space Station, which is about 200 miles above the Earth’s surface. This would be a much more distant trip. The moon is about a quarter million miles away, and the trajectory would take the capsule 300, 000 to 400, 000 miles from Earth. No astronauts have ventured beyond orbit since the last of NASA’s Apollo moon landings in 1972. NASA is working on a rocket, the Space Launch System, and a capsule, Orion, that would be capable of taking astronauts to deep space once again. But that first launch, without anyone on board, is scheduled for late next year, taking a path similar to what Mr. Musk has proposed for his space tourists. This month, NASA announced it is looking at the possibility of putting astronauts on the first flight, but officials say that would probably delay the launch to 2019. The rocket that SpaceX would use for the voyage is more powerful than its current Falcon 9 workhorse, but not as large as NASA’s. When Mr. Musk announced the Falcon Heavy in 2011, he said it would fly in 2013. The maiden flight is now scheduled for this summer. SpaceX has a contract to take NASA astronauts to the International Space Station using the Dragon 2 capsule launched on the Falcon 9 rocket. That program has also encountered delays. SpaceX is scheduled to launch a crewless test flight this year and take its few NASA passengers next spring, although a report by the Government Accountability Office has cast doubt that SpaceX would be able to do it that quickly. NASA has financed much of SpaceX’s spacecraft development, and Mr. Musk said the agency has priority. If NASA wants to put its astronauts on the Falcon Heavy’s first moon flight, he said, SpaceX will comply. But the Falcon Heavy has not been through NASA’s rigorous reviews to be judged safe for astronauts. | 1 |
Les e-mails d’Hillary Clinton et la Confrérie par Thierry Meyssan L’enquête du FBI sur les e-mails privés d’Hillary Clinton ne porte pas sur une négligence face aux règles de sécurité, mais sur un complot visant à distraire toute trace de ses correspondances qui auraient dû être archivées sur des serveurs de l’État fédéral. Il pourrait comprendre des échanges sur des financements illégaux ou de la corruption, d’autres sur les liens des époux Clinton avec les Frères musulmans et les jihadistes.
Réseau Voltaire | Damas (Syrie) | 1er novembre 2016 ελληνικά English Español Türkçe русский Deutsch Hillary Clinton et sa directrice de cabinet Huma Abedin. La relance de l’enquête du FBI sur les e-mails privés d’Hillary Clinton ne porte plus sur les questions de sécurité, mais sur des trafics qui pourraient aller jusqu’à la haute trahison.
Techniquement, au lieu d’utiliser un serveur sécurisé de l’État fédéral, la secrétaire d’État avait fait installer à son domicile un serveur privé, de manière à pouvoir utiliser Internet sans laisser de traces sur une machine de l’État fédéral. Le technicien privé de Mme Clinton avait nettoyé son serveur avant l’arrivée du FBI, de sorte qu’il n’était pas possible de savoir pourquoi elle avait mis en place ce dispositif.
Dans un premier temps, le FBI a observé que le serveur privé n’avait pas la sécurisation du serveur du département d’État. Mme Clinton n’avait donc commis qu’une faute de sécurité. Dans un second temps, le FBI a saisi l’ordinateur de l’ancien membre du Congrès, Anthony Weiner. Celui-ci est l’ancien époux d’Huma Abedin, directrice de cabinet d’Hillary. Des e-mails provenant de la secrétaire d’État y ont été retrouvés.
Anthony Weiner est un homme politique juif, très proche des Clinton, qui ambitionnait de devenir maire de New York. Il dut démissionner à la suite d’un scandale très puritain : il avait envoyé des SMS érotiques à une jeune femme autre que son épouse. Huma Abedin se sépara officiellement de lui durant cette tourmente, mais en réalité ne le quitta pas.
Huma Abedin est une états-unienne ayant été élevée en Arabie saoudite. Son père dirige une revue académique —dont elle fut durant des années la secrétaire de rédaction— qui reproduit régulièrement l’avis des Frères musulmans. Sa mère préside l’association saoudienne des femmes membres de la Confrérie et travaillait avec l’épouse du président égyptien Mohamed Morsi. Son frère Hassan travaille pour le compte du cheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, le prêcheur des Frères et conseiller spirituel d’Al-Jazeera.
À l’occasion d’un déplacement officiel en Arabie saoudite, la secrétaire d’Etat visite le collège Dar al-Hekma en compagnie de Saleha Abedin (mère de sa directrice de cabinet), présidente de l’association des Sœurs membres de la Confrérie. Huma Abedin est aujourd’hui un personnage central de la campagne Clinton, à côté du directeur de campagne, John Podesta, ancien secrétaire général de la Maison-Blanche sous la présidence de Bill Clinton. Podesta est par ailleurs le lobbyiste attitré du Royaume d’Arabie saoudite au Congrès pour la modique somme de 200 000 dollars mensuels. Le 12 juin 2016, Petra, l’agence de presse officielle de Jordanie, avait publié une interview du prince héritier d’Arabie, Mohamed Ben Salmane, affirmant la modernité de sa famille qui avait illégalement financé à hauteur de 20 % la campagne présidentielle d’Hillary Clinton, quoique ce soit une femme. Le lendemain de cette publication, l’agence annulait cette dépêche et assurait que son site internet avait été piraté.
Selon l’agence officielle jordanienne Petra du 12 juin 2016, la famille royale saoudienne a illégalement financé 20 % de la campagne présidentielle d’Hillary Clinton. Madame Abedin n’est pas la seule membre de l’administration Obama liée à la Confrérie. Le demi-frère du président, Abon’go Malik Obama, est le trésorier de l’Œuvre missionnaire des Frères au Soudan et président de la Fondation Barack H. Obama. Il est directement placé sous les ordres du président soudanais, Omar el-Béchir. Un Frère musulman est membre du Conseil national de sécurité —la plus haute instance exécutive aux États-Unis—. De 2009 à 2012, c’était le cas de Mehdi K. Alhassani. On ignore qui lui a succédé, mais la Maison-Blanche niait qu’un Frère soit membre du Conseil jusqu’à ce qu’une preuve surgisse. C’est également un Frère qui est ambassadeur des États-Unis auprès de la Conférence islamique, Rashad Hussain. Les autres Frères identifiés occupent des fonctions moins importantes. Il faut cependant citer Louay M. Safi, actuel membre de la Coalition nationale syrienne et ancien conseiller du Pentagone.
Le président Obama et son demi-frère Abon’go Malik Obama dans le Bureau ovale. Abon’go Malik est le trésorier de l’Œuvre missionnaire des Frères musulmans au Soudan. En avril 2009, deux mois avant son discours du Caire, le président Obama avait secrètement reçu une délégation de la Confrérie dans le Bureau ovale. Il avait déjà invité, lors de son intronisation, Ingrid Mattson, la présidente de l’association des Frères et Sœurs musulmans aux États-Unis.
De son côté, la Fondation Clinton a employé comme responsable de son projet « Climat » Gehad el-Haddad, un des dirigeants mondiaux de la Confrérie qui avait été jusque là responsable d’une émission de télévision coranique. Son père avait été l’un des co-fondateurs de la Confrérie, en 1951, lors de sa recréation par la CIA et le MI6. Gehad a quitté la fondation en 2012, date à laquelle il est devenu au Caire le porte-parole du candidat Mohammed Morsi, puis celui officiel des Frères musulmans, à l’échelle mondiale.
Sachant que la totalité des leaders jihadistes dans le monde sont soit issu de la Confrérie, soit de l’Ordre soufi des Naqshbandîs —les deux composantes de la Ligue islamique mondiale, l’organisation saoudienne anti-nationaliste arabe— on aimerait en savoir plus sur les relations de Madame Clinton avec l’Arabie saoudite et les Frères.
Il se trouve que dans l’équipe de son challenger Donald Trump, on compte le général Michael T. Flynn qui tenta de s’opposer à la création du Califat par la Maison-Blanche et démissionna de la direction de la Defense Intelligence Agency (Agence de Renseignement militaire) pour marquer sa réprobation. Il y côtoie Frank Gaffney, un « guerrier froid » historique, désormais qualifié de « conspirationniste » pour avoir dénoncé la présence des Frères dans l’État fédéral.
Il va de soi que, du point de vue du FBI, tout soutien aux organisations jihadistes est un crime, quelle que soit la politique de la CIA. En 1991, les policiers —et le sénateur John Kerry— avaient provoqué la faillite de la banque pakistanaise (quoi qu’enregistrée aux îles Caïman) BCCI que la CIA utilisait pour toutes sortes d’opérations secrètes avec les Frères musulmans tout autant qu’avec les cartels latinos des drogues.
Thierry Meyssan | 0 |
Donald J. Trump spent his first week in office repeating the lie that between three million and five million people had voted illegally in the November election, first to members of Congress, then on Twitter, then in an ABC News interview, then again on Twitter on Friday, citing an unsubstantiated claim popular in conspiracy circles. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump had announced in a pair of tweets that he would be asking for a “major investigation” into voter fraud, “including those registered to vote in two states. ” Since then, a variety of news organizations have found that several members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle were registered in more than one state during the election. Several still are. There is no evidence that any of them voted twice. • Steve Bannon, Mr. Trump’s strategist, was registered to vote in Florida and New York, the Sarasota found. • Tiffany Trump, Mr. Trump’s youngest daughter, was registered in Pennsylvania and New York, NBC News reported. • Sean Spicer, his press secretary, was registered in both Virginia and Rhode Island, according to The Washington Post. • Jared Kushner, his and close adviser, was registered in New York and New Jersey, according to The Washington Post. • Steven Mnuchin, who is nominated to lead the Treasury Department, was registered in New York and California, CNN found. Not really. Have you ever moved to a new state? And did you call up the people in charge of voting in your old state to tell them to go ahead and take you off their list? Probably not. Neither, apparently, did some members of the Trump family and his White House. “There is nothing illegal about that,” Fred Voigt, the deputy election commissioner for Philadelphia, told Heat Street, the News Corp. conservative and libertarian site, which reported Ms. Trump’s double registration. “The illegality only occurs if one votes in two places, not if you’re registered in both. ” State authorities regularly purge their voter rolls of people who move or die. Mr. Bannon’s case is a little different. A Guardian report last summer found that Mr. Bannon was registered at a vacant home he had previously rented for his but that he had never lived there himself. Shortly after that report, the Guardian said, Mr. Bannon changed his registered address to the home of a Breitbart writer, also in Florida. When he voted in November’s election, he did so by absentee ballot in New York, a spokesman for the state Board of Elections confirmed. On Wednesday, after widespread news reports of his double registration, Sarasota County removed Mr. Bannon from the rolls, The Herald Tribune reported. As the reports of double registrations grew, Kellyanne Conway, one of Mr. Trump’s senior advisers, appeared on NBC’s “Today” show on Thursday and denied that members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle were registered in more than one place. “I talked last night to Tiffany Trump, and she said it is flatly false that she is registered in two states,” she said. But NBC had confirmed that Ms. Trump, in fact, was. | 1 |
This Week in Hate highlights hate crimes and harassment around the country since the election of President Trump. Rajpreet Heir was taking the L train to a friend’s birthday party in Manhattan this month when a white man began shouting at her. “Do you even know what a Marine looks like?” the man asked Ms. Heir, who is pictured in the video above. “Do you know what they have to see? What they do for this country? Because of people like you. ” He told Ms. Heir, who is Sikh and was born in Indiana, that he hoped she was sent “back to Lebanon” and said, “You don’t belong in this country. ” As New York City works to respond to a rise in reports of discrimination and harassment, subways have emerged as a source of special concern. Harassment has long been a problem on subways, in part because many strangers are packed together on narrow cars, sometimes for long periods. “Even in a park, you’re not going to be quite that close together,” said Emily May, the executive director of the group Hollaback. But since the election, the group has received nearly double the usual number of reports of harassment on the subway, and more than usual involve racist, Islamophobic or comments. The New York City Commission on Human Rights was concerned enough about postelection incidents on subways that it organized an outreach day in December, with handouts on religious discrimination and reporting harassment distributed at eight subway stations. Overall, the commission saw a 480 percent increase in claims of discriminatory harassment between 2015 and 2016. For Sarah the shock of being singled out for a racist attack was compounded by the fact that no one stepped in to help her. She was riding the train to work one morning in when a man began elbowing her in the back. When Ms. who is black, asked him to stop, he said, “Obama’s term is over. ” Then the man, who was delivered an angry rant that included a comment about “ slaves. ” “I wouldn’t have expected somebody to confront him, necessarily,” she said. But even someone making eye contact with the man, she said, would have sent the message that his behavior was unacceptable. Harassment can be more traumatic when no one steps in to help, Ms. May said, and people who have experienced it are more likely to wish a bystander had spoken up than that police had gotten involved. Two fellow passengers stepped in to help Ms. Heir after the incident on the L train. One woman tapped her on the shoulder and asked if she was all right. “That meant something,” Ms. Heir said, “because when you’re a minority, you’re so used to just experiencing things on your own. ” Another woman reported the incident to a police officer at a subway station. Anyone who witnesses or experiences harassment on the subway can report it to the city’s human rights commission by calling (718) . Communities Against Hate, a partnership of 11 civil rights organizations, operates a hotline at ( ) where people who have been harassed can get information about resources like legal services and counseling. Hollaback and other organizations offer bystander intervention training to help people learn what to do if they see someone being harassed. Ms. reported what happened to her on the subway to the Documenting Hate project, a group of organizations — including The New York Times opinion section — tracking hate crimes and harassment since the election. She also posted about the incident on Facebook and talked to her children and their teachers about it. She wanted people to understand how to protect themselves and others, she said. “We actually all have a responsibility to create the society we want. ” If you have experienced, witnessed or read about a hate crime or incident of bias or harassment, you can use this form to send information about the incident to This Week in Hate and other partners in the Documenting Hate project. The form is not a report to law enforcement or any government agency. These resources may be helpful for people who have experienced harassment. If you witness harassment, here are some tips for responding. You can contact This Week in Hate at weekinhate@nytimes. com. | 1 |
The revived Hillary Clinton email investigation story that gave Republicans some brief hope has been killed by a slew of new facts.
Devastating point number one to Republicans. The emails aren’t about Clinton withholding, receiving, or sending emails: Pete Williams has sources saying not about Clinton world w/holding emails. Not about Podesta emails. Not emails from Clinton.
— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) October 28, 2016
NBC’s Pete Williams also has details that are already taking the air out of Republican sails: NBC’s Pete Williams: Sr. officials say—During separate investigation “a device” led to add'l emails–not from Clinton https://t.co/QmmNoxXhOx
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) October 28, 2016
For those who can’t watch the video above: Important reporting from @PeteWilliamsNBC on the FBI/Clinton news (h/t @mmurraypolitics ). pic.twitter.com/RyxmTPXMtW
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) October 28, 2016
This might be a record for the fastest death of a Republican scandal. Trump and Republicans made a number of assumptions that turned out not to be true. It looks like the FBI is only trying to be careful in their review. Since the emails have nothing to do with Hillary Clinton, the State Department, emails sent or received by Clinton or the Clinton Foundation, Republicans were wrong on all fronts.
Facts won’t stop Republicans from trying to make something out of nothing, but the Comey letter is not the campaign changer that Trump and the Republicans were hoping for. The weakness of this story means that should play well in the conservative media echo chamber, but by Monday, it will be forgotten by the rest of the country. | 0 |
November 12, 2016 2703 German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said the US president-elect needs to understand NATO is more about values than business-like behavior. Share on Facebook
German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen is in panic mode. Her fear is that Trump may actually call out NATO’s uselessness…and that would mean Germany, and other NATO freeloaders, may actually have pay for their own security.
That is why, when von der Leyen warns Trump to not even think about rapprochement with Russia, she is signaling her fear that such a rapprochement would mean the end of her and her war hungry cronies.
When von der Leyen tells Trump that NATO stood by the US after the 9/11 attacks, and that NATO “isn’t just a business,” she is trying to kiss Trump’s ass, and admitting that NATO is in fact a “business.”
And of course no NATO grand standing would be complete without the exhausted and fictional argument that NATO is actually useful in countering Moscow on Syria and Ukraine.
RT reports …
Appearing on the ZDF Thursday show ‘Maybrit Illner’, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen emotionally argued that the US president-elect needs to understand NATO is more about values than business-like behavior.
She also went on to address some unfounded speculation circulating in Western capitals, namely that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are in a ‘bromance’ – a kind of relationship between the two leaders that would benefit bilateral ties between Moscow and Washington.
Therefore, the Defense Minister continued, the issues of the Ukrainian conflict and the ongoing anti-terrorist efforts in the Syrian city of Aleppo are not to be taken off the table during discussions with Moscow.
Here are some of von der Leyen remarks to Trump with regard to NATO…
“What his advisers will hopefully tell him and what he needs to learn is that NATO isn’t just a business. It’s not a company.”
“I don’t know how he values NATO.”
“You can’t say ‘the past doesn’t matter, the values we share don’t matter’ but instead try to get as much money out of [NATO] as possible and whether I can have a nice deal out of it,”
“Donald Trump has to say clearly on which side he is. Whether he is on the side of the law, peaceful order and democracy or whether he does not care about this and is looking instead for a best buddy.”
For his part, Trump has been lukewarm on the whole NATO charade…and rightly so. RT reminds us of what Trump has said about NATO …
During his election campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly voiced skepticism towards the bloc, calling it “obsolete” in the era of fighting terrorism worldwide.
“Maybe NATO will dissolve and that’s OK, not the worst thing in the world,” he said earlier.
Trump, however, earlier dismissed claims he favors Putin both personally and as a political leader, saying on NBC in September:
“I don’t know him, I know nothing about him really. I just think if we got along with Russia that’s not a bad thing.”
Trump has also suggested that the US should not engage too much in defending European allies.
