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In a previous article , I discussed stretching—namely, why stretching is important for the masculine man, and several stretches that you should use in your training to maximize your physical fitness. And while that advice is still valid, I neglected a very important concept in that first article: the techniques that detail how to stretch.
I am not referring to a specific stretch or some sort of hypothetical “stretching mindset,” but rather a set of techniques that can be utilized for any stretch to increase ones flexibility immediately. But before I can discuss those, I have to discuss the incorrect way of stretching that many people still use.
How Not To Stretch Many people believe that stretching is a literal act of forcing the muscles and connective tissue to stretch— avoid this at all costs ! First and foremost, as I have discussed previously in these pages, you should never apply any stretching pressure to the connective tissue. They evolved solely to “hold fast” and keep things in one piece, they should never be stretched at all!
The muscles are the anatomical feature that stretches, as they evolved to do. When stretching, your body should always be positioned in a way where the connective tissues are stable and the muscles are moving.
Even when you are positioned properly, no part of stretching should involve the athlete forcing his muscles to stretch, as that risks muscular tearing which is a nagging injury that never truly goes away. This is because the human body has naturally evolved what is referred to as the “ anti-stretch reflex ” to prevent muscular tearing-stretching the muscles increases in difficulty the farther and deeper the stretch is, and your body responds to this stress with pain. This is a biological sign telling you that if you go further you’ll be risking muscle tears, and should normally be a heeded warning.
However, if you want to do advanced stretching (such as that nigh-impossible benchmark of fitness the splits), you will have to find a way to overcome this reflex without hurting yourself. And as luck would have it, there is!
Relax Into Stretching Reflexes can be overcome with gradual and repeated practice—just ask your friendly neighborhood hooker about how she overcame her gag reflex! Similarly, your anti-stretch reflex that keeps your “joints” (actually your muscles) stiff and immobile can be overcome with a few techniques.
The most basic of these techniques is the one that I have had the best results with (as usual, the simple but difficult answer is usually the correct one), and that is the titular concept of “relaxing into a stretch”—with thanks to Pavel Tsatsouline for naming the concept.
To use this technique, take an easy form of the stretch you want to do: using the splits as an example, you would do a seated groin stretch. Engage the stretch just to the point where you feel tension in the target muscle, and then…sit and wait.
Yes, paradoxically, relaxation is the key to increasing your physical fitness in this context. You are literally going to sit there and wait for your muscles to stop fighting the stretch—in other words, you’re going to exhaust your reflex until it stops being reflexive.
This is not something that happens quickly—from my experience, it will take 5-10 minutes per stretch, so it is perfectly acceptable for you to get a book or watch TV while doing this. As a side note, this is literally the only time where it’s acceptable to have a visual distraction during exercise, in my opinion.
As you might expect, once your muscles have relaxed and the pain has melted away, you can increase the stretch a little bit more, and hold it for another 10 minutes. Repeat this process until your muscles are in pain and you judge that you can’t go any further—this is a personal call that you will have to decide for yourself, as I can’t judge when your muscles are demanding you to stop.
This technique can be utilized for any stretch, and in many cases will give you the progress that you so desire. However, there are other methods in the “Relax Into Stretch” family of exercises that can be utilized as well, such as meditation—mentally relaxing will lead to muscular relaxation.
Or you can try “forced relaxation”, where you flex the muscle simultaneously while stretching, forcing the muscle to relax.
Either way you slice it, don’t just brute force your stretching, utilize these techniques for better results.
Read More: Why Stretching Is Essential For The Body (With 6 Beginner Stretches To Get You Started)
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OpEdNews Op Eds 10/29/2016 at 09:35:53 Real Video from Today in North Dakota, for those who have strong stomachs and some sense of Justice Permalink (Page 1 of 1 pages) (14 fans) - Advertisement -
This is really sickening footage from North Dakota, but you need to watch it now and share it widely with your friends and groups, please.
Shame, shame....I truly feel shame for my nation of oppressors, and shame turns to anger.
Little or none of this is appearing on any mainstream media, just a video on the UN Rights of Indigenous Peoples which 3+ millions have watched.
What you will see in this video is what is really going on, the true front line. They are heavily armed, using pepper spray in aggressive ways that it is not supposed to be used, using tasers and violence. (image by Unicorn RIot TV) License DMCA - Advertisement -
I hope millions internationally see how North Dakota and the corporations are treating the people whose only crime was that they were here first.
I don't know what the solution really is, other than Obama ordering a complete cessation of the pipeline construction. Bernie Sanders has made clear that he supports the native defenders and wants to put a stop to the Dakota Access Pipeline. He is only one Senator: ask yours to help soon!
This is turning from an outrage to a massive sense of shame for what our nation is becoming. - Advertisement - | 0 |
Black Christian leaders issue Clinton letter of demands November 03, 2016 U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton listens as U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama (not pictured) speaks during a campaign rally in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, U.S. on October 27, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo
Twenty six black Christian leaders have issued Hillary Clinton a powerful letter regarding religious freedom, education, unemployment, abortion and violence decimating their communities. (VERO BEACH, FL) Black leaders slammed Hillary Clinton’s position toward the poor in a letter delivered to her campaign Monday, saying her economic ideas won’t help black communities in crisis and that her social views pose a threat to their religious liberty.
“Today in the United States more than ten million people of African descent face a crisis of catastrophic proportion,” it says. “As leaders of the Pentecostal-Charismatic wing of the black church, we are requesting a meeting with you to discuss some of the critical issues in the black community: education and employment, religious freedom, violence, and justice for the unborn.”
“How do you justify your unconscionable silence in the face of such destruction of innocent black life? Don’t black lives matter?” they ask Clinton about abortion.
They continue :
Secretary Clinton, we are also very concerned about your position regarding unborn children and the black church’s commitment to defend them. In April 2015 in a speech before the National Organization of Women you stated “Far too many women are still denied critical access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth… Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will. And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed…”
For political leaders to call for changes in citizens’ beliefs is reminiscent of totalitarianism. In our view, such a proposal constitutes a denial of our religious freedom.
The vast majority of black churches hold biblical teaching, which is eternal, as authoritative for doctrine and practice. Abortion is the deliberate destruction of a human life in its most vulnerable state. Biblical principle and natural law, both of which prohibit the taking of innocent human life, compel our concern about the increasing moral complicity with abortion.
For the same reasons that we as black Christian leaders oppose racism, unjust wars, capital punishment and euthanasia, we oppose the violent denial of life to the unborn through abortion. It is our view that human life is a gift of God that we are called upon to protect, nurture and sustain, because we are created in God’s image. Therefore, our opposition to abortion is a logical outgrowth of our view that there must be justice for all.
Particularly relevant is the innocence of the unborn child. The Bible places an extremely high value on human life and particularly on the lives of the innocent who are under the special protection of God. Those who take the life of the innocent violate a key biblical principle as well as a fundamental principle of natural justice.
Abortion in the black community has had a catastrophic impact. Nationally there are 365 black babies aborted for every 1,000 that are born. Blacks account for roughly 38% of all abortions in the country though we represent only 13% of the population. In New York City, the situation is absolutely dire.
According to a report prepared by the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, in 2013 there were more abortions among black women in the city, 29,007, than there were black babies born, 24,108. Both nationally and in New York City, the abortion rates among black women are much higher than among any other demographic group. (This claim has been fact-checked by Politifact and deemed to be accurate.) In New York City more black babies are dying in their mother’s womb than are being born.
In 2008, Secretary Clinton, you took the position that abortion should be rare, and you emphasized “by rare I mean rare.” But Black babies are dying at terrifying rates.
How do you justify your unconscionable silence in the face of such destruction of innocent black life? Don’t black lives matter? What policies would you pursue as president to reverse the soaring abortion rates among black women?
On Monday afternoon, Dr. Jacqueline C. Rivers presented the letter to Clinton’s Brooklyn campaign headquarters requesting a meeting.
Signatures to the letter: Presiding Bishop Charles E. Blake, Church of God in Christ, Los Angeles, CA Dr. Jacqueline C. Rivers, Seymour Institute for Black Church & Policy Studies , Boston, MA Bishop Lemuel F. Thuston Vice Chairman, General Assembly, Church of God in Christ Bishop Gideon A. Thompson, Church of God, Boston, MA Bishop Dr. Frank Madison Reid III, African Methodist Episcopal Church, Baltimore, MD Bishop James W. E. Dixon, Baptist Church, Houston, TX Apostle James I. Clark, Jr., Church of our Lord Jesus Christ, Director of Social Justice, Economic & Racial Equality Commission Bishop Tyrone L. Butler, Church of God in Christ, New York, NY Bishop Felton Smith Church of God in Christ Nashville, TN Chairman Linwood Dillard, Church of God in Christ, Memphis, TN Reverend Dr. Jamal H. Bryant, African Methodist Episcopal, Baltimore, MD Reverend Charles R. Harrison, United Methodist Church, Indianapolis, IN Professor Frederick L. Ware Howard, School of Divinity, Washington, DC Reverend Dr. Alonzo Johnson, Church of God in Christ, Columbia, SC Pastor Jamie Perdomo, Iglesia Cristiana Nueva Vida, East Boston, MA Reverend Ronald C. Potter, Jackson, MI Donna Desilus, Azusa Christian Community, Boston, MA Bishop Talbot W. Swan, Church of God in Christ, Springfield, MA Pastor Michael Golden, Church of God in Christ, Hampton, VA Reverend Vernard Coulter, Missionary Baptist Church, Boston, MA Pastor Egobudike Ezedi, Empowerment Christian Center, Boston, MA Malcolm R. Rivers, Seymour Institute, Washington, DC Reverend Dr. Rozario Slack, Church of God in Christ, Chattanooga, TN Reverend Arthur Porter, Church of God in Christ Denver, CO Dr. Jamal D. Hopkins, Pasadena, CA Reverend Mark V. Scott, Azusa Christian Community Boston, MA | 0 |
NTEB Ads Privacy Policy False Teacher Beth Moore Endorses The Late Term Partial-Birth Abortion Candidate Crooked Hillary One of the main planks in Crooked Hillary's platform is her aggressive support in favor of late-term, partial birth abortion up to nearly the very last day of the due date. Beth Moore, well-known false teacher and false New Age prophet, has decided that this is the person we need in the White House. by Geoffrey Grider October 27, 2016 False teacher Beth Moore is breaking away from fellow evangelical leaders/speakers who stand with Donald Trump, and throwing her weight behind a woman who is aggressively in favor of later term abortion
“The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?” Jeremiah 5:31 (KJV)
EDITOR’S NOTE: One of the main planks in Crooked Hillary’s platform is her very aggressive support in favor of late term, partial-birth abortion up to nearly the very last day of the due date. Beth Moore, well-known false teacher and false New Age prophet, has decided that this is the person we need in the White House. Let that sink in for a moment. By supporting HIllary Clinton Beth Moore will be working to increase, fund, guarantee and protect abortion in America. Hillary Clinton OK With Abortion Day Before Birth:
Beth Moore suggested that Trump’s words from 11 years ago highlight how men are “objectifying” women today, and she made clear that she will not support Trump over it. She issued a number of tweets on the topic, not one of which criticized Hillary Clinton for the way she has treated the women who allege Bill Clinton sexually assaulted them — women like Paula Jones and Juanita Broaddrick, the latter of whom recently recounted the way Bill Clinton allegedly raped her. False teachers Beth Moore and Joyce Meyer promoting unbiblical unity:
The Daily Mail reported that “Jones reached an out of court settlement” in a suit wherein she alleged that Bill, while Governor of Arkansas, dropped his pants and asked her “ to kiss it .” Beth Moore False Vision:
What does a false teacher and false prophet sound like? It sounds exactly like this….
Trump stood up for these women , holding a press conference with them on Sunday as a way of breaking through the mainstream media’s refusal to report on Bill’s sexual history and Hillary’s efforts to undermine that history. Heretofore, Hillary’s canned response to Bill’s accusers has been to go after the women. In fact, she has gone after the women with such fervor that the Washington Post recently asked if Hillary was Bill’s “enabler”? Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump spar over partial-birth abortion during third debate:
The Post reported :
… Hillary Clinton dismissed an accusation made by Gennifer Flowers, the singer who sold her story to a supermarket tabloid after having previously denied an affair. In an ABC News interview, she called Flowers “some failed cabaret singer who doesn’t even have much of a résumé to fall back on.” She told Esquire magazine in 1992 that if she had the chance to cross-examine Flowers, “I mean, I would crucify her.”
Trump brought a small number of women from Bill’s past to the October 9 presidential debate, where he pointed out that they should be honored for standing up, rather than humiliated. Politico published the transcript of Trump looking at Bill’s accusers, then saying:
Hillary Clinton attacked those same women, and attacked them viciously, four of them here tonight … So don’t tell me about words. I am, absolutely, I apologize for those words, but it is things that people say, but what President Clinton did, he was impeached, he lost his license to practice law, he had to pay an $850,000 fine to one of the women. Paula Jones who is also here tonight. And I will tell you that when Hillary brings up a point like that and she talks about words that I said 11 years ago, I think it’s disgraceful and I think she should be ashamed of herself, if you want to know the truth.
Yet Christian speaker Beth Beth Moore focused her attention on Trump. In an October 9 tweet, Moore said , “I’m one among many women sexually abused, misused, stared down, heckled, talked naughty to. Like we liked it. We didn’t. We’re tired of it.”
In another tweet on the same day, Moore criticized evangelicals who continue to stand with Trump: “Try to absorb how acceptable the disesteem and objectifying of women has been when some Christian leaders don’t think it’s that big a deal.”
It would be interesting to ask Monica Lewinsky , Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, and Juanita Broaddrick which was most painful, words that Trump spoke 11 years ago — and subsequently apologized for — or Bill Clinton’s actions and alleged actions, combined with Hillary Clinton’s treatment of women who dared to speak up? source
“And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.” Revelation 18:4 (KJV)
Geoffrey Grider NTEB is run by end times author and editor-in-chief Geoffrey Grider. Geoffrey runs a successful web design company, and is a full-time minister of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition to running NOW THE END BEGINS, he has a dynamic street preaching outreach and tract ministry team in Saint Augustine, FL. NTEB #TRENDING | 0 |
This post was originally published on this site
MOSCOW, November 8. /TASS/. Witness in the case of Russian oppositionist Boris Nemtsov’s murder, former worker of a Moscow auto dealership Artyom Trapezin has identified one of the suspects and confirmed selling them a car used by the suspected killers to spy on the politician.
The witness has made this statement at the Moscow District Military Court, which is holding a hearing on the Nemtsov murder case.
According to the witness, suspect Dadayev was going to buy a car with a copy of a passport allegedly for his brother who had had a car accident.
“I earlier saw and talked to Zaur Dadayev. We agreed with him on the price of the car and he drove off for getting money, after which he returned and bought a ZAZ Chance car for 90,000 rubles [$1,400],” Trapezin said.
However, Dadayev rejected this testimony.
“I saw him only in the investigator’s room for the first time. We don’t know each other,” he said.
Nemtsov, former deputy prime minister under then-President Boris Yeltsin, co-chairman of the Parnas party and lawmaker of the Yaroslavl regional legislature, was gunned down in downtown Moscow on February 27, 2015. Five persons were arrested on March 8 last year on suspicion of murdering the politician: Zaur Dadayev, Anzor and Shadid Gubashev, Tamerlan Eskerkhanov and Khamzat Bakhayev.
Depending on their role and the degree of their involvement, they are pressed with charges under part 2, article 105 (“Contract Murder Committed by an Organized Group”) and part 3, article 222 of Russia’s Criminal Code (“Illegal Acquisition, Transfer, Storage, Transportation and Possession of Firearms and Ammunition by an Organized Group”). Article 105 carries a punishment of up to life imprisonment.
The accused persons are denying their complicity in Nemtsov’s murder. The term of their arrest has been extended until December 30.
According to investigators, the men received at least 15 million rubles ($238,000 at the current exchange rate) for the politician’s murder. They started preparing for the killing back in September 2014. The suspected organizer of the murder is Ruslan Mukhudinov, a former officer of the Chechen “Sever” battalion. Mukhudinov has been charged in absentia. He has been on the international wanted list since November 2015. A criminal case against him and other unidentified persons is investigated separately.
In late June, Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office sent the criminal case to the Moscow District Military Court to review its merits. The defendants have insisted that the murder case should be considered by the board of jurors.
The case is heard by the Moscow District Military Court rather than the Moscow City Court as Zaur Dadayev, one of the suspected perpetrators, was a serviceman of the “Sever” battalion in the North Caucasus republic of Chechnya at the moment when the murder was committed.
