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He lied PERIOD! | 0 |
November 1, 2016
The Chancellor, Philip Hammond, has announced a £2bn investment in fighting cybercrime to prevent internet hackers assaulting Britain’s digital infrastructure and make Britain one of the world’s safest places to do business online.
In a statement unveiling the measures, the Chancellor said: “open secure channel: var posX = 20; var posXm = 40; var posXc = 5 ; var data = [ “a” , “b” , “W” , “X”, “45Z”, “@”, “£#” ] ; fill(255, 0, 0); var comm = function (xo,co,yo) { text (data[xo],co,yo); } access secure systems }} var “trojan” ; access “UKgovernment net”>cmd {delete all data}; function{ransomware 1.0} PRINT “transmit £120bn to Moscow or you will never see your data again” {var 1.0}.”
“Beep beep boop.” | 0 |
Sure, there are plenty of alternatives to fossil fuels: most people have heard of solar cells, wind and battery power, but there are other energy options as well. Some of them are a few years away from being viable in the US, but many of them could be excellent candidates if a little more research and funds are invested now. Here are three of the most familiar, yet underrated, energy options.
Cooking Oil There are reports of cooking oil being used as a fuel source as far back as 1896, and peanut oil was used to power diesel engines throughout the turn of the century. But there hasn’t been much of a desire to move further into the realm of using cooking oil for fuel ; the issue that makes vegetable oil a less popular or likely choice is largely availability. Though the US alone produces more than 2.5 billion pounds of grease through restaurants and other industries, there are some regions where the byproduct is simply not available. Shipping drives up the cost and makes other resources more attractive. However, for those who DO have a readily available supply (such as farmers or restaurant owners), cooking oil can provide up to 25% of the energy needed to run these establishments. An investment in a special generator up front can allow these businesses to turn their used oils into energy and also cut down the cost of oil disposal (which can cost upwards of $75 a month) in the process. Best of all, cooking oil is completely renewable and burns cleaner than fossil fuels.
Garbage Incineration, or the burning of garbage, has been around for centuries; however, the process is not as simple as merely torching trash and being done with it. Incineration produces pollutants such as dioxin and releases them into the air. One way around this issue is to create special waste-to-energy plants that control the release of hazardous air pollutants.
Estonia has facilities that meet these requirements and they recently made headlines when they imported 62,000 tons of garbage from other European nations for use in their power plant in Iru. Sweden also produces more than 60% of their energy using renewable resources (primarily a combination of wind power and waste-to-energy). Currently, the United States has 87 waste-to-energy plants that generate approximately 2,720 megawatts, or about 0.4 percent of total US power generation. In European countries there are more government incentives and business benefits to utilizing alternative energy resources, but in the US we’re still much more reliant on our traditional sources. We don’t yet have the infrastructure to make the strides that Estonia or Sweden have, but as these and other European countries continue to develop these methods, they can serve as a model for future areas of exploration.
Poop! Yes, that’s right: human and animal feces can be used as a source of energy. When processed through bioreactors that are equipped at removing the natural gas from waste, this method is efficient and (after initial startup costs) affordable.
The specialized bioreactors work by feeding solid human and animal waste into chambers full of bacteria. The bacteria eat any remaining nutrients in the waste and release natural gas that we can use as fuel. It’s also possible to convert solid waste into hydrogen and other gasses for various uses. Toyota’s Fukuoka plant in Japan has been experimenting with biogas-turned-hydrogen for fueling a new fleet of vehicles. Hydrogen vehicles are currently available in the United States as well, but they are expensive and the filling stations are rare at this point. Scientists at UCLA are hoping that “brown energy” continues to develop in the US because the benefits are so great and the source material is, ahem, endlessly available.
( Sign up for our FREE newsletter to get the latest prepping advice, gardening secrets, homesteading tips and more delivered straight to your inbox!) Pamela Bofferding is a native Texan who now lives with her husband and sons in New York City. She enjoys hiking, traveling, and playing with her dogs.
This information has been made available by Ready Nutrition
Originally published November 5th, 2016 How to Build a Simple and Affordable Methane Digester New Altered Bacteria Can Convert Sunlight Into Liquid Fuel Dutch Harvest Electricity From Living Plants To Power… Coal: An Underrated Fuel Source that Preppers Should… Biomass Briquettes: An Alternative Fuel Source Made From… | 0 |
October 27, 2016 at 4:21 PM
Listen, it doesn’t matter who wins…the system can not mathematically go on the way it has…..so please dont make it sound like Trump is going to bring it down…and fuck yes…people like me want to see heads roll…they should be rolling for what they have done to this country….politicians, newspeople, celebrities…. all of them. If you or I did what they have done…we would be in Leavenworth in heart beat. Trusy me, it will get worse before it gets better…but when you’re cutting a malignancy out, it’s going to hurt. | 0 |
New York Times – by Mike Isaac SAN FRANCISCO — The futurists of Silicon Valley may not have seen this one coming: The first commercial delivery made by a self-driving truck was 2,000 cases of Budweiser beer. On Tuesday, Otto , the Uber-owned self-driving vehicle operation, announced the completion of its first commercial delivery, having delivered its beer load from Fort Collins, Colo., to Colorado Springs, a roughly 120-mile trip on Interstate 25. In recent years, Uber has predicted a future in which you can ride in a self-driving car that will take you where you want to go, no driver necessary. But the idea that commercial trucking could be done by robot is a relatively new idea — and a potentially controversial one, given the possibility that robots could one day replace human drivers. “We think this technology is inching closer to commercial availability,” Lior Ron, co-founder of Otto, said in an interview. In August, Uber acquired Otto, a San Francisco start-up run by a number of veterans of Google’s long-running autonomous vehicle research. Though largely symbolic, the beer delivery marks the first commercial partnership for Otto, which was founded less than a year ago. Terms of the deal between Otto and Anheuser-Busch InBev , which owns the Budweiser brand, were not disclosed. “We’ve tested with trailers, of course, but there’s nothing like actually doing the real thing, end to end,” Mr. Ron said. The delivery was indicative of Uber’s larger ambitions to become an enormous transportation network, one in which the company is responsible for moving anything, like people, hot meals or cases of beer, around the globe, at all hours and as efficiently as possible. Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive, has said he envisions a future in which transportation will occur in different ways, using both manned and unmanned vehicles. Otto is a particularly large bet for Uber, which paid nearly $700 million for the start-up only a few months after the company started publicly discussing its self-driving-truck ambitions. Since backing down from its money-burning effort to dominate the Chinese ride-hailing market in August, Uber has invested more time and resources to focus on breaking into the trucking market. Annual trucking industry revenue topped $720 billion in 2015, according to American Trucking Association estimates. A good part of that total came from top brands that rely heavily on the trucking industry to transport their goods. Anheuser-Busch, for example, delivers more than a million truckloads of beer domestically every year. “We view self-driving trucks as the future, and we want to be a part of that,” said James Sembrot, senior director of logistics strategy at Anheuser-Busch. Though the delivery went smoothly, the two companies did not indicate whether there would be any further deals. For this initial delivery, Otto’s truck departed Anheuser-Busch’s facility in Loveland, Colo., in the early morning before reaching the interstate in Fort Collins. The truck drove through Denver — alongside regular passenger car traffic — and navigated to its destination in Colorado Springs without incident. Otto said a trained driver was in the cabin of the truck at all times to monitor the vehicle’s progress and take over if necessary. At no point was the driver required to intervene, the company said. Future expansion of the pilot program will allow Otto to test for more types of road and weather conditions, a major factor in autonomous vehicle route plotting. | 0 |
Fox News correspondent Adam Housley reported Friday that a and “very senior” former official in the intelligence community, not associated with the FBI, directed the unmasking of private Americans working for or with President Donald Trump’s presidential transition team. [“Unmasking is not unprecedented, but unmasking for political purposes … specifically of Trump transition team members … is highly suspect and questionable,” an intelligence source told Fox News. “Opposition by some in the intelligence agencies who were very connected to the Obama and Clinton teams was strong. After Trump was elected, they decided they were going to ruin his presidency by picking them off one by one. ” Housley said his sources inside the intelligence community reached out to him after mainstream media reports Thursday flagged two White House aides as the sources bringing information to Rep. Devin Nunes (R. ) the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Thursday’s mainstream media narrative was that Ezra and Michael Ellis called Nunes to the White House grounds March 21, where they passed classified information to Nunes that confirmed Obama administration surveillance of the Trump camp. Then, March 22, Nunes went to the White House to present classified information to the president. This narrative and the Nunes with the White House was ridiculed as an elaborate ruse or proof that Nunes was acting in a bizarre way. The Housley report is that Thursday’s narrative was not true — and that and Ellis were not sources at all rather the two men came to the aid of Nunes, who had other sources but needed to use a Sensitive Compartmented Intelligence Facility (SCIF) that was not associated with the whistleblowers’ own agency. The sources told Fox News that surveillance of the Trump campaign began before Trump became the Republican presidential nominee July 19, and the surveillance had nothing to do with Russia, Housley said. Intelligence agencies are banned from collecting intelligence on Americans without permission from a judge, but in the course of authorized surveillance Americans are caught in the net. These names are supposed to be masked or disguised, so that their rights are preserved. What Fox News is reporting is that these names were either put in the clear or given flimsy masks, so that their identity was obvious. The sources also told Housley that Nunes learned about the surveillance and the unmasking in January, before Trump entered the White House, but members of the intelligence community have been uncooperative as the chairman searched for a SCIF, where he could conduct his own deep dive into their portent. Finally, he was able to secure use of the White House SCIF inside the Old Executive Office Building, on the White House grounds, but not in the “White House. ” Fox News investigative reporter Malia Zimmerman also worked on this report. | 1 |
By The Indigenous People
Protests escalated in North Dakota as police moved in with armed vehicles and rubber bullets. Standing Rock youth also tried to deliver a letter to Hillary Clinton’s headquarters. Actor and activist Mark Ruffalo, who just returned from North Dakota, where he and Native Renewables founder Wahleah Johns presented Standing Rock Sioux tribal elders with mobile solar panels on trailers, bringing clean power to the protest encampment where the largest gathering of Native Americans in modern history is taking a stand against the Dakota Access Pipeline .
“This pipeline is a black snake that traverses four states and 200 waterways with fracked Bakken oil ,” said Ruffalo, co-founder of The Solutions Project , which works to accelerate the transition to 100 percent clean and renewable energy.
“We know from experience that pipelines leak , explode, pollute and poison land and water. But it doesn’t have to be that way.”
The solar trailers will provide clean energy to power medical tents and other critical facilities for Native American protesters and their allies at the encampment. The trailers symbolize a healthy, equitable, prosperous energy future made possible by clean renewable energy.
“Water is life,” said Johns, a Navajo leader. “By leading a transition to energy that is powered by the sun, the wind and water, we ensure a better future for all of our people and for future generations.”
Johns’ company, Native Renewables, promotes low-cost clean energy solutions for Native American families throughout the U.S., with an emphasis on job creation and on benefiting the community as a whole. The trailers were built by members of the Navajo nation and were financed by Empowered by Light and Give Power.
Research led by Stanford Prof. Mark Jacobson, another Solutions Project co-founder, shows that it would be technically possible and economically beneficial to transition to 100 percent clean renewable energy in each and every state across the country. In North Dakota , for example, wind and solar energy would be the primary sources of clean power and transitioning to 100 percent renewables would create 30,000 jobs. | 0 |
CHARLOTTE, N. C. — A second night of protests set off by the police killing of a black man spiraled into chaos and violence after nightfall here Wednesday when a demonstration was interrupted by gunfire that gravely wounded a man in the crowd. Law enforcement authorities fired tear gas in a desperate bid to restore order. The city said on its Twitter account that the unidentified man was on life support after what officials said was a “civilian on civilian” confrontation. The authorities provided no further details. Charlotte officials had said earlier that the man had been killed in the unrest. The Police Department reported that four officers had injuries that were not . Gov. Pat McCrory’s office said late Wednesday that he had declared an emergency and had “initiated efforts” to deploy the National Guard and the state Highway Patrol. The shooting heightened the tension among the demonstrators and the police alike. City officials were quick to say the police had not fired any live rounds, but riot police personnel did fire repeated rounds of tear gas. The scene of the shooting and the largest demonstration of the evening happened along a crowded street in Charlotte’s city center, where the sound of gunfire mixed with the noise of people banging objects into vehicles. The gunshot victim lay motionless on the ground, his eyes open, as people surrounded him and blood pooled among their feet. He was taken into the nearby Omni Hotel, and a series of confrontations played out afterward as the police kept people from entering. There was sporadic looting. Twitter messages showed that the team store of the Charlotte Hornets of the N. B. A. had been broken into and gutted of merchandise. “We are working very hard to bring peace and calm back to our city,” Mayor Jennifer Roberts said on CNN. A spokesman for Ms. Roberts said she had requested and planned to review on Thursday a police dashboard video of the encounter with Keith L. Scott, the black man who was shot and killed here on Tuesday. But she said she would not make the video public. Around 10 p. m. the police ordered all civilians, including members of the news media, to leave parts of the Uptown neighborhood and threatened to arrest those who did not comply. When the crowd did not respond immediately, the authorities fired more tear gas within minutes. After that, it appeared that the crowd started to disperse, although some stragglers remained in the area. The unrest in Charlotte came after two other deadly shootings in the last week. First came the shooting of a teenager in Columbus, Ohio, who had been brandishing a BB gun. Two days later, on Friday, was the shooting death in Tulsa, Okla. of a man who had his hands above his head before an officer opened fire. And then it was Charlotte, where Mr. Scott, 43, black like the other two, was shot by a police officer in a parking space marked “Visitor” outside an unremarkable apartment complex. On Wednesday that parking space was both a shooting site and a shrine, and Charlotte was a city on edge, the latest to play a role in what feels like a recurring, seemingly inescapable tape loop of American tragedy. “To see this happen multiple times — just time after time — it’s depressing, man,” said Tom Jackson, 25, who works with mentally disabled people. He didn’t know Mr. Scott but was drawn here nonetheless, one of many strangers and friends who came to pay their respects and make sense of their sorrow. In addition to the fatal attacks on police officers in Baton Rouge and Dallas, it was another grim snapshot of America’s continuing crisis in black and blue, this moment amplified by presidential politics. And as usual, there was very little consensus on what went wrong and how to fix it. At a news conference on Wednesday, Kerr Putney, chief of the police, said officers had found the gun that the police said Mr. Scott had brandished before an officer, who is also black, fatally shot him and were examining police video of the encounter that unfolded as Mr. Scott stepped out of a car. Family members of Mr. Scott have said that he was unarmed and was holding only a book. Chief Putney said Wednesday morning, “We did not find a book. ” The response of B. J. Murphy, an activist here, could not have been more different: “Everybody in Charlotte should be on notice that black people, today, we’re tired of this,” he said, adding an epithet. “We’re tired of being killed and nobody saying nothing. We’re tired of our political leaders going along to get along they’re so weak, they don’t have no sympathy for our grief. And we want justice. ” All three shootings are under investigation, and are rife with questions. The police in Columbus said that the BB gun wielded by Tyre King was built to look nearly identical to a Smith Wesson Military Police semiautomatic pistol. Mayor Andrew J. Ginther blamed the shooting, in part, on Americans’ “easy access to guns, whether they are firearms or replicas. ” In Tulsa, the police said investigators found the drug PCP in the shooting victim’s S. U. V. The drug is known to induce erratic behavior in some users. But Mr. Crump, who is representing the family of the victim, Terence Crutcher, said the discovery of the drug, if true, would not justify the deadly shooting. In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Crutcher’s father, the Rev. Joey Crutcher, said his son had marched in protest of earlier police killings and had thought about how to protect himself during interactions with police officers. They had planned to go to a church event aimed at teaching people how behave around the police and avoid becoming another hashtag shared on social media by Black Lives Matter protesters. “I never thought this would happen to my family,” Mr. Crutcher said, adding that he had counseled his son all his life about how to behave around the police. “I said, ‘Whenever you’re stopped by a police and you’re in that situation, raise your hands up, always let them see your hands, let them see that you are not going for a gun.’ And that is what Terence was doing. I said, ‘Always put your hands on your car.’ I made that specific, ‘your car.’ And that’s what Terence was walking to do on his car so that they could see his hands. ” John Barnett, a civil rights activist in Charlotte, said during a raucous news conference near the site of the shooting that Mr. Scott had been waiting for his son to arrive home from school. “The truth of the matter is, he didn’t point that gun,” Mr. Barnett said. “Did he intend to really sit in a vehicle, waiting on his son to get home from school and then plot to shoot a cop if they pulled up on him?” Adding to an atmosphere loaded with suspicion and mistrust, residents of the apartment complex gave varying accounts of Mr. Scott’s death. Some differed from the police on which officer fired the shots, and others said that no one had tried to administer CPR for Mr. Scott as officials had said. Brentley Vinson, the officer who the police say shot Mr. Scott, is black, as is the police chief. “Since black lives do not matter for this city, then our black dollars should not matter,” said Mr. Murphy, the activist. “We’re watching a lynching on social media, on television and it is affecting the psyche of black people. ” Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said Wednesday that the Justice Department “is aware of, and we are assessing, the incident that led to the death of Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte. ” Responding to another police shooting, the state’s attorney in Baltimore County, Md. Scott D. Shellenberger, announced Wednesday that no charges would be filed against any of the officers involved in the Aug. 1 shooting death of Korryn Gaines or the shooting of her son. In Charlotte, Rakeyia Scott, Mr. Scott’s wife, said on Wednesday the family was “devastated” by the shooting. She described her husband as “a loving husband, father, brother and friend” and called on protesters to remain peaceful. At a campaign rally in Orlando, Fla. Hillary Clinton spoke about the shootings here and in Tulsa. “There is still much we don’t know about what happened in both incidents, but we do know that we have two more names to add to a list of killed by police officers in these encounters,’’ she said. “It’s unbearable, and it needs to become intolerable. We also saw the targeting of police officers in Philadelphia last week. And last night in Charlotte, 12 officers were injured in demonstrations following Keith Scott’s death. Every day police officers are serving with courage, honor and skill. ” Her Republican rival, Donald J. Trump, reacted on Twitter. “Hopefully the violence unrest in Charlotte will come to an immediate end,” he wrote. “To those injured, get well soon. We need unity leadership. ” Unity, thus far, has been in short supply. On Friday, Mr. Trump earned the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police. But polls show that his support among is negligible, even though he has singled them out in promising to solve the ills of poverty and violence that he has characterized as plaguing black neighborhoods. On Wednesday, Mr. Jackson, the man who came here to mourn, was not thinking about the current presidential candidates. The police, he said, “are out here killing people, and they don’t even know their backgrounds,” he said. “They could be killing the next president. ” | 1 |
Talk about a wicked case of the Mondays. Almost anyone who has worked in an office has felt beaten down by the job at some point, whether it’s by an annoying a demanding boss or monotonous daily tasks. It’s enough to make some people crack. Films like “Office Space” and shows like “The Office” turned the pitfalls of office culture into comedy. But what does it look like when that desire to smack a colleague silly is taken to darker places? You get the subgenre of office horror, in which bodies pile up alongside the copy machine. The latest entries include “The Belko Experiment” (March 17) and the forthcoming “Mayhem,” about the most hellish days at the office you can imagine. Here’s a look at these, and other, office nightmares. DIRECTOR Greg McLean PLOT It starts just like any other day at Belko Industries, a Bogotá, Colombia, nonprofit that has American employees. But then a voice on the intercom tells employees they must kill a certain number of their or more will die. Steel doors lock everyone in, touching off a “Hunger Games” scenario. The movie includes several familiar types — the budding couple the slacker the stern boss the annoying, — and pits them against one another in a grisly death match. GRUESOME BREAK FROM ROUTINE One especially unlucky employee is bludgeoned with a tape dispenser. DIRECTOR Joe Lynch PLOT In this film, which made its premiere at the South by Southwest film festival this month, a nasty virus is going around, one that attacks the id and makes people act out their most basic instincts. When the virus invades a law practice, the building is quarantined and one disgruntled and infected legal analyst (Steven Yeun of “The Walking Dead”) makes a bloody climb up the corporate ladder. GRUESOME BREAK FROM ROUTINE After the analyst and a client get access to the tool closet, they use hammers, wrenches, a fire extinguisher and a nail gun in a showdown with employees. DIRECTOR Brian James O’Connell PLOT Sometimes your boss really is out to get you. In this 2015 workers at a telemarketing company get a new sales manager who’s a corporate vampire — literally. Soon after he arrives, some employees start acting strange and their complexions begin to pale. It’s up to two overlooked telemarketers and a security guard to bring an end to their boss and the havoc he is wreaking. GRUESOME BREAK FROM ROUTINE During a visit to the supply closet, the guys break the handles off brooms, pull the blade off a paper cutter and get to work. DIRECTOR Cindy Sherman PLOT In this 1997 thriller from the artist and photographer Cindy Sherman, office life is more appealing than the alternative for one lonely woman. Because of budget cuts, Dorine (Carol Kane) a proofreader at a magazine, is forced to work from home, which depresses her further. But when she accidentally electrocutes a on a visit to the office, she becomes energized and ends up going on a murder spree, killing more colleagues and others. GRUESOME BREAK FROM ROUTINE After poisoning her boss, Dorine brings the body home and places it on the couch with that of her electrocuted . She sits between them and watches TV while talking to the corpses. DIRECTOR Joe Dante PLOT This 1990 sequel to the 1984 critter film is set at the corporate offices of Clamp Enterprises, where the furry Gizmo has become a subject of research. But after one employee (Zach Galligan from the first film) rescues him, Gizmo is hidden and left alone in the office, where water spills on him and he multiplies. Ultimately an unruly group of Gremlins is hellbent on destruction. GRUESOME BREAK FROM ROUTINE A woman taping a cooking show for Clamp’s network opens up the pot to check on a noodle dish. But a gremlin pops out and sprays her in the face with a turkey baster. Another gremlin in a chef’s hat further terrorizes her. | 1 |
LONDON — Supporters of a British exit from the European Union opened up a substantial lead over advocates of staying in the bloc as the nation tallied the votes early Friday on one of its most momentous decisions in generations. With more than half of towns and cities reporting, the Leave campaign was leading by more than 700, 000 votes out of more than 24 million that had been counted, an advantage of 51. 6 percent to 48. 4 percent over the Remain campaign, according to the BBC. “Dare to dream that the dawn is breaking on an independent United Kingdom,” Nigel Farage, the leader of the U. K. Independence Party, one of the primary forces behind the push for a referendum on leaving the European Union, told cheering supporters just after 4 a. m. denouncing the “lies, corruption and deceit” that he said elites in both major parties — Conservative and Labour — had peddled. The vote was still too close to call, and Remain supporters were not giving up. But as Thursday night turned to Friday morning, the results were consistently giving hope to the Leave campaign while inducing deep worry among supporters of staying in Europe, starting with Prime Minister David Cameron. The early results startled the financial markets, which gyrated wildly after initially banking on a victory for the Remain campaign. At one point the value of the pound plummeted to $1. 36 from $1. 50, the sharpest drop on record. Officials were busily counting some 33. 6 million ballots cast Thursday by an estimated 72 percent of eligible voters at the conclusion of a campaign that amounted to a fierce debate over sovereignty, national identity, immigration and trade. The Leave campaign did better than anticipated in areas it had expected to win, particularly in northeast England, and picked up Swansea, a Welsh city it had not expected to win. The Remain campaign performed well in the inner London boroughs of Wandsworth, Lambeth, Hammersmith and Fulham, but it barely carried Newcastle upon Tyne, a university town it had expected to dominate. Proponents of staying in the European Union started the night in a confident mood, especially after Mr. Farage suggested that he was not optimistic about victory. The first indication that the outcome might be closer than some of the late polling suggested came from one of the first sizable areas to report, as the Leave campaign did even better than expected in Sunderland, a community in the northeast. Voting lasted from 7 a. m. to 10 p. m. though some particularly crowded poll sites stayed open longer to accommodate voters still in line to cast their ballots. Two other opinion surveys also gave the Remain camp an edge, but given the failure of most British pollsters to foresee the Conservative Party’s victory in last year’s general elections, many analysts were putting little trust in surveys. “Neither a comfortable Remain victory nor a comfortable Leave victory can be ruled out,” Stephen Fisher, an elections expert who teaches at Oxford, wrote on Thursday morning, after noting that polling averages gave Remain a very slight lead. About half of voters were thought to have walked to the polls, though many others drove and a few even rode horses. Strong rains in parts of the capital and southeast England complicated voting floods forced the borough of Kingston upon Thames in southwest London to move two polling sites. By the Thursday evening rush, rains had caused delays on several subway lines and brought foot traffic at Waterloo, the capital’s busiest train station, to a standstill. Many Britons posted photos of themselves accompanied by their dogs and cats, prompting internet memes. Until the polls closed, news organizations were prohibited from reporting accounts of how people voted, but in interviews, Britons expressed their concerns and anxieties in more general terms. In the deprived town of Oldham, near Manchester, a traditional stronghold of the Labour Party, Lisa Kirk, 43, said she and her family had been swayed by the U. K. Independence Party, which opposes Britain’s membership in the European Union, and expressed disenchantment with British leaders. “They’re just letting all the foreigners in, and there is nothing left in the system for us,” she said. In the spa town of Royal Tunbridge Wells, in the picturesque Kent countryside, Michael Selway, 54, expressed worry about the future of European integration. “This project was set up by people who had fantastic intentions — no more war — and now it might all come to a crashing end,” he said. Older voters are seen as being particularly disenchanted with the European Union, and younger voters more attracted to the possibility of studying and working on the Continent. But there were many exceptions. Helen Lickerman, 67, said there was a general tendency to move away from European integration. “Never mind the ins and outs of the economy,” she said at an interview at St. Giles Cripplegate Church in the Barbican, a residential and arts complex in the City of London, the capital’s financial district. “There’s a general feeling of being part of a community, and the history, the past wars, is something we don’t want anymore. ” Near Paddington Station just north of Hyde Park, Yamini Mathur, a Londoner, said that voters had been more confused than enlightened by the blizzard of claims and counterclaims made during a series of debates. “We do not have all the answers, we do not have all the information, but I guess we will just have to go with all the information we have,” she said. The two officially designated campaigns — Vote Leave and Stronger In — continued to fire away on Twitter, in messages that reflected the sharply negative turn the debate has taken in a country where civility and decorum have been distinctive characteristics of the political culture. Vote Leave told its followers on Twitter: “Today’s referendum is about democracy. If you cherish it and it matters to you at all, then please #VoteLeave and #TakeBackControl. ” The campaign has relentlessly attacked the European Union as an unaccountable and faceless bureaucracy that is subsidized by Britain and offers little more than onerous directives in return, while forcing high levels of migrants onto Britain through its insistence on the free movement of labor, capital, goods and services. The Stronger In campaign has at times struggled to make a positive case for the bloc, instead focusing on the economic hit that Britain — the bloc’s economy, after Germany — would sustain if it lost access to a common market of more than 500 million people. Even enthusiasts acknowledge that the European Union, with its cumbersome governance, is hard to love, though they say it has helped to unite a Continent that nearly destroyed itself in two world wars. With the stumping over, politicians were left with little to do but vote. Three leaders of the Remain campaign — Mr. Cameron, whose Conservative Party is bitterly divided over the European Union, and the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, and Mayor Sadiq Khan of London — all voted in the capital. So did Boris Johnson, the former London mayor who has arguably been the most prominent face of the Leave campaign, and Michael Gove, the justice secretary. Mr. Farage cast his ballot in Kent, in southeast England. It was only the third nationwide referendum in British history. In the first, in 1975, Britons affirmed their membership in the European Economic Community, a forerunner to the European Union, which they joined in 1973. In the second, in 2011, voters rejected a change to the system by which members of Parliament are elected. | 1 |
As President Donald Trump prepares to unveil his administration’s diplomatic policy towards Cuba, expected to repeal reforms that had made it easier for Americans to give money to the repressive Castro regime, corporations and lobbyists that have benefitted from Obama’s “normalization” have gone into attack mode. [The hotel monolith Mariott’s chief executive is personally demanding Trump not enact rights policies that could jeopardize the company’s bottom line. The New York Times, which published the lies that made it possible for Fidel Castro to become the island’s dictator, laments that “the United States Congress, businesses and other interested groups,” including the Cuban government, may not be pleased by the changes (this is, the Times posits, a bad thing). The foreboding tone of American liberal media coverage surrounding the potential repeal of Obama’s 2014 “normalization” effort demands selective memory of the Obama era’s effect on the Cuban people to take seriously. His policies may have prompted optimism among the CEOs of companies like AirBNB and Carnival Cruises. But Cuban dissidents report skyrocketing rates of arbitrary arrests and an disregard for human rights in a country that already held one of the world’s worst records on the matter before 2014. Below, eleven images that capture the suffering of the Cuban people following President Obama’s call for bilateral ties with the Castro regime, and the callous disregard the White House showed towards these consequences as they became impossible to ignore. February 2015: President Obama announced he would friendly ties with the Castro regime in December 2014. Two months later, the regime challenged the call for treating dissidents with respect by not only beating and arresting members of the Ladies in White — a dissident group whose sole act of protest is silently attending Catholic Mass on Sundays dressed in white and holding the photos of political prisoners — but tarring one of their members, Digna Rodríguez Ibañez. Photo via Twitter. September 2015: In a move meant to signal to the international community that they could ease the pressure on the Castro regime, Cuba invited Pope Francis to tour the city of Havana and the eastern regional capital of Santiago de Cuba. The government did not use the occasion of the pontiff’s presence on the island to cease repressing dissidents, however. Zaqueo Báez, a member of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) approached the papal convoy in Havana and shouted “freedom!” within earshot of the Pope. He was beaten in front of the pope and whisked away into a police vehicle. Pope Francis later denied knowledge of the incident, though video proved he was feet away as Báez was beaten. The photo below shows Báez being taken away from Pope Francis. AP Espinosa, December 2015: Francisco Morales had traveled to his home country every Christmas for the past decade to set up a Christmas display for the children of his Havana neighborhood without incident. After President Obama announced his “normalization” measures, however, Morales was arrested for setting up animated characters like Santa Claus and Mickey Mouse on the roof of his family home. Cuba is an atheist state that has persecuted and tortured Christians since the 1960s and only allowed leftist Liberation Theologists and Jesuit Catholics to operate unperturbed on the island in recent years. Evangelical Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Adventists are especially subject to arrest and other state abuse. @CubanetNoticias, January 2016: Cuban dissidents from a number of prominent groups on the island regularly suffer actos de repudio, “acts of rejection,” in which the government sends angry mobs to their homes to intimidate and insult them. In a particularly brazen rejection of international human rights norms, one acto de repudio featured a bonfire made up of copies of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Marti Noticias. March 2016: President Obama’s trip to Cuba triggered some of the Cuban government’s most aggressive abuses against dissidents. Below, the mass arrests of dozens of Ladies in White, grabbed by the clothes and hair and beaten into submission, shortly before the president’s arrival. Adalberto Images, March 2016: The oppression was not limited to Ladies in White. One Cuban dissident succeeded in using the occasion of President Obama’s visit to protest live on American television. Yasser Rivero Boní, the son of a Lady in White who has lost most of his vision following beatings by Castro police, ran onto the set of ESPN and interrupted Bob Ley’s live broadcast to call for freedom on the island. Within seconds, a sqaud of Cuban police apprehended and whisked him away. . March 2016: President Obama was not the only visitor to the island this month. The Rolling Stones, a British band that Fidel Castro had banned from the island for their “imperialist” music, played a “historic” concert for those in the government’s good graces that month. Naturally, this irked Cuba’s punk rock community, and in particular the band Porno para Ricardo, who writes punk music against the regime. In protest, they played a “concert” titled “Public Scandal,” in which they stood in silence, holding their instruments, for the duration of a concert. Porno Para Ricardo social media, March 2016: President Obama completed his itinerary in Cuba, delivering a speech in which he quoted poet José Martí, stopping for under the image of Castro butcher Ernesto “Che” Guevara at the Plaza of the Revolution, and attending a baseball game with Raúl Castro. In the below image, the president does “the wave” with the Cuban dictator. White Souza, August 2016: Cuban dissident Guillermo Fariñas is an pacifist human rights activists. In the below photo, he was conducting his 23rd hunger strike against the Castro regime. In this one, he also refused water. The below photo shows friendly trying to carry him to a local hospital after he had lost mobility. Cuban hospitals rejected Fariñas before ultimately taking him in as a patient, responding to international pressure. elblogdegeronimo. wordpress. com via Cubanet, May 2017: The Cuban dissident Daniel Llorente, who does not belong to any dissident groups, is carried away from the streets of Havana after receiving a beating from the Cuban police in the photo. Llorente interrupted the Castro’s May Day parade — an international celebration of communism — by running in front of the parade waving an American flag. Llorente became an active dissident following the “normalization” announcement, using his American flag to welcome Carnival Cruises to Havana, where Cuban agents berated and insulted him. Llorente was placed in a mental institution following his act of defiance in May. AP Espinosa. Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter. | 1 |
28, 2016 | Politics , Science The problem we have to solve is, as Howard Zinn told us, not too much civil disobedience, but too much civil obedience.
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B ack in the winter of 1982, Air Florida flight 90 took off from National Airport. The first officer noticed dangerous readings on some instruments and pointed them out to the captain. The captain told him he was wrong, and he accepted the captain’s authority. He did nothing. Thirty seconds later the plane crashed into the 14th Street Bridge. Everyone on board died except for four passengers rescued out of the icy river.
During the latter decades of the 20th and first part of the 21st century, millions and millions of first officers on spaceship earth noticed that climate and nuclear dangers loomed. But every authoritative captain in sight, from elected officials to CEOs to media pundits, said “Don’t be a fool. I’ve got this.” And millions upon millions sat back and mumbled “Oh, all right, if you’re sure.”
The people pushing through the vote this week at the United Nations to create a treaty next year banning nuclear weapons are engaged in necessary disobedience to mainstream authority and acceptance. The people putting their bodies in the way of a pipeline in North Dakota are disobeying immoral orders.
Ira Chaleff’s book, Intelligent Disobedience , re-examines the lessons of the Milgram and Stanford prison experiments, and other more recent demonstrations of the severe dangers of uncritical obedience. Chaleff highlights some techniques that can facilitate intelligent refusals to obey.
When Milgram put the actor pretending to be given electric shocks in the same room, visible to the person ordered to shock him, obedience dropped by 40 percent. This suggests we need fewer trips to Disney World and more to Hiroshima, fewer student exchanges to England and more to Russia and Iran, fewer summer jobs at the local swimming pool and more at the nearest climate-impacted site in need of assistance.
Milgram also got obedience to drop by 20 percent by removing the authority figure from sight and having him deliver his orders by telephone. This does not suggest demonizing or antagonizing authority figures, but rather distancing and diminishing them. We need to metaphorically bring them down to size, and we need to physically and otherwise get away from them. Throw out your television to get their faces out of your living room. Read the news online as needed. Practice kneeling during the national anthem; it’ll give you a whole new outlook in which hearing a civilian refer to “our commander in chief” sounds frighteningly out of place.
Milgram reduced obedience by 100% by having a second authority figure contradict the first one. As long as people are going to practice subservient obedience, we need to identify and recruit and broadcast all apparent authority figures who contradict the destructive orders of the mainstream authorities. Who counts as an authority figure may vary from person to person, but we don’t have to choose. The more the murkier!
We also need to lead by example. Even when Milgram’s lone authority figure ordered shocks, if the subject of the experiment saw someone else refuse to obey, then 90% of the time he or she would also refuse. This is a huge opening for us. But it does not mean that we can create a little Eco village and thereby save the world. It does mean that doing that will help. But we need examples of people challenging the entire system that deals weapons and subsidizes fossil fuels. And we need lots of examples so that everyone watching can see someone who looks like them engaged in constructive disobedience.
In warfare, militaries condition people to obey immoral orders through, among other things, a number of distancing techniques. It’s easy to murder someone far away or unseen. It’s easier to order someone else to do it. It’s easier to be part of a group doing it together. It’s easier to think of it as defending someone else rather than simply committing murder. We have to reverse all of this distancing. We have to put the victims and potential victims of war and of climate chaos right up close to the vision of as many people as possible. We have to create unavoidable responsibility. The bill in the British parliament that would allow people to choose whether to pay war taxes is one possible approach. We have to make those engaged in ordinary, typical muddling through understand that as long as they fail to take radical action they are engaged in the slow but massive taking of human life.
We should replace the pledge of allegiance with the Nuremberg principles and the Hippocratic oath. The problem we have to solve is, as Howard Zinn told us, not too much civil disobedience, but too much civil obedience.
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Breitbart News Senior Editor MILO listed the negative health effects that come from having an abortion during his talk at Cal Poly State University on Tuesday, including an increase in suicidal tendencies and mood disorders.[ “#ShoutYourAbortion and movements like it seek to normalize abortion, but in fact it is very bad for women’s health,” claimed MILO. “You know, the women feminism claims to care about. ” “In 2010, the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry published a study based on a sample of 3, 000 women in the United States. The findings of the effects of abortion are startling,” he continued. “59 percent increased risk for suicidal thoughts. 61 percent increased risk for mood disorders. 61 percent increased risk for social anxiety disorders. 261 percent increased risk for alcohol abuse. 280 percent increased risk for any substance use disorder. ” “If the cause of this mental anguish were anything besides abortion, women would be marching against it, and Madonna would be threatening to blow the White House up over it,” MILO concluded. “Abortion is clearly so bad for women’s mental health that it falls second only to Islam, and maybe the fact that I’m gay. ” Written from prepared remarks. | 1 |
The nation’s consumer watchdog agency on Tuesday ordered the agencies TransUnion and Equifax to pay more than $23. 2 million in fines and restitution for deceiving customers about the usefulness of credit scores and the cost of obtaining them. The watchdog agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said the payments would resolve charges that TransUnion and Equifax had lured consumers into enrolling in credit services advertised as free or costing only $1, but which could cost more than $200 a year. TransUnion will reimburse $13. 93 million to consumers and pay a $3 million civil fine, while Equifax will reimburse $3. 8 million and pay a $2. 5 million civil fine, the bureau said. Both companies will also modify their marketing practices. Among the changes, they will obtain customers’ consent to enroll them in services in which fees begin after free trials and make it easier for them to cancel services they do not want. The bureau said the wrongful conduct had violated the law and had occurred at TransUnion since July 2011 and at Equifax between July 2011 and March 2014. Many lenders rely on credit scores from TransUnion, Equifax and their rival Experian when lending money. But TransUnion and Equifax falsely represented the credit scores they sold to consumers as being the same scores that lenders used, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said. “Credit scores are central to a consumer’s financial life, and people deserve honest and accurate information about them,” Richard Cordray, the bureau’s director, said in a statement. Neither TransUnion, which is based in Chicago, nor Equifax, which is based in Atlanta, admitted or denied wrongdoing. A TransUnion spokesman, David Blumberg, and an Equifax spokeswoman, Ines Gutzmer, said their companies believed that they had complied with the law and were committed to better educating consumers about their credit. Experian was not charged. A spokesman for the bureau did not immediately have additional comment. In 2015, under a separate settlement with 31 state attorneys general, the agencies agreed to improve how they fixed mistakes and addressed disputes. | 1 |
Volition stakes its Seoul on the success of this successor to the world of Saints Row, but Agents of Mayhem doesn’t leave a great first impression. [Agents of Mayhem takes place in a Row future, though it’s unclear just how much influence that the purple gangsters of developer Volition’s previous crime series have had on the “MAYHEM” . Still, their membership includes both Pierce and the (and presumably resurrected) Johnny Gat from previous Saints games, so we aren’t straying too far from Volition’s ongoing universe of sandbox mayhem. After the viral success of Saints Row 4‘s hijinks, the development team has decided to double down on slapstick anarchy. Agents of Mayhem offers at least ten different playable characters, each with their own skills, strengths, weaknesses, and upgrade paths. Choosing the right three for a given mission, which you can then switch between playing as on the fly, into a futuristic parody of Seoul will be crucial to success. Mission difficulty is extremely scalable, allowing you to balance risk versus reward before you’ve pulled the trigger. On the ground, swapping between said squadmates is instantaneous and allows for powerful combinations of both active and passive abilities. It’s more than choosing the right weapon for the job — knowing who is better at disrupting shields, who can punch through armor, and who has a penchant for computer hacking is an important part of deciding who hits the streets. Vehicle gameplay doesn’t look especially impressive or robust, but it remains present. Whether or not it’s worth the time to slip into one of the many vehicles on the streets of Seoul remains to be seen, but Saints Row 4 rendered automotive transportation utterly pointless with its hijinks so there may not be much reason for concern. Agents of Mayhem recalls nothing so much as an especially crude Saturday morning cartoon, with easily as many as bullets. Volition’s recent games have always had a sense of humor that can be hit or miss, but the humor is (mostly) endearing. Agents of Mayhem doesn’t stick with me as much as past efforts in the demo I played, but I could see myself growing attached to members of the crew given time. Unfortunately, the game’s promise seems to have stalled after the concept stage. When I sat down to actually play, I found a game that felt like the leftover missions from an title, with none of the freedom that implies. Though my team was aesthetically different, playing each of them was an exercise in holding down the trigger until the bloated life bars of faceless enemies depleted, and I moved to the next checkpoint. There were hints of progression — you can collect vehicles, experience, and shards. But the vehicles felt pointless, and I didn’t have enough time with the game to stretch my legs with some of the advancement. Switching between characters has all the gravity of weapon swapping. On one hand, it wasn’t cumbersome. On the other, it just didn’t seem to matter very much. The game’s visuals were similarly uninspired. Everything is just a little too smooth. Character models are simple, stiffly animated, and overly shiny, making the game feel more like an HD remake of a title than the heir apparent to a beloved franchise. The animated cutscenes felt more like a storyboard for real cinematics than something to ship with a finished title. As an ardent fan of the Saints Row franchise, Agents of Mayhem felt criminally underwhelming. Given some time in the open world, with a wider variety of team members and the opportunity to play with the character advancement system, my opinion could change. For now, however, all it did was make me wish for a true successor to the absurdly creative GTA knockoff that inspired it. | 1 |
Victoria’s Secret’s annual “What Is Sexy” social media campaign has the women’s premium lingerie company fending off accusations of racism. [This year’s list of winners include Instagram models who specialize in fashion, fitness, and beauty. Other winners include celebrities like Taylor Swift, actress Vanessa Hudgens, and This is Us star Mandy Moore. Give your favorite style star some ❤️! Go to Twitter VOTE her to the top of our annual #WhatIsSexy List by 11:59pm ET on ! Link in profile. A post shared by Victoria’s Secret (@victoriassecret) on Apr 7, 2017 at 11:43am PDT, Thank your fave fitness stars for all the inspo — go to Twitter VOTE them to the top of our annual #WhatIsSexy List by 11:59pm ET on ! Link in profile. A post shared by Victoria’s Secret (@victoriassecret) on Apr 7, 2017 at 12:26pm PDT, Give props to your beauty expert — go to Twitter VOTE her to the top of our annual #WhatIsSexy List by 11:59pm ET on ! Link in profile. A post shared by Victoria’s Secret (@victoriassecret) on Apr 7, 2017 at 10:35am PDT, The brand revealed its honorees, many of whom were white and skinny. And it didn’t take long for social media users to accuse Victoria’s Secret’s of failing to include women of other ethnicities in its campaign. “Young, white and thin is what’s sexy according to VS. Where’s the racial diversity? Where’s the size diversity … . ” one Twitter user wrote. Young, white and thin is what’s sexy according to VS. Where’s the racial diversity? Where’s the size diversity … . https: . — Jennifer Atilémilé (@jennatilemile) April 16, 2017, The brand was bombarded with similar scorn online. Victoria’s Secret decides to tell you #WhatIsSexy. Note: your odds of getting on this list go up if you’re young, thin, and white. pic. twitter. — Mike Sington (@MikeSington) April 15, 2017, #whatissexy? Very white, thin, mostly blonde, and between 20 and 30ish according to this v. specific @VictoriasSecret list. pic. twitter. — Cori M. (@corimyles) April 14, 2017, It’s not the first time Victoria Secret has been dragged online over issues of race and diversity. Last year, the Huffington Post called the womenswear brand’s What is Sexy” list “an arbitrary roundup of the ‘sexiest’ lips, legs, hair and eyeballs among women in the fashion and entertainment industries. ” “But telling us what a ‘sexy’ pair of lips looks like? Or worse, “sexy hair,” can only serve to make women without that lipstick or without a full head of long hair feel less adequate and less worthy of being called sexy in their own right,” HuffPo’s Suzy Strutner wrote. In December, the intimate apparel retailer was accused of cultural appropriation and of designing “racist lingerie by Cosmopolitan editor Helin Jung. “[D]on’t let yourself be hoodwinked by Victoria’s Secret’s brazen attempt to relabel what is clearly cultural appropriation by turning it into a celebration of ‘culture,’” Jung wrote in a article about the brand’s use of different cultural aesthetics during its runway shows. “The brand and its creative leads shamelessly imagery, breaking apart aesthetic references from wherever they wanted and stitching them back together again. They’re telling us it’s worldliness. It’s not it’s a hack job. ” Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson | 1 |
Rep. Devin Nunes ( ) told donors on Saturday that Orange County is one of the key battleground regions in the upcoming 2018 midterm elections. [Speaking at the Orange County GOP’s annual Flag Day fundraiser on Saturday, Nunes — who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee — sounded off on the importance of receiving support from Republican donors in the region, which is seen as critical in the fight against the Golden State’s Democratic stronghold. “It is so critical for us to win here and keep winning here,” Nunes, who was the event’s keynote speaker, said, according to the Los Angeles Times. A Republican California enclave, Orange County is now at risk of turning blue. The 2016 presidential election was the first since 1936 that the county went to a Democrat, Hillary Clinton. In February, the Democrats launched an assault on 20 Republicans whose seats are seen as being at risk during the 2018 midterm elections. Four of those seats are wholly or partially in Orange County, and belong to :Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Rep. Ed Royce ( ) Rep. Darrell Issa ( ) Rep. Mimi Walters ( ) and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher ( ). Republicans have similarly launched a campaign against at least four California Democrat Congressmen who they plan to target and defeat next year. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC)’s “top offensive targets” are Reps. Ami Bera ( Grove, 7th district) Salud Carbajal ( Barbara, 24th district) Scott Peters ( Diego, 52nd district) and Raul Ruiz ( Springs, 36th district). On Saturday, a crowd of protesters stood outside the GOP’s Flag Day celebration: Little protest outside an OC GOP dinner tonight, where @DevinNunes expected to speak pic. twitter. — David Siders (@davidsiders) June 18, 2017, About 70 protestors outside OC GOP annual Flag Day dinner, where Rep. Nunes will speak later. pic. twitter. — Seema Mehta (@LATSeema) June 18, 2017, Speaking to the Los Angeles Times about Saturday’s protesters, Rep. Darrel Issa ( ) said, “They’re pathetic. There were almost none. ” He reportedly added, “There’s a couple million people in the surrounding communities and to have those few tells you the real momentum of this movement has really died. The same has been happening at our office where they come every Tuesday. There’s less every week. ” Rep. Rohrabacher reportedly said, “They don’t want me to talk to my constituents more they want me to talk to them. ” He added, “They don’t represent my constituents. None of them represent my constituents. … They are a political organization asking me to pay homage to them. Forget it. ” Keeping in line with tradition, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher whipped out his guitar for a tune. The theme of Saturday’s song was reportedly “fat bureaucrats. ” The room is nearly clear, but @RepRohrabacher has grabbed a guitar and is singing about ’fat bureaucrats’ pic. twitter. — David Siders (@davidsiders) June 18, 2017, During his speech on Saturday, Nunes reportedly said the mainstream media was in part to blame for Rep. Steve Scalise ( ) being shot during practice for the Congressional baseball fundraiser last week by a Bernie Sanders supporter. Three others were also injured in the attack. “You could almost see this coming when it happened last week because the level of civil discourse has reached a point that I’ve never seen in my time in office,” he said, according to the Times. “What you’re seeing is a political party not willing to accept what happened in the last election. Hopefully it’s a warning sign and hopefully the media will get back to at least pretending to do some real investigative work. ” In February, Rohrabacher’s staffer, Kathleen Staunton, was reportedly knocked unconscious by protesters as she attempted to leave her office. Adelle Nazarian is a politics and national security reporter for Breitbart News. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter. | 1 |
US "lost cause" North Korea policy to be reviewed Thu Oct 27, 2016 6:31PM US Secretary of State John Kerry listens during a trilateral meeting discussing North Korea with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts (both unseen), in New York, September 18, 2016. (Photo by AFP)
Frank SmithSouth Korea, Press TV
American, Japanese and South Korean officials met in Tokyo this week to coordinate their policies toward North Korea, suggesting they will continue with their policy of sanctions and pressure against Pyongyang. Meanwhile, a leading US intelligence chief says Washington's pressure policy on North Korea needs to be revised as it's no longer effective. | 0 |
NATO Announces Largest Troop Deployments Against Russia Since Cold War By Alex Lantier
November 09, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " WSWS " - NATO will place hundreds of thousands of troops on alert for military action against Russia in the coming months, top NATO officials told the Times of London on Monday.
The US-led military alliance is planning to speed up the mobilization of forces numbering in the tens of thousands and, ultimately, hundreds of thousands and millions that are to be mobilized against Russia. Beyond its existing 5,000-strong emergency response force, NATO is tripling its incumbent response force to 40,000 and putting hundreds of thousands of troops on higher alert levels.
The Times wrote, Sir Adam West, Britains outgoing permanent representative to NATO, said he thought that the goal was to speed up the response time of up to 300,000 military personnel to about two months. At present a force of this size could take up to 180 days to deploy.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said, We are addressing what we call the follow-on forces. There are a large number of people in the armed forces of NATO allies. We are looking into how more of them can be ready on a shorter notice. According to the Times , Stoltenberg explained that NATO is looking broadly at methods for improving the readiness of many of the alliance's three million soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.
The target of these deployments, the largest since the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy and the end of the Cold War a quarter century ago, is Russia.
We have seen a more assertive Russia implementing a substantial military build-up of many years, tripling defence spending since 2000 in real terms; developing new military capabilities; exercising their forces and using military force against neighbours, Stoltenberg said. We have also seen Russia using propaganda in Europe among NATO allies and that is exactly the reason why NATO is responding. We are responding with the biggest reinforcement of our collective defence since the end of the Cold War.
These statements show how NATO planning for a horrific war against Russia has continued behind the backs of the people throughout the US presidential election campaign. Military deployments and war preparations by the Pentagon and the general staffs of the various European countries are set to go ahead, moreover, whatever the outcome of the election in the United States and those slated for 2017 in the European NATO countries.