“Hey, NATO allies,” Trump wrote in a Facebook post in July, “If we are not reimbursed for the tremendous cost of protecting you, I will tell you – congratulations, you will be defending yourself.” | 0 |
Hospitals and many insurance carriers care about patient satisfaction. It especially matters to hospitals because insurance payments can be influenced by how patients rate the care they receive, as well as by the health of the patient, which hospitals usually report. Many people in the health care profession are put off by this. They argue that patient satisfaction scores aren’t necessarily aligned with outcomes. Moreover, they say that trying to improve satisfaction is a waste of time. It’s possible, however, that patient satisfaction is being rewarded already, and that the efforts we are making to highlight it aren’t helping as much as we think. Almost every study on patient satisfaction uses the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (H. C. A. H. P. S.) survey. Studies show it is correlated with clinical measures of quality, although some other studies dispute this. Collecting such information is costly, but there may be other sources for quality assessments that don’t require investment from the health care system. In 2012, researchers in the Journal of General Internal Medicine examined online reviews from RateMDs. com and Yelp. They found that a majority of reviews were positive. They noted, however, that patients reported on aspects of care that extended beyond the encounter. They were concerned about staff, access to the hospital and convenience. They also cared greatly about the bedside manner of the doctors they encountered. Dr. Naomi Bardach, associate professor of pediatrics and health policy at U. C. S. F. Benioff Children’s Hospital San Francisco, and her colleagues looked at Yelp to determine how consumer ratings compared with those of the hospital consumer assessment survey. Of the almost 3, 800 hospitals with survey and other data, about 25 percent also had ratings on Yelp. The correlation between Yelp and the survey was quite strong. Moreover, high ratings at Yelp were correlated with lower mortality for myocardial infarctions and pneumonia — and fewer readmissions for those problems as well as heart failure. A recent study in Health Affairs expanded on this work. Researchers compared the content of Yelp narrative reviews with the factors considered important in the hospital consumer assessment survey. They found that Yelp reviews did cover most things the survey tallied. But they also covered an additional 12 criteria not in the survey. These included the cost of a visit insurance and billing scheduling compassion of staff family member care and the quality of many staff members. All of these things were important to patients, and all might be correlated with outcomes. More important, nine of the 15 most prevalent criteria in reviews were not included in the survey. The use of metrics like the hospital consumer assessment survey assumes that those in the health care system have figured out how best to measure patient satisfaction. They also assume that all the information we need should come from patients or from the medical record. That’s not how the real world works. In a more recent study, Dr. Bardach found that the perceptions of other family members matter and can also be powerful because they focus on safety in a way that patients may not be able to do. The same is true of those who help care for patients at home and help make medical decisions for them. Their opinions are ignored by the survey. Those publicly available data may even be more comprehensive than that gathered at the behest of payers. The next question is whether the health care system needs to measure satisfaction — maybe the publicly available data, like at Yelp, is sufficient. Could those data be used alone to incentivize providers? A couple of weeks ago, my colleague Austin Frakt wrote a column on hospital quality and market share. He argued that people could improve their health by choosing a hospital that has a higher quality rating. He also underscored that patient satisfaction scores are often aligned with quality and with better outcomes. He highlighted a paper published in The American Economic Review that looked at how performance of hospitals was related to market share. Conventional wisdom holds that patients lack information on quality and that they cannot tell, or favor, providers who seem better. But researchers found that hospitals that performed better, on both outcomes and measures, tended to have greater market share, and experienced greater market growth. Further, they found that as patients shifted to hospitals with higher performance, that change alone drove a significant amount in the improvements seen in overall survival rates for a number of conditions. Overall survival improved, in part, just because patients shifted from hospitals with lower quality to higher quality. If patients had the ability to choose between hospitals, they tended to gravitate to those with higher performance. In other words, this may be an area of health care where the free market is working. When allowed to choose, patients seem able to discern quality — as they define it — and gravitate toward it. It’s not clear that we need to be forcing the issue with measurement and reimbursement. It’s important to recognize, though, that this was a study of Medicare patients, all of whom arguably have more flexibility in terms of hospitals and doctors than those with private insurance. Those with private insurance often are restricted by “narrow networks” and directed to a few facilities and offices. Americans cry out for more choice in their health care. This sometimes gets translated to mean a choice of insurance companies. But Americans with Medicare, who have the least choice of insurers, have the most choices when it comes to providers. And they seem to use that freedom to choose providers who perform better. I asked Dr. Bardach about this. “It’s still unclear how people are getting the information to choose the hospitals, but the power of stories is likely an important part of why Yelp and other online reviews are compelling,” she said. “Stories add nuance and context to the otherwise somewhat sterile numbers that the H. C. A. H. P. S. produces. ” Research shows that patients reward quality on their own — when they can. We might just need to make it easier for more of them to do so. | 1 |
■ The White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, took aim on Monday afternoon at a New York Times story that described President Trump watching television in his bathrobe. ■ Opposition to Mr. Trump’s travel restrictions on certain countries mounted, but the president remained defiant and unbowed. ■ Mr. Trump turned to Twitter early Monday and began challenging polls that showed his travel order was not popular. ■ A bipartisan group of former National Security Council officials filed court documents opposing the ban. ■ The Justice Department corrected the record on how many people had their visas canceled because of the ban. Mr. Spicer denounced The Times’s account, published Sunday night, of the president’s turbulent adjustment to life in the White House. In particular, he zeroed in on one detail among a few paragraphs of the story that he insisted were wrong: that the president has worn a bathrobe while alone in the White House residence. “That is literally the epitome of fake news,” Mr. Spicer told reporters traveling with Mr. Trump. “Start at the top. I don’t think the president owns a bathrobe. He definitely doesn’t wear one. ” The White House staff stocks the official residence with bathrobes. Within moments of Mr. Spicer’s comment, reporters on Twitter posted photos of a much younger Mr. Trump lounging in a bathrobe. Mr. Spicer added that the story was “so riddled with inaccuracies and lies that they owe the president an apology. ” He went on, “Literally, blatant factual errors, and it’s unacceptable to see that kind of reporting or reporting. ” The overall piece, which described Mr. Trump’s first two weeks in office as he attempts a dramatic of a Washington culture he has never inhabited, was “not an accurate portrayal of what’s really happening,” Mr. Spicer concluded. Mr. Trump appeared not to like the news he was reading Monday morning. In one Twitter post, the president rejected reports of polls showing that a majority of Americans oppose his travel order. In another, he appeared to lash out at suggestions that Stephen K. Bannon, his chief strategist, holds the real power in the West Wing. A CNN poll released over the weekend said that 55 percent of Americans viewed Mr. Trump’s travel order as an attempt to keep Muslims out of the country. The president also seemed angry about the story line, which was featured in a Time magazine article and in a “Saturday Night Live” skit showing Mr. Bannon as the Grim Reaper directing Mr. Trump’s activities in the White House. On Twitter, Mr. Trump called the reports “fake news” that sought to marginalize him. If you missed Mr. Trump talking to Bill O’Reilly of Fox News during the Super Bowl, you will have another chance tonight. Mr. Trump continued his screed against news coverage of him on Monday, training his fire at The New York Times in an apparent reaction to a portrait of his early stumbles published in Monday’s editions. In a Twitter post, Mr. Trump appeared to characterize The Times’s coverage, which was based on interviews with several of his White House’s most senior officials and others aware of the administration’s inner workings, as “fiction” based on fabricated sources. Mr. Trump has long delighted in denigrating The Times and claiming, falsely, that its coverage of him has led to declining readership. But in a meeting at The Times in November, he called the paper, which is among his first reads each morning, “a great, great American jewel. ” Last week, The Times surpassed three million print and digital subscriptions, adding 276, 000 net subscriptions in the last three months of the year, more additions than in 2013 and 2014 combined. It’s official: Silicon Valley really, really despises Mr. Trump’s immigration order. Overnight, 97 companies — most of them technology firms, including Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft — filed a legal brief arguing that the ban is unconstitutional and harms the interests of American businesses. The brief, filed with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, is blunt and direct. The ban, it says, “hinders the ability of American companies to attract great talent increases costs imposed on business makes it more difficult for American firms to compete in the international marketplace and gives global enterprises a new, significant incentive to build operations — and hire new employees — outside the United States. ” It is a remarkable statement of unity from the country’s technology companies, many of which rely heavily on foreign workers. And it is a shot across the bow for Mr. Trump, foreshadowing a rocky relationship with Silicon Valley leaders over the next four years. The companies were not the only ones joining in opposition. Susan E. Rice, former President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, was among the leaders of a petition signed by a group of former National Security Council officials. The Justice Department on Monday corrected the record on an claim that one of its lawyers made in a Northern Virginia courtroom about the impact of President Trump’s executive order on visitors from seven countries. The government lawyer provoked gasps in the courtroom when he told Judge Leonie Brinkema, one of the Federal District Court judges weighing legal challenges to Mr. Trump’s order, that more than 100, 000 visas had been revoked as a result of the order — far more than had been understood to be the case. That number, however, came under question later on Friday, when a spokesman for the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs said that the real number was around 60, 000 and that the larger figure had inaccurately included diplomatic visas that were not affected by the ban. On Monday, the department submitted a filing to Judge Brinkema that corrected its statement in the court. “In response to a question from this court as to how many individuals have been affected by the executive order, government counsel presenting oral argument, based on information he had received, stated that 100, 000 visas had been provisionally revoked as a result of the executive order,” it said. “The Department of State has since provided undersigned counsel with a revised number, which is roughly 60, 000 visas. ” An outside, political group is adding veteran and Republican Party strategists, and is also employing one of the president’s campaign ad makers to try to ensure Senate confirmation of his remaining cabinet nominees. The group, 45Committee, has signed Larry Weitzner of Jamestown Associates, which produced most of Mr. Trump’s campaign ads in the general election. Mr. Weitzner’s first spot will air nationally this week, with a gauzy focus on the initial days of the Trump presidency. It’s part of a $4 million effort, with three other ads focused specifically on the nominations of Betsy DeVos for education secretary, Jeff Sessions for attorney general and Tom Price for secretary of health and human services. Some of those ads have been broadcast in states with critical races in the 2018 midterms. The other new advisers are Cara Mason, who worked as the finance director for the Trump Victory committee under Reince Priebus Rob Collins, a former National Republican Senatorial Committee executive director Mike Shields, a former Republican National Committee chief of staff and Rob Simms, a former National Republican Congressional Committee executive director. With Mr. Trump’s administration still evolving, the 45Committee has moved to fill a void, supporting the White House as it finds itself besieged by critics. Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff known for his uncompromising stance on illegal immigration, is back in the news months after losing his bid for . Now he is asking supporters to help him raise $1 million for his legal defense fund. Mr. Arpaio faced numerous lawsuits alleging abuse and faulty medical care in several jails, and taxpayers in Maricopa County, where he was sheriff, spent tens of millions of dollars for his legal defense. In his email, Mr. Arpaio attributed his defeat to a host of enemies, including “leftist financier George Soros,” the American Civil Liberties Union and the Obama administration’s Justice Department. Mr. Soros spent an estimated $2 million last year opposing Mr. Arpaio, and the Justice Department under Mr. Obama filed criminal charges against the sheriff for refusing a judge’s order to stop discriminating against Latinos. As the sheriff of Arizona’s largest county, Mr. Arpaio gained a national reputation for immigration raids that targeted heavily Hispanic neighborhoods in and around the Phoenix area. Thousands of people were caught up in the raids, which were often carried out without any proof of criminal activity, and which critics called racial profiling. | 1 |
MANILA — A manhunt was underway Wednesday for more than 150 inmates who escaped from a jail in the southern Philippines after it came under attack by gunmen overnight. One guard was killed and another wounded in the assault on a jail in Kidapawan City on the southern island of Mindanao, according to Peter Bungat, the warden. The gunmen were thought to be from a bandit group that had broken away from a Muslim rebel organization, Mr. Bungat told a radio station on Mindanao, which is home to a insurgency. Five of the 158 inmates who escaped from the facility, the North Cotabato District Jail, were later killed in a shootout with pursuing officers, Senior Inspector Xavier Solda, a spokesman for the Philippine Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, told a radio station in Manila. A village official was also killed when he was mistaken for one of the escaped inmates, the police said. Mr. Bungat said the attack began early Wednesday, when the jail’s power supply was cut. Armed men then approached from behind the compound and began firing. “It was well planned,” Mr. Bungat said. He said it was unclear whether any “high profile” inmates were among the escapees. At least a dozen were involved in drug trafficking, according to officials from the jail management bureau. Mr. Bungat said the assault was believed to have been led by a bandit known as Commander Derbie, who once led a faction of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the Philippines’ largest rebel group. Commander Derbie is widely believed to have broken away from that organization, which has signed a peace deal with the government. Philippine security officials have said that Commander Derbie joined a breakaway group called the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters. A spokesman for that group, Abu Misry, denied any involvement in the jailbreak. Ernesto Abella, a spokesman for President Rodrigo Duterte, said there was no “specific information” as to the identities of the gunmen, “though speculation is rife. ” Three inmates who had been charged with possessing drugs and explosives escaped from the North Cotabato District Jail last August. Eight years ago, three inmates accused of carrying out a bombing also escaped from the jail. | 1 |
LOS ANGELES — Shortly after dropping off his youngest daughter at school, Romulo saw lights flashing from a black car following him, signaling for him to pull over. The car was unmarked and Mr. Avelica, along with his wife and another daughter, who were also in the car, did not know why he was being stopped. Officers wearing jackets emblazoned with “police” in large yellow letters on their backs emerged and demanded that Mr. Avelica get out of the car. When he asked what he had done wrong, the officers yelled back, “Be quiet, you know you have a deportation order. ” Mr. Avelica’s daughter Fatima, 13, and her mother began to cry. As Mr. Avelica, 48, stepped out of the car and was handcuffed, Fatima pulled out her cellphone and began recording the arrest. “My dad kept telling us to calm down, that everything would be O. K.,” Fatima said in an interview. “I didn’t understand what was happening and how they could have known who he was. ” “Don’t cry,” her mother told her as she filmed. “We have to be strong. ” As news quickly spread of Mr. Avelica’s arrest, local activists and leaders responded with anger and dismay that an arrest could happen so close to a school and in front of a child. Outraged local officials said that the tactics showed a new kind of aggressiveness from immigration agents. Mr. Avelica’s case is the latest example of the growing tension building in Los Angeles between federal immigration enforcers and local officials. The fraught relationship could continue to fray as the Trump administration ramps up arrests and detentions. Local leaders in California and other parts of the country are increasingly criticizing federal immigration agents, saying their actions threaten to erode the trust between local law enforcement officials and immigrants, whom they depend on to report crimes. California officials have for years declined to help enforce immigration laws, but they do not have the power to stop roundups of immigrants living in the United States illegally. Mr. Avelica had been convicted of driving under the influence about a decade ago and was ordered deported in 2014. He has lived in the country for nearly 25 years. But it is unclear precisely why immigration officials targeted him for arrest last week. “It’s very unsettling the way things are being carried out,” said Hilda Solis, a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors who represents the neighborhood east of downtown where Mr. Avelica was arrested. “This man was not an immediate danger to the community. The situation is very scary and alarming for so many of our families and there are a lot of implications for that. I think the federal actions are deliberate and they are trying to send a message. ” Battles over immigration enforcement between local and federal officials are playing out in other cities too. The Santa Cruz police chief, Kevin Vogel, accused Department of Homeland Security officials of lying to him after agents arrested several people for immigration violations during a raid on gang members in the city. Law enforcement officials in El Paso and Denver have also raised concerns that victims of domestic violence are no longer coming forward out of fear of being deported. The mayor in Austin, Tex. wrote a letter condemning recent immigration arrests, saying they made the city less safe. This month, the Los Angeles mayor, the City Council president and the city attorney sent a letter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement asking its employees to stop identifying themselves as police. The day after Mr. Avelica’s arrest, two students from the school his daughters attend, Academia Avance, were stopped by the police. Worried that rumors could spread that they had been stopped by immigration officials, Ricardo Mireles, the executive director of the school, urged students to carry school identification at all times. That was only the start of Mr. Mireles’s warnings to students. Like other public schools, Academia Avance does not know whether students or their parents immigrated legally. But last week, Mr. Mireles gathered all of the students at the small charter school and urged them to ask their parents whether they are living in the United States legally. During parent conferences in the coming days, he said, teachers will ask parents directly if they have made plans in case they are deported. As far as he knows, Fatima and her sister Yuleni are the first students at the school with a parent who has been placed in deportation proceedings. But he does not think they will be the last. For now, there is no way to know how many students are undocumented immigrants or have parents who are Mr. Mireles estimated about 20 percent. But when asked who had undocumented relatives, nearly all of the students in one junior class raised their hands. “This is a lot to ask of you, to put all this responsibility on you, but there’s no other choice,” he told the class. “You need to be prepared. The fact is that fear is being created and terrorism is being inflicted on our community. This father is not a criminal. He’s a person who has made some mistakes but proven his commitment to the United States. ” After Mr. Mireles spoke to the class, one boy approached him crying, saying that his parents would not allow him to ride his bike outside because they were afraid he could be picked up. Mr. Mireles is not allowing anyone who is not a citizen to participate in a senior class trip to New York, fearful that someone could be detained at an airport. Initially, immigration officials told Mr. Avelica that he would be deported to Mexico immediately. But lawyers from the National Day Laborer Organizing Network stepped in, pressing local officials to call the field director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to voice their concerns and asking activists to do the same. ICE officials said that Mr. Avelica would have been a target under the Obama administration because of his conviction and order of removal. Officers abided by the agency’s sensitive locations policy, which generally restricts arrests in schools, and stopped him about half a mile from the school, not knowing that one of the daughters remained in the car, the officials said. Since receiving his deportation order, Mr. Avelica has occasionally talked with his children about the possibility that he could be sent back to Mexico. He worked for years in restaurants, shifts, six days a week, his family said. He tried to avoid any contact with law enforcement officials. His two adult daughters warned their younger sisters two weeks ago that he could be in danger, but they cut the conversation short before making any specific plans. Jeff Gorell, the Los Angeles deputy mayor for public safety, said the circumstances of Mr. Avelica’s arrest were concerning enough that he wanted more information. “There’s certainly heightened focus here on the activities of ICE,” he said. “Any incident that affects our neighborhoods with the kind of response that a detention gets of course gives the mayor concern. That’s one of the reasons we called immediately. ” Pablo Alvarado, the executive director of the day labor organization, said the involvement from local officials probably helped keep Mr. Avelica in the country for now. He is being held at a detention center about two hours east of Los Angeles. “Political leaders are trying to understand what’s rhetoric and what’s real, but I think they are starting to see that we’re not just talking about hypothetical,” Mr. Alvarado said. “There are going to be real dilemmas for elected officials about how complicit they are willing to be. ” | 1 |