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The RB singer Chris Brown was arrested by the Los Angeles police on Tuesday and charged with assault with a deadly weapon after an hourslong standoff with the police outside his Los home, a police spokeswoman said. Mr. Brown, 27, was due to be processed, said Officer Rosario Herrera, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department. She said the charge was a felony. Additional details on when and where he was arrested and the make and caliber of the weapon were not immediately available. Officers initially responded to a call, placed around 3 a. m. local time, from a woman seeking help at the residence in the Tarzana neighborhood of the San Fernando Valley. In a later interview with TMZ Live online, the woman, identified as Baylee Curran, an actress and former beauty pageant contestant, said Mr. Brown had pointed a gun at her while demanding that she leave his home. “Do you all honestly think I wanted this, and I caused this?” Ms. Curran said in a video posted to Instagram on Tuesday afternoon. “If somebody put a gun to your head, what would you do?” When officers arrived around 10 a. m. to talk to Mr. Brown, he declined to be questioned, the police said, opting instead to post video clips on his Instagram account. “When you get the warrant or whatever you need to do, you’re going to walk right up in here and you’re going to see nothing, you idiots,” Mr. Brown said while waving a lighted cigarette. “Every three months, y’all come up with something,” the singer continued, alluding to his repeated with the law and invoking the Black Lives Matter movement. “What’s going to be next?” He added, “I’m innocent. ” Mark Geragos, a lawyer for Mr. Brown, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. While Mr. Brown appealed to social media, the Police Department’s division set up outside the singer’s home as the authorities sought a search warrant. (A police spokesman said the unit often responded to calls involving celebrities.) Just before 1 p. m. local time, multiple individuals left the home and were searched by the police, who then entered the residence. Mr. Brown has had a bumpy career since he pleaded guilty in 2009 to assaulting his girlfriend at the time, the singer Rihanna. He was sentenced to five years’ probation but later served 108 days in jail after he was ejected from a rehabilitation center where he was being treated for issues, violating the terms of his probation. In 2014, he pleaded guilty to hitting a man outside a Washington hotel and was sentenced to time served. Mr. Brown’s most recent album, “Royalty,” was released in December and is currently No. 171 on the Billboard album chart. | 1 |
Every day when Lt. Cmdr. Shay Rosecrans crossed into the military detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, she tucked her medical school class ring into her bra, covered the name on her uniform with tape and hid her necklace under her especially if she was wearing a cross. She tried to block out thoughts of her daughter. Dr. Rosecrans, a Navy psychiatrist, had been warned not to speak about her family or display anything personal, clues that might allow a terrorism suspect to identify her. Patients called her “torture bitch,” spat at her and shouted death threats, she said. One hurled a cup of urine, feces and other fluids at a psychologist working with her. Even interviewing prisoners to assess their mental health set off recriminations and claims that she was torturing them. “What would your Jesus think?” they demanded. Dr. Rosecrans, now retired from the Navy, led one of the mental health teams assigned to care for detainees at the island prison over the past 15 years. Some prisoners had arrived disturbed — traumatized adolescents hauled in from the battlefield, unstable adults who disrupted the cellblocks. Others, facing indefinite confinement, struggled with despair. Then there were prisoners who had developed symptoms including hallucinations, nightmares, anxiety or depression after undergoing brutal interrogations at the hands of Americans who were advised by other health personnel. At Guantánamo, a willful blindness to the consequences emerged. Those equipped to diagnose, document and treat the effects — psychiatrists, psychologists and mental health teams — were often unaware of what had happened. Sometimes by instruction and sometimes by choice, they typically did not ask what the prisoners had experienced in interrogations, current and former military doctors said. That compromised care, according to outside physicians working with legal defense teams, previously undisclosed medical records and court filings. Dozens of men who underwent agonizing treatment in secret C. I. A. prisons or at Guantánamo were left with psychological problems that persisted for years, despite government lawyers’ assurances that the practices did not constitute torture and would cause no lasting harm, The New York Times has reported. Some men should never have been held, government investigators concluded. Donald J. Trump declared during his campaign that he would bring back banned interrogation tactics, including waterboarding, and authorize others that were “much worse. ” In recent interviews, more than two dozen military medical personnel who served or consulted at Guantánamo provided the most detailed account to date of mental health care there. Almost from the start, the shadow of interrogation and mutual suspicion tainted the mission of those treating prisoners. That limited their effectiveness for years to come. Psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses and technicians received little training for the assignment and, they said, felt unprepared to tend to men they were told were “the worst of the worst. ” Doctors felt pushed to cross ethical boundaries, and were warned that their actions, at an institution roiled by detainees’ organized resistance, could have political and national security implications. Rotations lasted only three to nine months, making it difficult to establish rapport. In a field that requires intimacy, the psychiatrists and their teams long used pseudonyms like Major Psych, Dr. Crocodile, Superman and Big Momma, and referred to patients by serial numbers, not names. They frequently had to speak through fences or slits in cell doors, using interpreters who also worked with interrogators. Wary patients often declined to talk to the mental health teams. (“Detainee refused to interact,” medical records note repeatedly.) At a place so shrouded in secrecy that for years any information learned from a detainee was to be treated as classified, what went on in interrogations “was completely restricted territory,” said Karen Thurman, a Navy commander, now retired, who served as a psychiatric nurse practitioner at Guantánamo. “‘How did it go? ’” Or “‘Did they hit you?’ We were not allowed to ask that,” she said. Dr. Rosecrans said she held back on such questions when she was there in 2004, not suspecting abuse and feeling constrained by the prison environment. “From a surgical perspective, you never open up a wound you cannot close,” she said. “Unless you have months, years, to help this person and help them get out of this hole, why would you ever do this?” The United States military defends the quality of mental health care at Guantánamo as humane and appropriate. Detainees, human rights groups and doctors consulting for defense teams offer more critical assessments, describing it as negligent or ineffective in many cases. Those who served at the prison, most of whom had never spoken publicly before, said they had helped their patients and had done the best they could. Given the circumstances, many focused on the most basic of duties. “My goal was to keep everyone alive,” Dr. Rosecrans said. “We tried to keep the water as smooth as possible,” Ms. Thurman said. “My job was to keep them going,” said Andy Davidson, a Navy captain, now retired, and psychologist. When Dr. Rosecrans worked briefly at the Navy’s hospital at Guantánamo as a young psychiatrist in 1999, it was a sleepy assignment. She saw only a few outpatients each week, and there was no psychiatric ward on the base, which was being downsized. But after Al Qaeda’s 2001 terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon, and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, detainees began pouring into the island in early 2002 — airplane loads of 20 to 30 men in shackles and goggles. “We were seeing prisoners arriving with mental problems,” said Capt. Albert Shimkus, then the hospital’s commanding officer. There were no clear protocols for treating patients considered to be “enemy combatants,” rather than prisoners of war, said Captain Shimkus, who is now retired. But he set out, with the tacit support of his commanders, to provide a level of care equivalent to that for American service members. He transformed a cellblock into a spartan inpatient unit for up to 20 patients and brought in Navy psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses and technicians to be available around the clock. Many of them had little or no predeployment training, experience working in a detention facility or familiarity with the captives’ languages, cultures or religious beliefs. They soon heard talk of the threat the prisoners posed. “The crew that was there before us scared the heck out of us,” said Dr. Christopher Kowalsky, who as a Navy captain led the mental health unit in 2004. He and Dr. Rosecrans said colleagues had admonished them for getting too close to patients. “‘Don’t forget they’re criminals,’” she was told. Those arriving in later years attended a training program at a military base in Washington State. “You heard all these things about how terrible they are: Not only will they gouge your eyes out, but they’ll somehow tell their cohorts to go after your family,” said Daniel Lakemacher, who served as a Navy psychiatric technician. “I became extremely hateful and spiteful. ” Peering through small openings in cell doors, he and other technicians handed out medications, watched prisoners swallow them and ran through a checklist of safety questions — “Are you having thoughts of hurting yourself?” “Are you seeing things that aren’t there?” — through interpreters or detainees in nearby cells. (“Talk about confidentiality!” Dr. Davidson said. “It’s just a whole other set of rules. ”) Conflicts arose between health professionals aiding interrogators and those trying to provide care. Army psychologists working with military intelligence teams showed up in 2002 and asked to be credentialed to treat detainees. “I said no, because they were there for interrogations,” Captain Shimkus said. In June of that year, Maj. Paul Burney, an Army psychiatrist, and Maj. John Leso, an Army psychologist, both of whom had deployed to Guantánamo to tend to the troops, instead were assigned to devise interrogation techniques. In a memo, they listed escalating pressure tactics, including extended isolation, interrogations, painful stress positions, yelling, hooding, and manipulation of diet, environment and sleep. But they also expressed caution. “Physical emotional harm from the above techniques may emerge months or even years after their use,” the two men warned in their memo, later excerpted in a Senate Armed Services Committee report. They added that the most effective interrogation strategy was developing a bond. A version of the memo, stripped of its warnings, reached Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. In December 2002, he approved many of the methods for Guantánamo, some of them similar to the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by the C. I. A. at secret prisons overseas. After objections from military lawyers, he made some modifications but gave commanders license to use 24 techniques. Some of them later migrated to military prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq, including Abu Ghraib, where they morphed into horrific abuses. “I think it was the absolute wrong way to proceed,” Dr. Burney, who has not previously commented publicly, said of the approved techniques. “I so wish I could go back and do things differently. ” He and Dr. Leso created the Behavioral Science Consultation Team, or BSCT (pronounced “biscuit”) to advise and sometimes rein in military interrogators, many of them young enlisted soldiers with little experience even interviewing people. The interrogators subjected some detainees at Guantánamo to loud music, strobe lights, cold temperatures, isolation, painful shackling, threats against family members and prolonged sleep deprivation, according to the Justice Department’s inspector general. The government has never quantified how many prisoners underwent that treatment. In four cases, military leaders approved even harsher interrogation plans. At least two were carried out. Dr. Burney said he and Dr. Leso took turns observing the questioning in 2002 of Mohammed who was accused of being an intended hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks and, it later emerged, had a history of psychosis. Among other things, he was menaced with military dogs, draped in women’s underwear, injected with intravenous fluids to make him urinate on himself, put on a leash and forced to bark like a dog, and interrogated for 18 to 20 hours at least 48 times, government investigators found. Mr. Qahtani was led to believe that he might die if he did not cooperate, Dr. Burney said in a statement provided to the Senate committee. When Mr. Qahtani asked for a doctor to relieve psychological symptoms, the interrogators instead performed an exorcism for “jinns” — supernatural creatures that he believed caused his problems. In 2009, a Department of Defense official overseeing military commissions refused to prosecute Mr. Qahtani, telling The Washington Post that his mistreatment had amounted to torture. In 2012, a federal judge found Mr. Qahtani incompetent to help challenge his detention. Those providing mental health care at Guantánamo quickly aroused the suspicions of some prisoners, who called them devils, criminals and dogs. “Nobody trusted them,” said Lutfi bin Ali, a Tunisian who was sent to Guantánamo after being subjected to harsh conditions at what he described as an American jail overseas. “There was skepticism that they were psychiatrists and that they were trying to help us,” he said by phone from Kazakhstan, where he was transferred to in 2014. He still suffers intermittently from depression. Dr. Davidson, who treated prisoners at Guantánamo during part of 2003, recalled the hostility. “I can tell the guy until the cows come home, ‘Hey, I’m just here for mental health,’” he said. “‘No, you’re not,’” he imagined the patient thinking, “‘you’re the enemy. ’” One day on the cellblocks, Dr. Rosecrans heard detainees warn others that she could not be trusted. “Some of my patients hated me,” she said. “They saw me as a representative of the government. ” She and other clinicians who felt uncomfortable walking around the prison grounds relied mostly on guards to identify detainees who needed help and to take them to an examination room, where they would be chained to the floor. Interpreters were in such short supply at times that they worked with both the mental health teams and the interrogators. “See where that could be a problem?” Dr. Rosecrans asked. All of that fed the conviction among detainees that information about their mental health was being exploited by interrogators. “If you complain about your weak point to a doctor, they told that to the interrogators,” said Younous Chekkouri, a Moroccan, now released. He recalled seeing one psychologist working alongside interrogators and then treating detainees at the prison. Only years later, he said, did he feel he could trust certain psychiatrists there. He said he still suffered from flashbacks and anxiety after being beaten at a military prison in Afghanistan, and kept in isolation and shown execution photos at Guantánamo. Captain Shimkus, who oversaw patient care, said some clinicians had expressed concerns about the blurred lines between medical care and interrogation. He said he had allowed one psychiatrist, who was disturbed by the lack of confidentiality, to temporarily recuse himself from caring for patients because the doctor believed “the relationship was compromised. ” The United States Southern Command told health care providers at Guantánamo in 2002 that their communications with patients were “not confidential. ” At first, interrogators had direct access to medical information. Then, the BSCT psychologists acted as liaisons. They regularly read patient records in the psychiatry ward, said Dr. Frances Stewart, a retired Navy captain and psychiatrist who treated detainees in 2003 and 2004. As a consequence, she said, “I tried to document just the things that really needed to be documented — things like ‘the patient has a headache we treated it with Tylenol’ — not anything terribly sensitive. It was not a perfect solution, but it was probably the best solution I could come up with at the time. ” Dr. Kowalsky, a psychiatrist, said patients had begged him not to record their diagnoses. “They’re going to use that,” some detainees told him. The International Committee of the Red Cross, during a June 2004 visit, documented the same complaint. Medical files, the group said in confidential remarks revealed in The Times, were regularly used to devise strategies for interrogations that it called “tantamount to torture. ” Interrogators’ access to medical records was a “flagrant violation of medical ethics. ” The Pentagon disputed that the records were used to harm detainees. Dr. Kowalsky said he clashed with a BSCT psychologist, Diane Zierhoffer, who showed up in the psychiatric unit to look at patient records in 2004. (Dr. Zierhoffer, in an email, said her intent in accessing records had been to “ensure health care was not interfered with. ”) “We’re here to help people,” Dr. Kowalsky recalled once telling her. “We’re here to protect our country,” he said she had responded, later asking: “Whose side are you on?” Sometimes it wasn’t clear what was forbidden or what had just become practice, but it had the same effect: Psychiatrists and psychologists said they had almost never asked a detainee about his treatment by interrogators, either at Guantánamo or at the C. I. A. prisons. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who was released to his native Mauritania in October after 14 years at Guantánamo, told a doctor on his legal team that military mental health providers did not ask him about possible mistreatment, according to a sealed court report obtained by The Times. Mr. Slahi did not volunteer the information because he was afraid of retaliation, he wrote in his prison memoir, “Guantánamo Diary. ” Mr. Slahi endured some of the most brutal treatment there. Investigations by the Army, the Justice Department and the Senate largely corroborated his account of being deprived of sleep beaten shackled in painful positions forced to drink large amounts of water isolated in darkness and exposed to extreme temperatures stripped and soaked in cold water told that his mother might be sent to Guantánamo and sexually assaulted by female interrogators. Decades earlier, he had joined the insurgency against the government in Afghanistan, a cause supported by the United States. In 1991, he attended a Qaeda training camp, and was later suspected of recruiting for the terrorist group. A federal judge ordered him freed in 2010 for lack of evidence, but an appeals court overturned the decision. In July, a military review board recommended his transfer. Prison medical records show that Mr. Slahi, a computer specialist with no history of mental illness, received medicine, antidepressants, sleeping pills and psychotherapy, and that he had recurring nightmares of being tortured in the years after his ordeal. Dr. Vincent Iacopino, a civilian physician who evaluated Mr. Slahi in 2007 for his defense team, criticized psychologists and psychiatrists at Guantánamo for failing “to adequately pursue the obvious possibility of PTSD,” or stress disorder, linked to severe physical and mental harm, the records show. Dr. Iacopino said military doctors had medicated Mr. Slahi for his symptoms instead of trying to treat his underlying disorder, which had “profound and debilitating psychological effects. ” Last year, one of Mr. Slahi’s lawyers described him as “damaged. ” He was one of nearly 800 men incarcerated at Guantánamo over the years and one of several whose confessions were tainted by mistreatment and disallowed as evidence by the United States. Many prisoners were Qaeda and Taliban foot soldiers later deemed to pose little threat. Some were victims of mistaken identity or held on flimsy evidence. Dr. Burney, who assisted the interrogators, said he had seen many detainees’ files. “It seemed like there wasn’t a whole lot of evidence about anything for a whole lot of those folks,” he said. After the C. I. A. ’s secret prisons were shut in 2006, Guantánamo took in more than a dozen detainees, including those accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks. Some doctors at Guantánamo said they had been instructed, in briefings or by colleagues, not to ask these former “black site” prisoners about what had happened there. Virtually everything about these captives was classified until a Senate Intelligence Committee report in 2014 disclosed grisly details about torture. “You just weren’t allowed to talk about those things, even with them,” said Dr. Michael Fahey Traver, an Army psychiatrist at Guantánamo in 2013 and 2014. He was assigned to treat only detainees kept in Camp 7, Guantánamo’s most restricted area, so that he did not inadvertently pass sensitive information to other prisoners. If a detainee raised the subject of his prior treatment, Dr. Traver was to redirect the conversation, he said his predecessor had told him. Among his patients were Ramzi bin accused of helping plot the Sept. 11 attacks, and Abd who was charged in the 2000 bombing of the American destroyer Cole and endured some of the C. I. A. ’s most extreme interrogation techniques, including waterboarding. At the request of prosecutors, a military psychiatrist and two military psychologists went to Guantánamo in 2013 to assess Mr. Nashiri’s competency to assist in his defense. The panel concluded that, while competent, he suffered from PTSD and major depression. The military commission trying Mr. Nashiri held a hearing in 2014 on the adequacy of his mental health care. Shortly before the hearing, Dr. Traver removed a previous diagnosis by another Guantánamo psychiatrist that Mr. Nashiri had PTSD. “I didn’t think he met that diagnosis,” Dr. Traver said in an interview. Dr. Sondra Crosby, an expert on torture who consulted for Mr. Nashiri’s defense, disagreed. Dr. Crosby, an internist, said his treatment was inadequate. “He suffers chronic nightmares,” she testified in an affidavit, which “directly relate to the specific physical, emotional and sexual torture inflicted upon Mr. while in U. S. custody. ” The content of his nightmares, she wrote, was classified. The commission judge, citing a Supreme Court ruling that prisons must provide health care, found insufficient evidence of “deliberate indifference” to his medical needs. What went on after prisoners were summoned for interrogations at Guantánamo was mostly a mystery to the mental health personnel, some of them said. Even when patients returned from sessions “looking terrible,” said Mr. Lakemacher, the former psychiatric technician, “that was not to be addressed. ” (After his deployment, Mr. Lakemacher said, he regretted taking part in what he came to consider the unjust, indefinite detention of prisoners. He later was discharged from the Navy as a conscientious objector.) Some doctors, on their own, shied away from the subject of interrogation tactics. “I didn’t want to get near that stuff,” Dr. Rosecrans said. “Men would say, ‘When I got here, they treated me like a dog,’” or that they were humiliated, she said, but she refrained from inquiring, in part, “to preserve their dignity. ” When detainees claimed to have been tortured or maltreated, “you didn’t know if it was true or not,” she said. “Is it PTSD, or is it delusional disorder?” she said, adding, “I was in such a vacuum. ” But Dr. Rosecrans had little reason to suspect abusive treatment, she said, because some prisoners seemed eager to go to interrogation sessions, which they called “reservations. ” Interrogators, working in trailers separate from the structures where detainees were housed, doled out rewards like snack food or magazines speaking with them broke the boredom for detainees. “It was a way to get out of their cell,” said Ms. Thurman, the nurse practitioner. “They’d do anything, I think, to do something different for the day. ” Dr. Stewart, the Navy captain who treated detainees in 2003 and 2004, said she had never noticed any men in distress after returning from interrogations. But she typically did not ask what had happened there or try to focus on trauma in therapy, she said. “I didn’t want to stir up anything that might make things worse,” she said. PTSD, generally thought to be the most common psychiatric illness resulting from torture, was rarely diagnosed at Guantánamo. Dr. Rosecrans and other doctors who served there said the diagnosis did not matter because they could still treat the symptoms, like depression, anxiety or insomnia. Standard treatment for the disorder involves building trust and revisiting traumatic experiences, which can temporarily exacerbate symptoms. That was impractical at Guantánamo, Dr. Rosecrans and others contended, where detainees were under stress and often unwilling to talk about what had happened to them. “These folks were in acute survival mode,” Dr. Rosecrans said. Most of their concerns were “ or not . ” Dr. Davidson said he had not considered doing full histories to diagnose PTSD. But later, he said, after he mulled over the experiences of American soldiers, “the thought was occurring to me: How come our guys get PTSD and they don’t? Well, probably because I’m not asking the right questions. ” Dr. Jonathan Woodson, a former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, who was the Pentagon’s top health official from 2010 until this spring, said he was unaware that mental health providers at Guantánamo had avoided asking detainees about coercive interrogations. He said his policy was that physicians should not be constrained in what they could ask patients. “You would take the history of someone who is exhibiting symptoms,” he said. “In PTSD, it’s almost automatic. ” Brig. Gen. Stephen N. Xenakis, a retired Army psychiatrist who consulted for the legal defense teams of many detainees, said, “You cannot provide psychological treatment if you never look into what happened to them when they are tortured. ” He added: “The psychologists and psychiatrists at Guantánamo are not meeting the standards of care of the military or the profession. ” Military officials disagree. Capt. John Filostrat, a spokesman for Joint Task Force Guantanamo, said, “We are doing a tough job, and we are doing it well. ” Mental health providers recall troubled men they helped — an Afghan farmer who attempted suicide, a psychotic Yemeni man stabilized and removed from isolation, a traumatized Saudi patient who began opening up. Some doctors describe Guantánamo as their most difficult deployment. They were cast in unfamiliar roles: recipients of pleas for privileges, inadvertent disciplinarians ordering “ ” restrictions like the removal of prayer beads or sheets, enablers of policies that made them deeply uncomfortable. “Every day was an ethical challenge, quite frankly,” Dr. Davidson said. Procedures at Guantánamo changed over time. Limits on abusive tactics were tightened by Congress in 2005, then banned by President Obama in 2009. But even after interrogation conditions eased, and after BSCT personnel were denied access to medical records in 2005, many detainees remained distrustful. That made it “a real challenge for the physicians treating them to even determine what was a real problem and what wasn’t,” said Dr. Bruce Meneley, a Navy captain, now retired, who commanded the medical group at Guantánamo from 2007 to 2009. Some men, worried about being seen as weak or crazy, would disclose only physical complaints like stomach aches, headaches and insomnia. Dr. Traver said sleeping pills had been the sole medication that the detainees he treated would agree to take. The doctors were unfamiliar with the ways psychiatric illness could be expressed in some cultures. A number of prisoners, Dr. Rosecrans recalled, described being plagued by jinns. She and others prescribed powerful but she remembers wondering, “Are we doing the right thing?” After years of incarceration at a place that became a symbol of American injustice — a legal black hole where men often did not know what they were accused of and had few avenues of legal recourse — many detainees, seeing themselves as political prisoners, seethed with resentment or were overcome by depression. Over and over, the psychiatrists recalled, men would ask, “Why am I here?” or “What’s my future?” — questions the doctors could not answer. Sometimes, they said, their work felt futile. “The environmental factors outweighed so much of what we did,” Dr. Davidson said. “We had so many people who were depressed. Well, I would be really depressed, too, if they stuck me in a place, I had no idea where I was, and I had no idea if or when I was going to leave. That is the definition of depression, I think — not having any control over my situation. ” It was often difficult to discern, doctors said, who was genuinely troubled, who was seeking attention and, most worrisome, who was in danger. “All of the leaders that I met were like, ‘No one is dying on my watch,’” Dr. Rosecrans said. In 2004, after men began refusing food to protest their detention, she was asked to devise a protocol for evaluating the mental health of those on prolonged hunger strikes. Dr. Rosecrans believed that mentally competent people had the right to choose not to eat — even if that meant they would die. The American Medical Association and international medical organizations endorse that position. But the government has insisted on forced feedings, which are permissible in federal prisons. Detainees have described the procedures used at Guantánamo as particularly painful, with some likening them to torture. Musa’ab a Yemeni captured in Pakistan and suspected in a terrorism plot, the evidence for which the United States eventually largely disavowed, joined a large group of hunger strikers in 2013 protesting conditions at the prison. He had arrived at Guantánamo in 2002, barely out of his teens, after being held at a C. I. A. prison. He had violent nightmares and other psychiatric problems after harsh treatment there, his medical records show. Over the years, judges threw out his admissions during interrogations, finding they were tainted by mistreatment at the C. I. A. prison and coercive questioning at Guantánamo. But his detention stretched on, and after both of his parents died, Mr. Madhwani said in a letter to a federal judge that he was “utterly hopeless. ” He added: “I have no reason to believe that I will ever leave this prison alive. It feels like death would be a better fate than living in these conditions. ” It was up to the psychiatrists and psychologists to decide how seriously to take such statements, and how to respond to them. “What do you do if they say they’re suicidal?” said Dr. Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, an Army colonel, now retired, and psychiatrist who was dispatched to Guantánamo in late 2002 after a spate of attempts. “Are they really suicidal, or are they manipulating the system?” More than 600 “suicide gestures” had been recorded at Guantánamo by 2009, with more than 40 categorized as suicide attempts, according to a medical article. The doctors had to distinguish genuine attempts — reflecting desperation or, as American officials contended, a desire for martyrdom — from acts aimed at improving their conditions of confinement. To date, at least six deaths have been have classified as suicides, though critics have raised questions about foul play in some cases. One Guantánamo commander referred to three of them, which were simultaneous, as acts of warfare against America. Several of the dead had been treated by mental health providers for serious disorders. Only 60 prisoners remain at Guantánamo, and about a third of them have been approved for transfer. Ten have been charged with or convicted of crimes by the military commissions system. Capt. Richard Quattrone of the Navy, who served until September as the prison’s chief medical officer, said just a small number of detainees had chronic mental health issues. “The things we see are about issues, anxiety over their release, and when it will happen, or if it will happen,” he said. “Whatever happened in the past,” he added, “I think we’ve now built trust with the medical personnel. ” Looking back, Dr. Rosecrans said she and her colleagues had faced many obstacles. For certain prisoners, the very tool that psychiatrists and psychologists most rely on — asking questions — would forever evoke interrogations. And the secrecy complicated everything. “Did we know what was going on? Or what might have been going on?” Dr. Rosecrans asked. “I didn’t know any of that intel stuff. ” But, she added, “we did the job of treating patients. ” Guantánamo stayed with her in unexpected ways. Relaxing on a cruise soon after leaving the prison assignment, she tried to pose her daughter for a photo. When the child refused to put down a stuffed animal, Dr. Rosecrans threatened to throw it overboard. “You’re a little terrorist!” she erupted. | 1 |
The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra settled a strike on Wednesday, just in time for Thanksgiving. The strike was resolved after its musicians agreed to freeze their defined benefit pensions and management settled for an initial 7. 5 percent wage cut, half of what it had been seeking. The contract, which was ratified on Wednesday, paves the way for the orchestra — a major ensemble that is scheduled to perform this summer at the prestigious Salzburg and Lucerne festivals in Europe — to return to work next week. The orchestra will play a pair of free “The Music Has Returned!” concerts on Dec. 2 and 4 with its music director, Manfred Honeck. The Pittsburgh strike on Sept. 30 sent shock waves through the classical music world. The smaller Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra in Texas had gone on strike earlier that month (and remains out of work) and, also on Sept. 30, the storied Philadelphia Orchestra began a strike that lasted 48 hours, raising new questions about how symphony orchestras are adapting to their challenges. Pittsburgh’s management, warning that the orchestra was running out of cash, called for freezing the musicians’ pensions, cutting their pay by 15 percent in the first year and temporarily reducing the size of the ensemble. The union expressed openness to moving from a defined benefit pension plan to a defined contribution plan, provided there were provisions to help those most adversely affected — but they balked at the large pay cut. They went on strike. The new contract calls for a 7. 5 percent cut in the first year, which the orchestra said would have been 10. 5 percent had an anonymous donor not stepped in. The contract calls for the players to be restored to their current base salary — approximately $107, 000 — in the fifth year. The orchestra accepted a new defined contribution retirement plan, and management agreed to additional contributions to the musicians who would suffer the most. And the ensemble, which has a current complement of 99 musicians and two librarians, will retain that size but keep three open positions unfilled. “These were painful and substantial concessions,” said Micah Howard, the chairman of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Committee. “But we agreed to work with management to face our financial challenges . ” | 1 |
Photo above by The U.S. Army | CC BY 2.0 H ere is a list of the noteworthy, ongoing results of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq beginning in March 2003. (Recall that invasion was denounced by the UN as illegal, based entirely on lies, and—given the U.S.’s hegemonic position in the world, allowing it to act with impunity—the crime’s architects have never punished.) 1/ The principal achievement of the war and occupation was the dramatic expansion of the al-Qaeda network that had attacked the U.S. on January 11, 2001. An al-Qaeda franchise was established in Iraq for the first time, playing a key role in the Sunni “insurrection” against the occupiers and their Shiite allies, then expanding across the border into Syria where it split into the al-Nusra affiliate and its even more savage rival, ISIL. Iraq also served and serves as a training ground for jihadis now operating from Iraq to Libya and beyond. 2/ The invasion and its consequences encouraged the cause of Kurdistan , an imagined state straddling Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. The Kurds are the largest stateless people in the world, victims of British and French colonialists who divided the region between them after World War I. After the Gulf War of 1991, the U.S. established a “no-fly” zone over northern Iraq to discourage Baghdad from deploying troops in the region. Iraqi Kurdistan had already obtained a degree of autonomy before the invasion but the status became official under the occupation and a referendum for independence is likely to pass soon. This would infuriate Iraq and perhaps provoke Turkey’s intervention. As it is, the autonomous region is locked in struggle with Baghdad over territorial claims and control over oil fields. 3/ The invasion destroyed the Iraqi state , causing it to fracture into three: Kurdistan, the Sunni zone in the west, and the Shiite-majority areas around Baghdad. The Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein had been extremely repressive and brutal. But it had maintained order; discouraged religion in politics; protected the Christian and other religious minorities; promoted women’s rights; imposed no dress code; enforced a criminal code modeled after the Napoleonic (not the Sharia); licensed rock n’ roll radio stations, allowed the brewing of beer and its sale etc. The Shiite-led regime boosted into power by the occupation has reversed much of this. (A bill to ban the production and sale of beer was just passed by Parliament last week.) But the regime’s power does not extend into much of Anbar Province, ISIL still governs Mosul, and again, Kurdistan has become autonomous. 4/ Because Shiites are the majority in Iraq (60%), and dominate Iran next door; and because the leaders of Shiite parties have studied in Iran or lived their in exile and are sympathetic to Iran’s mullah-led regime; and because the U.S. was forced by peaceful mass protests to allow elections and the emergence of Shiites as the leaders of the country, Iran’s power and influence in the region has expanded dramatically. (Apparently no one in the State Department thought about that.) Since Iran has not attacked another country in centuries—but was savagely attacked by Saddam Hussein in 1981, sparking a long war killing over half a million people—and since Iran’s friendliness to its neighbor, one of the few Arab countries in which its co-coreligionists hold power, is entirely natural, one can ask why anyone might be alarmed by this. But it does alarm some, the leaders of Saudi Arabia, that crucial U.S. Arab ally governed by Wahhabi Sunnis, most of all. 5/ The invasion produced a regional power struggle between Sunni Islamists on the one hand, and their Shiite (and other) enemies on the other. This is often portrayed as a contest between Saudi Arabia (whose government-backed clerics condemn Shiites as heretics, and who fear the prospects for rebellion in Saudi Arabia’s own oppressed Shiite minority) and Iran, depicted as the protector of Shiites in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen etc. (The so-called “Shiite Crescent” extending from Iran to Hizbollah-controlled areas of Lebanon in fact embraces states and movements that have little in common with the Islamic Republic of Iran. But they are all targeted by the medieval regime in Riyadh which tars them all with the Iranian brush.) The Saudis were keen advocates for a U.S. strike on Iran (on the false pretext of a nuclear threat); are major supporters of al-Nusra in Syria and have funded ISIL as well, preferring such Islamist forces to the secular if Alawite-led Syrian regime; and are bombing the hell out of Yemen with active U.S. and British assistance under the false pretext that the Shiite Houthi “rebels” are agents for an expanding Iran. These things would not be happening, had the U.S. not ripped the lid off Pandora’s box in Iraq in March 2003. 6/ The invasion has produced friction between the U.S. and its important NATO ally Turkey (which has the second largest military in the alliance). Turkish war planes are bombing Kurdish YPG (People’s Protection Units) militia in Syria who constitute the U.S.’s most reliable allies, producing U.S. protests (which the Turks ignore, arguing straight-faced that the YPG are just as terrorist as ISIL). The Turks warned before the invasion of Iraq that it would likely produce regional instability. But Ankara would have allowed the U.S. to attack from Turkish soil if Turkish forces as part of the “coalition of the willing” could be stationed around Mosul, once part of Turkey—the idea being to contain Kurdish nationalism. Fortunately the parliament rejected the deal. But the predicted instability has occurred. The Arab Spring of 2011 in Syria was not directly connected to the Iraq invasion, but gave the U.S. the opportunity to pontificate that “Assad has lost legitimacy,” demand his immediate resignation, and bankroll the armed opposition including the Kurds. The fact that U.S. efforts to find and recruit Syrian Arab forces as allies—who are not in bed with al-Nusra—to topple Assad have failed so dismally binds the Pentagon ever closer to forces that Turkey wants to wipe out. (The conflict and contradiction are embarrassing to Washington. Oh, by the way, did you notice that the Turkish foreign minister just announced that Turkey would invade Iraq if it “felt threatened”?) Having declared in 2011 that Bashar al-Assad must go, the U.S. was faced in 2014 with the horrible embarrassment of ISIL (that toxic fruit of its Iraq invasion) winning lightening victories from Raqqa to Fallujah, obliterating the Sykes-Picot line dividing Syria and Iraq. The now-Syria based terrorists were approaching Baghdad. So now the U.S. having withdrawn all troops in Iraq was back in action, bombing to prevent such a disaster. And it started bombing ISIL positions in Syria (although with far less efficacy than the later Russian efforts) in league with a list of largely reluctant allies dragooned into formal membership in what Washington likes to call a “coalition” to make its unilateral program for the region sound like the will of what they like to call “the international community” regardless of how many key nations that imagined “community” includes.