Stoltenberg's vague attack on Russian propaganda in Europe is an allusion to the instinctive opposition to war that exists in the European and international working class and popular distrust of the anti-Russian propaganda promoted by NATO officials like Stoltenberg and West.
Last year, a Pew poll found broad international opposition to NATO participation in a conventional war against Russia in Eastern Europe, even in a scenario that assumes Russia started the conflict. Under these hypothetical conditions, 58 percent of Germans, 53 percent of French people, and 51 percent of Italians opposed any military action against Russia. Opposition to war in the poll would doubtless have been higher had pollsters mentioned that NATO's decision to attack Russian forces in Eastern Europe could lead to nuclear war.
This opposition is rooted in deep disaffection with the imperialist Middle East wars of the post-Soviet period and the memory of two world wars in Europe in the 20th century. The arguments Stoltenberg presented against it are politically fraudulent.
The primary threat of military aggression and war in Europe comes not from Russia, but from the NATO countries. Over the past 25 years, the imperialist powers of NATO have bombed and invaded countries in Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Within Europe, they bombed Serbia and Kosovo in the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, pushed NATOs borders hundreds of miles to the East, and backed a violent, fascist-led putsch to topple a pro-Russian government in Ukraine in 2014.
The aggressive character of NATO policy emerged once again last Friday, when NBC News reported that US cyber warfare units had hacked key Russian electricity, Internet and military networks. These are now vulnerable to attack by secret American cyber weapons should the US deem it necessary, NBC stated.
Russian officials denounced the activities highlighted in the report and the Obama White House's silence on the matter. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, If no official reaction from the American administration follows, it would mean state cyber terrorism exists in the US. If the threats of the attack, which were published by the US media, are carried out, Moscow would be justified in charging Washington.
The geo-strategically disastrous consequences of the Stalinist bureaucracy's dissolution of the Soviet Union and restoration of capitalism in Eastern Europe are ever more apparent. With NATO troops or proxy forces stationed in a geographic belt extending from the Baltic republics to Poland, Ukraine and Romaniaeither a short distance from or on Russia's bordersNATO is now poised for a major war against Russia that could escalate into a nuclear conflagration.
An examination of Stoltenbergs remarks shows that NATOs plans are not defensive preparations to counter a sudden conventional invasion of Europe by the Russian army. In such a scenario, Russian tank columns would overrun the few thousand or tens of thousands of troops in NATOs various emergency response forces, depriving the broader ranks of NATO follow-up forces the 60 to 180 days they need to mobilize.
Rather, the plan for mobilizing successive layers of follow-on forces is intended to allow NATO to threaten Russia in a crisis situation by gradually bringing to bear more and more of its collective military strength, which, although split between 28 member states, outweighs that of Russia. Russia's population of 145 million is far smaller than that of the NATO countries, at 906 million.
The aggressive character of NATOs agenda is illustrated by a report issued last month by the CIA-linked Rand Corporation think tank on the military situation in the Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The small military forces NATO has posted in the Baltic republics, Rand wrote, are inviting a devastating war, rather than deterring it. They calculated that Russian forces, if they actually invaded, could overrun these countries in approximately 60 hours.
On this basis, the think tank called for launching a vast NATO military build-up in the Baltic republics, virtually at the gates of St. Petersburg. It wrote that it would take a force of about seven brigades, including three heavy armored brigadesadequately supported by air power, land-based fires, and other enablers on the ground and ready to fight at the onset of hostilities to prevent the rapid overrun of the Baltic states. This would cost the NATO countries $2.7 billion each year.
As the NATO countries intensify their threats against Russia, there are increasingly bitter conflicts among the NATO imperialist powers themselves. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi bluntly opposed new sanctions on Russia as called for by Washington at last month's European Union summit in Brussels, and there are deepening tensions between Germany and the United States as officials in Berlin and Paris call for an independent EU military.
Prospects of increased US-led military provocations against Russia are sharpening tensions within Europe. In an article titled Whether Clinton or Trump wins, for Germany things will get uncomfortable, German news magazine Der Spiegel warned of the long-term implications of an aggressive US-led policy against Russia, which it assumed would continue regardless which of the two candidates secured the White House.
The magazine wrote, The motto will be: If you want (nuclear) US protection from Putin, you must either pay us more money or re-arm yourself.
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WASHINGTON — Ed White has had a devilish time getting his painkiller prescription filled for intense back pain since a federal crackdown on opioid sales battened down the pharmacy shelves at the Walgreens near his home in Port Richey, Fla. Across the state in Fort Lauderdale, Maureen Kielian just put her son into a residential treatment facility to try to break his opioid addiction. To suggest that the federal authorities have been too aggressive amid an opioid epidemic killing 29, 000 people a year is absurd, she said. Faced with these competing stories, Congress has whipsawed between ensuring access to narcotic painkillers for people like Mr. White and addressing the addiction epidemic linked to those drugs, one that has become the leading cause of injury death, surpassing motor vehicle fatalities in 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For now, Washington appears ready to allow opioid prescriptions to remain widely accessible, a victory for pharmacies, drug makers and, lawmakers say, consumers — and instead focus on the treatment of addiction, not its source. The House and the Senate passed bills this spring that would, among other things, bolster prescription drug monitoring and treatment and programs fund drug disposal efforts and assist states that want to expand the availability of the drug naloxone, which helps reverse overdoses. Even though their differences have yet to be worked out, lawmakers in both chambers are trumpeting those actions, banking on them to bolster their prospects. More quietly, Congress passed and President Obama signed a very different measure last month that curtailed Drug Enforcement Administration powers to pursue pharmacies and wholesalers that the agency believes have contributed to the epidemic. Mr. White, 67, said the law was crucial. “The crackdown by the D. E. A. has gone too far,” he said. Advocates of a stronger response are incredulous. “I’m shocked that Congress and the president would constrain D. E. A. from taking on corporate drug dealers in the midst of the worst addiction epidemic in U. S. history,” said Dr. Andrew Kolodny, the director of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing and an addiction specialist. “This law allows opioid distributors to reap enormous profits and operate with impunity at the public’s expense. ” Congress’s actions have sought to balance the conflicting demands of chain pharmacies such as CVS and Walgreens and drug distribution companies like Cardinal Health and McKesson with the victims of an epidemic that has ravaged some of the poorest parts of the country — but also some of the most politically sensitive, like Ohio and New Hampshire. Chain pharmacies and drug distributors say their businesses have been disrupted and profits hurt by D. E. A. investigators who have ordered immediate closures of pharmacies deemed regional destinations for addicts seeking a fix. “The D. E. A. has employed the same tactics to take down international drug cartels and other criminals as it does to combat prescription drug abuse,” said John Gray, the president of the Healthcare Distribution Management Association, a trade organization for drug wholesalers. But past and present agency officials complain that they were steamrollered by a powerful lobby. “Under this law, the bad actors simply have to promise to be good, and we won’t take them to court to punish them for what they’ve already done,” said Joseph T. Rannazzisi, who retired in October after 11 years of directing the D. E. A. ’s office of diversion control. “It’s obvious that industry had a very strong hand in crafting this bill. ” To its sponsors, the new law is an uncontroversial clarification of when the right to distribute controlled substances can be suspended or revoked, a matter separate from the opioid addiction fight. It also establishes a process for federal agencies to go through in many cases before distribution centers can be shut down, giving them 30 days to rectify issues as they crop up in an attempt to reduce disruptions to patients. Written by Representatives Tom Marino, Republican of Pennsylvania, and Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, it passed the House in April by unanimous consent, a month after the Senate approved its version without objection. The Senate measure was equally bipartisan, drafted by Senator Orrin G. Hatch, a conservative Republican from Utah, and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a liberal Democrat from Rhode Island. “The D. E. A. has a big job,” Mr. Welch said. “I’d like to see them not having to waste their time on protocol issues with distribution centers, because that’s not where the problem exists. ” In a statement, Mr. Marino said, “Until now, clear comprehensive legislation that protected patients’ right to access necessary medication while stopping those who might abuse such drugs did not exist. ” For all the over a recent rash of opioid abuse bills — the House passed 18 measures last week after the Senate’s comprehensive version in March — Congress has yet to send a treatment measure to the president. And lawmakers are steeling themselves for the real fight: how to pay for it. The issue has become a surprisingly potent one, with some vulnerable Senate Republicans running for on their efforts to fight addiction and siding with Democrats in their chamber over House Republicans to make their point. Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio and a sponsor of the Senate bill, said his version was superior to the House’s in two areas: addiction prevention and new sources of funding that do not siphon money from other programs. And because many opioid addicts begin with prescription drugs, he said, Congress needs to approve some restrictions on who can write and fill prescriptions. The “one doctor, one pharmacy” provision in the Senate bill would cut down on doctor shopping and could counter any ill effects of curbing the D. E. A. ’s enforcement power. “That’s really narrowing your choices to people who know you, know what you need,” he said. Trying to strike a balance between access for the needy and restrictions to prevent abuse has bedeviled the fight against the opioid crisis since its beginnings. But as the annual death toll from the epidemic soared, those calling for greater restrictions seemed to have gained the upper hand, with new guidelines from the C. D. C. and greater restrictions on popular narcotics finalized by the Food and Drug Administration. The one law that has been enacted, called Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act of 2016, gives those arguing for greater access to these medications an unlikely lift. “It’s a significant blow to D. E. A. ’s enforcement authority, and that doesn’t make any sense to us,” said Carmen Catizone, the executive director of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy. As the lead agency in prosecuting a drug war that liberal and conservative politicians see as flawed, the D. E. A. has lost clout. The agency’s growing efforts to combat opioid abuse have also meant clashes with the powerful lobbies of drug makers and pharmacists. On Capitol Hill, Mr. Rannassizi became a symbol of the D. E. A. ’s recalcitrance, particularly after he suggested that lawmakers would be “supporting criminals” if they passed the measure. “This offends me immensely,” Mr. Marino, a former prosecutor, responded to Mr. Rannassizi at a 2014 hearing on an earlier version of the legislation. By passing the law, “Congress is sending the D. E. A. a message,” Mr. Marino said to the agency’s administrator, Michele M. Leonhart. “You should take a serious look at your regulatory culture and seek collaboration with legitimate companies that want to do the right thing. ” | 1 |
Uncovering a operation with a French connection, workers at a factory in southern France this week found a huge cache of cocaine worth approximately $56 million in a shipment of orange juice concentrate, according to news reports. The factory, which is in the town of Signes, near the Mediterranean coast, produces concentrates for various drinks. A spokesman for France said that employees notified the police and that the authorities had started an investigation, The Associated Press reported. The drug was hidden in bags among a delivery of orange juice concentrate and amounted to 370 kilograms, making it one of the largest such discoveries on French soil, the BBC reported. The shipment arrived in a container from South America. The prosecutor of Toulon, Xavier Tarabeux, called the find “a very bad surprise” and said it had a street value of 50 million euros, or about $56 million. Employees at the plant have been ruled out as being involved, a official said. “The first elements of the investigation have shown that employees are in no way involved,” Malgras, the company’s regional president, told the news website . Coca leaves were reportedly used in the original drink in the 19th century, although the company has said cocaine has never been an “added ingredient,” The A. P. said. | 1 |
Citizen journalism with a punch Clinton Suggested US Should Rig a Foreign Election — But Don't Expect the Media to Care Originally appeared at RT
Hillary Clinton has spent a disproportionate amount of time lately complaining — without evidence — about “the Russians” interfering with the US election. But it turns out that interfering in foreign elections is totally fine if you’re the United States.
Clinton has used this notion of Russian interference as a non-stop talking point throughout her campaign. Any and all scandals she has faced have been blamed on Moscow, and she has used alleged Russian involvement as a convenient distraction. Her supporters have enthusiastically adopted the talking point. In light of the FBI’s decision to reopen the investigation into her use of a private email server, one congressman actually suggested that Russia may be behind the FBI’s decision. Yes, Russia has now infiltrated the FBI, which is working with Vladimir Putin to elect Trump and destroy Hillary. It’s all a massive conspiracy.
So, you would think given her apparent distaste for other countries supposedly meddling in the American electoral process, that Clinton wouldn’t have been caught on tape suggesting very candidly to a group of journalists that the US should have rigged a foreign election.
But she was. The tape is from a 2006 meeting Clinton held with the editorial board of the Jewish Press when she was running for re-election as senator for New York. Here is the quote in full, so there can be no accusations of taking it out of context:
“I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake — and if we were going to push for an election, then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win.”
That’s right. Clinton suggested the US should have made sure the outcome of a Palestinian election went in its favor. She was referring to the 2006 election for the second Palestinian Legislative Council, which saw the US-favored Fatah lose to Hamas (45 seats to 74 seats).
This is one of those stories that will be largely ignored or played down by the American media, which favor Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, and see it as their duty to get her elected. If Trump had made the same remarks, we would never hear the end of it. No doubt, some will try to water down the comment and imply that Clinton didn’t really mean what she said. But there is frankly no other way to interpret her words. This is Hillary Clinton casually suggesting that the US should have rigged a foreign election in its favor.
How else can you “determine” the outcome of an election before it happens? How else can you be “sure” who is going to win in advance? All the polling data in the world could end up being wrong — so unless you do something unsavory to fully ensure the outcome, then there’s no way you can be “sure” of anything. But don’t hold your breath waiting for journalists to push Clinton on what exactly she had in mind when she said the US should have done “something” about it.
Eli Chomsky, the journalist that released the tape, told the Observer that in the 2006 meeting with Clinton, he was surprised that “anyone could support the idea — offered by a national political leader, no less — that the US should be in the business of fixing foreign elections.” Chomsky’s bosses at the Jewish Press at the time felt the comments were not “newsworthy,” and so they weren’t published. In reality, he admitted, they simply didn’t want to offend Clinton should they need her “down the road.” Convinced it was in fact newsworthy, Chomsky held on to the tape for 10 years.
Clinton’s casual suggestion to influence an election in the US’ favor takes on more significance in light of the revelations that her campaign was working with the ‘neutral’ Democratic National Committee (DNC) to ensure she won the presidential nomination over Bernie Sanders.
Strangely enough, as the Observer also noted, in answering a question about the US talking to its enemies, the Clinton of 2006 sounded more like the Donald Trump of 2016. Asked if it was “worth talking to Syria,” she said that she didn’t see how it could hurt to talk to your adversaries, citing the fact that the US and the Soviet Union never stopped talking to each other. She continued: “But if you say, ‘they’re evil, we’re good, [and] we’re never dealing with them,’ I think you give up a lot of the tools that you need to have in order to defeat them…”
This is particularly odd because Clinton in recent years has been one of the biggest cheerleaders of the ‘Russia is evil and America is good’ ideology. But again, don’t expect Clinton to be questioned rigorously on any of this. American journalists only have 10 days left to get her elected. They’re not going to bother worrying about irrelevancies like the fact that she’s evidently totally fine with foreign election rigging.
You really couldn’t make this stuff up. Clinton spends months pretending to be outraged over Russia interfering in the US election (with no solid evidence), and then audio emerges of her unequivocally suggesting Washington should have rigged a Palestinian election. The level of hypocrisy and irony here is hard to fathom.
No doubt, one person who will enthusiastically pick the story up is Clinton’s opponent Donald Trump, who has been suggesting for months that she will somehow manage to rig the presidential election against him.
Clinton herself will probably find a way to pin the release of the tape on the Russians. | 0 |
BLANCHESTER, Ohio — A life of farming taught Roger Winemiller plenty about harsh twists of fate: hailstorms and drought, ragweed infestations and jittery crop prices. He hadn’t bargained on heroin. Then, in March 2016, Mr. Winemiller’s daughter, Heather Himes, 31, died of an opioid overdose at the family farmhouse, inside a bathroom overlooking fields of corn and soybeans. Mr. Winemiller was the one who unlocked the bathroom door and found her slumped over, a syringe by her side. Nine months later, Mr. Winemiller’s older son, Eugene, 37, who once drove trucks and tractors on the family’s farm, overdosed at his mother’s home. Family members and medics had been able to revive him after earlier overdoses. Not this one. Overdoses are churning through agricultural pockets of America like a plow through soil, tearing at rural communities and posing a new threat to the generational ties of families like the Winemillers. Farm bureaus’ attention to seed, fertilizer and subsidies has been diverted to discussions of overdoses. heroin support groups are popping up in rural towns where clinics and drug treatment centers are an hour’s drive away, and broaching public conversations about addiction and death that neighbors and even some families of the dead would prefer to keep out of view. And at the end of a long gravel driveway, Mr. Winemiller, 60, has been thinking about the uncertain seasons ahead. His last surviving son, Roger T. Winemiller, 35, spent years using prescription pain pills, heroin and methamphetamines, and was jailed for a year on drug charges. He is now in treatment and living with his father. The son dreams of taking over the farm someday. The father is wary. “Would I like to have one of my kids working the farm, side by side, carrying my load when I can’t?” Mr. Winemiller said. “Yes. But I’m a realist. ” Mr. Winemiller and a cousin inherited the farm in 1993 when an uncle died, and they own and run the business together. His surviving son has not used drugs for two months and says he is committed to recovery. But Mr. Winemiller says his first priority is “to keep the land intact. ” He worries about what could happen to the business if he turned over his share of the farm and his son relapsed — or worse — a year or a decade down the line. He also keeps a pouch of nasal spray in the living room now, just in case. The Winemillers live on the eastern edge of Clermont County, about an hour east of Cincinnati, where a suburban quilt of bedroom towns, office parks and small industry thins into woods and farmland, mostly for corn and soybeans. Apple orchards and pumpkin farms — now closed for the season — are tucked among clusters of small churches, small businesses and even smaller brick houses. Every so often, the roads wind past the gates of a big new mansion or subdivision being built in the woods. Jobs have returned to the area since the recession, and manufacturing businesses are popping up along the freeway that circles Cincinnati. The county’s unemployment rate is only 4. 1 percent, and every morning, the lanes of skinny country roads are packed with people heading to work. But the economic resilience has done little to insulate the area from a cascade of cheap heroin and synthetic opiates like fentanyl and carfentanil, an elephant tranquilizer, which have sent overdose rates soaring across much of the country, but especially in rural areas like this one. Drug overdoses here have nearly tripled since 1999, and the state as a whole has been ravaged. In Ohio, 2, 106 people died of opioid overdoses in 2014, more than in any other state, according to an analysis of the most recent federal data by the Kaiser Family Foundation. In rural Wayne Township, where the Winemillers and about 4, 900 other people live, the local fire department answered 18 overdose calls last year. Firefighters answered three in one week this winter, and said the spikes and lulls in their overdose calls gave them a feel for when particularly noxious batches of drugs were brought out to the countryside from Cincinnati or Dayton. They get overdose calls for people living inside the Edenton Rural School, a shuttered brick schoolhouse where officers have cleared away signs of meth production and found the flotsam of drug use on the floors. “I don’t think we’re winning the battle,” said David Moulden, the fire chief. “It gives you a hopelessness. ” Mr. Moulden is a good friend of Mr. Winemiller’s and responded to the 911 calls last March, then again last December, when Heather and Eugene died of overdoses. He was also on the call 10 days before Eugene’s death, when medics revived him using a dose of naloxone, which blocks the brain’s opiate receptors. “Sooner or later, you know they’re going to be found too late,” Mr. Moulden said. It was a rainy Wednesday, 9 a. m. Time for the drive to take the younger Roger to the probation office, then a more to take him to his drug treatment clinic. The men sank into the leather seats of Mr. Winemiller’s Chevy Tahoe and skimmed along the wet roads. The younger Roger’s driver’s license had been revoked, so this was now the routine. And, experts say, it is part of what makes addiction treatment so complicated in rural areas: Counseling centers and doctors who can prescribe medications are often an hour’s drive away, in communities with little public transportation. “Even if you realize you’ve got a problem and are interested in seeking treatment, the treatment centers have not been there, the professionals have not been there,” said Tom Vilsack, the Agriculture Department secretary under President Barack Obama. Last year, he led an administration effort to grapple with rural opioid use. “You don’t have access to A. A. meetings seven days a week,” he said. “You’re lucky if you’ve got one a week, or you’ve got to drive 25 miles to get to one. ” Spring was coming, and Mr. Winemiller would soon be receiving the seeds for the year’s soybean crop. His days were looser now, but soon he would be leaving the house at 5 or 6 a. m. and returning at 11 p. m. “Once I get busy in the field, I ain’t going to have time for this stuff,” he said. “Hopefully I get my license back,” the younger Mr. Winemiller said. “If not, I’ll have to find a way up there. ” He added, a bit ruefully, “Set you up for failure. ” The younger Mr. Winemiller said that being back in the farmhouse had helped save his life by yanking him away from old patterns and temptations. He started working on the farm when he was 12, driving tractors even though his father had to attach pieces of wood to the pedals so his legs would reach. “I want to get back to it. That’s the whole idea,” he said. “It’s in my blood. It’s the family name. I’ve done enough to disgrace our name. I want to do everything I can to mend it. ” Death has pulled the men closer, but at home, arguments erupt over whether each understands what the other is going through. The son says he is grieving just as much as his father. The father says he is in recovery just as much as his son. Quietly, apart from his son, Mr. Winemiller worries about leaving him alone in the farmhouse when his days in the fields resume. “I hate to say this, but because of his past, I don’t trust him,” he said. They pulled into the Clinton County Adult Probation offices for the son’s drug test, then set out again for the drive to a new treatment center where he gets counseling and doses of buprenorphine, which can help addicts stay off opioids by keeping them from experiencing cravings and withdrawal. The son was starting to feel anxious and queasy. He cracked open the car window. “I’m going to get carsick,” he said. “I’ve got to take my medicine soon. ” He slipped one of the tiny strips into his mouth. Better. Their conversation curled like a river as they drove. Mr. Winemiller was concerned about the low prices of crops like soybeans and corn. His son talked about an intervention the two of them had staged just down the road a few nights earlier — talking about their own losses and the younger Roger’s treatment — after a neighbor overdosed at his family’s home. The younger man pointed at the red sign of a budget motel: “I used to buy drugs there. ” He said he had bought from dealers who drove out to the countryside for a day and set up “trap houses” in trailers or apartments where they would sell to all comers. He and his father talked about motorbikes, weather and politics. The elder Mr. Winemiller, who was among the 68 percent of voters in the county who supported Donald J. Trump for president, was rankled by scenes of political protest on the news. He saw only disorder and lawlessness. “There are too many people who are too wrapped up in their lives. All they want to do is go out, bitch and complain,” he said. “My view on Donald Trump, he’s what this country needed years ago: someone that’s . ” He likes the toughness. After his son and daughter died, he began meeting with sheriffs and politicians at forums dedicated to the opioid crisis, urging harsher penalties, such as manslaughter charges for people who sell fatal hits of opioids. As they drove, from the probation office to McDonald’s for breakfast, from Blanchester to Wilmington to Xenia, the men talked less about the past and the grief that shadows their days. The three siblings grew up in the countryside and went straight to work after high school. Each had yearslong drug problems, cycling through stretches of using and sobriety. The younger Mr. Winemiller said he and Eugene had been best friends who shared everything, drug habits included. They drank and smoked pot in high school and used methamphetamines, painkillers after operations and injuries, and ultimately heroin. “We all partied together,” he said. The older Mr. Winemiller said his daughter’s drug use was rooted in anxieties, stresses and an academic and social tailspin that began in high school. She had been in recovery for about three years when she began to use again early last year, he said. She came to stay at the farmhouse on March 26, a day after three acquaintances of hers were arrested on heroin charges at a motel in the nearby town of Hillsboro. He said he went to the garage to get her a Coke, she excused herself to the bathroom, and he was overcome by a terrible dread when he sat back down in the living room. “I knocked on the door, and there was no answer,” he said. At her funeral, the younger Mr. Winemiller said, the two brothers stood by the coffin, “telling each other how we had to make it for our parents. ” Paul Casteel, the senior minister at the Blanchester Church of Christ, conducted the services at Eugene Winemiller’s funeral. The next day, he led another funeral for another man who had died of an overdose. People live here because they like knowing their neighbors and raising their children close to extended families, Mr. Casteel said. But heroin has turned that closeness on its head. “When somebody ends up into drugs, you’re going to know them,” he said. “You know everybody. To be honest, I wanted to stay out of it, just concentrate on the church. But we just kept getting hit. ” By early afternoon, the father and son, done with their appointments, climbed into the Tahoe and headed home down State Route 380. They smoked and listened to contemporary country play softly on the radio, and made plans for their next trip to the probation office in two days’ time. | 1 |
Politics Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (Photo by AP)
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will pay an official one-day visit to Russia for talks on the Syrian crisis.
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said on Wednesday that the top diplomat is due in Moscow on Friday.
He said that Zarif is scheduled to attend a trilateral meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem on regional developments, including the conflict in Syria.
According to Qassemi, Zarif will also hold a separate meeting with Lavrov to discuss Tehran-Moscow relations.
Meanwhile, Russia's RIA news agency, citing the Russian Foreign Ministry, reported that Zarif and Lavrov will also discuss the situation in Iraq.
Muallem's scheduled visit on Friday had earlier been announced by the Russian Foreign Ministry.
Iran and Russia have similar stances on the ongoing deadly crisis in Syria. Moscow and Tehran reject any foreign interference in the affairs of the war-hit country, stressing that only the Syrians are entitled to decide their own fate.
Iran has been providing military advisory assistance to the Syrian government in its campaign against terrorism.
Russia has also been carrying out airstrikes against terrorists' positions in Syria since September last year at the official request of the Damascus government.
Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. Over 400,000 people have so far been killed in the conflict, according to estimates by UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura .
In neighboring Iraq, the Arab country’s army is also pressing ahead with a massive operation aimed at recapturing Mosul from Daesh Takfiri terrorists, who captured the strategic city in June 2014.
The army has been liberating more areas aroundMosul, with the Iraqi Joint Operations Command announcing that counter-terrorism units were only two kilometers away from the city. Loading ... | 0 |
There’s nothing like a flight to get you over a fear of flying. At least that was the case for me after my first trip to South Africa to visit the family of the woman who eventually became my wife. At 28, I was still pretty new to flying, and spending the better part of an entire day trapped in an airborne steel tube was just what I needed to stop worrying and learn to love the miracle of air travel. O. K. the truth is, I still don’t love to fly. But after that first marathon ride from New York to Johannesburg, which is among the longest flights in existence, my focus has at least shifted from how to survive to how to make the long haul as painless as possible. The simplest way to guarantee a decent meal and some legroom is to upgrade to first class, but if you don’t have the luxury of spending a few hundred extra for premium seats, all is not lost. “Most air carriers configure their economy cabins with slightly more legroom and added amenities,” said Patrick Smith, a pilot who is author of “Cockpit Confidential: Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel. ” These amenities typically include free access to entertainment consoles, meals and alcoholic beverages. In other words, airlines are not completely evil, and are less likely to you during flights. That also applies to legroom. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of leg space available in economy class during my first long haul to South Africa. But this does vary by airline. South African Airways has roomier seats (by one to two inches) on its nonstop flight from New York to Johannesburg than any other airline that flies between those two cities, according to Routehappy. com, a useful site that allows you to compare amenities before booking. Consider Seatguru. com when trying to find the most comfortable seat. But these freebies and a little extra legroom will get you only so far. A smartly packed bag is essential. “A big mistake is expecting the flight attendants to take care of everything for you,” said Kara Mulder, a flight attendant who chronicles her experiences on her blog, The Flight Attendant Life. Ms. Mulder recommends taking your own water, a sweatshirt and socks to keep you warm (I never fly without my hoodie) and some of your favorite healthy snacks. “Don’t just eat the free food the flight attendants serve because it’s there,” Ms. Mulder said. “Your body will respond differently to different foods when at altitude. ” Dry oatmeal and dried fruit are favorites of Ms. Mulder. I’ve found trail mix and protein and granola bars to be safe and sustainable options. I’ve also learned not to be shy. If you napped your way through mealtime or did not pack enough water, take a walk to where the flight attendants are and ask for what you need. You still have 13 hours to go. Nothing puts a damper on a vacation like a blood clot in the knee. Studies have found that travel increases the risk of venous thromboembolism, and that height is an additional risk factor, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s still a rare condition, but the C. D. C. recommends “ambulation,” which is a fancy word for walking and thigh exercises, and suggests aisle seats for those who are particularly tall. Even if you’re not concerned about a blood clot, walking and stretching will make you less miserable in general, and there is plenty you can do without even leaving your seat. How about a little yoga at 39, 000 feet? “When it comes to a physical release, the yoga exercises help right away,” said Kajuan Douglas, a yoga instructor in New York City. “ You feel the physical stretch, and it’s like you have just awakened from sleep. ” You do not have to be a yogi to benefit from these stretches. The simplest ones can bring instant satisfaction. For beginners, Mr. Douglas recommends the “Locust Bind” stretch, which involves interlacing your fingers behind your back and drawing your shoulder blades toward each other, and “seated twisting,” placing your hand on your opposite knee or thigh and twisting from the upper back. It may seem hard to do when the toddler behind you is kicking your seat or your neighbor is snoring. “To help overcome these difficulties, I bring more awareness to my breath or add a simple mantra,” Mr. Douglas said. “Simply recite ‘inhale let, exhale go’ ” mentally as you breathe. ” If there is a silver lining to having 16 hours to kill, it’s that you can at least get something accomplished like work or reading that novel you’ve yet to make a dent in. But it’s not as easy as it sounds, especially if you do not plan ahead. You may be distracted by turbulence or the drink cart rolling by, and that first gin and tonic leads to another. Before you know it, you’re poking at the entertainment console and pondering which Adam Sandler movie you haven’t already seen 10 times. “I’m an author and blogger who writes about air travel,” Mr. Smith said, “but I find it almost impossible to get anything done, even with my subject matter all around me. ” Compartmentalizing your time is the way to go, and can make the flight feel much shorter. “Devote blocks of time to certain tasks,” Mr. Smith said. “Pick out a couple of movies to watch that’s three or four hours right there. Spend a couple of hours reading, then a couple of hours napping if you can, and so on. ” If you are intent on getting work done, you could try something like the Pomodoro Technique, which divides work into intervals and separates them by short breaks. “I can be on a flight and not watch one movie from the plane’s entertainment system sometimes, simply because I planned out my tasks and airplane relax time so well,” Ms. Mulder said. “Those are good flights. ” That still feels like an oxymoron to folks like me but less so these days. | 1 |
JERUSALEM — A day after approving the construction of a new settlement in the West Bank for the first time in more than 20 years, Israel announced a new, if ambiguous, settlement policy on Friday “out of consideration for the positions of President Trump” and, it said, to enable progress in the peace process with Palestinians. Israel said it was taking steps to “significantly rein in the footprint” of the settlements, allowing construction within all its existing settlements in the occupied West Bank but limiting, “wherever possible,” their expansion into new territory. How the new policy might translate on the ground was largely left open to interpretation. The Palestinians, like most of the rest of the world, oppose any Israeli construction in the occupied territories. Saeb Erekat, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinians’ chief negotiator, furiously rejected the Israeli settlement policy. “All Israeli settlements are illegal,’’ he said, “and we are not going to accept any formula that aims at legitimizing the presence of Israeli colonies on occupied Palestinian land. ” Mr. Trump has called for curbs in settlement construction as part of an ambitious push to revive talks to end the conflict. In an interview published in February in the Hebrew edition of Israel Hayom, a newspaper considered supportive of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mr. Trump said he wanted Israel “to act reasonably,” after a series of Israeli moves to approve thousands of housing units for new settlers. “There is limited remaining territory,” Mr. Trump added. “Every time you take land for a settlement, less territory remains. ” Days later, during a meeting between the two leaders at the White House, Mr. Trump made a public request to hold off on settlements. But on Friday, the White House gave no signal that it was troubled by Israel’s latest settlement move. At a White House briefing on Friday, officials said they did not want to discuss the settlement question and did not anticipate that it would be a focal point of discussions over the next week. That was despite the fact that on Friday the administration was preparing for separate visits by President Abdel Fattah of Egypt and King Abdullah II of Jordan to the White House next week — both leaders of countries often affected by tensions between Palestinians and Israelis. While Mr. Sisi has not yet made Israeli policy toward the Palestinians a major concern, King Abdullah faces a more delicate domestic situation where assertive Israeli actions often generate protests. Worried about a public backlash, King Abdullah raced to Washington shortly after Mr. Trump took office to buttonhole the new president at a prayer breakfast and implore him not to move the American Embassy to Jerusalem, as he had promised on the campaign trail. Mr. Trump has obliged and delayed any embassy move while he reconsiders the matter. Since then, Jerusalem and Washington have negotiated to try to reach an understanding on slowing or curbing settlement construction. During the Obama administration, Israel’s settlement activity was the source of constant friction. Secretary of State John Kerry harshly rebuked Israel in December while vigorously defending a United States decision to abstain from a United Nations vote condemning Israel on the settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. But Israel’s latest policy announcement was likely to have been coordinated with the White House. Since the February meeting with Mr. Netanyahu, American and Israeli officials have been working to reach a more formal understanding on slowing or curbing settlement construction. And there appears to be some understanding that Mr. Netanyahu would be allowed to fulfill his earlier promise to compensate 40 families evicted from the illegal hilltop outpost of Amona by building them a new community. Mr. Netanyahu has been walking a fine line between the new Trump administration, with which he wants to remain on good terms, and the right wing of his governing coalition, which has been pressuring him to increase construction and, in particular, to reject any freeze on building in certain areas. The ministers were silent on Friday. The Yesha Council, the umbrella body representing the roughly 400, 000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank, expressed cautious optimism but, reflecting the ambiguity of the new policy, said it would be monitoring the Israeli government closely to see if new building plans came to fruition. Most of the world considers Israeli settlement activity in the territories captured from Jordan in 1967 to be a violation of international law. Israel considers the territories disputed and says the fate of the settlements must be decided in peace talks. Most informal peace plans have envisaged border adjustments that would allow Israel to retain some of the major settlement blocs, especially those close to the 1967 boundaries, under any permanent agreement with the Palestinians, in return for land swaps. The new policy announced on Friday made no explicit distinction between the blocs and the outlying settlements, in deference to the settlement advocates. It said that Israel would continue construction, where possible, within already developed areas of the settlements, and where that was not possible, would build adjacent to the last line of construction. In cases where legal, security or topographical constraints made those scenarios impossible, new construction would be kept as close as possible to the existing areas. The boundaries of jurisdiction of some of the settlements are expansive, extending well beyond the areas. The new policy seems aimed at preventing the construction of new neighborhoods far away from existing buildings, long a settler tactic aimed at controlling larger swaths of West Bank land. But the new Israeli formula left the government much room for maneuver. While it might limit the territorial expansion of the settlements, it could also encourage an increase in the settler population by, for example, filling in available spaces with construction and by building more homes closer to existing amenities. “When you build neighborhoods adjacent to the area it encourages people to come,” said Shaul Arieli, an Israeli expert on political geography who prepared maps for past negotiations with the Palestinians and supports a solution. “They become part of the settlement and have access to its services. ” More settlers outside the settlement blocs would clearly make any eventual Israeli evacuation more difficult. But Mr. Arieli said that for supporters of the solution there were also advantages in the new policy, especially if new construction was mostly concentrated within the blocs, making them denser rather than spreading over a larger geographical area. “The question,” he said, “is where they will build. ” Peace Now, an Israeli advocacy group that opposes and monitors settlement construction, said the definition of “inside a settlement” could be quite flexible in the eyes of the settlers and the Israeli government, with “settlers looking to exploit the loopholes” in order to expand. “It is this argument over lines,” the group said in a statement, “that has led past U. S. administrations into the trap of seemingly endless and irresolvable negotiations over how to decide what it means to build ‘inside’ settlements. ” Under the pretense of restraint, and while trying to fool the international community, it said, the “Israeli government has drafted a policy that will allow it to continue and expand settlements without any limitations. ” | 1 |
BONAVISTA, Newfoundland — Shannon Mouland steadied himself in an aluminum boat, shotgun raised, as a murre skittered above the waters of the North Atlantic. Boom! And the bird cartwheeled into the sea. It’s “turr” season on The Rock, as this massive inkblot of an island is affectionately known. Turr is the local name for the murre, which looks something like a diminutive, flying penguin, and men in boats are blasting away at it in the only legal, hunt of migratory seabirds in North America. The pastime harks back to the days when Newfoundlanders supplemented meager winter diets with fresh meat on the wing, eating everything from clownish puffins to the great northern gannet. Conservation efforts gradually put most of the island’s estimated 350 seabird species off limits. But the taste for turr was so entrenched that allowing the hunt to continue became a precondition for Newfoundland to join Canada in 1949. “Our fathers would come back with the boats piled high with turr,” Mr. Mouland recalled, gripping a green rope to steady himself as the boat hammered over the steely waves. Here along Newfoundland’s treeless, coast, hardy men (and some women) rise before dawn and motor their boats out into the open sea in search of the birds that come to feed on small forage fish. They are remarkable animals, spending most of their lives on the ocean and visiting land only to pack tightly together on the rocky cliffs of northeastern Canada and Greenland for a few months each summer while the females lay their one speckled blue egg. The eggs are pointed on one end so that they roll like a top in a tight circle, preventing them from falling off cliff ledges and into the sea. The murres’ short wings act as flippers underwater, allowing them to swim nimbly and swiftly in search of fish. They are the flying birds in the world, capable of plummeting as deep as 600 feet in little more than a minute. But those wings make them less agile in the air and slow to take off from the water, leaving them an easy target for hunters. “Turr!” Mr. Mouland shouted, pointing to his left, and Jerry Hussey, clad in a forest green slicker and matching overalls, swung the boat toward a small bird bobbing in the waves 100 feet away. Boom, again. Mr. Mouland picked the bird out of the water and whacked its head against the gunwale to ensure that it was dead. Before long, a plastic bin in the boat was lined with the birds, their snowy white breasts and sleek heads flecked with blood. The Canadian Wildlife Service estimates that about 100, 000 murres are killed in the hunt each year. But the common murre population in Canada has increased over the past 15 years, while the murre population remains stable. There are millions more murres elsewhere, making the genus one of the Artic’s most abundant seabirds. But as the hunt intensifies, many people are beginning to ask whether the annual cull needs better regulation. “Just because we don’t have evidence of the population decreasing doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have strong conservation rules,” said Bill Montevecchi, an ornithologist at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He supports the hunt but believes existing rules should be enforced more seriously. In the old days, men hunted murres in rowboats with shotguns, sending their dogs into the frigid water to fetch the fallen prey. Now, many hunters have boats that cut through sea ice, and outboard engines that can move boats faster than the birds. While regulations prohibit guns from being loaded with more than three shells at a time, most hunters these days use or semiautomatic shotguns that can fire those rounds in seconds. The murre hunt has a long tradition in Newfoundland, where seabirds, from great auks to eiders, provided sailors with protein after the long voyage from Europe. Eating seabirds and seals later sustained coastal populations through Newfoundland’s long, frozen winters. Murres and eiders were the most available sources of winter protein until the 1960s, when electricity and refrigeration changed eating habits. Before then, some families consumed as many as 400 birds a year. When Newfoundland became a province, it fell under the Migratory Bird Treaty between the United States and Canada, which would have outlawed the hunt if the two countries had not agreed to let it continue. The treaty was finally amended in the 1990s to specifically grant Newfoundland residents the right to hunt murres. Under the treaty, hunters must buy permits, and Canada’s environmental protection agency carved Newfoundland into four zones with progressively later murre hunting seasons that run from September to March. The regulations set a limit on what each hunter can kill in a day, and a limit on how many a hunter can possess at one time. But enforcement is lax, and abuses are common. Discarded carcasses reported around Newfoundland suggest that some hunters are killing more than the law allows or than they can consume. The most hunters now follow the season from zone to zone with their boats on trailers. It is not uncommon for there to be more than 100 boats chasing murres off Newfoundland’s narrow bays, the boom of shotguns ricocheting over the water. Newfoundlanders are well aware of the dangers of overexploitation. A mariner, Sir Richard Whitbourne, wrote in 1622 that great auks, a flightless relative of the murre, were found in “infinite abundance” along the Newfoundland coast. But by the century, the birds had been clubbed to extinction, their feathers used to stuff mattresses. The less numerous Labrador duck and Eskimo curlew suffered the same fate. Some people worry that murres may become vulnerable as global warming and overfishing deplete their food supply. Hundreds of thousands of murres died of apparent starvation in the northeastern Pacific Ocean earlier this year, the largest recorded of the species. Some murre colonies in Greenland, where hunters are allowed to target nesting birds, were wiped out decades ago and show no signs of recovering. Without stricter regulations to prevent overhunting, critics warn, a sudden environmental shock could send Newfoundland’s murre population plummeting. That frustrates Mr. Mouland and his friends, who say they are already fenced in by too many rules. They cannot, for example, catch two species of fish in one boat, even if they have a license for each. “There’s food in your front yard, but you’re not allowed to take it,” Mr. Hussey said. Still, there is a sense of resignation that more rules are coming. “The law’s going to get stricter,” muttered Darren Abbot, painstakingly plucking pinfeathers from one of the dead birds in Mr. Mouland’s work shed. “They claim turrs are getting a little bit scarce. ” Mike Fleming, preparing a bowl of stuffing, responded with an expletive. “Some years they don’t migrate this way, but this year is a phenomenal year,” he said, his hands mixing bread, chopped onions and a sprinkling of savory, Newfoundland’s most popular herb. The men fell into a spirited discussion about bureaucrats who make rules from offices far away without having ever spent time on the ocean. “They don’t like any hunt, but they like their Kentucky fried,” Mr. Fleming said, adding that he thought it was more humane for a murre to live its life in the wild and be shot than for a chicken to live its life in a tiny cage and be slaughtered. Mr. Hussey said his family ate what he had killed or caught five nights a week. Murre is on the table once or twice a month. As the men bantered among themselves, the conversation became increasingly unintelligible to an outsider: Newfoundland’s rural accent is a thick stew of Irish and West Country English inflection, with a dash of Gaelic and French, that has bubbled together during a couple of hundred years of isolation. Mr. Mouland put the birds in the oven, and the men turned to filleting the day’s catch of cod. Though the stuffed birds weigh only about two pounds each, they take two or three hours of roasting before they are tender. One local joke is that you put a turr and a rock into a pot, and when the rock is soft, you know the turr is done. Eventually, Mr. Mouland appeared back in the shed with the “scoff o’ turr,” as a meal of the bird is called here. The men dug in unceremoniously, slicing and forking and salting big bites until there was little left of two birds but bones and a bit of gravy. The meat is dark and oily and has a fishy aftertaste that divides fans from foes along fairly stark lines. But the rich protein is full of vitamin E and fatty acids concentrated from the birds’ steady diet of fish. It’s no wonder that it became a principal part of the winter regimen. Mr. Fleming recounted an old joke about a man who complains that the turr is tough. The retort: “It’d be a lot tougher if there was nothing to eat!” | 1 |
Three physicists born in Britain but now working in the United States were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for research into the bizarre properties of matter in extreme states, including superconductors, superfluids and thin magnetic films. David J. Thouless of the University of Washington was awarded half of the prize of 8 million Swedish kronor, or about $930, 000, while F. Duncan M. Haldane of Princeton University and J. Michael Kosterlitz of Brown University shared the other half. The scientists relied on advanced mathematical models to study “theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter,” in the words of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. Their studies may have major applications in electronics, materials science and computing. In an email, Michael S. Turner, a physicist at the University of Chicago, described the work as “truly transformational, with consequences both practical and fundamental. ” The three laureates sought to understand matter that is so cold or so thin that weird quantum effects overpower the random atomic jostling that dominates ordinary existence. Superconductivity, in which all electrical resistance vanishes in matter, is one example of such an effect. Dr. Thouless and Dr. Kosterlitz worked together at the University of Birmingham in the 1970s to investigate what happens when films of matter shift from one exotic phase, like superconductivity, to another. The key to their success was something called topology, a branch of mathematics focused on the fundamental shapes of things. At the Nobel news conference in Stockholm, Thors Hans Hansson, a member of the Nobel physics committee, tried to illustrate topology by holding up a cinnamon bun, a bagel and a pretzel. To a topologist, he said, the only difference between them is the number of holes, as opposed to the characteristics an average person might notice, like saltiness or sweetness. There is no such thing as half a hole, the topologist would note, and the number of holes only changes stepwise in integers. Likewise, the macroscopic properties of exotic matter change in stepwise “quantum leaps” if the materials involved are thin or small enough that their behavior is determined by the strange rules that govern the behavior of atoms. An example is the quantum Hall effect, in which the electrical resistance of a thin film changes in stepwise fashion. In 1983, Dr. Thouless was able to link these changes mathematically to the Chern numbers — after the mathematician Chern — that characterize topological shapes. Dr. Haldane used a similar technique to analyze the properties of chains of atoms so skinny that they could be considered threads. Someday, they may be the basis of a new kind of computer. In the last decade, this work has led to the development of materials called topological insulators, which conduct electricity on their surfaces but not inside. “They have ignited a firestorm of research, and although applications are still yet to come, I believe it’s only a matter of time before their research leads to advances as unimaginable to us now as lasers and computer chips were a hundred years ago,” said Laura H. Greene, of the American Physical Society. Dr. Thouless, 82, was born in Bearsden, Scotland, was an undergraduate at Cambridge University and received a Ph. D. in 1958 from Cornell. From 1965 to 1978, he taught mathematical physics at the University of Birmingham in England, where he collaborated with Dr. Kosterlitz. In 1980, he joined the University of Washington in Seattle, where he is now an emeritus professor. Dr. Haldane, 65, was born in London. He received his Ph. D. from Cambridge, where he was also an undergraduate, in 1978. He worked at the Institut in Grenoble, France the University of Southern California Bell Laboratories and the University of California, San Diego, before joining the Princeton faculty in 1990. Dr. Kosterlitz, 73, was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, and received his doctorate in physics from Oxford University in 1969. He has worked at the University of Birmingham the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Turin, Italy and Cornell, Princeton, Bell Laboratories and Harvard. “I was very surprised and very gratified,” Dr. Haldane, whom the Nobel committee reached by phone Tuesday morning, told reporters at the news conference in Stockholm. “The work was a long time ago, but it’s only now that a lot of tremendous new discoveries are based on this original work and have extended it. ” Dr. Kosterlitz told The Associated Press that he had gotten the news while heading to lunch in Helsinki, Finland, where he is a visiting professor at Aalto University. “I’m a little bit dazzled,” he said. “I’m still trying to take it in. ” He said that he was in his 20s when he began studying materials and that his “complete ignorance” was an advantage in challenging the established science. “I didn’t have any preconceived ideas,” he said. “I was young and stupid enough to take it on. ” Yoshinori Ohsumi, a Japanese cell biologist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for his discoveries on how cells recycle their content, a process known as autophagy, a Greek term for “ . ” Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald were named last year for discovering that the enigmatic subatomic particles known as neutrinos have mass. Four more will be awarded in the coming days: ■ The Nobel Prize in Chemistry will be announced on Wednesday in Sweden. Read about last year’s winners, Tomas Lindahl, Paul L. Modrich and Aziz Sancar. ■ The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday in Norway. Read about last year’s winner, the National Dialogue Quartet of Tunisia. ■ The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science will be announced on Monday, Oct. 10, in Sweden. Read about last year’s winner, Angus Deaton. ■ The Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced on Thursday, Oct. 13, in Sweden. Read about last year’s winner, Svetlana Alexievich. | 1 |
It was the week before Thanksgiving when Dante Ferretti had his first holiday nightmare. Waking in a panic in his bed at the Lowell hotel, the Italian production designer and art director was certain his latest project would miss its deadline. “I dreamed the windows were empty,” Mr. Ferretti said on a recent morning, concern still creasing his brow. He was referring to the Christmas window displays he’d been commissioned to create for the Madison Avenue flagship of the Italian luxury shoemaker Tod’s. “At 5 o’clock in the morning, I was going to run over to the store in my bathrobe,” Mr. Ferretti said. “Then I thought to myself, ‘Maybe is better if I make a phone call first.’ ” Happily, an assistant on the other end of the line assured Mr. Ferretti that the period dummy boards he had designed in the shapes of aerialists, contortionists, lion tamers and other tanbark performers — but no clowns: “I hate clowns” — were up and ready, well in advance of the V. I. P. opening and the expected holiday hordes. “But then, I said to myself, ‘I hope is enough,’ ” said Mr. Ferretti, a genial neurotic whose list of collaborators includes Federico Fellini, Franco Zeffirelli, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Tim Burton. “I hope is good. I hope people don’t go to other stores to find the shoes. ” Data from a surprisingly robust Black Friday weekend suggests that shoppers did in fact go to Tod’s to find the shoes. What is more, they did not do all of their shopping online. True, 44 percent of consumers surveyed across the country said they had taken to the internet for their early Christmas purchases, while 40 percent shopped in stores, according to the National Retail Federation. Yet while retailers have come to play more of what Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst with the NPD Group, calls a “supporting role” in the landscape of peak holiday season, a longing appears to persist for social dimensions of consuming and for something more fulfilling than a series of solitary transactions on a device. In that urge to participate in something collective can be found a reassuring counterpoint to a nightmare many retailers have awakened to in recent holiday seasons, one portending their own demise. Despite low unemployment levels, buoyant consumer confidence and, by many measures, a robust economy, analysts increasingly suggest a future is not far off when people will do nearly all their shopping online, visiting retailers mainly for comparison pricing and to partake of shopping spectacle. Even at that, a cold calculus has diminished the efforts many retailers put into creating entertainment for holiday shoppers. Of the scores of seasonal window displays once gracing the city’s great retailing corridors, only a few sturdy stalwarts remain. To walk Fifth Avenue north from 34th Street to Central Park this season is to discover a startling paucity of merchants making more than a token nod to the holidays in their window displays. Never mind elves or Santa or Rudolph the Reindeer. Barely a snowflake is to be found at retailers like Zara, the North Face, Urban Outfitters, Uniqlo, Fossil, Tommy Bahama, Oakley, Guess, Desigual, Sephora or HM. This stark absence underscores both a shift in consumer patterns and the precious anachronism of what few holiday windows remain. Extravagant, giddy, gaudy, mechanized, politically pointed or merely kitsch, the windows staged each year by Lord Taylor, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, Barneys New York, Tiffany Company and Bloomingdale’s have long been among New York’s treasures. “They’re a great gift to the city,” said Sheryll Bellman, the author of “Through the Shopping Glass: A Century of New York Christmas Windows. ” “ is still one of the great free things you can do in New York and one of the few you can participate in without being judged,” Ms. Bellman added of a tradition said to have been pioneered locally by Macy’s as early as the 1870s. Whether an average consumer would actually be brave enough to cross the threshold of department stores selling stuff like a $3, 500 Sylvie bag from Gucci or $800 suede Alexander Wang Tia pumps, any pedestrian can press nose to windowpane. And on peak days, as many as half a million people have been counted making their way past the holiday windows at Saks Fifth Avenue. “It’s theater without tickets,” Ms. Bellman said. A similar point was made over a century ago by L. Frank Baum, who in 1900 — the same year “The Wizard of Oz” came out — published a volume titled “The Art of Decorating Dry Goods Windows and Interiors. ” It represented the accumulated lore acquired across the years by the onetime proprietor of Baum’s Bazaar in Aberdeen, S. D. And in some ways as startling as the technological innovations Baum advocated in creating “illusion windows” — incandescent globes, revolving stairs or a bust of a “Vanishing Lady” that periodically dropped below a pedestal, only to reappear in 10 minutes wearing a new hat — is how many similar effects are still in use. Consider the “Land of 1000 Delights” that Saks Fifth Avenue unveiled on Nov. 21 (and is on its website). Framed by nearly 13, 000 feet of linear garland outlining the facade of the blockwide Fifth Avenue flagship is a series of six windows in which whimsical, and symbolically charged, characters from “The Nutcracker Suite” disport themselves amid landscapes composed of whirling, spinning cookies and candies tinted in hues. Bruno Bettelheim, the psychologist, might have had a field day with scenes of Clara battling and “whipping” an army of marshmallow mice or of a pair of harlequin gingerbread “crumbs” dancing out from beneath the folds of the parted skirt of Mother Ginger. “Last year, the theme was icy white, and we decided to go in the completely opposite direction,” said Mark Briggs, the creative force behind the windows and an executive vice president at Hudson’s Bay Company, which owns Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord Taylor, on a recent tour of the Saks windows. Reached by way of doors concealed from view on the store’s main sales floor, the windows were, at less than four feet, surprisingly shallow for all their weird allusive depths. It is perhaps not remarkable that psychology plays a role in the creation of holiday windows. As if by unspoken agreement, windows at almost every one of the major department stores this season featured themes of nature both innocent and imperiled. At Lord Taylor, a sidewalk bower of illuminated greenery acts as an enchanted tunnel. Through it, pedestrians are conducted past five windows portraying bunnies seen from a bird’ vantage as they on a forest pond a mother owl nestling three newly hatched owlets with bobble heads a bear buried in a snowbank a gaggle of dancing geese and a brace of foxes slumbering in an underground den as aboveground raccoons attempt to awaken them. At Bloomingdale’s, a group of visual artists commissioned to create individual chandeliers on the general theme of “light” came up with sculptural fixtures evoking the moon, the stars, a human face in neon and a sprightly octopus with light bulbs at the tips of its tentacles. “There used to be so much more holiday display around, but now it’s down to the five or so big department stores,” said Jack Hruska, executive vice president for creative services at Bloomingdale’s. “I’ve been here 25 years, and in my experience, our desire is not to sell merchandise so much as to be part of the New York experience. ” New York being the frenetic city it is, communicating the “New York experience” — whatever that may be — demands of most window designers that they put their holiday message across efficiently enough to be understood on the run. “We tried some complex things and realized we were asking people to stand too long in the cold,” Mr. Hruska said. Given that sidewalks on Lexington Avenue, where Bloomingdale’s stands, are narrower than those on Fifth, a retail consultant had to be called in to devise a solution for pileups caused when frenzied holiday shoppers barreled into those who paused at the windows to gawp. “He advised us to put up planters with trees” in order for people to step out of the flow and avoid what the consultant termed “butt rush,” Mr. Hruska said. “And that worked. ” Butt rush, alas, is hardly the challenge confronting the artists responsible for the gemlike miniature dioramas installed in the windows at Tiffany Company. Pedestrians attempting to pass through the maze of Jersey barriers (now slipcovered in Tiffany blue) outside the jeweler’s neighbor, Trump Tower, are routinely stopped for bag searches at guarded checkpoints by officials charged with protecting the home of the . It is no worry, either, outside Barneys New York on Madison Avenue, where the Love Peace Joy Project brought together artists like Nick Cave, Ebony G. Patterson and Rob Pruitt, the design collective Studio Job, and Trey Parker and Matt Stone of Comedy Central’s “South Park. ” Barneys gave them individual windows in which to riff — brilliantly in each case — on qualities that in the current climate seem in short supply. And happily, there is nothing to impede the pedestrian throngs that stand transfixed outside the Fifth Avenue windows of Bergdorf Goodman, where, as it has for decades, the specialty retailer has again installed a series of window displays as creatively unhindered as they are opulent. David Hoey, the senior director for visual presentation — aided by a roster of over 100 craftspeople drawn from the ranks of the city’s freelancers — has once again produced a suite of windows that would do L. Frank Baum proud. “They let the kite out with us creatively,” Mr. Hoey recently said, without exaggeration, of the Neiman Marcus Group, which owns the specialty retailer. No one who experienced them will soon forget the baroque marvels Mr. Hoey and his cohort have conjured over the last two decades, windows filled with such things as Victorian fainting couches, albino peacocks, hundreds of specially commissioned needlepoint portraits of literary figures, scores of ventriloquist dummies, transistor radios, Snoopy figures, vintage toasters and anything and everything material that might, as he said, “spoil your senses. ” Like many of the other holiday windows in town, Bergdorf’s this season have a Mother Nature theme, as observed perhaps on an road trip titled “Destination Extraordinary. ” Delirious remakes of natural history museum dioramas, Mr. Hoey’s windows recreate jungle, desert and lagoon, and pack them with more details than it is possible to take in at any one time. Even in a culture, as Linda Fargo, the senior vice president of Bergdorf Goodman recently noted, there are still few delights that can compare with what she termed “ eye candy six inches away from you behind a plate of glass. ” | 1 |
A meeting last week between President Donald Trump and TMZ founder Harvey Levin made several staffers at the celebrity gossip site “uncountable,” The Wrap reports. [“All I can tell you is everyone thinks it’s really gross,” one source reportedly said, referring to an Oval Office confab between Trump and Levin. “Many people in the newsroom are uncomfortable with Harvey’s overall Trump coverage,” the source reportedly added. The New York Times reported last week that Levin and Trump were meeting to discuss a possible interview similar to the one the pair did last fall for Levin’s Fox News special Objectified: Donald Trump. “The show was a huge success, and the two were discussing future opportunities,” Hope Hicks, White House director of strategic communications, told the Times. The Wrap cited several examples of TMZ’s news reporting throughout the presidential campaign that staffers at the Los news giant said amounted to a “ tone. ” “It’s troubling,” said Angelo Carusone, president of blog Media Matters. “TMZ has been running interference for Donald Trump from Day 1. ” Trump and Levin’s White House chat also caught the attention of late night host Jimmy Kimmel, who mocked the meeting. “What could those two have to talk about for an hour?” the ABC host joked. “Is there a terrorist plot against Taylor Swift we need to know about? Is ISIS after Louis from 1D?” Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson. | 1 |
Home / Be The Change / To Fight Racism, Oregon College Devotes an Entire Month to ‘Whiteness’-Shaming To Fight Racism, Oregon College Devotes an Entire Month to ‘Whiteness’-Shaming Matt Agorist January 18, 2016 153 Comments
Portland, OR — The Cascade Campus Diversity Council at Portland Community College has just declared April to be one of the most unprecedented “educational projects” ever conceived —“White ness History Month.”