A judge on Monday sentenced a Georgia man to life in prison without the possibility of parole after a jury found that he had intentionally left his toddler son in a hot sport utility vehicle to die. Jurors last month convicted the man, Justin Ross Harris, 35 when convicted, of malice murder and other charges in the June 2014 death of his son, Cooper. Prosecutors argued that Mr. Harris was unhappily married and intentionally killed his son because he wanted an escape from family life. Defense lawyers maintained that Mr. Harris was a loving father and that while he was responsible for the boy’s death, it was a tragic accident. Mr. Harris did not testify at trial and did not speak at his sentencing hearing. Superior Court Judge Mary Staley Clark of Cobb County Superior Court told Mr. Harris that she thought about statements he had made during conversations with the police and his wife the day his son died about wishing to be an advocate to help keep others from leaving a child in a hot vehicle. “Perhaps not the way you intended, you in fact have accomplished that goal,” she said as she gave him the maximum sentence. Prosecutors had decided not to seek the death penalty, and Charles P. Boring, an assistant district attorney and the lead prosecutor on the case, said the sentence Mr. Harris got was appropriate. “I don’t think you could have any other sentence that would be appropriate when somebody’s been convicted of intentionally taking the life of a child — not only doing that but doing it such a painful and deliberate way,” Mr. Boring told reporters. Mr. Harris’s lawyers did not present any evidence or make any arguments at sentencing. They also declined to comment after sentencing. Cooper died after sitting for about seven hours in the back seat of his father’s vehicle outside the suburban Atlanta office where Mr. Harris worked. Temperatures in the Atlanta area that day reached at least into the high 80s. Mr. Harris told police he forgot to drop his son off at day care that morning, instead driving straight to his job as a web developer for Home Depot, forgetting that Cooper was still in his car seat. Investigators found evidence that Mr. Harris was engaging in online flirtations and affairs with numerous women other than his wife, including a prostitute and an underage teenager. Judge Staley Clark decided after nearly three weeks of jury selection in April that pretrial publicity had made it too difficult to find a fair jury in Cobb County, where the boy died, and granted a defense request to relocate the trial. A jury in Glynn County, located on the Georgia coast about 60 miles south of Savannah, spent about a month listening to evidence in the case and deliberated for four days before finding Mr. Harris guilty of all eight counts against him. In addition to malice murder and felony murder charges, Mr. Harris was also found guilty of sending sexual text messages to a teenage girl and sending her nude photos. | 1 |
A number of Gang members, some of which are illegal immigrants, were indicted in federal court for their involvement in the slayings of two New York teenagers. [Some 13 gang members, 10 being illegal immigrants, were indicted for murder charges against Nisa Mickens and Kayla Cuevas, as well as five other individuals who were allegedly murdered by the criminal organization, according to NBC New York. According to federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York, Mickens’ body was found brutally beaten in a area of the region of Brentwood. Just a day later, her lifelong best friend Cuevas was found beaten and killed in a wooded area in the same area. New York Attorney Robert Capers said the gang members noticed the two teenage girls while they were looking for rival gang members to spar with. The gang members had previously known Cuevas from a past altercation and called their gang leader for approval to kill the girls. Capers told the media that the two girls were killed from gang members “swinging baseball bats and machetes” at them, pointing out that both were running for their lives. Alexi Saenz, 22, Enrique Portillo, 19, and Selvin Chavez, 19, as well as two other members are accused specifically with the girls’ deaths. The bodies of Oscar Acosta, 19, Miguel 15, and Jose 18, were also found in the same period as the two teenage girls. All victims were students at Brentwood High School. John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 1 |
Kasich on ACA: There are some very conservative Rs in the House who are going to say just get rid of the whole thing that’s not acceptable pic. twitter. Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Gov. John Kasich ( ) a former candidate for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, said it was “not acceptable” for Republicans in Washington, DC to completely “get rid” of the Affordable Care Act. Kasich said, “I mean there’s going to be a problem in the House of getting anything out of there that still provides coverage to people. That’s why the Republicans have to reach out to some of the Democrats. I don’t know whether that’s going to happen. ” He added, “Well because I think there are some very conservative Republicans in the House who are going to say just get rid of the whole thing. And that’s not acceptable when you have 20 million people or 700, 000 people in my state because where do the mentally ill go? Where do the drug addicted go?” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
I have to give the jews their brilliance on this one. People have been "slutty" "sleazy" and horny forever. But they were discrete about it. There was early marriage around 18-20 years old so most people were sexually inexperienced. Now people don't get married until POSSIBLY later and this gives ample time to work on the self-esteem of women to worry about their self-worth via their physical looks. Jews capitalize on this and the newest generation of Western women have been horribly manipulated into giving all the wrong signals in order to attract men. Tattoos? Slutty clothes? Have sex right away? White girls honestly think that is what white men like. Thanks jews!
The final result is that white men are not attracted to white women and so the social fabric and therefore power of white culture is destroyed. It is sad that white women have been duped into repulsing white men.
As a parallel story, my grandma knew my grandpa since childhood. She was a Roaring Twenties "IT" girl and partied it up My grandpa always cared about her and "saved" her from partying too much and married her. They had a wonderful, long, exciting marriage. I doubt my grandpa would have traded my grandma for a quiet and nun-like girl to save his life. He considered it a badge of honor to try and "tame" her Irish spirit. In the end their graves were right next to each other.
Guys, don't be too freaked out about by these amateur white girl sluts. You can still save them and make them settle down. A 40 year old burnt out slut, that's different.... Otherwise you will be (((deceived))) into a life of living alone with your computer [white genocide] or mating with an Asian. And well there are billions of chinks, they aren't exactly disappearing from the face of the earth....
Consider the "slut" act a desperate cry for help, white girls instinctively know they are being rejected/genocided and are acting out.
Forgive them, they know not what they do. | 0 |
Donald J. Trump, who said last week that a judge’s Mexican heritage should disqualify him from a lawsuit against Mr. Trump, expressed doubt on Sunday that a Muslim judge could remain neutral in the case, comments that are unlikely to ease concerns among his fellow Republicans who fear his controversial remarks could hurt the party in November. Mr. Trump’s comments, made in an interview with John Dickerson, the host of CBS’s “Face the Nation,” followed his criticism of Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel, a federal judge in California overseeing a suit against the defunct Trump University. Mr. Trump said Judge Curiel had a “conflict of interest” in the case because of Mr. Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico. Republicans, concerned about how his contentious statements could harm their ability to retain control of the Senate and have a detrimental effect in races, have struggled with how to distance themselves from Mr. Trump’s language without alienating his voters. In a series of interviews on Sunday television news shows, Republicans repudiated Mr. Trump’s comments about Judge Curiel. But instead of softening his stance, Mr. Trump intensified it. Mr. Dickerson asked Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, if a Muslim judge would be similarly biased because of Mr. Trump’s call for a ban on Muslim immigrants. “It’s possible, yes,” Mr. Trump said. “Yeah. That would be possible. Absolutely. ” When Mr. Dickerson said there was a tradition in the United States, a nation of immigrants, against judging people based on heritage, Mr. Trump replied, “I’m not talking about tradition, I’m talking about common sense, O. K.?” In his interview with Mr. Dickerson, and in a separate discussion with Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Mr. Trump refused to retreat from his comments on Judge Curiel’s background. “He is a member of a club or society, very strongly which is all fine,” Mr. Trump said. “But I say he’s got bias. I want to build a wall. I’m going to build a wall. I’m doing very well with the Latinos, with the Hispanics, with the Mexicans, I’m doing very well with them, in my opinion. ” Judge Curiel, 62, was born in East Chicago, Ind. to parents who had emigrated from Mexico. He graduated from Indiana University’s law school and worked as an assistant United States attorney in the Southern District of California before being appointed in 2007 to the bench in San Diego by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican. President Obama nominated Judge Curiel to the federal bench in late 2011, and he was confirmed by the Senate in 2012. Mr. Trump’s broadside against Judge Curiel was one of the most overtly racial remarks he had made in the presidential race, and it exacerbated the tension between some Republicans and their nominee. White, older, voters make up a large portion of the party’s base, and Republicans need to keep the presidential campaign close in order to hold their majority in the Senate. But Mr. Trump’s remarks have offended wide blocs of voters to whom the party must appeal amid national demographic shifts. And the critiques have raised concerns about how, as president, Mr. Trump would handle the separation of powers between the executive and judicial branches of government. That issue is sacred to conservatives, who have railed against what they see as an abuse of power by Mr. Obama. Republicans have tried to mitigate the potential damage of Mr. Trump’s language by rejecting it in one moment, but embracing his candidacy in the next. On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, did not directly answer a question about whether Mr. Trump’s remark had been racist, but said he completely disagreed with it. “All of us came here from somewhere else,” Mr. McConnell said, referring to Judge Curiel’s heritage. “That’s an important part of what makes America work. ” Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, a Republican whose name had been floated as a potential nominee, said on ABC’s “This Week” of Mr. Trump’s behavior, “I think that he’s going to have to change. ” And Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, who has been among Mr. Trump’s most vocal supporters, called the Curiel remarks “inexcusable” on “Fox News Sunday. ” “This is one of the worst mistakes Trump has made,” said Mr. Gingrich, who has also been mentioned as a potential candidate. But none of the three men rejected Mr. Trump’s candidacy outright. Mr. Gingrich praised Mr. Trump moments later as a quick learner. Mr. Corker suggested that Mr. Trump “has an opportunity to really change the trajectory of our country, and it’s my sense that he will take advantage of that. ” Those defenses are becoming more strained as Mr. Trump has reversed his suggestions that he knows he must grow into the role of nominee. And Republicans were mostly silent after Hillary Clinton assailed Mr. Trump in a speech on Thursday about the stakes of the election. Mr. Trump led his defense on Twitter and at a rally, but his campaign and its surrogates had no uniform response. In the weeks since he vanquished his remaining two primary opponents, Mr. Trump has repeatedly turned his campaign’s focus inward — toward his businesses, the Trump University lawsuit, his fights with other Republicans — and obscured the hopes Republicans had of keeping a spotlight on Mrs. Clinton and her email controversy, or on a jobs report suggesting a slowdown in job creation. Mr. McConnell, who endorsed Mr. Trump quickly after Mr. Trump became the presumptive nominee early last month, has been vocal in his concern that the remarks on Hispanics will have a historic effect along the lines of the remarks Barry Goldwater made on the party’s ability to woo black voters after he declined to support the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Mr. McConnell said the alternative to Mr. Trump — a second Clinton presidency — was worse. But he also urged Mr. Trump to stop focusing on the recent past and to look toward the future. “This is a good time, it seems to me, to begin to try to unify the party,” Mr. McConnell said. “And you unify the party by not settling scores and grudges against people you’ve been competing with,” he added. “We’re all behind him now. And I’d like to see him reach out and pull us all together and give us a real shot at winning this November. ” | 1 |
SAN FRANCISCO — Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, has cultivated relationships with China’s leaders, including President Xi Jinping. He has paid multiple visits to the country to meet its top internet executives. He has made an effort to learn Mandarin. Inside Facebook, the work to enter China runs far deeper. The social network has quietly developed software to suppress posts from appearing in people’s news feeds in specific geographic areas, according to three current and former Facebook employees, who asked for anonymity because the tool is confidential. The feature was created to help Facebook get into China, a market where the social network has been blocked, these people said. Mr. Zuckerberg has supported and defended the effort, the people added. Facebook has restricted content in other countries before, such as Pakistan, Russia and Turkey, in keeping with the typical practice of American internet companies that generally comply with government requests to block certain content after it is posted. Facebook blocked roughly 55, 000 pieces of content in about 20 countries between July 2015 and December 2015, for example. But the new feature takes that a step further by preventing content from appearing in feeds in China in the first place. Facebook does not intend to suppress the posts itself. Instead, it would offer the software to enable a third party — in this case, most likely a partner Chinese company — to monitor popular stories and topics that bubble up as users share them across the social network, the people said. Facebook’s partner would then have full control to decide whether those posts should show up in users’ feeds. The current and former Facebook employees caution that the software is one of many ideas the company has discussed with respect to entering China and, like many experiments inside Facebook, it may never see the light of day. The feature, whose code is visible to engineers inside the company, has so far gone unused, and there is no indication that Facebook has offered it to the authorities in China. But the project illustrates the extent to which Facebook may be willing to compromise one of its core mission statements, “to make the world more open and connected,” to gain access to a market of 1. 4 billion Chinese people. Even as Facebook faces pressure to continue growing — Mr. Zuckerberg has often asked where the company’s next billion users will come from — China has been cordoned off to the social network since 2009 because of the government’s strict rules around censorship of user content. The suppression software has been contentious within Facebook, which is separately grappling with what should or should not be shown to its users after the American presidential election’s unexpected outcome spurred questions over fake news on the social network. Several employees who were working on the project have left Facebook after expressing misgivings about it, according to the current and former employees. A Facebook spokeswoman said in a statement, “We have long said that we are interested in China, and are spending time understanding and learning more about the country. ” She added that the company had made no decisions on its approach into China. Facebook’s tricky position underscores the difficulties that many American internet companies have had gaining access to China. For years, companies like Google and Twitter have been blocked there for refusing to yield to the government’s demands around censorship. In 2010, Google said it was directing users of its search engine in China to its service in Hong Kong, because of censorship and intrusion from hackers. Other companies, like the professional social networking service LinkedIn, agreed to censor some content on their platforms in China. The current climate for internet companies in China may not help Facebook. In August, the giant Uber gave up an expensive battle to crack the Chinese market, selling its Chinese business to an incumbent rival, Didi Chuxing. More broadly, China has streamlined and tightened its controls over the internet under President Xi, targeting influential social media celebrities and adding new reviews to popular online video sites. Still, some officials responsible for China’s tech policy have been willing to entertain the idea of Facebook’s operating in the country. It would legitimize China’s strict style of internet governance, and if done according to official standards, would enable easy tracking of political opinions deemed problematic. Even so, resistance remains at the top levels of Chinese leadership. Some analysts have said Facebook’s best option is to follow a model laid out by other internet companies and cooperate with a local company or investor. Finding a partner — and potentially allowing it to own a majority stake in Facebook’s China operation — would take the burden of censorship and surveillance off the Silicon Valley company. It would also let Facebook rely on a local company’s government connections and experience to deal with the difficult task of communicating with Beijing. Facebook and Chinese officials have had intermittent talks in the last few years about the social network’s entering the market, according to employees who were involved in the discussions, though the two sides have been unable to reach a compromise. Facebook currently sells advertising for some Chinese businesses from its Hong Kong office. Among its customers are sites that act as the propaganda arm of the Chinese government, and that operate official accounts where they post articles. Chinese citizens who wish to gain access to Facebook must tunnel in using a technology known as a virtual private network, or VPN. It’s unclear when the suppression tool originated, but the project picked up momentum in the last year, as engineers were plucked from other parts of Facebook to work on the effort, the current and former employees said. The project was led by Vaughan Smith, a vice president for mobile, corporate and business development at Facebook, they said. Like Mr. Zuckerberg, Mr. Smith speaks a smattering of Mandarin. Unveiling a new censorship tool in China could lead to more demands to suppress content from other countries. The problem, which has hit countries across the globe, has already led some governments to use the issue as an excuse to target sites of political rivals, or shut down social media sites altogether. Over the summer, several Facebook employees who were working on the suppression tool left the company, the current and former employees said. Internally, so many employees asked about the project and its ambitions on an internal forum that, in July, it became a topic at one of Facebook’s weekly Friday afternoon sessions. Mr. Zuckerberg was at the event and answered a question from the audience about the tool. He told the gathering that Facebook’s China plans were nascent. But he also struck a pragmatic tone about the future, according to employees who attended the session. “It’s better for Facebook to be a part of enabling conversation, even if it’s not yet the full conversation,” Mr. Zuckerberg said, according to employees. | 1 |
Stanford University, one of America’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning, has reportedly accepted the application of a Muslim teenager whose application included the repition of the slogan “blacklivesmatter” exactly 100 times. [According to The Independent, Muslim senior high school student Ziad Ahmed repeated the slogan in response to the following question in Stanford’s application process: “What matters to you, and why?” Ahmed posted a picture of his acceptance letter from Stanford on Twitter. In the letter, a Stanford representative said everyone who reviewed his application was “inspired” by Ahmed’s “passion, determination, accomplishments, and heart. ” The letter goes on to invite Ahmed to join a “diverse, joyful, and welcoming campus community. ” I submitted this answer in my @Stanford application, yesterday, I was admitted … #BlackLivesMatter pic. twitter. — Ziad Ahmed (@ziadtheactivist) April 1, 2017, In a comment to online publication Mic. com, Ahmed said “my unapologetic progressivism is a central part of my identity, and I wanted that to be represented adequately in my application. ” Ahmed emphasized that his “blacklivesmatter” answer was not the only part of his application. Nevertheless, this part of his application has been trumpeted by and mainstream publications including The Independent, Mic, the BBC, and the Huffington Post. Also, it’s important to note that this response was one answer on one application. Not my college essay or etc. There’s a lot more to it. — Ziad Ahmed (@ziadtheactivist) April 4, 2017, Ahmed, 18, appears to be making rapid strides in the world of activism. His Twitter profile includes pictures with former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State and failed 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Ahmed was, as his bio claims, listed on MTV’s “Top 9 Teens Changing The World” in 2015. He is the founder of Redefy, an activist organization which aims to “boldly defy stereotypes, embrace acceptance and tolerance, redefine our perspectives positively, and create an active community. ” According to MTV, Ahmed attended the White House Iftar Dinner in 2015, during which he “chatted” with Obama. “[The President and I] talked about … counterterrorism and Palestine and Israel. And we talked about education girls’ education,” Ahmed told MTV. “It was just the most enlightening and intellectual and informative conversation I could ever be part of. It reminded me of what I’d said before: Teens don’t realize we need to be in this conversation, injustice is our fight too. ” Ziad Ahmed’s personal website is called ziadtheactivist. com. He describes himself as a “speaker, thinker, and ” who “stands unapologetically for justice. ” You can follow Allum Bokhari on Twitter and add him on Facebook. Email tips and suggestions to abokhari@breitbart. com. | 1 |