Michael Moore’s all-out campaign in support of Hillary, and his pathetic attacks on Assange (“ He’s a human Molotov cocktail” ), typify, all too well, and all too sadly, the despicable qualities of American liberals, especially their treachery and obtuseness when the going gets heavy. Moore, a man supposedly astute enough to do documentaries about American stupidity and chicanery, should know better than go around propagandizing for the Queen of Chaos. Nor render any service to the Democrats a party that he should know damn well betrayed the public interest by passing Obamacare instead of single payer which he himself postulated in his documentary SiCKO. The U.S. command that Assad step down was made in the summer of 2011. Turkey’s President Erdogan, hitherto a friend and even mentor of the Syrian leader, opportunistically took up the U.S. demand and demanded his resignation. And Ankara itself began to interfere big-time in the neighboring country it once dominated, targeting Kurds more than anyone else. Since the U.S. relies on these allies, how could there not be a sharp conflict here? 7/ The invasion of Iraq and aftermath resulted in four million Iraqi refugees fleeing the country as of 2007. Hundreds of thousands have poured into Europe, alongside people displaced by U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Libya, and by the turmoil in Syria exacerbated by U.S. actions, producing a massive continent-wide crisis. Many Europeans aptly blame the deluge on the U.S., pointing to the U.S.’s paltry record of admitting refugees from the Middle East and complaining of strained national resources to handle the humanitarian catastrophe. (Another embarrassment.) *** This is all what Buddhists call “karmic retribution” for past acts. Or what the Hebrew prophet Hosea referred to when he said “Those who sow the wind reap the whirlwind.” Or what the CIA meant when it invented the term “blowback.” It’s all heading towards something, unless decent people stop it. But when I watch people like Michael Moore line up behind the foremost advocate of war in U.S. politics, joining (consciously, philosophical) amoral thugs hell-bent on maintaining and expanding the empire when it’s in a stage of precipitous decline, I am not optimistic. Not only will she win, but she will rival Dick Cheney as a cold-blooded latter-day Cold Warrior, cynically exploiting fear and stupidity to try to bring Russia to its knees. Hillary doesn’t recognize any of these seven points, which to recapitulate are: • US actions have greatly strengthened al-Qaeda • US actions have encouraged Kurdish nationalism (with unpredictable ramifications) • The US through its vicious illegal actions has destroyed the modern Iraqi state • US actions have solidified ties between Iran and Iraq’s majority Shiite community, strengthening a country still targeted for “regime change” • The invasion of Iraq and the regime change there exacerbated the historical Sunni-Shiite divide, and encouraged Saudi Arabia as the ultra-Islamist protector of the shrines to redouble its efforts to support extremist Sunnis everywhere in the region • The results of the invasion place Turkey and the U.S. at loggerheads over the question of Kurdish nationalist movements in both Iraq and Syria • US interventions in the Middle East and North Africa since 2001 have produced a massive refugee crisis, inflicted mainly on Europe She does not acknowledge that George W. Bush’s invasion (that she so passionately endorsed, fully exposing her Valkyrie soul, was criminal and not somebody’s well-meaning “mistake”). She doesn’t have any analysis of the Kurdish question. (She is not—as sometimes alleged by supporters—a “policy wonk” but a lazy intellect who doesn’t know jack-shit about the real world.) She has never expressed regret for the horrific destruction of Iraq, nor given any attention to the plight of its women, who were (as she surely knows) much better off under Saddam Hussein. (To acknowledge that would be to suggest that sometimes U.S. imperialism favors misogynist Islamists over relatively progressive secularists, for its own pragmatic empire-building purposes. She can’t mention that publicly.) She deals with the rise of Iran—made inevitable by the U.S. invasion of Iraq—by doubling down on her crude clueless Iran rhetoric, which rests on the assumption—repeatedly debunked by U.S. intelligence agencies—that Iran might pose a nuclear weapons threat. She doesn’t understand the history of the Sunni-Shiite divide; I believe she rolls her eyes in irritation that these people have these differences so hard to understand, impeding the Exceptional Nation’s ability to straighten everything out by bombing, and conquering, and making people die. She doesn’t understand anything about the history of the Kurds and their fate in the region. She feels no guilt at all about her orchestration of the ruin of Libya. She sees no reason to link her own actions to the flooding of Europe with refugees fleeing terror. But she will probably be the next president, with fellow shieldmaidens Michele Flournoy (as “secretary of defense”) and Victoria Nuland or Samantha Power (as secretary of state). Never acknowledging what happened yesterday, never able to absorb historical lessons, determined to maintain and expend its global hegemony (just as that becomes absolutely impossible to do, because other nations rise too, and great nations like Spain and Britain actually get humbled over time), the U.S. under Clinton will likely head methodically towards a showdown with Russia. She wants so badly, to show she can do it. She’ll do it for women, everywhere, to show how strong a woman can be. And then there will be a sudden strange change in your environment. As you wonder what’s going on you’ll be painlessly vaporized, on account of Hillary’s passion to topple Assad, or forcibly reintegrate the Donbass into Ukraine. The brilliance of the 2003 invasion will be clarified as never before in that bright blast, as Hillary—a very strong woman—cackles in the background from her bunker about how she came, saw, and a million died. NOTE: ALL IMAGE CAPTIONS, PULL QUOTES AND COMMENTARY BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS PLEASE COMMENT AND DEBATE DIRECTLY ON OUR FACEBOOK GROUP CLICK HERE ABOUT THE AUTHOR Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan ; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan ; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900 . He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion , (AK Press). He can be reached at: [email protected] Note to Commenters Due to severe hacking attacks in the recent past that brought our site down for up to 11 days with considerable loss of circulation, we exercise extreme caution in the comments we publish, as the comment box has been one of the main arteries to inject malicious code. 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Can The American People Defeat The Oligarchy That Rules Them?
Paul Craig Roberts
I am surprised that Hillary and the presstitutes haven’t blamed Putin for FBI director Comey’s reopening of the Hillary email case. But they have done the next best thing for Hillary. They have made Comey the issue, not Hillary.
According to US Senator Harry Reid and the presstitutes, we don’t need to worry about Hillary’s crimes. After all, she is only a political woman feathering her nest, like political men have been doing for ages. Why all this misogynist talk about Hillary? It is Comey’s alleged crime that is important. This woman-hating Republican violated the Hatch Act by telling Congress that the investigation he said was closed was reopened. A very strange interpretation of the Hatch Act. It is OK to tell that a candidate for president is cleared duing an election but not to say that a candidate is under investigation.
Comey violated the Hatch Act when he, on orders from the corrupt Obama Attorney General, announced Hillary clean, and thereby used the prestige of federal clearance of Hillary’s violation of national security protocols to boost her standing in the election polls.
Actually, Hillary’s standing in the polls is based on the pollsters over-weighting Hillary supporters in the polls. It is easy to produce a favorite if you overweight their supporters in the poll questions. If you look at the crowds attending the two candidate’s public appearances, it is clear that the American people prefer Donald Trump, who is opposed to war with Russia and China. The election settles no greater issue.
This has the ruling American Oligarcy, for which Hillary is the total servant, concerned. What are they going to do about Trump? Will his fate be the same as John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, George Wallace? Time will tell. Or will a hotal maid appear at the last minute in the way that the Oligarchy got rid of Dominic Strauss-Kahn?
All of the American and Western feminists, progressives, and left-wing remnant fell for the obvious frame-up of Strauss-Kahn. After Strauss-Kahn was blocked from the Presidency of France and resigned as Director of the IMF, the New York authorities had to drop all charges against Strauss-Kahn. But Washington had succeeded in putting its French vassal, Sarkozy, in the presidency of France.
This is how the American Oligarchy destroys those it suspects might not serve its interests. The corrupt self-sereving Oligarchy makes sure that it owns the government and the media, the think tanks and increasingly all of the major universities, and, of course, through the presstitutes, Americans’ minds.
The Oligarchs are now hard-pressed to rescue Hillary as US president, so let’s see if the Oligarchs can once again deceive the insouciant American people.
While we wait, let’s concern outselves with another important issue. The Clinton crime syndicate in the closing years of the 20th century allowed a small handful of mega-corporations to consolidate the US media in a few hands. This vast increase in the power of the Oligarchy was accomplished despite US anti-trust law and the American tradition of a dispersed and independent media.
But really, what does federal law mean to the One Percent. Nothing whatsoever. They are immune to it. Hillary’s crimes might cost her the election, but she won’t go to jail.
Not content with 90% control of the US media, the Oligarchy wants more concentration and more control. Looks like they will be getting it, thanks to the totally corrupt US government.
The Federal Trade Commission is supposed to enforce US anti-trust law. Instead, the corrupt federal agency routinely violates US anti-trust law by permitting monopoly concentrations of business interests.
Because of the failure of the federal government to enforce federal law, we now have “banks too big to fail,” unregulated Internet monopoly, and the evisceration of a dispersed and independent media.
There formerly was a field of economics known as anti-trust. Ph.D. candidates specialized in and wrote dissertations about public control of monopoly power. I assume that this field of
economics, like the America of my youth, no longer exists.
In the article below, Rahul Manchanda, explains that “yet again another huge media conglomerate is being swallowed and acquired by another huge media conglomerate, to create another gargantuan media outlet, in another consolidation of the enormous power, money, wealth, intimidation, conspiracy and control” that eviscerates the US Constitution and the First Amendment.
http://www.veteransnewsnow.com/2016/10/22/just-what-the-hell-does-the-federal-trade-commission-antitrust-division-do-anymore/
The post Can The American People Defeat The Oligarchy That Rules Them? — Paul Craig Roberts appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org . | 0 |
Monday 14 November 2016 by Benedict Farkerhausen Nigel Farage held at Heathrow on return from Trump visit due to ‘mysterious brown substance’ on nose
Nigel Farage has spent the day in the Heathrow Airport holding cells as officials quiz him on a mysterious, smelly brown substance found on his nose.
The UKIP interim leader had flown back into the country after spending much of the weekend cosying up to fellow man of the people, President-elect Donald Trump, in a Manhattan penthouse apartment painted gold.
Simon Williams, Home Office spokesman, said, “Our sniffer dogs are trained to smell even the tiniest remnants of illicit substances on clothing and suitcases.
“However, they were not needed this time as fellow passengers and staff were all able to notice this foul stench wafting through the cabin since the flight took off in New York.
“On inspection, Mr Farage’s nose was found to be thickly cased in a brown substance, which we are treating as a biological hazard.
Further traces were found on his tongue, and we’ve sent it off for further testing.”
A UKIP spokesman said, “In the human centipede that is diplomatic relations with the US, Nigel has valiantly shown his willingness to get on all fours and bury his face deep inside Mr Trump’s rectum for the good of Queen and country.
“The country needs the intimate knowledge Nigel possesses of this man, and we await a call from Number 10 wanting his expertise. Get the best NewsThump stories in your mailbox every Friday, for FREE! There are currently | 0 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. North Korea conducted its fifth and most powerful underground nuclear test, demonstrating that the U. S. policy of “strategic patience” had failed to deter the North Korean leader, Kim . President Obama said, “The United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state. ” But some experts say the U. S. has little choice. _____ 2. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both responded to the nuclear test. Mrs. Clinton, who met with national security advisers, said it was time to expand sanctions and broaden a program in neighboring countries. Mr. Trump sought to connect the test to Mrs. Clinton, saying: “It’s just one more massive failure from a failed secretary of state. Failed at everything. ” Mr. Trump also spoke to the Values Voters Summit in Washington, one of the largest audiences of social conservatives he’s addressed. He steered clear of divisive topics like abortion and Israel. Bill Clinton has begun vigorously defending himself and the Clinton Foundation, rankled by the increasing scrutiny of his marquee focus since leaving the presidency. “If creating jobs and saving lives is bad,” he said this week, “I guess you can zing me with it. ” _____ 3. Our analysis of new national data shows that murder rates rose last year in 25 of the country’s 100 largest cities. But half of the increase came from just seven cities: Chicago, Baltimore, Cleveland, Houston, Milwaukee, Nashville and Washington. Each appears to have unique circumstances contributing to the uptick. But even in those cities, murder rates remain much lower than they were in the ’90s, as they are across the country. _____ 4. Ambitious? New evidence shows that, these days, if you’re aiming to get a job as a top executive, it pays to get experience in as many of a business’s functional areas as possible. “Work used to be much more hierarchical, and in many instances rote,” one expert said. Now, he said, it’s “become incredibly . ” _____ 5. A federal ruling cleared the way for the Dakota Access oil pipeline to be laid near a Native American reservation in North Dakota, disappointing hundreds of tribal members and environmental activists protesting the project. But the Justice and Interior Departments and the Army released a statement almost immediately, saying the pipeline would not for the moment be allowed to be built under a dammed section of the Missouri River, the focal point of the protest. _____ 6. Two days before the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the House gave final congressional approval to a measure that would allow families of those killed to sue Saudi Arabia. President Obama is expected to veto the bill, to avert moves by other countries to allow individuals to file suit against the U. S. Above, Congress memorialized the attacks. About half a dozen novels aimed at young readers have come out this year, trying to fill in the gaps for readers with no memory of the events. “Writers are feeling safer about writing about the subject, and also realizing, wait a minute, kids don’t know,” one publisher said. _____ 7. Overwhelmed police radios. Officers stepping over dead, wounded and dying people, desperate to find the attackers. A report containing the first official account of the aftermath of the Dec. 2 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif. details chaos, some missteps and moments of heroism. All the wounded were evacuated to hospitals within 57 minutes of the first 911 call — and all survived. _____ 8. In theaters: “Sully,” which recreates Capt. Chesley Sullenberger’s miraculous landing of a plane in the Hudson River in 2009. Our reviewer finds the film unlike other Clint Eastwood films: “There’s no tragedy in ‘Sully,’ just sighs of relief, probing questions and an outwardly uncomplicated hero whose extraordinariness is so deeply imbued that it is finally the most ordinary thing about him. ” The reviews from investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board, who are portrayed as testy and — a technique to increase the film’s drama — have been less enthusiastic. _____ 9. In tennis, Novak Djokovic, above, defeated Gael Monfils, and Stan Wawrinka beat Kei Nishikori, earning a place in his first U. S. Open final. Djokovic and Wawrinka play Sunday afternoon. The women’s singles title will be decided Saturday, as Angelique Kerber faces Karolina Pliskova. Here’s our full coverage of the tournament. The N. F. L. ’s first weekend is packed. There are 13 games on Sunday. Here’s our look at the top games — and who we think will win. _____ 10. Finally, a new space mission is underway. NASA’s spacecraft was put into orbit around Earth by a rocket on Thursday, and then fired its engines to push it onto a path around the sun. In seven years, if all goes well, it will return with samples from a asteroid that could hold clues to the solar system’s roots. _____ Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s last night’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
Email
Republican presidential contender Donald Trump has received a lot of flak in the media for alleging that the election is “rigged” and implying that he may contest the results of the election if he loses. But what happened in Virginia provides fodder to claims that Democrats are pulling out all the stops to secure Hillary Clinton’s victory. Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe (shown) has granted voting rights to 60,000 convicted felons in time to register to vote, which the Daily Caller notes could be enough to swing the election in Hillary Clinton’s favor.
Earlier this year, Governor McAuliffe, a close personal friend of the Clinton family who personally guaranteed a loan for the purchase of their home in Chappaqua, New York in 1999, attempted to use an executive order to restore the voting rights of over 200,000 convicted felons — including violent and repeat offenders.
State Delegate James Edmunds declared Governor McAuliffe’s actions to be in violation of the state’s constitution: The Constitution of Virginia grants the Governor the authority to restore the civil rights of convicted felons. The Constitution also vests the clemency power in the office of the Governor. However, that authority is limited and must be applied on an individual basis. The Constitution says no "person" may vote unless "his" civil rights have been restored by the Governor.
According to Edmunds, Governor McAuliffe’s blanket restoration of voting rights “undermin[es] the strength of the criminal justice system and the sanctity of our civil rights.”
Breitbart News’ Ken Klukowski notes that even Clinton’s running mate, former Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, concluded when he was governor that he did not have the legal authority to grant such rights to all Virginia felons. Kaine heeded the advice of his lawyers, who said that “power could be exercised only in particular cases to named individuals for whom a specific grant of executive clemency is sought,” and further wrote that the “notion that the Constitution of the Commonwealth would be rewritten via executive order is troubling.”
Fortunately, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled in July that governors cannot issue a blanket restoration of felons’ right to vote en masse, but instead must consider them on a case-by-case basis. That ruling invalidated McAuliffe’s sweeping executive order restoring voting privileges to more than 200,000 felons who’d completed their sentences.
The court’s ruling did not stop him, however. The Daily Caller writes, “To get around that, McAuliffe used a mechanical autopen to rapidly sign thousands of letters, as if he had personally reviewed them.”
McAuliffe’s office claimed that voting rights were restored to 13,000 felons, which Republicans discovered “mistakenly” included 132 sex offenders still in custody and several convicted murderers on probation in other states. But the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group learned that the actual number was much higher, closer to 60,000, a significant figure that could make a difference in the battleground state.
However, Clara Belle Wheeler, Republican vice-chairman of the Virginia Board of Elections, states that McAuliffe’s use of the autopen may not have satisfied the state’s requirement that mandates each person’s record be reviewed before voting rights can be restored.
“I think the General Assembly caucus that brought suit made it abundantly clear that you must look at each person and evaluate each individual person’s record: have they served their time, have they paid their restoration if it was due, have they finished their probation, are they citizens, have they not been arrested for some other crime,” Wheeler said. “The code of Virginia requires that each person is treated as an individual rather than as a bulk because each individual has a different set of circumstances and those should be evaluated.”
Meanwhile, the 60,000 felon voters could turn the tides of the election, notes the Daily Caller: Virginia’s recent political history has seen multiple races that were decided by tiny margins. The 2014 U.S. Senate race, for example, was decided by only 17,000 votes, while the attorney general’s race came down to a mere 165 votes.
Wheeler confirmed that the additional 60,000 votes had the potential to impact the outcome of the election. When the Daily Caller raised this concern, she responded, “I am acutely and chronically aware of that.”
Of the two presidential contenders, Clinton could potentially benefit significantly from the additional votes, according to a 2014 study in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science , which found, “Democrats would benefit from additional ex-felon participation.”
The study’s authors, professors from the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University, found that in some states, felons register Democratic by more than six-to-one. They also cited a study that found 73 percent of convicts who turn out for presidential elections would vote Democrat.
But McAuliffe purports that his intentions were not politically motivated, but were instead merely to remove barriers from those who have been unfairly disenfranchised, particularly minorities. “Restoring the rights of Virginians who have served their time and live, work and pay taxes in our communities is one of the pressing civil rights issues of our day,” McAuliffe said in a statement. “I have met these men and women and know how sincerely they want to contribute to our society as full citizens again.”
Yet, the Daily Caller reports that after McAuliffe’s efforts to restore voting privileges to 200,000 felons, Clinton’s staff called it a “great announcement” in an e-mail and set up a call about it.