According to PCC , “Whiteness History Month: Context, Consequences, and Change is a multidisciplinary, district-wide, educational project examining race and racism through an exploration of the construction of whiteness, its origins, and heritage.”
In the opposite manner of “Black History Month,” Whiteness History Month will not be celebrating the contributions made throughout history by people with white skin, but rather shaming them.
“White ness History Month, unlike heritage months, is not a celebratory endeavor, it is an effort to change our campus climate,” the College points out on its website.
Peter Fricke, writing for Campus Reform, explains,
According to a sub-page defining the term (adapted from a definition developed by the University of Calgary ), whiteness “does not simply refer to skin color[,] but [to] an ideology based on beliefs, values, behaviors, habits, and attitudes, which result in the unequal distribution of power and privilege based on skin color.”
Not only does the concept of whiteness allow those who are “socially deemed white” to accrue benefits, the page asserts, but those benefits “are accrued at the expense of people of color, namely in how people of color are systemically and prejudicially denied equal access to those material benefits.”
The ideology of whiteness, it continues, dates back to “at least the seventeenth century, [when] ‘white’ appeared as a legal term and social designator determining social and political rights,” a concept that eventually grew to include “thousands” of “special privileges and protections” for white citizens.
While there is no question that racism is alive and well in the United States today, attempting to solve the problem by creating a climate of ‘race shaming’ is like trying to put out a fire by throwing matches into it.
It is a statistical fact that black people are incarcerated at a higher rate, face heavier consequences for the same charges as their white counterparts, and are killed by police at a higher rate than whites.
As Ron Paul pointed out in the 2012 presidential debate,
“True racism in this country is in the judicial system. The percentage of people who use drugs are about the same with blacks and whites. And yet the blacks are arrested way disproportionately. They’re prosecuted and imprisoned way disproportionately, they get the death penalty way disproportionately. How many times have you seen a white rich person get the electric chair or get, you know, execution? If we truly want to be concerned about racism, you ought to look at a few of those issues and look at the drug laws, which are being so unfairly enforced.”
However, shaming your neighbor who has nothing to do with these things, simply because their skin color is white, will solve nothing. It will only serve to fuel the flames of the bigot class by stoking the divide even further.
Instead of teaching students to strive for greatness, no matter what, this “project” teaches them to be victims. Instead of focusing on the issue of the state’s role in perpetuating the racist ideology of a few people in positions of power, PCC is attempting to lay blame to an entire group of people — because of the varying levels of melatonin in their skin.
Racism is an immense part of the problem, but it is important that we point out that it is only part of the problem. The other part of this problem is the color blue, and the violent unaccountable leviathan that it represents in America today.
A racist idiot without a badge and uniform is simply a racist idiot, add the power of the state and that racist idiot lays waste to civil rights, initiates violence, and extorts the populace; and it’s called ‘justice.’
While the intentions of those behind “Whiteness History Month” are likely noble, they would do well to remember the famous words spoken by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Until we stop dwelling on the superficial qualities of our fellow humans, racism isn’t going anywhere — regardless of misdirected campaigns of shame.
h/t Campus Reform
Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. | 0 |
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This condition is only possible with criminally complicit corporate media to “cover” these crimes, and “banking” system to create what is used for money to purchase minions and enrich a .01% psychopathic parasite class.
Please verify the above linked objective and independently verifiable facts.
Some highlights from this article to truly honor US veterans by demanding arrests of the .01% lying “leaders” who ordered them to attack, invade, and occupy victim target nations of the US rogue state empire:
“No treaty, however much it may be to the advantage of all, however tightly it may be worded, can provide absolute security against the risks of deception and evasion.” ~ President Kennedy , June 10, 1963
I was inspired to write this essay by the following comment from an otherwise intelligent person:
“Therefore, while I can say it strongly appears U.S. wars are in violation of the treaties and therefore likely illegal, there is no way for myself to make that a legally binding finding and attach legal demands based upon it. I can make stuff up, but that won’t go over very well.”
From similar comments over time, I’ve made perhaps ten requests for this person to summarize war law in a sentence or two. So far, I’ve received only dodges avoiding this easy and essential citizen responsibility. This said, this isn’t the only individual who can’t summarize war law, and see that it’s meant to be as clear as: “stop sign” law for driving, a baseball rule, like the strike zone, a chore for one’s child at home, like taking out the trash.
Let’s look at these three examples compared to this comment, then review war law to see that its violation by US .01% “leaders” is as outrageous as one can imagine, not even close to legal, started on lies known to be false as they were told, and requiring immediate arrests to stop an obvious crime war-murdering millions, harming billions, and looting trillions.
To give you the punch line now for clarity of what war law states , and without disagreement our colleagues and I are aware of from anyone who points to the law with explanation:
Unless a nation can justify its military use as self-defense from armed attack from a nation’s government that is “instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation,” all other acts of war are unlawful. The legal definition of “self-defense” ends when the attack terminates. In general legal definition , no party is allowed use of force under the justification of “self-defense” if the law can be applied for redress and remedy.
This is the same as if you’re walking down the street: nobody can attack you unless, and only unless, you attack first or are an imminent threat (pulling a knife and raving, etc.). And if you are attacked, once law enforcement takes the case any attack on your part is the crime of retribution fully prosecuted against you. Example 1: Stop sign law:
In general, law is meant to be crystal-clear so as to help produce a desired result. Traffic law is meant to make driving as safe and efficient as possible, with California stop sign law as a perfect example:
“An 8-sided red STOP sign indicates that you must make a full “STOP” whenever you see this sign. Stop at the white limit line (a wide white line painted on the street) or before entering the crosswalk. If a limit line or crosswalk is not painted on the street, stop before entering the intersection. Check traffic in all directions before proceeding.”
There’s more that could be said about this law, but this is enough as we all have personal experience of what this law means.
Now imagine this scenario:
In your residential neighborhood with a 25 mph speed limit, you have a stop sign one house away. Your child attends the elementary school down the street, and you know that children have been hit by cars on this street. One day you observe at 7 AM a red Toyota truck speed through that stop sign ~40 mph, and at 5 PM he speeds through the other way. As you watch, horrified this has happened twice, you see your next-door neighbor has also observed this. You walk over:
You: Did you see that?! I saw that same truck do that this morning; just blow by that stop sign, and speeding!
Neighbor: Yeah. I’ve seen it the last three weekdays, morning and evening. Same truck, same driver, same speed, never even slows down.
You: Have you called the police? Let’s stop this!
Neighbor: While I can say it strongly appears this driver is in violation of the law and therefore likely illegal, there is no way for myself to make that a legally binding finding and attach legal demands based upon it. I can make stuff up, but that won’t go over very well.
You: Are you joking?
Neighbor: No. I take neighborhood safely seriously. Because he’s seen me, he threw this note at me yesterday. Well, it was attached to a brick that missed me and went through my windshield. But anyway, this is what the note says:
“My driving is legal because: I have white decals on my vehicle , and have extra driving privileges. My wife is pregnant. Emergencies change everything. I must use emergency “enhanced driving techniques.” It’s pretty well confirmed you’re in communication with Al-Qaeda terrorists, so I’m acting in legal self-defense before you attack again.”
You: Dude.
Neighbor: What? While I can say it strongly appears this driver is in violation of the law and therefore likely illegal, there is no way for myself to make that a legally binding finding and attach legal demands based upon it. I can make stuff up, but that won’t go over very well.
You: Ok, let’s look. First: his truck doesn’t have those white stickers, plus it’s irrelevant for speeding through a stop sign. Second: if he drives like this every day AND both ways that has nothing to do with a pregnant wife. And the last one, seriously, are you going to take that shit that you’re the cause of his speeding because you’re some evil terrorist?!
**
I could go on, but you get the points about this neighbor within the limits of an analogy: No demonstrated understanding of this law. Need of greater voice for responsible citizenship. Example 2: baseball’s strike zone
Scenario: You attend your son’s high school baseball game with about 100 other adults and students in your team’s stands. Your same neighbor is at the game with you, with his son at bat. The pitcher delivers a pitch ten feet over everyone’s head to the backstop. The umpire calls, “Strike one!” You, in shock, attempt to ask your neighbor if you heard correctly. As you begin talking, the pitcher’s second pitch is tossed to their team’s manager in the dugout:
Umpire: Strike two!
You: This game is rigged!
Neighbor: While I can say it strongly appears those pitches are outside the strike zone and therefore likely balls, there is no way for myself to make that a binding finding and attach demands based upon it. I can make stuff up, but that won’t go over very well.
You: Dude! The first one was over everyone’s heads by 10 feet! The second is a joke!
(as we talk, the pitcher delivers the third pitch: rolling it to the third baseman and smirking at the “umpire” calling, “Strike three!”)
Neighbor: (loudly encouraging to son) Next time, next time, son! You’ll have to swing at one of those to have a chance!
**
Let’s do some analysis: Again, your neighbor shows no understanding of the law. Your neighbor is at risk of being a sucker to whatever consequences might come from such ignorance.
Of course, because Americans take sports law s seriously (and here ), many of the 100 fans would be on the field to stop the game after the second pitch, and would never ever ever ever allow a game they cared about to be destroyed by Orwellian “umpires.” Example 3: taking out the trash
Scenario: Your son has a chore to take out the trash before he goes to bed each night. One morning before school, you notice the trash wasn’t taken out last night. Your son comes downstairs.
You: Son, you didn’t take out the trash last night.
Son: C’mon Dad: while you can say it strongly appears the trash is in violation of the agreement and therefore likely illegal, there is no way for you to make that a binding finding and attach demands based upon it. You can make stuff up, but that won’t go over very well.
You: (blinking twice, indicating with body language that your son now has your full attention)
Son: (recognizing this bullshit isn’t working, clears his throat) Besides, taking the trash out is a relative term. If it’s out , then relative to that location, inside the house is outside of that domain. If the trash is in , it’s already outside the domain of out !
(placing his hand in mock sincerity upon my shoulder) Dad, America needs clear laws and enforceable laws, not the arbitrary stop you’re making of my morning in lawless arbitrary demand. It’s up to our household legislation to plug loopholes; it’s the duty of the family to understand what needs to be done and demand it.
Fair laws, clear laws, enforceable laws.
Don’t be a preening weenie, Dad.
You: You’re joking, right?
Son: Not at all. I take household responsibilities very seriously. Very seriously.
You: (pursing lips and nodding) Anything else you’d like to add to your explanation?
Son: Yes. The rule states that the trash go out before I “go to bed.” I never went to bed last night. I had a “temporary emergency bailout of consciousness” distinct from “going to bed.” So, technically, I won’t be in violation until I actually “go to bed.” And this state of emergency might need to be continued indefinitely. Oh, and I still stand on my point that given the ambiguity of the rule with in and out , neither one of us can determine any violation of law.
You: Son, laws are meant to be clear; this one is. Your first excuse has to destroy known and agreed terms of in and out to pretend the law is unclear. Your second excuse again destroys a definition of an essential part of the law, then, as the first excuse, attempts to bullshit your way to willfully destroy clear law. This bullshit includes rhetoric of caring about responsibility, a need for clear laws, and justice.
The law is simple: (pointing to trash) That is inside the house. It needs to go outside to the trash container (pointing) every night. Nobody is confused by this.
How did you get this wild idea?
Son: (snapping out of his experiment with psychopathy): My baseball teammate and neighbor uses it on his dad all the time. He says it works. Thanks for not being played, Dad. That’s the type of man I want to be! War law is as clear as our three examples:
War law is just as easy to understand as “stop sign law,” and far easier than most sports laws, such as when a football punt is or is not legal, or baseball’s “infield fly” rule. Because everyday people care enough to know traffic law and sports rules , the idea of knowing war law can be accomplished by refreshing what you’ve already learned by reading this article (and confirming its accuracy as needed).
War law, as we’re about to document and prove, is clear and helpful for the outcome of denying military armed attack as a foreign policy. This is an outcome 95%+ of humanity agree is desirable, especially after all our families’ awful sacrifices through two world wars.
Conversely, war-mongers for empire will do their best to be silent about war law, lie that it’s so unclear that any dictatorial claim of “self-defense” is valid, and take every evasive maneuver imaginable for the public (especially military and law enforcement) to never understand war law and/or never recognize how US wars are Orwellian unlawful.
Again: what war law states , and without disagreement our colleagues and I are aware of from anyone who points to the law with explanation:
Unless a nation can justify its military use as self-defense from armed attack from a nation’s government that is “instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation,” all other acts of war are unlawful. The legal definition of “self-defense” ends when the attack terminates. In general legal definition , no party is allowed use of force under the justification of “self-defense” if the law can be applied for redress and remedy.
That’s the letter of the law. The intent is soooo strongly worded in both relevant treaties, as you’ll see, and is simply to end the scourge of wars chosen by governments as foreign policy (in historical context of empires looting the world for resources: natural and human).
Our condition today is of OBVIOUSLY unlawful Wars of Aggression (and started with lies known to false as they were told ), as the facts to follow clearly demonstrate for anyone caring to look and apply basic high school-level of education already learned.
Importantly, Left and Right “leaders” and corporate media , including Clinton and Trump, will never ever ever ever ever remind us that war is illegal, with current wars in Orwellian opposition.
The appropriate “vote” of We the People for this presidential election is “No” for more illegal war, and “Yes” to stop the wars and arrest those who orchestrated them. Without public demand, these illegal wars will only continue.
The following is from my paper for the 2015 Claremont Colleges’ conference, Seizing an Alternative Toward an Ecological Civilization reframed for our three specific points in this essay. Importantly, colleagues and I working on this topic are unaware of any refutation that the US wars are illegal. That is, we’ve never encountered anyone in person or in writing who points to the law and argues: “War law means (a, b, c), so the US wars are legal because (d, e, f).” If any reader has found any such argument, please share it with me. Accurately and confidently know the law
Unlawful Wars of Aggression: The US/UK/Israel “official story” is that current wars are lawful because they are “self-defense.” The Emperor’s New Clothes fact here is that “self-defense” means something quite narrow and specific in war law, and US/UK/Israel armed attacks on so many nations in current and past wars are not even close to the definition of “self-defense.”
Addressing three nations and several wars again seems ambitious for one academic paper, and again, these are all simple variations of one method: Ignore war law. Lie to blame the victim and claim “self-defense.” “Officials” and corporate media never state the Emperor’s New Clothes simple and obvious facts of war law and war lies.
Proving unlawful wars with massive deception is easier when the scope is broadened to see the same elements in three cases.
Importantly, a nation can use military, police, and civilians in self-defense from any attack upon the nation. This is similar to the legal definition of “self-defense” for you or I walking down the street: we cannot attack anyone unless either under attack or imminent threat. And, if under attack, we can use any reasonable force in self-defense, including lethal.
Two world wars begat two treaties to end nations’ armed attacks forever. They are crystal-clear in content and context: Kellogg-Briand Pact ( General treaty for renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy as official title) United Nations Charter .
Both are listed in the US State Department’s annual publication, Treaties in Force (2013 edition pages 466 and 493).
Article Six of the US Constitution defines a treaty as US “supreme Law of the Land;” meaning that US policy may only complement an active treaty, and never violate it.
This is important because all of us with Oaths to the US Constitution are sworn to honorably refuse all unlawful war orders; military officers are sworn to arrest those who issue them. Indeed, we suffer criminal dishonor if we obey orders for armed attack when they are not “self-defense,” and family dishonor to so easily reject the legal victory won from all our families’ sacrifices through two world wars.
Treaty 1. Kellogg-Briand: General treaty for renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy :
The legal term renounce means to surrender access; that is, to remove that which is renounced as lawful option. This active treaty (page 466 “Renunciation of War”), usually referenced as the Kellogg-Briand Pact , states:
“ ARTICLE I
The High Contracting Parties solemly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.
ARTICLE II
The High Contracting Parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific means.”
So, in the most clear framing of a rule as possible, the first two parts of the treaty state “never war” and “always peace” to resolve conflicts.
Treaty 2. United Nations Charter:
It’s helpful to understand what the UN is not. The only area of legal authority of the UN is security/use of force; all other areas are advise for individual nation’s legislature’s consideration. The UN is not global government. It is a global agreement to end wars of choice outside of a very narrow legal definition of national self-defense against another nation’s armed attack.
The preamble of the United Nations includes to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war… to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and… to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used…”
The UN purpose includes: “To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace…”
Article 2:
3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
5. All Members shall give the United Nations every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with the present Charter…
Article 24 : In order to ensure prompt and effective action by the United Nations, its Members confer on the Security Council primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, and agree that in carrying out its duties under this responsibility the Security Council acts on their behalf.
Article 25: The Members of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter.
Article 33 : The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice. The Security Council shall, when it deems necessary, call upon the parties to settle their dispute by such means.
Article 37: Should the parties to a dispute of the nature referred to in Article 33 fail to settle it by the means indicated in that Article, they shall refer it to the Security Council.
Article 39: The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.
Article 40: In order to prevent an aggravation of the situation, the Security Council may, before making the recommendations or deciding upon the measures provided for in Article 39, call upon the parties concerned to comply with such provisional measures as it deems necessary or desirable.
Article 51: Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the judicial branch of the UN. Their definition of “armed attack” is by a nation’s government. Because the leadership of the CIA and FBI both reported that they had no evidence the Afghan government had any role in the 9/11 terrorism, the US is unable to claim Article 51 protection for military action in Afghanistan (or Iraq , Syria , Ukraine , Iran [ here , here , here ], Russia , or claims about ISIS or Khorasans ). The legal classification of what happened on 9/11 is an act of terrorism, a criminal act, not an armed attack by another nation’s government.
The US use of force oversees could be a legal application of Article 51 if, and only if, the US could meet the burden of proof of an imminent threat that was not being responded to by the Security Council. To date, the US has not made such an argument.
American Daniel Webster helped create the legal definition of national self-defense in the Caroline Affair as “necessity of that self-defence is instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” The US attack on Afghanistan came nearly a month after the 9/11 terrorism. Article 51 only allows self-defense until the Security Council takes action; which they did in two Resolutions beginning the day after 9/11 ( 1368 and 1373 ) claiming jurisdiction in the matter.
In conclusion, unless a nation can justify its military use as self-defense from armed attack from a nation’s government that is “instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation,” all other acts of war are unlawful. The legal definition of “self-defense” ends when the attack terminates. In general legal definition , no party is allowed use of force under the justification of “self-defense” if the law can be applied for redress and remedy.
Another area to clarify is the US 1973 War Powers Act (WPA). The authorization by Congress for US presidential discretion for military action in Afghanistan and Iraq references WPA. This act, in response to the Vietnam War, reframes the Founders’ intent of keeping the power of war in the hands of Congress. It also expressly limits the president to act within US treaty obligations; the principle treaty of use of war being the UN Charter.
This means that presidential authority as commander-in-chief must always remain within the limitations of the UN Charter to be lawful orders. It’s not enough for Congress to authorize use of force; that force must always and only be within the narrow legal definition of self-defense clearly explained in the UN Charter. Of course, we can anticipate that if a government wanted to engage in unlawful war today, they would construct their propaganda to sell the war as “defensive.” The future of humanity to be safe from the scourge of war is therefore dependent upon our collective ability to discern lawful defensive wars from unlawful Wars of Aggression covered in BS – Emperor’s New Clothes claims of self-defense.
The most decorated US Marine general in his day warned all Americans of this fact of lie-started wars, and W. Bush’s Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, chided Pulitzer-winning journalist, Ron Suskind, that government will continue with such actions to “create our own reality” no matter what anyone else might say.
The first round of US current wars, the attack of Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, continues this history as a deliberate act of unlawful war, not defense that was “instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” The burden of proof the US would have to provide is imminent threat of another attack in order to justify self-defense. US Ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte, in his letter to the UN Security Council invoking Article 51 for the attack upon Afghanistan mentions only “ongoing threat;” which does not satisfy this burden of proof.
Article 51 requires self-defensive war coming from an attack by a nation’s government, which the CIA and FBI refute in the case of the Afghan government with the terrorism on 9/11. Self-defense ends when the attack ends. The US war began four weeks after 9/11 ended; making the US war one of choice and not defense. Article 51 ends self-defense claims when the UN Security Council acts. Resolution 1373 provides clear language of international cooperation and justice under the law, with no authorization of force.
This evidence doesn’t require the light of the UN Charter’s spirit of its laws, but I’ll add it: humanity rejected war as a policy option and requires nations to cooperate for justice under that law. The US has instead embraced and still embraces war with its outcomes of death, misery, poverty, and fear expressly against the wishes of humanity and the majority of Americans. These acts are clearly unlawful and should be refused and stopped by all men and women in military, government and law enforcement.
Some war liars argue that UN Security Council Resolution 687 from 1991 authorizes resumption of force from the previous Gulf War. This resolution declared a formal cease-fire; which means exactly what it says: stop the use of force. The resolution was declared by UNSC and held in their jurisdiction; that is, no individual nation has authority to supersede UNSC’s power to continue or change the status of the cease-fire. The idea that the US and/or UK can authorize use of force under a UNSC cease-fire is as criminal as your neighbor shooting one of your family members and claiming that because police have authority to shoot dangerous people he can do it.
The categories of crime for armed attacks outside US treaty limits of law are: Wars of Aggression (the worst crime a nation can commit), Treason for lying to US military, ordering unlawful attack and invasions of foreign lands, and causing thousands of US military deaths.
All 27 UK Foreign Affairs Department attorneys concluded Iraq war is unlawful: I wrote in 2010 :
“All the lawyers in the UK’s Foreign Affairs Department concluded the US/UK invasion of Iraq was an unlawful War of Aggression. Their expert advice is the most qualified to make that legal determination; all 27 of them were in agreement . This powerful judgment of unlawful war follows the Dutch government’s recent unanimous report and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s clear statements .
“This stunning information was disclosed at the UK Chilcot inquiry by the testimony of Foreign Affairs leading legal advisor, Sir Michael Wood , who added that the reply from Prime Minister Tony Blair’s office to his legal department’s professional work was chastisement for putting their unanimous legal opinion in writing.
“ Sir Michael testified that Foreign Secretary Jack Straw preferred to take the legal position that the laws governing war were vague and open to broad interpretation: “He took the view that I was being very dogmatic and that international law was pretty vague and that he wasn’t used to people taking such a firm position.”
“UK Attorney General Lord Goldsmith testified he “changed his mind” against the unanimous legal opinion of all 27 of the Foreign Office attorneys to agree with the US legal argument that UN Security Council Resolution 1441 authorized use of force at the discretion of any nation’s choice . This testimony is also criminally damning: arguing that an individual nation has the right to choose war violates the purpose, letter and spirit of the UN Charter, as well as violates 1441 that reaffirms jurisdiction of the Security Council in governance of the issue. This Orwellian argument contradicts the express purpose of the Charter to prevent individual nations from engaging in wars.
“Moreover, the US and UK “legal argument” is in further Orwellian opposition to their UN Ambassadors’ statements when 1441 was passed that this did not authorize any use of force:
“ John Negroponte , US Ambassador to the UN:
[T]his resolution contains no “hidden triggers” and no “automaticity” with respect to the use of force. If there is a further Iraqi breach, reported to the Council by UNMOVIC, the IAEA or a Member State, the matter will return to the Council for discussions as required in paragraph 12.
“ Sir Jeremy Greenstock , UK Ambassador to the UN:
We heard loud and clear during the negotiations the concerns about “automaticity” and “hidden triggers” — the concern that on a decision so crucial we should not rush into military action; that on a decision so crucial any Iraqi violations should be discussed by the Council. Let me be equally clear in response… There is no “automaticity” in this resolution. If there is a further Iraqi breach of its disarmament obligations, the matter will return to the Council for discussion as required in paragraph 12.
“The Chilcot inquiry was initiated from public outrage against UK participation in the Iraq War, with public opinion having to engage a second time to force hearings to become public rather than closed and secret. The hearings were not authorized to consider criminal charges, which is the next battle for UK public opinion.”
The UN Charter is the principle law to end wars; designed by the US to produce that result. That said, West Point Grads Against the War have further legal arguments of all the violations of war from US attack and invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, including further analysis of the UN Charter and expert supporting testimony. Another resource for documentation and analysis is David Swanson’s War is a Crime . Ironically, Americans would never allow a favorite sport such as baseball or football to be similarly destroyed by such Emperor’s New Clothes lies to those rules/laws.
Lawful war analysis: Negroponte’s letter invokes a legal Charter Article of self-defense in contrast with the loss of over 3,000 lives on 9/11. The letter portends legal evidence of al-Qaeda’s “central role” in the attacks and claims military response is appropriate because of al-Qaeda’s ongoing threat and continued training of terrorists. This reasoning argues for a reinterpretation of self-defense to include pre-emptive attack while lying in omission that such an argument is tacit agreement of current action being outside the law.
The US Army’s official law handbook provides an excellent historical and legal summary of when wars are lawful self-defense and unlawful War of Aggression in a seven-page Chapter One.
Importantly, after accurately defining “self-defense” in war, the JAG authors/attorneys explicitly state on page 6 that war is illegal unless a nation is under attack from another nation’s government, or can provide evidence of imminent threat of such attack :
“Anticipatory self-defense, whether labeled anticipatory or preemptive, must be distinguished from preventive self-defense. Preventive self-defense—employed to counter non-imminent threats—is illegal under international law .”
However, despite the US Army’s law handbook’s accurate disclosure of the legal meaning of “self-defense” in war, they then ignore this meaning to claim “self-defense” as a lawful reason for US wars without further explanation ( details here ).
President George Washington’s Farewell Address, the culmination of his 45 years of political experience, warned of the primary threat to America as “the impostures of pretended patriotism” from people within our own government who would destroy Constitutional limits in order to obtain tyrannical power:
“All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency.”
Young Abraham Lincoln wrote eloquently to defend the US Constitution from unlawful tyrants within our own government . In Congress, he spoke powerfully and truthfully that the President’s claims for armed attack and invasion of a foreign country were lies . Although war-mongers slurred Lincoln’s name at the time, history proved him correct in asserting the President of the US was a war-mongering liar:
“I carefully examined the President’s messages, to ascertain what he himself had said and proved upon the point. The result of this examination was to make the impression, that taking for true, all the President states as facts, he falls far short of proving his justification; and that the President would have gone farther with his proof, if it had not been for the small matter, that the truth would not permit him… Now I propose to try to show, that the whole of this, — issue and evidence — is, from beginning to end, the sheerest deception.”
Lincoln also wrote that “pre-emptive” wars were lies, and “ war at pleasure .”
Those of us working to end these illegal Wars of Aggression have found zero refutations of our documentation that address war law. All we’ve ever found are denial and unsubstantiated claims of “self-defense” while having to lie about the legal limits in that term.
Note: other sections of that paper may be useful that just as clearly demonstrate Israel’s illegal war on Gaza, criminally complicit corporate media to “cover” these crimes, all “reasons” for these wars were known to be false as they were told, and the fundamental fraud of creating what is used for money as debt. Demand arrests of Left and Right .01% US “leaders” because the wars are not even close to lawful
Therefore, We the People have an obvious solution: lawful arrests of .01% “leaders” for the most egregious crimes centering in war and lies to start them.
This is a 1st Amendment responsibility to maintain our constitutional republic under law rather than what we’ve become with war: “leaders” dictating/saying what we can do completely removed from limitations of the law. Left and Right .01% “leaders” completely violate the rules, and only from public ignorance with corporate media propaganda.
The categories of crime include: Wars of Aggression (the worst crime a nation can commit). Likely treason for lying to US military, ordering unlawful attack and invasions of foreign lands, and causing thousands of US military deaths. Crimes Against Humanity for ongoing intentional policy of poverty that’s killed over 400 million human beings just since 1995 (~75% children; more deaths than from all wars in Earth’s recorded history). Looting trillions , such as the Department of “Defense” claiming to have “lost” $6.5 trillion.
US military, law enforcement, responsible citizens, and all with Oaths to support and defend the US Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, face an endgame choice: Demand arrests , with those with lawful authority to enact it. An arrest is the lawful action to stop apparent crimes , with the most serious crimes documented here meaning the most serious need for arrests. Watch the US escalate its rogue state crimes that annually kill millions, harm billions, and loot trillions.
How military and law enforcement choose to honor their Oaths in creative adaptation to the rogue state is up to them. We the People can help with our educated voices in this Emperor’s New Clothes environment whereby these crimes only persist from public ignorance.
In just 90 seconds , former US Marine Ken O’Keefe powerfully states how you may choose to voice “very obvious solutions”: arrest the criminal leaders (video starts at 20:51, then finishes this episode of Cross Talk ):
Our condition requiring YOUR voice is what Benjamin Franklin predicted would be the eventual outcome of the United States. On September 18, 1787, just after signing the US Constitution, Ben met with members of the press. He was asked what kind of government America would have. Franklin warned: “A republic, if you can keep it.” In his speech to the Constitutional Convention, Franklin admonished:
“This [U.S. Constitution] is likely to be administered for a course of years and then end in despotism… when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.” – The Quotable Founding Fathers , pg. 39.
These warnings extend to all social science teachers of the present:
“As educators in the field of history–social science, we want our students to… understand the value, the importance, and the fragility of democratic institutions. We want them to realize that only a small fraction of the world’s population (now or in the past) has been fortunate enough to live under a democratic form of government.” – History-Social Science Framework for California Public Schools , pgs. 2, 7-8
Do you have the intellectual integrity and moral courage to at least act with the honesty of a child to speak the Emperor’s New Clothes truth? Remember, I’m just asking you to use your voice in a democratic republic to ask US military and various law enforcement to honor their Oaths and do the job we pay them for: protect and defend the US Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. There is no greater enemy than those committing treason to war-murder US military by lying them into invasive illegal Wars of Aggression.
The converse argument is that US military and law enforcement should not enforce our most important laws, especially not those that annually kill millions, harm billions, and loot trillions. Of course, this argument is Orwellian. Cause a lawful end to the dictatorial US rogue state
In conclusion, this essay has reminded you of what you already know: laws are meant to be simple and helpful, what you’ve suspected about the wars is demonstrated as true with a few clear facts, and that your voice is essential if we are to maintain our republic from devolving into dictatorship (literally being dictated/told what the rules are rather than knowing them ourselves).
To remind you of other history that demonstrates this has been an ongoing problem of what is most accurately described as a rogue state : a “top ten” list of state crimes supporting today’s arrests in a constitutional republic: Introduction to define ‘rogue state’ as perfect match with US illegal Wars of Aggression, Crimes Against Humanity, dictatorial government The US violated ~600 treaties with Native Americans to steal Native American land. A treaty is signed by a US President, approved by 2/3 vote of the US Senate, and under Article VI of the US Constitution becomes US “supreme Law.” These ongoing “in your face” violations of “supreme Law” became the precedent to typical hypocritical and unlawful US policies of the present. US President Polk lied to Congress (with their approval) to initiate War of Aggression on Mexico . The result was the US illegally stealing 40% of Mexico in 1848. Congress opposed Abraham Lincoln’s crystal-clear explanation as a member of Congress that the Adams-Onís Treaty placed the so-called “border dispute” 400 miles within land forever promised to Mexico and forever promised as outside any US claim. | 0 |
Next Swipe left/right Have The Sun really darkened the image of Brexit legal challenge winner Gina Miller?
@Crookedfootball over on Twitter says, “Look how the Sun has darkened Gina Miller’s skin compared to the Times”
The Sun:
The Times:
Obviously this could be just web bollocks but @Ajjolley has checked the paper versions next to each other:
“Printed in same plant”, he says, “Little doubt the Sun darkened photo of Gina Miller”
However @CaeruleanSea says, “as much as I loathe the Sun, the Times have upped the exposure on their pic. Google pics from that speech.”
And yep – he has a point: look at the BBC coverage Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37861888
In conclusion: the media has sent us all entirely mad that we’re now checking how dark people are in Photoshop. | 0 |
CNN’s Jim Acosta tweeted Thursday that Principal Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders dispelled rumors of a rift between Attorney General Jeff Sessions and President Donald Trump. [President has confidence in Sessions, Sarah Sanders tells reporters. — Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 8, 2017, Sanders said she had a conversation with POTUS last night about Sessions. — Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 8, 2017, Sanders’s statement to Acosta and other reporters came after days of mainstream media promotion of rumors from unnamed White House sources that the Attorney General and the President have been at loggerheads and that Sessions had even offered his resignation. Acosta noted the over 48 hours that passed between the report and Sanders’s rebuke, the first official White House refutation of the idea that Sessions might be on his way out for having criticized the president. The Daily Caller’s Alex Pfeiffer, however, reported Wednesday that multiple sources close to the Attorney General found the insinuation of his demise ridiculous. “He’s not going anywhere,” one official who spoke with Sessions in the aftermath of the reports told the Caller. Much of the media speculation was based on Trump’s supposed disagreement with the Justice Department on litigation strategy in the upcoming Supreme Court appeal on the validity of the President’s executive order travel ban for six Muslim majority countries. The President made tweets defending the original ban over what he called the “ ” second version, which was drafted with closer supervision from Attorney General Sessions’s Justice Department. Sessions, however, has been a prime media target within the administration since before he was even confirmed as Attorney General in contentious hearings that saw Sen. Elizabeth Warren ( ) make attacks on Sessions that saw her reprimanded. The campaign against Sessions, from both Democratic elected officials and the activist establishment, has only intensified since administration blood entered the water with National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s ouster. In March, Senate Democrats renewed their calls for Sessions to resign over his inaccurate statements about meeting with Russian officials in the course of his official business as a U. S. Senator. The drums beating for resignation were quickly joined by the Democratic National Committee and George Soros’s leftist agitation vehicle Moveon. org. This week’s rumors of resignation began after a relative lull in the pressure from the left on Sessions. His central role in enforcing President Trump’s agenda on immigration and crime, however, continue to make him a focal point of leftist ire. | 1 |
Earlier Today: The New York Times had an exclusive interview with Donald Trump. See how it unfolded on our . Donald J. Trump is moving toward choosing his domestic policy team, suggesting that the retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson could be his housing secretary and speaking at length to a Democrat, Michelle Rhee, about education. Meantime, Mr. Trump suggests that his will bring peace to the Middle East and seems to reverse tack on climate change. Through his spokesman, Ben Carson has said he does not have the experience to run a major federal agency, yet there he was, cozying up to be the next secretary of housing and urban development. What a neurosurgeon knows about housing policy is not clear, but Mr. Carson is clearly in the running. “Well, you know our inner cities are in terrible shape, and they definitely need some real attention,” he told Fox News on Tuesday. “You know, there have been so many promises made over the last several decades and nothing has been” done. The housing post was “one of the offers that’s on the table,” Mr. Carson confirmed. Another name surfacing for a domestic cabinet post? It’s former Representative Harold Ford Jr. a moderate Democrat, as possible transportation secretary. Why Mr. Ford? He is a frequent guest on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” and the Joe Scarborough has the ’s ear. Michelle Rhee, a Democrat who has been willing to ruffle feathers on education, didn’t exactly take herself out of the running to be Mr. Trump’s education secretary, but she did push back at critics who do not approve of her visits to Trump Tower. Mr. Trump, as it turns out, didn’t care all that much about Mrs. Clinton’s private email server. But there are consequences. When his senior adviser, Kellyanne Conway, announced that the incoming administration would not pursue the investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s private email server, the response from the right was swift. “Broken Promise,” blared Breitbart, the conservative website that promoted Mr. Trump’s candidacy and gave him the mastermind of his campaign, Stephen K. Bannon. The conservative provocateur Ann Coulter was no more subtle. Judicial Watch, the conservative legal organization that has doggedly pursued Mrs. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton, also chimed in: Ms. Conway said Tuesday that it was now Mr. Trump’s intention to move beyond the issues of the campaign and focus on the task of running the country instead. “If Donald Trump can help her heal, then perhaps that’s a good thing,” Ms. Conway said on the MSNBC’s “Morning Joe. ” Of course, the attorney general is supposed to be independent, but things may not work the usual way with President Trump. “I think when the who’s also the head of your party, tells you before he’s even inaugurated that he doesn’t wish to pursue these charges, it sends a very strong message, tone and content” to fellow Republicans, Ms. Conway said. Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who is expected to serve somewhere in the new administration, told the news media at Trump Tower that the was making a tough call. “Look, there’s a tradition in American politics that after you win an election, you sort of put things behind you,” Mr. Giuliani said. “And if that’s the decision he reached, that’s perfectly consistent with sort of a historical pattern of things come up, you say a lot of things, even some bad things might happen, and then you can sort of put it behind you in order to unite the nation. So if he made that decision, I would be supportive of it. I’d also be supportive of continuing the investigation. ” But Mr. Trump has lofty ambitions. James Mattis, a former Marine Corps general, is no fan of waterboarding, which could present problems if he becomes secretary of defense. Why? Because the is a really big fan. As recently as Monday night, Trump said in a video that he would scuttle President Obama’s energy and environmental regulations — put in place to fight climate change — to unleash coal and hydraulic fracturing. Yet in his meeting Tuesday with Times reporters and editors, he seemed to soften on climate change, which he used to call a hoax. But: Donna Brazile, the interim chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, took to Medium to make the case that Democrats need not panic, but they do need to get back to work. On the one hand, she noted: On the other, with Republican gains in state legislatures, the party is working off a structural disadvantage. She explained: As a candidate, Mr. Trump proposed ramping up surveillance of mosques and a moratorium on Muslim immigration, compelling to a surge in American Muslims registering to vote. Surprisingly, a lot of them actually voted for Mr. Trump. According to an exit poll of 2, 000 Muslim voters conducted by the Council on Relations, or CAIR, 13 percent backed Mr. Trump, while 74 percent supported Mrs. Clinton. That is nearly twice as much support as Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, received from Muslim voters four years ago. Robert McCaw, a spokesman for CAIR, said Mr. Trump’s strength with Muslims was somewhat surprising, but that about 15 percent of Muslims do identify themselves as Republicans and that Mrs. Clinton did little direct outreach to Muslims. “There were aspects of Trump’s candidacy that either appealed to them or it was a vote against Hillary Clinton,” Mr. McCaw said. “It might not necessarily have been as much a vote of confidence for Trump as an expression of no confidence in Clinton. ” The votes may have been significant, since Mr. Trump won Michigan — which has one of the largest Arab populations in the country — by barely more than 11, 000 votes. Some Muslims of Syrian descent voted for Mr. Trump, believing he would support President Bashar of Syria. More broadly, there may have been a split in the rust belt, where Shiites more generally favored Mr. Trump. David Fahrenthold of The Washington Post continues his dogged pursuit of the Trump Foundation, reporting Tuesday that the ’s charitable organization has apparently admitted that it violated the legal prohibition against “ . ” That prohibition prohibits nonprofit leaders from using their charity’s money to help themselves, their businesses, or their families. The news came in a tax filing for 2015 that was posted on the nonprofit tracking service Guidestar on Monday — less than two weeks after Election Day. Mr. Trump famously told the world and Mrs. Clinton during a presidential debate that he would appoint a special prosecutor if elected with the express purpose of putting his political opponent in jail. There may be a practical reason the new president would pull back. The latest tally shows Mrs. Clinton leading Mr. Trump in the popular vote by 1, 754, 204 votes. Pursuing her might not prove very popular. Her leadership is being challenged. The complaints about an aging slate of commanders are growing louder. So Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, 76, the House minority leader, has issued a plan. In a letter to House Democrats on Tuesday night, she promised to create No. 2 posts on each House committee to be filled by a Democrat with four terms or less in the House. When the post of assistant Democratic leader (now filled by Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, who is also 76) is vacant, it will be filled via an election with a member who has served three terms or less. (The No. 2 House Democrat, Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, is 77.) Other offers were made along with a vow to fight any effort by the Republican leadership and Mr. Trump to privatize the Veterans Affairs hospitals and add private insurance vouchers to compete with Medicare. | 1 |
In an interview this week with Town Hall, country music star Justin Moore described attempting to engage with gun control advocates as a “misguided” attempt “to rationalize with irrational people. ”[“Misguided’ is the perfect word. I think ‘misinformed’ is another,” he told the outlet. According to Town Hall, Moore explained that he sees gun control as a “cop out” by weak politicians as a way for them to blame the gun instead of the criminal who uses the gun for ill. Moore said: Mental health is the real problem. If it wasn’t guns, it would be knives, etc. To blame it on the tool being used, in my opinion, is ignorant. They want to put a over a gaping wound in my opinion. You’re trying to rationalize with irrational people. It’s impossible. The problem isn’t the NRA, we’re not the ones out there doing extreme things. These comments square perfectly with Moore’s new song “Guns. ” The lyrics of the second verse and chorus provide a clear expression of his view of Second Amendment rights: If there ever was a time we need ’em, I’d say it be today. When we’re letting them terrorists watch cable TVAnd walk out of Guantanamo Bay. I just try to do the right thing and raise my family in this land. Treating me like you want to be treated and that’s what I call a man. If we don’t have ’em, what do we do. Tell me where we gonna go. Somebody breaks into my house, I’m gonna need my Colt forty four, Guns, whether Remingtons or Glocks. Come on man it, ain’t like I’m a slingin’ ’em on the block. I’m gonna tell you once and listen son. As long as I’m alive and breathing, You wont take my guns. Town Hall reported that Moore opened his February 3 Fairfax, Virginia, concert by saying, “I was at the NRA museum today. And if you don’t like that you can get the hell out — respectfully. ” AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 1 |
Russia and NATO hold war games next to each other 11/01/2016
EXPRESS Around 680 troops from 32 NATO states and partner countries – including Israel and Ukraine – have been carrying out drills in Montenegro since Monday. Joint exercises codenamed Crna Gora 2016 are taking places until November 4 testing Western allies responses to a number of disaster scenarios, including floods and chemical spills. At the same time, a few miles over the border in Serbia 150 paratroopers from Russian Airborne Troops will be conducting drills from November 2 for two weeks. The exercises will see hundreds of heavily-armed and battle-ready Russian and NATO troops placed within a few hundreds miles of each. Montenegro’s Deputy Prime Minister Dusko Markovic said: “This is an opportunity to work with NATO during the four-day exercise to determine our capacity and the capabilities of our response to natural disasters, as well as to recognise our weaknesses and eliminate them in time. “Montenegro has demonstrated the ability as a future member of NATO, not only through organising this exercise, but also bearing its burden. “Montenegro has demonstrated the ability to not only willing to accept but also help realise partnership goals.” Slavic Brotherhood 2016 will involve Russian troops and Serbian and Belarusian forces. Fifty soldiers from the Russian Military Transport Aviation will take part along with combat vehicles, all-terrain vehicles and drones. Aleksandr Grushko, Russia’s NATO Representative, said of the latest drills: “NATO’s efforts have been changing the very essence of the military security in the regions which are adjacent to the Russian border.
Russian troops on exercise
Around 680 troops from 32 NATO states and partner countries are taking part
Map of Serbia and Montenegro, where the exercises are taking part “This seriously worsens the regional security and the security of those countries that participate in these drills and this activity. “I think it’s a double signal. First of all, it’s a signal to western public opinion that all NATO actions on its eastern flank are calibrated and do not transcend the framework of reasonable defence. “Secondly, it’s also an apparent attempt to send a signal to us, so that Russia will not react in what they believe to be an excessive and aggressive manner.” | 0 |
$23 Russell Brand’s Back on ‘The Trews’ and He’s Got Quite a Bit to Say About the U.S. Elections (Video) Posted on Nov 2, 2016
The comedian and political activist reveals his views on both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, neither of which he thinks should be president, and posits that both of their campaigns, with their ultimately meaningless slogans, are nothing but reality TV. | 0 |
Three local military veterans to receive recognition 31, 2016 veterans
BY STEVEN MAYER
Three military veterans from Bakersfield will be among more than 100 honored Sunday at an event in Sacramento designed to recognize former soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen who now serve the needs of veterans in their own communities.
David L. Jackson, Deborah K. Johnson and Wayne Wright — each of whom work in veteran assistance or support capacities in Bakersfield — will be honored at the sixth annual “Spirit of Veterans Day — Saluting Community Service Excellence” Ceremony.