NICE, France — Terrorist attacks in France come often enough that they can seem to be variations on a painful pattern: carnage followed by disbelief, then condemnations, condolences, and shrines of flowers, candles and letters for the dead. Yet to see the attacks only that way is to miss the one element that might buoy the national spirit: In nearly every terrorist episode here, ordinary individuals risked their own safety to try to halt the attack or to lend a hand to the wounded rather than running away. Some of these local heroes are recognized right away, though others never receive recognition and some receive it only belatedly. “What I saw was horrible, people crushed — it had to be stopped,” said a man named Franck who would not give his surname even after he was decorated by the City of Nice for his effort to stop the driver of a cargo truck that ran over scores of people at a Bastille Day celebration on July 14. A worker at the Nice airport, Franck, who was on a motor scooter, decided in a split second to chase the truck and when he caught up, rammed it — to no avail — and was knocked off. He got up and ran after the truck, managed to climb onto the running boards and began hitting the driver through the open window. As the driver, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, tried to shoot Franck his gun failed and at the same time, Franck tried to open the door of the truck, then tried climbing through the window, but the driver struck him on the head with the gun and he fell, breaking a rib and badly bruising his back. Franck said he was satisfied that when the driver was fighting with him, he was not running over more people. “He was concentrating on me in that moment he could not kill people,” he said. At least two other men made similar, if less prolonged, efforts and also received medals from the City of Nice: Alexander Migues pursued the truck on a bicycle, and Gwenaël Leriche, a deliveryman, ran after the truck armed with nothing but a penknife and tried to jump onto the running boards as the truck came to a halt. They were not unique. Almost every attack or attempted attack in France since the assault on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Jan. 7, 2015, produced local heroes. There was Lassana Bathily, a Muslim immigrant from Mali, who hid shoppers in the basement of a kosher grocery store in Paris two days after the Charlie Hebdo attack, then smuggled them out as the terrorist Amedy Coulibaly held people hostage upstairs. In Villejuif in April last year, a fitness instructor and mother, Aurélie Châtelain, 32, refused to hand over her car to Sid Ahmed Ghlam, who the authorities say planned to gun down a crowd at a suburban church. Her refusal ended with both of them being shot in a tussle, and she died. When Mr. Ghlam called the police for help, he was arrested. He remains in prison and contends he did not shoot her. Ms. Châtelain received the Légion d’Honneur posthumously after her family and friends pointed out that if those who stopped a gunman presumed to be on the verge of an attack on the Thalys train running from Amsterdam to Paris deserved France’s highest award, so did she. The attempted attack on the train occurred almost exactly a year ago, when a shirtless man emerged from a train bathroom with a Kalashnikov assault rifle and a Luger pistol. Three Americans who stopped him have been decorated by France’s president, along with a Briton and a man, Mark Moogalian, who was the first to grab the gunman, Ayoub El Khazzani. Mr. Moogalian was shot in the process but survived. The intervention of the men stopped what could have become a slaughter. On Nov. 13, 2015, when extremists tied to the Islamic State attacked a theater, a stadium and restaurants in and near Paris, a number of people made extraordinary efforts to help each other. One was Ludovic Boumbas, a of Congolese descent, who lived in Lille and was celebrating the birthday of a waitress at the La Belle Équipe when armed men began firing on them. He jumped in front of a young woman who was at the party and was fatally shot she was wounded but survived. Most recently, in July, Sister Danielle Delafosse overcame her fear after terrorists entered a small church at St. in Rouen, France, with the intent to kill people. She ran out of the church, found someone with a phone and had the person call the police, who arrived too late to save the Rev. Jacques Hamel, 85, who was killed, but perhaps in time to prevent more bloodshed. While the heroism that gains attention is often the sort that risks the hero’s own life or limb, many who acted in less visible ways nonetheless transcended the moment. They responded with an extraordinary commitment to assist the wounded in circumstances that many would find overwhelming. In Nice, they include doctors, technicians, nurses and firefighters who worked hours upon hours treating the injured or trying to match lost children with their families. There was also Gilles Thévenet, the owner of the High Club, a popular discothèque in Nice that faces the Promenade des Anglais, who swiftly turned his nightclub into a triage center for emergency workers. Mr. Thévenet was sitting in his office in the back of the building, oblivious to the bloody chaos as the cargo truck careened by, until his security guards rushed in and he ran to the front door. “We heard the weeping, the cries, we saw the crowds,” he said. “I understood I had to choose. I could not open the door to the crowds of people and to those giving first aid, I decided the first priority was the wounded, to do as much as we could for the emergency responders who were trying to save whomever they could,” he said. In minutes, the firefighters and workers began carrying the injured — and the dead — into the club to get them off the promenade, which was thick with running, stumbling, screaming people. Soon, two medical helicopters landed just in front of the disco, where the aid workers performed triage, with the most badly hurt airlifted to hospitals nearby. Some of Mr. Thévenet’s security staff, who were trained in first aid, worked alongside the firefighters and emergency responders a room in the club was set aside for the dead. Mr. Thévenet is not sure when — or even if — business will return, especially because many in Nice know that the dead and wounded lay in rows on the same floor where they would be dancing. But he believes it will. “We will have to find again the party atmosphere, that has been our protein for 11 years,” he said. “It is out of the question to cede it to the terrorists. ” A few blocks farther west on the promenade, in sight of the sea, stands the ultramodern Lenval Foundation Hospital, one of only two major pediatric centers in southern France. and the place where Dr. Virginie Rampal, a pediatric orthopedist, who was born and raised in Nice, works day in and day out to mend the bones of children. She was the night of the attack, but at home after a relatively quiet day. She had considered going with her daughters to the promenade to see the fireworks, but her plans changed when a friend stopped by. When Dr. Rampal’s pager went off, like everyone else, she did not know of the attack, but rushed to the emergency room. The wounded were already filling the chairs, lying on the floor, some with open fractures — most of them children. More were coming in, some carried in their parents’ arms. She helped with triage, went into surgery, back to triage, working without stopping as 30 young patients, many under the age of 10, were stabilized and sent into surgery. Of the 30 children, 28 survived — two died from head injuries and crushed pelvises, she said. At 7 a. m. she went home to shower. “I came in and took my daughter in my arms and held her close to me” — she has two girls, one 2½ and another 9 months old. She was back at the hospital 90 minutes later. | 1 |
Sky News unveiled a data poll suggesting that Britain is “more racist and less happy” than a year ago, with the supposedly worsening mood framed as a direct consequence of the country voting to leave the European Union (EU) last June. [The findings were reported by Sky News by the broadcaster’s Head of Data, Harry Carr, who previously managed the political polling for Ipsos MORI, a polling organisation which suffered a severe blow to its credibility after putting the probability of Britain voting to Remain in the EU at 74 per cent. Carr writes that 57 per cent of respondents believe the UK is more racist than it was 12 months ago, immediately after an allusion to Home Office statistics which claim allegations of crimes motivated by racial or religious hatred are up by 41 per cent. This increase in allegations is likely to have been driven by government policy, which is geared towards positively encouraging an increase in hate crime reporting. The Home Office launched a hate crime action plan in July 2016 in which the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, made it clear the government has been pushing “measures to increase the reporting of hate incidents and crimes”. Past measures have included a scheme launched by the British Transport Police which allows people to register hate crime allegations via text, which logged 32, 500 incidents in its first three years of operation, and the online True Vision portal, which logged 4, 300 hate allegations in . Assistant Chief Constable of the Essex police force, Maurice Mason, admitted some of these reported incidents reported even include “members of the public complaining about Nigel Farage, or whatever … If the person feels it’s a hate crime it will get recorded as a hate crime”. Mason’s comments underline that there is virtually no requirement for evidence of a crime to be presented before a hate incident is logged. The College of Policing’s Hate Crime Operational Guidance manual states that, “For recording purposes, the perception of the victim, or any other person, is the defining factor in determining whether an incident is a hate incident”. The guidance goes on to make it clear that “the victim does not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief, and police officers or staff should not directly challenge this perception. Evidence of the hostility is not required for an incident or crime to be recorded as a hate crime or hate incident. ” The police will take action against false reporting, as when a Muslim woman was fined for lying about being attacked in Birmingham last year, but the guidance is clear that challenging people to substantiate hate crime allegations is generally discouraged. This has not stopped broadcasters and mainstream media outlets such as Sky News from reporting that hate crime has “soared” prominently and repeatedly, which is likely the key factor in the public allegedly perceiving an increase in racism. Another driver for any increase in hate crime, not explored in the Sky News report, is the accelerating pace of mass immigration, with migrants in poorly integrated minority communities harbouring racist attitudes towards the majority population themselves. Police Scotland conceded that white Britons were the most likely victims of racist attacks towards the end of 2015, a widely unreported phenomenon. Sir Peter Fahy, former Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, has been reported as saying that it is “a fact that it [is] harder to get the media interested where murder victims [are] young white men. ” Broadcasters have come under strong criticism for their failure to report such crimes in the past, with the BBC acknowledging it “underplayed” the murder of Kriss Donald by a Pakistani gang in Scotland’s first ever race hate killing. Biased, negative media coverage following the Brexit vote, such as that uncovered at the BBC by researchers at News Watch, will also have played a part in any increasing apprehensions about the future. Sky Data did not believe that voters would back Brexit if they thought it would damage the economy before the referendum, which would seem to contradict its new report suggesting most members of the public believe it will. Sky’s previous survey also indicated that “Brits do not think the UK will be less respected on the world stage if it leaves the EU” that Britain gets “a raw deal” from the EU compared to France and Germany, and that EU immigration “undermines British culture and values”. | 1 |
Yet another woman has stepped forward to accuse Republican nominee Donald Trump of sexual assault. Ninni Laaksonen, crowned the 2006 Miss Finland , has become the fourteenth woman to come forward and accuse Trump of unwanted advances. Speaking to local newspaper Ilta-Sanomat, Laaksonen described how moments before she was set to appear on the Late Show With David Letterman , Trump came up to her and began groping her buttocks.
““Before the show we were photographed outside the building. Trump stood right next to me and suddenly he squeezed my butt. He really grabbed my butt. I don’t think anybody saw it but I flinched and thought: ‘What is happening?’”
Laaksonen later attended a party with other contestants. “Somebody told me there that Trump liked me because I looked like Melania when she was younger. It left me disgusted.”
The story echos the complaints made by numerous women about Trump, who boasted on a hot mic of casually committing sexual assault on women he finds attractive. “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful women — I just start kissing them, it’s like a magnet…I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything… Grab ’em by the pussy” said Trump to Entertainment Tonight’s Billy Bush.
That admission opened the floodgates as dozens of women came forth telling stories that all reinforce each other’s credibility, painting a portrait of a serial predator who treats women’s bodies as objects for him to grope and force himself upon as he pleases. His response to the allegations has been to demean the women, insult them for their looks, and threaten to sue them for “libel.” The consistency of the women’s accounts taken in the context of his own words should leave little doubt in the mind of the American voter of who is telling the truth here. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Tuesday that the rise of in the United States since his inauguration was “horrible” and “painful,” reacting publicly for the first time to mounting threats targeting Jewish people and institutions after he drew criticism for being slow to condemn them. During a visit to the National Museum of History and Culture, Mr. Trump said he was reminded of the need to combat hatred “in all of its very ugly forms. ” He spoke one day after 11 bomb threats were phoned in to Jewish community centers around the country and a Jewish cemetery in University City, Mo. was vandalized. “The threats targeting our Jewish community and community centers are horrible, and are painful, and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil,” Mr. Trump said. The statement came after weeks of private complaints from leaders of major Jewish organizations to members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle, including his Jared Kushner, about the president’s seeming unwillingness to speak out forcefully against acts. His failure to do so stoked concern among some Jewish leaders that Mr. Trump, whose presidential campaign drew the support of racist and groups including the Ku Klux Klan, was at best willing to stay silent about such actions and at worst quietly condoning them. Mr. Trump’s comment on Tuesday was a rare concession to the demands of outside forces by a president who prides himself on standing his ground. Despite the questions that arose during his campaign, Mr. Trump has never proactively delivered a statement condemning . “The president’s sudden acknowledgment of is a on the cancer of that has infected his own administration,” said Steven Goldstein, the executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect. “When President Trump responds to proactively and in real time, and without pleas and pressure, that’s when we’ll be able to say this president has turned a corner. ” He added, “This is not that moment. ” The White House was criticized by Jewish groups last month when it issued a statement honoring International Holocaust Remembrance Day that did not mention the six million Jews who perished, instead broadly mentioning “the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror” and “those who died. ” Pressed on the matter, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, defended the statement as “inclusive” of all of those targeted during the Holocaust, including Gypsies, priests and gay people, and he called the criticism “pathetic. ” Concern mounted among Jewish leaders after a news conference last week at which Mr. Trump reacted angrily to a question about his response to the increasing number of acts around the nation. The president called the query insulting and demanded that the questioner, who works for a Jewish publication, sit down. The League called the president’s reaction “ . ” Mr. Trump, who was criticized during his campaign for being slow or halfhearted in condemning hate speech, has been particularly stung by accusations that he is or that he has nurtured the rise of such sentiments. Such accusations have been leveled against both the president and his chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, a former chairman of Breitbart News, a website that has cultivated a white nationalist following. The president’s daughter Ivanka Trump, who converted to Judaism to marry Mr. Kushner, an observant Jew, wrote in a Twitter post on Monday: “America is a nation built on the principle of religious tolerance. We must protect our houses of worship religious centers. #JCC. ” JCC is the abbreviation for Jewish community centers. Morton A. Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America and a strong supporter of Mr. Trump, said, “One of the issues here is that President Trump and Steve Bannon are very upset and very frustrated that so many Jewish organizational leaders have accused them of being which is very unfair and simply inaccurate. ” Mr. Klein added, though, that “President Trump needed to, himself — not through a statement by his daughter that didn’t even mention — speak up against this kind of hatred and urge law enforcement to do all they can to find these perpetrators and hold them accountable. ” The president’s slow response, he argued, may have been in part because Mr. Trump “wants to make these decisions on his own and not feel like he’s being told what to do. ” The proliferation of acts in the United States and the president’s failure to address them publicly were frequent topics of conversation in Jerusalem over the weekend, where the leaders of American Jewish groups gathered for meetings, according to attendees who described the private discussions on the condition of anonymity. On Tuesday, several organizations issued statements praising Mr. Trump’s comments. “We appreciate that President Trump spoke directly to this matter,” said Nathan J. Diament, the executive director for public policy at the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America. “The words of a president of the United States carry great weight, and it is important that Mr. Trump addressed the American Jewish community and all our fellow Americans at this time. ” Still, some leaders said they wished Mr. Trump had made a personal call for his administration to find and prosecute perpetrators of the recent threats. The Simon Wiesenthal Center urged Mr. Trump to present a plan for combating and called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to form a task force on the matter. Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks activities, said the wave of threats was “really worrying,” especially because of the “tendency on the part of this administration to completely overlook terrorism and political violence from the domestic radical right. ” Mr. Potok also welcomed Mr. Trump’s comments, but he criticized them as tardy. “It’s very nice that President Trump opposes these crimes,” Mr. Potok said. “It might have been helpful if he had done so months or even years earlier. ” Mr. Spicer complained on Tuesday that Mr. Trump was being treated unfairly. “It’s ironic that, no matter how many times he talks about this, that it’s never good enough,” he said at a briefing with reporters. He declined to respond to a shouted question about whether Mr. Trump would ask the Justice Department to prosecute those responsible for the acts. Mr. Trump has mentioned his Jewish grandchildren and daughter when questioned about his commitment to combating . Yet defenses of Judaism that do not involve fealty to Israel have proved tougher for a man raised in New York, a city heavily populated with Jews. In an interview with Jake Tapper of CNN at the end of February 2016, soon after Mr. Trump won the South Carolina primary, Mr. Trump demurred when pressed repeatedly about the support offered to him by David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader. “Honestly, I don’t know David Duke,” Mr. Trump said at the time. Asked by reporters days later why he would not simply disavow Mr. Duke, Mr. Trump shrugged and said, “I disavow, O. K.?” | 1 |
“Turns Out North Korea’s Economy Is Actually Doing Pretty Well,” the headline at Vox proclaims. The bulk of the article offers nothing to support this assertion. [The piece is based heavily on a “fascinating article” in the New York Times, which purportedly demonstrated how North Korea “has been experiencing economic success in recent years by taking steps toward allowing private enterprise to spread throughout the country. ” “According to the Times, some experts estimate that the North Korean economy could be growing between 1 and 5 percent per year. If North Korea’s economy is actually growing at the higher end of that estimate — say, around 4 percent — the country would be showing surprising resilience in the face of international sanctions,” Vox chirped. And then, four paragraphs in, Vox splashed a little cold water in its face and remembered which country it is talking about, admitting that North Korean quality of life is “nightmarish” and marked by “rampant food shortages,” leaving 70 percent of the population dependent on food aid and 40 percent of the people malnourished. Nevertheless, Vox persisted, gamely forging ahead with an argument that black markets and tiny marketplaces were prodding North Korea toward a uprising against centralized control. Late in the article, Vox mentions that 80 percent of North Korea’s consumer goods come from China but leaves out the more pertinent fact that North Korea gets almost all of its oil from China. China and a few other friendly states indulge the illicit trade that provides Pyongyang with much of the equipment and hard currency needed for its weapons programs. That is how North Korea “survives sanctions. ” The country’s economic system is basically a laboratory experiment in feral communist brainwashing financed by Beijing. China keeps this nightmare going because it loathes the notion of a reunified Korea allied with the United States and because it likes having a vicious attack dog snarling at the Western world and its Pacific Rim friends. China profits a great deal by promoting itself as the only hand that can tame the Kim regime. The cost of keeping North Korea’s “economy” afloat has been reasonable until now. That analysis is changing as Pyongyang closes in on nuclear ICBM technology, which is why Beijing seems to be dealing more sternly with the Kim regime than ever before. There is nothing more to the North Korean economic picture than this, which Vox slowly figures out by the end of its silly article, since not the faintest trace of the headline assertion that “North Korea’s economy is actually doing pretty well” remains by the final paragraph. It is actually a story about how starving and terrified North Korean citizens are trying to use a little market cooperation to survive the hideous communist economy they are trapped in. Black markets are the defiance of an economic system, not a component of it. Part of the problem here is an absurdity of scale. Four percent “growth” for a starvation economy is nothing. That is like saying a man with ten cents in his pocket who discovers a dime on the street has doubled his financial holdings. The low end of the growth estimate that served as the entire premise for the Vox article was one percent, which sounds more like the “totally stagnant economic backwater” Vox claims North Korea is not. Even that paltry estimate is based on the highly dubious assumption that any meaningful economic data can be extracted from the North Korean dungeon state. Communist tyrannies have a long history of manufacturing fraudulent data to make themselves look prosperous. “North Korea is doing pretty well” stories erupt almost every year, based on similarly flawed economic analyses that speculate the dungeon state’s economy might be growing a little. There was a previous boomlet of such media coverage in the summer of 2015, prompting The Diplomat to conduct a bit of debunking. After duly noting that all economic data from North Korea is suspect and pointing out that North Korean growth stories always ignore the many negative economic events plaguing the secretive nation, The Diplomat quoted blogger Joshua Stanton explaining that North Korea really has two economies and the larger one keeps the bulk of the population in a constant state of misery: North Korea’s economy is bifurcated between the in the provinces and the haves — the regime, the elites, and the donju (middle class) who are are mostly figures who trade with and on behalf of the regime, and largely supply the elite with goods that aren’t available to most North Koreans. Although there is more overlap between these economies today than there was five years ago, these remain two distinct economies for the most part. No, North Korea’s economy is not “doing well,” and there is little solid evidence that it’s doing better than it was last year. It endures the pressure of sanctions because China constantly relieves that pressure and because murderous totalitarian regimes can absorb a great deal of economic pain with their captive populations. Even a and dependent tyranny can afford to maintain a small ruling clique in high style. Only China can exert the type of pressure that would really hurt North Korea’s rulers. | 1 |