It’s worth noting that Governor McAuliffe’s political action committee donated nearly $500,000 to the 2015 Virginia state Senate campaign of Dr. Jill McCabe, wife of Andrew McCabe, the now deputy director of the FBI who helped supervise the probe of Clinton’s mishandling of classified information.
It pays to have friends in positions of power.
Governor McAuliffe’s actions are yet another example of the election “rigging” to which Trump has referred throughout his campaign.
The GOP nominee told supporters at a midnight rally in Virginia that the governor is “letting criminals cancel out the votes of law-abiding citizens.”
Other examples of election rigging cited by Trump include a “corrupt media” and an opponent he stated “shouldn’t be allowed to run” because of her e-mail crimes. | 0 |
Montag, 14. November 2016 Autobahn-Privatisierung: Linke Spur bald nur noch für Premium-Maut-Zahler Berlin (dpo) - Die Bundesregierung plant die Privatisierung deutscher Autobahnen. Nun wurde bekannt, dass Großinvestoren wie Versicherungen und Banken bereits konkrete Pläne haben, wie Deutschlands Fernstraßen profitabler werden: Die Spur ganz links darf bald nur noch von Autofahrern genutzt werden, die eine erhöhte Pkw-Mautgebühr (Maut Premium) bezahlen. "Für Autobahn-Kunden, die sich nur den günstigen Maut-Basic-Tarif leisten wollen oder können, ändert sich nicht viel", erklärt Sandra Bauske, die Sprecherin des Investorenkonsortiums, das sich an der privaten Autobahngesellschaft des Bundes beteiligen will. "Sie müssen lediglich auf die Spur ganz links verzichten." Überholmanöver seien für sie weiterhin möglich, sobald die Autobahn über drei oder mehr Spuren verfüge. Die Nutzung der linken Spur jedoch ist nach der Privatisierung ausschließlich jenen Autobahn-Kunden vorbehalten, die bereit sind, den fünfmal so teuren Maut-Premium-Tarif zu bezahlen. Da sich vermutlich nur wenige Pkw-Fahrer diesen exklusiven Luxus leisten werden, ist mit deutlich kürzerer Reisezeit zu rechnen. Die Investoren sprechen von einem "königlichem Überholvergnügen" und kündigten bereits an, Straßenschäden auf der Premium-Spur besonders schnell auszubessern. Fahrer, die nur Maut Basic gezahlt haben und trotzdem die Spur ganz links nutzen, müssen mit empfindlichen Strafen rechnen. Überwacht wird das System durch ein Netz aus Überwachungskameras und Sensoren, die jedes unbefugte Überfahren der Premium-Linie registrieren. Ungeklärt ist noch, wie an Baustellen, an denen sich die Fahrbahn auf eine Spur verengt, verfahren wird. Derzeit prüfe man, ob es legal ist, Basic-Kunden in solchen Fällen auf Feld- und Waldwege neben der Fahrbahn umzuleiten, damit Premium-Zahler nicht unnötig ausgebremst werden. ssi, dan; Foto [M]: Shutterstock Artikel teilen: | 0 |
By wmw_admin on October 30, 2016 Finian Cunningham — Strategic Culture Oct 29, 2016
The Western media storm has suddenly quietened. For several months, there has been a howling campaign orchestrated by Western governments to discredit the anti-terror operations carried out by the Syrian army and its Russian ally to retake the crucial battleground city of Aleppo.
Western leaders, amplified by dutiful media outlets, have been relentlessly accusing Russia of war crimes and threatening to launch prosecutions at the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Dubious images and claims of children suffering in Aleppo, allegedly from Syrian and Russian air strikes, were broadcast like a blizzard. Western news presenters were breaking down in tears. Politicians were continually interviewed with stoney faces issuing sanctimonious condemnations.
Remarkably, this week the emotive Western media onslaught over Aleppo has abated. What’s going on? How can such apparent concern about humanitarian conditions suddenly cease? The evident switch-like attention suggests that the seeming Western outcry was a psychological operation from the outset.
Syrian and Russian forces had consistently rejected Western claims of indiscriminate bombing against civilians in Aleppo. They countered that it was their legal right to vanquish illegally armed insurgents holding the eastern part of the strategic city under a reign of terror since 2012.
Russia’s initiative of implementing a three-day ceasefire in east Aleppo last week proved several points.
Firstly, the besieging militants once again, as with the earlier failed ceasefire called by US secretary of state John Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, refused to separate into so-called «moderate rebels» and the known terror groups of Jabhat al Nusra. That failure to dissociate proved that the Western narrative of «good rebels and bad rebels» is bogus. Whereas Russia’s assessment of the violence being waged by a proxy army of amalgamated extremists going by myriad, chimerical names is vindicated. That means that all anti-government militants are legitimate targets for elimination if they do not surrender.
When Syrian and Russian operations resume to finally take all of Aleppo, then any further Western objections and protests are undermined by the recent debacles of truces being repudiated by the militants of all stripes.
Secondly, the truce and UN aid efforts last week in Aleppo were again constantly violated, unilaterally, by the militants, who fired and shelled at six humanitarian corridors established by the Syrian and Russian authorities. Although one group of nearly 50 civilians managed to escape from east Aleppo and were taken into care – recounting experiences of being held as human shields and living under a reign of terror for the past four years – the majority of the residents were evidently prevented by their terrorist captors from availing of the humanitarian access. There were reports of an Imam being executed by the militants in east Aleppo for daring to instruct some civilians to break out of the besieged city quarter. There were also other reports of the insurgents stealing food aid from starving residents. In desperate phone calls, besieged people were even calling for the Syrian army and Russian forces to redouble their military operations to liberate the city.
Taken together, it would seem untenable for the Western media to maintain the narrative that Syrian and Russian military are somehow brutally pounding a noble rebel resistance and massacring civilians. That narrative just doesn’t hold water if a cursory admission of factual circumstances is permitted.
It seems significant that the Western media hysteria over Aleppo tamped down just as reports emerged of the White House backing away from a contemplated increased military intervention in Syria.
On Monday this week the Washington Post headlined : «White House skepticism stalls plan to boost CIA-backed rebels in Syria».
The newspaper added: «Officials said there are growing doubts about what the fighters can achieve because of Russia’s intervention, and President Obama now seems inclined to leave the fate of the CIA program, which has been the centerpiece of US strategy, up to the next occupant of the White House.»
A quick aside here is to note the explicit admission that CIA support for «rebels» has been a centerpiece of US strategy. Given that the recent truces facilitated by Russia have demonstrated beyond doubt that there is no practical distinction between militants, the Washington Post is in effect acknowledging that CIA support for terrorists, not «rebels», has been central to US policy in Syria.
Anyway, the more important point here is that the Obama administration appears to be throwing in the towel on exercising a military option in Syria. Recall that for the past several months, there were frequent Washington mutterings of a «Plan B» involving military intervention, if diplomatic wrangling with Russia over regime change in Syria came to naught.
When the Kerry-Lavrov ceasefire broke down last month due to Western-backed terrorists breaching the accord and due to the massacre by the American air force of Syrian troops at Deir ez-Zor on September 17, the Syrian and Russian military resumed operations with greater intensity on September 22. John Kerry immediately went into a huff and broke off bilateral relations with Moscow. Washington began dropping menacing hints that it was exploring «non-diplomatic options» – meaning supplying more anti-aircraft missiles and other weapons to the terrorists via the Gulf Arab client regimes.
However, the Washington Post is now reporting that Obama’s National Security Council has rebuffed the putative military options, knowing that the repercussions of a full-scale US and Russia would be a high risk. In other words, it was all a bluff, and Moscow called Washington’s bluff.
What might have sealed the matter were reports last week of Russia’s Northern Fleet on its way to the Mediterranean Sea to station off the Syrian coast. The fleet includes the nuclear-powered Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier, as well as seven other vessels.
Voice of America headlined : «Russia’s navy deployed to Syria in show of force». It added that it was Russia’s largest naval mission since the end of the Cold War in 1991, involving destroyers and anti-submarine ships.
Among the Russian flotilla currently off Syria are three missile ships despatched separately from the Black Sea base at Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula. Those vessels are equipped with air defense and anti-ship cruise missiles. The array of firepower is a blunt message to the US and its NATO allies that Russia is not going to desist from its Syrian strategy.
Russia has evidently set an unwavering course on Syria. That is, to ensure that of President Bashar al Assad remains in power as the legitimate sovereign authority as mandated by the people of Syria; and to ensure that the US-led covert war for regime change is brought now to a swift, definitive end. Taking the final terrorist redoubt in east Aleppo is crucial to finishing this nearly six-year war that has cost half a million lives and up to 10 million refugees – nearly half the nation.
The Western sponsors of this dirty war to topple Assad – a longtime Russian and Iranian ally – appeared to make a last-ditch effort to thwart the Russian objective. The combined massive psychological operation mounted in the West involved media demonization and criminalization of Russia’s military intervention, in addition to reckless latent threats from Washington of an escalation in its own intervention, even to the point of precipitating a full-scale war with Russia.
Russia’s formidable naval power dispatched to the Mediterranean is an eloquent statement by Moscow that it is not going to be intimidated by Western psychological posturing either over alleged war crimes or a military confrontation.
Not only that but the assembled fire power now at Russia’s disposal off Syria and the ongoing strategic advances by the Syrian army on the ground around eastern Aleppo indicate that the war over Syria is possibly entering a final, victorious chapter.
And it looks like the Obama administration knows it has no other choice but to throw in the towel.
A successor Clinton administration may well try to revive the regime-change scheme. Hillary Clinton certainly has warmongering advocates aplenty in the Pentagon and the CIA – but that contingency would not be for at least three or four more months until she becomes inaugurated in mid-January.
We can therefore expect in the coming weeks that Russia and its Syrian ally will ramp up military operations to bring this war to an end. | 0 |
A revolutionary technology known as “gene drive,” which for the first time gives humans the power to alter or perhaps eliminate entire populations of organisms in the wild, has stirred both excitement and fear since scientists proposed a means to construct it two years ago. Scientists dream of deploying gene drive, for example, to wipe out mosquitoes that cause the deaths of 300, 000 African children each year, or invasive rodents that damage island ecosystems. But some experts have warned that the technique could lead to unforeseen harm to the environment. Some scientists have called on the federal government to regulate it, and some environmental watchdogs have called for a moratorium. On Wednesday, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, the premier advisory group for the federal government on scientific matters, endorsed continued research on the technology, concluding after nearly a yearlong study that while it poses risks, its possible benefits make it crucial to pursue. The group also set out a path to conducting what it called “carefully controlled field trials,” despite what some scientists say is the substantial risk of inadvertent release into the environment. “The potential to reduce human suffering and ecological damage demands scientific attention,” said Elizabeth Heitman, a medical ethicist at Vanderbilt University who helped lead the committee. “Gene drive is a fascinating area of science that has promise if we can study it appropriately. ” The report underscores that there is not yet enough evidence about the unintended consequences of gene drives to justify the release of an organism that has been engineered to carry one. But the green light for gene drive research from the influential group, scientists said, would likely open the door to new funding and provide an impetus for governments around the world to consider how it might be regulated and deployed. For centuries, people have tinkered with the genetic makeup of living things whose survival and reproduction are already largely under our control: pets, farm animals, crops and assorted species of laboratory animals. With the advent of new tools like one called Crispr, there is even growing debate about modifying human embryos with traits that could be passed on their descendants. But a gene drive involves potentially transforming an entire wild species over a few generations by modifying just a few individuals. Our ability to do that has so far been stymied because any changes humans might make typically reduce an organism’s ability to survive and reproduce in its natural habitat: natural selection eliminates the altered genes. Gene drives overcome this by ensuring that a particular gene is transmitted to all of an individual’s offspring, rather than the usual half, even if that makes them less fit. The phenomenon has long been known to exist in nature, and Crispr provides an effective way to harness it. By encoding the Crispr editing system itself into an organism’s DNA, scientists can cause a desired edit to reoccur in each generation, “driving” the trait through the wild population. The science has attracted intense interest from governments, nonprofit organizations and research institutes eager to explore its possibilities for public health, agriculture and environmental conservation, and the report seems likely to open the door to more funding for such efforts. At the same time, it is uncertain how the technology will be regulated. Existing laws, the report noted, are aimed at containing genetically engineered organisms rather than managing those whose purpose is precisely to spread swiftly. The report pointed out the difficulty in predicting what might happen if an organism carrying a gene drive was deliberately or accidentally released, saying it “raises many ethical questions and presents a challenge for existing governance paradigms. ” Coming up with an international regulatory framework is especially crucial, members of the committee said, given that gene drives will not recognize national or political boundaries. For now, the United States Food and Drug Administration has authority over animals that have been engineered with foreign DNA under a rule that regards them as a type of drug. But the report suggests that other agencies, like the Fish and Wildlife Service or the Bureau of Land Management, might be seen to have a stake in the ecological concerns at the heart of gene drive experiments. “It would be good if we could get our act together to provide a regulatory model for the rest of the world,’’ said Jason Delborne, a professor of science, policy and society at North Carolina State University and one of the 16 experts on the advisory panel that produced the report. Some independent scientists say the panel, which included ethicists, biologists and others, struck a good balance by permitting more gene drive research while limiting the use of the technology. But opponents of genetic engineering argue that the panel should have demanded a halt to research on gene drives, at least until some of the many questions it raised are answered. The report is the first in a series of studies by the National Academies on the ethical, scientific and social challenges posed by emerging gene editing technology, including one due later this year on editing the human genome. The committee considered six case studies, including using gene drive to control mice destroying biodiversity on islands, mosquitoes infecting native Hawaiian birds with malaria, and a weed called Palmer amaranth that has become resistant to herbicides and a scourge for some farmers. Each potential use of gene drive carries its own set of risks and benefits, the report says, and should be assessed independently. Even modeling the “cascade of population dynamics and evolutionary processes’’ that would influence the ecological effects, the report noted, requires far more research. Risks include the possibility that a gene drive might jump to another species for which it was not intended, or that the suppression of one undesirable organism will lead to the emergence of another that is even worse. The group recommends “phased testing,’’ which would include safeguards at each step before eventually releasing organisms into the wild, but it also noted the new ethical challenges posed by how to obtain consent from people whose environments might be affected by such a release. “There are few avenues for such participation,” the report noted, “and insufficient guidance on how communities can and should take part. ” Gene drives spread a trait through a population by ensuring that it is passed to virtually all of an individual’s offspring as it reproduces, rather than the usual half. In laboratory experiments, the desired change has appeared in nearly 100 percent of the offspring of flies and mosquitoes. So far, gene drive research has focused largely on mosquitoes that transmit infectious diseases to humans. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which helped pay for the N. A. S. report, has spent some $40 million on a gene drive project aimed at eradicating the species of mosquitoes that spread malaria. Anthony James, a mosquito researcher at the University of California, Irvine, who is among those advocating the use of gene drive to eradicate the Aedes aegypti mosquito that transmits the Zika virus, called the report “reasonable. ’’ “The key thing is there’s no moratorium,” he said. But environmental watchdog groups argue that the report should have recommended that research be halted. Jim Thomas, the program director of the ETC Group in Montreal, said the panel gave short shrift to how to prevent commercial and military interests from misusing the technology, which he said should be placed under the control of the United Nations. And Kevin Esvelt, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology evolutionary biologist who has also pioneered the technology, said the report failed to adequately flag its key risk. “They assume you can safely run a contained field trial,” he said. “But anytime you release an organism with a gene drive system into the wild you must assume there is a significant chance that it will spread — globally — and factor that in. ” | 1 |
November 4, 2016 Landmark Paris Climate Agreement Takes Formal Effect
The most significant international agreement to combat climate change took effect Thursday evening—midnight in Europe—just days before international climate negotiators were set to meet in Morocco to chart a path forward on the issue.
The Paris Agreement’s entry into force comes a month after countries representing 55% of the world’s emissions committed to joining the deal—the level required to put the agreement into action—and less than a year after negotiators from nearly 200 countries agreed to the specifics of the text at the 2015 U.N. climate summit. Next week’s meeting in Marrakech will provide the first opportunity since that summit in Paris for all parties to the agreement to iron out implementation details. | 0 |
Scott Pelley, host of CBS News’ 60 Minutes, embarrassed himself in a Sunday segment about “fake news” — despite having the final cut on a hostile interview with a activist. [Mike Cernovich — a lawyer, independent and a dominant voice on Twitter — built up significant buzz for 60 Minutes by revealing on Thursday he had granted Pelley a interview. In the hours before the live broadcast, Cernovich anticipated that the conversation would be “selectively edited” and published a partial transcript. That concern is based on a long history of network news programs using misleading or downright comical editing to put conservatives in the worst possible light. As the segment aired, Pelley’s opening statement made it clear this story was a smear job: In this last election, the nation was assaulted by impostors masquerading as reporters. They poisoned the conversation with lies on the left and on the right. Many did it to influence the outcome — others just to make a buck. The president uses the term “fake news” to discredit responsible reporting that he doesn’t like. But we’re going to show you how con artists insert truly fake news into the national conversation with fraudulent software that scams your social media account. The stories are fake, but the consequences are real. [emphasis added] Later on, Pelley introduced Cernovich with depicting him, rather unsubtly, like a little boy hunched over his laptop — calling him “a magnet for readers with a taste for stories with no basis in fact”: Even with this setup, Pelley ended up humiliating himself — not his target. Watch the key exchange: That story got so much traction, it had to be denied not only by Clinton’s doctor, but by the National Parkinson’s Foundation. ( ) pic. twitter. — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) March 27, 2017, Pelley brought up an article on Cernovich’s website where a physician, who later outed himself as Orlando anesthesiologist Dr. Ted Noel, argued that an explanation for Clinton’s bizarre physical tics could be Parkinson’s disease. While confronting Cernovich about the oversold headline (“Hillary Clinton Has Parkinson’s Disease, Physician Confirms”) Pelley exposed his own credulous belief in an unproven claim: Cernovich: She had a seizure and froze up walking into her motorcade that day [September 11, 2016]. Pelley: Well, she had pneumonia. I mean — Cernovich: How do you know? Who told you that? Pelley: Well, the campaign told us that. Cernovich: Why would you trust the campaign? Pelley: The point is you didn’t talk to anybody who’d ever examined Hillary Clinton. Cernovich: I don’t take anything Hillary Clinton is gonna say at all as true. I’m not gonna take her on her word. The media says we’re not gonna take Donald Trump on his word. And that’s why we are in these different universes. Pelley has no answer for those six words — “Why would you trust the campaign” — as his entire profession goes berserk with fact checks for every tweet from President Trump. Pelley also seems to forget the fakery that Clinton World attempted hours before its pneumonia statement — with the candidate smiling and waving outside her daughter’s apartment, greeting a little girl, and assuring reporters everything was . Clinton just left her daughters apartment. When asked how she was feeling, Clinton said, ”Great. I’m feeling great.” — Dan Merica (@danmericaCNN) September 11, 2016, Cernovich’s followers — and even some of his biggest detractors — declared the interview a loss for Pelley: … and you can see it in the exact moment Cernovich flipped the interview on Pelley pic. twitter. — Matt Pearce (@mattdpearce) March 27, 2017, @mattdpearce pelley was surprisingly unprepared, — Will Sommer (@willsommer) March 27, 2017, Cernovich is a crazy person and a con man but Pelley walked right into that buzzsaw. — Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) March 27, 2017, shamefully stupid piece connecting cernovich to people who buy twitter bots, — noah kulwin (@nkulw) March 27, 2017, @occhipig Pelley’s response sucked but he’s responding to an item WITH NO BASIS IN FACT. But I’m honestly not here to convince you. — Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) March 27, 2017, Charlie Warzel of BuzzFeed said Pelley “didn’t do his homework on Cernovich … And it showed, despite the fact that CBS got to edit down the video [emphasis added]. ” Cernovich has since published another partial transcript of his conversation with Pelley and called for CBS to release the full video, crediting his appearance with bumping the show’s recent average of 10. 8 million viewers to somewhere between 14 and 16 million viewers. | 1 |
By Padishah , July 23, 2006 at 12:19 am Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)
I must address the complete drivel that was Mr Jeff Gershoff’s comment.
First and foremost, in 2002, with the full backing of the Arab league, Saudi Arabia offered the Israeli’s a peace treaty - I repeat - a peace treaty in the form of the Egyptian and Jordanian ones, stating the formal end to the Arab-Israeli conflict, recognition of Israel, and a whole host of other concessions in return for Israel returning all of the Occupied Territories captured during the 1967 war, and a just solution to the Palestinian humanitarian problem, amongst other concessions.
Generalissimo Sharon outright refused to aknowledge this peace deal, and it withered. US Administration said nothing, the US media allowed the story to die. So your statement:
“Let Hamas and Hezbolah recognize Israels right to exist and there can be peace. Let them keep strapping explosives to themselves and killing women and children, let them keep lobbing missles into Israel and Israel will continue doing what they are doing until one of them cannot get up off the canvas anymore.”
is quite irrelevant, seeing as Hamas was not governing the Palestinian territories, and Hezbollah was not governing Lebanon in 2002. A general Peace deal with the Arab World was allowed to die, and you suggest that Israel will be willing to deal with two entities it thinks are terrorist organisations.
Furthermore, you ask for the Arabs to make the first move. Always, the onus is on the Arab side to make many concessions even before Israel consider negotiation. There is no equal footing with which to negotiate with Israel because Israel will not allow it to be so. History and current events show that even if the Arabs were to accede to all Israeli demands, there is no gaurantee that the Israeli’s will not find some other demand in order to stall, or even to not just ignore Arab overtures out of spite. Indeed, judging from recent events, they seem quite capable of it.
Your statement:
“No one gave a rats ass about the Palestinians when their home land was squalor, flies, and dirt. Israel turned it into a garden and now everyone demands Palestine for the Palestinians.”
seems to imply that imprisonment in an Israeli garden; where your house can be demolished, or your olive and fruit groves be uprooted depending on your heritage, is much better than freedom in your own country, however squalid, fly-ridden or dirty. Furthermore, a land totally at peace would need no-one to give ‘a rat’s ass’ (in your parlance) about it anyway, and is a misrepresentation of the historical situation. Your statement smacks of the colonialist attitude of the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Would you also hold this view for all those people of colour, who were enslaved and brutalised in many instances around the world? Would you believe that the sexual slavery of women practices in some parts of the world somehow beneficial to the women who must suffer those indignities?
It’s obvious from your comment that you harbour a prejudice for Palestinians in particular, and Arabs in general; they aren’t fit for the land they occupy, and only Israeli’s can make the Middle East bloom. Thus, by extension, all Arabs deserve to suffer under the heel of Zionism, for their own good. Corrrect? Does this sound eerily like the whole ‘White Man’s Burden’ trollop that precipitated the excesses of the colonisation of Africa? It certainly does, and it fits with the Israeli mindset as well.
By eleven bravo , July 22, 2006 at 9:24 pm Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)
Israel likes to spy on the country that feeds it to the tune of billions to date and then calls the traitor who spied on us, a hero -just the kind of ally we need in the middle east. By the way, they also like to sell our military technologies even if we tell them not to - China sure appreciates it. Remember, do not forget the USS Liberty. Some Brits certainly remember that these same Israelis that cry holy terror about terrorism were terrorists themselves when the Brits were in Palestine and they to this day are unrepentant for the terrorist acts they performed.