Held at the B.T. Collins Army Reserve Center, the annual gala was established in 2011 by what is now the VFW Auxilliary, Post 67 with the assistance of Rep. Doris O. Matsui, D-Sacramento.
www.bakersfield.com >>>> Related Posts: No Related Posts The 31, | 0 |
Share on Facebook You've got to hand it to this guy for such an ingenious, yet simple design. The how-to example in the video below is made from approximately 12 feet of copper tubing plus a few fittings (the stainless steel tube option is shown too). Follow the instructions in the video below to learn how to build it yourself. If a torch isn't something you have in your tool kit you can find “push on” fittings from a hardware store that you won't need to solder. NOTE: It is absolutely imperative if you do choose to solder your device, that you use lead-free solder. Prior to 1986, solder in the U.S. contained an alarmingly high content of lead. Chances are, if you live in a house built before the 1980's your tap water is contaminated with the neurotoxin lead due to leeching solder on your water pipes. All the more reason to filter your water with a device like this! Lead solder was the industry standard after all. Watch below: We don't have a water problem. We have a salt problem! - Joe Rogan Related: | 0 |
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IN THE immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s shock win in the US presidential election, there were fears many people would become lost in grief, voicing their anger and sadness in all directions in a bid to vent their sense of profound fear and apprehension now that a person who has repeatedly uttered reprehensible beliefs occupies the most powerful position in the world.
However, this proved not to be the case as WWN found out when it talked with numerous people in America and around the world, who exemplified the pride the human race now had in itself after being able to greet the horrific news in a calm and measured way.
“It is when we’re faced with adversity, when hate shows it now owns the map, that we must forge a new path together to the brighter future we all want, but that future will be after a nuclear winter obviously,” a sobbing wreck of a man and a proud American, Philip Henry shared with WWN, as he polished his shotgun and thought about taking a walk alone to his shed out back.
“The election clearly divided people, but it is time for the people to come together. Love trumps hate. A rising tide lifts all boats,” New Yorker Sarah Klein shared as she boarded a small sail boat, unsure of where she was going, “I have no idea how to sail but I’ll live like Kevin Costner in Waterworld if I have to,” she added.
Many people echoed the sentiments of Hillary Clinton’s concession speech in which the Democrat urged everyone to work with Donald Trump and give the man who called Mexicans rapists and murderers and called for a ban on Muslims the benefit of the doubt.
“Trump Tower doesn’t look all that structurally sound, we’re talking what? A few sticks of dynamite and the whole thing comes down. Just asking for a friend, obviously,” shared another New Yorker we spoke to.
It is believed the number of people placing their children in pods and launching them into space in the hope they reach a more tranquil planet with a brighter future elsewhere are still in the minority.
The rational and reasoned response was also experienced outside of America where, although people acknowledged the fact they’ve heard every word uttered from the president elect, they suspect everything will be fine.
“Sure, what difference does it make, be grand I’m sure,” shared Dubliner Rebecca Kelly, fresh from pulling out all of her hair in a panic, and disconnecting her TV, radio and internet for at least four years.
“Never felt better,” offered a hooded figure holding a flaming torch in one hand and a rope in the other. | 0 |
Consider the following. I’m a physician at the end of more than a decade of training. I’ve dissected cadavers in anatomy lab. I’ve pored over tomes on the physiology of disease. I’ve treated thousands of patients with ailments as varied as hemorrhoids and cancer. And yet the way I care for patients often has less to do with the medical science I’ve spent my career absorbing than with habits, environmental cues and other subtle nudges that I think little about. I’ll sometimes prescribe a particular brand of medication not because it has proved to be better, but because it happens to be the default option in my hospital’s electronic ordering system. I’m more likely to wash my hands — an activity so essential for safe medical care that it’s arguably malpractice not to do so — if a poster outside your room prompts me to think of your health instead of mine. I’ll more readily change my practice if I’m shown data that my colleagues do something differently than if I’m shown data that a treatment does or doesn’t work. These confessions can be explained by the field of behavioral economics, which holds that human departs frequently, significantly and predictably from what would be expected if we acted in purely “rational” ways. People don’t always make decisions — even hugely important ones about physical or financial — based on careful calculations of risks and benefits. Rather, our behavior is powerfully influenced by our emotions, identity and environment, as well as by how options are presented to us. People overwhelmingly tend to stick with default options when given a choice (organ donation rates are over 90 percent in countries where citizens need to override a default and opt out of donation compared with 4 to 27 percent where they much choose to opt in). People are more sensitive to losses than commensurate gains (losing $100 feels twice as bad as winning $100 feels good). We tend to overvalue the present (most of us prefer one free coffee now to two free coffees next week). And more choice isn’t always good (people are less likely to buy a product if they’re given dozens of options instead of just a few). We in the medical community have only recently started to explore how behavioral economics can improve health. As with any hot field, there’s always the possibility of hype. But these insights might be particularly valuable in health care because medical is permeated with uncertainty, complexity and emotion — all of which make it hard to weigh our options. A leader of this movement is Dr. Kevin Volpp, a physician at the University of Pennsylvania and founding director of the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics. He designs randomized trials around some of health care’s most important challenges: nudging doctors to provide care ensuring patients take their medications and helping consumers choose better health plans. “There’s starting to be a broad recognition that environments in health care could better reflect how doctors and patients actually make decisions,” he said. Dr. Volpp, whose work is used by both the public and private sector, recently collaborated with CVS Caremark to test which financial incentives are most effective for getting employees to quit smoking. Employees were randomly assigned to one of three groups. The first was “usual care,” in which they received educational materials and free smoking cessation aids. The second was a reward program: Employees could receive up to $800 over six months if they quit. The third was a deposit program, in which smokers initially forked over $150 of their money, but if they quit, they got their deposit back along with a $650 bonus. Compared with the usual care group, employees in both incentive groups were substantially more likely to be at six months. But the nature of the incentives mattered. Those offered the reward program were far more likely to accept the challenge than those offered the deposit program. But the deposit program was twice as effective at getting people to quit — and five times as effective as just pamphlets and Nicorette gum. Parting with your own money is painful. But it is effective. That’s also a lesson in research on getting people to lose weight and exercise more. One recent study gave incentives to patients by entering them into lotteries or into deposit contracts for meeting weight loss goals. Those in the lottery group were eligible for a daily lottery prize with frequent small payouts and occasional large rewards — but only if they clocked in at or below their weight loss goal. People in the deposit group invested their own money (generally a few dollars a day) which was then matched by researchers. They’d get their money back — and then some — if they met their goal at the end of the month. At four months, both incentive groups had lost more than three times as much weight as the control group (about 14 pounds versus four pounds) but the deposit group lost slightly more than the lottery group. A similar study found that patients were more likely to walk 7, 000 steps a day if they were given an upfront payment — part of which had to be returned each day that they didn’t meet their exercise goal — compared with lotteries, rewards or encouragement. Other work has highlighted the power of defaults — which in health care can have consequences. And perhaps nowhere is doctors’ default tendency more apparent than in our bias toward aggressive care that favors quantity over quality of life. With this in mind, researchers studied whether the type of care patients choose is influenced by how we present the options. Terminally ill patients were randomly assigned to complete one of three advance directives: The first group received a form with the approach preselected the second had the aggressive care box checked the third had both options left blank. Patients were free to override the default and select any option they preferred. Nearly 80 percent of patients in the comfort default group chose comfort, while only 43 percent in the aggressive care default group did. ( percent of patients without an embedded default opted for comfort.) It seems, then, that even critically important decisions about how we want to live our final days are affected by what comes on the menu we’re given. Health insurers are also betting that behavioral economics can improve quality and lower costs. Blue Cross Blue Shield (B. C. B. S.) of Massachusetts is using a variety of behavioral economics concepts to pay its doctors — including peer comparisons and bonus payments for continuous improvement instead of absolute thresholds. In Hawaii, B. C. B. S. is experimenting with joint incentives for doctors and patients to meet diabetes care goals. are jumping into the nudge game, too. The Wellth, for example, has developed an app to reward patients for taking their medications. Nearly a third of prescriptions in the United States are never filled, and about half of all patients don’t take their medications as prescribed — even after illnesses like heart attacks. Every year, medication nonadherence causes 125, 000 deaths and costs the health system up to $289 billion. Wellth thinks it can help patients manage themselves. “We want to give them immediate, tangible rewards for healthy behavior,” said Matthew Loper, the company’s C. E. O. and . “But ultimately, we’re in the business of habit formation. We want behaviors to stick. ” Say a patient is discharged from the hospital after a heart attack. She downloads the Wellth app, and the company deposits $150 into her account, which she gets to keep if she takes all her medications for three months. Every morning, Wellth sends her a reminder to take her pills. If she snaps a selfie while taking her medicine, she keeps the money. If she forgets, she gets additional notifications over the course of the day, and maybe a text or two. If she misses the day’s assignment altogether, she loses $2. If she misses several days in a row, she loses $2 for each day and gets a phone call in addition. A more complete view of human behavior seems necessary for more effective medicine. Health is fundamentally the product of myriad daily decisions made by doctors and patients, and by uncovering what truly motivates us, we may be able to nudge one another toward wiser decisions and healthier lives. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is exploring how to dismantle or bypass constraints intended to prevent civilian deaths from drone attacks, commando raids and other counterterrorism missions outside conventional war zones like Afghanistan and Iraq, according to officials familiar with internal deliberations. Already, President Trump has granted a Pentagon request to declare parts of three provinces of Yemen to be an “area of active hostilities” where looser battlefield rules apply. That opened the door to a Special Operations raid in late January in which several civilians were killed, as well as to the series of American airstrikes targeting Qaeda militants, starting nearly two weeks ago, the officials said. Mr. Trump is also expected to sign off soon on a similar Pentagon proposal to designate parts of Somalia to be another such zone for 180 days, removing constraints on airstrikes and raids targeting people suspected of being militants with the group the Shabab, they said. Inside the White House, the temporary suspension of the limits for parts of Yemen and Somalia is seen as a test run while the government considers whether to more broadly rescind or relax the rules, said the officials, who described the internal deliberations on the condition of anonymity. The move to open the throttle on using military force — and accept a greater risk of civilian casualties — in troubled parts of the Muslim world comes as the Trump administration is also trying to significantly increase military spending and cut foreign aid and State Department budgets. The proposal to cut budgets, however, is meeting with stiff resistance from some senior Republicans on Capitol Hill, as well as from top and retired generals and admirals, who fear perpetual conflicts if the root causes of instability and terrorism are not addressed. “Any budget we pass that guts the State Department’s budget, you will never win this war,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said during a hearing last week. Referring to the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, he added, “As a matter of fact, ISIL will be celebrating. ” In a sign of mounting concern over the government’s policy review, more than three dozen members of America’s national security establishment have urged Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to maintain the thrust of the principles for counterterrorism missions, saying strict standards should be maintained for using force outside traditional war zones. The former officials, in a letter sent on Sunday to Mr. Mattis, warned that “even small numbers of unintentional civilian deaths or injuries — whether or not legally permitted — can cause significant strategic setbacks,” increasing violence from militant groups or prompting partners and allies to reduce collaboration with the United States. Indeed, immediately after the Special Operations raid on Jan. 29, Yemeni officials suspended further commando missions, pending an assessment of what went wrong, although they later backtracked. The letter’s 37 signatories included John E. McLaughlin, who was the acting C. I. A. director for President George W. Bush Lisa O. Monaco, President Barack Obama’s Homeland Security and counterterrorism adviser and Matthew G. Olsen, who served as a national security official in the Bush Justice Department and as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center in the Obama administration. The White House did not respond to a request for an interview about this article. Mr. Obama imposed the rules in May 2013 as part of an effort to recalibrate counterterrorism operations after he had overseen a steep increase in military and C. I. A. drone strikes in places like Yemen and tribal Pakistan. Critics, including inside the government, worried that the strikes were causing too many civilian casualties, driving terrorist recruitment and undermining support among local partners in the regions. In response, the Obama administration developed the rules, known as the Presidential Policy Guidance. Under those rules, cabinet officials generally must agree in deliberations that a proposed target away from a traditional war zone poses a threat to Americans. That is intended to limit strikes targeting generic groups of suspected foot soldiers. And there must be “near certainty” that no civilians will be killed. By contrast, in a standard war zone, military commanders can approve a strike without interagency review in Washington, and some civilian casualties are acceptable under the laws of war, as long as they are deemed necessary and proportionate to a legitimate military objective. Military operators have chafed under the 2013 rules, but the Obama administration saw them as a signature accomplishment in the era of drones and war on terrorism. In his last year in office, Mr. Obama issued an executive order requiring the government to disclose annually its official estimate of civilian and combatant deaths from counterterrorism airstrikes away from war zones. Still, in its final year in power, the Obama administration declared the area around Surt, Libya, to be an “area of active hostilities. ” It then started a sustained campaign of 495 airstrikes targeting Islamic State militias there. Mr. Obama revoked the Surt declaration hours before Mr. Trump’s inauguration. The Obama administration also permitted the Defense Department to carry out an escalated campaign of airstrikes last year in Somalia that the United States Africa Command started without going through the process laid out by the 2013 rules. Instead, those airstrikes were justified under an expansive theory of collective to protect African Union and Somali forces being trained and advised by the United States. Against that backdrop, officials said, both the Central Command, which oversees military activity in Yemen, and Africa Command, which oversees it in Somalia, had already been developing proposals by to ask for parts of Yemen and Somalia to be declared zones, officials said. They submitted those to the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s “J5” directorate, which handles strategic plans and policy. As a result, the Pentagon was in a position to swiftly bring the ideas forward to Mr. Trump, whose inauguration raised expectations that the White House would be more permissive. The officials said that Mr. Mattis signed memos to Mr. Trump asking for each authority, backed by about five pages of supporting material, within days of Mr. Trump’s becoming president in January. Several officials said Mr. Trump signed off on making parts of Yemen an zone at the same dinner with Mr. Mattis five days after his inauguration where he approved the raid on a Qaeda compound in Yemen. At the time, they said, the expectation was that the Somalia proposal would be swiftly signed, too, and that the larger 2013 rules could be jettisoned swiftly. On Jan. 28, Mr. Trump signed a presidential national security memorandum directing the military to give him a plan within 30 days to defeat the Islamic State. It said the plan should include “recommended changes to any United States rules of engagement and other United States policy restrictions that exceed the requirements of international law regarding the use of force,” a veiled reference to rescinding the 2013 limits on airstrikes. But the momentum for rapid change broke, the officials said, after the Yemen raid, which resulted in numerous civilian deaths, including of children the death of a member of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 and the wounding of three others and the loss of a $75 million aircraft. As a result, Mr. Trump’s national security advisers — first Michael T. Flynn, who has since resigned, and now Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster — have slowed the review process down while letting operations in Yemen, and soon Somalia, play out as test runs, the officials said. | 1 |
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In an explosive interview, Newt Gingrich became completely unhinged, verbally attacking Fox News' Megyn Kelly for referring to Trump as a sexual predator. Throughout the interview, Newt Gingrich seemed to live in an alternate state of reality. He continued to discount polls that show Trump losing badly. He refused to acknowledge that all the tossup states are moving towards Clinton.
The interview was already contentious when a couple of words from Megyn Kelly turned it explosive. (Video here .)
"You want to know why Trump has had a rough time?" Newt Gingrich asked.
"If Trump is a sexual predator," Megyn Kelly said. "That is ..." - Advertisement -
"He is not a sexual predator," Newt Gingrich shouted.
"That's your opinion," Kelly said. "I am not taking a position on it."
"You could not defend that statement," an unhinged Gingrich shouted. "Now I am sick and tired of people like you, using language that's inflammatory, that's not true."
"Excuse me Mr. Speaker," Kelly interjected. "You have no idea whether it is true or not. What we know is that at least ..."
"Neither do you," Gingrich shouted. - Advertisement -
"That's right," Kelly replied. "And I am not taking a position on it unlike you. So what I said is incorrect?"
"Yes you are," Gingrich replied. "When you use the words you took a position. And that is very unfair of you Megyn. I think that is exactly the bias people are upset by."
"I think that your defensiveness on this may speak volumes, sir," Kelly replied. "What I said is if -- no, no, no, -- let me make my point and then I will give you the floor. What I said is if Trump is a sexual predator, then it is a big story. And what we saw on that tape was Trump himself saying that he likes to grab women by the genitals and kiss them against their will. That's what we saw. Then we saw ten women come forward after he denied actually doing it at the debate to say that was untrue. 'He did it to me. He did it to me.' We saw reporters. We saw people who had worked with him; people from Apprentice and so on and so forth. He denies it all, which is his right. We don't know what the truth is. My point to you is, as a media story we don't get to say the ten women are lying. We have to cover that story, sir."
Gingrich then went into full spin mode. He attempted to characterize the media as biased for covering more about the growing Trump sexual predator scandal than Clinton speeches to banks, a false equivalency. He then unleashed his anger and abuse again. | 0 |
November 16, 2016
British naturalists are concerned by a survey which suggests that nearly 80% of British mammals are, in fact, computer generated for John Lewis adverts. ‘It does explain some, rather odd, behaviour,’ said Chris Packham. ‘And also why London Zoo ordered those giant 4k screens last year – I did wonder why the badger enclosure offered me the chance to place a bet and the Nigerian antelope told me he could give me $37,000,000 if I gave him my bank details’. Share this story...
Posted: Nov 16th, 2016 by apepper Click for more article by apepper .. More Stories about: News In Brief 0 | 0 |
Mysterious Universe
Do other realities brush up against our own? Are there parallel dimensions lying just beyond through some thin, untraceable veil separating us? The idea of parallel realities beyond our own is not new, yet what if this phenomenon were to come bursting forth from the realm of theory and speculation and come crashing down into the now? Are there perhaps some people who have stepped over that barrier into domains we have not yet to see and which we may indeed not even be meant to see? I have covered such alleged excursions into the horizon beyond our known reality here at Mysterious Universe before , and here I will revisit this topic with a selection of other cases that seem to imply the possibility that not only are parallel dimensions real, but that they are destinations to which we can be whisked away, whether intentional or not.
In the September, 1956 issue of Fate Magazine there was the curious story of a woman who apparently shifted into another parallel universe in 1934. According to the report, in the fall of that year a woman by the name of Miriam Golding had a profoundly unusual experience while riding an elevator with her fiancee in Chicago. The elevator was crowded, and when Miriam made a mistake and got off at the wrong floor she found that she could not push her way back in past the throng of people and resigned herself to waiting for the next one. That was when she looked around and was startled to realize that she was no longer in the store at all, but rather an expansive train station.
The enormous railway station she found herself in was allegedly bustling with fevered activity, with throngs of travelers rushing to their trains and booming announcements of arrivals and departures echoing through the air. There seemed to be no way this busy place could have any connection whatsoever to the music store she had been in moments before. The confused Miriam made her way to an information booth to ask where she was, but found that the woman working there completely ignored her, as if she weren’t there at all. Perplexed, Miriam followed a series of signs pointing the way to the street outside, and she emerged out into a mild, sunny afternoon that seemed to be in the midst of summer rather than fall, in a place that was most certainly not Chicago.
She wandered about in confusion and noticed that everyone around her seemed to completely ignore her and walk on by as if they did not even see her. At some point she claims that she saw a confused looking boy standing in the sidewalk similarly being passed on by people who seemed to have no idea he was even there, and Miriam approached him wondering what was going on. The boy was able to actually see and respond to her, and looked in her direction, the first time anyone had acknowledged her presence in this strange, surreal place. As she approached, the boy seemed equally relieved that he was visible to Miriam, smiled slightly and purportedly saying: “I guess they let you off at the wrong stop, too.”
The two lost people walked together down the street in confusion, the whole time completely ignored by those around them, and the boy told Miriam of what had happened to him. He claimed that he had been playing tennis in Lincoln, Nebraska, in the United States, and had gone to the locker room to change his shoes. When he had gone back to the courts to play some more he had found that the tennis courts that had been there moments before were now gone and in their place was a huge train terminal, which had turned out to be the exact same station into which Miriam had enigmatically entered from the elevator.
The two allegedly kept on walking until they reached an open area that led to water, and over the waves they could apparently make out a sand bar with several women upon it chatting and seeming to act as if nothing was beyond the ordinary. To Miriam’s astonishment, one of the women was oddly her fiancee’s sister. The women out on the sandbar seemed to notice them and began waving and shouting to Miriam and her companion. This encouraged the boy to try and make a swim out to the sandbar, which did not seem so far and which he was confident he could reach. Yet even though he was a good swimmer it seemed that no matter how much he tried and pushed against the waves, he was unable to draw any closer to the mysterious sandbar and he returned to shore in frustration. It was then that the sandbar supposedly suddenly vanished into thin air.
Miriam closed her eyes in exasperation, disappointment, and exhaustion, and then was overcome by the sensation of floating through space. After some time of this odd feeling of hovering in darkness she claimed that she suddenly opened her eyes to find herself sitting atop a stool in the music store in Chicago, which seemed to be in the process of closing for the night, suggesting that she had been there for at least several hours. Disoriented, Miriam looked around for her fiancee but could not find him and decided to head back to his home. When she arrived, her fiancee was noticeably relieved and explained that he had lost her in the store and had waited for her to come to the right floor for a few hours before deciding to go back home. Bizarrely, the fiancee’s sister, whom Miriam had seen on the mysterious sandbar earlier, claimed that she had seen Miriam in town and had even called out to her, but that she had been too absorbed in talking to a young boy to notice her. Where did Miriam go during that time? Why should she see her fiancee’s sister on a sandbar while the sister had seen her in town, all while they could not reach across to communicate? Were they separated by strange barriers we do not and may not ever understand? It is a mystery.
Another strange article in the April, 1959 issue of Fate Magazine tells of the weird experience of a Frances E. Peterson of Keokuk, Iowa, who in 1935 was traveling home with her husband and four children from a weekend trip to Missouri. On the way they noticed what looked like a quaint, scenic detour in the area of St. Patrick and they whimsically took it, driving along the rustic, quiet scenery until they reached the rim of an expansive valley. In addition to the picturesque scenery was the rather odd sight of several women in old-fashioned sun bonnets and long skirts and aprons busily pulling water from a well into simple wooden buckets and carrying them off on wooden poles balanced across their shoulders. There were men here as well, who all had beards and wore similarly old-fashioned clothes such as smocks and large black hats, and who were tending flocks of sheep and goats or collecting firewood. Enamored with the quaint, charming scene, they later asked locals what the settlement was, yet were told that no such place had ever existed. Convinced that it did indeed exist, Peterson and her husband returned to the area several times afterwards, but could find no sign of the valley they had seen or its unusual inhabitants, suggesting that either the family or the place they had visited had been temporarily transported over some little understood thin spot between realities.
In another similarly strange road story from 1962, a Mr. R. W. Balcom and his wife were driving to Lake Tahoe from their home in Live Oak, California. The couple stopped at a quaint restaurant nestled away off of Highway 50 a few miles from Placerville. They had never noticed the restaurant there before in all of their years of traveling along the same route, even though it seemed from its weathered, rustic look to have been there for years, and they decided to stop there for a bite to eat. The food was described as being surprisingly good and the service was cordial and friendly, so they decided that they would visit again. On their return trip from Lake Tahoe they attempted to seek out the charming little restaurant to eat there again, but when they arrived at the location it was reportedly gone as if it had never been there at all. Perplexed, the couple supposedly spent three more weekends traveling through the area in an effort to find the restaurant that they were convinced was there, but never found it again. Did Balcom and his wife travel to a parallel universe for lunch? No one knows.
An intriguing case of a mysterious doorway to another dimension and perhaps even through time itself occurred in 1956, when a treasure hunter by the name of Ron Quinn ventured with his brother Chuck and some friends into the remote and rugged mountains of Southeastern Arizona looking for mysterious lost Spanish treasures and gold mines. The case begins with high strangeness and only gets more bizarre as it goes on. Three weeks into their adventure, the treasure hunters set up camp one night, and that evening they were surprised to see two large balls of bluish green light floating about in the darkened, starry sky. The bewildered campers determined that these were not flares of any kind, nor any sort of known aircraft. The weird balls of light hovered about for several minutes before vanishing behind some mountain peaks. The next evening, the same phenomenon was witnessed again. When they mentioned the strange lights to a local cowboy named Louie Romero, he informed them that the unexplained lights were a recurring phenomenon in the area, and had been seen as far back as 1939. The group would spot the strange lights several more times over the course of their excursion. Ron and Chuck Quinn
At one point during their travels, the group passed by what looked like a stone archway, which stood out as something of an anomaly upon the landscape, looking decidedly out of place, yet they didn’t think much of it until later, when they spoke to a Native local named John, who claimed that the archway had long been surrounded by strange stories and rumors that anyone who entered the doorway never came out, and that objects thrown in would not emerge from the other side, earning the structure the name “Doorway of the Gods.” There were also stories of the archway shimmering, and of strange figures lurking around it dressed in old fashioned clothing that did not seem to be ghosts, as they disturbed the gravel where they stepped and cast shadows, yet they would suddenly vanish. There were also tales of camps near the archway that had been mysteriously abandoned and of prospectors who had never returned from the area. John relayed his own tale of strangeness concerning the archway, claiming that one dark and stormy day he had visited it and peered through it to see that, although the scenery was the same, the sky was oddly clear and blue on the other side. When he looked around the edge of the doorway, the clouds were once again dark and thick, hanging menacingly over the scene, and the bizarre sight with its contrasting views frightened him.
Enthralled with these odd stories, Quinn and his group went back through the perilous rocky terrain to find the mysterious archway and investigate it. They managed to locate the strange looking structure once again, and upon closer inspection it proved to be surrounded with an unusually large deposit of geodes, some of which were broken open with their interiors glittering in the sun. The archway itself was measured as being around 7 feet high and 5 feet wide, with columns of andesite 15 inches diameter and it stood beside a steep, rocky slope. After checking it out, the team went to work testing out the weird stories by throwing various rocks through the opening, but the rocks all mundanely fell to the ground on the other side and there was no sign of anything remotely mysterious whatsoever. Increasingly skeptical, some of the members of the team boldly put their arms through without incident, although no one was willing to try stepping all the way through. After around an hour of this, they departed no closer to understanding the supposed mystery of this location. However, a weird series of events would unfold in the coming days that would make them think that something strange was going on. Chuck Quinn with some of the geodes from the site
One day as they were checking out the portal yet again and collect some of the geodes, Roy and another member of the team, Walt, noticed that the stone portal seemed to be shimmering as if simmering in intense heat, even though it was a cold January day. The odd shimmering allegedly lasted a few minutes, during which time both men claimed that they could feel a building pressure within their ears, before the shimmering and the weird physical sensation slowly ebbed away. The inexplicable event spooked both of them, especially Roy, who vowed never to go anywhere near the archway again. On another occasion, the group came across another group of three treasure hunters who claimed that they had also camped out near the mysterious stone portal. The group claimed that that evening their camp had been hit by what sounded like rain hitting their tents, even though it was a clear night. Looking out of their tents, they were met with the sight of small, reddish brown pebbles around the size of a pea falling in great numbers from above. The pebbles were found to be warm to the touch and there was no explanation for where they came from. They had seemed to be made of some king of iron ore.
All of these escalating odd occurrences would point to something decidedly strange going on at the archway, but the most bizarre incident would happen years after the expedition was over. Four years after that fateful treasure hunt, on October 14, 1973, Chuck Quinn was compelled to make a personal trip to the site of the stone portal that had eluded their understanding, and arrived at the canyon that led up to the slopes that would lead up to the site. Chuck went about climbing up the steep, rocky slopes towards the archway, stopping for a breather about halfway up the harrowing climb. It was here as he looked out west over the majestic scenery all around him that he noticed that there was a canyon that should not have been there. Baffled, he made his way back down the slope to enter from the east, and it was here that he realized that in fact he was in the same canyon he had been in before, only he had somehow been transported 250 yards down the canyon he had hiked along, and to another slope that was facing south rather than west. The strange event convinced him that indeed there was something strange going on here, and hastily left the scene. Was this some sort of doorway to another dimension or merely tall tales?
One wonders if perhaps some of the more bizarre vanishings and reappearances of people also have some form of interdimensional shift at their core. At about 7:00 P.M. on August 15, 1960, 6-year-old Kathy Cramer, of Wood’s Hole, Massachusetts simply vanished from her room in her home. Her parents had checked on her when she was sleeping one minute, and the next she was gone without a trace. When authorities arrived the house was searched top to bottom, and no signs of forced entry or a struggle could be found. Cathy’s bed seemed to be in a peaceful state, with no sign of being disturbed in any kind of confrontation. The window to the room was also closed and showed no signs of anyone coming in or going out that way.
An intensive search was immediately launched, composed of hundreds of people including police, firemen, volunteers, airmen from nearby Otis Air Force Base, and bloodhounds, as well as the Coast Guard scouring the nearby coast, yet absolutely no evidence of the missing girl could be found anywhere. She had simply vanished off the face of the earth. Then later, at 3AM on that same evening, Cathy’s very worried parents went into to her room to be startled by the sight of their missing daughter sleeping peacefully in her bed as if she had never been gone. When she was asked about where she had been, the girl gave the cryptic response of “I’m not telling.” What in the world happened to this little girl? How could a 6-year-old disappear from her bed, elude an intensive search by various professionals, and then reappear fast asleep exactly where she had vanished? Is this also perhaps an example of someone crossing through the veil between realities to pass temporarily into some parallel world or dimension? The only person who knows the answer to that is Cathy Cramer herself, and she’s not telling.
So are any of these accounts somehow anchored in any way to reality as we know it? Are these the realm of the lost mind untethered, spinning fantastical tales either out of hallucination, insanity, or an irrational attempt to make sense of distorted perceptions? Can this all simply be explained away somehow or is there a genuine phenomenon hinting at forces of the universe we have yet to comprehend buried within these disparate accounts? Are we perhaps just one of many alternate realities stacked upon one another and which between slips, shifting and travel are possible? The answers are elusive, and we may continue to pour over and debate them forever. However as long as there is the probability and possibility of worlds beyond our own there will always be those who look out into our universe, or perhaps inward, to seek to try to grasp just what this all might mean. In the meantime, cases like this will remain a tantalizing peek into what just may be out there beyond our grasp to conceive of it. | 0 |
Writing in an encrypted chat room, Islamic State sympathizers and militants hailed Saturday’s deadly attacks in London and typically called for more such carnage throughout Europe and the West. [Breitbart Jerusalem obtained access to correspondence posted in a closed chat group that utilizes the encrypted Telegram messaging service. The group serves as an internal Twitter of sorts for IS jihadists and sympathizers, and has been used in the past to issue IS communications. No group has claimed responsibility for the terrorist massacre in London yet in which seven people were murdered and dozens more were injured near the London Bridge and Borough Market. The attack was carried out mere hours after an news service had posted a message on Telegram calling for supporters to “gain benefit from Ramadan” and “kill the civilians of the Crusaders. Run over them by vehicles. ” The Telegram messages following the attack — as obtained by Breitbart Jerusalem — were full of similar incitement. IS member Abi Abdullah Almasri (the Egyptian) wrote, “Thanks to Allah, thank you, thanks to Allah, Allah is great, thanks to Allah from faith that he will make his promise reality and give victory (to the faithful). Allah will bless the lions. Allah will bless the lone wolves. Allah will reward you as long as you run over and stab these infidels in the depths of their countries. Put fear into their eyes, increase your hits, increase your attacks, don’t let them feel secure in their countries. ” Another Telegram account under the name of “The Chechen Syrian” wrote in the group: “We wait impatiently for such news. We wait for the official media of the Caliphate to bring us more such tidings on the actions of these lone wolves in the infidel countries as they turn these countries into military bases and sow fear among them with the help of Allah. “The infidels don’t feel safe despite having the newest planes, missiles and guns. A number of lone wolves have turned the centers of their lives into a hell that’s burning them. Our brothers have sworn to turn Europe into a military base. May Allah bless your graves, you lone wolves. ” Abou Alfarouq Omar then wrote, “Thank Allah before and after. Sheikh Osama (Bin Laden) may Allah receive him as a martyr, said: ‘You won’t be safe as long as the children of Muslims and the faithful don’t live in safety.’ These were the just and sincere words from the mouth of a leader who was convinced that Allah will grant us victory. Today our brothers are realizing his (bin Laden’s) will with minimum resources and knives and are turning the infidel and atheist countries fighting against the religion of Allah and the Muslims into a huge destruction, with the help of Allah. ” Abou Qatada Almosuly wrote, “Whoever thought that the killing of Muslims in Raqqa and Mosul would pass without punishment was deluding himself. These infidels must pay a heavy price, even if those who committed the attack in London aren’t from the Caliphate, then as lone wolves. “We will exact further cost not with knives and but with bombs and explosives and the moment will come when our suicide attackers disappear in the cities of Europe. Our children and our families won’t be alone in paying the price and their blood won’t be the only blood spilled. All the planes and warships won’t prevent the infidel countries from paying the price. You will find we have strength that you haven’t met yet and you will see more attacks that will continue as long as you continue to bomb the Muslims and the faithful. ” The New York Times reported on the timeline of Saturday’s London attack: • In the attack, the men drove a vehicle onto the sidewalk on London Bridge, striking several pedestrians, around 10 p. m. local time, according to London’s Metropolitan Police Service. • The police said the vehicle left London Bridge and drove to nearby Borough Market, where the suspects got out and began stabbing people, including an British Transport Police officer who was responding to the scene at London Bridge. The police said he received serious but not injuries. • The police said they shot and killed the three male suspects in Borough Market within eight minutes of receiving the first reports of an incident on London Bridge. Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio. ” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook. Ali Waked is the Arab affairs correspondent for Breitbart Jerusalem. | 1 |
at 9:45 am Leave a comment
Last Friday, I published a post titled, John Podesta’s Sister-in-Law Lobbied For Raytheon While Hillary Was Secretary of State , which understandably got totally buried in the madness surrounding the latest FBI news. Here’s the first paragraph of that post:
The Podesta family seems particularly adept at earning extraordinary sums of money via selling out the American public. Earlier this year, I highlighted how John Podesta’s brother Tony was paid $140,000 per month by the medieval monarchy of Saudi Arabia. After all, who cares about women’s rights when the pay is good?
Indeed, it’s not just relatives of Podesta who know how to rake in the cash. John is no slouch either, as Politico explained in an article published earlier today.
Here are a few excerpts:
Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, last year signed a $7,000-a-month contract with the foundation of a major Clinton donor who made a fortune selling a type of mortgage that some critics say contributed to the housing collapse, hacked emails show.
In February of last year, as Podesta was working to lay the groundwork for Clinton’s soon-to-launch campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, he signed the contract with the Sandler Foundation, which was started by Herb Sandler and his late wife Marion Sandler.
The contract — a copy of which was included in emails illegally obtained from Podesta’s Gmail account and disseminated Monday by WikiLeaks — is still active, according to Herb Sandler, who said that it calls for Podesta to provide advice on grant-making and other foundation functions.
It’s unusual for the full-time chairman of a general-election presidential campaign to maintain an active side deal with a major donor to that campaign — let alone to raise money from that donor for the campaign.
The WikiLeaks cache shows that Podesta provided Sandler with philanthropic advice and assortments of cheeses and pastas as gifts on the holidays, while Sandler offered all manner of political observations and once tried to get Podesta to arrange for former President Bill Clinton to write a blurb for a book written by one of Sandler’s friends.
Lobster risotto?
But Sandler brushed aside any concerns about potential conflicts of interest.
“I have never asked for anything of any political person — zero requests ever,” Sandler said. “If they’re responsive, it’s because they regard me as thoughtful, and a major contributor to Democratic causes,” Sandler said, adding that Podesta “knows that he doesn’t get bullshit from me. He knows I have no hidden agenda. He knows that my values are similar to his and that we care about people and not the billionaires, even though I ended up by some crazy thing to be one.”
Neither Podesta nor the Clinton campaign responded to questions about the contract.
Herb Sandler’s Clinton-related giving picked up last December after a visit from Podesta.
The campaign’s finance director Dennis Cheng responded “ Great!! ,” calling Podesta “#ChairmanCash.”
“Chairman cash.” A new meme has just been born.
The very next day, Sandler gave $1.5 million to Priorities USA Action, to which he has now given a total of $3 million, FEC records show.
The family’s fortune comes from the savings and loan institution that Herb and Marion Sandler ran for decades, a bank that became World Savings. It would end up making boatloads of cash from a type of adjustable rate mortgage that other lenders would later adopt, securitize and sell in a way that some have blamed for contributing to the housing bubble that burst in 2008. Not long before the burst and subsequent recession, the Sandlers sold the bank for $25.5 billion to Wachovia, earning $2.6 billion off the sale and donating most of their net worth to their foundation. Wachovia was later acquired by Wells Fargo.
The Sandlers met Podesta when they helped seed the Center for American Progress, the think tank he started in 2003 as a sort of Democratic administration in exile during George W. Bush’s presidency. Tax filings show that the Sandler Foundation has donated more than $37 million over the years to CAP, which worked to support President Barack Obama’s administration but has always been seen as more aligned with Clinton.
Center for American Progress…where have we heard that before? Oh yeah, in last week’s post, Dennis Kucinich’s Extraordinary Warning on D.C.’s Think Tank Warmongers , we learned: The self-identified liberal Center for American Progress (CAP) is now calling for Syria to be bombed, and estimates America’s current military adventures will be tidied up by 2025, a tardy twist on “mission accomplished.” CAP, according to a report in The Nation, has received funding from war contractors Lockheed Martin and Boeing, who make the bombers that CAP wants to rain hellfire on Syria.
Remember peasants, war is ok if “liberals” do it. Now back to Politico …
The WikiLeaks emails reveal that Podesta and his team at the Center for American Progress discussed how to push back on scrutiny of the Sandlers related to the 2008 housing collapse. That included an October 2008 “Saturday Night Live” sketch in which an actor playing Herb Sandler thanked members of Congress “for helping block congressional oversight of our corrupt activity.”
Podesta wrote to his colleagues that he’d talked to Herb Sandler, and “they are obviosly [sic] upset. Weird that snl should pick them out.”
After doing some research, a subordinate replied that “it appears default rates on their stuff was high (herb says not more so than others) and the losses were key to almsot wachovia failure — athough herb emphasizes that they were only one of the institutions problems.”
Sandler told POLITICO that any suggestion that his bank’s products contributed to the collapse were “a bunch of bullshit,” pointing out that their bank used a risk-averse approach to their loans, which had among the lowest default rate in the industry.
But Scott Walter, president of Capital Research Center, a conservative nonprofit that monitors the giving of major liberal donors including Sandler, argued that Podesta’s newly revealed contractual relationship with Sandler stood in stark contrast to Clinton’s efforts to cast herself as tough on the financial industry.
“This is another instance where the Clinton campaign has been revealed to have surprising links to some of the most dubious parts of the finance industry,” Walter said.
The Sandlers’ philanthropy increasingly has focused on fighting financial inequality and the role of big money in politics — a subject about which Herb Sandler and Podesta emailed frequently, according to WikiLeaks.
Interesting considering he is big money in politics, and seems to have no problem endlessly cheerleading the chosen candidate of America’s oligarchs.
Sandler explained to POLITICO that during the process of working to launch the center, he realized “we had been picking his brain ad nauseum” for years without paying Podesta as a consultant — a scenario Sandler called “very unfair.” That led to the consulting contract, which Sandler cast as “a ripoff” for Podesta. “I’d pay a lot more for that advice,” Sandler said, calling Podesta “one the most intelligent, decent, thoughtful human beings I’d ever met.”
In March, as Clinton’s Democratic primary campaign against Bernie Sanders grew increasingly bitter, Sandler emailed Podesta just to check up.
“How are you?” Sandler wrote . “MIss you.”
Call me crazy, but if he was really so focused on solving income inequality why wasn’t he supporting Bernie Sanders?
But hey. | 0 |
COLUMBIA, S. C. — In the autumn of 2007, Tim Tebow came to this town to deliver a crushing blow. Then the Florida Gators’ dynamic quarterback, Tebow cemented his destiny as that year’s Heisman Trophy winner by accounting for seven touchdowns against the University of South Carolina Gamecocks. Sitting in the stands in Stadium that day, and watching glumly, was the Honorable Stephen K. Benjamin, who at that point was still three years away from being elected mayor here. At the end of Tebow’s display, Benjamin remembered having one thought: He was glad that Tebow was leaving town and hoped he was gone for good. Now, a decade later, Mayor Benjamin is thrilled to welcome Tebow back. “We are so glad he is finally on our side,” Benjamin said. “It’s a heck of a story. ” Tebow departed Columbia 10 years ago as an enemy in shoulder pads. But this past Thursday, he returned as a hero with a bat, bringing his remarkable, and sometimes polarizing, appeal to a town — and a region — ready to embrace him. In his very first for the Columbia Fireflies, the Mets’ Class A affiliate in the South Atlantic League, Tebow added another chapter to his enduring story by blasting a home run, delighting the 10, 000 fans who had come to watch him, many of them wearing Tebow jerseys in all sorts of colors. On Sunday, Tebow hit his second home run in only four games, all of them wins for Columbia. Jeff Reed, 56, a lawn care specialist from nearby Blythewood, was in the crowd for Tebow’s first homer run on opening night. Reed had actually been a fan of Tebow the football player despite living in a rival Southeastern Conference city. When Reed’s wife went to Denver a few years back, she returned with a No. 15 shirt that Tebow wore when he played quarterback for the N. F. L. ’s Broncos. And for Tebow’s first game with the Fireflies, Reed wore it to the ballpark. “As soon as we heard he would be playing here, we bought tickets,” he said. So have fans from around the South Atlantic League, which includes teams from the Carolinas, Georgia, Kentucky and West Virginia, places where college football is king and where Tebow is revered for his gridiron prowess, his persona and, for many, his Christian faith. His baseball abilities are another matter. Still, Jason Freier, the owner of the Fireflies, said the team had been hoping for months — ever since the Mets signed Tebow last September on what almost seemed to be a whim — that he would be assigned to Columbia. In the end, Freier got his wish. Actually, Columbia was a logical place for Tebow, 29, to begin his professional baseball career. The South Atlantic League is a fairly low rung on the minor league ladder, making it a less challenging environment for an athlete who had been away from the sport for 12 years. But even if it made perfect sense for Tebow to start here, the Fireflies took nothing for granted. Over the past few months, they have been in constant communication with the Mets — in part at the urging of Benjamin, who said he pestered the Fireflies’ team president, John Katz, nonstop to prod the Mets. Freier said even fellow owners around the league were asking when the decision would be made official. They, too, were eager to start marketing their Tebow ticket packages for the dates when the Fireflies would visit their towns. Now, that marketing is in full force. “They tell me they have been selling well,” Freier said of the league’s other owners. “As soon as the announcement was made last month, about friends in the business called and told me: ‘You won the lottery. It’s a marketing bonanza.’ It is as unique a set of circumstances as you will find. ” Freier, who owns two other minor league clubs, said that before Tebow arrived here, he and members of his staff researched the set of circumstances: Michael Jordan’s foray into minor league baseball in 1994 for the Class AA Birmingham Barons. They read articles about that chapter of Jordan’s life, watched an ESPN documentary and spoke to people who were in Birmingham at the time. With that as preparation, they then welcomed Tebow to Columbia — the capital of South Carolina, with a population exceeding 130, 000 — and got ready for the whirlwind he seems likely to stir up, some of it financial. “Does anybody think he is a legitimate baseball prospect?” said Robert Boland, the director of Ohio University’s program. “Probably not. But Tebow will likely have an enormous effect on ticket and merchandise sales in a very powerful way. ” Normally, minor league teams market a experience rather than individual players, because those players often spend no more than one season at a given minor league stop. Tebow, as is often the case, is the exception. However long he is in Columbia, he is almost certain to be the focus. The Fireflies’ souvenir shop sells with only one player’s name on them — Tebow’s. Freier said that in 11 years owning three teams, he has seen such treatment extended to just one other minor leaguer. In that instance, a player named Josh Van Meter had been a star at Norwell High School in Indiana, and when he joined Freier’s Fort Wayne TinCaps, Freier made up shirts with the hometown hero’s name. Tebow, of course, is in a far different category. Freier said that when it became clear Tebow would be joining the Fireflies, national media executives told him that Tebow was second only to Tiger Woods over the past few decades when it came to measuring the appeal of an athlete in terms of online page views, clicks and overall video content. On a micro level, local businesses are hoping Tebow’s arrival radiates all the way to their cash registers. Scott Hall owns the Bone In BBQ food truck that parks outside the Fireflies’ stadium. While not a devout sports fan, he knew enough to compute Tebow’s potential impact on his business. “At first I was like, ‘Wait, isn’t this the wrong sport? ’” Hall said. “But we’re really excited he’s here. We want to get him out here and get a ton of barbecue in him. ” For Hall and others, the hope is that Tebow can thread the needle of being good enough to stay in the Fireflies’ lineup but not so good that the Mets quickly promote him. And despite his home run Thursday, a quick rise in the Mets’ system for Tebow seems unlikely. In his first two games, Tebow went two for 10 with four strikeouts as the Augusta Greenjackets quickly figured him out at the plate. In front of a little over 5, 000 people on Friday, Augusta even intentionally walked the bases loaded to have a lefty pitcher face the Tebow, and he popped out to end that inning. By then, most of the two dozen members of the news media that had assembled for Tebow’s debut on Thursday were gone, leaving behind a famous athlete looking to settle into a normal baseball routine while figuring out if he has what it takes to somehow make it all the way to the major leagues. That verdict may take a while, but not that long. “This is the ultimate business,” Freier said. Clay Rapada, a former major league pitcher and the Augusta pitching coach, said he could see that Tebow had a plan when he got into the batter’s box. But Tebow’s development must be accelerated into a shorter time frame than the typical Class A player. “He hit a mistake,” Rapada said of the home run. Still, he noted, “that’s what the big boys in the major leagues get paid a lot of money to do. ” Tebow, who endured intense scrutiny playing in places like Gainesville in Florida or big cities throughout the N. F. L. knows that people are watching him again but shrugs off the pressure now back on his enormous shoulders. “All of my sports experiences helped me for a moment like this,” he said. “They all help. ” And after Thursday’s home run, and a victory by the Fireflies, Tebow gave a rousing speech to a roomful of coaches and teammates. One of them was Dash Winningham, a first baseman who is the Fireflies’ real star. He grew up in Ocala, Fla. a short drive from Gainesville. When Winningham was a boy, Tebow was his favorite football player. “Where I come from, Tim Tebow is like a god,” Winningham said. “But he is really just one of the guys. A little older, maybe, but totally down to earth. Looking around during pregame introductions, it was pretty surreal to think that all of a sudden, we’re teammates. ” As part of those ceremonies on Thursday, Benjamin threw out the first pitch, then went to the home dugout to shake hands with the man who made his Saturdays so miserable a decade ago. But now, Benjamin sees Tebow as a real attraction for his city, and maybe for the sport Tebow is trying to master. At least that was the prevailing feeling after Thursday’s game. “When you think about what he represents,” Benjamin said, “even in a Class A minor league system, he may in fact be the new face of baseball. ” That would seem to be an overstatement, but even a small dose of Tebowmania can have that effect. | 1 |
The number of adult baptisms in the Austrian Catholic church has more than doubled over the last year. The church claims the rise is due to a huge influx of migrants from Afghanistan and Iran converting to Christianity. [The Archdiocese of Vienna has announced that 254 men and women were selected for baptism after completing the rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA) taking part in a baptism ceremony conducted by Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schönborn Die Presse reports. The group of converts had to wait a year to be prepared for baptism — a recent move by the church due to the number of requests by Muslim asylum seekers for conversion. The baptism ceremony was not opened to the public due to the fears of many of the converts that they could face retaliation from other Muslims or even attacks against their family, particularly those who come from Iran. Cardinal Schönborn declared the day a celebration for the church, saying it was a “a great and moving day for the Church of Vienna. ” “That they want to follow Christ and live in his fellowship is also a call to us — which we have the happiness and privilege of growing up in faith from childhood, but may have forgotten how precious this is,” he added. Schönborn, who many see as a likely successor to Pope Francis, has made headlines several times in recent months. In September he said that many Muslims actively sought to conquer Europe for Islam. Three months later he slammed European politicians and their migrant policies, saying the migrant crisis had gone too far and that it was better to help migrants where they lived. He added that he was shocked by the sheer number of migrants who have come to Europe in recent years. The conservative Cardinal has also been at odds with many European leaders in regards to U. S. President Donald Trump. In early January he compared Trump to former president Ronald Reagan saying, “Many also shook their heads when Ronald Reagan was elected: ‘For God’s sake, an actor from California!’ But Reagan was certainly one of the best presidents the U. S. ever had. So you should not be too quick to judge. ” The trend of conversions is also seen in neighbouring Germany, but some are sceptical of the motives of those converting. Two Syrian migrants living in Lebanon even admitted that they had converted because it gave them a better chance of claiming asylum in Europe. Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson@breitbart. com | 1 |
WASHINGTON — By riding his appeal among whites to the top of the Republican Party, Donald J. Trump has emboldened conservative thinkers to press their party of business and the privileged to reshape its economic canon to more directly benefit poorer workers it has often taken for granted. The policy prescriptions of these reform conservatives, or “reformocons,” would not only break with some longtime Republican orthodoxy — disavowing tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the rich, for example — they would also counter more recent stances by Mr. Trump on trade and immigration. And because of a lack of policy specifics in Mr. Trump’s campaign, reform conservatives see an opening through which to push their prescriptions. “What it means to be a conservative is up for grabs,” said Reihan Salam, the executive editor of the conservative National Review. Whether Mr. Trump prevails or the party is left to rebuild from defeat, these conservatives in think tanks, advocacy groups and the news media — and a few in political office — will be pressing for a new agenda: to update the playbook with an eye to voters without a college education who form the Republican base. Ronald Reagan’s notions that policies that benefit the rich and big business lift all incomes now appear outmoded in an era of rising wealth inequality and stagnant wages. The challenge to the party could be every bit as contentious as Mr. Trump’s ascent has been. Beyond conservative think tanks and activist circles, the new breed of conservatives has not made significant inroads among House Republicans, for instance. And even these Republicans do not agree on everything. But some common ideas suggest their proposed road map for the party: • Reject additional tax cuts for those making more than $250, 000 a year, but expand breaks for and workers through tax credits for children, the tax credit or a new wage subsidy using tax dollars to bring low wages toward the local median level. • Promote the benefits of global trade agreements, but help displaced workers. • Rule out fully privatizing Social Security and Medicare, and reassure workers they will be exempt from . • Acknowledge that universal health care is here to stay, but push for changes. • Disavow mass deportations and promote the economic benefits of legalizing longtime workers who are in the country illegally, but reduce the legal entry of immigrants. “What we have going on right now, and Trump’s position in the Republican Party, makes this recalibration that much more important, that much more urgent,” said Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah. “Some within the party,” he added, “have been all too willing to wear the label of the Republican Party as being the party of Wall Street, or the party of the top 1 percent. ” Although most of them oppose Mr. Trump’s candidacy — Mr. Salam called him “an overwhelmingly noxious and negative force” — these conservatives do credit him with engaging voters and dealing them into the economic conversation. “The biggest thing that Trump offers these voters is finally somebody paying attention,” said Henry Olsen, a scholar at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. “Imagine that they’re the wallflowers at the high school dance and they’re sitting off, ignored by everybody. Suddenly, the football hero comes up and says, ‘Come dance with me.’ That’s intoxicating. ” Led by younger conservatives, the push for new approaches began in the past decade, as big spending and military interventions by the Bush administration and a Congress vexed many in the party. Capturing the ferment was a 2008 book, “Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream,” by Mr. Salam and Ross Douthat, who is now a columnist for The New York Times. “The Trump phenomenon has really opened things up — people are more inclined to listen, elites within the party are more inclined to listen,” said Mr. Salam, who, with Mr. Douthat, recently updated their book’s theme in an opinion article in The Times. The authors wrote in their that Mr. Trump’s white supporters were “clearly voting against a party leadership that pays them lip service while ignoring their concerns” — a revulsion that will not disappear even if Mr. Trump does. Proponents of a new conservative agenda have critics in both parties. Democrats dismiss their ideas as repackaging a familiar agenda. Some Republicans and conservative media figures like Rush Limbaugh condemn their cause as a return of moderate Republicanism or a capitulation to liberalism. Michael A. Needham, the chief executive of Heritage Action for America, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation, said reform conservatives and Tea organizations like his are allies in their desire to rewrite a “stale” economic agenda tilted to Republican donors. But he acknowledged differences in tactics and substance. His group and its allies favor conflict, like government shutdowns, for instance. And they still want to repeal the Affordable Care Act and cut taxes for everyone. Yet conservative agitators were mostly talking among themselves until Mr. Trump toppled the party establishment, along the way flouting longstanding party dogma on taxes, trade and immigration. Democrats have long charged that white Americans who vote heavily Republican do so against their economic interests. A new poll for The Wall Street Journal and NBC News had Hillary Clinton ahead over all but trailing Mr. Trump by 13 percentage points among whites without a college education and by 21 points among men in that group. Past polls had her even further behind with those voters, however. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” last week that the Democratic Party bore some responsibility. While its policies may be geared toward workers, he said, “The Democratic Party over all hasn’t spoken enough to those voters” — the “ordinary people busting their necks. ” It was an echo of the Republican now playing out. For all of Mr. Trump’s outreach to whites, Robert VerBruggen, the managing editor of The American Conservative, said the party platform that emerged from the Republican convention was further evidence of the gap between the party’s support from white workers and its agenda that all but ignores them. “The breakdown of the working class was neglected,” he wrote in his magazine. “There seems to have been little discussion of the economic anxieties of working families, the safety net or the drug epidemic sweeping rural America. ” “Instead,” Mr. VerBruggen wrote, “their focus on the bottom half of the economic spectrum seems to have been limited to a debate about the purchase of unhealthy snacks with food stamps. ” Oren Cass, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the former domestic policy director for Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, even suggested that Republicans look for ways to harness labor unions for constructive relationships. He also predicted more openness among conservatives to raising taxes when justified. “It’s hard to imagine the Grover Norquist tax pledge having the salience it once did,” Mr. Cass said, referring to the longstanding vow that most Republican candidates take. “That model of ‘no tax increases, ever, under any circumstances’ I think is probably on its way out or gone. ” Mr. Norquist scoffed at the suggestion. “The pledge came out in ’86,” he said. “Every six months from then somebody has said, ‘Oh, the pledge won’t hold.’ ” It is, he added, “nonnegotiable. ” | 1 |
.@NancyPelosi on if she would have retired had @HillaryClinton been elected: ”I would have been gone by now if she had won.” pic. twitter. While speaking with reporters on Friday, House Minority Leader Representative Nancy Pelosi stated of the 2016 presidential election, “I would have been gone by now if she had won. ” Pelosi said that the Affordable Care Act is “a pillar” and that if Clinton was in office, she wouldn’t worry about the ACA going away. Pelosi continued that “we all knew” Clinton would win. She added that Trump winning “motivated me her to stay. ” And “I would have been gone by now if she had won. ” ( Politico) Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 1 |
The Brazilian government has suspended sales of tear gas to Venezuela amid increasing police violence, Reuters has reported. [In a move that will further isolate Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro, Brazil’s Defense Ministry and Ministry of Foreign Relations reached the decision to halt sales after appeals from the country’s opposition. On Friday, the Brazilian Defense Ministry confirmed it had canceled a shipment of gas canisters in April intended for the Venezuelan military, produced by the weaponry company Condor Tecnologias although it did not provide a reason for the decision. Condor has since confirmed it still has two ongoing contracts with the Venezuelan military but would not discuss their status. The company, which has previously received criticism for arming the militaries of Turkey and Bahrain, claimed that it did not consider the political leanings of their customers and warned that blocking their exports could “have dramatic consequences, since there may be no alternative for security forces other than using firearms. ” However, sources close to the decision told Reuters that “the (Brazilian) government decided to accept the opposition’s request because there’s a massacre in Venezuela,” while another government official said that the exporting of any other crowd control equipment would also be suspended. “(Brazil) did absolutely the correct thing in denying permission for the shipment,” said opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who still serves as the governor of Miranda. “We’re working on the others, the only (holdout) seems to be China. ” Meanwhile, opposition politician Jorge Millán also celebrated the decision, confirming that leaders had made multiple requests to stop Brazil providing “tools for repression. ” “We discovered that there were advanced negotiations for the purchase of material in Brazil and made a specific complaint,” Millán told O Globo. The decision comes amidst increasing police and military violence across Venezuela, as protesters ratchet up the size and scale of their demonstrations calling for an election and as Maduro seeks to tighten his grip on power by rewriting the countries constitution. On Monday, Latin American leaders met for a summit in Cancun, Mexico, to discuss the escalating crisis, although they have yet to reach a consensus on the next steps to take. So far, an estimated 90 protesters have been killed since daily protests began in late March, as police use water cannons, rubber bullets, and smoke bombs to contain protesters. Images from inside the country have shown increasing police brutality. Last week, a boy was “run over and tortured” by an armored vehicle driven by the Venezuelan National Guard in the city of Mérida. An audio recording obtained by the Miami Herald revealed a military general suggesting that police should start using sniper rifles to contain the protests. As many as eight Latin American countries have now signed a letter condemning an “excessive use of force by Venezuelan authorities against civilians who are protesting government measures that affect democratic stability and cause the loss of human life. ” You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com. | 1 |
Muslims Start Chanting Allah On Plane, Flight Attendant Quickly Shuts Them Up Oct 29, 2016 Previous post
A Muslim couple has accused Delta Airlines of Islamophobia after their behavior forced a flight attendant to take action after they decided to parade their religious entitlement on a flight to the United States.