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in an interview published Tuesday that he did not want or seek the position and only took it because his wife convinced him to do it. [“I didn’t want this job. I didn’t seek this job,” Tillerson told IJR in an interview with the sole reporter allowed to accompany him on his recent Asia trip. “My wife told me I’m supposed to do this. ” Tillerson said he never met with President Trump before the election, but Trump asked to meet with him at Trump Tower after winning the presidential election to talk “about the world” and Tillerson’s experience as CEO of ExxonMobil. “When he asked me at the end of that conversation to be secretary of state, I was stunned,” Tillerson shared. When Tillerson told his wife about the offer, he said she responded, “I told you God’s not through with you. ” “I was supposed to retire in March, this month. I was going to go to the ranch to be with my grandkids,” Tillerson added. Tillerson stated that he serves in the role “at the pleasure of the president. ” “My wife convinced me,” he said. “She was right. I’m supposed to do this. ” Tillerson was confirmed as secretary of state in February in a Senate vote. Reuters reported that Tillerson is skipping a NATO meeting next month to stay in the U. S. for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s meeting with the president at Trump’s resort in Florida. | 1 |
SANA, Yemen — At least 15 people were killed on Monday in northern Yemen when warplanes bombed a hospital supported by Doctors Without Borders, according to hospital and local health ministry officials. The airstrike hit Abs Hospital in Yemen’s northern Hajjah Province, and three Yemeni staff members of Doctors Without Borders were among the dead, said the hospital director, Ibrahim Aram, who was reached by telephone. He said that three foreign doctors at the hospital were also wounded, and that three other staff members had limbs amputated. The bombing came two days after Saudi airstrikes killed at least 19 people, mostly children, in a residential area and a school in northern Yemen. The coalition fighting Houthi militias has stepped up its bombing campaign in recent weeks after peace talks collapsed between the rebels who control the capital, Sana, and the largely exiled government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, which is backed by the coalition and by Western powers. Ayman Ahmed Mathkoor, the health director for Hajjah Province, said the airstrike on Monday had destroyed the emergency department of Abs Hospital, killing 15 people and wounding 20. In a news release on Monday afternoon, Doctors Without Borders — often known by its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières — said that at least 11 people, including a member of the organization’s staff, had been killed in the attack on the hospital, and 19 wounded. Nine people were killed immediately, and two more died while being moved to another hospital, according to the news release. Mr. Aram said he was unsure how many patients had died. Hospitals in Yemen supported by Doctors Without Borders have been hit by coalition airstrikes at least four times in the country’s war. Saudi officials have insisted that they have struck only at military targets, and have accused the Houthis of using civilian facilities to carry out attacks against the government and its coalition partners. Ban the United Nations secretary general, condemned the attack in a statement, emphasizing that antagonists in the Yemen conflict had damaged or destroyed more than 70 health facilities since the hostilities began 17 months ago. Ibrahim Jafari, a health ministry official who went to the hospital on Monday, said the emergency room had been full of patients when it was hit. Many of the victims were badly burned, he said, and body parts were scattered around the site. Mr. Jafari said there were no military forces near the hospital. The nearest military activity involving the Houthi militias was more than 35 miles away, he said. Amnesty International in the United States condemned the attack, and an Amnesty official said in a statement that the targeting of medical facilities could constitute “a serious violation of international humanitarian law, which would amount to a war crime. ” Mr. Aram, the hospital director, said the three Doctors Without Borders staff members who were killed were a guard, a logistician and an electrician. In addition, another guard, an technician and a nurse had limbs amputated because of their wounds, he said, adding that the three foreign doctors had relatively minor injuries. “Today’s airstrike appears to be the latest in a string of unlawful attacks targeting hospitals, highlighting an alarming pattern of disregard for civilian life,” said Magdalena Mughrabi, an Amnesty official. Other hospitals supported by Doctors Without Borders that are known to have been hit in Saudi strikes include Shiara Hospital in Razeh, in Sada Province, struck on Jan. 10 Taiz Hospital in the city of Taiz, struck on Dec. 2 and Haydan Hospital in Haydan, Sada Province, struck on Oct. 26, according to statements from the aid organization as well as government health officials. Mr. Aram said that Doctors Without Borders had not begun supporting Abs Hospital until it was assured that the Saudi coalition was aware of the hospital’s geographical coordinates, in line with the organization’s longstanding policy for hospitals in war zones. Maj. Gen. Ahmed Asseri, the spokesman for the coalition, said a statement about the airstrike would be issued. Efforts to reach spokesmen for the Yemeni government supported by the Saudi coalition were unsuccessful. | 1 |
Impeachment-era evidence against Bill Clinton still sealed 60,000 pages stored in 'locked, guarded room' Published: 23 mins ago
(DAILYCALLER) — Tens of thousands of pages detailing the case for impeachment against former President Bill Clinton have remained locked away from the public for almost 20 years.
Although many believe that the report issued by then Independent Counsel Ken Starr revealed the final findings of his investigation of Clinton in the late 1990’s, around 60,000 pages of documents seen by only a few people describe the House Judiciary Committee’s case against the 42nd president.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde hired Chicago attorney and Democrat David Schippers to be the Chief Investigative Counsel to help prosecute the committee’s case against Clinton. Schippers described to American Family Radio’s Sandy Rios Friday how the evidence against Clinton was stored and studied by Congress at the time. | 0 |
President Obama has stooped to new lows in his increasingly forceful pleas for voters to go to the polls for enthusiasm gap-challenged Hillary Clinton. | 0 |
in: Science & Technology (The Verge) Today, Google’s Threat Analysis group disclosed a critical vulnerability in Windows in a public post on the company’s security blog. The bug itself is very specific — allowing attackers to escape from security sandboxes through a flaw in the win32k system — but it’s serious enough to be categorized as critical, and according to Google, it’s being actively exploited. As a result, Google went public just 10 days after reporting the bug to Microsoft, before a patch could be coded and deployed. The result is that, while Google has already deployed a fix to protect Chrome users, Windows itself is still vulnerable — and now, everybody knows it. Google’s disclosure provides only a general description of the bug, giving users enough information to recognize a possible attack without making it too easy for criminals to replicate. Exploiting the bug also depends on a separate exploit in Adobe Flash, for which the company has also released a patch. Still, simply knowing that the bug exists will likely spur a lot of criminals to look for viable ways to exploit it against computers that have yet to update Flash. | 0 |
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“I endorse Donald Trump”- I am Hillary Clinton and I Approve this messageary
Here’s Gary Franchi as he reports that that before running against billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump for the presidency, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an audience at a private, paid speech she wanted to see more successful businessmen and women run for office because they can’t be bought.
AMAZINGLY, SHE SAID DONALD TRUMP WOULD BE AN EXCELLENT PRESIDENT!!!
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What a total load of RUBBISH! Trump mopped the floor with Hitlery in the debates, is leading her in the REAL polls (polls of a mere 1000 people are statistically insignificant....in polls of 50,000 people or more he's getting about 70%!). Saying the ACA is better than what existed before is just ignorant when insurance companies are bailing, premiums are increasing and more and more people just can't afford it! As for 'freedom of the press'....when they're all owned and controlled by Soros, Bloomberg, Murdoch and their ilk, how is it "free"? O'Vomit gave control of the internet to Rothschilde....hopefully Trump will take it back! Sanctuary cities are ILLEGAL and SHOULD be eliminated! What's wrong with term limits? I'm hoping to see a National Voter ID law as well, so stop the rampant, voter fraud the Demonrats are engaging in! Hey Robin....how did you graduate from college without learning anything? | 0 |
November 2, 2016 at 12:35 am
What the narrator failed to mention was that it is God who is in control of all things. It is God who will put the hook in the jaw of the mouth of the Russian President to war with other nations. So, we shall see what it is that God will do next; man has no choice in the matter, unless of course, the man is one of God's anointed.Thanks much and May God Bless | 0 |
OLATHE, Kan. — “The Jameson guys,” as some on the staff at Austins Bar and Grill knew the pair, were on the patio on Wednesday evening. It was hardly unusual: Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani, two immigrants from India, often enjoyed an whiskey at the bar they had adopted as a hangout. Adam W. Purinton was also there, tossing ethnic slurs at the two men and suggesting they did not belong in the United States, other customers said. Patrons complained, and Mr. Purinton was thrown out. But a short time later, he came back in a rage and fired on the two men, the authorities said. Mr. Kuchibhotla was killed, and Mr. Madasani was wounded, along with a man who had tried to apprehend the gunman, who fled. Mr. Purinton, 51, was extradited to Kansas from Missouri on Friday, and he is charged with premeditated murder and two counts of attempted premeditated murder. The attack, which the federal and local authorities are investigating as a possible hate crime, reverberated far beyond both states. It raised new alarms about a climate of hostility toward foreigners in the United States, where President Trump has made clamping down on immigration a central plank of his “America first” agenda. The White House strongly rejected the notion that there might be any connection between the shooting and the new administration’s sharp language about immigration. “People are devastated,” said Somil Chandwani, a friend of the two victims who lives in Overland Park, Kan. “I wouldn’t say they are angry. They have a sense of insecurity at the moment. People are trying to find answers. ” A charging document released on Friday gave no details about the motive for the shooting. Law enforcement officials in Kansas, citing the continuing investigation and judicial ethics standards, said little about the episode. Still, the F. B. I. ’s role in the inquiry suggested that officials had found some evidence that could eventually lead to civil rights charges in connection with the shooting, which occurred around 7:15 p. m. Wednesday. “He snapped, and this is not his typical self,” the suspect’s mother, Marsha Purinton, said before declining further comment. In a brief phone interview on Friday night, Mr. Madasani described the remarks made Wednesday by the man sitting near him and Mr. Kuchibhotla at the restaurant. “He asked us what visa are we currently on and whether we are staying here illegally,” Mr. Madasani said. (Both men were educated in the United States and were working here legally.) “We didn’t react,” Mr. Madasani said. “People do stupid things all the time. This guy took it to the next level. ” Mr. Madasani said he went in to get a manager, and by the time he returned to the patio, the man was being escorted out. After Mr. Purinton was thrown out, Jeremy Luby, 41, a software developer, said he offered to pick up the tab for the two men, who thanked him during a brief conversation about work and cultural differences. “It was wrong what happened to them,” Mr. Luby said. “I thought it was a nice gesture to say, ‘I’m sorry someone was being rude to you like that. ’” After the shooting began, another patron, Ian Grillot, 24, said he tried to count the shots while he hid under a table. Thinking the gunman had run out of ammunition, Mr. Grillot said, he confronted him, only to be shot in the hand and the chest. “It wasn’t right, and I didn’t want the gentleman to potentially go after somebody else,” Mr. Grillot said in a video released by the hospital where he received treatment. “He did it once. What would stop him from doing it again?” The shots echoed around the area, and Chris Lacross soon emerged from a store a few doors down to an unimaginable scene: an emergency medical technician performing CPR on a man lying in the doorway of the bar’s front patio, where tables and chairs had been flipped over, and someone was shouting that they needed towels. Another man took off his shirt and applied pressure to the wound of another victim, who was writhing in pain, said Mr. Lacross, who allowed some people to use a store restroom to wash away spattered blood. Within minutes, an emergency dispatcher, in a transmission archived by the Broadcastify website, told officers, “We’re being advised the suspect’s name is Adam, and he’s a white male wearing a white shirt with military medals. ” Capt. Sonny Lynch, the deputy chief of police in Clinton, Mo. where Mr. Purinton was arrested at an Applebee’s restaurant, said a bartender there called the police after a customer confessed to his involvement in a shooting hours earlier. “He was talking to her — ‘I’m on the run I’m hiding out from the law’ — so she stuck around,” Captain Lynch said of the bartender. “She just hung out there talking to the guy until he said, ‘I shot those guys, and that’s why I’m hiding out from the police. ’” Mr. Purinton was arrested without incident, Captain Lynch said, and invoked his constitutional rights. It was not clear whether he had a lawyer. Mr. Purinton spent time in the Navy and, according to a website where veterans can list their military records, was deployed aboard the Long Beach, a missile cruiser, from 1988 to 1990. He later worked for the Federal Aviation Administration but left the agency in 2000, a spokeswoman said. In Johnson County, Kan. at least, he has had few with law enforcement. Court records showed a limited history: a speeding ticket in 2008, as well as a 1999 charge that was dismissed. A neighbor, Lisa Puckett, said that Mr. Purinton was frequently intoxicated but that news of a shooting was stunning. “We always wondered if he might hurt himself, but we didn’t think he would hurt someone else,” she said. The dead man, Mr. Kuchibhotla, worked for Garmin, a GPS navigation and communications device company. One of the wounded men, Mr. Madasani, like Mr. Kuchibhotla in his early 30s, also worked for Garmin, according to the Indian government. On Friday, counselors were at the company’s campus in Olathe, a hub of South Asian immigrants where 84 languages are spoken in the local school district. Speaking to reporters on Friday at the Garmin headquarters, Mr. Kuchibhotla’s widow, Sunayana Dumala, said she had long been worried by shootings she read about in the newspaper. “I, especially, I was always concerned, are we doing the right thing of staying in the United States of America?” she said. “But he always assured me that only good things happen to good people. ” Now, Ms. Dumala said, she needed “an answer from the government” about what “they’re going to do to stop this hate crime. ” Mr. Madasani’s father, Jagan Mohan Reddy, a government engineer in Hyderabad, India, said his family was in shock. He said he did not know whether he would ask Mr. Madasani, who received a graduate degree from the University of City, and another son living in the United States to leave the country. “We have to think it over,” he said. “My sons are not new to America. They have been staying there for the last 10 to 12 years. This is a new situation, and they are the best judges. ” Mr. Madasani, who has been released from the hospital, said he was recovering physically and mentally. “I’m definitely doing much better, but it’s not over yet,” he said. On Friday, Mr. Kuchibhotla’s killing and the wounding of Mr. Madasani led to a chorus of fury in India, where the attack dominated the news media to such an extent that the top American diplomat in the country was compelled to issue a statement condemning what she described as a “tragic and senseless act. ” In Washington, the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, rejected any link between Mr. Trump’s policy agenda and the shooting, which many Indians believed might have been inspired by the president’s harsh tone on immigration. The Justice Department is under pressure to bring federal charges in the case. Moussa Elbayoumy, the board chairman for the Kansas chapter of the Council on Relations, said the government should “consider filing hate crime charges in order to send a strong message that violence targeting religious or ethnic minorities will not be tolerated. ” On Friday night, a diverse crowd of more than 400 gathered to grieve at First Baptist Church down the street from the bar. They offered their prayers to the Kuchibhotlas and the Madasanis, characterized the shooting as an anomaly in an otherwise peaceful, tolerant suburb and vowed they would not let that change. “As a community, we are still shocked, devastated, and angry,” Mayor Michael Copeland said. “But this is not how this ends. This is not our Olathe. ” He added, “One evil act does not divide a united community. ” Mr. Purinton was scheduled to appear in court on Monday. Austins, meanwhile, planned to reopen on Saturday. | 1 |
The Jerusalem Post reports: Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev has made public her pleasure that US President Barack Obama is soon leaving office. [In an interview with Army Radio on Sunday, Regev said “thank God that Obama is finishing his term. ” “In Obama’s world view we have moved closer to peace, but during his term we have just gotten further from it,” she said, adding that “there have been more and more terror attacks in Berlin, Orlando and yesterday in Turkey, what does any of this have to do with the [Israeli] settlements?” Read more here. | 1 |
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“And would sir like a regular or large fries, with that? And how about a McFlurry? ”[I do hope that Gavin “Toast” Schmidt, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) followed the advice I gave him a few months back. Because it now looks very much as if he and many of his colleagues are about to face exciting new job opportunities, hopefully in areas best suited to their talents, such as the challenging world of retail. Yes, as we predicted, NASA is going to be stripped of the two main roles it enjoyed under the Obama administration — Muslim outreach and green propaganda — and return to its original day (and night) job as an agency dedicated to space exploration. The U. S. Senate passed legislation recently cutting funding for NASA’s global warming research. The House is expected to pass the bill, and President Trump will likely sign it. Supporters say it “ ” NASA’s budget back toward space exploration and away from global warming and earth science research. Republicans plan to end the more than $2 billion NASA spends on its Earth Science Mission Directorate. “By rebalancing, I’d like for more funds to go into space exploration we’re not going to zero out earth sciences,” Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, who chairs the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, told EE News. “I’d like for us to remember what our priorities are, and there are another dozen agencies that study earth science and climate change, and they can continue to do that. ” Before we shed too many tears for the plight of Gavin Schmidt and the rest of his global warming research team, though, let’s just pause to reflect on how much damage they have done to the cause of honest science over the years and what vast quantities of our money they have wasted. A good place to start is this excellent piece by Steve Goddard, entitled The Pause Is Real: NASA Temperatures Aren’t. Here is the damning chart that says it all: How did a supposedly respectable government agency get away with such blatant fraud? Well, one answer is that it was encouraged to do so by the US government which paid its Earth Science research division $2 billion a year, while giving only $781. 5 million and $826. 7 million to its astrophysics and space technology divisions. Obama wanted “global warming” to be real and dangerous: and — lo! — thanks to the magic of his crack prestidigitators at NASA, NOAA and the rest, it was. But the longer answer is that this is what happens when green ideologues are allowed to infiltrate and hijack government institutions. As we’ve reported before, NASA has been caught out fiddling temperature data on “an unbelievable scale”. So too has NOAA. That’s because their global warming departments are mostly run by true believers — scientists who want to show the world that global warming is a major threat in urgent need of more grant funding, regardless of what the actual temperature data shows. Hence the many, many adjustments. This has done tremendous damage not just in the US but across the world because it has enabled green propagandists to point at the dodgy adjusted data from NASA and NOAA and claim: “The Experts say … ” Now, thanks to Donald Trump, that fraud is about to come to a sudden and painful end. It never ceases to amaze and nauseate me that more people, especially on the right, aren’t more grateful for what is being done here. While mainstream media commentators on both left and right bloviate about Trump’s style (clearly they prefer Obama’s empty rhetoric) and stoke up fake news stories about Russian plots, Trump is busily getting on with one of the most valuable and important missions ever conducted by a US president: he is putting an end to the biggest and most expensive scientific scam in history. Oh, and he is also working wonders for property rights and business by rescinding such damaging regulations as the Waters Of The US and the Climate Action Plan. A source briefed on the matter told The Washington Post one of the orders “will instruct the Environmental Protection Agency to begin rewriting the 2015 regulation that limits emissions from existing electric utilities” and order “the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to lift a moratorium on federal coal leasing. ” Trump will issue a second order instructing the EPA and U. S. Army Corps of Engineers to rewrite the “Waters of the U. S. ” (WOTUS) rule that expanded federal control over rivers, streams and wetlands — even those on private property. If ever a swamp needed draining, it’s the swamp of the $1. 5 trillion environmental scam. This could have gone on for ever and ever. Our grandchildren ought to be properly grateful to President Trump that it didn’t. | 1 |
By Amanda Froelich 25 million single-use plastic bags are discarded every day in California. This new law aims to benefit the environment and all wildlife. In July of 2015, Hawaii made headlines... | 0 |
Posted on November 5, 2016 by WashingtonsBlog
By George Eliason, an American journalist living in Ukraine.