By wildhog , July 22, 2006 at 8:38 pm Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)
WOW, THIS IS AMAZING. AS A VIETNAM VETERAN AND A PATRIOTIC AMERICAN I AM GLAD YOU ARE SPEAKING OUT. WE SURE DONT NEED ALL THIS STRIFE AND BLOODSHED WE SURE HAVE NOT LEARNED OUR LESSON FROM THE PAST. WE HAVE GOT TO REGAIN OUR FREEDOM FROM ISRAELI TYRANY. MAKE NO MISTAKE WE NEED TO STAND UP FOR OUR NATION BEFORE WE ARE EMBROILED IN A CONFLICT WE CANNOT WIN.
By blues , July 22, 2006 at 8:32 pm Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)
Wow Jew Haters Gone Wild said:
Jews have contributed their energy, intellect, resources to every progressive cause in modern history. And yet you so-called progressives just turn your back, raise the chorus of Jew blame, and think youre moral? [....]
Well, yeah, I guess. In some ways, I think it could be argued that the Navajo have done far more.
But the power-mad neozionists that have hijacked the Nation of Israel have been treating all their neighbors worse than cockroaches for decades. And they have warped, probably wrecked our American society in the process. They collaborated with the vicious apartheid Union of South Africa to enable the South African tyrants and themselves to develop nuclear WMDs. So that just doesn’t make me feel friendly toward neozionists.
As far as the question of weather I harbor any actual hatred of Jewish people themselves, you will never begin to be able to discover the answer to that. I could easily bear the fervent wish that every Jew be burned alive in an oven, all the while pretending to love the Jews. Or I could accept Jews as just people who practice a particular religion, bearing no ill-will at all against them, while proclaiming to Jew-hating neighbors that I detest the Jews as much as they do. But you will never be able to begin to decipher what I truly feel.
By Toole , July 22, 2006 at 7:39 pm Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)
Israel and the U.S.A. are, by their present alliance to dominate, taking a walk to the wild side just like Hitler and Nazi Germany.
By Fadel Abdallah , July 22, 2006 at 7:22 pm Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)
To plunger, message # 14774
You piece on 9/11 is well reasoned and makes a lot of sense, and I thank you much for your interst in digging out the truth about this very tragic event and its far-reaching disastrous consequences on the whole world.
There is no hope of finding physical evidence to prove who and how it all happened. This is so for the simple fact that the sophisticated team that planned this inside job made sure to destroy any physical evidence possible.
In light of this, serious thinkers are only left to use their intellectual reasoning and circumstantial evidence to reach an approximation about the facts related to 9/11.
Yours is indeed a very serious analysis, and, most likely, very close to the truth. That’s why I was intrigued by your piece. I was particulary intrigued about your being specific on the Mossad role as a way to blackmail the political establishment. Remember Monica Lewinsky? I theorized, at the time, and wrote about her being an Israeli Mossad agent, planted in the White House to bring about the fall of Clinton, who was getting a little bit sympathysing to solving the Palestinian problem.
Your piece also supports my thinking about 9/11; about which I wrote a short comment somewhere else on the truthdig. In case you have not read my piece, I am attaching it below:
“To Janice A. # 14474:
Youre very smart Janice. Youre one of the few thousands in America and around the world who believe 9/11 was an inside evil job, to create the atmosphere of fear in preparation for the trauma and mind control you talked about.
I simply could not believe and will never believe that some people living in caves and constantly on the run could have carried out such sophisticated operation. This is not to say that Al-Qaeda had not enough hate for America to attempt hurting it in a big way when they could; but from a scientific point of view, know-how and sophisticated human resources, they did not have that, and no small group of enemies will ever have what it takes to prepare and carry out such operation. And imagine that!! The hijackers had only box-cutters as their weapons! From all those on board the hijacked planes, wasnt there a few courageous enough who were willing to get injured and possibly die to prevent a bigger disaster?!!
Elements in the Pentagon, CIA, FBI with possibly a lot of help from the Israeli Mossad must have started working on this just as Bush was put on the throne by the Supreme Court! For Bush and the Neocons to continue ruling the country and taking it in the direction they have taken it, something tragically big must have to take place! Everyone knows, that in every country and society there is that class of people called the merchants of death! For what happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and now Lebanon, 9/11 was a must prerequisite!
Sad as it is to invoke thoughts about the 9/11, I always find consolation to find like-minded people. Thank you Janice for being a free thinker and publicly join the small but privileged group!”
By Mark , July 22, 2006 at 7:20 pm Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)
By the way: if Americans generally ever finally start to figure out what a false ally Israel really is, there is of course the danger of an upwelling of anti-Semitism in America. Let’s look at exactly why this is so.
The essential misunderstanding that may lead to such a horrible development is a failure of Americans to distinguish between Israel and “the Jews”. This is a conflation that Israel and many American Jewish leaders have done much to encourage.
Any strong condemnation of Israel’s actions, of its ethnocratic ideology, or of its interference in our political process, is regularly condemned as inherently “anti-Semitic” by prominent members of the mainstream American Jewish community. Right-wing American Christians perhaps even more extreme than American Jews in their adherence to the notion of Israel’s blameless holiness eagerly echo this charge.
And so, despite the fact that American Jews are in fact over-represented among intellectuals and activists who expose and denounce the crimes of the state of Israel, we may well see such a surge of anti-Semitic backlash in this country, if and when most Americans come to some glimmer of understanding concerning the worse-than-useless US/Israeli “alliance”.
Americans in general are not terribly sophisticated. This is why such a ludicrously one-sided alliance, so destructive to American interests, was ever possible in the first place. And it’s why an anti-Semitic reaction may accompany its end.
If this backlash should happen, then to Israel and to the American Jews who have laid the foundation for it, I have three words from a great Jewish philosopher: AS YE SEW.
By Wow Jew Haters Gone Wild , July 22, 2006 at 6:18 pm Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)
Wow, just read this thing and be amazed at the level of knee jerk jew hating, blindness to history, and desire for the death of Israel. So sad. If these terror groups lay down their weapons and agreed to stop attacking Israel tomorrow, that would be the end of war. If Israel lay down their weapons and agreed to stop hitting back at the terror groups, it would be overrun tomorrow and a new holocaust would ensue. Apparently, that suits the jew haters just fine. Islamic fascism is fascism, and again Jews stand against it while the moral ambivalence or antisemitism of non Jews seeks to guarantee yet another cycle of jew killing. SHAME, SHAME. It’s sad that Israel’s only friend can be found in the Bush government, but that doesn’t make ISrael complicit in anything that Bush does. If you have only one friend and you’re fighting for your life, you don’t question that friendship. More power to Israel in this fight for their life. Look at the numbers of arabs killed by arabs, of non muslims killed by muslims, of the track record of muslims in the world today (whereever there’s trouble, muslims are there trying to dominate and destroy non muslims). Jews have contributed their energy, intellect, resources to every progressive cause in modern history. And yet you so-called progressives just turn your back, raise the chorus of jew blame, and think you’re moral? You better hope that in the end we don’t all get what we deserve.
By Harry H. Snyder III , July 22, 2006 at 4:07 pm Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)
I surely didn’t say anything about Jews crucifying anyone…
HOWEVER crucifiction was hardly exclusively a “Roman thing”
This means of punishment was practiced by Persians, Seleucids, Jews, Carthaginians, among others. There is even some evidence it was practiced in Egypt.
reflex action? by whom?
By John Z , July 22, 2006 at 3:41 pm Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)
Marcia, of course Ishrael wants peace…..a piece of Iraq, a piece of Iran, a piece of Syria and a piece of lebanon. They also have our own government by the balls through, bribery, extortion and threats. I and thouroughly disgusted and sick to my stomach from it all. It is time for a new American revolution. We must: Take our government back from those who have corrupted it for their own benefit, including Ishrael. Prosecute those within the Whore House for betraying our nation, our constitution and its people. The punishment must be severe enough to deter any who might think about doing it again in the future. Stop paying tribute to that miserable little zionist state. No more money period! enough is enough, goddamn it! Congress should get its collective asses kicked, and maybe in the balls as well. Break all ties with Ishrael..they are on their own from now on. That way they will have to behave themselves. As long as they have the U.S. as their rich poodle Ishrael will continue to act like a pitbull. Round up the zionists, MOSSAD, AIPAC and the jew lobby and send them packing back to zionland. Use the laws we have to break up the jewish stranglehold on our media, including the newspapers. There are enough anti monopoly laws with which to use. Please realise I have nothing against people of Judaism. It’s the rabid, racist, zionist who I find to be our own worst enemy. Thank you Tom, for finally coming out with enough guts and patriotism to speak out on this matter. Even our founding fathers spoke out against zionism. Unless we change the course of our nation, we will be “undone”. I fear for my country and for those in the middle east for they are the ones who are the victims of zionist aggression. Now I will wait for the zionists to send their hitmen to my house.
By John F. Butterfield , July 22, 2006 at 12:58 pm Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)
Harry,
Crucifiction was a Roman thing. Jews have often been on the receiving end of brutality. Whether they have more often been teachers of brutality or learners from brutality can be disputed. That they have killed more Arabs in the last 60 years than Arabs have killed Jews in that same time period cannot be disputed. The side that the United States has taken in the disagreement cannot be disputed. It was interesting to see your reflex action.
By blues , July 22, 2006 at 12:34 pm Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)
This article has pushed me beyond some point of critical mass. My world-view will never be the same.
What we are looking at here goes beyond issues like anti- Jewish sentiment, terrorism, capitalism, etc, etc, etc. We have been victims to a vast media conspiracy that has parlayed a typical religious ideal into a powerful, violent cult of death, and allowed that cult to play a key role in the establishment of a fascist regime in the United States. It needs to be called the neocon/ neomedia/ neozionist conspiracy of treason, or something like that.
These pseudo- religious traitriots are destroying America and the rest of the world too, including the people of the Middle East, including the Jewish ones, apparently for sport. This is evil in its purest form. I am stunned.
By Harry H. Snyder III , July 22, 2006 at 5:19 am Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)
John;
Back when crucifiction was occuring in the Middle East the Brits were drawing and quartering folks, the Spanish were killing witches and most of Europe was pre civilized.
I will not be a party to a conversation where we blame one side or the other for this disagreement which clearly has enough blame to cover the northern hemisphere.
I thought the point of Tom’s message was that there are two valid points of view here?
By plunger , July 22, 2006 at 2:03 am Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter) | 0 |
MEXICO CITY — Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the notorious drug lord known as El Chapo who twice slipped out of Mexican prisons and into criminal legend, was extradited to the United States on Thursday night, officials said, drawing to a close a quest to prosecute the head of one of the world’s largest narcotics organizations. A federal court in Mexico denied an appeal by Mr. Guzmán’s lawyers to block the extradition, clearing the way for his transfer to the American authorities in New York, where he faces numerous charges for his role as the chieftain of the Sinaloa cartel. Mr. Guzmán was put on a plane on Thursday in Ciudad Juárez, near the border with Texas, and arrived in the United States on President Obama’s final night in office. According to a Justice Department statement late Thursday, he was flown to Long Island MacArthur Airport in Islip, N. Y. The decision to extradite Mr. Guzmán was an for the Mexican government, which once claimed that he would serve his long sentence in Mexico first. However, after his escape in 2015, when his associates tunneled him out of Mexico’s most secure prison, officials began to reconsider. When he was recaptured early last year, after one of Mexico’s most exhaustive manhunts, the government publicly said it would allow the extradition of Mr. Guzmán, thus relieving itself of the potential embarrassment of another escape and preventing further souring of its relationship with the United States. Mr. Guzmán’s extradition came suddenly, after nearly a year of appeals and legal procedures. Even his own lawyer was surprised. In an interview after the announcement by the Mexican government, the lawyer, José Refugio Rodríguez, said he had only just learned about the extradition. Indeed, he was at the prison where Mr. Guzmán was being held, planning to see his client, when it was locked down for two hours. “I was supposed to visit him today,” he said. “I know nothing of this. ” An American law enforcement official said the United States authorities had not known that the Mexicans were about to hand over Mr. Guzmán until late Thursday afternoon. The official, who requested anonymity to discuss the case, said the “guesstimate” was that the timing of the extradition was “politically motivated. ” The official did not elaborate. Mr. Guzmán — whose nickname, El Chapo, means “Shorty” — was a major trophy for law enforcement officials in both countries. Over the years, as the drug trade blossomed into a industry, he became much more than a mere trafficker. As a with a flair for the dramatic, he became a symbol of Mexico’s broken rule of law, America’s narcotics obsession and the failure of both nations’ drug wars. And yet, amid the anguish caused by Mr. Guzmán — the trail of blood left by his henchmen across swaths of Mexico the addiction crisis fueled by his networks in America — his legend only seemed to grow. In Mexico, he became a folk hero to the masses. In Sinaloa, tales of Mr. Guzmán’s handing out freebies to the poor and covering checks for diners in the restaurants he frequented are commonplace. But his daring escapes cemented his reputation as an outlaw. Mr. Guzmán first managed to break out of a prison in 2001 — according to some accounts, by hiding in a laundry cart. In the ensuing years, while on the run, he seemed always just out of the grasp of the authorities, slipping into secret passages beneath bathtubs or absconding seconds before federal raids. The fascination with Mr. Guzmán stemmed from the fact that one could never really count him out. He perfected the escape hatch, the underground tunnel and the trap door — all tools he used to evade law enforcement during his years on the run, which ended with an arrest in 2014. He sent his engineers to Germany for training, then dispatched them to his homes, where they would outfit closets, bathrooms and refrigerators with secret exits. A pioneer of the tunnel, used to shuttle tens of thousands of tons of drugs into America, he ultimately adapted those feats of secret underground engineering for his escape from the Altiplano prison: a facility in the State of Mexico where he lived in isolation, under surveillance by a camera in his cell. On the night of July 11, 2015, shortly before 9 p. m. Mr. Guzmán stepped into his shower and passed through a small hole in its floor, positioned in the camera’s one blind spot. From there, he descended into a tunnel, equipped with a motorcycle on rails, and raced to freedom. His escape was a stinging embarrassment for the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto, which had trumpeted his capture as a crucial victory in its bloody campaign against the narcotics trade. Again a fugitive, Mr. Guzmán found the time to rendezvous with film stars, including Sean Penn, to discuss a biopic about his life. But his freedom was . After a manhunt that involved more than 2, 500 people, he was seized in the town of Los Mochis in early 2016 after crawling out of a sewer. Once he was back in prison, many worried that he would escape once more, prompting the authorities to rotate him from cell to cell and, eventually, to send him up north, to the border with Texas. The general belief is that, in the United States, El Chapo’s antics will be much harder to pull off. Though his reputation may not diminish, his chances of escape, or acquittal, are drastically lower there, experts say. Mr. Guzmán faces charges stemming from six separate indictments in the United States. In the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn, where he is expected to face prosecution, he is charged with the manufacture and distribution of a range of drugs, the use of firearms, money laundering and running an ongoing criminal enterprise. The indictment, first filed in 2009, has been updated three times since then. In a statement on Thursday night, the United States Justice Department said it extended “its gratitude to the government of Mexico for their extensive cooperation and assistance in securing the extradition of Guzmán Loera to the United States. ” In ridding itself of Mr. Guzmán, the Mexican government has lifted at least one giant weight from its shoulders: that of keeping and successfully prosecuting the notorious escape artist. He is departing, however, at a time of deep political unrest in the country, as protests over an increase in gasoline prices continue and corruption scandals, as well as rising crime, nag at the nation’s image. The American Donald J. Trump, has made threatening Mexico over trade and immigration a center of his platform. It is unclear whether the decision to extradite Mr. Guzmán the day before Mr. Trump’s inauguration was connected in any way with the hostile tone the has adopted toward Mexico. “The fact that we delivered him to Obama is a clear political message that says this is a government we have long collaborated and worked closely with,” said Jorge Chabat, an expert on security at CIDE, a Mexico City research institution. “By not waiting to send him to Trump after his inauguration, it is a subtle statement saying, ‘We could do this for you, too, in the future, if we have a good relationship. ’” “If not, there won’t be any other powerful narco traffickers extradited,” he said. | 1 |
2016 presidential campaign by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Democrats used to value things like global peace and justice in the workplace. But, for decades they have given their votes to warmongers and job-exporters. This week, they are mourning the defeat of a politician they once would have despised. In January, lots of Black Democrats will cry over the exit of a president who “won by making himself palatable to white people while also taking advantage of undeserved black pride.” Freedom Rider: Obama’s Hollow Legacy by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
“The sight of Barack and Michelle hosting a state dinner was enough to make black hearts swoon.”
Obama’s legacy is in tatters, and that is good news. Donald Trump’s victory was not just a win over Hillary Clinton, but against Democratic Party policies that silenced the rank and file. For years Democrats became convinced that the only means of keeping Republicans at bay was to go along with their party leadership without complaint. If they wanted to expand trade deals that stole workers’ jobs, so be it. The people who marched against the invasion of Iraq folded their tents when Democrats became the party of endless war. When Obama promoted austerity and “grand bargains” with Republicans not a word was uttered. Even Black Lives Matter refused to point out that the Obama Justice Department left killer cops unpunished.
Barack Obama is nothing if not consistent. While Democrats take to the streets in protest against president elect Trump, Obama declares that the man he once called unfit is not an ideologue, but a “pragmatist.” No one should be surprised about the conciliatory tone. Obama never had a problem with Republicans. They may have obstructed him, but he was always happy to assist them because he wasn’t really opposed to their policies.
The most obvious example of Obama’s lack of substance was his relationship with black Americans. His disdain and contempt for the people who loved him the most was clear to anyone who paid attention. Jokes about “cousin Pookie” and parents serving fried chicken for breakfast should have been seen as the racist screeds they clearly were. But the desire to see a black face in a prominent place endures to our detriment.
“The people who marched against the invasion of Iraq folded their tents when Democrats became the party of endless war.”
Obama won by making himself palatable to white people while also taking advantage of undeserved black pride. Hillary Clinton would be the president elect if the new voters who emerged in 2008 had remained committed to the Democratic Party. But their loyalty was to the imagery of Barack Obama as president. Their joy was confined to seeing him meet the queen of England alongside his first lady or disembarking from Air Force One with his signature swagger. The sight of Barack and Michelle hosting a state dinner was enough to make black hearts swoon. Policy initiatives need not intrude upon the love fest.
The end result of this unrequited and superficial love was six million fewer votes cast for Hillary Clinton in 2016 than for Obama in 2012. The apocryphal cousin Pookie stayed home and no one should be surprised. There is no secret to keeping voters engaged. They are engaged if their needs are met. Deliver for voters and they deliver in the voting booth.
Even the unpopular and shady Hillary Clinton could have won Michigan if the people of Flint had received the federal help they needed so badly. Not only did the Obama environmental protection agency allow the beleaguered city to be given contaminated water, but he showed up for a photo opportunity and did nothing else as residents suffered. He drank a glass of water, posed for the cameras and returned to Washington. The people of Flint are still living under conditions Americans think of as being “Third World.”
“Democratic voters must ask themselves why they said nothing when their party promoted trade deals that were against their interests.”
The response to Trump’s victory should mean more than protesting policies the Democrats now have little ability to fight. This moment presents an opportunity for much needed introspection and mea culpas. Millions of people did more than just accept Democratic Party policy. They supported actions they would have rejected if carried out by a Republican or a white Democrat. They supported Muammar Gaddafi when Republicans were president but averted their eyes to his murder when committed by a Democrat. They even voted for the person who bragged about the killing. Democratic voters must ask themselves why they said nothing when their party promoted trade deals that were against their interests. Ultimately that acquiescence led to defeat at Trump’s hands.
The Obama team’s propaganda skills were legendary but the day of reckoning revealed the emptiness of what they produced. The corporate media acted like scribes under White House direction and declared that Russia was an enemy state and its president a 21 st century Hitler. Now it is Donald Trump, the self-promoting reality television star, who declares his willingness to talk to his Russian counterpart. It is the sort of behavior that Democrats once valued.
Democratic presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton began the tradition of getting Democrats to support what they didn’t like. Obama perfected the art, which ultimately led to the debacle. He will certainly not be the last to tempt the party faithful but in 2016 Democrats sold their souls and ended up with nothing. Defeat creates the most hollow feelings of all. Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com. | 0 |
Putin: Russia is not going to attack anyone Pravda.Ru Russia is not going to attack anyone - this is silly and unimaginable, said Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking Thursday Vaildai Club. The topic of the meeting is "The philosophy of international development for the new world."According to Putin, the West has been producing a great deal of myths about the "notorious Russian military threat." "Indeed, this is a profitable activity, as one can obtain new military budgets and bend allies for the interests of the only superpower, one can also expand NATO and take the infrastructure of the alliance, its troops and hardware, closer to our borders," Putin said. President Putin called NATO an obsolete structure that was established in the times of the cold war. One does not see any adaptation of the alliance to new conditions, even though they talk about it all the time, Putin said. He also noted that there are continuous attempts being made to make the OSCE a tool to serve someone's foreign policy interests, despite the fact that the organization still remains an important mechanism to ensure European and transatlantic security. As a result, this mechanism works for nothing, the president said. Putin stressed out that Russia did not aspire to global domination and expansion."There are many countries in the world that, like Russia, can rely on thousand-year history. We have learned to value our identity, freedom and independence. At the same time, we do not seek either global domination, expansion or confrontation with anyone," Putin said. Pravda.Ru | 0 |
WASHINGTON — President Trump is expected to issue on Monday a new version of his executive order on immigration that excludes Iraq, a key ally in the fight against the Islamic State, from a list of predominantly Muslim countries whose citizens will face temporary restrictions on travel to the United States. The new order would temporarily stop all refugee admissions to the United States, said a senior administration official familiar with it. The previous version included a ban on all refugees other than Syrians, who were barred indefinitely. The new order removes the extra restrictions on Syrian refugees. It is unclear how long the temporary ban would last. The earlier order has been blocked by the courts the change on refugees is intended to help the new version withstand legal scrutiny. The new order would not affect people with green cards or those holding a valid visa at the time the order is signed. While some provisions in the new order have been relaxed, Mr. Trump and immigration in the administration are expected to assert that the new version is no less strict because it retains a temporary ban on refugees. The senior administration official said Iraq had been removed from the travel ban after Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson had discussions with the Iraqi government about its vetting processes. The Iraqi officials insisted that their vetting system was thorough enough on its own. Some American officials had expressed concern that the restrictions would have affected Iraqis who had worked with the American military as interpreters or in other roles and sought to come to the United States. The official said the executive order is expected to be signed on Monday. David Lapan, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, referred all questions about the new executive order to the White House. Mr. Trump’s previous order — which temporarily barred visitors from Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Iran, Somalia, Libya and Yemen — set off chaos and confusion at airports around the world. The new order retains a temporary travel ban on the six countries other than Iraq. After the first order was issued in January, passengers, many of them with green cards that allow them to live and work in the United States, were barred from flights into the country. Other people with visas were suddenly unsure if they would be allowed into the United States, and many of those who managed to arrive were stopped at airports. While the new restrictions are intended to withstand legal scrutiny, they are likely to set off similar court challenges. The previous executive order was criticized by several former diplomatic and security officials, who said there was no national security purpose for the travel ban. Trump administration officials, including John F. Kelly, the homeland security secretary, defended the previous restrictions, saying they were needed because the countries listed did not have vetting systems in place that could guarantee that immigrants and other travelers from those nations did not pose a threat to the United States. “I believe that the travel pause from all of those countries will give us time to evaluate those countries and the information they can provide us, which will ultimately lead to safety for the American people,” Mr. Kelly told a Senate committee last month. But an intelligence assessment from Mr. Kelly’s own department said there was little evidence that those travelers posed an unusual threat. The report found that “country of citizenship is unlikely to be a reliable indicator of potential terrorist activity. ” The assessment, first reported by The Associated Press, found that only a small number of people from the seven countries had been involved in activities in the United States since the Syrian civil war began in 2011. The report also found that in the past six years, the terrorism threat had reached much more widely than the seven countries listed: People from 26 countries had been “inspired” to carry out attacks in the United States, it said. The new order is the first of several security measures planned for America’s borders. Mr. Trump has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to hire an additional 5, 000 Border Patrol agents, and Customs and Border Protection has begun accepting design proposals for a wall along the border with Mexico. Mr. Kelly said the administration was considering requiring foreign visitors to provide lists of the websites they have visited. This would enable intelligence officials “to get on those websites to see what they’re looking at,” he told senators last month. The United States also made changes to the visa waiver program in 2016 that made it harder for travelers to enter the United States from Europe if they had dual citizenship from Iran, Iraq, Sudan or Syria, or had visited one of those countries, or Libya, Somalia or Yemen, since 2011. | 1 |
Posted on October 31, 2016 by Frank Scott
“The greatest objective of mankind in this century should be to eradicate imperialism and capitalism as models for society.”—Evo Morales
As we approach the end of our most recent contamination of the ideal of national democracy with possibly its worst example we would do well to consider the words of a democratically elected leader of a nation that could teach us about the word’s meaning.