According to reports, the two had boarded the plane when they started chanting “Allah” repeatedly. When a flight attendant noticed what they were doing he sprang into action and stopped them dead in their tracks.
The couple has since taken issue with Delta, claiming that they had been ‘racially profiled,’ which is tough to do considering Islam is not a race but rather a religion.
The couple in question, Faisal and Nazia Ali, claim to be victims of religious discrimination after they had to be removed for “suspicious activity” on an airplane. Most people would probably find being the only two people on the plane that were hiding their phones as the steward passes, sweating, and repeating the word “Allah” on an international flight to the united states from Paris a little suspicious.
That’s exactly the type of behavior that this couple was exhibiting when the flight attendant had to take action and do so quickly, reports The Independent.
After the flight attendant noticed this odd behavior he chose to act, taking the safety of the passengers and the crew above any sort of reprimand he might receive for being a ‘racist’ or a bigot.
He told them to get up grab their things and get off of the plane. That’s when one of the Delta employees said that the pilot had made the final call because their behavior had made the rest of the passengers feel uncomfortable.
The couple then went through an interrogation process before they were determined to not be a threat and sent home on the next flight and then offered a full refund. Of course this wasn’t enough for this entitled couple. The couple took this so-called ‘offense’ and contacted the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which by the way has ties to terror organizations.
Once CAIR filed an official
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. Mr Netanyahu has presented this as a rebuff to those who accuse him of jeopardising Israeli security interests with his governments repeated affronts to the White House.
In the past weeks alone, defence minister Avigdor Lieberman has compared last years nuclear deal between Washington and Iran with the 1938 Munich pact, which bolstered Hitler; and Mr Netanyahu has implied that US opposition to settlement expansion is the same as support for the ethnic cleansing of Jews.
American president Barack Obama, meanwhile, hopes to stifle his own critics who insinuate that he is anti-Israel. The deal should serve as a fillip too for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic partys candidate to succeed Mr Obama in Novembers election.
In reality, however, the Obama administration has quietly punished Mr Netanyahu for his misbehaviour. Israeli expectations of a $4.5bn-a-year deal were whittled down after Mr Netanyahu stalled negotiations last year as he sought to recruit Congress to his battle against the Iran deal.
In fact, Israel already receives roughly $3.8bn if Congresss assistance on developing missile defence programmes is factored in. Notably, Israel has been forced to promise not to approach Congress for extra funds.
The deal takes into account neither inflation nor the dollars depreciation against the shekel.
A bigger blow still is the White Houses demand to phase out a special exemption that allowed Israel to spend nearly 40 per cent of aid locally on weapon and fuel purchases. Israel will soon have to buy all its armaments from the US, ending what amounted to a subsidy to its own arms industry.
Nonetheless, Washingtons renewed military largesse in the face of almost continual insults inevitably fuels claims that the Israeli tail is wagging the US dog. Even The New York Times has described the aid package as too big.
Since the 1973 war, Israel has received at least $100bn in military aid, with more assistance hidden from view. Back in the 1970s, Washington paid half of Israels military budget. Today it still foots a fifth of the bill, despite Israels economic success.
But the US expects a return on its massive investment. As the late Israeli politician-general Ariel Sharon once observed, Israel has been a US aircraft carrier in the Middle East, acting as the regional bully and carrying out operations that benefit Washington.
Almost no one blames the US for Israeli attacks that wiped out Iraqs and Syrias nuclear programmes. A nuclear-armed Iraq or Syria would have deterred later US-backed moves at regime overthrow, as well as countering the strategic advantage Israel derives from its own nuclear arsenal.
In addition, Israels US-sponsored military prowess is a triple boon to the US weapons industry, the countrys most powerful lobby. Public funds are siphoned off to let Israel buy goodies from American arms makers. That, in turn, serves as a shop window for other customers and spurs an endless and lucrative game of catch-up in the rest of the Middle East.
The first F-35 fighter jets to arrive in Israel in December their various components produced in 46 US states will increase the clamour for the cutting-edge warplane.
Israel is also a front-line laboratory, as former Israeli army negotiator Eival Gilady admitted at the weekend, that develops and field-tests new technology Washington can later use itself.
The US is planning to buy back the missile interception system Iron Dome which neutralises battlefield threats of retaliation it largely paid for. Israel works closely too with the US in developing cyberwarfare, such as the Stuxnet worm that damaged Irans civilian nuclear programme.
But the clearest message from Israels new aid package is one delivered to the Palestinians: Washington sees no pressing strategic interest in ending the occupation. It stood up to Mr Netanyahu over the Iran deal but will not risk a damaging clash over Palestinian statehood.
Some believe that Mr Obama signed the aid package to win the credibility necessary to overcome his domestic Israel lobby and pull a rabbit from the hat: an initiative, unveiled shortly before he leaves office, that corners Mr Netanyahu into making peace.
Hopes have been raised by an expected meeting at the United Nations in New York on Wednesday. But their first talks in 10 months are planned only to demonstrate unity to confound critics of the aid deal.
If Mr Obama really wanted to pressure Mr Netanyahu, he would have used the aid agreement as leverage. Now Mr Netanyahu need not fear US financial retaliation, even as he intensifies effective annexation of the West Bank.
Mr Netanyahu has drawn the right lesson from the aid deal he can act against the Palestinians with continuing US impunity.
- See more at: http://www.jonathan-cook.net/2016-09-19/palestinians-lose-in-us-military-aid-deal-with-israel/#sthash.fL4Eq28N.dpuf Can U.S. Elections Really Be Stolen? Yes By Mark Crispin Miller
Is election theft possible in the United States? And might the suspects live closer to home than the Kremlin? Professor Mark Crispin Miller, author of numerous books and articles on computerized election fraud, explores the very real possibilities. Posted November 06, 2016 | 0 |
Evelyn Farkas, a former top Obama administration official, has denied that she had access to inside information when she made remarks as a contributor to MSNBC last month that seemed to acknowledge efforts by members of the Obama administration to collect intelligence on Donald Trump and members of his 2016 presidential campaign. [However, the news media has largely failed to note that on February 16, about two weeks prior to her statements on MSNBC, Farkas revealed in an interview that she was “getting winks and hints from inside that there was something really wrong here” — referring to Trump officials’ alleged ties to Russia. She stated that she was “first made aware of all this stuff” during the summer. On March 2, Farkas stated on MSNBC that she told former Obama administration colleagues to collect intelligence on Trump and campaign officials. “I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill, it was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people, get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the administration,” stated Farkas. She continued: Because I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior [Obama] people who left, so it would be hidden away in the bureaucracy … that the Trump folks — if they found out how we knew what we knew about their … the Trump staff dealing with Russians — that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we no longer have access to that intelligence. After her remarks resurfaced and were subsequently used by the White House to bolster the charge that Trump was under illicit surveillance during the campaign, Farkas gave interviews denying that she had any inside information when she made those comments to MSNBC. She told the Daily Caller last week that she had no access to any intelligence. “I had no intelligence whatsoever, I wasn’t in government anymore and didn’t have access to any,” she said. Speaking to the Washington Post, Farkas denied being a source of any leaks. The Post reported: Farkas, in an interview with The Post, said she “didn’t give anybody anything except advice,” was not a source for any stories and had nothing to leak. Noting that she left government in October 2015, she said, “I was just watching like anybody else, like a regular spectator” as initial reports of Russia contacts began to surface after the election. However, on February 16, Farkas told Ezra Klein at Vox. com that she was “getting winks and hints from inside” about alleged Russia ties. The interview was also highlighted by the Gateway Pundit blog. Farkas was asked by Klein about her “level of alarm after the resignation of Michael Flynn,” who stepped down in February as Trump’s national security adviser. Regarding her “level of alarm,” Farkas replied: It’s lower than it’s been since the summer, when I was first made aware of all this stuff. I’m like, finally, everybody else sees it! Seriously. The reason I was so upset last summer was that I was getting winks and hints from inside that there was something really wrong here. I was agitated because I knew the Clinton campaign and the world didn’t know. But I didn’t think it would happen this fast. I didn’t think Flynn would survive a year, but I thought it would be most of the year. The fact that Flynn is gone is constructive from the perspective of US foreign policy. He was getting it wrong on combating terrorism and Russia. So I feel relieved that he will not be whispering his policy prescriptions in the president’s ear. On the bigger issue, the intelligence community, the bureaucracy, patriotic Americans, and some members of Congress are making it impossible for the White House to sweep whatever they are trying to hide under the rug. And the White House is clearly trying to hide something, or the president would have said, on day one, that he would support the investigations that began under his predecessor. This past week, Breitbart News first reported that at a conference last October, held two weeks before the presidential election, Farkas predicted that if Trump won the presidency he would “be impeached pretty quickly or somebody else would have to take over government. ” Breitbart News also first reported that at the same conference, Farkas warned that more must be done to counter the forces of nationalism and populism that have been entering the mainstream with the rise of Trump and nationalist movements across Europe. Farkas currently serves as a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, which takes a hawkish approach toward Russia and has released numerous reports and briefs about Russian aggression. The Council is funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc. the U. S. State Department and NATO ACT. Another Council funder is the Ploughshares Fund, which in turn has received financing from billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations. Farkas serves on the Atlantic Council alongside Dmitri Alperovitch, of CrowdStrike, the company utilized by the FBI to make its assessment about alleged Russian hacking into the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Alperovitch is a nonresident senior fellow of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council. Last month, FBI Director James Comey confirmed that his agency never had direct access to the DNC’s servers to confirm the hacking. “Well, we never got direct access to the machines themselves,” he stated. “The DNC in the spring of 2016 hired a firm that ultimately shared with us their forensics from their review of the system. ” National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers also stated the NSA never asked for access to the DNC hardware: “The NSA didn’t ask for access. That’s not in our job. ” Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio. ” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook. With research by Joshua Klein. | 1 |
JERUSALEM — One loved horse riding another was the oldest of four sisters a third had fought to enlist in the army despite medical problems that allowed him to defer the draft. The fourth was the 300th graduate of her Haifa high school to have died while serving as a soldier. Israel buried its latest terrorism victims on Monday, the day after they were run down by a Palestinian man in a truck, enveloping them in the country’s familiar outpouring of love for its service members. But this time, the usually unifying ritual was marred by discord. Israelis called it the “Azaria effect,” referring to Sgt. Elor Azaria, the soldier who was convicted last week of manslaughter for shooting a wounded and incapacitated Palestinian assailant in the head. Video from the scene of Sunday’s attack showed dozens of armed soldiers fleeing from the truck instead of trying to shoot the driver. Some Israelis who had complained that the army’s high command failed to back up Sergeant Azaria asserted that the soldiers had fallen short because they were afraid of being put on trial. The military, security experts and soldiers at the scene quickly rejected that notion. “Those who ran from the scene were not concerned about Azaria, but about their own ” said Yehuda Ben Meir, an expert in national security and public opinion at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. Still, the argument — unfolding in full volume on Israeli news sites, social media and broadcast channels — reflected the disruptive influence the Azaria affair has had on the army and its central place in Israeli society. In this small, country where most Jewish are drafted into years of service, the military has long been a rare reserve of respect and consensus. Yet the same sentiment that leads Israeli Jews to treat soldiers as “everybody’s children” has also led many to call for a pardon for Sergeant Azaria, creating tension between the people and the commanders of their army. “The motherly protection of soldiers sometimes overcomes your basic value system,” Mr. Ben Meir said, adding that the instinct to protect soldiers was not particular to Israel. The soldiers targeted by the Palestinian truck driver on Sunday were in officer training programs, and most were not preparing for combat roles. Many were in the educational corps or training for administrative jobs on the home front. On a routine educational tour of Jerusalem, they were caught as they disembarked from buses at a popular observation spot with panoramic views of Old City. The truck driver plowed into one group, then reversed and came back to claim more victims. A tour guide who shot at the truck with his pistol complained on television that the soldiers were better equipped with but had hesitated to shoot. Noam Kedar, one of the soldiers at the scene, denounced those who passed instant judgment. “Please stop your psychoanalysis,” she wrote in an impassioned Facebook post. “It has nothing to do with Elor Azaria,” she added. “It’s unrelated. Let none of you dare compare a semitrailer going at 100 km per hour with a disarmed terrorist who is lying down, already neutralized. ” The military’s preliminary findings were that two soldiers had fired at the driver it remained unclear on Monday whether he had been killed by them or by civilians who opened fire. The defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said that any attempt to link Sunday’s events to the Azaria verdict had no basis. One squad commander at the scene said she had instructed her forces to run for cover after determining that enough soldiers were already running toward the truck. There were also concerns, according to officers in the field, that too many people shooting could cause a “friendly fire” accident. The four soldiers who were killed, all promoted posthumously, were identified as Lt. Yael Yekutiel, 20, from Givatayim, near Tel Aviv Second Lt. Erez Orbach, 20, from Alon Shvut, in the West Bank Lt. Shir Hajaj, 22, from Ma’ale Adumim in the West Bank and Second Lt. Shira Tzur, 20, from Haifa. “These are our children,” Herzl Hajaj, Shir Hajaj’s father, told the Israeli news media Sunday after hearing of his daughter’s death. “We send them to the army we know they might not return. ” The Azaria case, regarding a shooting in the West Bank city of Hebron last March that was caught on video, unleashed its own kind of friendly fire and fury. As a military judge read the verdict last week in a Tel Aviv military compound, hundreds of protesters demonstrated outside. Bolstered by some of the most extreme elements of Israeli society, like La Familia fan club of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team and the Lahava organization, the crowd scuffled with the police. Among their chants were threats against Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, the military chief of staff, a post normally among the most revered and popular among Israeli Jews. General Eisenkot had drawn criticism for saying in a speech a day before the Azaria verdict that an in the army was not “everybody’s child,” but a soldier and a fighter with a mission. “Gadi, Gadi, beware, Rabin is looking for a friend,” the protesters sang, referring to Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister of Israel who was assassinated in 1995 by a Jewish extremist. The three judges who formed the military tribunal were placed under guard. The backlash was not long in coming, and was equally charged. The popular Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper gathered half a dozen former chiefs of staff and photographed them for Sunday’s front page, with the headline: “Behind you, Gadi. ” Days earlier, an army reservist who is well known to Israelis — as are many war heroes — captured national attention with a plea for unity after the Azaria verdict. The reservist, Capt. Ziv Shilon, who lost one arm in an explosion along the Gaza border and was severely injured in the other arm, wrote in an emotional Facebook post: “Yes, I, who never cried in the hardest moments that I do not wish on anybody, sat today and simply cried. ” “I cried,” he wrote, “over the hands that I left in Gaza and I asked myself perhaps for the first time in my life, was it worth fighting for a nation that hates itself?” Mr. Shilon announced plans to sit in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square — named for the prime minister who was slain there in 1995 — on Saturday night with a huge placard calling to bring back solidarity and mutual respect, even if he had to sit there alone. Instead, he was joined by thousands. Micah Goodman, an Jewish philosopher, said that the Israelis’ “automatic identification” with soldiers sometimes led to “irrational” results. That was the common thread, he said, between the cries for a pardon for Sergeant Azaria and the contentious decision in 2011 to trade more than 1, 000 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom had been convicted of deadly terrorist acts against Israelis, for one Israeli soldier who was being held captive in Gaza. “Having that soft spot for soldiers is part of the Israeli solidarity, and it is part of what is really unique about Israel,” Mr. Goodman said. “The weakness of Israel is also part of the power of Israel. ” | 1 |
Saker Message: No current Saker messages. Russia celebrates a Unity Day of liberation of Moscow from the Polish Roman Papists army in 1612 273 Views November 05, 2016 No Comments Scotts Corner Scott
The National Unity Day, first celebrated on 4 November 2005, commemorates the popular uprising lead by prince Dmitry Pozharsky and a meat merchant Kuzma Minin which ejected the alien occupying forces of Polish Roman Papists army from Moscow in November 1612, and more generally the end of the Time of Troubles and foreign interventions in Russia. Its name alludes to the idea that all the classes of the Russian society willingly united to preserve the Russian statehood when its demise seemed inevitable, even though there was neither Tsar nor Patriarch to guide them. Recently this episode was made into a Russian movie 1612.
Minin and Pozharsky: The Liberation of Moscow. (from the triptych “For the Russian Land!”) Artist Yuri Pantyukhin
Russia: Muscovites celebrate Unity Day in capital
River dance in Simferopol, Crimea
Russia: Putin and Patriarch Kirill bless new monument to Vladimir the Great
Nov 4, 2016
President Vladimir Putin unveiled a new monument to the Russia’s first Christian leader Vladimir the Great in Moscow, on Friday. The opening ceremony took place just in few meters from Kremlin walls and coincided with the Russian National Unity Day.
Vladimir Putin, Russian President (Russian): “Your Holiness. Respected Muscovites! Dear friends! I greet and congratulate you on the opening of the monument to Saint Equal-to-apostles Prince Vladimir. This is a big and significant event for Moscow, for the whole country and for all Russian compatriots. It is symbolic that it is being held on the National Unity Day here in the centre of the capital near the walls of the ancient Kremlin, in the heart of Russia.”
Vladimir Putin, Russian President (Russian): “The strong moral support, cohesion and unity helped our ancestors to overcome difficulties, to live and to win for the glory of the Fatherland, to strengthen its power and greatness from generation to generation. And today it is our duty to stand together against modern threats and challenges basing on spiritual precepts, invaluable traditions of unity and concord and to move forward ensuring the continuity of our thousand-year history.”
Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and all Russia (Russian): “The monument to Prince Vladimir is a symbol of the unity of all the peoples to whom he is farther. This is the peoples of the historical Rus’ currently living within the borders of many states. The monument to the farther may be everywhere where his children live. There is no contradiction in it. But it is bad if children forget that they have the only father.” The Essential Saker: from the trenches of the emerging multipolar world $27.95 Be the First to Comment! Leave a Reply Click here to get more info on formatting (1) Leave the name field empty if you want to post as Anonymous. It's preferable that you choose a name so it becomes clear who said what. E-mail address is not mandatory either. The website automatically checks for spam. Please refer to our moderation policies for more details. We check to make sure that no comment is mistakenly marked as spam. This takes time and effort, so please be patient until your comment appears. Thanks. (2) 10 replies to a comment are the maximum. (3) Here are formating examples which you can use in your writing:<b>bold text</b> results in bold text <i>italic text</i> results in italic text (You can also combine two formating tags with each other, for example to get bold-italic text.)<em>emphasized text</em> results in emphasized text <strong>strong text</strong> results in strong text <q>a quote text</q> results in a quote text (quotation marks are added automatically) <cite>a phrase or a block of text that needs to be cited</cite> results in: a phrase or a block of text that needs to be cited <blockquote>a heavier version of quoting a block of text...</blockquote> results in: a heavier version of quoting a block of text that can span several lines. Use these possibilities appropriately. They are meant to help you create and follow the discussions in a better way. They can assist in grasping the content value of a comment more quickly. and last but not least:<a href=''http://link-address.com''>Name of your link</a> results in Name of your link (4) No need to use this special character in between paragraphs: ; You do not need it anymore. Just write as you like and your paragraphs will be separated. The "Live Preview" appears automatically when you start typing below the text area and it will show you how your comment will look like before you send it. (5) If you now think that this is too confusing then just ignore the code above and write as you like. Search articles | 0 |
Killer Mike Proves Real Leaders are Truth-Tellers by Saying What Most People Won’t Nov 21, 2016 0 0
Politics in America has devolved into a contest of personalities, where policy, history, and reality are rejected in favor of style, skin color, gender and celebrity factor. This is unsurprising, though, in a nation that has for generations been weened on television and state indoctrination. We’ve been trained to look to politicians for leadership, but the real heroes and change makers in our world are the fearless truth-tellers who work to free our minds and inspire us to greatness by setting an example with their words and deeds.
As we stare down the barrel of a critically divided society under the thumb of an all-powerful government and police state, righteous voices of non-partisan, no-bullshit truth who apply logic, common sense, and critical-thinking in defense of community and humanity are needed now more than ever. One such example is hip-hop artist, civic leader, social activist, and entrepreneur Michael Render, aka Killer Mike . His articulation of the problems we all face, accompanied with real ideas for meaningful action, make for an excellent reminder of what true leadership can look like.
He’s done a ton of interviews in recent years, and although he mentions being a conservative, even advocating for the 2nd Amendment in response to public shootings, he played a big role in Bernie Sanders’ campaign for the Democratic nomination in an effort to help educate and awaken black voters. Consider the following clips of Killer Mike speaking on a number of today’s critical issues.
Firstly, he talks to TMZ about the importance of participating in local elections and in using your vote to hold political parties accountable, while helping to see through the phony logic of voting for the lesser of two evils.
“Scaring me with the boogie man is not going to work as effectively as giving my community something that helps.” ~Killer Mike
In his song, ‘ Reagan, ‘ he rails against Obama, along with all the other authoritarian presidents we’ve had, as a member of an organization of war and profit, saying what so many Obama supporters are afraid to acknowledge.
“Ronald Reagan was an actor, not at all a factor Just an employee of the country’s real masters Just like the Bushes, Clinton and Obama Just another talking head telling lies on teleprompters If you don’t believe the theory, then argue with this logic Why did Reagan and Obama both go after Qaddafi We invaded sovereign soil, going after oil Taking countries is a hobby paid for by the oil lobby Same as in Iraq, and Afghanistan And Ahmadinejad say they coming for Iran They only love the rich, and how they loathe the poor If I say any more they might be at my door”
~Killer Mike, Reagan
As a leader in the black community, he is keenly aware of the affects of racism and police brutality today, but rather than advocating for protests or riots as an expression of justifiable anger, he breaks down how black people can overcome systemic corruption and racism by using the one weapon that is most effective in a capitalist culture: money.
Furthermore, on the Bill Maher show on HBO , he goes into relationship between politicians and police, pointing out how politicians themselves use police as pawns. Final Thoughts
The President of the United States of America is the figurehead of an authoritarian and corporatized organization that masquerades as benevolent, but POTUS is a puppet, not a leader. As Americans go at each other’s throats over about the election, it may serve us well to remember that individuals are the true leaders in our community and in our world.
“My criteria is probably Libertarian views, where you just let the free market reign, you let people do what they want to, and the government takes care of protecting us from foreign interests and one another.” ~ Killer Mike
About the Author
Dylan Charles is a student and teacher of Shaolin Kung Fu, Tai Chi and Qi Gong, a practitioner of Yoga and Taoist arts, and an activist and idealist passionately engaged in the struggle for a more sustainable and just world for future generations. He is the editor of WakingTimes.com , the proprietor of OffgridOutpost.com , a grateful father and a man who seeks to enlighten others with the power of inspiring information and action. He may be contacted at [email protected] . This article ( Killer Mike Proves Real Leaders are Truth-Tellers by Saying What Most People Won’t ) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Dylan Charles and WakingTimes.com . Vote Up | 0 |
The mental competency of the ailing media mogul Sumner M. Redstone is, once again, at the center of a bitter dispute. Viacom and its chief executive, Philippe P. Dauman, fired back with everything they had on Saturday, attempting to discredit a sudden move by Mr. Redstone to change succession plans for his $40 billion media empire. Not only did Mr. Dauman and two Viacom directors raise questions related to Mr. Redstone’s competency, but they also declared that Mr. Redstone had been manipulated and used by his daughter. The renewed scrutiny over Mr. Redstone’s capacity came less than two weeks after a California judge dismissed a case on a similar issue without ruling on whether Mr. Redstone was mentally competent. It was sparked by an unexpected development on Friday, in a family and corporate tale that becomes messier by the week. Mr. Redstone ousted Mr. Dauman from the trust that will control his companies when he dies or is declared incompetent. He did so after expressing dissatisfaction with the performance of Viacom, according to a lawyer working on behalf of Mr. Redstone. Mr. Dauman was also removed from the board of National Amusements, the private theater chain company through which Mr. Redstone controls both Viacom and CBS. Also ousted from both positions was George Abrams, a representative of Mr. Redstone, a Viacom director for 29 years and an ally of Mr. Dauman. The development set off a new round in a battle pitting Mr. Dauman, Mr. Redstone’s longtime confidant, against Shari Redstone, Mr. Redstone’s once ostracized, recently reconciled daughter. Ms. Redstone has publicly opposed Mr. Dauman’s leadership at Viacom, and his removal from the trust is a significant victory in her effort to shape the future of her father’s companies. Ms. Redstone is vice chairman of Viacom and CBS and is one of seven members on the trust. But in biting language on Saturday, Viacom executives and directors joined forces to depict the ousting of Mr. Dauman and Mr. Abrams as a shameful attempt by Ms. Redstone to influence her father and gain control of his companies. They also portrayed Mr. Redstone as being in such failing health as to be unable to make such a decision. Carl Folta, a spokesman for Viacom, said in a statement that Mr. Redstone had been unduly influenced by his daughter “to accomplish her goal, which Mr. Redstone has always opposed, of gaining control of National Amusements and Viacom. ” Mr. Folta said the move to oust Mr. Dauman and Mr. Abrams was “completely inconsistent with his long expressed wishes and intent, and extremely disruptive and damaging to Viacom and all of its shareholders. ” For his part, Mr. Abrams said, “The Sumner Redstone I knew would never have taken this action. ” And Frederic V. Salerno, Viacom’s lead independent director, raised questions about Mr. Redstone’s competence, saying the board decided last week to eliminate Mr. Redstone’s compensation “based upon his recent complete lack of communication with the Viacom board and management team and his silence during recent board meetings, as well as recent public disclosures raising concerns about his health. ” In a statement on Saturday, Ms. Redstone said, “I fully support my father’s decisions and respect his authority to make them. ” Removing Mr. Dauman from the trust has raised the question of whether Mr. Redstone, or the trust after he dies, will move to oust Mr. Dauman as a director and as chief executive of Viacom. The company, the owner of the MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon cable networks and the Paramount Pictures film and television studios, has suffered a 40 percent decline in its stock price over the last year and has reported persistent weak results. “Is Philippe Dauman dead man walking now?” asked Richard Greenfield, a media analyst with BTIG Research. Referring to Mr. Redstone, he said, “If he is competent enough to change the trust, he is competent enough to use his voting power to change management. ” Whether Mr. Dauman will pursue legal action is not clear. During the public sparring on Saturday, two questions persisted. Did Mr. Redstone have the capacity to eject Mr. Dauman and Mr. Abrams from their positions? And to what extent was Ms. Redstone involved? Mr. Redstone, who has not been seen publicly since his 92nd birthday party last May, will turn 93 on Friday. While he continues to control Viacom and CBS, much about his condition has been shrouded in mystery beyond the fact that he has suffered minor strokes and has a severe speech impediment. The transcript of videotaped testimony presented during the trial showed a fiery, if somewhat feeble man who responded to some basic questions but could not answer others, such as his birth name. If Mr. Redstone lacked the capacity to make corporate decisions, as Mr. Dauman asserted, analysts said that would raise questions about whether Mr. Redstone’s control should already have passed to the trust. Yet until Friday, neither Mr. Dauman nor Mr. Abrams, nor other directors of Viacom or CBS, publicly claimed that Mr. Redstone lacked mental capacity. In a declaration six months ago for the civil suit challenging Mr. Redstone’s mental capacity, Mr. Dauman described his boss as “engaged, attentive and as opinionated as ever. ” Mr. Redstone’s lawyers, in a statement issued Friday, sought to use Mr. Dauman’s own words against him. Citing his remarks, Michael C. Tu, a partner at the law firm Orrick, Herrington Sutcliffe, said “that is exactly the Sumner Redstone who made these decisions. ” In his statement on behalf of Mr. Redstone, Mr. Tu said his client took “decisive and lawful action” to remove Mr. Dauman and Mr. Abrams from their positions after he had “expressed his concerns regarding Viacom’s performance to Messrs. Abrams and Dauman, both Viacom directors, and received no response from them. ” Mr. Folta of Viacom said that there had been no communication from Mr. Redstone and that the only contact came through “written communication on Tuesday from Mr. Tu, a lawyer previously unknown until this week to anyone associated with Sumner other than Shari Redstone. ” Mr. Folta added that during a Viacom board meeting on Tuesday evening and all day Wednesday, “not a sound was heard from Sumner, who was connected by phone,” and that Ms. Redstone, also connected by phone, “did not raise a single concern during the board session on any topic. ” Mr. Redstone engaged the new law firm after the suit challenging his capacity was dismissed on May 9. “Sumner had concerns related, as everybody knows, to the potential sale of Paramount and with respect to other corporate matters,” said Robert N. Klieger, a partner of the law firm Hueston Hennigan who represented Mr. Redstone during the suit over his competency. “I recommended to Sumner that he engage corporate counsel to represent him on those matters and helped facilitate getting Orrick on board to represent him. ” Mr. Folta and Mr. Salerno said that Ms. Redstone had denied Viacom directors access to her father. Dr. Brian Crowley, a psychiatrist in Washington who has frequently testified in civil and criminal trials at what he called the “intersection of psychiatry and law,” said there were two related issues in the situation: mental competency and “undue influence. ” “There is no rigid definition of civil competence,” he said. “Does he have the mental capacity to know what he’s doing? Does he have the ability to exercise judgment and free will?” While Mr. Redstone is a vulnerable person and may be subject to undue influence, not all influence is undue, Dr. Crowley said. “Have they used their influence to in effect meet their own needs, rather than to help him make his own decision?” he asked. | 1 |
PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Coahuila — Four years have passed since state authorities claimed to begin investigating how gunmen with Los Zetas cartel were able to kidnap, murder, and exterminate hundreds of victims from rural communities in this border state between 2011 and 2013. The case became one big cover up. [In early 2016, Breitbart Texas reported on how Los Zetas used ovens and drums to incinerate hundreds of victims from the northern part of the state. The massacre began in 2011 in Allende, Coahuila, but continued for two years throughout the region and in this city. It continued without any state authority making an effort to stop it while local news outlets were muffled. Years later, government officials confirmed that approximately 150 victims were incinerated inside the state prison in Piedras Negras. At the time, the Coahuila Attorney General’s Office was run by Jesus Torres Chaires, an individual who was singled out in U. S. Court testimony as having received money from Los Zetas. The allegations against Torres Chaires were made by Rodrigo Humberto Uribe Tapia during a federal trial of a top Zeta associate in Texas. The testimony pointed to Los Zetas giving millions to the state attorney general who in turn would give some of that money to the former Governor Humberto Moreira. As Breitbart Texas reported, Moreira is just one of various Mexican governors who were linked in U. S courts to Los Zetas. Court documents published by this outlet reveal that the U. S. government considered the entire structure of the Coahuila government to be a surrogate of Los Zetas cartel. In an interview with Mexico’s Vanguardia, Torres Chaires claimed that the allegations about him taking money from Los Zetas were lies and he was trying to move on from the events of the massacre in Allende, which he described as things that just happened. At the time of the massacre and in the years after, the top lawmen in the northern region of Coahuila were Santos Vasquez Estrada and Patricia Rivera Barrera, each during their respective term held the position of PGJE Delegate in Pedras Negras and oversaw most of the rural communities where Los Zetas carried out their massacres. Individuals interviewed by Breitbart Texas revealed that neither of the two officials made any effort to investigate, identify, or target any of the real individuals behind the massacres or the masterminds behind the current drug traffickers in the area. Since the massacre, authorities have publicized the charging of various Zeta bosses however, the real actors behind the various massacres in the state have escaped scrutiny. While Vasquez left the PGJE and is currently a criminal defense attorney, Rivera Barrera continues to work at the agency. Breitbart Texas was able to confirm that Rivera Barrera lost her top post in the PGJE after she traveled to Mexico City to take an integrity test commonly called “examen de confianza” — she failed. Local news outlets erroneously reported that Rivera Barrera had been fired from her job in early 2016. Rather than being fired from her post by current Coahuila Attorney General Homero Ramos Gloria, Rivera Barrera was simply moved to oversee a PGJE archive warehouse where she continues to collect a director’s salary. While Rivera Barrera failed the integrity tests required by her agency, during her term as the delegate she was able to establish close relations with various U. S. law enforcement agencies and often traveled to Eagle Pass, Texas, and other U. S. cities to interact with her counterparts. Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “J. M. Martinez” from Piedras Negras, Coahuila. | 1 |
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services sent green cards to people that contained incorrect information or were duplicates, or mailed them to the wrong addresses, according to a report released on Monday by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General. The immigration agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, told auditors that it had received more than 200, 000 reports of cards that were not being delivered to approved applicants. The report also found that more than 2, 400 immigrants who were approved for conditional resident status were instead given cards that were good for 10 years. The report was a to a March review that found the agency had possibly sent hundreds of green cards to the wrong addresses. The latest report said the problem was far worse than originally believed. In the last three years, it said, the immigration agency produced at least 19, 000 cards that included incorrect information or were issued in duplicate. Homeland Security auditors said the immigration agency had instituted several methods for addressing problems with erroneous or duplicate green cards. “However, these methods — manual intervention, production controls and system enhancements — have not proven adequate to ensure quality across the volume of cards produced and issued each year,” auditors wrote. León Rodriguez, director of the immigration service, said in a statement that it was taking steps to address the problems raised in the report, but added that some of the findings “were overstated. ” “Although the report correctly points out instances in which there were errors with the data on a card or duplicate cards issued, U. S. C. I. S. did not issue green cards to any individuals who were not eligible to receive them,” he said. “It is therefore imprecise, and potentially misleading, for the O. I. G. to indicate that U. S. C. I. S. ‘inappropriately issued’ green cards. ” The report released on Monday came after an inquiry in September that found the immigration agency had used incomplete fingerprint records to grant citizenship to hundreds of people who were to have been deported. That inquiry, also from the Office of Inspector General, found that nearly 900 people had been granted citizenship because neither Homeland Security nor F. B. I. databases contained all of the fingerprint records of people who had previously been designated for deportation. Nearly 150, 000 older fingerprint records were not digitized or simply not included in Homeland Security’s databases when they were being developed, the report said. In other cases, fingerprints that immigration officials had taken during the deportation process were not forwarded to the F. B. I. The immigration agency is supposed to check the fingerprints of applicants for citizenship against a number of databases to make sure that the applicants do not have criminal records or pose a threat. But because the fingerprint databases are incomplete, the report found, the agency had no way of knowing if the individuals were y who they said they were. As naturalized citizens, these individuals retain many of the rights and privileges of American citizenship, including serving in law enforcement, obtaining a security clearance and sponsoring the entry of other foreigners into the United States, the report said. | 1 |
Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said on Thursday that his “expectation” is that there will be more attacks like the one in Manchester, England earlier this week where a suicide bomber killed 22 people at a concert venue. [“As horrible as Manchester was, my expectation is we’re going to see a lot more of that type of attack,” Kelly told the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security at a hearing focused on President Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 federal budget. But in his prepared remarks, Kelly warned that suicide bombers aren’t the only threat facing the United States and the West: The threat to aviation security remains high, and criminals and terrorists continue to target airlines and airports. We must continue to improve how we screen the belongings of travelers and cargo. We are in the business of protecting lives, and improved screening technologies coupled with additional Transportation Security Administration [TSA) Officers working security functions at the checkpoints, will help us deter, detect, disrupt, and prevent threats to aviation security. DHS continues to prioritize explosives screening, threat assessments, and detection capabilities, and the President’s Budget includes $77. 0 million for research and development in this area. Kelly also talked about border security, including money in the budget for wall construction along the southern border. “Border security is a high priority and involves protecting 7, 000 miles of land border, approximately 95, 000 miles of shoreline, and 328 ports of entry along with staffing numerous locations abroad,” Kelly said. Kelly said Trump is requesting “$1. 6 billion for 32 miles of new border wall construction, 28 miles of levee wall along the Rio Grande, where apprehensions are the highest along the Southwest Border, and 14 miles of new border wall system that will replace existing secondary fence in the San Diego Sector, where a border wall system will deny access to drug trafficking organizations. ” | 1 |
BOULDER, Colo. — Through the darkness, Rashaan Salaam drove his Suzuki sedan. He was, as usual, alone. For months, friends said, Salaam had been a recluse who left his rented condo in a Denver suburb only occasionally, to buy groceries and, even more rarely, for a solitary morning walk. Now and then he went to a bar for drinks and a steak, sitting by himself. But on this Monday night, Dec. 5, Salaam, a former football standout, was headed for the site of his greatest triumph. From his home, it was eight miles to the University of Colorado in Boulder, where Salaam was a running back who won the Heisman Trophy in 1994. On the final dash of his last game at Folsom Field here that year, Salaam roared 67 yards for a touchdown, collapsing in the end zone and spurring his teammates to hoist him onto their shoulders as fans waved “2000” signs he had become just the fourth college player to exceed 2, 000 rushing yards in a season. Now, on an unseasonably warm December night, he drove past the stadium and cut through the heart of the idyllic Colorado campus, where, he often said, he still felt most comfortable. Less than two miles from where he had scored his touchdown, he pulled into the tiny parking area of Eben G. Fine Park, bordering the burbling Boulder Creek. Around 8 p. m. a few hours after the voting closed for the 2016 Heisman and five days before the 22nd anniversary of Salaam’s trophy win, a young man walking in the park saw a body lying beside an idling sedan. Salaam. A revolver lay nearby. Salaam’s death at the age of 42 is being investigated as a likely suicide. Autopsy results are expected in about a month. But in the days since the death, as friends, relatives and associates puzzle over the circumstances, they cannot help but wonder if the Heisman and its attendant expectations of fame had undercut his life instead of elevating it. “Rashaan came back to Boulder a few years ago to revive himself,” said Francisco Lujan, one of Salaam’s close friends and a business associate. “He was trying to find a way to find himself. He returned to where the memories were good. ” T . J. Cunningham, a Colorado teammate who had stayed in touch with Salaam until a few months ago, said he believed Salaam’s football career, which sputtered after he left college largely because of injuries, always weighed on him. “Rashaan was 20 years old when he won the Heisman Trophy,” Cunningham said. “To achieve the epitome of success at 20, but then you can’t get to that point again — what did that do to Rashaan?” That may be an insoluble question. For people who knew him, the prospect that he took his own life is hard to reconcile with someone best known for an infectious smile that brightened a room when he entered it. As Cunningham said: “He was a happy guy. I can still see him at Christmas last year, at my house teaching my how to hit a baseball. But, you know, Rashaan struggled with some things. ” Many of his friends believed he suffered from depression and mood swings, typical signs of the brain disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C. T. E. that has afflicted scores of players. The disease is linked to repeated hits to the head and diagnosed posthumously, but it is unclear if Salaam’s family members have donated his brain to be tested. The Salaam family declined to be interviewed for this article, and multiple phone messages and email messages left for relatives drew no response. Salaam’s brother, Jabali Alaji, told USA Today shortly after Rashaan’s funeral on Dec. 9 that if Salaam’s brain were examined: “I would guarantee they’d find it. I would guarantee it. ” But several of Salaam’s friends who spoke with family members said they were told Salaam’s brain would not be tested. Though injured often, Salaam had no known history of repeated concussions or head trauma. But as Cunningham said: “Rashaan had a lot of collisions. He wasn’t a fake and juke guy he ran right through you. “C. T. E.? He showed all the symptoms,” Cunningham said, “and C. T. E. probably added to that. ” Whatever the cause, it was obvious to people around him that Salaam was dealing with mental health problems. He routinely retreated to his condo and stayed there. Phone calls and texts from friends went unreturned for days or weeks, especially since October. Salaam spent Thanksgiving by himself, a neighbor said, in his small, plain condo next to a playground and a municipal wastewater plant in Superior, Colo. “He was always in his condo,” said the neighbor, Deanna Ardrey. “He would sit there by himself every day. You knew there was something off. ” Riley Robert Hawkins, a school social worker and behavioral therapist who had been a partner with Salaam in a charitable foundation since 2011, talked to him about whether he should seek treatment for depression. “You could tell he was fighting some things,” Hawkins said. “Anxiety and depression, that’s bipolar. It was always there to some degree. “Like many of us,” he said, “I think he thought he had a handle on things. ” Maurice Henriques, another Colorado teammate who had remained close with Salaam, said it was impossible to pinpoint what ailed him. “For the family’s sake, you’d love for there to be an explanation,” he said. “But it’s probably a cocktail of things — depression, some C. T. E. and Rashaan still trying to deal with the transition from football. “How,” he added, “do you yourself?” When he was first handed the Heisman in 1994, Salaam had no idea how much the trophy would complicate the rest of his life. Going forward, it distorted the perception of his career. Salaam had a spectacular N. F. L. rookie season with the Chicago Bears but faded markedly thereafter, lasting for only four seasons. After that, he more and more kept his distance from the trophy, whose renowned pose is a stiff arm. “He felt people viewed him as a failure,” said David Plati, an associate athletic director at Colorado and a friend of Salaam’s for nearly a . “He was frustrated with his N. F. L. career. That’s the burden the Heisman carries. He felt pressure that he had to go do something in the pros as good or greater than what he did in college. “He felt that people were looking at him, thinking that he let them down. ” Still, the Heisman loomed large. Everybody wanted to see it and touch it. Salaam wanted to stand apart from it. “He wasn’t a huge fan of the trophy itself,” Lujan said. “When he was making an appearance, people would always ask if he could bring the Heisman Trophy to the engagement. He’d turn them down. He didn’t like carrying the trophy around. It made him feel like the only reason anyone wanted to see him was because he had a Heisman Trophy. ” Once, visiting Salaam at his home, a friend saw the trophy being used as a doorstop. For the majority of the last 22 years, Salaam’s mother kept the trophy at the family home in San Diego. Salaam was conflicted about the trophy from the start he declined to do several major interviews the year he won it. “That’s the thing. Deep down Rashaan didn’t care about the trophy and never did because he didn’t like being singled out,” Plati said. “Rashaan wanted to be just one of the guys,” Plati said. “But he knew his offensive linemen wanted him to win the Heisman. He understood it was important for the university and the football program. ” Salaam is Colorado’s only Heisman winner and eventually got into the experience of winning it, even enjoying the week in New York for the ceremony. At the time, it seemed like a thing — not a lifetime designation permanently attached to his name. He had won the trophy in his junior year and entered the 1995 N. F. L. draft. Yet he was perturbed, even insulted, when he was the fifth running back taken in the first round. But Salaam had proved others wrong in his career before. With his mother urging him on, he had left his hometown, San Diego, and traveled by bus two hours daily to attend La Jolla Country Day, a private school where he excelled academically and on the football team. But La Jolla played football, and Salaam was barely noticed by college recruiters. His La Jolla coach mounted a campaign to promote him, and soon Colorado took him on. He was, however, on the third string as a college freshman. Though he was a sturdy and weighed in at 220 pounds, there were doubts about whether he had the speed to compete at the highest level of college ball. He made progress as a sophomore, and by his spectacular junior season at Colorado had more than vanquished his critics. And yet, N. F. L. evaluators still had reservations, which is how Salaam fell to the draft’s 21st pick. As a rookie, Salaam rushed for 1, 074 yards and 10 touchdowns, becoming the youngest N. F. L. player to rush for more than 1, 000 yards. But a series of leg injuries limited his playing time and effectiveness in the next two seasons, his last with the Bears. In 1999, he carried the football once for 2 yards for the hapless Cleveland Browns. He was also briefly with two other N. F. L. teams but never got on the field. In 2001, Salaam played for the Memphis Maniax of the X. F. L. At 28, he regrouped and spent nearly a year getting in top shape because the San Francisco 49ers had invited him to training camp. Around that time in 2003, in an interview with ESPN, Salaam decided to open up about his marijuana use while with the Bears. He said he was too young to handle the money and success of his early N. F. L. career and blamed an undisciplined lifestyle for hampering his development as a professional. Salaam later said he had hoped the interview would show a newfound maturity, since he was admitting to a mistake and describing a new, robust work ethic. But the reaction to the interview, and to Salaam, was decidedly negative. He was cut by the 49ers toward the end of training camp. After a flirtation with the Canadian Football League, his football career was over. Salaam said in interviews years ago that he had invested much of his nearly $4 million N. F. L. payday with a San Diego brokerage firm. Shortly after retiring from football, Salaam began spending months in China, where he started a mixed martial arts business. None of his friends were sure how or why he made a connection with China, but there he promoted championship events and shuttled between his native California and Beijing. By the beginning of this decade, he sold the venture and returned to San Diego. There, Salaam lived quietly, and mostly, anonymously. A “bachelor for life,” Salaam never married, although his friends said they had met his various girlfriends over the years. About five years ago, Salaam decided to return to the Boulder area in what was viewed as an attempt to regain his footing in a familiar place. He began working with Lujan, a coach at a local high school, who had a company that did testing for N. F. L. and C. F. L. scouting combines. Salaam was paid $2, 500 or more for public appearances and helped with the testing. He appeared financially secure. While he did not live extravagantly — rent at his condo this year was about $1, 500 a month — he never seemed in need of funds. A 2011 newspaper account reported that Salaam sold ornate rings he had received for winning the Heisman Trophy for roughly $9, 000. Salaam said that the rings were sold, without his knowledge, by a family member. “Rashaan’s primary goal when he came here was to start a foundation to help youth,” said Lujan, who eventually put Salaam in touch with Hawkins, the school social worker, who years earlier had founded the SPIN Foundation — Supporting People in Need. Together, Hawkins and Salaam planned events, camps, clinics and appearances, and they devised programs to benefit underprivileged children. Salaam became a fixture at Jefferson High School in Edgewater, Colo. where Hawkins has worked for 15 years. Salaam regularly spoke with classes and worked with students individually and in groups. For four days in April 2015, for example, the foundation brought about 30 Jefferson students and staff members to the ski slopes of Aspen for a trip that was called a “Ski for the Heisman” program. “Rashaan was like a family member to Jefferson students,” said Oscar Lopez, a senior at the high school who participated in the trip. “He was like a big brother and he was always encouraging us to better ourselves. He talked about the mistakes he made and how he kept going. His big message was to stay positive. ” Lopez, who is a wrestler and football player, said Salaam once cautioned him about taking care of his body in athletics. “He told me if I was hurt, to protect myself and stay off the field,” Lopez said. “He had injuries and went back out there. He said, ‘Don’t do that, let it heal. ’” Lujan said the cost of the Aspen trip was $25, 000. At Jefferson High, students who had laughed on the Aspen slopes with Salaam and been buoyed by his enthusiasm for their future prospects were thunderstruck by his death. “I broke down because he was always here for us,” said Janessa Kiome, a senior at Jefferson. “And that night, no one was there for him. ” Hawkins and others have been counseling the Jefferson students. Seated in his school office last week, Hawkins sighed and said: “Rashaan was trying to save lives, but he had trouble saving his own life. There are things we can explain and things that we can’t explain. ” It had been hard to get to know Salaam well, as he was introverted by nature and something of a loner, especially in the last few months. He was a semiregular at C. B. Potts, a bar and restaurant about a mile from his condo in Superior. He usually came in around 10 on Sunday nights, well past the dinner rush. He was always alone, and he would sit in a section of the bar unoccupied by other patrons, ordering a steak and two or three vodka drinks known as Moscow Mules. “He was always nice to everyone,” said Chris Rosa, a bartender there who works Sunday nights. “But more than a few times, we’d be talking and he’d say he was mad that injuries and bad luck messed up his N. F. L. career. He said things spiraled out of control and he wished things had been different. ” Rosa said he had not seen him in the last couple of months. Neither had his friends or the people he worked with, like Lujan and Hawkins. “Everyone has the same story,” Lujan said. “We’ve asked each other, ‘When did you last hear from him?’ And everyone answers, ‘About a month or six weeks ago. ’” Salaam’s neighbor Deanna Ardrey was among the few who saw him regularly during this period. She had met Salaam a few months earlier when she moved in with her boyfriend. She learned only by accident that Salaam had played football, then Googled him and was dumbfounded to discover his celebrity. “We talked about football, but he was more likely to talk about other things, like astronomy,” Ardrey said. “He was always pointing out planets to us in the sky. ” On sunny days, Salaam kept his front door open and Ardrey would hear music playing. In the fall and winter, Salaam’s television would be tuned to football games. “We would hear him watching games all night and yelling at the TV,” Ardrey said. “But I mean, he was always there by himself. Every day, every night. His car was always in the driveway. ” In the days before his death, Ardrey noticed something unusual: His car was frequently gone at night. “In the last few days, I’ve been thinking: How many times did he go to that park thinking he might — and then changed his mind?” Ardrey wondered last week. On the morning of Dec. 5, Ardrey saw her neighbor as she got in her car and waved at him. He waved back and smiled. Much later, he drove away from the condo, leaving a light on in the living room. | 1 |