Whether you are for Hillary Clinton or against her, the problem with Hillary Clinton isn’t her lack of experience. Almost the entire political establishment is behind her. Throughout all the bumps and scandal in this whole election cycle, Republicans and former presidents are coming out of the woodwork supporting her. According to the LA Times she may well be one of the most experienced candidates in US history, while even accounting for severe conflicts of interest inside the Clinton Foundation. Neither friend or foe doubt Hillary Clinton’s experience after 30 years in politics.
The problem is even Hillary Clinton’s friends say she has a history of acting without thinking, of making bad decisions. According to Neera Tanden : “Almost no one knows better than me that her instincts can be terrible.”
Does Hillary Clinton show bad instincts and terrible decision-making skills, and if she does, how will this affect the USA?
According to journalist Robert Parry “the people that will be taking senior positions and especially in foreign policy believe “This consensus is driven by a broad-based backlash against a president who has repeatedly stressed the dangers of overreach and the need for restraint, especially in the Middle East… Taken together, the studies and reports call for more aggressive American action to constrain Iran, rein in the chaos in the Middle East and check Russia in Europe.”One of the lead organizations revving up these military adventures and also counting on a big boost in military spending under President Clinton-45 is the Atlantic Council, a think tank associated with NATO that has been pushing for a major confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.”
The Atlantic Council is the think tank for the CEEC which is associated with NATO. The CEEC (Central and Eastern European Coalition) has only one goal. At the beginning of the presidential campaign they put out a small list of questions for the candidates to decide who they would support for the president.
The first question was essentially “Are you willing to go to war with Russia?” Hillary Clinton has answered that question and received their unqualified support throughout the campaign. Who is the CEEC?
The Central and Eastern European Coalition represent the various Central and Eastern European countries to the US government. What makes them special in an election is that they control a 20 million person strong bloc vote in key states across the country and sway elections by themselves. The price of a Clinton win is war with Russia.
If that seems a little too much to be believable, reconsider the Iraq war. All it took was for the Iraqi diaspora to develop strong ties with like-minded people from “The Project for the New American Century” that wanted regime change in Iraq. Many of the people associated with the PNAC crossed over into the Bush administration . They pushed the invasion together.
“ Walt Vanderbush’s essay, “The Iraqi Diaspora and the US Invasion of Iraq” (chapter 9), traces the collaboration between leaders of the Iraqi diaspora and neoconservative Americans, many of them linked to the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), to convince the US government to wage war and bring about “regime change” in Iraq… The INC claimed credit for placing 108 articles in the news media, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Times (of London), during a nine-month period before the war.”
It wasn’t terror, Osama, or even oil that the Iraq war was fought for. It was a guy named Ahmed Chalabi who was the only victor of the Iraq war.
American-emigre groups use their strategically settled populations in key battleground states, deep pockets, and unbridled political ambition to gain control over their home “old” countries. Even more insidious is the influence they exert over the United States to destroy old enemies.
Do we want senior cabinet and policy positions filled by people that think starting WWIII is a good goal? Let’s take a look at the make-up and politics of some of these.
Starting at the top let’s look at the Ukrainian emigres which lead the CEEC and the Atlantic Council. One thing anyone represented by the UCCA (Ukrainian Congressional Committee of America) or the UWC (Ukrainian World Congress) has in common is Axis-political heritage and beliefs. The OUN is the political grouping of Ukrainian nationalists and it would vote for Adolf Hitler if he was running in a heartbeat.
Unless real Nazi political views (not neo-nazi) found a way to survive all these years with this group of people, the statement is just insulting. Anyone reading should be insulted because that level of offensiveness in a politically charged environment is wrong.
Nazism or Axis-Nazism are political beliefs and principles that structure your government the same as Republican or Democratic control would. The only difference is the “ism.” The “ism” means everything you do in your life revolves around your politic so it’s not just political or social guides or guidelines. It’s your lifestyle and everything wraps around it. Anything or anyone that goes against it is an enemy of the state, and it is personal.
From their own words in the Ukrainian Weekly, real, active political Nazi’s are alive, kickin’ and ready for a Clinton win! It is the sheer number of groups self-identifying as practicing real Nazi beliefs in the US gaining policy and cabinet positions under a Clinton win that is incredible.
The Ukrainian World Congress with its affiliates in over 40 countries and others work tirelessly in trying to keep Ukraine and the Ukrainian spirit front and center.
“We have had a minister of finance, Natalka Jaresko, in the Cabinet. We now have Ulana Suprun as acting minister of health. We have many from the diaspora assisting with strategizing, reforming and supporting the overall cause. We have a highly successful program in Patriot Defence. We are out to change the way business is done.
Unity to act when required has been the diaspora’s mantra – this cannot be disputed.
As time moves on, we see that things take a natural course. We see that two wings of the OUN – (OUNb)Banderivtsi and (OUNm)Melnykivtsi – are working actively on the international level, working in partnership and currently are in strong negotiations about becoming a single entity again.”
With all you’ve heard about Stepan Bandera’s OUN since the Maidan coup in Ukraine, I’ll bet you didn’t know they call New York, Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia home.
The UCCA and the UWC still celebrate their Nazi SS because they are still Axis-nazis. The OUN were the vile Holocaust murderers during and after WWII and their politics live on in their children today. This is no different from the children of other Waffen-SS leaders or if Hitler had surviving children that stood up and ran other countries based in Hitler’s policy. These American kids are sent to Ukraine to learn how to copy and act like Stepan Bandera before they come back to America and get involved in policy making.
“ OUNb leader Ivan Kobasa also took responsibility of making sure the Ukrainian-Americans received the proper secondary education at Ukrainian nationalist schools(MAUP) in Ukraine. From the mid-2000’s enrollment in this educational system has skyrocketed. Today almost all members of the current Ukrainian government are graduates of this ideological system that was taught to them by moderates like David Duke who is also a graduate of the MAUP system.”
While American media criticizes David Duke’s support for Donald Trump, they say nothing about Hillary’s strongest supporters hiring David Duke as a professor to teach their children college level history. Is Hillary Clinton too far right for David Duke? After all, he has no plans to conquer Russia.
When you look at her campaign coffers and the most active political activists supporting Hillary Clinton, many are groups whose politics are not republican or democrat, but old-world nationalist. They are spread across America and still idolize their Waffen SS heroes, literally. They have statues and holidays and children’s groups across America in cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago celebrating some of the vilest mass murderers in history. And they teach their children to idolize them and grow up using them as role models. They also bring up their children in the same political mold of ultra-nationalism.
Now they want an America that will do the same. Over the last 30 years, the old world nationalists have moved into media and policy positions to make this happen. If that wasn’t enough they control a 20 million person bloc vote in key states and swing states in important cities across America.
I am not using the word nazi as an insult, this isn’t neo-nazi or even a nazi revival. These groups have been the most extreme political activists in the USA over the last 50 years and are a continuation of what their parents were in the 1930’s. In their own words, they never assimilated into American culture. They assimilated the culture to them. In the words of the CIA, they are political animals. Today, their wagons are circled around a Hillary Clinton presidency.
The OUN were the guards at the Holocaust prison camps, Waffen SS, and volunteer brigades that were famous for torture and murder. In Ukraine, they killed over 3 million people and conducted the first act of Holocaust at Babi Yar.
The funny part if there was one is that with every fiber of your being, you want to argue against these facts. The OUN on the other hand featured at least one of my articles on their rise in American politics even though I called them devils. The fact they find me credible shouldn’t get lost on you.
When these good friends of Hillary Clinton from the CEEC start getting tapped for advisory posts, and cabinet positions through the Atlantic Council or Project for a new American Century, will they automatically become Democrats or Republicans?
Does America want a war with Russia so the losers of WWII can settle old scores?
For the first time, under a Clinton presidency, America will have unbridled Axis-nazis/old world nationalists/ nazis in most of the cabinet and policy positions. They are getting the positions because they are delivering donations, bloc votes, political propaganda, and hard activism in battleground states.
The results for the Clinton campaign in emigre dominated states is the same as it was when they first got together. Clinton is up by 11 points in important emigre bloc voting districts.
…In last month’s heavily publicized Pennsylvania Senate race. Ukrainian and Baltic groups, protesting the administration’s attempts to prevent the break-up of the USSR, supported the Democratic candidate, Harris Wofford. This position contributed to the defeat of Dick Thornburgh, a former attorney general in the Bush administration….”The Ukrainian Weekly, December 8, 1991, No. 49, Vol. LIX
In a Ukraine Weekly interview with candidate Bill Clinton-“For the last 40 years, many Ukrainians have been supporters of the Republican Party. However, Mr. Bush severely damaged his relations with Ukrainians with his “Chicken Kiev” speech, and by his unwillingness to see Ukraine’s point of view in disputes with Russia. How will your party seek to secure the goodwill of voters concerned by this issue?” …
Clinton’s answer…“The Bush administration has had a spotty record abroad…including the president’s insulting warning against “suicidal nationalism” made before proindependence forces in Kiev in the summer of 1991 — and a failed economic record at home. We hope Ukrainian Americans will join our effort to put people first.” – Interview with Candidate Bill Clinton-Ukrainian Weekly Issue 43, 1992
In what has become the ultimate pay to play scheme, the Clinton’s gave over Ukraine to OUNb nationalists to run as they saw fit. This was payment for political support and bloc votes that won the 1992 elections for Bill Clinton. American citizens were given a country to run and represent in any manner they chose to do it.
According to Ukrainian nationalist scholar Taras Kuzio , the Axis- nazi political beliefs started to be taught to children in Ukraine after the OUNb took the reins. This was the preparation for what would become a nationalist coup in 2014 Ukraine.
This pattern follows the Clinton-NATO expansion and every CEE (Central and Eastern European) country freed by the Clintons followed suit. In Croatia, Croatian-Americans have more parliamentary seats and representation than any group from Croatia.
Other than American-emigre groups gaining rule and representing the “home country” in the US, there is only one other universal factor each of them revived. Axis- nazi politics and political views became normal in their home countries. In Croatia, they even revived the Waffen SS Battalions.
The people at the CEEC are behind the Atlantic Council and PNAC will be making the domestic and foreign policy decisions in a Clinton administration. While I would not call Hillary Clinton a Nazi, the people she surrounds herself with actively are. There is very little doubt that Victoria Nuland, a Ukrainian-American brought up in these beliefs will be Secretary of State under a Clinton Administration.
To get an understanding of what that means, the same people that are deciding Ukrainian domestic and foreign policy will be sending their people to those cabinet positions.
The one thing for sure is even publications that support her candidacy wonder about Hillary Clinton’s lack of judgment and surrounding herself with nationalist war-hawks that want war with Russia.
According to the WEEK “At first, Obama went over the top of public opinion to avenge American honor against ISIS. Slowly, America’s mission has crept to include some form of regime change with the ouster of Assad. Now Clinton is selling the American people on greater military interventions so that the U.S. can challenge Putin. Clinton seems unable to distinguish between what is of vital interest to the Russians and peripheral interest to America. She combines this with her bias toward always taking action — of any sort, for good or ill. The combination is dangerous.”
The article ends in the hope that Clinton is once again lying. Both current president Obama and Hillary Clinton are trying to sell America on the idea that there are moderates fighting a civil war in Syria. We are arming and training them. Are there moderates in Syria worth supporting? Do we have any business there to begin with? The article goes as far as stating the US is determined to overthrow every country that is friendly to Russia.
Right now Clinton wants to establish a no-fly-zone to protect her moderates. Who are they? US Special Forces on the ground are adamant that Clinton wants to give US military support to ISIS even if it means starting an open war with Russia.
“ Nobody believes in it. You’re like, ‘Fuck this,’” a former Green Beret says of America’s covert and clandestine programs to train and arm Syrian militias. “Everyone on the ground knows they are jihadis. No one on the ground believes in this mission or this effort, and they know they are just training the next generation of jihadis, so they are sabotaging it by saying, ‘Fuck it, who cares?’” “I don’t want to be responsible for Nusra guys saying they were trained by Americans,” the Green Beret added.
Since 2014, Ukraine has fully supported al Nusra and at the beginning of the civil war pulled 200 ISIS fighters to the Ukrainian front lines. These fighters are jihadis from Crimea. They have also set up an ISIS training camp near Mariupol. Like all other volunteers, they don’t receive government support and rob to make a living.
Before this, the Kosovo example looms large. Does inviting indicted mass murderers and people preparing for illegal organ trade (crimes against humanity) trials to your national party convention as special guests qualify as good judgment? Does it showcase Hillary Clinton’s good instincts to be president?
Welcome to the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Hillary Clinton’s special guest from Kosovo took time-out from preparing for his crimes against humanity case to give support and wish her well.
“Invited as a guest to the 2016 Democratic National Convention is none other than Kadri Veseli, the Speaker of the Kosovo Assembly. Veseli is a former Kosovar Albanian leader of the KLA and its spy organization SHIK. He’s being indicted along with the current president of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci for small things like organ trafficking and crimes against humanity .’
The main witness against Clinton friends, Veseli and Thaci, is a man that was ordered to cut the heart out of another man that was begging for mercy. In a 1998 interview with the BBC , US special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard had this to say about Veseli and Thaci; “I know a terrorist when I see one and these men are terrorists.”
Clinton’s relationship with the Albanian and Kosovo killers stretches back to the first Clinton election in 1992. During the campaign season the Clinton duo found out quickly how powerful the emigre national vote was in America. In one fell swoop, the Albanians and the KLA after them went from what the USA definitely recognized as Islamic terrorists to victims we were going to war for.