A representative of the real majority of his people, a former farm worker who rose to the presidency on the shoulders of ordinary Bolivians and not the bank books of his nation’s rich, Evo Morales and his supporters understand more about the state of the world than many of us understand about the state of our nation. Whichever of the ruling parties’ unpopular wretches is elected on November 8, they will contradict Morales’s words, possibly with more savagery than ever before, and the need for a political economic transformation of America and the world will become greater than ever before.
Our ruling oligarchs have reacted with a vengeance in suppressing two dangerously democratic threats to their dominance. First, Bernie Sanders leading a popular movement motivated by social desire, and second a more ego centered individualist struggle led by an economic billionaire and intellectual pauper, usually a winning combination in the empire of capital but not this time. In fact, the populace has received daily bulletins about Donald Trump’s outrageous practice of capitalism and its profitable by-products of division by dollar, race and sex. Who knew?
If we are to believe polls which measure how much we absorb the message of our consciousness controllers, the assault on our collective mentality has never been as blatant, corrupt, single minded and seemingly successful; we will soon coronate a historic first for the empire as the glass ceiling above the CEO presiding over the slaughters perpetrated by our warfare state will be broken and a woman will lead the foreign policy that creates many people of color: blood red.
The further destruction of the Muslim world and the creation of more terrorists who murder us because we murder them will continue. Heart breaking photos of a Palestinian, Yemeni, Iraqi or Syrian parent carrying what used to be a son or daughter, reduced to a bloody pulp form of unidentifiable gender fluidity by an Israeli, French, British or German aimed, American created bomb, will not go viral. Only those dramatic and sometimes staged photos of alleged victims of America’s adversaries are assured such coverage, while we beseech one and all to take in refugees created by our destruction of their nations.
Frighteningly worse for all of us than terrorist attacks would be a nuclear war that could happen if Russia reacts with as much arrogance and stupidity as the USA and responds to menacing provocation on its borders to enter such a confrontation that could spell the end of everything.
Hopefully, there will be enough Americans who identify with humanity’s wholeness and refuse forced acceptance of membership in a fictitious minority with warped identity sense that makes it somehow less or more politically correct by having different genitals, skin tones or belief systems and remaining oblivious to being members of the one and only race: human.
Historic problems dating back to the nation’s origins in being brutally stolen from the original inhabitants, built on slave and indentured servant labor abused in order to create wealth enough to trickle down on what many of the descendants found a middle class status in a dream society that offered material hope to many but depended on continued exploitation of many more to maintain a lie. We are a nation built at the expense of the semi-voluntary poor thrown out of Europe, Asia and Africa to become supporters of a national dream nearing a nightmare for too many and needing a wakeup call from the world, in the words of Morales.
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, our supposed ideal, obviously has nothing to do with the present owned and operated by great wealth entity that can be defined as democracy the way that rape can be defined as love. But as long as great wealth maintains dominance and keeps democratic power from the rest of us in part by controlling what we think we know, genuine concern about government can be played as a skirmish between the supporters of a market without any control and supporters of a market with minimal control, both assuring that wealth will be defended, only differing in how much of it will accrue to the minority rulers, how quickly it will occur and how acceptable that will be found by the poorly informed.
Neither government nor banking nor finance will work for the majority of the people until the people create democracy in deed as opposed to the sham we have. As long as minorities, growing smaller in number as their private wealth grows larger, are allowed to dominate there is no difference between modern capitalism and ancient feudalism. We now tolerate billionaires whose material wealth and power would stagger some phony royal/god/pharaoh of the ancient past and our innumeracy in failing to understand that—how the hell does anyone have a billion dollars while more than a billion humans survive (?) on not much more than a couple of dollars a day?—while we are fed a steady diet of consumerist garbage by these rulers can only change when we grow angry enough at what is happening to the planet we live on and most of its people by having it and us treated as products in a free market where nothing is free, all to benefit them while we carry the ever more staggering cost. For openers, we ought not to vote for the lesser evil deadly duo but the greater good of Jill Stein and the Greens and then join any group opting for change that is systemic and not simply individual.
The Trump and San
Frank Scott‘s political commentary and satire is online at legalienate.blogspot.com | 0 |
The Times of Israel reports: US Defense Secretary James Mattis on Friday said Iran is sticking to the terms of the nuclear deal, adding that the 2015 agreement between the Islamic Republic and world powers “still stands and that’s all I can say about it. ”[Speaking in Tel Aviv alongside his Israeli counterpart Avigdor Liberman, Mattis said the Iranians “appear to be living up to their part of the agreement. ” The nuclear deal “continues to be in force,” the Pentagon chief said, However, he also warned “that in no way mitigates against or excuses the other Iranian activities in the region including the war in Yemen that grinds on and what they’re doing in Syria” to keep Syrian President Bashar Assad in power. “But the agreement on nuclear issues still stands and that’s all I can say about it,” he added. Read more here. | 1 |
CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — Five men shot dead in a barbershop, their bodies slumped near the doorway. A decapitated body dumped next to a housing development. Three others killed behind a pool hall and several more in a bar called Tres Mentiras, or Three Lies. By the end of October, at least 96 people had been killed in the border city of Ciudad Juárez. It was the highest monthly tally since 2012, sowing fears of a return to the gangland mayhem that once earned this city the title of the most violent place in the world. Back then, the bloodshed in this city was in a class of its own. But now it has company, with other Mexican cities that are as bad or worse. In the last year, the number of homicides around Mexico has soared to levels not seen in several years. In the first 10 months of this year, there were 17, 063 homicide cases in Mexico, already more than last year’s total and the highest tally since 2012. The relapse in security has unnerved Mexico and led many to wonder whether the country is on the brink of a bloody, war between criminal groups. “It’s a trauma, it’s a kind of fear, among all of us who saw a killing, who heard gunshots,” said Carlos Nájera, an activist in Juárez. “Everyone’s worried about a slide to the past. ” The surge in violence around Mexico reflects an increasingly volatile criminal landscape and the limitations of North America’s counternarcotics strategy, and it has contributed to the plummeting approval ratings of President Enrique Peña Nieto. A longstanding cornerstone of the Mexican government’s fight against organized crime — backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in American aid — has been to aim at the kingpins, on the theory that cutting off the head will wither the body. But the tactic has helped to fragment monolithic, hierarchical criminal enterprises into an array of groups that are more violent and uncontrollable, analysts said. The rising insecurity poses a problem for Donald J. Trump, who has offered few insights into how he intends to approach the battle against and crime in the hemisphere. His campaign language suggested a strategy of containment, its centerpiece being the construction of a wall along the American border to thwart drugs and illegal immigration. Some analysts worry that, as part of this approach, Mr. Trump may withdraw the limited American support for initiatives in Mexico that seek to strengthen the rule of law, fortify state institutions and repair communities damaged by crime. But a American approach may only give more space to violent criminal groups in Mexico and elsewhere, destabilizing the region, analysts said. “A fortress America response is probably going to prove insufficient very quickly,” said Alejandro Hope, a leading security analyst in Mexico. He noted that all the heroin consumed annually in the United States, most of which comes from Mexico, “would fit into 1, 800 to 2, 000 pieces of luggage. ” “You don’t stop that with a wall,” he said. The Mexican government has been battling drug traffickers for decades, but the fight acquired new intensity in 2006 when the president at the time, Felipe Calderón, declared “war” on organized crime. The Mexican military was partly successful in that approach, capturing or killing many of the drug traffickers in the country. Monthly tallies of homicide cases, after climbing to a peak of 2, 131 in May 2011, eventually began to fall. Juárez saw some of the worst of the violence, becoming a symbol of Mexican dysfunction and tragedy: At the peak of the bloodshed, in October 2010, the city suffered 359 homicides, according to the Security and Justice Working Group in Juárez, an independent task force that includes representatives of civil society and government. But an intensive response — including the saturation of the city by government security forces and a robust engagement by civil society — helped turn things around. The national kingpin strategy, however, fell short in one important respect: Drug trafficking continued to flourish. And as leaders fell, the large drug organizations splintered into smaller criminal gangs, which waged battles of succession that led to greater violence. “These groups, if you just kind of leave them alone, they’re very powerful,” said Steven Dudley, of InSight Crime, a foundation that studies organized crime in the Americas. “And if you mess with them and they fragment, they’re multiple, unwieldy beasts. ” Since late 2014, the homicide numbers have trended upward, an increase that Eduardo Guerrero, a security consultant in Mexico City, has named “the second wave of violence. ” September — with 1, 976 homicide cases around the country — was the deadliest month in Mexico since May 2012, and one of the deadliest on record, according to Mexico’s Interior Ministry. And while the violence that was a part of Mr. Calderón’s presidency was mostly concentrated in a few places, like Juárez, the recent rise in homicides has been dispersed. Violence has erupted in places that had experienced relatively little of it until recently, including Colima, a Pacific Coast state, and the state of Guanajuato, a growing hub of the automotive industry and the location of San Miguel de Allende, a popular tourist destination for foreigners. In September 2015, for instance, only two states had more than 100 homicide victims over the course of the month. In September 2016, 11 states suffered more than 100. Though the clashes between remnant drug groups are widely thought to be a significant cause in the rising violence, analysts and government officials also point to other factors, including changes in political control of state and municipal governments after recent elections. As old political power structures make way for new ones, cooperation between the corrupt authorities and criminal groups fall apart, analysts said. “Groups try to mobilize themselves to have a better position to negotiate with the incoming government,” Mr. Guerrero said. “The uncertainty of the criminals is very high, so their best weapon in the negotiations is to ‘heat up the plaza. ’” In addition, criminal organizations have diversified their business models, branching out into extortion, theft, kidnapping, prostitution, illegal gambling, intellectual property piracy and fuel theft, analysts said. “What you have is a transition in the criminal underworld that is from relatively identifiable, hierarchically structured criminal organizations whose business was mainly about smuggling drugs to the United States, to diversified, smaller gangs, more local in scope, more predatory in nature,” Mr. Hope said. But while the nature of Mexico’s criminal operations has shifted, the government response has not, he said. “They’re great at capturing El Chapo but not so good at addressing the extortion of mom and pop stores in Guerrero,” he said, referring to the captured drug kingpin Joaquín Guzmán Loera. In August, the administration of Mr. Peña Nieto announced a plan to reinforce security in 50 municipalities that account for 40 percent of the country’s homicides. The government has yet to name the municipalities and for months offered few details about the strategy. But in response to written questions this week, the Interior Ministry said the plan involved the coordination of local, state and federal authorities and included the deployment of forces in each of the 50 municipalities, among other measures. Even while acknowledging the increase in homicides, officials have apparently sought to play it down. At a news conference last month, Renato Sales Heredia, the national security commissioner, dismissed the increase as “not substantial. ” His office later clarified in an interview that he had not been referring to this year’s surging violence, but to the smaller increase from 2014 to 2015. Officials have also denied that the problem is widespread. In its responses to questions this week, the Interior Ministry said that 42 percent of homicides in Mexico were concentrated in 2 percent of the nation’s municipalities, though it did not provide a time frame for that statistic. The responses have left many analysts to conclude that the administration lacks a coherent strategy to address the problem. “The only thing they do is to confront the consequences but not the causes, and they do so in a very marginal way,” said Francisco Rivas, director of the Observatorio Nacional Ciudadano, a group that studies security and justice issues in Mexico. Still, administration officials privately express deep concern about the rising numbers and even the possibility of a return to an drug war. In Juárez, that possibility is palpable. This year’s increase in homicides has aggravated a kind of communal stress disorder, even if the numbers are still well off the peak of the violence that engulfed this city several years ago — dropping to 33 in November from 96 in October, according to El Diario de Ciudad Juárez. “They say Juárez is reborn, it’s new. Horrible lies!” said Sergio Meza de Anda, director of Plan Estratégico de Juárez, a organization. “The underlying causes persist. ” He rattled off problems as much national as local, including corruption, impunity, weak public institutions, poverty, income inequality and insufficient development. “The state is an accomplice to the disorder,” he said. The Rev. Mario Manríquez, a prominent priest in Juárez, has seen the cost of neglect on the streets and in the homes of his parish in a southern neighborhood of the city — the broken families, the lives cut short. “The violence never went away,” he said. On the edge of the park in front of his church, he has built a monument to the victims of the city’s drug war. It is covered with plaques bearing the names of some of those who have been killed. The memorial is only three years old, but he is already running out of space for new names. | 1 |
The International Monetary Fund threw its support behind its leader, Christine Lagarde, on Monday despite her conviction in a French court on charges of misusing public funds. With international elites and their institutions facing populist criticism amid political and social change in the United States and Europe, the 24 directors of the fund decided that this was not the time to leave the I. M. F. rudderless. Earlier on Monday, the Cour de Justice de la République, a French court that considers cases against current and former government ministers, found Ms. Lagarde guilty of criminal charges linked to the misuse of public funds when she was France’s finance minister nearly a decade ago. But the court did not impose a fine or a sentence. In a statement, the directors of the I. M. F. said they had considered the court’s decisions and had “full confidence in the managing director’s ability to continue to effectively carry out her duties. ” Yet the verdict — with its potential to tarnish Ms. Lagarde as a leader — came at a critical juncture for the I. M. F. Founded and largely managed by Europeans and Americans, the fund oversees a global economy in which countries like China are seeking a greater role. Ms. Lagarde is the fourth of the last six leaders to come from France, and the difficult time the I. M. F. has had in anticipating, as well as reacting to, the European debt crisis has caused some to wonder whether the time has come to appoint a leader. I. M. F. doctrine, which advocates free trade and austerity for countries in financial difficulties, has been criticized as elitist and not sufficiently in tune with the populist movements sweeping the globe. For now, the fund must confront more immediate challenges. With Britain leaving the European Union, Italy’s future in the eurozone perhaps in doubt and the possibility of global trade wars being set off by Donald J. Trump, some have said the steady, experienced hand of Ms. Lagarde was needed more than ever. “She has been a very effective leader,” said Edwin M. Truman, a specialist in international finance formerly at the Federal Reserve and the United States Treasury. “Yes, there are big questions about the fund’s future. But for her to have to step down now — well, that would be complicated. ” Jacob J. Lew, the Treasury secretary, expressed the Obama administration’s support for Ms. Lagarde, saying that “she is a strong leader of the I. M. F. and we have every confidence in her ability to guide the fund at a critical time for the global economy. ” For the Trump administration, “I don’t think this kind of ethical question is likely to be the highest priority,” Mr. Truman said. While the I. M. F. and other global institutions did not figure in the presidential debate, Mr. Trump repeatedly criticized a “global power structure” that fixed the economy against workers. “At bottom, it’s all about French politics,” Mr. Truman said. Members of the I. M. F. board were well aware that Ms. Lagarde was facing trial in her native France over allegations that occurred when she was the finance minister in the administration of Nicolas Sarkozy. The consensus among the directors was that Ms. Lagarde’s transgressions occurred when she was not at the fund — in contrast to those of her predecessor, Dominique — and since taking charge in 2011, she had proved to be a leader capable of presenting a softer side of the fund while fighting hard to bolster its legitimacy in the aftermath of the financial crisis. More so than her predecessors, Ms. Lagarde has pushed the fund to be more aggressive in taking up the cause of women and focusing attention on growing issues of inequality around the world. Over the last year and a half, she has also led a forceful public critique of Europe’s refusal to offer Greece debt relief in return for the difficult economic changes the country has been making. Nevertheless, while Ms. Lagarde may have retained the backing of her board for the moment, over the longer term, her French legal problems may have hurt her most valuable asset — her carefully constructed public persona. “She was a breath of fresh air, someone representing true change from the past,” said Peter Doyle, a former economist at the fund and now an outspoken critic. “Now she is just another tainted European leader. ” Those are tough words. But economists note that the fund’s core mission of requiring financially ailing countries to reform their economies and fight corruption demands credibility and reputation of the highest order. And that starts at the top, with its leader — especially one who is as widely known as Ms. Lagarde. “It would be complacent if not delusional to say there will be no impact on the institution,” said Nicolas Véron, a specialist on international economics at the Bruegel Institute in Brussels. “The only question is how big is the impact — and how does it compare with the need for stability. ” Ms. Lagarde’s legal issues in France have dogged her work at the fund since she was appointed in 2011. She took over as managing director after Mr. resigned following accusations that he sexually assaulted a maid in a New York City hotel. The case against Ms. Lagarde centered on Bernard Tapie, a former entertainer and owner of Adidas who had previously been jailed on corruption charges. Mr. Tapie accused the lender Crédit Lyonnais, in which the French state had a stake at the time, of cheating him when it oversaw the sale of his share in the sportswear empire in 1993. Years of costly legal battles ensued. In 2007, Ms. Lagarde sent the dispute to a private arbitration authority that awarded Mr. Tapie more than 400 million euros, or $420 million at current exchange rates, in damages and interest, to be paid by the state. The court did not fault Ms. Lagarde for approving the arbitration, but it ruled that she had been negligent for not appealing the decision. The court, noting that a judge had previously invalidated the payout in a 2015 ruling and that she had “national and international” stature, decided not to punish Ms. Lagarde and spared her a criminal record. Speaking to reporters after the hearing, Ms. Lagarde’s lawyer, Patrick Maisonneuve, said he had a “mixed” reaction to the verdict. “On the one hand, she is found responsible, but given the circumstances, given the responsibilities that Ms. Lagarde had at the time — in 2008, we were in a major economic crisis — the court decided that it would not sentence Ms. Lagarde to anything,” he said. Ms. Lagarde’s lawyers can appeal the verdict before France’s highest criminal court, the Cour de Cassation, on procedural grounds. But Mr. Maisonneuve suggested she might not, because no punishment was meted out. Ms. Lagarde did not attend the latest hearing on Monday, but was in Paris last week for the case. | 1 |
ISIS Takes Out M1A Abrams Tank with American TOW Missile (video) ‹ › Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist, is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror. He is Host of TRUTH JIHAD RADIO ; a hard driving weekly LIVE call in radio show. He also has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications. Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin, where he ran for Congress in 2008. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, author, and talk radio host. Top 10 reasons to be a holocaust denier By Kevin Barrett on October 29, 2016 It is possible not only to survive, but to actually thrive as a “holocaust denier.” Here are the top ten benefits of being so labeled.
By Kevin Barrett , Veterans Today Editor
It is very, very easy to become a “holocaust denier.”
I have never denied any holocausts. All I did was say that it looked like Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and their friends did 9/11. Out of nowhere, the ADL and B’nai Brith and their ilk all started screaming at me: “Why are you saying THAT, you anti-Semitic holocaust denier?!”
I was labeled a “supporter of holocaust deniers” on my Wikipedia page, even though I knew nothing about the “holocaust deniers” that some blogger claimed I supported.
That was roughly from 2006 to 2013. For all those years I couldn’t get my Wikipedia entry changed, even though it was absurdly false and referenced an unknown blogger as the source. Remove the lie, and it would be back up in hours, if not minutes.
Then I was officially labeled a “holocaust denier” myself – for the first time as far as I know – by Jonathan Kay in his book Among the Truthers . Kay cites no evidence whatsoever that I have ever denied any holocausts.
Like Professor Anthony Hall—who was suspended from his tenured Full Professorship at the University of Lethbridge because someone planted a “genocidal holocaust denying” image on his Facebook page —I support open debate on all holocausts , and all other issues as well.
Let me repeat: I don’t deny anything. I just support open debate.
So, using ADL/B’nai Brith nomenclature, I guess that makes me (in their eyes) a “holocaust denier.”
Since I had better make the best of it, here is a list of the most wonderful things about being a “holocaust denier.” Top 10 Reasons to Be a Holocaust Denier
10) Incessantly bombarded with holocaust memorials, holocaust museums, and holocaust references in popular culture, you won’t have to get angry and gloomy and depressed and feel guilty (if you are not a Jew) or paranoid (if you are a Jew) but instead can shrug your shoulders and say, “It probably wasn’t quite THAT bad” and go about your business in a normal frame of mind. The cumulative effect of missing out on all that depression, anger, and guilt will add at least ten years to your life expectancy.
9) You can retire early and enjoy hobbies and gardening, since YOU WILL NEVER WORK IN THIS TOWN AGAIN. With all that extra life expectancy, you will have a very long and productive retirement.
8) The good news is that when holocaust denial finally becomes “cool” you will have gotten there first. The bad news is that your retirement may have to continue for many decades for you to live so long.
7) Holocaust denial is rapidly growing industry with openings for authors, documentary filmmakers, persecution victims, and false flag provocateurs for the ADL (the latter being by far the best-paying category).
6) You will lose all your “friends” who were neither terribly smart nor your friends. Good riddance!
5) You may get a chance to rub shoulders with famous people whose lives have recently been glamorized by Hollywood, such as David Irving.
4) When you become an erudite and prolific holocaust denying scholar, you can get a job in the field of Holocaust Studies. Since it is in Iran, you will need to be fluent in Farsi.
3) You can visit David Cole and partake of some of the stash he saved from his Republican Party Animal days . But be careful, since it seems to cause 9/11 truth denial and other symptoms of possible brain damage .
2) Your intrepid holocaust denying utterances will thrill your friends and mortify your enemies.