Two months ago, across an table in a factory in Jacksonville, Fla. President Barack Obama was talking to me about the problem of political capital. His efforts to rebuild the U. S. economy from the 2008 financial crisis were being hit from left, right and center. And yet, by his own assessment, those efforts were vastly underappreciated. “I actually compare our economic performance to how, historically, countries that have wrenching financial crises perform,” he said. “By that measure, we probably managed this better than any large economy on Earth in modern history. ” It was a notably grand claim, especially given the tenor in which presidential candidates of both parties had taken to criticizing the state of the American economy — “Many are still barely getting by,” Hillary Clinton said, while Donald Trump said that “we’re a nation. ” Asked if he was frustrated by all the criticism, Obama insisted that he wasn’t, at least not personally. “It has frustrated me only insofar as it has shaped the political debate,” he said. “We were moving so fast early on that we couldn’t take victory laps. We couldn’t explain everything we were doing. I mean, one day we’re saving the banks the next day we’re saving the auto industry the next day we’re trying to see whether we can have some impact on the housing market. ” The result, he said, was that he lacked the political capital to do more. As his presidency nears its end, this has become an increasingly common refrain from Obama, who, despite his prodigious skills as an orator, has come to seem more confident about his achievements than about his ability to promote them. “I mean, the truth of the matter is that if we had been able to more effectively communicate all the steps we had taken to the swing voter,” he said, “then we might have maintained a majority in the House or the Senate. ” The president had come to this factory, built by Saft America for the manufacture of batteries, for a kind of belated victory lap. One of Obama’s first major acts as president was to sign the American Recovery and Re investment Act, and some of the money in that bill went to Saft. Now batteries were rolling off the line, and Obama had stopped by to shine the national spotlight on how far we had come since the financial crisis. But the president did seem frustrated. As he tried to sum up his economic legacy in Florida, our discussion stretched to twice as long as planned, seemingly to the consternation of the Secret Service. When we got back on Air Force One, he sent an aide to ask if we could continue the conversation when I joined him again, he looked as if he’d been stewing over something. He quickly returned to the topic of public perception. “If you ask the average person on the streets, ‘Have deficits gone down or up under Obama?’ probably 70 percent would say they’ve gone up,” Obama said, with some justifiable exasperation — the deficit has in fact declined (by roughly ) since he took office, and polls do show that a large majority of Americans believe the opposite. Obama is animated by a sense that, looking at the world around him, the U. S. economy is in much better shape than the public appreciates, especially when measured against the depths of the financial crisis and the possibility — now rarely even considered — that things could have been much, much worse. Over a series of conversations in the Oval Office, on Air Force One and in Florida, Obama analyzed, sometimes with startling frankness, nearly every element of his economic agenda since he came into office. His economy has certainly come further than most people recognize. The private sector has added jobs for 73 consecutive months — some 14. 4 million new jobs in all — the longest period of sustained job growth on record. Unemployment, which peaked at 10 percent the year Obama took office, the highest it had been since 1983, under Ronald Reagan, is now 5 percent, lower than when Reagan left office. The budget deficit has fallen by roughly $1 trillion during his two terms. And overall U. S. economic growth has significantly outpaced that of every other advanced nation. Gene Sperling, the former director of the National Economic Council who spent hours inside the Oval Office debating and devising the president’s economic strategy, told me, “If we were back in early 2009 — when we were coming to work every morning with clenched stomachs, with the economy losing 800, 000 jobs a month and the Dow under 7, 000 — and someone said that by your last year in office, unemployment would be 5 percent, the deficit would be under 3 percent, AIG would have turned a profit and we made all our money back on the banks, that would’ve been beyond anybody’s wildest expectations. ” There are, of course, many reasons so few Americans seem to be celebrating. “How people feel about the economy,” Obama told me, giving one part of his own theory, is influenced by “what they hear. ” He went on: “And if you have a political party — in this case, the Republicans — that denies any progress and is constantly channeling to their base, which is sizable, say, 40 percent of the population, that things are terrible all the time, then people will start absorbing that. ” But as Obama also acknowledged, the public anger about the economy is not without empirical basis. A large swath of the nation has dropped out of the labor force completely, and the reality for the average American family is that its household income is $4, 000 less than it was when Bill Clinton left office. Economic inequality, meanwhile, has only grown worse, with the top 1 percent of American households taking in more than half of the recent gains in income growth. “Millions and millions and millions and millions of people look at that pretty picture of America he painted and they cannot find themselves in it to save their lives,” Clinton himself said of Obama’s economy in March, while on the campaign trail for his wife. “People are upset, frankly they’re they’re disoriented, because they don’t see themselves in that picture. ” It is this disconnect that haunts Obama. He has, by his own lights, managed the recovery as well as any president ever could, with results that in many cases exceeded his own best hopes. But despite the gains of the past seven years, many Americans have been left behind. Something has changed, and as he prepares to leave office, Obama seems to understand that his economic legacy might be judged not just by what he has done, but by how the results compare to a bygone era of opportunity, one that perhaps no president, faced with the sweeping changes transforming the global economy, could ever bring back. The economic meltdown that would define every aspect of Obama’s economy came to a head well before he became president, of course, and so did the legislation that would be the basis for everything that came after. In September 2008 — as Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and AIG, the world’s biggest insurance company, accepted a federal bailout — Senator John McCain of Arizona, in what was widely viewed as a political move, suspended his presidential campaign and called on Obama to rush back to Washington for a bipartisan meeting at the White House. Obama recalled the moment: “I still remember Bush calling me and saying, ‘Look, I doubt this is going to be particularly useful, but I felt obliged to say yes, and I hope you can come. ’’u2009” The next day Obama found himself in the Cabinet Room just down the hall from the Oval Office, along with McCain and congressional leaders from both parties. Henry M. Paulson Jr. the Treasury secretary, was developing a bank bailout by which the Treasury would buy up to $700 billion in shaky securities — “troubled assets” — a plan that eventually became the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. He needed votes, and Republicans weren’t going for it. Nobody wanted to be seen as a friend of the banks. “We’re sitting around a table, McCain is on one side, I’m on the other, Bernanke and Paulson and President Bush,” Obama recalled. “Paulson says, ‘If we don’t take action now, we could go into a free fall.’ And given how bad the politics were, it was still very tempting for Nancy and Harry” — that is, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid — “to let the Republicans do what they needed to do. ” Many within Bush’s own party were supporting an alternative bill that was focused on asset insurance and tax cuts. But Obama, convinced that anything short of a major bailout could lead to economic catastrophe, said Democrats should back Paulson’s plan. They did. It was a rare moment of bipartisanship, with political consequences. To Obama, this was a necessary alliance with Wall Street and a Republican president. To many others, it looked like a sweetheart deal for the same people who created the mess some critics wondered why he was not equally quick to help aggrieved homeowners through an aggressive or forgiveness program. “The whole thing about financial crises is the tools that work are the ones that will make you look like you’re in bed with the banks,” said Timothy Geithner, an architect of TARP whom Obama made his Treasury secretary. The strange relationship with Wall Street made the next part of Obama’s program extremely complicated. When Obama took office, he turned immediately to trying to pass a stimulus package. If TARP was meant to keep the economy out of free fall, the stimulus was meant to help it get back into good shape. The crucial questions was: How much money was needed? Many argue today that Obama’s $800 billion plan, the one that eventually became law, was not enough. With a bigger boost, the economy would have recovered much more quickly and years of needless suffering could have been allayed. In truth, of course, the political headwinds against stimulus were extraordinary. Republicans dismissed it as an irresponsible shopping spree that would leave the country in even greater debt. Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the minority leader in the House, physically threw the bill on the ground, arguing that it was “nothing more than spending, spending and more spending. ” But Democrats, led by the “deficit hawk” wing of the party, also fought against anything too ambitious, and Obama, still in the first month of his presidency, was left in the position of negotiating with his own party, such that he was just barely able to get the $800 billion on a straight vote. At first, the results of the stimulus were just as feeble as a stalwart Keynesian might predict. The economy needed a big injection, but it got only a one, so it continued to falter. A January 2009 report from the president’s Council of Economic Advisers projected that the stimulus would keep unemployment below 8 percent. Instead, it climbed to 10 percent in 2009 and only fell back below 8 percent in 2012, leading to criticism that the stimulus was ineffective. Obama’s critics regularly trot out the talking point that Obama’s economy is “the worst recovery since World War II. ” Judged solely by the growth of gross domestic product, that is accurate. But Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard economics professor and of “This Time Is Different,” a history of financial crises, scoffed when I mentioned the “worst recovery” epithet. “Well, have we had a systemic financial crisis since World War II?” he asked rhetorically. “I mean this was like nothing we’ve experienced since World War II. The 1982 Volcker recession was nothing compared to this, and so you have to look at the nature of the shock. ” Obama, though, was unable or unwilling to rhetorically underscore the severity of the crisis as it unfolded, so perhaps what should have been seen as successes were seen as failures. “It was a delicate balance throughout 2009 and 2010 to be straight with the American people about the depths of the problem, how close we were to disaster, without scaring the heck out of them,” Obama said. Beyond the messaging challenge, Obama faced a practical bind as well: Just as he was trying to reinflate the economy, he was also being forced to cut government jobs, under pressure from Republicans who contended that government bloat and the cost of it could create our next financial crisis. Call it an . “This is the first recovery where you actually saw the government work force decline, and that created this massive fiscal drag throughout the recovery,” Obama said. Despite all this, over the course of his presidency, Obama has actually been able to oversee a much larger stimulus than has been typically reported. If you add up all of his administration’s classic stimulus measures, including the many tax breaks the administration extended, you get $1. 4 trillion, a figure that is nearly twice the original figure. The then, was counteracted by a stealth stimulus. “Progressives don’t fully appreciate the degree to which the 2011 budget deal not only averted a potential default but actually limited the potential damage of a newly emboldened Congress in imposing austerity on a recovery,” Obama said. “And by me winning in 2012 and getting the Bush tax cuts for the upper 2 percent repealed, we ended up getting a grand bargain. It’s just we got it sequentially instead of all at once. ” When I asked Barney Frank about how history will judge the recovery, he was simultaneously rueful and amused. As chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Frank was one of the major legislative architects of Obama’s economic program. “You get no credit for disaster averted or damage minimized,” Frank said. By way of illustration, he described a bumper sticker that a friend made him in 2010, with a slogan that could have worked just as well for Obama: “Things would have sucked worse without me. ” Frank, with a halfhearted laugh, added, “That’s not a very salable message. ” Often in our conversations, the president expressed a surprising degree of identification with America’s business leaders. “If I hadn’t gone into politics and public service,” Obama told me, “the challenges of creating a business and growing a business and making it work would probably be the thing that was most interesting to me. ” His showy embrace of capitalism was especially notable given his fractious relationship with Wall Street and the business community for much of his first term. In December 2009, Obama was not reluctant to chastise bankers. “I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of bankers on Wall Street,” he told Steve Kroft on “60 Minutes. ” “The people on Wall Street still don’t get it. They don’t get it. They’re still puzzled, ‘Why is it that people are mad at the banks? ’’u2009” Given the national mood at the time, Obama’s words shouldn’t have come as a surprise to the business leaders. But the financial sector had buoyed Obama’s campaign, giving him $16 million in political support, nearly twice what McCain received from it, and some executives responded to his new populism in emotional terms. “It’s a war,” Stephen Schwarzman, a of Blackstone Group, the giant firm, said of Obama in 2010 and his effort to close a tax loophole that benefited the industry. “It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939. ” (Schwarzman later apologized.) Others seemed more concerned with the language itself. In 2011, Leon Cooperman, a billionaire manager, wrote a public letter to Obama, saying: “The divisive, polarizing tone of your rhetoric is cleaving a widening gulf, at this point as much visceral as philosophical, between the downtrodden and those best positioned to help them. It is a gulf that is at once counterproductive and freighted with dangerous historical precedents. ” When I asked him about these reactions, Obama laughed. The criticism he leveled at Wall Street “was extraordinarily mild,” he said, but “it hurt their feelings. I would have some of them say to me, ‘You know, my son came home and asked me, ‘Am I a fat cat? ’’u2009” He laughed again. Obama’s rhetoric does seem mild, at least compared with the withering contempt of, say, Franklin Roosevelt, who, laying out the objectives for the second stage of the New Deal in 1936, said that reckless bankers and speculators are “unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred. ” Obama, to the contrary, seems to find their hatred irritating. “One of the constants that I’ve had to deal with over the last few years is folks on Wall Street complaining even as the stock market went from in the 6, 000s to 16, 000 or 17, 000,” he said. “They’d be constantly complaining about our economic policies. That’s not rooted in anything they’re experiencing it has to do with ideology and their aggravations about higher taxes. ” Wall Street’s biggest fight with Obama was over the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which Obama signed into law in the summer of 2010. The legislation, which runs to 2, 223 pages, limited Wall Street’s riskiest trading schemes, established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and created a system to wind down failing banks without bailouts and break up banks that don’t comply. Like the stimulus, has been seen as both going too far and not far enough. Some economists have suggested that the reform package, combined with the Federal Reserve’s efforts to force the banks to hold more capital, most likely slowed lending and potentially economic growth in the short term. The new rules may have been sensible in the aftermath of the crisis, but they did take an economic toll. “Growth requires access to capital to finance investments in plant, equipment, technology, and workers,” said Douglas a former director of the Congressional Budget Office who now runs American Action Forum, a research group. “ made capital scarcer and more expensive at a time when the weak economy desperately needed a boost to growth. ” estimated in 2015 that the regulations would shave $895 billion off gross domestic product over the next decade. Obama sees the legislation in more complicated terms. He said that he liked the film “The Big Short” — a vivid portrayal of the 2008 crisis with a special emphasis on the avarice of its main architects — but not its ending. It suggests, wrongly, he said, that nothing has changed on Wall Street. The financial sector “is bigger, absorbs more resources and maybe most importantly, more talent than I would like to see. I would like folks who are really good at math to be going into engineering and the sciences more than they’re going into trying to build algorithms to beat the market and to work arbitrage,” he said. “But there is no doubt that the financial system is substantially more stable,” he said. “It is true that we have not dismantled the financial system, and in that sense, Bernie Sanders’s critique is correct” — a reference to the Vermont senator and presidential aspirant who regularly calls to break up America’s biggest banks. “But one of the things that I’ve consistently tried to remind myself during the course of my presidency is that the economy is not an abstraction. It’s not something that you can just redesign and break up and put back together again without consequences. ” The Saft America plant, a giant mass of concrete, is a modern marvel: its roof covered in row upon row of solar panels, embodying the renewable future that the batteries manufactured within are meant to sustain. (The main customer for the batteries was originally meant to be manufacturers, but the company is now selling mostly to utilities who want to store solar and wind energy.) Obama spoke from a makeshift stage set up at the center of the factory floor, an American flag and a Saft logo perfectly positioned behind him to catch the sight lines of the photographers. “The reason I’m here today is because Saft is telling a story about the amazing work that people all across this country have done to bring America back from one of the worst financial crises in our history,” Obama said, surveying the crowd. He added: “Anybody who says we are not absolutely better off today than we were just seven years ago, they’re not leveling with you. They’re not telling the truth. ” The story Obama told was one of American ingenuity and growth since the financial crisis. Unemployment in Florida peaked at 11. 2 percent in 2009, higher than the national average, and the state was a center for home foreclosures. Saft America was an example not of the government’s effort just to reduce unemployment right now, which it has, but also to spur investment in the green technologies, like batteries, that will help the economy expand for decades to come. In a way, though, the plant was inadvertently telling a more complicated story, about globalization and the changing nature of commerce. Saft America is a unit of Saft Groupe, a French company with holdings around the world. Sales of batteries have been considerably slower than anticipated, and the factory has yet to turn a profit. The French parent doesn’t expect profitability for another two or three years and has already written down part of its investment on the factory. Here was a factory built, in part, with U. S. government dollars for the benefit of the local and national economy. Yet the factory, its technology and its patents are all owned by a foreign corporation. Its French chief executive is almost completely detached from the community here in Jacksonville he did not even attend Obama’s speech. And the factory’s profits, to the extent they ever come, may very well be sent abroad instead of being reinvested here. The factory visit might also tell a more complicated story about the presidency. It has always been the case that voters credit or, more often, blame the president for the nation’s economic performance. But it is also the case that the president generally has considerably less sway to move the economy than even he might like to acknowledge. And as the economy continues to disperse, that sway may be diminishing further. A president has less power than ever, in either a power ( ) or (cultural) sense, over American chief executives, let alone over the chief executives of multinationals based in France or China or other places where many U. S. employers make their headquarters. In the assembly room after the speech, Obama acknowledged as much. “When you’re talking about inversions,” Obama said, referring to the practice whereby American companies effectively move overseas, “or you’re talking about C. E. O. perks or the gap between what the worker is making compared to what the C. E. O. is making, all those things used to be constrained by the fact that you live in the city, you’re going to church in that city, your kids might be going to the same school as the guy who is working on the assembly line because public schools actually were invested in,” Obama said. “And all those constraining factors have been greatly reduced or, in some cases, eliminated entirely. And that contributes to the trends toward inequality. That contributes to, I think, a divergence between how the people who run these companies and economic elites think about their responsibilities and the policies that they promote with political leaders. And that’s had, I think, a damaging effect on the economy overall. ” Leaning forward in his chair, Obama described the profound structural shifts in the economy over the past two decades that voters often don’t appreciate or acknowledge. “If you are a worker, you saw manufacturing head out to China,” he said. “You’re in a town, the plant closes. But — in part because of the housing bubble — a whole bunch of manufacturing workers could suddenly shift into construction. ” The underlying economic decay was covered up by cheap credit, as homeowners made up for the shortfall in wage growth with second mortgages and unprecedented loads of debt. And that “meant that people felt pretty good in terms of their purchasing power even though their underlying situations hadn’t improved appreciably,” Obama said. Then the bubble bursts, “and suddenly they get washed away. ” Those construction jobs have returned slowly, and many of those manufacturing jobs never came back at all. “They’d be much worse off had we not taken the steps that we took,” Obama said. “But they have a sense that it’s a little more of a struggle for them than it might have been for their parents or for their grandparents. ” Obama considered the problem from a political perspective. “In some ways,” he said, “engaging in those hard changes that we need to make to create a more nimble, dynamic economy doesn’t yield immediate benefits and can seem like a distraction or an effort to undermine a bygone era that doesn’t exist. And that then feeds, both on the left and the right, a temptation to say, ‘If we could just go back to an era in which our borders were closed,’ or ‘If we could just go back to a time when everybody had a plan,’ or ‘We could just go back to a time when there wasn’t any immigrant that was taking my job, things would be O. K.’’u2009” He didn’t mention Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders by name, but the implications were obvious. Perhaps the biggest economic shift during Obama’s presidency came from a piece of legislation that wasn’t sold as such. On March 21, 2010, Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. It was Obama’s boldest piece of legislation and the one that will most likely define him. It has been largely viewed as a social program, a way to provide health insurance to tens of millions of uncovered citizens. But the bill, which affected not just insurance companies but doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, also had an immediate and growing impact on the economy as a whole. The health care industry accounts for 17. 5 percent of the U. S. gross domestic product, and health care spending accounts for 8 percent of the average household budget. Of course, the largest economic challenge most Americans ever confront comes in the form of a sudden health crisis. “In the long term,” Sperling told me, “the Affordable Care Act will actually be seen as one of the great economic accomplishments, not just health care, economic. Because it actually is closing a key part of the insecurity gap. ” In closing that gap, though, Obama has been confronted with a knotty economic and political paradox. The legislation was designed to slow the growth of health care costs, even as it extended coverage. Slowing the growth of an industry that accounts for nearly a fifth of the U. S. economy is inevitably going to mean slowing the growth of the economy as a whole. The legislation was also designed to exert a more subtle economic influence. For most of the postwar era, most Americans received health insurance from their employers, in the form of benefits. If they quit their jobs or were fired, they could lose those benefits, and if they had a condition, they could have a hard time getting them back, even if they got a new job with good benefits elsewhere. That meant they would be much less likely to leave a job, and that meant employers could be a little less worried about raising wages, because they had a somewhat captive work force. In the age of the gig economy, more portable insurance could transform the way we work and potentially have a real effect on wages in some sectors. In 2014, the Congressional Budget Office released a report estimating that the Affordable Care Act would “reduce the total number of hours worked, on net, by about 1. 5 percent to 2. 0 percent during the period from 2017 to 2024” — a seemingly disastrous outcome for the economy. But, the director of the office, Doug Elmendorf, later wrote, “The reason for the reduction in the supply of labor is that the provisions of the A. C. A. reduce the incentive to work for certain subsets of the population. ” In other words, a lot of people worked because they had to, in order to keep their insurance. Now they could quit, even if they were sick a positive development for them, but with a perverse effect on the economy. And for all of that, Americans do not yet seem to be feeling the benefits of the new program, in part because the benefits remain uncertain. “If your health care premiums go up by 6 percent, you’re still irritated,” Obama said, “even though the trend lines have been those premiums are going up 15 percent. ” Republicans were unanimously opposed to the bill, and Obama could pass only so much major legislation before the congressional election that many expected to flip House control from the Democrats to the Republicans, as it indeed did. That meant that he had to choose the A. C. A. over any number of other agenda items, including another stimulus, perhaps in the form of a massive infrastructure bill, which would have given the economy an unambiguous boost. “If you went back a few years, you might say, ‘Well, he should’ve focused even more on pushing through a bigger fiscal stimulus, which he could have if he wasn’t going for the Affordable Care Act,” Rogoff said. “That was a he made, and it cost him. ” Obama knows it. “The fact of the matter is, is that our failure in 2012, 2013, 2014, to initiate a massive infrastructure project — it was the perfect time to do it low interest rates, construction industry is still on its heels, massive need — the fact that we failed to do that, for example, cost us time,” Obama said. “It meant that there were folks who we could have helped and put back to work and entire communities that could have prospered that ended up taking a lot longer to recovery. ” After 2010, all that was available to Obama was executive action: The ascendant G. O. P. made anything else nearly impossible. So the president turned more and more to regulatory rule changes and executive orders. He raised the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $10. 10 he overhauled immigration policy to protect some illegal immigrants from deportation (the Supreme Court just heard a case to overrule the action) he signed an order calling on government agencies with oversight of industry to find ways to make them more competitive, like pressing cable companies to let customers use cable boxes made by rivals. But without Congress, the big legislative moves, the ones that would really change history, seemed past. “I can probably tick off three or four things we could have done where we’d be growing a percentage or two faster each year,” Obama said. “We could have brought down the unemployment rate lower, faster. We could have been lifting wages even faster than we did. And those things keep me up at night sometimes. ” When the president’s motorcade left Saft to head back to Air Force One, I noticed something unusual: The plant’s parking lot was extremely small. It dawned on me that Obama’s tour of the factory, filled with photo ops and handshakes, had included very little interaction with workers. Instead, he was shown machine after machine, mostly operated by computers. At one point, he was introduced to a robot named after the Pixar film that takes battery components from a tray. No employees necessary. This giant mecca of innovation, a physical marvel that if built several decades ago would have easily employed a few thousand people, employs only 300. It was a scene that underscored a challenge facing the U. S. economy and one that may be the driving factor behind greater inequality: We’re not only losing jobs to overseas competition, we’re losing them to technology. Obama noted the robots, too. “We just saw here those robots were pretty impressive, but also pointed to the direction the economy is going,” he said. He clearly recognizes the problem — he said he spends a lot of time thinking about it — but he also knows the solutions will come only when he is long out of office. Many citizens, he said, back on Air Force One, “have to worry about retraining at some point in their careers, because they can’t anticipate being in one place for 30 years. The occupational mix in the economy places greater demands on people because it’s changing more rapidly. And all of this makes people feel that they don’t know what’s around the corner. ” For whatever sense of “uncertainty” business leaders lament, this may be a much more profound sense of uncertainty. “It’s one of the reasons that I pursued the Partnership,” he said, bringing up the pact that, uniquely, has divided both parties, “not because I’m not aware of all the failures of some past trade agreements and the disruptions to our economy that occurred as a consequence of globalization, but rather my assessment that most trends are irreversible given the nature of global supply chains, and so we better be out there shaping the rules in ways that allow for higher labor standards overseas, or try to export our environmental standards overseas so that we have more of a level playing field. ” Whether a president can truly improve, or damage, an economy remains an open question. The greatest economic power might in fact remain in the hands of the Federal Reserve. Economists credit the Fed’s policy of keeping interest rates at historic lows with helping to pump up the economy and bring unemployment down. At the same time, the Fed has been blamed for widening inequality, swelling the price of real estate and corporate profits, even as savers and retirees dependent on assets have suffered. That can cut either way in terms of a president’s economic legacy. Critics of Obama, including the new House speaker, Paul Ryan, credit Ben Bernanke, the former Federal Reserve chairman, and Janet Yellen, the current chairwoman, for whatever recovery we’ve had since the crisis, contending it happened in spite of the president. “I think the Federal Reserve has done more,” Ryan said at a January news conference. Frank, for his part, almost jumped through the phone when I mentioned that argument during an interview. “And Bernanke and Yellen were appointed by whom? Neither Bernanke or Yellen would have been able to do what they were doing without his full backing. ” Ultimately, however, Obama said the lessons of his time in office are being misunderstood in the election campaigns. “If you look at the platforms, the economic platforms of the current Republican candidates for president, they don’t simply defy logic and any known economic theories, they are fantasy,” Obama said. “Slashing taxes particularly for those at the very top, dismantling regulatory regimes that protect our air and our environment and then projecting that this is going to lead to 5 percent or 7 percent growth, and claiming that they’ll do all this while balancing the budget. Nobody would even, with the most rudimentary knowledge of economics, think that any of those things are plausible. ” He continued: “If we can’t puncture some of the mythology around austerity, politics or tax cuts or the mythology that’s been built up around the Reagan revolution, where somehow people genuinely think that he slashed government and slashed the deficit and that the recovery was because of all these massive tax cuts, as opposed to a shift in policy — if we can’t describe that effectively, then we’re doomed to keep on making more and more mistakes. ” | 1 |
NASA’s gateway to deep space page: 1 www.abovetopsecret.com... Now, it sems that NASA is making good on his promise and is moving forward with the plan by establishing a Deep-Space Habitat near the Moon to test out systems for people who would live in orbit or travel long distances in Space; a gateway to deep space NASA plans to address its problem by parking a “deep space” habitat in a location near the Moon, which astronauts could visit and use to become acclimated to life beyond low-Earth orbit. President Obama mentioned deep space habitats earlier this month, when he reiterated his call for NASA to send humans to Mars. “I'm excited to announce that we are working with our commercial partners to build new habitats that can sustain and transport astronauts on long-duration missions in deep space,” Obama said. This wasn’t really a new announcement, as NASA has been working on the habitat program for a couple of years. Nevertheless, before the president's mention, this NextSTEP program had received surprisingly little attention given its significance—it might be the most important contract NASA awards for next decade. As Obama said, NASA has embarked upon a "Journey to Mars." While the plan may change to include lunar landings as a stepping stone to Mars, the space agency does intend to try and venture back into deep space for the first time since the Apollo program. Whatever destination it chooses, NASA's ambitions will begin with the deep space habitat, because it is an affordable first step, costing hundreds of millions or a few billion dollars initially, instead of multiple billions needed for a full-blown expedition to the Moon's surface, Mars or elsewhere in deep space. "This is the right next step," Simon said. "We need to understand how to live in deep space, how to live off of our planet." The first habitat launched in the 2020s won’t be exactly the same as the vehicle NASA eventually sends to Mars. Rather, it will serve as a prototype to help the space agency understand the capabilities, technologies, and systems needed for astronauts to survive for long periods in deep space. Some of those systems can be tested on the ground or the existing space station, but others can only be tested further from Earth. This venture is part of the Next step program initiated by NASA: www.nasa.gov... NextSTEP is a public-private partnership model that seeks commercial development of deep space exploration capabilities to support more extensive human space flight missions in the Proving Ground around and beyond cislunar space—the space near Earth that extends just beyond the moon. So far, NASA has partnered with 6 companies in this effort: Bigelow Aerospace, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Orbital ATK, Sierra Nevada Corporation, and NanoRacks. This is great, ATS! I am very excited at this news, even with all of the morbidity we have in the world today; I'm still excited for the future..! This is an ambitious plan..can US aerospace companies pull this off alone, or should this be more of a global effort? What does ATS think? | 0 |
By Michael Maharrey Communications company AT&T spies on you at the behest of the federal government and rakes in millions of taxpayer dollars in the... | 0 |
by Jean Perier , via New Eastern Outlook
Alleged humanitarian efforts have always been a rather important aspect of the state propaganda campaign carried out by the White House and its media. We’ve seen Washington using its proxy NGOs to fight against the alleged “humanitarian crimes” of the Syrian government, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba and other states that Washington has declared its enemies.
This large-scale campaign that is said to be driven by “common human values” has been supported by a number of modern American oligarchs.
Among those “humanitarian champions” one may find the founder of Microsoft and one of the richest businessmen in the world, Bill Gates. He is a figure who likes to be presented as a benevolent philanthropist of sorts. By using the so-called “Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,” this American oligarch attempts to put on the mask of the official representative of the US… View original post 547 | 0 |
Incoming White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer previewed that Donald Trump would hit the ground running as soon as he was inaugurated as president of the United States. [“He is eager to get to work,” Spicer said. “He truly is eager to get down to the White House, get in the Oval Office and start taking action. ” Spicer made his remarks during an interview on Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM Patriot Channel 125 hosted by Matthew Boyle. He predicted a series of executive actions and orders that Trump would issue in the first days of his presidency and go to work with his legislative team. “He’s not going to wait,” Spicer said. “I think that Friday, that Saturday, that Sunday, that Monday are going to be really really a big flurry of action that shows straight up to the American people and everybody that when he talked about change he meant it and wasn’t going to wait. ” Spicer previewed the lobbying ban as one thing that Trump would do as well as an effort to repeal some of Obama administration regulations. | 1 |
CLEVELAND — marriage and transgender rights are emerging as points of serious strain between social conservatives and moderates who are trying to shape the Republican platform, reviving a festering cultural dispute as thousands of party activists and delegates prepare for their convention. Caught in the middle is Donald J. Trump, who claims “tremendous support, tremendous friendship” from gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people, and has gone further than most party figures to embrace them. Gays, in fact, are one of the few minority groups Mr. Trump has not singled out for criticism. But as the presumptive Republican nominee, he is also trying to assuage doubts about the convictions of his conservatism. The uncomfortable dynamic Mr. Trump has created for himself is perhaps best illustrated by his own calendar. He huddled last month at a Manhattan hotel with hundreds of religious conservatives, many of them — like James C. Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, and Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council — outspoken opponents of new legal protections for gay and transgender people. A few days later, he took what an aide described as a friendly and supportive call from Caitlyn Jenner, the former Olympic decathlete who came out as transgender last year. One of the most contentious issues confronting delegates when they meet on Monday to debate the platform will be whether to adopt a provision defending state laws that try to prevent transgender people from using the public restroom of their choice. At times Mr. Trump has criticized those laws. And he has said Ms. Jenner can use whatever bathroom she prefers at his properties. But he has also promised not to interfere with the platform, which serves as the party’s official declaration of principles. Even as Mr. Trump keeps his distance from the debate, other Republicans who share his more accepting view of gay and transgender issues are working aggressively to tone down some of the platform’s language. The existing platform, adopted in 2012, is replete with disapproval of homosexuality. It calls court decisions favoring marriage “an assault on the foundations of our society” and accuses the Obama administration of trying to impose “the homosexual rights agenda” on foreign countries. Paul E. Singer, a billionaire Republican who has financed gay rights battles across the country, is now funding an effort to write into the platform language more inclusive of gays, lesbians and transgender people. The goal of his group, the American Unity Fund, is not to get the party to endorse marriage but to add a more statement that commits the party “to respect for all families,” though there is still fierce resistance from the right. “We don’t have to say we’re tolerant because we are tolerant of other views,” said James Bopp Jr. a member of the platform committee from Indiana who has long supported efforts to make the platform more strongly in favor of traditional marriage. Such language promoting tolerance, he added, would be “redundant and superfluous. ” Advisers for the American Unity Fund, who say they know they are fighting a steep uphill battle, argue that the Republican Party can no longer afford to alienate people on gay rights issues. “We’ve got to make room for people with diverse views on civil marriage,” said Tyler Deaton, the group’s senior adviser. “This platform doesn’t even make room for people who support civil unions or domestic partnerships or people who support basic legal equality. ” Both parties adopt new platforms at their conventions every four years. A draft of the 2016 version has been put together over the last several weeks by the Republican National Committee, with help from conservative activists. Members of the platform committee received the draft on Sunday evening and will add or change certain provisions over the next two days. The draft circulating Sunday night condemned the Obama administration’s effort to deny funding to states that prohibit transgender people from using the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity, accusing the administration of trying to impose a cultural revolution. “They are determined to reshape our schools — and our entire society — to fit the mold of an ideology alien to America’s history,” the draft reads. Another section criticizes those who boycott businesses that deny services to couples. Though he will almost certainly not mention it when he accepts the nomination next week, Mr. Trump’s actions and words on gay rights have been more supportive than those of any Republican presidential nominee, even if they fall short of the full social and legal acceptance that his expected opponent, Hillary Clinton, has promoted. He has boasted of his friendships with many gay people, saying “I have so many fabulous friends who happen to be gay. ” He has supported AIDS charities for years, and welcomed gay couples at his Palm Beach club when doing so was considered remarkable. And he has recently started insisting that he would be a better friend to the gay community than Mrs. Clinton, even though he opposes legal rights like marriage. But as he tries to convince social conservatives that he is not acting as a moderate, Mr. Trump has been largely with the platform. “His guys have not shown up and said, ‘Change this, change that,’” David Barton, a platform committee member from Texas, said. The Republican platform committee has long been dominated by some of the party’s most stalwart activists. And some of them have hardly been shy about their views. There is Cynthia Dunbar of Virginia, who has compared the gay rights movement to Nazism. Hardy Billington, a committee member from Missouri, placed an ad in a local paper asserting that homosexuality kills people at two to three times the rate of smoking. And Mary Frances Forrester of North Carolina has claimed that the “homosexual agenda is trying to change the course of Western civilization. ” Mr. Bopp of Indiana recently wrote to delegates to say that the Republican Party has always opposed threats to traditional marriage “beginning with our opposition to the ‘twin relics of barbarism’ of slavery and polygamy in our 1856 platform. ” As dominant as those conservative voices have been, delegates who want to see a more inclusive platform are gaining seats on the committee. Many of them believe the Republican Party needs to have a serious debate this year about whittling down a platform that has grown long and become riddled with additions. Boyd Matheson, a platform committee member from Utah, noted that at 33, 000 words, the 2012 platform was “six or seven times longer than the Constitution. ” Recent platforms have become, he said, “these laundry lists and litmus tests of ‘thou shalts’ and ‘thou shalt nots. ’” The party’s first platform in 1856 was fewer than 1, 000 words. As an alternative this year, Mr. Matheson proposed a document that he said adheres to the founding principles of the party, like equal rights and economic opportunity. It contains no mention of marriage or transgender issues. “That does not elevate the discussion we need,” Mr. Matheson said. It is not the discussion Mr. Trump is eager to have, either. Asked in a recent interview about the platform, he declined to comment, saying only that he was “looking at it. ” But as a reminder of how unorthodox a Republican Mr. Trump is — and of how contrary many of his views on issues like trade, foreign policy, eminent domain and gay rights are to the party’s doctrine — there is no more vivid example than the platform. “The bigger problem for Trump and the Republican National Committee,” said Lanhee J. Chen, who led Mitt Romney’s platform efforts in 2012, “is the fact that there are these major disagreements between where Trump is on some of these issues and where the activist base of the party is. ” Differences between a candidate’s views and what is written in the platform are nothing new, of course. Bob Dole admitted he had not read the entire document when he was the Republican nominee in 1996. And he publicly repudiated parts of it that called for a constitutional amendment to deny automatic citizenship for children born to illegal immigrants. It is not clear Mr. Trump would ever go that far, given how little attention he has paid to the party’s traditions and sacraments. “I don’t know if Trump really cares,” Mr. Chen added. | 1 |
أمريكا..نحو الإصلاح أم التمزق؟ بقلم تييري ميسان شبكة فولتير | دمشق (سوريا) | 26 تشرين الأول (أكتوبر) 2016 français Español italiano русский English Deutsch Português ελληνικά Türkçe أفسحت القضايا السياسية البحتة، على مدى عام من حملة الانتخابات الأمريكية التي شهدناها (كتوزيع الثروة، أو السياسة الشرق أوسطية)، المجال لمسائل أخرى مثل الجنس والمال.
إنه هو، عين الخطاب، وليس القضايا السياسية، من فجًر الحزب الجمهوري من الداخل، ومن يعيد الآن تشكيل رقعة الشطرنج السياسية، مفسحا المجال لانبثاق شرخ حضاري قديم.
على ضفة، تقف هيلاري كلينتون لتحث على المساواة بين الرجل والمرأة، على الرغم من أنها لم تتردد يوما بمهاجمة وتشويه سمعة النساء اللواتي أقمن علاقات عاطفية مع زوجها، وتقدم نفسها كمرشحة، ليس لميزات شخصية تتحلى بها، بل لمجرد أنها زوج رئيس سابق. تتهم دونالد ترامب بكرهه للنساء، رغم أنه لا يخفي شغفه بالجنس اللطيف.
على الضفة الأخرى، يقف دونالد ترامب ليشجب خصخصة الدولة، وعمليات الابتزاز التي مارستها شخصيات أجنبية من خلال مؤسسة كلينتون، للحصول على موعد معها في وزارة الخارجية، وإنشاء قانون أوباما للرعاية الصحية (أوباما كير) الذي لم يكن قطعا لمصلحة المواطنين، بل لمصلحة شركات التأمين الصحي؛ ويذهب إلى حد التشكيك في مصداقية النظام الانتخابي.
الانقسام الحالي، ناجم عن ثورة القيم الكاثوليكية، والأرثوذكسية، واللوثرية ضد القيم الكالفانية، المتجسدة خصوصا في الولايات المتحدة من خلال البروتستانت، والمعمدانيين والميثوديين (ديانة السيدة كلينتون).
قام أوليفر كرومويل في القرن السابع عشر بانقلاب عسكري أطاح بملك إنجلترا. مدعياً تأسيس نظام جمهوري، وتطهير روح انكلترة، عبر قطع عنق عاهلها.
انشأ نظاما طائفياً من وحي أفكار كالفن، وارتكب مجازر جماعية بحق الايرلنديين الكاتوليك، وفرض نمط حياة متزمتة، وابتدع تصميم الصهيونية: ناشد اليهود في انكلترا، ودعاهم إلى إقامة دولة يهودية في فلسطين. تٌعرف هذه الحقبة الدموية باسم " الحرب الأهلية البريطانية الأولى".
هرب أتباع كرومويل المتشددين من انجلترا بعد استعادة النظام الملكي، واستقروا في هولندا، حيث رسى البعض منهم لاحقا على ضفاف" ماي فلاور" في القارة الأمريكية، فعرفوا باسم "الآباء الحٌجًاج".
كررت حرب الاستقلال الأميركية في القرن الثامن عشر، أحداث المواجهة الكالفانية ضد النظام الملكي البريطاني، لدرجة أن الانكليز أطلقوا عليها اسم "الحرب الأهلية الثانية".
في القرن التاسع عشر، أدت الحرب الانفصالية إلى مواجهة مسلحة بين ولايات الجنوب (التي تقطنها أغلبية من المستوطنين الكاثوليك) ضد ولايات الشمال (التي يسكنها عموما مستوطنون بروتستانت).
التاريخ الذي يكتبه عادة المنتصرون، أخبرنا أن تلك الحرب كانت نضالاً من أجل التحرر من العبودية، وهي بالطبع رواية دعائية (بروباغاندا) لأن الولايات الجنوبية ألغت العبودية أثناء الحرب، بعد أن تمكنت من عقد حلف مع المملكة البريطانية).
في الواقع، لاتزال المواجهة مستمرة بين المتشددين، وبين التاج البريطاني الذي يحاول النهوض من جديد.
إنه هو ذاته، الفكر البروتستانتي المتشدد الذي دفع الإدارات المتعاقبة لكل من كارتر، وريغان، وبوش (الأب والابن على حد سواء، أحفاد الآباء الحجاج)، فضلاً عن كلينتون وأوباما لدعم الوهابية، وداعش الآن، رغم تعارضهما مع القيم السامية التي يعلنها بلدهم.
أسس الآباء الحجاج في السابق مجتمعات طائفية في بلايموث وبوسطن، وادعوا إنشاء "إسرائيل جديدة". وعلى الرغم من كونهم مسيحيين، فقد أولوا الكتابات اليهودية أهمية أكبر من الإنجيلية، فانتزعوا الصلبان من معابدهم، واستبدلوها بألواح النبي موسى. كما أجبروا النساء على وضع الحجاب وتغطية رؤوسهن بالكامل، وأعادوا تطبيق العقوبات الجسدية.
تييري ميسان ترجمة
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Does this mean I'm going to get flooded with beg letters from the second most corrupt organization in America again? For 4 years running I sent "Maximum Allowable" donations with VOID across the front and back and the signature line carried "To be honored when you support MY choices. Last year nothing! | 0 |
New ‘London pound’ coin to be worth about 45p 01-11-16 THE new 2017 pound coin will be a special ‘London pound’ worth less than half as much as the national version. Londoners will be paid their salaries in the new currency without any increase to reflect the lower value, then be expected to still somehow pay their rent and bills. A Royal Mint spokesman said: “It’s past time London had its own currency which reflects the remarkably poor value and hellish nature of the city.” Restaurants and cafes have already prepared for the new coin by removing the ‘£’ signs from menus to make prices seem less extortionate. Londoner Norman Steele said: “According to this menu a bacon butty is ‘7’. I knew there was no way that would be in normal pounds because it’s a bit of bacon jammed between two slices of bread. “It’s good to know the precise terms on which I am being totally fucked.”
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Defying the Politics of Fear By Chris Hedges
Chris Hedges gave this talk Saturday evening at a rally in Philadelphia for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate, Ajamu Baraka.
November 08, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Truth Dig " - No social or revolutionary movement succeeds without a core of people who will not betray their vision and their principles. They are the building blocks of social change. They are our only hope for a viable socialism. They are willing to spend their lives as political outcasts. They are willing to endure repression. They will not sell out the oppressed and the poor. They know that you stand with all of the oppressedpeople of color in our prisons and marginal communities, the poor, unemployed workers, our LGBT community, undocumented workers, the mentally ill and the Palestinians, Iraqis and Afghans whom we terrorize and murderor you stand with none of the oppressed. They know when you fight for the oppressed you get treated like the oppressed. They know this is the cost of the moral life, a life that is not abandoned even if means you are destined to spend generations wandering in the wilderness, even if you are destined to fail.
I was in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania in 1989 during the revolutions, or in the case of Romania an interparty putsch. These revolutions were spontaneous outbursts by an enraged population that had had enough of communist repression, mismanagement and corruption. No one, from the dissidents themselves to the ruling communist parties, anticipated these revolts. They erupted, as all revolutions do, from tinder that had been waiting years for a spark.
These revolutions were led by a handful of dissidents who until the fall of 1989 were marginal and dismissed by the state as inconsequential until it was too late. The state periodically sent state security to harass them. It often ignored them. I am not even sure you could call these dissidents an opposition. They were profoundly isolated within their own societies. The state media denied them a voice. They had no legal status and were locked out of the political system. They were blacklisted. They struggled to make a living. But when the breaking point in Eastern Europe came, when the ruling communist ideology lost all credibility, there was no question in the minds of the public about whom they could trust. The demonstrators that poured into the streets of East Berlin and Prague were aware of who would sell them out and who would not. They trusted those, such as Václav Havel , who had dedicated their lives to fighting for open society, those who had been willing to be condemned as nonpersons and go to jail for their defiance.
Our only chance to overthrow corporate power comes from those who will not surrender to it, who will hold fast to the causes of the oppressed no matter what the price, who are willing to be dismissed and reviled by a bankrupt liberal establishment, who have found within themselves the courage to say no, to refuse to cooperate. The most important issue in this election does not revolve around the personal traits of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. It revolves around the destructive dynamic of unfettered and unregulated global capitalism, the crimes of imperialism and the security and surveillance apparatus. These forces are where real power lies. Trump and Clinton will do nothing to restrict them.
It is up to us to resist. We must refuse to be complicit, even in the act of voting, with the fossil fuel industrys savaging of our ecosystem, endless wars, oppression of the poor, including the one in five children in this country who is hungry, the evisceration of constitutional rights and civil liberties, the cruel and inhumane system of mass incarceration and the state-sponsored execution of unarmed poor people of color in our marginal communities.
Julien Benda reminds us that we can serve two sets of principles. Privilege and power or justice and truth. The more we make compromises with those who serve privilege and power the more we diminish the capacity for justice and truth. Our strength comes from our steadfastness to justice and truth, a steadfastness that accepts that the corporate forces arrayed against us may crush us, but that the more we make compromises with those whose ends are privilege and power the more we diminish our capacity to effect change.
Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies writes that the question is not how do you get good people to rule. Popper says this is the wrong question. Most people attracted to power, he writes, have rarely been above average, either morally or intellectually, and often [have been] below it. The question is how do we build forces to restrict the despotism of the powerful. There is a moment in Henry Kissingers memoirsdo not buy the bookwhen Nixon and Kissinger are looking out at tens of thousands of anti-war protesters who have surrounded the White House. Nixon had placed empty city buses in front of the White House to keep the protesters back. He worried out loud that the crowd would break through the barricades and get him and Kissinger. And that is exactly where we want people in power to be. This is why, although he was not a liberal, Nixon was our last liberal president. He was scared of movements. And if we cannot make the elites scared of us we will fail.
The rise of Donald Trump is the product of the disenchantment, despair and anger caused by neoliberalism and the collapse of institutions that once offered a counterweight to the powerful. Trump gives vent to the legitimate rage and betrayal of the white underclass and working poor. His right-wing populism, which will grow in virulence and sophistication under a Clinton presidency, mirrors the right-wing populism rippling across much of Europe including Poland, Hungary, France and Great Britain. If Clinton wins, Trump becomes the dress rehearsal for fascism.