The Clinton humanitarian bombing in the Balkans drove victims into the waiting clutches of the KLA, and the spread of Islamic terrorism worldwide.
In what became her first executive decision, first lady, Hillary Clinton brow-beat the unwilling president Clinton into bombing the Balkans and creating a humanitarian catastrophe. Today, as a result of this, ISIS is setting up training camps in what is widely referred to as Clinton country.
“On the territory of Kosovo and Metohija, the local police detained three militants of so-called “Islamic State” (a terrorist organization banned in Russia), is going to organize a series of terrorist attacks in Serbia.” Terrorists LIH (IGIL/ISIS) break through the Balkans to Western Europe March 2016
Clinton’s jihadi bloc vote in America remains central to her winning this election along with the rest of the CEEC. Does America want people advising the president that openly support genocide like the Kosovars, Albanians, or Ukrainians?
Hillary Clinton is not an Islamist. Hillary Clinton is not a Nazi. But the question remains. Why is she surrounded by and listening to people that are? Is that her best judgment? | 0 |
in: Natural Medicine , Sleuth Journal , Special Interests
Color is everywhere and has many functions. In nature, animals and plants use color for camouflage and to facilitate mating. Humans decorate and dress with color for expression. Color preference has a psychological affect on mood and affects people on a subconscious level. Color and Wellness Encouraging mental wellness through the use of color is a very old practice that exists in many cultures. Practitioners of Feng Shui, acupuncture and other adjustments for better living introduce various colors in the form of gemstones , colored fabric, candles, and prisms. If you’ve ever chosen clothing of a specific color based on your mood (perhaps you chose black clothing when you felt down, or bright yellow when you were feeling energetic) then you’ve practiced colorology, also known as chromotherapy. Chromotherapy is actually an alternative medicine that uses color and light to balance a person’s energy where it is lacking — mental, emotional, physical or spiritual. Color for Stress Management Different colors produce different psychological, emotional, and physical effects. Some colors are calming and can help you relax and release your worries; some colors are stimulating. Surrounding yourself with the right colors can be an excellent stress management tool . If you are suffering from stress , consider changing the colors in your environment. The Effects of Different Colors The color chart below outlines the different effects of different colors. Wearing the colors or decorating with them is a great way to harness their specific benefits. Red Red is not the color to use for stress management. It is an exciting and stimulating color, usually associated with passion and vigor. Use this color when you need to lift yourself out of an emotional slump. Pink Pink is soft and tranquil. Its peacefulness promotes a better balance of energy. Orange Like red, orange is not calming but, rather, stimulating and intense. It can help invigorate you when you are feeling down. Yellow Yellow is sunny and cheerful but softer than red or orange. It’s a great color to lift your spirits and combat stress. Green Green is restful and quiet. It’s a soothing color that invites harmonious feelings that diffuse anxiety. Blue Blue is tranquil and peaceful. It has a tremendous stress management quality that encourages calmness. Personally, I’ve found that dark blue has the most calming effect. If you’re stressed, or anticipating stress, try wearing dark blue. Violet Violet represents strength, peace and wisdom. It can encourage feelings of inner peace when worn. Decorating with violet can give your space a peaceful feeling that relieves stress. White White is symbolic of clarity and freshness. However, it needs to be a clean, bright white. Dingy or dull white can cause your emotions to be dull. Black Black exudes power and elegance that is strong but can be overpowering at times. Conversely, it can also represent submission. It’s a color that can impact your world either way; be mindful when decorating with or wearing black. How do you use color to influence your mood? Do you find color therapy beneficial for stress management? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts with us. Submit your review | 0 |
WikiLeaks Destroys Hillary Mouthpiece Donna Brazile… Iron-Clad Proof
“This shows you that the angst even her campaign chairman wasn’t told until very late that she had a private email server in her Chappaqua, New York, home when she was secretary of state. It shows you the secrecy — some would say paranoia — of Hillary Clinton and her inner circle,” he continued.
“If we can keep this from people until the last possible second and only release if we’re forced to release it. What does that tell us about a Clinton presidency ?” he asked.
King even asking that question is a massive leap forward for the network. Advertisement - story continues below
You can watch the segment here:
Despite King’s statements, CNN political reporter Nia-Malika Henderson didn’t think it will have any impact.
“I mean, that’s the big issue should she get elected to the Oval Office,” she said. “It’s terrible that her inner circle was talking about this in this way. More terrible I think if it had come earlier.” Advertisement - story continues below | 0 |
Even Republican politicians and former politicians are telling Trump to knock off such talk .But, as usual, Trump's shrewdness and defiance of standard political decorum – in which the "opposition" party merely rolls over and surrenders in the face of Democratic pressure – is winning the day.None other than billionaire investor and longtime Democratic supporter George Soros has said that the fix is literally in for the election, in favor of Clinton – no matter how much of the popular vote, and from which battleground states, Trump captures.As reported by Top Right News and other outlets, during a recent interview with Bloomberg News , Soros – a Democrat mega-donor – openly admitted that Trump will win the popular vote in a "landslide."However, he said that none of that would matter, because a President Hillary Clinton is already a "done deal."In the interview, which is now going viral, Soros says with certainty that Trump will take the popular vote, despite what the polls say now (which are completely rigged to oversample Democrats ), but not the Electoral College, which will go to Clinton.When the reporter asks if that is already a "done deal" – that Clinton will be our next president no matter what – Soros says "yes," and nods his head.Is Soros just making a prediction out of overconfidence? Or does he truly know something most of us don't know?In a recent column , Natural News founder and editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, says that Soros and Democrats have "bribed electoral college representatives" in a bid to "fix" the election outcome in favor of Clinton. In truth, that would be the only way it could be done, short of massive voter fraud through electronic balloting, as some reports have already claimed .Adams further pointed out that Soros was one of the main money men behind the Black Lives Matter movement, which is being blamed for generating hatred and mistrust of police officers all around the country – some of which has led to the deaths of several officers already.Soros also funds left-wing websites and groups that locate, pay and deploy volunteer "agitators" at Trump rallies, to start fights and engage in physical violence against Trump supporters (acts that the establishment media then blames on Trump ).But aren't electors legally obligated to cast a ballot for the presidential candidate who won the majority vote in that elector's district? No, they're not. Nine-nine percent of electors have done what they're supposed to do throughout our history, but this is no ordinary election Per Archives.gov , there is no constitutional provision or federal law requiring electors to vote according to the results of the popular vote. Rather, these pledges fall into two categories: State law and those who are bound by promises made to respective political parties.In the past, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution doesn't require electors to be completely free to cast ballots as they please and, therefore, respective political parties may "extract pledges from electors to vote for the parties' nominees," Archives.gov notes. Some state laws hold that "faithless electors" could be subjected to fines or disqualification for casting an invalid ballot, and could then be replaced by a substitute elector."The Supreme Court has not specifically ruled on the question of whether pledges and penalties for failure to vote as pledged may be enforced under the Constitution. No Elector has ever been prosecuted for failing to vote as pledged," said Archives.gov.The site notes that throughout our history, 99 percent of electors have voted as required. But this is no ordinary time, and it's no ordinary election . And Democrats (and the establishment media) have already proven that they will do anything to stop a Trump presidency. Plus, establishment Republicans don't want Trump either, so you can bet they wouldn't balk at or challenge the buying off of electors. Sources: | 0 |
CIUDAD DEL CARMEN, Mexico — The town that oil built is emptying out. “For Sale” signs are plastered on houses and bungalows alike. The idled oil workers who used to cluster in the main square, hoping to pick up odd jobs, have moved on. Here in Ciudad del Carmen, on the gulf coast of Mexico, even the ironclad union positions are slipping away. Some roughnecks on the offshore rigs of the national oil company, Pemex, have not worked in months, and their voices are filled with anxiety. “What do you think is going to happen?” some ask. Pemex has been limping along for years, bleeding billions of dollars annually, saddled with debt and struggling to maintain production as its giant oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico run dry. Next year, it will pump less than two million barrels a day, the lowest output since 1980. Fixing the oil company was already at the top of Mexico’s list of priorities, the focus of a long debate over the fate of one of its most important — and troubled — national institutions. Now, that mammoth undertaking has become all the more critical with the United States’ election of Donald J. Trump. As Mexicans steel themselves for an American president who made upending his nation’s relationship with Mexico a cornerstone of his campaign, officials on this side of the border have hastened to reassure the country that Mexico’s economy is sound. If Mr. Trump goes through with his promises to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, deport migrants and tax remittances to pay for his border wall, Mexico will face severe economic shocks, particularly to the vibrant manufacturing base, whose products replaced oil as the country’s main export years ago. The Mexican peso remains at record lows. The central bank raised interest rates this month, citing “heightened uncertainty. ” And last week, it cut growth forecasts for this year and next. The bank’s governor, Agustín Carstens, told a local radio station that understanding the Trump administration’s policies was “like trying to put a jigsaw puzzle together without having all the pieces. ” Many are pessimistic that the government can come up with a backup plan. “Mexico lacks a credible Plan B to offset the wave,” analysts at Morgan Stanley warned in a recent note to investors. The damage that Mr. Trump could inflict on the busy factories that ship cars and computers to the United States has given a sharp urgency to Mexico’s efforts to parts of the economy that do not rely on Nafta — particularly its dilapidated oil industry. To that end, when José Antonio Meade, the finance minister, lists the Mexican economy’s strengths, he singles out the importance of the new energy laws that broke the monopoly held by Pemex. The laws, part of a package of economic overhauls that President Enrique Peña Nieto pushed through Congress three years ago, allow for private investment in Mexico’s oil sector for the first time since foreign companies were expelled in 1938. Only days before the American presidential election, Pemex’s chief executive, José Antonio González Anaya, presented a timetable of projects he expected to offer to potential partners and promised to begin returning the national oil company to solvency. He and the finance minister met with investors in New York this month to argue that Mexico’s economy was solid and that “the oil sector will continue to be an engine of national economic growth,” according to a joint statement from Pemex and the Finance Ministry. The pair followed up with a visit to London. Mr. Peña Nieto has pushed through other overhauls, including changes in education, telecommunications, taxes, electricity and finance, but they have yet to generate significant economic growth. Most economists project that the economy will expand by just over 2 percent this year. The most radical of all these overhauls, though, was ending the monopoly of Pemex, the country’s largest company, and allowing it to seek capital and technology from private companies. The measure struck at Mexico’s most enduring symbol of national sovereignty, rejecting the conviction that it could develop its most valuable natural resource on its own. “The only way to bring back production in the next five, six years is to bring more investment to Pemex,” said Juan Carlos Zepeda, the president of the National Hydrocarbons Commission, Mexico’s oil regulator. “There is no other way. ” But after the new energy laws were approved, the company stalled, the promised joint ventures did not happen, and oil prices plunged. Pemex reeled as its debt soared and production dropped. Falling oil revenue means oil funds less than 20 percent of the government budget, down from as much as 40 percent when prices were at their peak. “The government was never prepared for sustained low oil prices,” said John Padilla, a managing director of IPD Latin America, an energy consulting firm. “They never saw a Pemex implosion in the way it occurred. ” The president chose Mr. González Anaya, a economist known for efficiency, to take over at Pemex in February. He quickly announced the first joint venture proposal: a deepwater oil field just south of United States waters. Experts believe that Mexico’s untapped deepwater oil fields are its next great prize. But they are risky and expensive, a concern at a time when low oil prices have forced international oil companies to scrap many planned investments. Still, major companies like BP, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Shell have qualified to bid in a deepwater auction in December. In an interview in his office at the top of the Pemex tower in Mexico City, Mr. González Anaya warned not to expect too much. “Some people have said to me, ‘Look, Pemex won’t go back to producing three million barrels.’ Well, no,” he said. “That’s a shame — but no. What I can say and demonstrate is the company’s solidity. ” Not everyone is sure that companies will jump at the chance to team up with Pemex. “Two years ago, everybody wanted to partner with Pemex,” Mr. Padilla said. “They were being courted like the homecoming queen. two years later, and how can you go to your board and say, ‘Pemex is good for the money’?” Another question is whether the government can speed up the transformation as a defense against Mr. Trump’s promised policies. Even if the government attracts private investment, the effect on production could take years to materialize. “They’re not going to turn the economy around on energy reform,” said Jeremy M. Martin, an energy expert at the Institute of the Americas in San Diego. In the meantime, Mexico must fix the company’s many problems. Pemex’s rusty refineries operate at about 60 percent capacity, forcing the country to import more than half of its gasoline. The company loses billions of dollars every quarter, and it owes almost $100 billion in debt and an additional $68 billion in pension liabilities. Budget cuts have halted exploration for next year. An explosion on a fuel tanker in September was the latest in a series of fiery and often fatal accidents. Gangs routinely tap Pemex’s pipelines to steal gasoline, tipped off from inside the company. The government continues to tax Pemex heavily, and the oil workers’ union — an ally of Mr. Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party — remains powerful. Mr. González Anaya’s first action after arriving at Pemex was to slash the budget by 22 percent, halting expensive projects and cutting waste. “We haven’t finished,” he said. Referring to his effort to rein in overspending, he added, “We continue, continue, continue. ” For decades, Pemex made many people very rich. The company granted inflated contracts to local business executives who cultivated political connections, according to interviews with contractors in Ciudad del Carmen. Mayors in oil states demanded Pemex cash for public works. “The budget has been converted into plunder,” said Mariano Ruiz Funes, a former Pemex chief of staff. Analysts argue that Pemex may have to sell off parts of the company. “We will see a much smaller Pemex in the years to come,” Mr. Ruiz Funes said, predicting a “long and painful” adjustment. “Politically it will be difficult. ” Mr. González Anaya is not prepared to make that decision. Pemex “is not just any company,” he said. “You can’t ask a national oil company to be Exxon. ” But in Ciudad del Carmen, the riches of that national oil company are long gone. The city has lost about 23, 000 jobs since the end of 2014. “What we’re living through in Carmen, we have never lived through something like this in contemporary Mexico,” said José Domingo Berzunza, the economic development secretary for Campeche, the surrounding state. | 1 |
Most Bavarians have negative attitude toward Muslims in Germany – poll 18:42 Get short URL © Michaela Rehle / Reuters More than four in five people in the German state of Bavaria have a negative attitude toward Muslims, a new study has found, also reporting that refugees, the long-term unemployed and Roma community are generally perceived negatively.
More than half of the population of Bavaria demonstrated either “moderate” or “strong” antipathy towards Muslims living in Germany, a study conducted by the Social Studies Institute of the Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich said . It also reported that another 34 percent of Bavarians said they had “slight” dislike for followers of Islam. Read more Merkel suggests Christmas carols, flute-playing in face of ‘Islam concerns’
Only 11 percent of respondents said they had no bad feelings about Muslims living in Germany, the research published on Monday added.
The study was based on a comprehensive survey that examined people’s attitudes towards eight different “distinct” groups of society – Muslims, refugees, Jews, Roma, foreigners in general, as well as people of a different race, homosexuals and the long-term unemployed.
It featured from three to 10 questions that varied depending on each group in focus and that were presented in the form of statements that the respondents had to agree or disagree with.
The study particularly featured such statements as: “There are too many Muslims in Germany,”“Foreigners/refugees endanger my financial situation/personal way of living,” and “Many long-time unemployed people systematically shy away from work.”
The research was conducted between April and June 2016 and relied on surveying people from more than 1,700 households across Bavaria.
Of all the groups in question, Muslims were the only one that stirred up “strong” negative feelings among more than 20 percent of the Bavarian population, while in all other cases it never exceeded 10 percent, and was between 3 and 6 percent on average.
However, Muslims were not the only group that was perceived mostly negatively by Bavarians. The second most negatively perceived group was actually the long-time unemployed, as more than 80 percent of Bavarians had at least “slightly” negative attitude towards them, although only 4 percent had a “strong” animosity towards this section of society. Read more Syrian refugee in Germany with 4 wives, 22 kids sparks social media fuss over welfare
Refugees and the Roma (gypsy) community were also among the groups that were viewed least favourably, as only 27 percent of Bavarians had no negative feelings towards each of these groups. Ten percent of Bavarians said they had a “strong” negative attitude towards Roma – the second highest figure among all the groups in focus.
In the case of refugees, about a third of Bavarians held either “moderate” or “strong” antipathy towards them.
At the same time, the study showed that people of Bavaria have no negative attitude towards foreigners living in Germany in general as 56 percent of respondents said they had no bad feelings towards foreigners and only 10 percent of those questioned demonstrated “moderate” or “high” level of animosity towards them.
Bavarians were also almost equally tolerant towards gay people as 54 percent of respondents showed no antipathy towards them. They were also even less prone to what the study called “classic racism” that consists in viewing white people more positively than the people of other races. About three quarters of respondents showed no signs of racism at all, while only about 10 percent of them had “moderate” or “strong” racist views.
The study also showed that men are more prone to various forms of negative attitude towards the distinct groups in focus than women as well as that people having higher level of education tend to be more tolerant and less prejudged towards all these groups. Read more Merkel ally promotes ‘German Islam’ as means to integrate refugees into liberal EU society
The research also stressed people that have a strong national identity or have low level of trust to the political institutions are also inclined to have a negative attitude towards the distinct groups mentioned in the study.
However, the results of the study provoked significant concerns among social scientists, activists and even some churchmen. “In general, there is already a clear negative attitude [towards various distinct groups],” Christian Ganser, a social scientist from the LMU, told German media, adding that “group-focused hostility is a widespread phenomenon in Bavaria.”
The present social developments that concern negative attitudes towards various groups of society do not fit into the classic conception of right wing extremism, Miriam Heigl, an expert from the Center for Democracy of Munich, told dpa news agency.
Animosity towards distinct groups is no more a phenomenon linked only to some fringe extremist groups, Ganser, who is a co-author of the study, stressed, adding that it is now “a phenomenon [related to] the average people.”