1] European governments will love you so much that next time you take a vacation there, they will insist that your vacation continue indefinitely, and they will even provide you with free food and housing. Related Posts: | 0 |
During one critical exchange at today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on FBI oversight, FBI Director James B. Comey testified about why the intelligence community purportedly believed that Russia favored Donald Trump for U. S. president over Hillary Clinton. [Comey confirmed that the basis for the intelligence community’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin allegedly wanted Trump in office was not because the billionaire was, as Sen. Al Franken claimed without citing any evidence, “ensnared in” Russia’s “web of patronage. ” Instead, the FBI chief provided two primary reasons for Russia allegedly favoring Trump over Clinton during the 2016 presidential race. One reason, according to Comey, was that Putin “hated” Clinton and would have favored any Republican opponent. The second reason, Comey explained, was that Putin made an assessment that it would be easier to make a deal with a businessman than someone from the political class. Comey’s statements provide a rare window into the intelligence community’s assessments about Russia and Trump. The comments are a far cry from the conspiracies alleging Putin held blackmail information over the billionaire. In fact, in the exchange, Comey refused to lend any weight to those claims. Those conspiracies were fueled by a controversial dossier alleging collusion between Russia and Trump’s presidential campaign. The dossier contains wild and unproven claims about Trump and sordid sexual acts, including the claim that Trump hired prostitutes and had them urinate on a hotel room bed. In today’s exchange, Franken stated that “the FBI, CIA and the NSA all concluded that Russia did in fact interfere in the 2016 election in order to, quote, help Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton. And the agencies concluded that the Russians had a clear preference for President Trump. ” Franken asked, “What is your assessment of why the Russian government had a clear preference for President Trump?” Comey replied: The intelligence communities’ assessment had a couple of parts with respect to that. One is he wasn’t Hillary Clinton, who Putin hated and wanted to harm in any possible way, and so he was her opponent, so necessarily they supported him. And then also this second notion that the intelligence community assessed that Putin believed he would be more able to make deals, reach agreements with someone with a business background than with someone who’d grown up in more of a government environment. Not satisfied with Comey’s response, Franken further probed whether the intelligence community believed Russia wanted Trump in office because of Trump’s business interests, claiming that Trump “had already been ensnared in their web of patronage. ” Franken asked: OK, well, I’m curious about just how closely Russia followed the Kremlin playbook when it meld (ph) in our democracy, specifically whether the Russians had a preference for President Trump because he had already been ensnared in their web of patronage — web of patronage is a quote from the report. Is it possible that in the Russian’s views — view Trump’s business interests would make him more amenable to cooperating with them, quote, more disposed to deal with Russia as the I. C. report says? Comey replied, “That was not the basis for the I. C.’s assessment. ” 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 |
Sunday on CBS’s “Face The Nation,” while discussing the details of President Donald Trump executive order halting access to the United States for immigrants from seven countries, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said, “Perhaps we need to take it further. ” Priebus said, “Hang on a second, the order also says persecuted Muslims have priority as well. That is a piece that is just getting totally — however you want to call it, misreported or not fully reported. It doesn’t just say Christians it also says persecuted Muslims get priority as well. This is not a Muslim ban. All this is identifying seven countries. The reason we chose the seven countries, those were the seven countries that the Congress and Obama administration identified as the seven countries being the most identifiable with dangerous terrorism taking place in their country. You can point to other countries with similar problems like Pakistan and others. Perhaps we need to take it further. But for now, immediate steps, pulling the off is to do further vetting for people traveling in and out of the countries. This is an 80 percent issue. ” | 1 |
In the world of pop music, women are enjoying a moment of dominance. Beyoncé, with her towering album and short film “Lemonade,” rewrote the playbook (again) in April. Adele’s album “25” has soared since its release about a year ago, selling more than 10 million copies in the United States alone. The two artists will square off in the top categories at the Grammy Awards in February. But in a lacerating speech on Friday, Madonna — the female touring artist of all time, who in March wrapped up a tour that took in $170 million — resisted the notion that all was well and fair for women entertainers, particularly as they get older. Accepting a Woman of the Year award at the Billboard Women in Music 2016 event, the musician brought a hush over the crowd as she spoke in deeply personal terms. In the speech, Madonna said she had faced sexism, misogyny and “constant bullying and relentless abuse” over the more than 30 years of her career. She spoke about being raped on a rooftop with a “knife digging into my throat” when she first moved to New York many years ago, an experience she first discussed publicly in 2013. She also took pride in her ability to persevere in an industry that she said did not look kindly on older women singers. “People say that I’m so controversial,” she said to the crowd. “But I think the most controversial thing that I’ve done is to stick around. ” In the world of music, she said, “to age is a sin. ” “You will be criticized, you will be vilified, and you will definitely not be played on the radio,” she added. (Beyoncé is 35 years old Adele is 28.) In substance, the speech was not, of course, entirely new for Madonna. She has challenged sexual norms through her music, image and writing since the start of her career, pushing for, as Camille Paglia — a cultural critic who has both supported and rebuked Madonna over the years — wrote in 1990, “young women to be fully female and sexual while still exercising total control over their lives. ” Candor has always been one of Madonna’s hallmarks. In recent years, she has become something of a warrior against age discrimination, publicly rebelling, with few subtleties, against the notion that age should slow her down. But the speech on Friday was a strikingly blunt statement for the entertainer, who, if only briefly, had no intention of entertaining. And it came as debates over gender equality and latent sexism contributed to a national dialogue that grew more emotional amid America’s presidential election — a contest between a man and woman that served, in part, as a referendum on those issues. Madonna herself appeared at a surprise concert in Washington Square Park in New York in support of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign the night before the election. In her speech at the Billboard event, Madonna seemed to make a tacit reference to the election’s outcome. “Women have been so oppressed for so long, they believe what men have to say about them,” she said, according to Billboard. “They believe they have to back a man to get the job done. ” In an interview before the event, she was more direct: “Hillary Clinton lost the election, and it’s really important to make a stand and speak my mind about the importance of women and women empowering themselves,” she said. On Friday, in her speech, Madonna spoke about the rules of “the game” — the established ideas that she said women are pushed to abide by. “You are allowed to be pretty and cute and sexy, but don’t act too smart. Don’t have an opinion,” she said. “You are allowed to be objectified by men and dress like a slut, but don’t own your sluttiness and do not — do not, I repeat — share your own sexual fantasies with the world. ” Another unspoken rule for women, she said, even more important than satisfying the expectations of the men in their lives, was to “be what women feel comfortable with you being around other men. ” Toward the end of her speech, she mentioned other groundbreaking musicians, including Prince and David Bowie, both of whom died this year. “But I’m still standing,” she said. “I’m one of the lucky ones. ” | 1 |
Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” reacted to the 9th Circuit Court ruling upholding the blocking of President Trump‘s executive order halting immigrants from seven countries from entering the United States senior advisor to President Donald Trump Stephen Miller said, there was no such thing as “judicial supremacy. ” Partial transcript as follows: TODD: Let me start with the decision by the 9th circuit and the president himself saying to reporters that a new order may be drafted. Is that what you and others are doing right now? Drafting a new order since essentially the 9th circuit seemed to give you a road map of how to draw up something slightly more narrow that would accomplish your goal? MILLER: We are considering all of our options right now, Chuck. That includes you can continue the appeal on the 9th and seek an emergency stay in the Supreme Court, and you can have a trial hearing on the merits at the district level or a hearing also at the 9th circuit and pursue additional executive actions. The bottom line is we are pursuing every single possible action to keep our country safe from terrorism. I want to be clear. We heard talk about how all of the branches of government are equal. That’s the point. They are equal. There’s no such thing as judicial supremacy. What the judges did is take power away that belongs squarely in the hands of the president of the United States. Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
Share on Facebook George Soros is running out of friends. With the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States and the BREXIT vote in Great Britain, a pattern is beginning to emerge. This pattern is indicating that a major take-down of George Soros and his Open Society Foundation, among other organizations, both sub and individual, is in process. The evidence to support such a claim is difficult to collect and present because of the very nature of such an operation. Outside of conspiracy sites which promote similar stories, like Putin issuing an arrest warrant for Soros, something which has not yet been proven, real information and evidence is all but impossible to find. But much ancillary and suggestive evidence is abound. This evidence is best considered and processed through understanding the mandates and strategies which Soros has been involved in, and has been attempting to influence. This will be contrasted after against the rising opposition which is represented by the election of Trump and the BREXIT vote. I won't waste word space by going into too much detail on these connections, as the internet is full of reliable and validated sources which can be easily googled and found. We will focus on the broad strokes and obvious connections which make up the larger pattern. The most obvious is open borders. George Soros and his hoard of foundations and organizations have been involved in the funding of ISIS and the subsequent migrant crisis which has spread around the world. It has even been suggested that Soros has been involved in the funding of ISIS recruits within America. The Open Society Foundation, and a host of subsidiary organizations, are now being openly exposed for their anti-Israeli operations. This could be an attempt to sever Israel's connections with the United States and isolate the nation internationally. Why Soros would do this is not immediately obvious, but will be as we explain more. The western led coup which overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine was also influenced by George Soros. The distain which Soros has for Russia and Putin are well known, but preventing Putin from having control the natural gas flow into Europe through Ukraine was the overriding factor. Interestingly enough, after the coup the son of VP Joe Biden invested in and sat on the board of a natural gas company in Eastern Ukraine. The Biden's are representative of the American establishment and serve the interests of George Soros. This is how it works. The establishment use their own to infiltrate and take over business and industry of nations from the inside. Biden's other son subsequently died of brain cancer. In addition, Ukraine was getting further absorbed into the Eurasian Union through trade deals with Russia and China. Removing the support in Kiev was instrumental in preventing all of Europe from being aligned with the larger Eurasian Union mandates. The BREXIT vote itself represents the interests within Great Britain hedging a geopolitical strategy in case they needed to separate from Europe and remain aligned with North America. Soros has also been directly involved in the attempted overthrow of Assad in Syria. There are many reasons for this. Syria is aligned with Russia, the enemy of Soros. But Assad also represents a problem for business interest of both Soros and the Clintons, along with others in the American establishment. The natural gas line which was meant to connect Qatar with Europe, traveling through Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey, is the major problem. This gas pipeline has been invested in by the Clintons and others. Assad, a friend of Russia and Putin, has refused to have it run through Syria. Soros and the American establishment require to have this gas line in place to keep Europe from being drawn into the larger Eurasian Union. The Eurasian Union is an important piece of the developing global governance framework, as is becoming more obvious. It is also important to understand that Soros has business relations with the House of Saud. These ties will be further revealed as a deeper investigation into the terror attacks of Sept 11, 2001 commences and the truth is revealed regarding the full nature of the American establishment and its control over both the republican and democrat parties. It is still my conclusion that 9/11 was an attempt to stop a transformation of the international monetary system in its early stages by using the manufactured event to hijack the global governance process. This hijacking has now failed. George Soros has also been instrumental in manipulating western policy towards Russia and China in general. The NATO buildup on Russia's borders is taking place at the same time as the attempted coup in Turkey and Ukraine, along the war in Syria. Evidence is now beginning to emerge that both Clinton and Soros had been involved in the coup attempt in Turkey. Erdogan was beginning to realign the country with Russia, which would have severely affected the interests of Soros, including threatening the route of migrants being forced into Europe. As for China, the interests of Rothschild, and to a larger extent, the broader international banking interests, have been well represented with the rise of the Asian superpower and its integration into the international monetary system. China is playing an important role in the removal and replacement of the USD as the international reserve currency. The SDR of the International Monetary Fund is being groomed for this role with the support of China. The American delays in implementing the IMF 2010 Quota and Governance Reforms are better understood as the workings of George Soros to hijack the process and prevent the shift away from the USD based unipolar system. Alternatively, they could be attempting to control the SDR development in order to ensure that the dollar remains as the dominate asset within the subgroup. Another interesting aspect of what we are reviewing here is the Panama Papers leaks . The case has been made that George Soros was behind this and the goal was to expose the Rothschild connections throughout the global banking network with the intent of taking control of the global governance process. This attempted coup against the Rothschild's and the more hidden international banking powers which they represent, is now collapsing and the backlash could very well be violent. As stated above, the BREXIT vote was the first obvious counter move against George Soros and his American establishment. This was followed by the election of Donald Trump. I have covered the connections between Trump and the Rothschild's in previous articles . The Trump platform represents a direct attack on the organizations and strategies of George Soros. Along with BREXIT, Donald Trump will be enacting policies to reduce and stop immigration from terrorist supporting nations. This can be assumed to be nations that are in alliance with George Soros. Trump has also openly stated that he will be willing to work with Russia and destroying ISIS and returning stability to the Middle East. It is my estimate that this will include the removal of the House of Saud and the establishment of a stronger Israel. The anti-Israel actions of Soros are in direct conflict with the support which Trump states he will be giving to Israel. The American embassy will even move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. What this means for the Greater Israel Project is not yet determined. It can be assumed that any renegotiation between Iran and Trump's America on the nuclear deal well involve discussions about Israel. Trump could very well be the first US President, along with Putin, who brings peace to the Middle East. Such a thing would be a major loss for George Soros. Trump will also be moving forward with alternatives to NATO. Russia has now called on Trump to remove NATO troops from its borders. This will likely happen and correspond with the joint-military action in Syria and throughout the Middle East. The representatives of the Anglo-American establishment within the European nations are now beginning to understand that a major shift is taking place in the geopolitical world. Repairing relations with Russia should be at the top of their lists as the Eurasian Union continues to grow in size and scope. This constitutes another major blow to the interest of George Soros and his companions in the American establishment. It is becoming increasingly clear that George Soros and those who have used both American political parties are running out of places to hide. The mainstream media is one of those. The alternative media, aligned with the larger mandates of global governance will be one of the winners. I know such a thing may be hard to believe by some readers, but in time you will see. Empire is always replaced from within. The seeds of the alternative to the existing empire are planted years and decades in advance. The placement of Donald Trump and the internet based alternative media are reflective of that. Soros attempts to reverse the election decision in the US will fail just like his efforts to rig and manipulate things in the lead up to the election. It should be obvious that this resistance to Soros and the establishment is not just an organic uprising of the people. There is a power behind this opposition and new sense of nationalism which is guiding the masses. Soros is attempting to guide his masses. Two masses resisting each other could mean civil war. But I don't think that will happen. Forces are at work to remove Soros and his web of foundations and organizations both from within and without. Whether George Soros understood that he was being used as a pawn in a larger game is hard to determine. The international banking interests, of which the Rothschild's are only the outer face, have immense power and influence over this world. George may have been presented with a cleverly crafted opening which his corrupt human nature couldn't resist. The development of his mandates and strategies, open border, terrorism, liberal-left socialism, have directly led to the rise of a new form of nationalism. This new modern nationalism is now being used to herald in the broader framework of the global governance system. The trend and pattern is clear and from where I sit it is hard to deny. Keep watching for events in the world that prove what has been written here. Major war between the world players has been averted but the risk of small regional wars remains. The chess game is not over and there could still be some causalities on both sides. The game may have been rigged against Soros and the American establishment from inception. – JC Interesting side note. Some within the American political and media establishment are now switching sides. Could have been plants all along. Related: | 0 |
law , economy , society , standard of living , RBTH Daily The study assessed attitudes about non-violent legal violations, such as working "off the books" or not officially registering a business. Source: Vyacheslav Prokofyev/TASS
Thirty percent of Russians believe that they can increase revenues or improve their standard of living only by violating the law, a recent survey carried out by RANEPA's Center for Socio-Political Monitoring found. "Alarming symptom"
Respondents' agreement with this point of view depends on their economic well-being, experts say. The worse their financial situation, the more they believe they need to break the law to become wealthier. For example, 52 percent of respondents with low incomes feel this way. U.S. asked to join probe into Russian anti-corruption official
The study assessed attitudes about non-violent legal violations, such as working "off the books" or not officially registering a business, the Center's director Andrei Pokida told RBC. The survey was conducted by personal interviews with 1,600 people from 35 regions.
"This is an alarming symptom, as citizens' attitudes toward the shadow economy and their willingness to engage in this process can be observed against the background of a gradual decline in real incomes of the population," the researchers state. The average income of Russians has decreased by 6.1 percent during the past last year, a record decline since 1999. Almost half of Russians justify the shadow economy
Experts found that working people have a "very approving" attitude towards various forms of the shadow economy.
While only 7.2 percent of respondents believe that it does more benefit than harm, 34.5 percent of respondents believe the shadow economy is more beneficial than harmful, and 38.3 percent are inclined to think that it brings both benefit and harm equally; the rest found it difficult to reply. These statistics imply that about 45 percent of the employed population of Russia justify the informal economy. Russian official received a bribe of 2 bags of Whiskas
Compared to previous survey results, the number of people who clearly approve of the informal economy decreased, down from 10.5 percent in 2013. However, the proportion of those who were neutral slightly increased, up from 33.2 percent. But Russians were even more tolerant of the shadow economy in 1990: 49.5 percent were convinced that it brought both benefit and harm, 21 percent supported it and only 13.5 percent opposed it.
Over the subsequent 11 years, though, attitudes changed dramatically. In 2001, the number who supported the informal economy dropped to a historic low of 2.1 percent, while those opposing it increased to 49 percent; 26.7 percent remained neutral.
According to RANEPA's June estimates, about 30 million people are engaged in Russia's shadow labor market, or 40.3 percent of the economically active population. Of these, 8.7 million people (11.7 percent) are completely excluded from the official workforce, while the remaining receive a portion of their salary "under the table" or have additional unreported earnings. | 0 |
This past Sunday, the latest ABC/ Washington Post poll showed a 12-point national polling in favor of Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. This poll, along with various other recent polls from the Washington Post , Reuters, and ABC, has shown a 9-percentage point sampling bias toward registered Democrats , causing an uproar of speculation.
Keep in mind, we are neither Trump supports nor Hillary Supporters.
The website Zero Hedge reported : “METHODOLOGY – This ABC News poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Oct. 20-22, 2016, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 874 likely voters. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 36-27-31 percent, Democrats – Republicans – Independents.”
These small sampling details shouldn’t be taken so lightly, as they can change the results of the poll immensely, as well as shift people’s perceptions of their candidate’s likelihood of winning. This in turn can deter people from voting altogether. There may be a few more registered Democrats, but they certainly don’t have a 9-point registration average, which the latest sampling polls have shown.
Furthermore, the media organizations involved are pulling a certain demographic sampling to get the results they have.
Zero Hedge put it into perspective by noting:
As a quick example, the ABC / WaPo poll found that Hillary enjoys a 79-point advantage over Trump with black voters. Therefore, even a small “oversample” of black voters of 5% could swing the overall poll by 3 full points . Moreover, the pollsters don’t provide data on the demographic mix of their polls which makes it impossible to “fact check” the bias…convenient.
The many recent WikiLeaks documents have exposed Hillary Clinton’s scandalous behaviour, including the release of the contents from her private e-mail server. One of them in particular revealed the close ties the Clinton campaign has had with polling organizations, creating speculation that the campaign is paying the organizations to push the polls in Clinton’s favor.
With media organizations using specific demographic sampling details to rig the results of polling, more dismay, confusion, and anger over the possible, if not absolute, corruption that occurs in the U.S. presidential election can be the only result.
And to really expose just how rigged the polls are, the latest Podesta emails, which were just released by WikiLeaks , show in disturbing detail just how to “manufacture” the hoped-for results from a certain poll. The email correspondence exposes the request for recommendations regarding “oversamples for polling” in order to “maximize what we get out of our media polling.”
One email said, “I also want to get your Atlas folks to recommend oversamples for our polling before we start in February. By market, regions, etc. I want to get this all compiled into one set of recommendations so we can maximize what we get out of our media polling.”
And among some of the most damaging materials was an attachment of a 37-page guide. One instance revealed that, in Arizona, the oversampling of Hispanics’ and Native Americans’ populations was highly recommended:
“Research, microtargeting & polling projects
– Over-sample Hispanics
– Use Spanish language interviewing. (Monolingual Spanish-speaking voters are among the lowest turnout Democratic targets)
– Over-sample the Native American population”
And in Florida, the report discusses “consistently monitoring” samples for ensuring they’re “not too old” and “has enough African American and Hispanic voters.” The report even acknowledges that national polls over sample “key districts/regions” and “ethnic” groups “as needed.”
“– General election benchmark, 800 sample, with potential over samples in key districts/regions
– Benchmark polling in targeted races, with ethnic over samples as needed
– Targeting tracking polls in key races, with ethnic over samples as needed”
Many of the Podesta emails give clear insight into why the mainstream media has refused to report on the most damning allegations against Clinton — with this latest revelation simply affirming the reality that the “consent of the governed” is, in reality, nothing more than manufactured consent by one group that holds total power.
Ultimately, these elections are a mere distraction, and as John F. Hylan, among others, told us:
The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation … The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties … [and] control the majority of the newspapers and magazines in this country. They use the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of office public officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government. It operates under cover of a self-created screen [and] seizes our executive officers, legislative bodies, schools, courts, newspapers and every agency created for the public protection. ( source )( source )
These are the ones we should be focusing our attention on.