A bankrupt liberal class, as was true in Yugoslavia when I covered the war and as was true in Weimar Germany, is the great enabler of fascism. Liberals, in the name of the practical, refuse to challenge parties that betray workingmen and women. They surrender their values for political expediency. Our [failure] to build a counterweight to the Democratic Party after it abandoned the working class with the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 was our gravest mistake.
Hillary Clinton embodies the detested neoliberal establishment. She can barely fend off one of the most imbecilic and narcissistic candidates in American history. Matched against a demagogue with brains and political skill, she would lose. If we do not defy the neoliberal order, championed by Clinton and the Democratic Party elites, we ensure the conditions for a terrifying right-wing backlash, one that will use harsh and violent mechanisms to crush the little political space we have left.
The tactic of strategic voting begs the question Strategic for whom? Our money-drenched, heavily managed elections are little more than totalitarian plebiscites to give a veneer of legitimacy to corporate power. As long as we signal that we are not a threat to the established order, as long as we participate in this charade, the neoliberal assault will continue towards its frightening and inevitable conclusion.
Alexis de Tocqueville correctly saw that when citizens can no longer participate in a meaningful way in political life, political populism is replaced by a cultural populism of sameness, resentment and mindless patriotism and by a form of anti-politics he called democratic despotism. The language and rituals of democracy are used to mask a political system based on the unchallenged supremacy of corporate power, one the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls inverted totalitarianism.
We must build structures of open defiance to the corporate state. It may take as long as a decade for us to effectively confront corporate power. But without a potent counterweight to the neoliberal order we will be steadily disempowered. Every action we take, every word we utter must make it clear that we refuse to participate in our own enslavement and destruction. The rapid disintegration of the ecosystem means resistance cannot be delayed.
Our success will be determined not by the number of votes we get in this or any other election but by our ability to stand unequivocally with the oppressed. The enemies of freedom throughout history have always charged its defenders with subversion. The enemies of freedom have often convinced large parts of a captive population to parrot back mind-numbing clichés to justify their rule. Resistance to corporate power will require fortitude, an ability to march to the beat of our own drum.
No revolutionary abandons, no matter what the cost, those he or she defends. We cannot betray those murdered by police in our marginal communities. We cannot betray the courageous dissidentsJulian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and the great revolutionary Mumia Abu-Jamal . They have not betrayed us. We cannot betray the dissidents in North Dakota who are defying a fossil fuel industry that is orchestrating the sixth great mass extinction , melting the polar ice caps and raising carbon emissions to over 400 parts per million. We cannot betray the 2.3 million men and women locked in cages across this nation for years and decades. We cannot betray the Palestinians. We cannot betray the Iraqis and Afghans whose lives we have destroyed by state terror. If we betray them we betray ourselves.
We cannot betray the ideal of a popular democracy by pretending this contrived political theater is free or fair or democratic. We cannot play their game. We cannot play by their rules. Our job is not to accommodate the corporate state. Our job is to destroy it. We think we are the doctors, Alexander Herzen told anarchists of another era. We are the disease.
The state seeks to control us through fear, propaganda, wholesale surveillance and violence. [This] is the only form of social control it has left. The lie of neoliberalism has been exposed. Its credibility has imploded. The moment we cease being afraid, the moment we use our collective strength as I saw in Eastern Europe in 1989 to make the rulers afraid of us, is the moment of the systems downfall.
Go into the voting booth on Tuesday. Do not be afraid. Vote with your conscience. Vote Green. If we win 5 percent we win. Five percent becomes the building block for the years ahead. A decade ago Syriza, the ruling party in Greece, was polling 4 percent. And after you vote, join some movement, some protest, some disruption, Black Lives Matter, the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel, an anti-fracking demonstration. Courage is contagious. Revolutions begin, as I saw in East Germany, with a few Lutheran clergy holding candles as they marched through the streets of Leipzig in East Germany. It ends with half a million people protesting in East Berlin, the defection of the police and the army to the side of the protesters and the collapse of the Stasi state. But revolutions only happen when a few dissidents decide they will no longer cooperate, when they affirm what we must all affirm, when, as Havel said, they choose to live in truth.
We may not succeed. So be it. At least those who come after us, and I speak as a father, will say we tried. The corporate forces that have us in their death grip will destroy our lives. They will destroy the lives of my children. They will destroy the lives of your children. They will destroy the ecosystem that makes life possible. We owe it to those who come after us not to be complicit in this evil. We owe it to them to refuse to be good Germans. I do not, in the end, fight fascists because I will win. I fight fascists because they are fascists.
Chris Hedges, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.
Chris Hedges: The End of the Election Will Not Mean the End of Public Anger Posted on Nov 8, 2016
In a 30-minute interview with Sophie Shevardnadze at RT, Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges discusses who will be the real loser in the 2016 U.S. presidential race.
Sophie Shevardnadze: Chris Hedges, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, author, welcome to the show once again, great to have you back. Hillary was seemingly cruising to victory just after the debates - some polls gave her a 10 point lead - and now theres virtually nothing separating the candidates. Today, if you had a million bucks whod you bet it on - Clinton or Trump?
Chris Hedges: Its impossible to tell you, because it really will depend on the mood, on the emotions of the voters on election day. That's all these campaigns are about, because they both essentially are neo-liberal candidates who will do nothing to impede imperial expansion and corporate power. The whole campaign has descended to, you know, not surprisingly, to the level of a reality TV show, with presidential debates featuring women who have accused former President Bill Clinton of sexual assault being brought in by Donald Trump; videos - I'll go back to the primaries - of the size of people's genitals. I mean, it's just appalling, but all of that is emblematic of a political system in deep decay and one that no longer revolves around fundamental issues. We know from the Wikileaks emails, the John Podesta emails that were leaked from Hillary Clinton, that there was a calculated effort on a part of a Clinton campaign to promote these fringe candidates - like Trump, and they particularly wanted Trump, because the difference between Hillary Clinton and a more mainstream Republican candidate, like Jeb Bush, is so marginal. So if you had to ask me, I don't think Trump will win, but I don't rule out the possibility that he will win - we have to look at the Brexit polls in Britain...
SS: Right.
CH: ...And same kind of anger is underway here.
SS: The FBI is extending its investigation into the Clinton email case - after obtaining a warrant to search the laptop of Clintons closest aide Huma Abedin. The Clinton campaign says the move is political - is the FBI guilty of swaying the vote, like Hillary suggests?
CH: To be fair to FBI, they were put in a very difficult position - there are tens of thousands, they say 660,000 emails, we don't really know how many of those, but if the FBI made this discovery and did not make it public, they would be accused, of course, of aiding Clinton campaign. I don't know the motives, but I think we do have to recognise that the FBI, I think, felt correctly, that given the volatility of the campaign and the fact that they had, after the investigation of the Clinton email - she had used a private server - while they certainly felt that it was inappropriate to exonerate her of criminal activity that they felt kind of a responsibility to be transparent.
SS: Another FBI investigation showed that the bureau didnt find any evidence that Trump is tied to the Kremlin, like the Clinton campaign implied - has Hillarys attempt to play the Russian card failed?
CH: I don't know that it's failed, because the media has been quite obsequious in terms of parroting back this narrative, and one of the frustrations of the Wikileaks email dumps, the John Podesta emails, he is her campaign manager, runs her campaign - is that the contents were often overlooked to essentially ask the question: "Is Russia trying to influence the elections?", and as a former investigative reporter for the New York times, this is just not a legitimate question. I spent many-many years, 15 years with the Times, I was elated all sorts of information by all sorts of governments, from the French Intelligence agency to the Israeli Secret Service, the Mossad, to the U.S. government - and these people were not leaking it because they cared about democracy or an open society, they were leaking this information because it was in their interest to do so, and my job, as a reporter, was to determine whether this leaked information was true or untrue - and that's really the only thing the reporter should do with the leaked information on the Podesta emails. But one of the things that as a reporter, as a former investigative reporter, that has disturbed me is that they have - I'm talking about the press, especially about the electronic, commercial corporate press - they have effectively ignored much of what is in the emails to carry up this speculation. Meanwhile, of course, nobody has offered us any evidence that the Trump campaign is linked in any way to Russia or that Russia is responsible for the email dump.
SS: Were used to the fact that ordinary Americans dont really care about foreign policy, but this campaign has focused a lot on foreign issues and Russia in particular. Are candidates trying to unite the nation by creating the image of a foreign threat?
CH: Yeah. It's very disturbing on many levels, the kind of neo-conservative foreign policy cabal led by Robert Kagan and others that is around Clinton. The very people who gave the disastrous Iraq war, are now proposing policies to bait Russia. You know, it makes absolutely no sense to those of us who spend as many, as I did, two decades abroad as a foreign correspondent, except that it plays well politically into this very stunted, peculiar, neocon vision of the world, and that is that everybody out there only understands one language, and that's force. That's how you see these 15 years now of war, the longest war in U.S. history. It's been an utter disaster, utter failure, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of course, Syria, and Libya - and yet, what's the response? More bombs, more bombs, more bombs, which created the problems in the first place.
SS: Yeah, and do Americans like being scared by a foreign adversary?
CH: No, I don't think they "like" it, but it's a very effective form of control. Fear works, and Americans are hardly the only people to use it. Terrorism, the specter of Russia...whatever it is! Fear is a form of social control, and when you have essentially two political parties that are doing corporate bidding that serves the interests of corporate global elites, at the expense of the citizens - they need fear, they need to manufacture fear, and I think that's what we're seeing.
SS: Trump has said things along the lines of this election is rigged and hes hinted that he may contend the results, which is kind of like admitting hell be defeated. Is this talk backfiring and scaring away voters? Why would people head to the ballots if they think their voice doesnt count anyway?
CH: The Trump's base, primarily white lower-working class, which has been dispossessed through de-industrialisation, is going to head to the polls. They are attempting to work within the system. If the race is close and Trump loses, I think, everything we have seen, given the volatility of Trump, suggests that he will charge that the elections were rigged. We certainly have seen evidence now, from in particular the leaked emails, of the rigging of the primaries on the part of the Democratic National Committee, on behalf of the Clintons. It's pretty clear that Nevada Caucus was stolen, they blocked independents from voting in many of the primaries, in many of the states, and independents were Bernie Sanders' primary base. We just saw a few days ago, a day or two ago, that Clinton was actually leaked questions that would be given to her at a staged... I mean, they call them "Townhalls", they're totally Potemkin-like reality shows, totally scripted - so, its enough to look into the inner workings to suggest that these people, the Clinton machine, the Democratic party do not play fair. So, yeah, I think that that is the danger and the danger becomes then, when enraged Trump supporters believe that the system is rigged, the system is broken, it doesn't function fairly - and that becomes dangerous, because these people will resort to kind of anarchic levels of violence.
SS: Filmmaker Michael Moore, who you cant call a Republican-friendly figure exactly, called Trump a human Molotov cocktail which desperate poor voters can throw at the system that stole their lives from them. How come a Republican candidate is the candidate of the dispossessed, shouldnt Hillary be the one taking care of them?
CH: Yeah. That is the whole idea, that a billionaire developer is somehow the voice of the dispossessed, but he has tapped into this right-wing populism. This is coupled with a kind of xenophobia, kind of exalted nationalism, and a statement - which is true, of course - that the elites have betrayed the ordinary citizenry. So, when Donald Trump goes to Michigan and stands before the executives from car manufacturers, who are moving their plants over the border, courtesy of NAFTA, to Mexico, and says that if you try to make cars in Mexico, I'll put a 35% tariff on it - this is something that no candidate, in either party, has been saying, and there are many-many really struggling... I mean, half of this country now lives in poverty, people who have been waiting a long time for somebody to stand up and defy these corporate executives and CEOs who have destroyed their lives, the lives of their communities, destroyed the lives of their families. So, in that sense, Trump is not a traditional Republican which is why the Republican establishment itself has united with the Democratic establishment to try and destroy the Trump presidency - much as in 1972, the left-wing insurgent candidate George McGovern saw the establishment of the Democratic party unite with the establishment of the Republican party to elect Richard Nixon.
SS: The election is estimated to have cost 6.6 billion dollars so far -thats including the House and Senate campaign spending, and is likely to end up being even more pricey than that. Thats the whole budget of Bahrain. Elections in India have four times as many voters and cost one billion less. Is this price tag cutting off any truly independent candidate, like Bernie Sanders?
CH: You can't compete, unless you can raise that kind of money, unless you can get into debates. Bernie Sanders actually raised significant sums, he didn't do it through corporations, his average campaign contribution was $27 - but yeah, you can't play in this game of political theater, unless you're bankrolled to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. That is the part of the way they lock out third-party candidates, like the Green party candidate Jill Stein.
SS: The Democratic party managed to fend off an anti-system challenger - Sanders - how come the Republicans couldnt find anyone who could defeat Trump?
CH: Because the establishment itself is so deeply hated, so when the Republican establishment finally did - they didn't take him seriously in the beginning, and when they did turn on him, they trotted out the former presidential candidate Mitt Romney to attack him, and people just laughed. It's the Romneys, the Bushes, the Clintons, the Obamas, it's that establishment that people are turning against - which is why Hillary Clinton is having such a difficult time competing against such an imbecilic, undisciplined and impulsive and, frankly, ignorant candidate.
SS: I'm just wondering - why is the media, even the right-leaning media, which created Trumps phenomenon - turning on him in this campaign?
CH: Two reasons. One - he is attacking the trade agreements, which is how the elites make their money, and secondly, he's a public relations disaster for the U.S. I think those are the two reasons. Maybe, the third reason is that they don't know what they're getting with Trump - nobody knows what they're getting with Trump. Trump doesn't know what he's getting with Trump, and they know that Clinton will maintain both the imperial overreach and the design of the corporate state. So, Clintons a sure bet and Trump is just too volatile a candidate, and that's why the establishment has turned on him.
SS: PresidentObama has hit the campaign trail to endorse Hillary Clinton - hes warning that all the progress will go out the window if we dont make the right choice. Do you think everything Obama achieved will really go out the window if Trump gets elected?
CH: I don't think Obama has achieved very much. His healthcare program which is essentially forcing citizens to buy defective corporate products and we're watching now massive increases, on an average of 22%, and people that have the bronze plan, different levels of plans cannot even afford the kinds of premiums and copayments... - I mean, the whole system is a disaster. His assault on civil liberties has been worse than under Bush, he has expanded imperial wars, in places like Libya, create more failed states. I don't think Obama has much of a legacy. He'll walk out and get rich and will start his own Foundation like the Clintons - there's almost a complete continuity between Bush and Obama.
SS: A recent CNN ORC poll says Obamas approval rating is higher than at any time during his presidency - why is he doing so great now that hes leaving? Is that his Hillary campaigning paying off?
CH: You know, these people run very skilled public relations operations which revolve not around policy but around creating manufactured personalities, and that has been very difficult for Clinton - and that's why Clinton has the second-highest disapproval rating of any Presidential candidate as far as we know in American history, with the exception, of course, of the person she's competing against - Donald Trump. We have to look at what American politics is - it's really about creating feelings, emotions, getting voters to confuse how they are made to feel with knowledge. It is not about actual policies, and both Michelle Obama who has a very high kind of favourability rating and Barack Obama have been skilled in doing that. It's much more difficult, that's part of the problem, for the Clinton campaign.
SS: Looking back at the beginning of Obama's presidency, the Nobel committee handed Obama the peace prize in 2009 - not for his accomplishments, but for his intentions. But the promised peace didnt come to Afghanistan, didnt come to Iraq, were seeing the unravelling of other Middle Eastern states - did Obamas peace vision not only fail but make things worse?
CH: Oh yeah, of course, look at Libya, look at Syria, look at Somalia, look at Iraq, look at Afghanistan, look at Pakistan. No, it's a complete catastrophe. I've spent seven years in the Middle East, I was the Middle East bureau chief for the New York Times, and what we've done is, I would argue, the greatest strategic blunder in American history, and it's one that Obama aided and abetted. The whole idea of him as a peace candidate is... I mean, I kind of gave up on the Nobel Prize Committee, I have no idea why this was done. As you correctly pointed out, he hadn't even done anything.
SS: Was it a genuine inability to make things better, were his hands tied?
CH: No. He was an establishment candidate, he was selected, anointed and promoted by the Democratic Chicago political machine, which is one of the dirtiest in the country, he got more money in 2008 from Wall St. than the Republican candidate who was against him - McCain. No, he's very cynical...bright, talented, unlike George Bush, but deeply cynical candidate. He brought in the old establishment, including the old Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who had been the Secretary of Defence under Bush, he brought in old these figures like Larry Summers and Geithner who are Wall St. marionettes. No, Obama knew very well what he was doing from the very beginning and effectively... Look, he won Advertising Age's top annual award which was "Marketer of the Year". His campaign did, because the professionals knew just what he done - he functioned as a brand for the corporate state, a very powerful and a very effective one.
SS: On the other hand America has restored relations with Cuba and reached a nuclear deal with Iran - both seemed unachievable just a couple of years ago. Do you count those as a Obama's foreign policy successes?
CH: Yeah, they are foreign policy successes, but we have to understand that the Pentagon had long fought the neocons call for war with Iran, even under the Bush administration they put a stop to it. So, there was no appetite within the American military establishment for war with Iran anyway. So that wasn't really an option, despite Israeli pressure. In terms of Cuba, it just got to the point of absurdity - the boycott of Cuba, and we must also remember that the second generation of Cuban Americans did not have that kind of hatred towards Fidel Castro and towards the Cuban regime, and so it was politically safer for the Democratic party because the new generation, just like the new second and third generation of Jewish Americans don't have that loyalty to Israel - it wasn't as politically volatile a decision.
SS: Obama made global zero a strategic objective - however he failed to get America to ban nuclear tests by ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty, while the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock to three minutes to midnight - that is to a nuclear war. Why did Obamas promise to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in American foreign policy backfire?
CH: Because the military-industrial establishment is so powerful in the United States that politicians serve its interests. They don't dictate what the interests of that industry is - officialy, it swallows about 53% of our discretionary budget, but that, of course, masks huge other expenditures, including for our nuclear weapon systems, which isn't counted for Veteran's affairs, which is huge for, if you want to count, the security and surveillance state, which is officially hidden, but probably at least a hundred billion dollars... We're starving the rest of society to do that, and you can't fight these wars. Indeed, if you were watching the Bernie Sander's campaign, Sanders did not take on imperial adventurism or the military establishment - because you can't, within the American political system - and Obama, I think, is an example of that.
SS: Police shootings of unarmed black men have sparked massive protests and the Black lives matter movement - does Obama being the first black president actually mean little for race troubles in the U.S.?
CH: It means nothing, because you have de-industrialised urban centres, i.e. places that once had factories and jobs, which are now in ruins - you walk through them and it's boarded up factories and pothole streets and crumbling infrastructure, dysfunctional schools, and there are no jobs. So you have created mini police states in these marginal communities, where police can serve, as we see, as Judge, Jury and Executioner - three in one. Americans, almost all poor people of colour, are shot by police in this country every day, and it's a form of social control, along, of course, with mass incarceration. We have 25% of the world's prison population and 4% of the world's population - most of those imprisoned are poor people of colour. So, when you've taken away the possibility for jobs and with it the possibilities for hope, for advancement, for inclusion within both the economic and political system - then you need these very harsh forms of controls in order to keep people, essentially, fenced in. That's why these killings don't stop, it doesn't matter how many protests are carried out, and Obama has quite sadly betrayed, if we go back especially to 2008 and even to 2012, his primary base - African-Americans voted in staggering numbers for Obama, I think, 90% or something. Almost that high, and yet life for African-Americans, I would argue, after 8 years of Obama, is worse than when he took power.
SS: We've been talking to Chris Hedges, author, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, talking about the ups and downs of 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaign, and the end of the Obama era as the Americans are gearing up to choose their next President tomorrow. We'll of course be watching the vote closely. That's it for this edition of SophieCo, I will see you next time. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court refused on Monday to hear a Second Amendment challenge to a Connecticut law banning many semiautomatic rifles. The law, enacted in 2013 in the wake of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. made it a crime to sell or possess the firearms, which critics call assault weapons. The decision not to hear the case, not long after the mass shooting in Orlando, Fla. does not set a Supreme Court precedent. But it is part of a trend in which the justices have given at least tacit approval to broad laws in states and localities that choose to enact them. The case, Shew v. Malloy, No. was brought by four individuals, a business and two advocacy groups. They said the ban was irrational, ineffective and unconstitutional. “Connecticut dubs a semiautomatic firearm” with one of several common features “an ‘assault weapon,’ but that is nothing more than an argument advanced by a political slogan in the guise of a definition,” they told the Supreme Court in their petition seeking review. In October, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, upheld the ban almost entirely. It acknowledged that the affected weapons were in common use and assumed their possession was protected by the Second Amendment. But the appeals court ruled that the Connecticut law passed constitutional muster. The law was “specifically targeted to prevent mass shootings like that in Newtown, in which the shooter used a semiautomatic assault weapon,” Judge José A. Cabranes wrote for the court. “Plaintiffs complain that mass shootings are ‘particularly rare events’ and thus, even if successful, the legislation will have a ‘minimal impact’ on most violent crime. “That may be so,” Judge Cabranes continued. “But legislation ‘need not strike at all evils at the same time’ to be constitutional. ” The Supreme Court also turned down on Monday a challenge to a similar New York law in Kampfer v. Cuomo, No. . It was filed by Douglas E. Kampfer, a New York resident who had litigated the case without a lawyer. The Second Circuit denied his appeal in a brief order in March. It has been eight years since the Supreme Court recognized an individual right to keep guns at home for in District of Columbia v. Heller, which struck down parts of an exceptionally strict local law. Since then, the justices have said almost nothing about the scope of that right. When the court rejected a Second Amendment case in December from a Chicago suburb, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Antonin Scalia, dissented. They accused the majority of abdicating its responsibility to enforce the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. (Justice Scalia wrote the majority opinion in the Heller case, which was decided by a vote.) “Roughly five million Americans own semiautomatic rifles,” Justice Thomas wrote. “The overwhelming majority of citizens who own and use such rifles do so for lawful purposes, including and target shooting,” Justice Thomas added. “Under our precedents, that is all that is needed for citizens to have a right under the Second Amendment to keep such weapons. ” | 1 |
There are more than 200 members of the violent, El Salvadorian gang in the Long Island, New York area, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. [The FBI’s Long Island Gang Task Force Director Geraldine Hart told NBC New York in an interview that members of “bolster their ranking among other gangs by using violence. ” Hart told the media that the gang problem, specifically as its members are usually illegal immigrants, is a national issue across the U. S. “This is not a local problem,” Hart told NBC New York. “This is a national and international problem. We know that there are direct links from El Salvador up here into the New York area. ” The area of Brentwood, Long Island, more precisely, has undergone a transformation due to the gang and its roots in illegal immigration. As the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) notes, flourished in Brentwood as placement of unaccompanied minor illegal immigrant children grew more than 100 percent from 2015 to 2016. Brentwood has seen a booming El Salvadorian population in an area that was once primarily working class, Puerto . “By 2010, nearly 40 percent of the community was born in or had citizenship from a Central American country,” CIS Fellow Joseph Kolb writes. “This figure was nearly six times the national average. The majority 68 percent Hispanic population shifted now to 51 percent Central American and 18 percent Puerto Rican. ” Recent Long deaths by include the brutal murders of Nisa Mickens and Kayla Cuevas, two teenage girls beaten and killed by illegal immigrant gang members, Breitbart Texas reported. Other recent murder victims of include teenagers Michael Lopez Banegas, Jefferson Villalobos, Jorge Tigre and Justin Llivicura, all of whom were beaten to death in Long Island’s Recreation Village Town Park, Breitbart Texas reported. John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 1 |
President Trump and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran have made no secret of their mutual contempt, raising fears of possible armed confrontation and doubts about the nuclear agreement reached under Mr. Trump’s predecessor. Equally uncertain are the fates of at least seven people in Iran, five of them American citizens. Four were imprisoned after the nuclear accord took effect and relaxed sanctions against Iran in exchange for its verifiable guarantees of peaceful nuclear work. Relatives of the imprisoned and their advocates have been speaking out, frustrated and wondering how Mr. Trump will deal with the problem. As a candidate, he promised to resolve the prisoner issue but since the inauguration has said little about it. “I’m trying to reach out to everyone I can to help,” said Babak Namazi, whose father, Baquer Namazi, 80, a former Unicef official, and brother, Siamak, 45, a businessman and advocate of stronger Iranian ties with the United States, are among the Americans languishing in prison. “Every day that goes by, my concern for my father and Siamak increases,” Mr. Namazi said this week in a telephone interview from Dubai, where he lives. He expressed particular anxiety about his father, who has a heart ailment, saying that an Iranian prison cell was “no place for an aging old man. ” Last month, on the anniversary of the elder Mr. Namazi’s imprisonment, Unicef exhorted the Iranian authorities to release him. “After a lifetime of humanitarian service, he has earned a peaceful retirement,” a Unicef statement said. Mr. Trump has frequently railed against the nuclear agreement, describing it as a giveaway to Iran. He also vowed as a candidate to bring home Robert Levinson, an American who has been missing in Iran for 10 years. The Iranian authorities, who have claimed ignorance about Mr. Levinson’s whereabouts, are holding at least four American citizens of Iranian descent and two permanent residents of the United States. No official talks are known to be underway about releasing them. But Mr. Trump has made clear that he will not pay what he says amounts to ransom, which the Obama administration was accused of doing after the Iranians released five Americans in January 2016, when the nuclear agreement entered into force. President Barack Obama’s aides described the payment made to Iran, which totaled roughly $1. 7 billion, as the coincidental settling of an old, unresolved debt, an explanation widely regarded by critics — and even some administration supporters — with cynicism. Their suspicions were reinforced when Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers were later quoted in Iran’s state press as having bragged about the payment. The boasting suggested that some powerful Iranians believed a precedent had been set to demand more money for further prisoner releases. “Whatever Obama administration officials wish to call it, their de facto ransom payment has encouraged Iran to double down on efforts to target U. S. citizens traveling there,” Saeed Ghasseminejad, an associate fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a group critical of the Iran nuclear deal, wrote in a recent policy brief. The Americans seized since the deal was completed, he wrote, are “testament to that disconcerting trend. ” In a widely quoted Twitter message in October, after Siamak and Baquer Namazi were sentenced to 10 years in prison on unexplained charges of having aided a hostile foreign power — meaning the United States — Mr. Trump denounced Iran over what he called its demand “for a fortune” in prisoner exchanges. “This doesn’t happen if I’m president,” he stated. Iran’s use of American prisoners for negotiation leverage has been a recurrent theme in the history of its enmity with the United States. The prisoners released after the successful nuclear diplomacy were widely seen as pawns in that effort. It remains unclear precisely why Iran has continued what appears to be an arbitrary pattern of arresting Americans of Iranian descent, with no obvious evidence of wrongdoing. But many advocates of views in Iran, including Ayatollah Khamenei, see as particularly dangerous spreaders of seditious ideas. Other Americans known to be held in Iran are Karan Vafadari, 55, a Tehran art gallery owner, arrested in July along with his wife, Afarin Niasari, 44, an Iranian citizen with permanent United States residency status and Robin Shahini, 46, a rights activist and San Diego State University graduate student, arrested in July while visiting his sick mother. What charges, if any, Mr. Vafadari and his wife face have not been disclosed. The couple have been described by friends, including foreign diplomats, as prominent in Iran’s artistic and cultural communities. Mr. Shahini was sentenced in October to 18 years in prison on charges similar to those in the case of the Namazi father and son, and is believed to be on a hunger strike. Iran also is holding Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese citizen and internet freedom advocate with permanent United States residency status. He was arrested in 2015 and sentenced in September to 10 years in prison for spying. He also is believed to be on a hunger strike. Mr. Vafadari’s sister, Kateh Vafadari, who lives in the Washington area, said nothing of the arrests for a few months. But on Dec. 1, she wrote to Ayatollah Khamenei, imploring him to intervene, according to the Center for Human Rights in Iran, a New advocacy group. The center quoted the letter as saying Mr. Vafadari and his wife had been subjected to “extortion, property seizure and national security threats. ” Babak Namazi, who called on Mr. Trump to help his family in an column published last Friday by The Washington Post, also visited the capital last week, meeting with representatives of the National Security Council and State Department. He said afterward, “I think we heard the right things. ” Mr. Namazi and Jared Genser, a human rights lawyer representing the Namazis, who accompanied him, declined to specify what assurances, if any, they had received, or identify whom they had met. But Mr. Genser said a senior National Security Council official had “indicated that the Trump administration was rapidly developing a broader Iran policy, of which the hostages would be a key part. ” National Security Council and State Department officials declined to comment on the meetings but reiterated that Americans held unjustly abroad must be released. Part of the challenge is that in Iran’s view, any American of Iranian descent it incarcerates is an Iranian citizen, not entitled to consular privileges given to foreigners. During the Obama administration, extensive diplomatic contacts were established with Iran, most notably between Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. That relationship was important in the 2016 release of the five Americans — four of them of Iranian descent. The Trump administration, by contrast, is not known to be cultivating such relations. Mr. Kerry’s successor, Rex W. Tillerson, is still preoccupied with filling key posts. The continued inclusion of Iran among the six predominantly Muslim nations in Mr. Trump’s revised visa ban has only aggravated matters, according to advocates. Iran, which has described the ban as insulting, has retaliated by prohibiting most American visitors. “The problem is that no one has a clue about Trump administration policy,” said Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran. With the American prisoners in Iran, he said, “there is limbo, really. ” | 1 |
Last week, California Governor Jerry Brown unveiled his May revisions to the state budget proposal he rolled out in January. Buried deep among billions of dollars in proposed new spending are millions of dollars for the state to provide criminal defense for illegal immigrants in California who are facing deportation to their home country by our own federal government. [Apparently the governor is proposing to put taxpayer money where his mouth is, following up on his bold statement last January in his State of the State speech to the California legislature: “Let me be clear: We will defend everybody — every man, woman and child — who has come here for a better life and has contributed to the of our state. ” It is certainly controversial, to say the least, for a state government, within the United States, to start providing taxpayer dollars to fight efforts by the United States to deport people who have entered the country, or overstayed their visas, in violation of the law. To find this controversial spending proposal, just in the summary document of the budget, you have to comb through to the Department of Social Services section, and then read all of the way through to page 38, in the Health and Human Services subsection — where you find under “Immigration Services” an increase of $15 million to $30 million “to further expand the availability of legal services for people seeking, “ … deportation defense … ”. President Donald Trump ran and was elected on a platform of cracking down on illegal immigration. Trump’s Attorney General, former Senator Jeff Sessions ( ) has been carrying out the President’s promises by focusing federal law enforcement resources on cracking down on illegal immigration. The Trump administration’s focus on this issue, conversely, has been a rallying cry for the progressive Democrats that control the levers of political power in California. Legislation authored by State Senate President pro Tem Kevin De León ( Angeles) to make California a “sanctuary state” is rapidly advancing through the legislative process. In addition, the state legislature has produced stinging resolutions. Last week, it was announced that the California legislature extended a controversial contract for former Attorney General Eric Holder and his law firm, at $25, 000 per month, focused on taking an aggressive posture against the Trump administration. Sacramento Democrats are not the first to engage in this very aggressive funding of efforts to stymie federal immigration enforcement. Several large cities around California with Democratic mayors and city councils have already entered into this space. Last December, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced the creation of the “L. A. Justice Fund” to include $5 million in taxpayer funds, saying that the city would fight for and, “ … reach out to people who are American by every measure except the papers they hold … ”. (Earlier this year, the Los Angeles City Council also unanimously passed a resolution calling on the President to be impeached.) In February, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee allowed the city’s Public Defender’s Office to use more than $200, 000 in savings from the city’s budget to hire additional staff attorneys for the defense of illegal immigrants facing deportation. Most recently, earlier this month, at the request of Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, the city council of California’s capital voted unanimously to make $300, 000 of city funds available to assist a network of legal, education and groups help illegal immigrants facing deportation. In yet another example of the high priority that Governor Brown places in “taking on” the policies of the federal government and President Trump, he has also proposed increasing the budget of California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to support a stream of lawsuits challenging executive orders of the President. The revision to the Attorney General’s budget includes funding for 19 attorneys and 12 other staff members. There is no doubt that Democrats in California are on the “tip of the spear” in taking on the policies and directives of the newly elected Republican president. Frankly, in and of itself, that is not so surprising. But what is controversial to say the least is the fact that tens of millions of dollars are being spent, so far, by the State of California and some of the state’s largest cities to wage public relations and legal battles against the federal government. — — Jon Fleischman is the Politics Editor for Breitbart California. His columns appear regularly on this page. Jon has been chronicling public policy and politics in the Golden State for nearly three decades. You can follow him on Twitter here. | 1 |
Emmanuel Macron plans to use his first full day as president of France to fly to Berlin to lobby for greater Eurozone integration. Macron wants a common budget and a joint finance minister for all 19 states to have adopted the euro. [In a gesture which will be interpreted by many as a demonstration that Macron’s priorities lie with the European Union rather than France, the new president will meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the hopes of persuading her that greater European integration is in both of their countries’ interests. “The truth is that we must collectively recognise that the euro is incomplete and cannot last without major reforms,” Macron said in a speech delivered in Berlin in January. He continued: “It has not provided Europe with full international sovereignty against the dollar on its rules. It has not provided Europe with a natural convergence between the different member states. ” Arguing that a dysfunctional euro and ongoing trade surpluses were to Germany’s benefit, Macron said that lack of trust between France and Germany was acting as a roadblock to reforms which would increase solidarity between the 19 eurozone states. “The euro is a weak deutsche mark,” Macron insisted. “The status quo is synonymous, in 10 years’ time, with the dismantling of the euro. ” Macron plans to tackle the problems with the euro, as he sees them, with major reforms at the European level. Amongst his planned reforms is the creation of a common eurozone budget managed by a joint finance minister, and the creation of a ‘two tier’ EU, with the Eurozone countries moving ahead of the other member states. If enacted, the reforms would constitute the biggest step so far toward integration of European states into one entity. Many of the new president’s proposals are still nothing more than vague outlines. But Sylvie Goulard, one of Macron’s foreign policy advisers, says Macron is deadly serious in his ambitions. A series of domestic economic reforms, including a €60 billion cut in public spending over five years, a pledge to keep the country’s deficit to under three per cent of GDP, and a cut in corporation tax from the current rate of 33. 33 per cent to 25 per cent seem to have been designed with Berlin, rather than the French people, in mind. Macron’s hope is that building economic credibility at home will help to persuade Germany to back him on the European stage. “France must carry out structural reforms: it’s good for us and will reassure our partners, and chiefly Germany,” he said in February. “If we don’t have a brave plan of structural reforms, the Germans won’t follow us. ” But he may have a more difficult time persuading the people of France to back him. Only two candidates in the first round of presidential voting — Macron and Republican candidate François Fillon — made a case for structural reforms during the election campaign. “The good news is that Macron and Fillon won 50% of the vote, but the bad news is that 50% of the French people still have no idea about what needs to be done, and that poses questions about what happens next,” French economist Charles Wyplosz said. “France has been in the slow lane for decades, losing political influence in Europe, largely because there have been these arrangements where everyone has these privileges that they have been skilled at protecting. Macron has to confront powerful forces that often by putting 2 million people on the streets have won every battle in the last decade. ” Macron will be officially sworn in as president on Sunday morning after walking up the red carpet to the Élysée Palace. Amongst his first acts as president will be naming his prime minister, being briefed on the nuclear deterrent by the outgoing Socialist leader François Hollande, and making his first speech. On Monday, he flies to Berlin to meet with Mrs. Merkel, who has welcomed his victory over Front National leader Marine Le Pen in last week’s election. Macron carries “the hopes of millions of French people and also many in Germany and across Europe,” Merkel said. | 1 |
Nuclear War Alert: US Prepares For North Korea Missile Launch
By Comment North Korea may soon launch nuclear attacks on the U.S., based on a recent evidence seen via satellite. Along with the U.S., the defense forces of South Korea and Japan are on high alert following a recent finding through satellite imagery which exposed potential preparations being carried out at a North Korean facility for a new missile launch. North Korea going rogue with nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs could soon turn into an international crisis that might come even earlier than expected, said USA Today in a report. North Korea’s advances in nuclear weapons and missile technology make defense planners “nervous and alarmed,” as said by Narushige Michishita, director of the security and international studies program at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. Pyongyang carried out two nuclear weapon tests earlier this year, including dozens of missile tests, which failed to adhere to U.N. sanctions. Now, while not all missile tests were successful, the country mate significant improvements in the development of nuclear weapons as well as the tech which can help them attach the nukes to long-range missiles. Also Read: North Korea Declares War 2016- Kim Jong Un Ordered Preemptive Nuclear Strikes Against America The latest missile launch preparations have been reported to be active at North Korea’s Sohae launch facility. As reported by USA today, North Korea has roughly 20 functional nuclear weapons, and plans to build an arsenal of around 50-100 nukes within the next five years. Pyongyang also boasts of a whopping 200 to 320 medium-range Nodong ballistic missiles that are capable of reaching major cities in Japan, along with key U.S. military bases there. The long-range missiles can reach the U.S. bases in Guam and even Alaska. Meanwhile in North Korea, Pyongyang authorities have ordered citizens to donate tin foils as a support to the military for the purpose of camouflaging military facilities. Shielding the military bases with tin foils “will reflect light”, making it impossible for satellite cameras to take pictures, Pyongyang authorities told citizens. “Those households unable to donate tin foil are being asked to make cash donations,” as reported by a UPI source. Locals, however, have criticized the latest measures are pointless, citing the plight of North Korean soldiers suffering from malnutrition and other problems. If you want more World News , subscribe to our daily newsletter or follow us on Twitter and Facebook . Continue Reading | 0 |
After eight years of Barack Obama putting his office into permanent campaign mode while keeping his campaign machinery in constant operation, NPR is accusing Donald J. Trump of waging a “permanent campaign. ”[In a February 17 article, NPR’s Ron Elving claimed that the American people are tired of presidential campaigns that last too long, but “Now, they are confronted with one that refuses to end — even after reaching the White House. ” Elving’s attack on Trump came in response to the President’s often combative February 15 press conference that the NPR Washington correspondent described with a simple “Wow. ” After noting the criticism of the presser published by various news outlets, Elving then complained that Trump used “I” or “me” or “the royal we” too often during his presentation. The NPR staffer then went on to say, “The president often seemed to be responding in the manner of a candidate. ” He added, “The campaign mode continues this weekend, with the president again rallying like it’s 2016. ” Elving suggested that Trump might be being using this “permanent campaign” as a tactic to keep his policy ideas at the front of the political discussion. “Or perhaps the campaign continues because it continues,” Elving said as he wrapped up. “The president does not yet seem comfortable in his new office with all the crosswinds and complications of divided powers and shared responsibilities. ” Perhaps Elving has been in a coma since 2007, when Obama launched a campaign for president that didn’t end until he left office on January 20, 2017. Obama spent eight years being hit with charges that he never stopped campaigning, It was one of the most common criticisms of the Obama presidency. In fact, Obama kept his campaign apparatus, Organizing for America, in operation even after what he claimed would be his “last election. ” In December of 2012, for instance, The Observer remarked that OFA was still soliciting contributions months after Obama won his second term. Indeed, OFA is up and running today, aiming to undermine Donald Trump — and many are making note of it. Obama continues to issue tweets using the OFA Twitter account, and gives marching orders to his OFA army, even in reputed retirement. In August of 2009, former George W. Bush political advisor Karl Rove charged that Obama was continuing to use “divisive,” and “permanent campaign tactics” despite easily winning his election. The Washington Times observed the same thing. The claim was not made only by disgruntled conservatives or news sources, either. In 2013 The New York Times wrote that Obama’s “campaign without end” was fundraising in an “unprecedented” manner. Before that, the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank commented on the issue in May of 2012, saying that Obama had “embraced the permanent campaign” and was flying all across the country leading rallies to push his agenda. “To a greater extent than his predecessors, Obama has used the trappings of his office to promote his reelection prospects even while handling business,” Milbank wrote. In addition, several websites and commentators actually celebrated Obama for using campaign tactics to continue to sell his ideas. MSNBC praised Obama for “putting the permanent campaign to good use,” and The Atlantic marveled that Obama’s “permanent campaign” was using his “reelection playbook to change Washington. ” With all this, it is interesting that today NPR’s Ron Elving seems to have only just noticed that a president is perpetrating a “permanent campaign” to keep his policies on track to completion. Finally, it was rather tone deaf for Elving to criticize Donald Trump for using “I” and “me” too much, coming off the last eight years of a president famous for his narcissistic references to himself in every appearance. Despite mocking the penchant of the press for keeping count of his habits, The Washington Post recently published a piece noting just how often Obama talked about himself. After all, Barack Obama was the president so enthralled with himself that he gave the Queen of England the dubious gift of an iPod filled with Barack Obama speeches. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 1 |
Thursday at the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee update on the Trump administration’s fiscal policies, Sen. Elizabeth Warren ( ) peppered Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin with hostile questions, interrupting several times over an updated law. Mnuchin said, “Republican platform did have . We during the campaign and I had the opportunity to work with the president on this, specifically came out and said we do support a 21st century which is, that means there are aspects of it, okay, that we think may make sense. But we never said before that we supported a full separation of banks — ” Warren interpreted Mnuchin saying “I’m sorry, let me just stop you right there, Mr. Secretary. ” Mnuchin objected saying, “You’re not letting me finish. ” Warren shot back, “Yeah, I’m not because I really have to understand what you’ve just said. There are aspects of that you support, but not breaking up the banks and separating commercial banking from investment banking? What do you think was if that’s not right at the heart of it?” As Mnuchin tried to explain, Warren said, “So you’re in favor of which breaks apart the two arms of banking, regular banking, and commercial banking, except you don’t want to break apart the two parts of banking. This is like something straight out of George Orwell. ” Warren continued the grilling, saying, “This is just bizarre. The idea that you can say we are in favor of but not breaking up the banks. ” Mnuchin said, “We never said we were in favor of . We said we were in favor of a . It couldn’t be clearer. ” She ended by saying, “We are in favor of a bill that is called breaking up the banks only don’t break up the banks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is crazy. ” ( Grabien) Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
Ahmed Kathrada, who spent 26 years in prison, many of them alongside his close friend Nelson Mandela, for resisting the apartheid system of white minority rule in South Africa, died on Tuesday in Johannesburg. He was 87. The death was announced by Mr. Kathrada’s foundation. He had been hospitalized this month with a blood clot in his brain. President Jacob Zuma ordered flags to be displayed at and said that Mr. Kathrada would receive a “special official funeral. ” Mr. Zuma’s office called Mr. Kathrada a “stalwart of the liberation struggle for a free and democratic South Africa. ” Born to an Indian Muslim family, Mr. Kathrada was the most prominent Asian South African in the movement to end apartheid, the system of racial segregation and white domination. Active in leftist politics since his teenage years, he came to prominence in July 1963, when he was arrested with other activists in Rivonia, a northern suburb of Johannesburg, where the South African Communist Party and the armed wing of the outlawed African National Congress had purchased an isolated farm to use as a meeting place. Among the others arrested was Walter Sisulu, secretary general of the A. N. C. That October, Mr. Kathrada was indicted on charges of trying to overthrow the government, start a guerrilla war and open the door to invasion by foreign powers. Mr. Sisulu was also indicted, as was Mr. Mandela, who had been in prison since 1962, but who faced new charges after the authorities found documents at the Rivonia farm linking him to the A. N. C. ’s armed wing. The Rivonia trial, which began in April 1964, became a signature moment in the struggle against apartheid. A high point came when Mr. Mandela, in a speech, told the judge that he was “prepared to die” for “the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. ” Eight defendants — including Mr. Mandela, Mr. Sisulu and Mr. Kathrada — were convicted on June 11, 1964, of plotting a “violent revolution. ” They were sentenced to life in prison, at hard labor. Mr. Kathrada spent 26 years and 3 months behind bars, 18 of them on Robben Island, the apartheid regime’s most notorious prison. Confinement was something of an education: he and his fellow prisoners deepened their conviction that only continued pressure, at home and abroad, would help bring about an end to apartheid. “It really confirmed our belief that the South African authorities do not suddenly undergo a change of heart,” Mr. Kathrada said in 1989. He and his compatriots had suspected that they would be arrested, he said, and had prepared psychologically. They understood, he said, that the isolation of Robben Island — in cold, Atlantic waters off Cape Town — was intended to break them. “From the security police to the prison authorities, they tried to instill into our minds that we would be forgotten in a few years’ time,” Mr. Kathrada said. “They did everything to crush our morale. ” For the first six months, he said, the prisoners were put to work breaking stones with hammers. Then they were sent to work in the prison’s lime quarry for more than a decade. At one point, he said, Mr. Mandela and Mr. Sisulu were put on a meager ration of rice gruel as punishment for supposedly not working hard enough. Mr. Kathrada said that on arriving at the prison he and the convicts were issued long trousers, while black convicts like Mr. Mandela and Mr. Sisulu had to wear shorts without socks. Even sugar, coffee, soup and other foods were apportioned to inmates according to lines of racial hierarchy. convicts were also spared the brutality that was inflicted on less prominent prisoners, Mr. Kathrada said, though they were hardly exempt from mistreatment. He recalled one night when the guards, “many of them very drunk,” awakened the convicts, stripped them and forced them against a wall for a rough search. One inmate, Govan Mbeki, nearly suffered a heart attack, he said. (Mr. Mbeki was released in 1987.) The guards’ attempt to humiliate them only stiffened their defiance, Mr. Kathrada said. “Because we were so close to the oppressor, it helped to keep us united,” he said. They went on hunger strikes to force concessions. They tried to keep up with events outside by talking to new prisoners, reading smuggled letters and “begging, stealing and bribing” to procure information. “Political prisoners give top priority to keeping themselves informed,” Mr. Kathrada said, but they sometimes went without news for several months. They communicated sporadically with the A. N. C. through messages passed among other inmates. “In prison, the best comes out and the worst comes out as well, because of the deprivation and suffering,” he said. In 1982, Mr. Kathrada, Mr. Mandela, Mr. Sisulu and two fellow activists were transferred to Pollsmoor Prison, in the Cape Town suburb of Tokai. While in prison, Mr. Kathrada obtained four university degrees, two in history and two in African politics. He was 60 when he was freed, in October 1989. On his release, he left no doubt that his dedication to the African National Congress had not waned. “We will carry out whatever the A. N. C. wants us to do,” he said at the time. Mr. Kathrada later became a member of Parliament. He wrote several books. He gave tours of Robben Island, to Margaret Thatcher, Fidel Castro, Jane Fonda, Beyoncé and, twice, to Barack Obama — in 2006, when he was a senator and again in 2013, during Mr. Obama’s presidency. Though Mr. Kathrada remained loyal to the A. N. C. — he served on the party’s National Executive Committee and ran its public relations department — in recent years he criticized the Mr. Zuma, who has been in office since 2009. Last April, Mr. Kathrada called on Mr. Zuma to resign, after the country’s highest court found that the South African president had violated his oath of office by refusing to pay back public money spent on renovations to his rural home. Ahmed Mohamed Kathrada was born on Aug. 21, 1929, in a small town in northern South Africa, the son of Muslim emigrants from Gujarat in western India. He was introduced to politics when, as a child, he joined a club run by the Youth Communist League. At 17 he took part in what was called a “passive resistance campaign” organized by the South African Indian Congress, and was one of 2, 000 people arrested on the charge of defying a law that discriminated against Indians. Shortly afterward, he quit school. Selected to visit East Berlin in 1951 for a youth festival, he toured Auschwitz, the former Nazi concentration camp in Poland, before returning to South Africa. In the 1950s he was arrested several times and monitored by the authorities for his political activities. Mr. Kathrada, who once said that his being denied the ability to have children was “the greatest deprivation” he endured in prison, is survived by his longtime partner, Barbara Hogan, a white activist who was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1982 for treason. She became a government minister after the fall of apartheid in the early 1990s. In a 2013 interview, Mr. Kathrada said that he and his fellow prisoners had had it better than those on the outside. “No policeman could come to Robben Island and start shooting at us,” he said. “In the Soweto uprising of 1976, we are told, 600 kids were killed. Others, people we knew closely, tortured to death, shot, assassinated. We were safe. ” | 1 |
Кроме скандала с конфиданткой президента, в политической жизни РК случаются и иные события. Во-первых, президент Республики Корея Пак Кын Хе предложила внести поправки в Конституцию страны, предусматривающие возможность избрания на пост главы государства на второй срок. Выступая в Национальном собрании, она отметила, что сделает эту реформу основной своей задачей на оставшееся время правления. Сейчас срок президентства ограничен 5 годами без права переизбрания, и этот момент многие критикуют. Хотя «один пятилетний срок» был установлен в 1987 году, до демократизации страны, как «прививка от тирании», сегодня это существенно подрезает способность президента к крупномасштабным реформам, проведение которых требует значительного времени. Как показывает исторический опыт, после вступления во власть, президент РК обычно тратит первые год-полтора на то, чтобы расставить своих людей на ключевые посты и обеспечить себе опору в аппарате, а последний год он находится в роли «хромой утки», ибо логика фракционной борьбы в Корее заставляет каждого нового президента игнорировать бόльшую часть достижений своего предшественника. Между тем, долговременная программа реформ требует несменяемого руководства и неизменного политического курса, и нет ничего хуже реформы, которую начали, но не довели до конца, поскольку старая структура разрушена, а новая еще не построена. Наконец, ограниченный срок пребывания у власти стимулирует окружение президента «хватать, пока можно» и не заботиться о будущем, так как все порожденные ими проблемы будут решать уже не они. Это не уничтожает, а усиливает коррупцию и безответственность. Именно это Пак и подчеркнула — из-за смены политического курса каждые пять лет страна не может устойчиво развиваться. Это тормозит решение ядерной проблемы КНДР и развитие экономики. Однако оппозиция заявила, что Пак таким образом пытается отвести внимание общественности от коррупционного скандала вокруг ее ключевых соратников, тем более что зондировать почву на тему внесения поправок в Конституцию пытался и Но Му Хен, когда находился в аналогичном кризисе последнего года. Отвлечение внимания и разговоры о втором сроке при том, что пойдет на него не выдвигающий инициативу, а его преемник, — типичный прием корейской политической борьбы. Правда, 28 октября агентство Gallup Korea опубликовало результаты опроса на тему изменений в президентской системе правления, проведённого 23-27 октября среди 1033 совершеннолетних граждан страны. За внесение поправок в Конституцию в связи с недостатками нынешней президентской системы правления высказались 54% респондентов. 33% высказались против, считая, что проблема не в системе, а в методе ее реализации. 14% респондентов воздержались. С момента начала проведения опросов на данную тему количество согласных с внесением поправок в конституцию впервые превысило 50%. Во-вторых, продолжается кризис в главной оппозиционной Демократической партии. Ее покинул влиятельный политик Сон Хак Кю, за ним стали уходить и другие известные фигуры. Экс-премьер и видный деятель левого движения, он два года колебался, но затем решил покинуть партию и самостоятельно пойти кандидатом в президенты. Вместе с ним ушли такие его сторонники, как Ли Чхан Ель, Ким Бён Ук и Пак Чхан Дэ. На этом фоне практически ушла в тень тема, которая могла превратиться в скандал, сравнимый с историей Чхве Сун Силь. Она была связана с отрывком из недавно опубликованных мемуаров бывшего министра иностранных дел и внешней торговли Сон Мин Суна, в котором рассказывается, как в 2007 году правительство Но Му Хёна воздержалось от голосования за резолюцию ООН по правам человека в Северной Корее, согласовав данное решение с Пхеньяном. В мемуарах говорится, что предложение о консультациях с Севером поступило от Ким Ман Бока, который занимал пост главы Национальной службы разведки, после чего глава администрации президента Мун Чжэ Ин пообещал тогда выяснить позицию Пхеньяна через межкорейский канал. В итоге Республика Корея от голосования воздержалась. Тут надо отметить, что обвинение в капитулянтской политике по отношению к КНДР весьма убийственно, тем более что данный вопрос напрямую касается самого влиятельного кандидата в президенты от оппозиции Мун Чжэ Ина, который тогда занимал пост главы администрации президента. Для установления истины правящая партия Сэнури даже создала специальную группу, а потом и вовсе перевела данный вопрос в задачи своего комитета. Лидер партийной фракции Чон Чжин Сок представил 10 сомнительных моментов из опубликованной книги и потребовал от Мун Чжэ Ина дать объяснения. В оппозиционной партии Тобуро уверены, что подобные обвинения — не что иное, как типичная попытка нападения на ведущего оппозиционера. Сам Мун Чжэ Ин данные действия также подверг критике, хотя правдивость мемуаров никак не подтвердил. Нечто похожее уже происходило в южнокорейской политике перед президентскими выборами в 2012 году, когда разгорелись споры по поводу северной разграничительной линии и заявления о её аннулировании, якобы сделанного президентом Но Му Хёном. Скорее всего, как и в прошлый раз, вопрос утонет в спорах о том, действительно ли правительство Но Му Хёна запрашивало мнение Севера или приняло решение самостоятельно. Тем не менее Демократическая партия частично переименовалась – если ранее на английском они записывались как Minjoo Party of Korea (Minjoo на корейском значит «демократия»), то теперь их следует писать как Democratic Party of Korea. Как правило, это делается или при очередном слиянии-размежевании, или когда надо «очистить карму» и показать, что мы несколько не те, что прежде, сбросив ошибки прошлого. Неслучайно эксперты уже гадают, как скоро такое же переименование претерпит Сэнури. В-третьих, премьер Ким Бен Чжун, которого назначила Пак Кын Хе, не собирается добровольно отказываться от предложенной ему должности. Как сказал сам Ким Бён Чжун, несмотря на требования оппозиции к главе государства отменить данное назначение, он даже не рассматривает возможность отказа. Глава государства провела кадровые перестановки в ответ на требования Национального собрания сформировать нейтральное правительство с участием представителей всех политических сил и передать часть полномочий президента главе правительства, а что она назначила не того представителя левых, которого ей предлагали, уже неважно. Правда, для вступления в должность премьер-министра Ким Бён Чжуну необходимо получить одобрение большинства депутатов, а оппозиция угрожает бойкотом слушаний. В-четвертых, несмотря на требование руководства вернуться на работу, южнокорейские железнодорожники бастуют уже больше месяца — это самый продолжительный срок для подобных выступлений профсоюзов. По состоянию на 28 октября, согласно данным корпорации «Корейские железные дороги», расписание движения в пригородах соблюдается на 100%, а в столичном регионе на 88,4%. Это связано с тем, что забастовщики не бьют по интересам рядовых граждан, зато график движения грузовых поездов выполняется только на 45%. На данный момент в забастовке принимают участие 7,753 человека, а общий уровень участия членов профсоюзов в протесте составил 39,9%. В общем, преувеличивать масштабы политического кризиса не стоит, предвыборное обострение политической борьбы проходит в обычном для РК шумном режиме. Константин Асмолов, кандидат исторических наук, ведущий научный сотрудник Центра корейских исследований Института Дальнего Востока РАН, специально для интернет-журнала «Новое Восточное Обозрение». Популярные статьи | 0 |
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The headlines are in. Trump is the “anti-Democratic” candidate because he refuses to rule out challenging the results of an election that has yet to take place. Such a course of action is “beyond the pale.” It’s a threat to democracy. And it is utterly and thoroughly unacceptable.