“To harbor a pejorative attitude towards others out of fear to lose own identity is no Christian way,” Martin Schneider, a member of the Catholic township council of Munich, told German KNA news agency, commenting on the results of the study. He added that “those, who ostracize outsiders, go against Jesus” Christ.
At the same time, the issue is not limited to Bavaria, as sentiments similar to those presented in the study are common across the whole of Germany, Ralf Melzer, who works for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, told dpa. Read more Massive PEGIDA rally in Dresden marks 2 years of anti-immigrant movement (VIDEO)
On October 22, two days before the study was published, German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested that any Germans concerned about Islam should combat the perceived Islamization of Germany with flute-playing and Christmas carols.
“I know there are concerns about Islam,” she said at a congress of her party, the Christian Democratic Union, in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, while calling on people to rely on their Christian values and traditions to tackle this challenge.
On October 3, the German finance minister and close Merkel ally, Wolfgang Schaeuble, called for the creation of “German Islam” that would combine traditional Islamic norms with the principles of tolerance and European liberalism to help integrate millions of refugees from the Middle East into European and particularly German society.
Meanwhile, the anti-Muslim and anti-migrant sentiments in Germany are on the rise as the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party gains strong support at the expense of Merkel’s Christian Democrats.
German ‘anti-Islamization’ movement Pegida (which stands for ‘Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West’) staged a massive rally in Dresden on October 16 to mark the group’s second anniversary. The event drew thousands of supporters who demonstrated against the chancellor’s refugee policy. | 0 |
Every few years, the botanical garden down on the National Mall proudly boasts its prized “corpse flower. ” In years when our federal swamp gets hot and icky enough, the plant turns a throbbing purple and blooms. [Like the swollen tongue of a bloated battlefield corpse — pressing at the cuffs, seams and Sam Brownes — the engorged spadix of the titan arum grows until bursting into a stench that is described as a cross between rotting meat and garbage. The odor is so repellent that it tricks flies into thinking the plant is a decaying corpse, thus its name. This being Washington and the seat of your federal government, such a carnival of putrefaction inexplicably attracts people from all around by the thousands to take part in the jolly rotten occasion. So it is with that other periodic event just up the hill. Every few years, Congress convenes to confirm a nominee to the Supreme Court and, watch out, here come the flies. This year’s picnic feast will be Neil Gorsuch, a highly respected appeals court judge nominated by President Trump to replace the late legal titan Justice Antonin Scalia. For decades, these confirmations were fairly basic, straightforward affairs. Is the nominee qualified? Criminal background check to make sure he could not be bribed on the bench. Does he understand the Constitution? Will she faithfully and honestly adhere to the Constitution and always apply it with justice and equality? Well, that all changed back in the 1960s when the absurdly named “liberals” and “progressives” finally realized that the electorate would never buy their crazy authoritarian bunkum. So they decided that the electorate needed to be cut out of the deal. That was when they started stacking the courts with people who flat out reject the notion that the Constitution actually means anything. These neanderthals certainly have no intentions whatsoever of upholding the Constitution or applying it fairly. This is how you wind up with four justices on the high court who embrace the notion that the Constitution means whatever they say it means, including Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who announced her own constitutional credentials as a “wise Latina. ” Seriously. And it is how you wind up with a crazy lunatic on the Left Coast’s “9th Circus” who somehow decides that the rights enshrined in the U. S. Constitution extend to foreigners in foreign lands. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if these sleazeballs cared this much about the rights of actual American citizens? Already, Democrats in the Senate have declared that they have no interest in taking Judge Gorsuch or his confirmation hearings seriously. “The high burden of proof that Judge Gorsuch has to meet is largely a result of the president who nominated him,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat who was elected to the Senate from the ridiculous state of Connecticut despite repeatedly lying about fighting in the Vietnam War. In other words, according to Mr. Blumenthal, it’s all about politics. Nothing to do with the Constitution. He doesn’t like the president, so he will never vote for Judge Gorsuch’s confirmation. Break out the smelling salts. It’s gonna be a long, putrid week along the Potomac River. • Charles Hurt can be reached at churt@washingtontimes. com follow him on Twitter via @charleshurt. | 1 |
Tweet Widget by Rick Sterling
Warmongers in the U.S. Congress -- Democrats and Republicans – are in a mad dash towards war with Russia in Syria. A “No Fly Zone” resolution passed the House with little debate, cloaked in “humanitarian” language that blames the besieged Syrian government for the totality of the deaths in the U.S.-backed proxy war. The bipartisan regime changers are desperate to complete their mission before the regime change that will occur in Washington, on January 20. Congressional Hawks Rush to Intensify War in Syria by Rick Sterling
This article previously appeared in Dissident Voice .
“ They are desperate to prevent the Syrian government from finally eliminating the terrorist groups which the West and allies have promoted for the past 5+ years.”
Hawks pass HR5732
Late in the day Tuesday November 15, Congress convened in special session. With normal rules suspended, they passed House Resolution 5732 the “Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act.” The resolution calls for intensifying already harsh sanctions on Syria, assessing implementation of No Fly Zone in Syria and escalating efforts to press criminal charges against Syrian officials.
HR5732 claims to promote a negotiated settlement in Syria but, as analyzed by Friends Committee for National Legislation, imposes preconditions which would actually make that more difficult.
There was 40 minutes of “debate” with six representatives (Royce, Engel, Ros-Lehtinen, Kildee, Smith, and Curbelo) speaking in favor of the resolution. There were few other Congressional representatives present in Congress. The House Foreign Affairs Committee stated that the resolution was passed “unanimously” without mentioning the special conditions.
The “Non Controversial” Resolution that could lead to World War III
According to wikipedia “ Suspension of the rules is a procedure generally used to quickly pass non-controversial bills in the United States House of Representatives ….such as naming Post Offices…” In this case, the resolution calls for evaluating and developing plans for a “No Fly Zone” which is an act of war. This is obviously controversial and it seems clear the resolution should have been debated and discussed under normal rules with a normal amount of Congressional presence and debate.
The motivation for bypassing normal rules and rushing the bill through without debate was articulated by the bill’s author and ranking Democrat Eliot Engel: “We cannot delay action on Syria any further…. if we don’t get this legislation across the finish line in the next few weeks, we are back to square one.” The current urgency may be related to the election results since Trump has spoken out against “regime change” foreign policy. As much as they are critical of Obama for not doing more, Congressional neoconservatives are concerned about the prospect of a President who might move toward peace and away from war.
The Caesar Fraud
HR5732 is titled the “Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act”. Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Ed Royce (R-Ca) explained that the resolution is named after “the brave Syrian defector known to the world as Caesar, who testified to us the shocking scale of torture being carried out within the prisons of Syria.”
In reality, the Caesar story was a grand deception involving the CIA with funding from Qatar to sabotage the 2014 Geneva negotiations. The 55,000 photos which were said to show 11,000 torture victims have never been publicly revealed. Only a tiny number of photos have been publicized. However, in 2015 Human Rights Watch was granted access to view the entire set. They revealed that almost one half the photos show the opposite of what was claimed: instead of victims tortured by the Syrian government, they actually show dead Syrian soldiers and civilian victims of car bombs and other terror attacks! The “Caesar” story, replete with masked ‘defector’, was one of the early propaganda hoaxes regarding Syria.
False Claims that the US has been doing nothing
One of the big lies regarding Syria is that the US has been inactive. Royce says:
The administration has decided not to decide. And that itself, unfortunately, has set a course where here we sit and watch and the violence only worsens. Mr. Speaker, America has been sitting back and watching these atrocities for far too long. Vital U.S. national security interests are at stake.
The ranking Democrat Eliot Engel said:
Four years ago I thought we should have aided the Free Syrian Army. They came to us in Washington and begged us for help… they were simply looking for weaponry. I really believe if we had given it to them, the situation in Syria would have been different today.
This is nonsense. The US was actively coordinating, training and supplying armed opposition groups beginning in late 2011. When the Qadaffi government was toppled in Fall 2011, the CIA oversaw the theft of the Libyan armories and shipment of weapons to Syrian armed opposition as documented in the Defense Intelligence Agency report of October 2012.
These weapons transfers were secret. For the public record it was acknowledged that the US was supplying communications equipment to the armed opposition while Saudi Arabia and Qatar were supplying weaponry. This is one reason that Saudi purchases of weapons skyrocketed during this time period; they were buying weapons to replace those being shipped to the armed opposition in Syria. It was very profitable for US arms manufacturers.
Huge weapons transfers to the armed opposition in Syria have continued to the present. This past Spring, Janes Defense reported the details of a U.S. delivery of 2.2 million pounds of ammunition, rocket launchers and other weaponry to the armed opposition.
“The US has done everything short of a direct attack on Syria.”
Claims that the US has been inactive are baseless. In reality the US has done everything short of a direct attack on Syria. And the US military is starting to cross that barrier. On September 17 the US air coalition did a direct attack on the Syrian Army in Deir Ezzor, killing 80 Syrian soldiers and enabling ISIS to launch an attack on the position. Claims that it was a “mistake” are highly dubious.
The claims by Congressional hawks that the US has been “inactive” in the Syrian conflict are part of the false narrative suggesting the US must “do something” which leads to a No Fly Zone and full scale war. Ironically, these calls for war are masked as “humanitarian.” And never do the proponents bring up the case of Libya where the US and NATO “did something”: destroyed the government and left chaos.
Congress as a Fact-Free House of Propaganda
With only a handful of representatives present and no debate, the six Congress members engaged in unrestrained propaganda and misinformation. The leading Democrat, Eliot Engel, said “We’re going into the New Year 2017, Assad still clings to power, at the expense of killing millions of his citizens.” That number is way off anyone’s charts.
Rep Kildee said “The world has witnessed this terrible tragedy unfold before our eyes. Nearly half a million Syrians killed. Not soldiers – men, women, children killed.”
The official text of the resolution says,
It is the sense of Congress that–
(1) Bashar al-Assad’s murderous actions against the people of Syria have caused the deaths of more than 400,000 civilians…
The above accusations – from “millions of citizens” to “half a million” to “400,000 civilians” – are all preposterous lies.
Credible estimates of casualties in the Syrian conflict range from 300,000 to 420,000. The opposition supporting Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates the documented 2011-2016 death toll as follows:
killed pro Syrian forces – 108,000
killed anti government forces – 105,000
killed civilians – 89,000
In contrast with Congressional and media claims, civilians comprise a minority of the total death count and the largest casualty group is those fighting in defense of the the Syrian state. These facts are ignored and never mentioned because they point to the reality versus the propaganda narrative which allows the USA and allies to continue funding terrorism and a war of aggression against Syria.
The Congressional speakers were in full self-righteous mode as they accused the Syrian government of “committing crimes against humanity and war crimes against civilians including murder, torture and rape. No one has been spared from this targeting, even children.” A naive listener would never know that the Syrian government is primarily fighting the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda including thousands of foreigners supplied and paid by foreign governments.
The Congressional speakers go on to accuse the Syrian military of “targeting” hospitals, schools and markets. A critical listener might ask why they would do that instead of targeting the Al Qaeda terrorists and their allies who launch dozens and sometimes hundreds of hell cannon missiles into government held Aleppo every day.
“The White Helmets actively promote US/NATO intervention through a No Fly Zone.”
The Congressional propaganda fest would not be complete without mention of the “ White Helmets “. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce said:
“We (previously) heard the testimony of Raed Saleh of the Syrian White Helmets. These are the doctors, nurses and volunteers who actually, when the bombs come, run towards the areas that have been hit in order to try to get the injured civilians medical treatment…They have lost over 600 doctors and nurses.”
This is more Congressional nonsense. There are no nurses or doctors associated with the White Helmets. The organization was created by the USA and UK and heavily promoted by a “ shady PR firm .” The White Helmets operate solely in areas controlled by Nusra and associated terrorist groups. They do some rescue work in the conflict zone but their main role is in the information war manipulating public opinion. The White Helmets actively promote US/NATO intervention through a No Fly Zone. Recently the White Helmets has become a major source of claims of innocent civilian victims in east Aleppo. Given the clear history of the White Helmets, these claims should be treated with skepticism. What exactly is the evidence? The same skepticism needs to be applied to video and other reports from the Aleppo Media Center. AMC is a creation of the Syrian Expatriates Organization whose address on K Street, Washington DC indicates it is a US marketing operation.
What is really going on?
The campaign to overthrow the Syrian government is failing and there is possibility of a victory for the Syrian government and allies. The previous flood of international jihadi recruits has dried up. The Syrian Army and allies are gaining ground militarily and negotiating settlements or re-locations with “rebels” who previously terrorized Homs, Darraya (outer Damascus) and elsewhere. In Aleppo the Syrian army and allies are tightening the noose around the armed opposition in east Aleppo.
This has caused alarm among neoconservative lawmakers devoted to Israel, Saudi Arabia and U.S. empire. They are desperate to prevent the Syrian government from finally eliminating the terrorist groups which the West and allies have promoted for the past 5+ years.
“Pro Israel” groups have been major campaigners for passage of HR5732. The name of Simon Wiesenthal is even invoked in the resolution. With crocodile tears fully flowing, Rabbi Lee Bycel wrote “ Where is the Conscience of the World? ” as he questioned why the “humanitarian” HR5732 was not passed earlier.
Israeli interests are one of the primary forces sustaining and promoting the conflict. Syria is officially at war with Israel which continues to occupy the Syrian Golan Heights; Syria has been a key ally of the Lebanese resistance; and Syria has maintained its alliance with Iran. In 2010 Secretary of State Clinton urged Syria to break relations with Hezbollah, reduce relations with Iran and come to settlement with Israel. The Syrian refusal to comply with these Washington demands was instrumental in solidifying Washington’s hostility .
Congressional proponents of HR5732 make clear the international dimension of the conflict. Royce explains “It is Russia, it is Hezbollah, that are the primary movers of death and destruction…it is the IRGC fighters from Iran”. Engel echoes the same message: “Yes, we want to go after Assad’s partners in violence…along with Iranian and Hezbollah forces”.
These statements are in contrast with the analysis of some writers who believe Israel is not deeply opposed to the Damascus government. For example, Phyllis Bennis recently wrote that belief in an “arc of resistance” has been “long debunked” and that “the Syrian regime …. often plays a useful role for US and Israeli interests.”
It’s remarkable that this faulty analysis continues to be propounded. In words and deeds Israel has made its position on Syria crystal clear. Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren explained in an interview:
“We always wanted [President] Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran … the greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc.”
These statements have been fully backed up by Israeli actions bombing Syrian positions in southern Syria and providing medical treatment for Nusra/Al Qaeda and other armed opposition fighters.
What Will Happen Now?
If the Syrian government and allies continue to advance in Aleppo, Deir Ezzor, outer Damascus and the south, the situation will come to a head. The enemies of Syria – predominately the USA, Gulf Countries, NATO and Israel – will come to a decision point. Do they intervene directly or do they allow their regime project to collapse?
HR5732 is an effort to prepare for direct intervention and aggression.
One thing is clear from the experience of Libya: Neoconservatives do not care if they leave a country in chaos. The main objective is to destabilize and overthrow a government which is too independent. If the USA and allies cannot dominate the country, then at least they can destroy the contrary authority and leave chaos.
What is at stake in Syria is whether the USA and allies Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc. are able to destroy the last secular and independent Arab country in the region and whether the US goal of being the sole superpower in the world prevails.
The rushed passing of HR5732 without debate is indicative that:
* “regime change” proponents have not given up their war on Syria
* they seek to escalate US aggression.
* the US Congress is a venue where blatant lies are said with impunity and where violent actions are advanced behind a cynical and amoral veneer of “humanitarianism” and crocodile tears. Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist and member of Syria Solidarity Movement. He can be reached at [email protected] | 0 |
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"На сегодняшний день потенциальные инвесторы подали 56 заявок на получение статуса резидентов территорий опережающего развития в Приморье. Сумма заявленных инвестиций - более 260 млрд рублей. Очень важно, что налажена работа с инвесторами, и эти заявки переходят в реализуемые инвестиционные проекты", приводит ТАСС слова Галушки.
По его словам, к настоящему времени "от общего объема заявленных инвестиций более 75%, более 202 млрд рублей, - это уже подписанные с инвесторами соглашения по реализации проектов в Приморье".
Как отметил Галушка, на совещании было заявлено еще о семи новых потенциальных резидентах с инвестициями на общую сумму 64 млрд рублей.
По каждой территории опережающего развития Приморского края будет сформирована своя проектная команда. В нее войдут представители Минвостокразвития, Корпорации развития Дальнего Востока, администрации региона, инфраструктурных компаний и других заинтересованных организаций и ведомств, сообщил Галушка.
Напомним, в настоящее время в Приморье работают три ТОР: "Надеждинская" со специализаций на логистике, агротерритория "Михайловский" и "Большой Камень", где строится крупнейшая в мире судоверфь.
Правда.ру писала, что власти Приморья выдали 53 "дальневосточных гектара" новым владельцам.
Как пишет Российская газета, документы еще по 88 участкам находятся на подписи у граждан, а более полутора тысяч заявок находятся на рассмотрении у муниципальных властей.
Отметим, что гектары в Приморье находятся на втором месте по популярности у дальневосточников. На первом месте - Якутия, на втором - Сахалин.
Ежедневно более 500 жителей ДФО подают заявки на "гектар". Чаще всего землю жители Дальнего Востока берут под жилищное строительство, сельское хозяйство, пасеки, складское хозяйство и производство.
Любой россиянин сможет получить по "дальневосточному гектару" в 2017 году, а с октября этого года землю будут предоставлять по всей территории региона, заявил министр РФ по развитию Дальнего Востока Александр Галушка.
Галушка в интервью газете "Известия" пояснил, что "с 1 октября 2016 года участки будут предоставляться уже на всей территории Дальнего Востока. А с 2017 года "дальневосточным гектаром" смогут обзавестись не только жители ДФО, а любой россиянин. При этом государство предъявляет одно требование - земля должна быть освоена по истечении пяти лет, иначе она будет возвращена государству. Тем же, кто освоил, ее бесплатно передадут в собственность".
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