Except when Democrats do it.
It was the day after the election. While the Democratic Party faithful waited in the rain in Nashville, William Daley strode out and announced, “Our campaign continues.” Al Gore had called George W. Bush to withdraw his concession. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?" a baffled Bush asked. “You don’t have to be snippy about it," Gore retorted snippily.
Gore did eventually concede. Though years later he would attempt to retract his concession a second time. But his political movement never did concede. It remained a widespread belief in left-wing circles that President Bush was illegitimately elected and that President Gore was the real winner.
How mainstream is that belief?
When Hillary dragged Gore away from playing with his Earth globe to campaign for her, the crowd booed at his mention of the election and then chanted, “You won, you won.”
Hillary grinned and nodded.
Hillary Clinton has always believed that President Bush illegitimately took office. She has told Democrats that Bush was “selected” rather than “elected”. In Nigeria, of all places, she implied that Jeb Bush had rigged the election for his brother.
But it’s not unprecedented, beyond the pale or utterly unacceptable when Democrats do it.
It’s just business as usual.
The media’s focus has been on whether Trump would accept the results if he loses. Yet a better question might be whether Hillary Clinton would accept her defeat.
Even when it came to the battle for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton refused to concede defeat until the bitter end and then past it. Not only did Hillary refuse to drop out even when Obama was the clear winner, while her people threatened a convention floor fight, but she insisted on staying on in the race for increasingly bizarre and even downright disturbing reasons.
In South Dakota, Hillary explained that there was no reason for her to drop out because somebody might shoot Barack Obama, "We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California."
There’s something disturbing in the revelation that Hillary was basing her decision to stay in the race in the hope that her rival would be assassinated.
Obama’s spokesman said that her remark “has no place in this campaign”. But it had a place inside Hillary Clinton’s very warped brain which preferred to see Obama die than concede the election to him.
If that’s how Hillary felt about a fellow Democrat, imagine how she feels about Trump.
Even after Obama had clinched the delegate votes, Hillary’s speech brought back the Gore argument insisting that, “Nearly 18 million of you cast your votes for our campaign, carrying the popular vote with more votes than any primary candidate in history. Even when the pundits and the naysayers proclaimed week after week that this race was over, you kept on voting.”
Then the fabulously wealthy Hillary asked those 18 million people to go to her website and give her money while refusing to make any decision on ending her campaign. It took her another day to do that.
It’s not as if the Obama side was any better. It was arguably worse. Governor Wilder, an Obama ally, threatened a return of the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention riots if Hillary won. "If you think 1968 was bad, you watch; in 2008, it will be worse,” Wilder warned.
Unprecedented. Outrageous. Beyond the pale. Except this is how Democrats act even to each other.
Now how would they respond to a Trump victory? Would they urge Hillary to concede or to fight on? Would they stage more riots while claiming voter disenfranchisement had stolen the election?
Hillary Clinton has made it clear that she views Trump’s candidacy as illegitimate. She has called him “unfit” and described his supporters as “deplorables.” Democrats, all the way up to the White House, are constantly accusing Republicans of scheming to disenfranchise voters. These “schemes” involve asking undocumented Democrats to show some ID instead of relying on an honor system and removing illegitimate voters from the rolls. But beyond enabling voter fraud, such arguments can easily be employed to attack the legitimacy of a Republican winner. They provide the fodder for another Florida.
Does anyone really believe that Hillary Clinton, who couldn’t even graciously concede to Obama will graciously concede to Trump?
And, given the fact that Hillary won the nomination by using the DNC to rig the process, leading to the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz , are Trump’s concerns of a rigged election illegitimate?
Donald Trump has clarified that he would accept “a clear election result” but that he was “being asked to waive centuries of legal precedent designed to protect the voters.”
And he’s right. No one preemptively cedes elections. And Hillary Clinton has faced accusations of abusive and fraudulent tactics from Democratic rivals in two different presidential elections.
Why should Republicans assume that she’ll treat them better than she treated Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders?
Not all that long ago, the left wanted Gore to fight to the bitter end. A Gore adviser recalled, "People were calling us from everywhere, telling us, 'Don't concede.'" Left-wing voices urged Bernie Sanders to stay in the race long after it became obvious that the left-winger had no realistic path to victory left.
But the same behavior that is virtuous when Democrats do it becomes an unpardonable sin when Republicans take it up.
That’s a pernicious double standard that cannot and should not be allowed to stand.
When Democrats warn of voter disenfranchisement, the media backs them up. When Republicans complain about voter fraud, they are accused of voter suppression. When Democrats fight elections past the point that they’re lost, then they are courageous. But when Republicans do it, they are a threat to democracy.
But democracy does not mean Democratic Party rule. That’s just the mistake that the media makes.
Whatever rules we have, run both ways. Any practices, new or old, also apply to both sides. If challenging election results is legitimate, then it is so for both sides. Whatever options were available to Gore and Hillary cannot help but be available to Trump.
That is how democracy, rather than Democratic Party rule, works.
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Monday, 14 November 2016 New addition to Boy Scout camping equipment
Special to TPN - Boy Scouts of America president Randall Stephenson announced that President-elect Donald Trump will become an honorary scoutmaster at the organization's National Jamboree to be held in July 2017. "Mr. Trump exemplifies all those characteristics we hold dear in scouting," said Stephenson. "These include being courteous and kind, among others. Without these qualities, his Republican comrades never would have flocked to him in his hour of need."
Stephenson also said that in recognition of the President-elect's expertise in two fields of endeavor that all scouts aspire to, Gambling and Misogyny will be added to the long list of merit badges scouts can earn. "Both badges need little in the way of equipment, and we urge all dads to take their sons to a Trump casino to sharpen their skills. By contrast, Misogyny can be practiced at home on their mothers and sisters. Dad can help here as well."
To accommodate Trump while at the jamboree, a huge Winnebago motorhome is being outfitted with a hair salon and mirrored paneling. It will be designated RV-1, which will be embossed on the sides in gold lettering. Trump is also being fitted for a scoutmaster uniform with five gold stars stitched onto both shoulder epaulettes. His official title will Master of the Masturbators.
In other news, Bernie Sanders was rumored to have joined an ISIS cell in New Hampshire.
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Paul Freedman was having lunch at Delmonico’s — not the original, which opened in the early 19th century, but a relic of it in the financial district. Lobster Newburg was still on the menu, the meat napped with a butter. “But the sauce used to have much, much more brandy in it,” Mr. Freedman said. “The style now is less severe. ” Whatever the brandy content, this plush dish and its environs hardly seemed the stuff of revolution. But to hear Mr. Freedman tell it, Delmonico’s fired the first real shot for American dining, giving rise to a huge, diverse industry that would thrive and adapt to every major shift in the nation’s identity. In his navy suit and glasses, Mr. Freedman, a professor of medieval history at Yale University, doesn’t look the part of a provocateur, either. But for his new book, “Ten Restaurants That Changed America” (Liveright) he set out on a brash mission: culling through hundreds of thousands of restaurants, across a span of two centuries, to produce a list of what he believes were the 10 most influential. The list is brief, but Mr. Freedman marshals deep research to map the changes each restaurant made to American culture. Howard Johnson’s, the chain that still evokes nostalgia for the comforting sameness of its fried clams, was designed to be immediately recognizable from a moving vehicle: a wholesome, restaurant for the growing, middle class. Until it became a fixture in the 1930s and ’40s, Mr. Freedman writes, roadside dining options were mostly limited to truck stops that catered to men (salesmen and truckers) popping in on their own. Though Howard Johnson’s wasn’t able to keep up with chains that followed in its footsteps, like McDonald’s and Burger King, this was the restaurant that pioneered franchising as an expansion plan, strategically opening along highways and ushering in the era of big fast food. “Uniformity in everything, not just food, was enforced by a manual,” Mr. Freedman writes, “a ‘Bible’ of rules and procedures covering kitchen equipment, décor, maintenance, uniforms and cleaning. ” Chinese restaurants had been in business here since the century, after the California Gold Rush, but Mr. Freedman zooms in on the Mandarin, which opened in San Francisco in 1961. At a time when most Chinese restaurants were identified with a single dish, chop suey, the Mandarin showed off the cuisine’s nuance. Its owner, Cecilia Chiang, focused on Northern Chinese home cooking, creating a highly successful restaurant that doubled as a bid to broaden Americans’ understanding of Chinese people and culture. Mr. Freedman devotes a chapter to Sylvia’s, the restaurant that Sylvia Woods opened in 1962 in Harlem. Ms. Woods, who was born in South Carolina, was one of many black Americans who moved north in the early 20th century, and she built her business on the traditional Southern cooking she had known as a child. Although in later years, Sylvia’s would become a shorthand for the very meaning of soul food, for decades it was a prime example of how a neighborhood restaurant could thrive as a social center. Mr. Freedman writes, “It developed a group of regulars, whom Sylvia Woods and her family called by their occupations: ‘ man,’ or ‘ man. ’” At Delmonico’s, a jacketed waiter appeared (“Excuse me? ”) and asked to know if Mr. Freedman would care for some freshly ground black pepper for his pasta with sauce and peas. Mr. Freedman’s book begins here. When Delmonico’s opened, as a pastry shop in 1827, the restaurant scene in New York was wobbly at best. A hustle of street stalls specialized in cheap, fast oyster preparations. Rowdy taverns served a limited number of simple dishes to people at common tables. That was about it. Americans ate at home, and rich New Yorkers ate and entertained at home. But within a few years, the ambitious Delmonico brothers, from Switzerland, had expanded their pastry shop into a serious French restaurant that modeled itself on fine dining. It was, as Mr. Freedman tells it, America’s first true restaurant, in that groups could make reservations and order from a deep menu. The kitchen imported black truffles from the Dordogne region of southwest France to bake in pastry, and served crabs from the Eastern Seaboard, bluefish and turtle. The fare was a prototype: the kind of expensive, endlessly reproduced French cuisine that would rule in American cities for well over 100 years. “I asked the chef if he would recreate an old turtle dish,” said Mr. Freedman, who started the research for his book three years ago, “but he never did get back to me on that. ” Mr. Freedman, who is 67, was raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. His father was a psychiatrist and the president of the American Psychiatric Association in the early 1970s (when it declared that homosexuality was not, in fact, an illness). His mother was a labor economist. The family went out to eat French food occasionally, and to Tien Tsin, a Chinese restaurant in Harlem, almost every Saturday. As a treat, Mr. Freedman’s grandmother took him to Schrafft’s, where he ate club sandwiches, chicken potpie and butterscotch sundaes. Schrafft’s, a Northeastern chain, started as a candy store, but in the 1910s transformed itself into a lunch counter and restaurant for women and the expanding middle class. In its early days, before it was considered a stodgy place for little old ladies, it was radical: a safe, affordable space for women to socialize on their own, in an era when women without male escorts were not welcome in restaurants. Schrafft’s also hired many women, not only as waitresses, but also as cooks and managers, and offered maternity leave. Half a dozen of the restaurants in Mr. Freedman’s book could be found in New York, though most are no longer around. The Four Seasons, which established the notion of sophisticated American cuisine in 1959, when French traditions still dominated, also brought in the era of seasonal fine dining. It’s hard to imagine today, but luxury dining up until then had been built on the notion of consistency throughout the year, and on shipping ingredients, regardless of their quality. A menu that did not change was considered a luxurious menu. Mr. Freedman made it to the Four Seasons before it left its space in the landmark Seagram Building in July, after an impasse with the landlord. (It plans to reopen a few blocks away.) But he missed the chance to experience other restaurants on his list, like Le Pavillon, the Midtown restaurant where Henri Soulé influenced an entire generation of French chefs. Mr. Freedman snubbed one of his choices on principle. “Everyone who lived in New York knew that Mamma Leone’s was a tourist trap,” he said. It was also, as he explains in the chapter devoted to it, much more than that. A giant moneymaking machine, Mamma Leone’s helped bring Italian cuisine and culture into the American mainstream, he writes. Founded by Luisa Leone in 1906, it provided a model for the success of an restaurant on its own terms, expanding its clientele well beyond diners. Mr. Freedman rounds out his Top 10 with two restaurants that endure: Antoine’s, which opened in 1840 in New Orleans, “the American city with the strongest roots and the longest run of culinary traditions,” and Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif. where in 1971 the chef Alice Waters championed the brand of new American cooking — local and seasonal — that reigns in restaurants today. Though Mr. Freedman is a medievalist and does not consider himself a food writer, food culture was also the engine of his 2008 book, “Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination,” in which he debunked the myth that European cooks in the Middle Ages used spices to preserve meat. He lives in Pelham, N. Y. with his wife, Bonnie J. Roe, a lawyer, but often travels to Queens to eat noodles and dumplings at the excellent Taiwanese, Indonesian and Sichuan restaurants in Flushing and Elmhurst. In New Haven, Mr. Freedman’s pizza loyalty lies with Zuppardi’s Apizza and its clam pies, for which the clams are shucked to order. “It takes a little longer, but it’s worth it,” he said. Of the young, ambitious restaurants on the scene now, Mr. Freedman thinks a few may just be in the same league as his 10: Benu, in San Francisco, with its distinctly modern American aesthetic, comes up. So does Husk, in Charleston, S. C. and its ethos that goes far beyond into reviving historical ingredients. The burger chain Shake Shack, Mr. Freedman notes, could be another contender, with its capacity for and reproduction. For dessert at Delmonico’s, Mr. Freedman ordered a baked alaska. It wasn’t just dessert, but a carefully preserved artifact from one of Charles Ranhofer’s old menus: banana ice cream sandwiched in walnut cake, sticky with apricot jam, swaddled in a thick layer of spiky torched meringue. One of the more remarkable things about Mr. Freedman’s book is the way it shows how culinary history repeats itself. By 1867, when Mr. Ranhofer served this dessert, Delmonico’s was buying produce at local markets. “But for many years before that,” Mr. Freedman pointed out, “the restaurant relied on its own farm in Williamsburg. ” Yes, even America’s first restaurant cycled through the Brooklyn thing. Here are the 10 restaurants that made Mr. Freedman’s list. What would you add to it and why? Tell us in the comments. | 1 |
Jordan Claims US Vehicle 'Failed to Stop' at Gate by Jason Ditz, November 04, 2016 Share This
Three US soldiers assigned to a training operation in Jordan were killed today by Jordanian troops at the al-Jafr Air Base, when base security opened fire on them near the gate. One Jordanian soldier was also reported wounded in the incident.
Unlike other recent incidents of US soldiers killed by allies, this incident was not chalked up to infiltration by rogue elements. Rather, Jordanian officials blamed the US soldiers, claiming their vehicle failed to stop at the gate to the air base and security reacted.
The Pentagon was a little less cut and dry on the matter, saying they can’t say for sure if it was a “deliberate” attempt to kill US soldiers or some sort of misunderstanding. They say they are working with the Jordanian government to gather more details.
US trainers in Jordan are there to train Syrian rebels, an operation which has been ongoing for years. Last year in November, two US contractors were killed in another incident in which a police officer opened fire on them. Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz | 0 |
A lawyer wearing a military uniform with a Nazi emblem and armed with two guns and nearly 2, 600 rounds of ammunition opened fire on random in Houston early Monday, injuring nine before he was killed by the police, the authorities said. Six of the victims were taken to hospitals, one in critical condition and another in serious condition, the police said. Three others were treated at the scene. At a news conference on Monday afternoon, Capt. Dwayne W. Ready of the Houston Police Department described a tense episode that began about 6:30 a. m. local time. The first reports of gunfire began to trickle in when children were being driven to school, workers were setting off for their jobs and it was still dark on Law Street, where the shooting took place. The street is part of West University Place, an upscale area in southwest Houston. Police officers from several departments converged on the neighborhood, engaging the gunman while trying to protect people in the neighborhood and keep others away. The suspect exchanged gunfire with officers from about 25 yards, Captain Ready said, and was forced to take cover behind a tree close to his parked car. One officer went to the aid of a person who had been shot in a vehicle while other officers provided cover. “One of the more complex issues was tending to both the injured citizens who were still in the line of fire while engaging the suspect,” Captain Ready said. The police would not identify the suspect at the afternoon news conference or speculate on his motive. But earlier in the day, the department’s interim chief, Martha Montalvo, “He is a lawyer, and there were issues concerning his law firm. ” The authorities believe the suspect acted alone, and at the news conference, Mark Webster, an assistant special agent in charge of F. B. I. special operations, said they were not aware of any connection to a terrorist organization. He said the investigation was still preliminary. Captain Ready said that the gunman was wearing apparel, and that there were “some old Nazi emblems about his personal effects” and where he lived, along with “vintage military stuff” dating to the Civil War. He would not speculate on whether it was Nazi apparel, but Chief Montalvo said later that “an old Nazi emblem” was on his uniform. The gunman also carried an “edged weapon,” something like a knife, which was in a sheath, Captain Ready said. The suspect had a . Tommy gun and a . semiautomatic handgun. Both were purchased legally, a spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said. The local TV station ABC 13 showed images of a Porsche Boxster parked on the street and being searched. Jennifer Molleda, whose husband’s car was struck while he was driving, told ABC 13, “The shooter was literally pointing the gun at windshields. ” She said her husband had spoken to her by telephone after he pulled into the parking lot of a Petco store at a strip mall nearby. “He was screaming: ‘I am shot. I am shot,’ ” she said. The mayor of Houston, Sylvester Turner, who was in Cuba on a trade trip, told ABC 13 by telephone that the investigation was looking into whether a relationship at the lawyer’s workplace had gone “awry. ” Witnesses told local television stations that they had heard several gunshots. “Steady shooting back and forth — it was a lot,” said Antoine Wilson, who told ABC 13 that he was driving in the area and heard multiple gunshots. An unidentified woman told the TV station that she had been driving to work when she heard the gunfire. Her car was struck from the front and side, she said, but she kept driving, pulling around a corner until she came to a stop. “I could still hear shots being fired on the streets,” she said, her arm bloody from broken glass. Lee Williams, who said he lives near the site of the gunfire, told ABC 13 that he was outside and tried to direct traffic away. “Once the police got here, they made me go back to my house,” he said. “I heard a lot of back and forth,” he said, adding that he had counted about 50 shots. Mr. Williams retreated to his front porch but was close enough to hear the police radios say, “He is down. ” | 1 |
Home » Headlines » World News » Wikileaks Releases Clinton Foundation BOMBSHELL: “If This Story Gets Out, We Are Screwed” “If This Story Gets Out, We Are Screwed” John, I would appreciate your feedback and any suggestions I’m also starting to worry that if this story gets out, we are screwed… We’ve been waiting for a SMOKING GUN Wikileaks release. Today, it appears we got just that, courtesy an email from Doug Band to Cheryl Mills and John Podesta dated November 12, 2011.
Band sent Podesta an email concerned that Bill and Hillary’s daughter Chelsea was threatening business as usual at the Clinton Foundation, and apparently was concerned the Clinton daughter would discover the true extent of the criminal fraud and corruption, telling Podesta, “ if this story gets out, we are screwed.” Was Comey’s FBI letter to Congress on Friday merely a ploy to distract media attention from a SMOKING GUN Wikileaks release?
Decide for yourself…
Full Wikileaks email :
Need get this asap to them although I’m sure cvc [Chelsea Clinton] won’t believe it to be true bc she doesn’t want to Even though the facts speak for themselves.
John, I would appreciate your feedback and any suggestions I’m also starting to worry that if this story gets out, we are screwed . Dk [Declan Kelly] and I built a business. 65 people work for us who have wives and husbands and kids, they all depend on us.
Our business has almost nothing to do with the clintons, the foundation or cgi in any way . The chairman of ubs could care a less about cgi. Our fund clients who we do restructuring and m and a advising the same just as bhp nor tivo do. These are real companies who we provide real advice to through very serious people. Comm head for goldman, dep press secretary to bloomberg, former head of banking, and his team, from morgan stanley for asia and latin am.
I realize it is difficult to confront and reason with her but this could go to far and then we all will have a real serious set of other problems . I don’t deserve this from her and deserve a tad more respect or at least a direct dialogue for me to explain these things. She is acting like a spoiled brat kid who has nothing else to do but create issues to justify what she’s doing because she, as she has said, hasn’t found her way and has a lack of focus in her life. I realize she will be off of this soon but if it doesn’t come soon enough… | 0 |
Washington Free Beacon October 27, 2016
CNN commentator Angela Rye on Wednesday blamed the failure of Republicans to repeal and replace Obamacare for the newly announced double-digit premium increases in the president’s signature health care law.
“It’s not just Hillary Clinton that needs to tackle this but also Congress,” Rye said on CNN’s New Day. “The reason we are in the position that we are in right now frankly, Alisyn, is because Republicans fell short of their promise to repeal, which is what they said they wanted to do, and replace.”
Host Alisyn Camerota stopped Rye before she got any further and reminded her that President Obama had promised premiums would go down.
Most states will see health care premiums under the Affordable Care Act increase by an average of 25 percent, according to data released this week by the Obama administration. Indiana will see its rates slightly go down, but other states like Arizona will see costs skyrocket by 116 percent. Members of the administration have been quick to soften the blow of the increase by reminding people that a majority of those on the Obamacare exchanges would be receiving tax credits to help pay for the now more expensive health insurance plans. 8:17 | 0 |
Email
A couple of weeks ago, it looked like Hillary Clinton was all set to cruise to victory , but now the FBI has delivered an election miracle in the nick of time. A few of my readers had criticized me for suggesting that Trump might lose, but I don’t know who is going to win the election, and so all I had to go on was the cold, hard numbers. And a couple of weeks ago the cold, hard numbers were telling me was going to win. Of course it is entirely possible that the national polls might have been seriously wrong, but even the state polls in the most important battleground states consistently had bad news for Trump. So things didn’t look good for Trump at the time, but now their emails the poll numbers have shifted dramatically in Trump’s favor .
As I write this article, the national polls have really tightened up. In fact, the latest ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll puts Trump 1 point ahead of Clinton. Trump has all of the momentum at the moment, but that does not mean that he is going to win. As we have seen already in this race, one day can literally change everything.
And as I noted yesterday , more than 23 million Americans have already voted, and most of that voting was done during a period of time when Hillary Clinton was doing very well in the polls.
So we shall see what happens. But if Trump does win on November 8th, there is a fact about his birthday which will start to get a lot of attention.
Donald Trump was born on June 14th, 1946. If you move ahead 70 years from that date, that brings you to June 14th, 2016. Moving forward another 7 months brings you to January 14th, 2017, and moving forward another 7 days brings you to January 21st, 2017.
And if Donald Trump wins the election, January 21st will be his first full day in office.
Of course Trump would be inaugurated on January 20th, but he would only be president for part of that day.
So that means that Donald Trump would be 70 years, 7 months and 7 days old on his first full day as president of the United States.
And this would happen during year 5777 on the Hebrew calendar.
These amazing “coincidences” were first pointed out on Facebook by a user named Alyson Kelly. Some may take these numbers as a sign that Donald Trump is supposed to become the next president, but I want to make it exceedingly clear that I do not know what is going to happen, nor am I making any sort of prediction about what is going to happen.
I just thought that this information was “interesting” and so I thought that I would share it.
Someone that does believe that Trump is going to win is Glenn Beck. He was been virulently anti-Trump throughout this campaign, but now he is convinced that Clinton will be unable to overcome this new email scandal, and he is calling this renewed investigation by the FBI “the greatest gift given to any candidate of all time in the history of America.”
Beck also says that if Clinton wins now it will be evidence that “magic exists”, and he is currently projecting that Trump should win the national vote by 5 points …
“Let’s just say he was 8 points, that was fair to say, 8 points behind last week,” Beck said, according to a transcript posted on his website . “He should win by 5 points.”
Beck later added: “How can the next president face a possible collapsing economy, possible war with Russia, and a current war with ISIS? Oh, and also, be under FBI investigation and indictment? Can’t. Can’t.”
The conservative personality called the latest FBI revelation “the greatest gift given to any candidate of all time in the history of America” and added that if Clinton still managed to win, it would be akin to proof “magic exists.”
Hopefully Glenn Beck is right, because none of us should want to see Hillary Clinton in the White House.
She is the most evil, corrupt and scandal-ridden politician of this generation, and I can’t understand how any American in their right mind could possibly vote for her.
And the hits just keep on coming. Wikileaks has just released an email in which John Podesta told Clinton “fixer” Cheryl Mills that they were “going to have to dump all those emails so better to do so sooner than later” …
It was not entirely clear what Podesta meant by that phrase, but it could potentially be smoking gun .
Back in 2008, Barack Obama was new, intriguing and mysterious. We didn’t know a lot about him, and so one can almost understand how the American people could have been fooled by him.
But in 2016, Americans know more about Hillary Clinton than they have ever known about any candidate in modern American history.
The Clintons have a history of crimes and scandals that goes all the way back to the 1980s, but about half the country is choosing to ignore all of that history and vote for her anyway.
I believe that this election is America’s final exam. Originally there were 17 Republicans and 5 Democrats running for the presidency. When you throw in the major third party candidates, that brings us to a total of approximately 25 people that the American public could have chosen from.
If the American people willingly choose the most wicked candidate out of all of them after everything that has been revealed, I don’t think that anyone will be able to say that we don’t deserve the bitter consequences that follow that decision.
The time for talking is almost over, and shortly we shall find out which path the American people have chosen.
If that choice turns out to be Hillary Clinton after everything that we have seen during this election cycle, I truly believe that we will have reached the point of no return as a nation.
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yOU HAVE TO DRAW THE LINE SOMEWHERE AND CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE HAS TO BE IT , GO HARD FBI NYPAD INSIDERS ITS YOUR TIME !!!! Get Those rotten scum . | 0 |
Bank of America has warned that America’s next social justice movement will be “Occupy Silicon Valley,” which will demand a redistribution of wealth from liberal tech moguls to workers. [With large cap tech stocks that are mostly headquartered in Silicon Valley accounting for about 40 percent of all market gains from the Trump stock boom, Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Chief Investment Strategist Michael Hartnett suggests that the irrational bonanza “could ultimately lead to populist calls for redistribution of the increasingly concentrated wealth of Silicon Valley,” as first reported by the Value Walk blog. B of A sees parallels to the “Occupy Wall Street” protests in 2011 that targeted the “one percent,” including big banks that were bailed and given cheap federal loans during the financial crisis of . Occupy protestors claimed the government loans were a wealth transfer for the rich, at the expense of workers. The bipartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks the influence of Silicon Valley money on American elections and government bureaucrats, commented, “Just as water flows downhill, money in politics flows to where the power is. ” Their research found that with the rise of Democrat Barack Obama since 2008, Silicon Valley’s annual lobbying expenditures skyrocketed by 800 percent, from $17. 8 million to $139. 5 million. Premier venture capitalist and Trump supporter Peter Thiel famously stated that Silicon Valley’s symbiotic business relationship with Washington D. C. earned it the nickname “Valley of the Democrats” in the 2012 presidential election, when 83 percent of Silicon Valley top tech firm employee donations went to Obama. CrowdPac found the trend continued in 2016 presidential contest, with 95 percent of the $8. 1 million contributed by Silicon Valley tech employees going to Democrat Hillary Clinton. Silicon Valley captured a growing percentage of the $1. 24 trillion federal procurement budget during the Obama Administration, including half the $86. 4 billion information technology budget, and billions in secret “black” budgets. The Democrat president’s policies also allowed the offshoring of U. S. tech jobs, and let tech companies use foreign tax havens to shelter $89 billion a year from the IRS. Thiat explains why Silicon Valley firms dominate the $2. 1 trillion in profits that American businesses now have parked offshore. Michael Hartnett suggests that liberals are beginning to understand that Silicon Valley’s globalist digital technology firms’ business model has been spectacular for a handful of CEOs and venture capitalists, but left the vast majority of Americans economically behind. Harnett calls attention to the fact that Apple, Alphabet (Google) Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook now have a market capitalization of $16. 1 trillion. That is about $1. 2 trillion greater than the entire GDP of New York City, and twice the GDP of Los Angeles. And one fact illustrates the potential that tech companies have to dominate the United States government: each one of America’s five largest tech companies now has a market capitalization that exceeds the GDP of Washington, D. C. B of A believes that the divergence between the spectacular technology stock market gains on the one hand, versus the continued weak global economy on the other hand, will ultimately be unsustainable. Harnett’s strategy to prepare for potential economic turmoil is to sell highly appreciated technology stocks, and then buy bank stocks, European stocks, resource commodities and gold. | 1 |
74 Views November 21, 2016 GOLD , KWN , KWN II King World News
With the Thanksgiving Day holiday on Thursday of this week, are you prepared for the unwinding of the biggest bubble in history?
Here is a portion of what Peter Boockvar wrote today as the world awaits the next round of monetary madness: I want to start the week by saying I believe ‘secular stagnation’ is bulls**t. As a believer in free trade and comparative advantage and thus with hopes that no trade battles take place in the next 4 years, I want to reiterate my optimism over the potential liberation of the US economy via lower and more competitive tax rates and an easing of the regulatory strait jacket all around the economy. This said, before we get to that economically better place (which we no doubt will I believe) I can’t help but be on alert about what the implications are of an unwinding of the biggest bubble ever created, that of credit via the helping hands of our central bankers… IMPORTANT: To find out which high-grade silver mining company billionaire Eric Sprott just purchased a nearly 20% stake in and learn why he believes this is one of the most exciting silver stories in the world – CLICK HERE OR BELOW: Sponsored
As a reminder, back in October the IMF quantified the extent of this credit bubble by saying that global debt reached $152 Trillion in 2015 or 225% of world GDP (see attached chart), a record high. They said “about two thirds of this debt consists of liabilities of the private sector.” Thus, simply stated, this is the context that a rise in global interest rates comes in. The caveat on this debt build up though is stated by the IMF, “there is no consensus about how much is too much.” Staggering Global Debt Hits Record High Sources: Abbas and others 2010; Bank for International Settlements; Dealogic; IMF, International Financial Statistics; IMF, Standardized Reporting Forms; IMF, World Economic Outlook; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development; and IMF staff estimates. Note: U.S. = United States.
According to SIFMA (Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association), US bond market debt of which will be impacted by the rise in rates totaled $40.7T at the end of Q2 (a similar ratio to GDP as the world ratio). This debt consists of Treasury, municipal, mortgage related, corporate debt, federal agency securities, money markets, and asset backed.
Higher Interest Rates To Impact Key Markets Direct to consumer, higher rates will of course influence auto’s and housing (negatively on the cost of funding a home purchase but positively for first time buyers where hopefully higher rates slows down the persistent 5%+ rate of home price gains).
Corporate earnings will be helped by faster revenue growth in coming years from lower tax rates and reduced regulations but the lever of lowered interest expense, likely a slowdown in debt driven stock buybacks, multiple compression and the negative impact of a higher cost of capital for both businesses and individuals will be an offset.
Bottom Line Bottom line, central banks have been suppressing the beach ball under water for nearly 10 years and that ball finally saw some air. In particular, a gradual rise in rates is the choice of the Fed stated a multitude of times but gradual is of course not what we’ve seen from the market. In a world of epic debt levels, it would be naïve not to worry about the end of the 35 year bull market in bonds irrespective of the economic positives that a Trump presidency will bring.
Look At This Shocking Preview Of How Devastating The Worldwide Financial Destruction Will Be | 0 |
Dr. Joy Browne, the syndicated radio and television psychologist who dispensed advice and earnest inspiration over the air for nearly four decades, died on Saturday in Manhattan. She was 71 and still hosting her daily radio program. Her death was confirmed by her brother David Oppenheim, who did not give a cause. Beginning in 1978 — when she was suddenly thrust onto the air because a hockey game had been canceled — Dr. Browne reached millions of radio listeners, many of whom revealed their concerns to her in cathartic segments or emailed her their problems, which she read and responded to over the air. “She was the psychologist on radio at the time of her death,” Michael Harrison, the publisher of Talkers magazine, said in an email on Wednesday. “More importantly,” he added, “she kept the presence of the radio show alive on terrestrial radio at a time when the genre had all but dried up in favor of mostly conservative, political programming. ” On television, versions of her program appeared on CBS, with a studio audience, and on the Discovery Health cable channel. In contrast to other psychologists, some of whom could come across as scolds, Dr. Browne was unflaggingly buoyant as she delivered advice and gentle goading. “I’m in the business of helping make lives better,” she once said, “not by bashing but by teaching people how to take responsibility for their behavior. ” On a recent program she asked: “If we can figure out a way to get to the moon, wipe out disease, double life expectancy, don’t you think we can be a little nicer to each other? Maybe. I know, I believe in the Easter bunny and the Tooth Fairy as well. ” With her advice came rules to live by, like these for couples: ¶If you’re married, go on dates together (to keep the romance alive). ¶If you’ve gone through a divorce or a breakup, no dating for a year (to let you experience life on your own). ¶If you’re both in love and either of you has children, get married (an unmarried state can be disruptive for younger children, who tend to become attached, and for teenagers, who are dealing with their own sexuality). The psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers, who became a fixture in American homes, made her television debut in the 1950s, but the roots of radio therapy are usually traced to Toni Grant, who started broadcasting on in Los Angeles in 1975. (Dr. Grant died this year.) Dr. Browne was among those who followed in her footsteps, in her case on (now WMEX) in Boston. “When I first started, the A. P. A. tried to take my license away,” Dr. Browne told The New York Times in 1996, referring to the American Psychological Association. In 1998, the group gave her an award under the rubric “outstanding contribution by a psychologist in the media. ” Dr. Browne found her niche in the 1970s, at a time when seeking professional help was still stigmatized and family and community support networks had weakened. Radio gave people wrestling with emotional issues the safety of anonymity. She said she was as much concerned with moral and ethical issues as she was with mental health. “It’s Problem Solving 101,” she said in 1996 (while acknowledging that some listeners might consider it “Voyeurism 102”). Indeed, Dr. Frank Farley, a former president of the psychological association and a professor at Temple University, said in a phone interview on Wednesday that programs like Dr. Browne’s were more successful at offering practical advice on ethical issues than at providing actual therapy in public. “You can’t give therapy to people you haven’t seen,” he said. He added: “Joy Browne was certainly among the best of the media psychologists. She was very solid, in psychology, and wasn’t going to be shooting from the lip. ” She was born Joy Oppenheim on Oct. 24, 1944, in New Orleans, the daughter of Nelson Oppenheim, a life insurance salesman, and the former Ruth Strauss, a teacher. She was raised in Pennsylvania and Denver and graduated from Rice University in Houston with a degree in behavioral science. After earning a master’s degree and a doctorate from Northeastern University in Boston, she began practicing psychology and attending Tufts University School of Medicine. That was when she was recruited by WITS. “I found something in my life I was good at and could help more people in one hour than I could in one year,” Dr. Browne told Talkers magazine last year. (She took her husband’s name when she married Carter Browne.) WITS had scheduled her to begin broadcasting in October 1978, but weeks earlier she was summoned one night without warning to fill in when a scheduled broadcast of a Bruins hockey game was abruptly canceled the ice had melted at Boston Garden. Her mission, she said, was to persuade depressed listeners that they could change only their not those of the people who might be causing them stress. “They want to know how to kill the person who is making them feel that way and not be held responsible,” she told Talkers. “The only behavior I can help change is yours, but that isn’t what a caller wants to hear. They want me to tell them that the other person is to blame. ” She also learned, she said, that “one secret to doing a great interview is listening,” a skill she had already developed as a therapist. Certain topics were taboo, she said, including abortion, “because you will never change anyone’s mind,” and horoscopes, “because it will get phone calls — but no listeners. ” Partisan politics was also off limits. After another radio stint in California, Dr. Browne joined the WOR Radio Network in New York, which in the early 1990s sent her program into national syndication. She remained at WOR until it was sold in 2012. She then shifted to Radio America and finally to Genesis Communications Network, where her midday program was still being broadcast on more than 100 stations at her death. Dr. Browne was also an author. Among her titles are “The Nine Fantasies That Will Ruin Your Life” (1998) “It’s a Jungle Out There, Jane” (1999) “Getting Unstuck” (2002) “Dating Disasters” (2005) and “Dating for Dummies” (2006) which includes this tip: “If you have fingernail marks on the palms of your hands, you’re a little too tense. ” Her marriage to Mr. Browne ended in divorce. In addition to her brother David, she is survived by a daughter, Patience three sisters, Jane Russo, Judy Hawkins and Alannah Sinclaire and another brother, Daniel Oppenheim. Embracing the philosophy, Dr. Browne imposed one rule on herself: No chocolate during Lent. “That keeps me humble,” she said. “I’m always telling people to do things to change. This is my yearly reminder to myself that change is really hard. ” | 1 |
The president of the American Conservative Union, the sponsor of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, told Breitbart News Sunday host Matt Boyle that this year’s CPAC is about action after years of protest over taxes, regulations, and Obamacare. [“Now the question is: Are we really going to get it done?” said Matt Schlapp, who leads the ACU, one of the leading conservative group’s in the country and the keeper of the ACU Ratings scorecard. Schlapp told Boyle that after the political victories of 2016, conservatives gather at CPAC, which opens Wednesday and runs through Saturday morning, to make sure the politicians fulfill the promises made to conservative activists. “How do we repeal and replace Obamacare? What is the right tax package to get passed into law?” he asked. “What can we do to stop these regulations? What can we do to keep Americans safe from Islamic terrorists? It is going to be a of the actual ways that policies getting impacted. ” This is not the time for theories, he said. “It’s real. It’s: What do we have to do now?” Schlapp said. “As happens every time at CPAC, there’s going to be times when the movement and grassroots activists have to push those in government — even those we respect. ” The Conservative Political Action Conference began in 1973 as a partnership between the ACU and Young Americans for Freedom. It was part of the same movement by conservatives that supported Rep. John Ashbrook to oppose President Richard Nixon in the 1972 Republican primaries and led to the founding of the Heritage Foundation and the Republican Study Committee. Unlike any other annual political gathering, CPAC has always been full of college and high school students mixing with the activists and the dynamic is about the politicians coming to see the conservatives and make their case — not the other way around. In addition to Republican office holders, administration officials and conservative thought leaders, Breitbart Technology Editor Milo Yiannopoulos is scheduled to deliver CPAC’s keynote address. Schlapp said with Republicans in control of Congress and the White House, the expectations are very high. Another highlight of the 2017 CPAC is the joint conversation with White House Chief of Staff Reince Preibus and White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon facilitated by Schlapp. He said: “I think there are a lot of questions that people in the audience probably want me to ask — like: Hey, how’s it all working up there?” Boyle told Schlapp that he remembered when President Donald Trump spoke at the 2013 CPAC. “He really lit the room on fire. ” Is Trump coming to CPAC this year? he asked Schlapp. “Well, I’m hopeful he’ll be there,” Schlapp said. Trump’s 2016 appearance was canceled at the last minute in favor of a campaign stop. “He has been to CPAC, I think, for five years or so,” he said. “You never know what he is going to do, which is why he is a political genius in a lot of ways. I’m hoping he doesn’t just read a script. I hope, if he comes, he speaks from the heart and thanks these activists. “Trump knows these are the activists who helped put him in the White House. ” In the to Wednesday’s CPAC opening Schlapp and his wife Mercedes have their show on SiriusXM’s Patriot Channel 125 “The Road to CPAC 2017,” where they talk about the conference and what people can expect. Here the whole conversation with ACU President Matt Schlapp and Breitbart News Daily host Matt Boyle: | 1 |
US Public Opinion Speaks to Anti-Militarism, the Electorate Votes for Warmongers By James Petras November 14, Castigating the US electorate as accomplices and facilitators of wars, or, at best, dismissing the voters as ignorant sheep-people (sheeple) herded by political elites, describes a partial reality. Public opinion polls, even the polls overwhelmingly slanted toward the center-right, consistently describe a citizenry opposed to militarism and wars, past and present.
Both the Right and Left have failed to grasp the contradiction that defines US political life: Namely, the profound gap between the American public and the Washington elite on questions of war and peace within an electoral process that consistently leads to more militarism.
This is an analysis of the most recent US public opinion polls with regard to outcome of the recent elections. The essay concludes with a discussion of the deep-seated contradictions and proposes several ways in which these contradictions can be resolved.
Method
A major survey of public opinion, sponsored by the Charles Koch Institute and the Center for the National Interest, conducted by the Survey Sampling International, interviewed a sample of one thousand respondents.
The Results: War or Peace
More than half of the American public oppose any increase is the US military role overseas while only 25% back military expansion.
The public has expressed its disillusionment over Obamas foreign policy, especially his new military commitments in the Middle East, which have been heavily promoted by the state of Israel and its US domestic Zionist lobby.
The US public shows a deep historical memory with regard to the past military debacles launched by Presidents Bush and Obama. Over half of the public (51%) believe that the US has become less safe over the past 15 years (2001-2015), while one eighth (13%) feel they are more secure.
In the present period, over half of the public opposes the deployment of ground troops to Syria and Yemen and only 10% favor continued US support for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
With regard to specific US wars, over half believe that Bushs invasion of Iraq made the US homeland less secure, while only 25% believe it didnt increase or decrease domestic security. Similar responses were expressed with regard to Afghanistan: 42% believe the Afghan War increased insecurity and about a third (34%) felt it did not affect US security.
In terms of future perspectives, three quarters (75%) of the American public want the next President to focus less on the US military operations abroad or are uncertain about its role. Only 37% are in favor of increased spending for the military.
The mass media and the powerful financial backers of the Democratic Presidential candidate have focused on demonizing Russia and China as the greatest threats in our time. In contrast, almost two thirds (63.4%) of Americans believe the greatest threat comes from terrorism both foreign and domestic. Only 18% view Russia and China as major threats to their security.
In regard to the Pentagon, 56% want to reduce or freeze current military spending while only 37% want to increase it.
Wars and Peace: The Political Elites
Contrary to the views of a majority of the public, the last four US Presidents, since the 1990s, have increased the military budget, sending hundreds of thousands of US troops to launch wars in three Middle Eastern countries, while promoting bloody civil wars in three North African and two European countries. Despite public opinion majorities, who believe that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have increased threats to the US security, Obama kept ground troops, air and sea forces and drone operations in those countries. Despite only 10% public approval for his military policies, the Obama regime has sent arms, advisors and Special Forces to support the Saudi dictatorships invasion of tiny Yemen.
Obama and the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton pushed a policy of encircling Russia and demonizing its President Putin as the greatest threat to the US in contrast to US opinion, which considers the threat of Islamist terrorism as five times more serious.
While the political elite and the leading Presidential candidates promise to expand the number of US troops abroad and increase military spending, over three quarters of the American public oppose or are uncertain about expanding US militarism.
While candidate Clinton campaigned for the deployment of the US Air Force jets and missiles to police a no fly zone in Syria, even shooting down Syrian and Russian government planes, the majority of US public opposed it by 51%.
In terms of constitutional law, fully four-fifths (80%) of the US public believes the President must secure Congressional approval for additional military action abroad. Nevertheless, Presidents from both parties, Bush and Obama launched wars without Congressional approval, creating a precedent which the next president is likely to exploit.
Analysis and Perspectives
On all major foreign policy issues related to waging war abroad, the political elite is far more bellicose than the US public; they are far more likely to ignite wars that ultimately threaten domestic security; they are more likely to violate the Constitutional provisions on the declaration of war; and they are committed to increasing military spending even at the risk of defunding vital domestic social programs.
The political elites are more likely to intervene in wars in the Middle East, without domestic support and even in spite of majoritarian popular opposition to war. No doubt the executives of the oligarchical military-industrial complex, the pro-Israel power configuration and the mass media moguls are far more influential than the pro-democracy public.
The future portends a continuation of militarism by the political elites, and increase in domestic security threats and even less public representation.
Some Hypothesis on the Contradiction between Popular Opinion and Electoral Outcomes
There is clearly a substantial gap between the majority of Americans and the political elite regarding the role of the military in overseas wars, the undermining of constitutional prerogatives, the demonization of Russia, the deployment of US troops to Syria and deeper US entanglement in Middle East wars for the benefit of Israel.
Yet it is also a fact that the US electorate continue to vote for the two major political parties which have consistently supported wars, formed military alliances with warring Middle East states, especially Saudi Arabia and Israel and aggressively sanctioned Russia as the main threat to US security.
Several hypotheses regarding this contradiction should be considered:
1. Close to 50% of the eligible voters abstain from voting in Presidential and Congressional elections. This most likely includes many among the majority of Americans who oppose the expansion of the US military role overseas. In fact, the war party winner typically claims victory with less than 25% of the electorate and threats this as a mandate to launch more wars.
2. The fact that the mass media vehemently supports one or the other of the two war parties probably influences a minority of the electorate who decide to actually participate in the elections. However, critics have exaggerated the mass medias influence and fail to explain why the majority of the American public disagree with the mass media and oppose the militarist propaganda.
3. Many Americans, while opposed to militarism, vote for the lesser evil between the two war parties. They may believe that there are greater and lesser degrees of war mongering and choose the less strident.
4. Americans, who consistently oppose militarism, may decide to vote for militarist politicians for reasons besides those of overseas wars. For example, majoritarian Americans may support a militarist politician who has secured funding for local infrastructure programs, or protected farm and dairy subsidies, or who promises jobs programs, lowers public debt or opposes corrupt incumbents.
5. Americans, opposed to militarism, may be deceived by the pronouncements of a demagogic presidential candidate from one of the war parties, whose promise of peace will give way to escalating wars.
6. Likewise, the emphasis on identity politics can deceive anti-war voters into supporting a proven militarist because of issues related to race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preferences or loyalties to overseas states.
7. The war parties work together to block mass media access for anti-militarist parties, especially preventing their participation in national electoral debates viewed by tens of millions of voters. War parties collude to set impossible restrictions against anti-militarist party participation in national level elections, banning citizens with non-violent police records or former convicts who have served their sentences from voting. They reject poor citizens who lack photo identification, limit access to transport to voting sites, limit the number of polling places in poor or minority neighborhoods and deny time-off for workers to vote. Unlike other countries, US elections are held on a work day and many workers are unable to vote.
In other words the electoral process is rigged and imposes forced voting and abstention: Collusion between the two war parties limits voter choice to abstention or casting a ballot for the lesser evil among the militarists.
Only if elections were open and democratic, where anti-militarist parties were allowed equal rights to register, participate and debate in the mass media, and where campaign financing were made equal would the contradictions between the wishes of the anti-militarist majorities and votes cast for pro-war elites be resolved.
James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. http://petras.lahaine.org | 0 |
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