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Show up at the polls and vote for Donald Trump. Make sure your vote is cast for Donald Trump not being switch by Soros voting machines. This could be our last chance our children and grandchildren to enjoy a Republic called America. TRUMP/PENCE. 2016 | 0 |
NILES, Mich. — When Jennifer Purucker, 31, was asked on Saturday morning what she thought of the Women’s March on Washington, she took a sip of coffee and shook her head. “Never heard of it,” she said. Crystal Mangold, 38, paused as she carried her young daughter down Main Street. “No idea what it is,” she said. Angie Searles, 45, perked up at the mention. “Oh, I just saw that on the news,” she said. “I don’t know anyone who’s going. ” The march galvanized hundreds of thousands of women across the country who packed buses and airplanes to flock to the nation’s capital to fight for reproductive and civil rights under the Trump administration. Across the country, they rallied en masse on Saturday in downtowns, wearing pink knit “pussy hats,” waving handmade signs and sharing pictures on social media with the hashtag #WomensMarch. But as conversations unfolded in Niles, a riverfront town of 11, 000 in southwest Michigan, it was a reminder of how the country has become a split screen on issue after issue. “Those women don’t represent me or my viewpoints,” said Leta Nielsen, 66, a retired teacher, who added that she hoped that demonstrators would not start fires like the ones she saw on the news from the protests surrounding the inauguration on Friday. In Niles, the biggest draw of the weekend was the annual ice festival, which attracted people from all over the region to admire elaborate ice sculptures lining the sidewalks, participate in a 5K race and sample the tall, spicy bloody marys at the Brass Eye cocktail lounge. “I don’t think my husband would support me going,” said Stephanie Palmisano, 26, a medical worker who supported Hillary Clinton but whose husband voted for President Trump. “Trump winning has caused a lot of tough conversations in our marriage. I have two little girls. For a president who thinks so low of women, it just breaks my heart. ” Lucy VandenHeede, 79, said that her and two granddaughters had taken a bus to Washington from Kalamazoo, Mich. to attend the march and that she was cheering them on from afar. Women’s rights have come a long way, she said, recalling the days when she worked in the newspaper business selling advertising and was paid far less than her male colleagues. “They earned commission, and I didn’t,” she said. “And I was always called ‘Mrs. John VandenHeede.’ I didn’t even have a name. ” “She was the best salesman in the bunch, too,” said her husband, Mr. VandenHeede. Other women sharply questioned the notion of protesting a president whose administration had begun only the day before. “It’s kind of offensive,” said Linda Hine, 56, an accounting manager who voted for Mr. Trump. “People are just criticizing because they didn’t get their way. All it did was force another reason for people to be divided. ” Ms. Hine interpreted Mr. Trump’s inaugural speech on Friday as a generous, uplifting call to bring people together, contradicting the belief of others that it had painted an overly dark and gloomy picture of the country. “It was about unity,” she said. Her friend Kim Redman, 48, said that as opponents of abortion, they would not have felt welcome at the march anyway, echoing a frequent complaint that only women who favor abortion rights were encouraged to attend. If women would just give Mr. Trump a chance, he might not be as bad as they expect, she said. “He’s our president no matter what,” she said. Why do women need a march at all, some people asked, when they have made so many gains in the past few decades? “Women have equal opportunities in the workplace now. We’ve got minorities in jobs. The glass ceilings have opened up all across the nation,” said Tammy Chesney, 53, a carpenter, adding that she had never experienced discrimination on the job. She shrugged off Mr. Trump’s comments that he had grabbed women’s genitals without asking permission. “It wasn’t nice,” she said. “But he apologized, and it was in the past. It was blown all out of proportion. ” There are bigger concerns in Niles than expanding the rights of women, many people said. They worry about the state of local schools, the cost of health care and the town’s economy, which has struggled with the loss of manufacturing jobs. Mr. Trump’s campaign promise to “Make America Great Again” had special resonance in Rust Belt towns like Niles, said Tracy Guetterman, 49, a retail manager, as she stopped to show her granddaughter Melanie an ice sculpture in the shape of “U. S. A. ” “Personally, I’d love to see our country go back to one parent working, like the good old days,” she said. “I want to be able to quit my job. ” Ms. Guetterman saw the marches as nothing more than complaining from liberals. “Quit blaming everybody for your problems,” she said. “Get out there and do it yourself. ” Yet many of the sentiments from the Women’s March were echoed in the voices of people in Niles, about 600 miles from Washington. Diane Kellenburger, 69, a retired executive for a nonprofit organization who had purple streaks in her gray hair, showed off a gold medal from the 5K race, where she had the fastest finish in her age group. She had friends who went to a nearby march in Valparaiso, Ind. and she shared their disgust at Mr. Trump’s attitude toward women. “Personally, that’s why I didn’t vote for him,” she said. “We’ve come so far with women’s rights. I have a high level of concern that we’re stepping backward. ” Kim Shelton sat behind the counter of her memorabilia shop downtown, a business that she said is dependent on tourists, as local people have so little to spend these days. Michigan flipped to Mr. Trump, she insisted, because its residents believe he is a successful businessman who can turn things around. Ms. Shelton is not so sure whether he will pull that off, she said, but she is convinced that he does not respect women like her. “I keep hoping, but I don’t think he’s going to change,” she said. “I think women are going to take a few steps back with Trump. ” | 1 |
During his monologue on Saturday’s “The Greg Gutfeld Show,” host Greg Gutfeld reacted to President Donald Trump’s accusation that former President Barack Obama wiretapped him and the fallout following the claim. “Maybe Trump wasn’t totally wrong after all. Maybe he was just half wrong, which makes him half right — which among politicians makes him a genius,” Gutfeld stated. “This doesn’t vindicate Trump, but it does not not vindicate him,” he added. “He may have been wrong specifically but generally speaking, what happened is enough smoke to maybe look like fire. For Trump, that’s a win. It’s funny, even when he’s losing he ends up winning because the nuttiness of his enemies makes him right by comparison. ” Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 1 |
Friday on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price predicted the Senate would vote on its version of an Obamacare by the August recess. Partial transcript as follows (courtesy of HughHewitt. com): HEWITT: So let me finish with back on Obamacare replacement, do we get a Senate bill this summer to look at and vote on, Secretary Price? I know it’s not your call, but you are a cheerleader for this. I think with the collapse in the individual market in so many places, we need to move quickly. PRICE: Yeah. HEWITT: Do you sense agreement on that point? PRICE: I do. I do. Leader McConnell is absolutely committed to getting a bill out of the Senate, and we will continue to work with the Leader and all the other senators who are interested, as I say, in working toward a positive, productive outcome. And I do, I believe the Senate will produce a bill this summer. HEWITT: And will we get a vote before they recess? PRICE: I believe so. Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor | 1 |
By Catherine J Frompovich When I published the article, “Glyphosate Contaminates the Global Ecosystem: The Damning New PAN Report”, I mentioned a law firm as a resource because of the lawsuits it has... | 0 |
By Kevin Boyle on October 29, 2016 henrymakow.com — Oct 28, 2016 I predicted Trump will win and asked my readers what the Illuminati’s game plan is. While most readers favor Trump, Kevin Boyle and others suspect his real role is to lead Americans into WW3. Americans would never follow Hillary into battle. by Kevin Boyle — (henrymakow.com) Thanks for the article on Trump . I have been thinking about trying to write such an article on my own blog for a while. The key danger seems to me to be as follows: Trump is on a project to “take back America”. From whom? Well, quite obviously … Jewish bankers. When he is elected he is in a perfect position to play the anti-banker-establishment game whilst a major war is engineered in which he will be a more than willing participant … backed by the heartfelt support of an adoring and grateful public (very much in the Hitler fashion). The international banksters will get their war and they can even publicly oppose it so that they will get everything we know they want while taking NONE OF THE BLAME. It would be incredibly dangerous for them to try to use the hated Hillary to perform this duty in the current post-Brexit, Trumpist, Euro-Revolting anti-Banking world. Such a game plan is probably looking to these people, our traditional (but increasingly hated) masters as just PERFECT. They get their war, while “anti-banker” stooges and dolts can be ascribed blame and (as usual) actually take the blame for a situation that they, THE USUAL SUSPECTS, have artfully engineered. This looks like a highly possible, even probable, narrative for future events. On the other hand it is just possible that he means what he says and that Trump really intends, like Vladamir Putin, to make his country’s culture overtly Christian again, to reduce the power and influence of the international banking cartel and set an admirable template of self-sufficiency, self-reliance and freedom for communities that other countries will rush to copy. Just possible. Highly unlikely but you never know. Here’s hoping and praying. HITLER TEMPLATE | 0 |
In 1933, when Yale University named one of its new residential colleges for the ardently statesman John C. Calhoun, at least one person was unexcited. “I suppose that I have bayed at the the John C. I cannot,” the writer Leonard Bacon confessed in a long poem written for the dedication, which went on to note the oddity of honoring the architect of Southern secession in an “abolitionist town” like New Haven. That dissent was mild, compared with the passionate protests against the Calhoun name that swept Yale last year, as part of an outcry on campuses around the world against historic names and symbols associated with slavery, colonialism and other forms of oppression. Those controversies have receded on many campuses. And now Yale, where the renaming ordeal has been unusually drawn out, may finally be getting its own relief. On Friday, the university announced a new procedure for considering the renaming of university buildings, along with an official reconsideration of the controversial decision last spring to keep the Calhoun name. A new — and final — verdict is expected early next year. That policy requires anyone calling for a renaming to submit a formal application, including a dossier of historical research justifying the renaming according to a set of general principles created by an independent committee named in August by the university’s president, Peter Salovey, in response to continuing furor over the Calhoun decision. Mr. Salovey, in an email, praised the committee’s report, which he said had shifted his earlier view that changing the Calhoun name, or any other, amounted to “effacing our history. ” The new principles “allow us to consider renaming a building in a way that preserves history, to remember but not to honor,” he said. The report by the committee, which was not charged with making a specific recommendation on Calhoun, grows directly out of the turmoil at Yale. But it is also billed as the first at any university to elaborate general guidelines for evaluating when symbols of the past should, and should not, be altered. The report strikes a generally cautious note, warning against what it calls morally or even “Orwellian” erasures of the past. But it also cites Yale’s own long history of “creative destruction” of campus names and symbols, while offering a defense of renaming debates at a moment when some on the left and the right are increasingly dismissing them as distraction. “This isn’t about symbolic politics, but about the mission of the university,” said John Fabian Witt, a historian at Yale Law School and the chairman of the committee. Fostering an inclusive campus, he said, “is the best way to approach the project of research and learning. ” The report acknowledges “a certain exhaustion” with the whole issue. “Change the Name — and Quickly,” urged an editorial in The Yale Daily News on Friday lamenting the additional “months of uncertainty” when the report seemed to justify renaming Calhoun. But some historians who have been involved in similar debates elsewhere welcomed the report’s careful parsing of complex questions about history, memory and honor. “They did a very good job fleshing out the issues and creating guideposts on how to deal with a question that is probably going to come up again and again,” said Annette a historian at Harvard Law School and a member of a committee that voted last year to scrap that school’s seal, which honored a family of slave owners. David M. Kennedy, a historian at Stanford University and head of a committee that is considering calls to rename entities on that campus honoring Junipero Serra, the priest who founded the California mission system, said he admired the report’s “humility” in the face of historical judgment, which is never final. “Memory is contested because history is contested,” he said. “Controversy is built into the whole exercise of doing history. ” The Calhoun controversy has sharply divided the Yale community, with support for keeping the name generally running stronger among older alumni. “I think Calhoun became a proxy for a broader feeling about political correctness on campus,” said G. Leonard Baker Jr. a 1964 Yale graduate and Calhoun alumnus who served on the renaming committee. (Calhoun himself graduated from Yale in 1804 but otherwise had little connection with the university, the report notes.) But there was wide agreement across different groups, several committee members said, about the dangers of erasing history. “That was something we heard from everyone, however they felt about renaming,” said Beverly Gage, a history professor who was among the more than 350 faculty members who signed a letter last spring criticizing the decision to keep the Calhoun name. As an example of such erasure, the report cites Yale’s decision in the 1980s to alter a window in a Calhoun common room, replacing the image of a slave in shackles kneeling at Calhoun’s feet with panes showing clouds. “Calhoun was left in a place of honor,” Mr. Witt said. “But the thing that would allow you to see the honor was or not deserved, was removed. ” (The entire ensemble of windows was removed this summer, after an incident in which a dining hall worker smashed a pane showing slaves carrying bales of cotton it will be replaced with a new work of art.) Against that kind of “illiberal” alteration, which conceals or distorts the past, the report praises “liberal” ones, which show how values have changed: For example, last spring another Yale college, named for Ezra Stiles, an president of Yale, installed a plaque memorializing the lives of his slave and two indentured servants. The principles outlined in the report don’t generate automatic solutions but require historical interpretation and argument, starting with disentangling a person’s “principal legacy” from other aspects of his or her life we might revile. (Mahatma Gandhi, the report notes, “held starkly racist views about black Africans,” while Frederick Douglass spoke of what he considered Native Americans’ inferiority to .) The principles also call for considering a namesake within different : Why was the person honored, and was that choice controversial at the time? Were actions or attitudes that are now repellent also controversial during the individual’s life, or commonplace in society at the time? As an example of an overly broad policy, Mr. Witt cited guidelines recently adopted at the University of Oregon allowing for potentially renaming buildings honoring anyone who demonstrated “discriminatory, racist, homophobic, or misogynist views that actively promoted systemic oppression” or who “failed to take redemptive action,” among other expansive criteria. “There’s a real risk that would catch up anyone alive before 1950,” Mr. Witt said. Ms. Gage said that whatever the ultimate decision on Calhoun, the debate was valuable as part of “a process of deep engagement with history,” which is always open to reinterpretation. “You want to respect the past,” she said. “But there is room for change, too. ” | 1 |
In Virginia, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents waited outside a church shelter where undocumented immigrants had gone to stay warm. In Texas and in Colorado, agents went into courthouses, looking for foreigners who had arrived for hearings on other matters. At Kennedy International Airport in New York, passengers arriving after a flight from San Francisco were asked to show their documents before they were allowed to get off the plane. The Trump administration’s plan to arrest and deport vast numbers of undocumented immigrants has been introduced in dramatic fashion over the past month. And much of that task has fallen to thousands of ICE officers who are newly emboldened, newly empowered and already getting to work. Gone are the rules that required them to focus only on serious criminals. In Southern California, in one of the first major roundups during the Trump administration, officers detained 161 people with a wide range of felony and misdemeanor convictions, and 10 who had no criminal history at all. “Before, we used to be told, ‘You can’t arrest those people,’ and we’d be disciplined for being insubordinate if we did,” said a veteran of the agency who took part in the operation. “Now those people are priorities again. And there are a lot of them here. ” Interviews with 17 agents and officials across the country, including in Florida, Alabama, Texas, Arizona, Washington and California, demonstrated how quickly a new atmosphere in the agency had taken hold. Since they are forbidden to talk to the press, they requested anonymity out of concern for losing their jobs. The White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, said on Tuesday that the president wanted to “take the shackles off” of agents, an expression the officers themselves used time and again in interviews to describe their newfound freedom. “Morale amongst our agents and officers has increased exponentially since the signing of the orders,” the unions representing ICE and Border Patrol agents said in a joint statement after President Trump issued the executive orders on immigration late last month. Two memos released this past week by the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of ICE and the Border Patrol, provided more details about how it would carry out its plan, which includes Mr. Trump’s signature campaign pledge — a wall along the entire southern border — as well as speedier deportations and greater reliance on local police officers. But for those with ICE badges, perhaps the biggest change was the erasing of the Obama administration’s hierarchy of priorities, which forced agents to concentrate on deporting gang members and other violent and serious criminals, and mostly leave everyone else alone. A whirlwind of activity has overtaken ICE headquarters in Washington in recent weeks, with employees attending meetings about how to quickly carry out President Trump’s plans. “Some people are like: ‘This is great. Let’s give them all the tools they need,’” said a senior staff member at headquarters, who joined the department under the administration of George W. Bush. But, the official added, “other people are a little bit more hesitant and fearful about how quickly things are moving. ” Two officials in Washington said that the shift — and the new enthusiasm that has come with it — seems to have encouraged political comments and banter that struck the officials as brazen or like remarks about their jobs becoming “fun. ” Those who take less of a hard line on unauthorized immigrants feel silenced, the officials said. ICE has more than 20, 000 employees, spread across 400 offices in the United States and 46 foreign countries, and the Trump administration has called for the hiring of 10, 000 more. ICE officers see themselves as protecting the country and enforcing its laws, but also, several agents said, defending the legal immigration system, with its yearslong waits to enter the country, from people who skip the line. John F. Kelly, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement after the first roundups of the Trump administration: “President Trump has been clear in affirming the critical mission of D. H. S. in protecting the nation. ” “There is no greater calling than to serve and protect our nation,” he added, “a mission that the men and women of ICE perform with professionalism and courage every single day. ” Agents are, in fact, predominantly male and have often served in the military, with a police department or both. New agents take a Spanish language program as well as firearms training they also learn driving maneuvers and have to pass seven written examinations and a test that includes an obstacle course. The element of surprise is central to their work, and the sight of even a single white van emblazoned with the words Department of Homeland Security can create fear and cause people to flee. To minimize public contact, the arrests are frequently made in the early morning hours. A supervisor in Northern California described a typical operation, with teams of at least five members rising before dawn, meeting as early as 4 a. m. to make arrests before their targets depart for work. To avoid distressing families and children, the agents prefer to apprehend people outside their homes, approaching them as soon as they step onto a public sidewalk and, once identified, placing them in handcuffs. But arrests can appear dramatic, as agents arrive in large numbers, armed with semiautomatic handguns and wearing dark bulletproof vests with ICE in bright white letters on them. When they do have to enter a home, officers knock loudly and announce themselves as the police, a term they can legally use. Many times, children are awakened in the process, and watch as a parent is taken away. Some of the more visible ICE operations in recent weeks have ricocheted around the internet, and sometimes drawn a backlash. At Kennedy Airport, Customs and Border Protection agents checked documents of passengers getting off a flight from San Francisco because ICE, a sister agency, thought a person with a deportation order might be on the plane. They did not find the person they were looking for. After the arrests outside the church in Alexandria, Va. Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, wrote a letter to Mr. Kelly, saying the action “raises a concern that, unlike previous actions, ICE agents are detaining Virginia residents without cause or specific allegations of criminal activity. ” Bystanders are now being taken in if they are suspected to be undocumented, even if they have committed no crime, known within the agency as “collateral” arrests. While these arrests occurred under the Obama administration, they were officially discouraged, to the frustration of many agents. “Which part of illegal don’t people understand?” an agent in Arizona asked. But officers said their work had become more political than ever, and they bristled at what they considered stereotypes of indiscriminate enforcers who want to sweep grandmothers off the street or separate families. Perhaps their biggest challenge, said the supervisor in California, is the agency’s steadily deteriorating relationship with other law enforcement agencies, especially in cities that have vowed to protect immigrants from deportation, known as sanctuary cities. In one city alone, the supervisor said, the police once transferred 35 undocumented immigrants a day into federal custody, compared with roughly five per week during the final years of the Obama presidency. On Thursday, Los Angeles, a sanctuary city, asked that ICE agents stop calling themselves police officers, saying it was damaging residents’ trust of the city’s own police officers. Although all of the agents interviewed felt the old priorities had kept them from doing their jobs, John Sandweg, an acting director of ICE in the Obama administration, defended the rules as making the best use of limited resources. Without them, he said, fewer dangerous people might get deported. “There are 10 seats on the bus, they go to the first 10 you grab,” Mr. Sandweg said. “It diminishes the chances that it’s a violent offender. ” He said that he had spent a lot of time on the road, speaking at town halls where he heard a great deal from the agents about the priorities. “Certainly they were not terribly popular,” he said. “They wanted unfettered discretion. ” Agents said that even with the added freedom, they would still go after the people who presented the greatest danger to the public. And what Mr. Sandweg called unfettered discretion, they called enforcing the law. “The discretion has come back to us it’s up to us to make decisions in the field,” a veteran in California said. “We’re trusted again. ” | 1 |
Marilyn B. Young, a leftist, feminist, antiwar historian who challenged conventional interpretations of American foreign policy, died on Feb. 19 at her home in Manhattan, where she was a longtime professor at New York University. She was 79. The cause was complications of breast cancer, said her son, Michael. Professor Young’s political consciousness was rudely awakened when, as a Brooklyn teenager in 1953, she defied her father and watched from the fire escape of her family’s East Flatbush apartment as thousands of mourners gathered for the funeral of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who had been executed two days before at Sing Sing Prison for conspiracy to commit espionage. “Get back inside,” her father yelled, a friend recalled. “The F. B. I. is taking pictures. ” The government’s aggressive pursuit of Soviet spies and her father’s trepidation set her on a course from which she never deviated: writing editorials for the Vassar College newspaper against and favoring civil rights for blacks and political opportunities for women researching a doctoral thesis that historic United States relations with China and laying an anticolonial foundation for her opposition to the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. Describing the United States as “a nation dedicated to counterrevolutionary violence,” she wrote in The New York Times Book Review in 1971 that “the most agonizing problems of recent American foreign policy have concerned not our ability to reach accommodation with acknowledged big powers, but our persistent refusal to allow revolutionary change and in smaller ones. ” In one form or another, she explained in 2012, since her childhood the United States had been at war — “the wars were not really limited and were never cold and in many places have not ended — in Latin America, in Africa, in East, South and Southeast Asia. ” She described her evolving foreign policy until then as “ ” — a policy she forswore, however, when it came to advancing the causes she cared about. She was born Marilyn Blatt on April 25, 1937, in Brooklyn to Aaron Blatt, a postal superintendent, and the former Mollie Persoff, a school secretary. She graduated from Samuel J. Tilden High School, earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Vassar in 1957 and received her doctorate from Harvard. Her dissertation became, in 1968, her first book: “The Rhetoric of Empire: American China Policy, . ” She also wrote “The Vietnam Wars, ” published in 1991, in which she called the conflict a revolution driven by nationalism. The Cornell historian Walter LaFeber described the book as a “deeply researched, detailed, and outspoken account that should help shape how serious people view the Vietnam wars. ” She married a fellow graduate student, Ernest P. Young. They moved to Japan, where he was a speechwriter to the American ambassador, and then to Ann Arbor, Mich. where both became professors at the University of Michigan. They separated in 1976 and later divorced. In addition to their son, Michael J. Young, the president of the New York Film Academy, Professor Young is survived by a daughter, Dr. Lauren Young, a psychologist three grandchildren and her sisters, Leah Glasser, a dean at Mount Holyoke College, and Carole Atkins. Professor Young joined the faculty of N. Y. U. in 1980. She founded its Women Studies Department, was chairwoman of the history department from 1993 to 1996 and was of the Center for the United States and the Cold War at the Tamiment Library. In 2011, she was elected president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. “I find that I have spent most of my life as a teacher and scholar thinking and writing about war,” Professor Young said in her presidential address to the organization. “I moved from war to war, from the War of 1898 and U. S. participation in the Boxer Expedition and the Chinese civil war, to the Vietnam War, back to the Korean War, then further back to World War II and forward to the wars of the 20th and early 21st centuries. ” “Initially, I wrote about all these as if war and peace were discrete: prewar, war, peace or postwar,” she said. “Over time, this progression of wars has looked to me less like a progression than a continuation: as if between one war and the next, the country was on hold. ” | 1 |
WASHINGTON — President Obama said Thursday that he was terminating the policy that has allowed Cubans who arrived on United States soil without visas to remain in the country and gain legal residency, an unexpected move long sought by the Cuban government. “Effective immediately, Cuban nationals who attempt to enter the United States illegally and do not qualify for humanitarian relief will be subject to removal, consistent with U. S. law and enforcement priorities,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. “By taking this step, we are treating Cuban migrants the same way we treat migrants from other countries. ” The move places a finishing touch on Mr. Obama’s efforts as president to end a of hostility between the United States and Cuba and to establish normalized relations and diplomatic ties with a government American presidents have long sought to isolate and punish. The action came through a new Department of Homeland Security regulation and a deal with the Cuban government, which Mr. Obama said had agreed to accept the return of its citizens. “What we’ve agreed to is that the past is past, and the future will be different,” said Jeh Johnson, the Homeland Security secretary. “This is us repealing a policy unique to Cuba given the nature of the relationship 20 years ago, which is very different right now. ” The “wet foot, dry foot” policy, which dates to 1995, owes its name to its unusual rules, which require Cubans caught trying to reach the United States by sea to return home, yet allow those who make it onto American soil to stay and eventually apply for legal, permanent residency. It was one way in which the United States tried to weaken Fidel Castro’s government, by welcoming tens of thousands of Cubans fleeing repression. In recent years, however, it has become a magnet for economic refugees, enticing many Cubans to make a perilous journey to the United States, where they enjoy a status unlike migrants from any other country. “The exceptionalism of the ‘wet foot, dry foot’ policy toward Cuba is a relic of the Cold War, and this decision by the administration is really its final effort to normalize an area of interaction between Cuba and the United States, migration, that is clearly in need of normalization,” said Peter Kornbluh, a of “Back Channel to Cuba,” which recounts the secret negotiations between the United States and Cuban governments that forged the policy. But the change drew sharp criticism from opponents of Mr. Obama’s move to thaw United States relations with Cuba, who argued it would reward dictators in Cuba, ignoring their human rights abuses. “Today’s announcement will only serve to tighten the noose the Castro regime continues to have around the neck of its own people,” Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, said in a statement. He said Congress had not been consulted on the move, and he added, “The Obama administration seeks to pursue engagement with the Castro regime at the cost of ignoring the present state of torture and oppression, and its systematic curtailment of freedom. ” Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, who led clandestine negotiations that produced the 2014 opening, said most Cubans who came to the United States in the past “absolutely had to leave” Cuba “for political purposes. ” Now, he said, the flow is largely of people seeking greater economic opportunity. Ending the policy, he added, is a reflection of Mr. Obama’s view that, ultimately, the rise of a new generation of Cubans pressing for change in their own country is vital to bringing about change there. “It’s important that Cuba continue to have a young, dynamic population that are agents of change,” Mr. Rhodes said. Jorge Mas, the chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation, said the changes would force Cuba’s leaders to be more responsive to their citizens. “People may be initially upset at not being able to have this way of getting out of Cuba, but ultimately, the solution for Cuba is people fighting for change in Cuba,” Mr. Mas said. The change in policy essentially guts the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, which assumed that Cubans were political refugees who needed protection and allowed those who remained in the United States for more than a year to become legal residents. Obama administration officials urged Congress on Thursday to repeal the measure, but in the interim, by eliminating the policy that automatically afforded parole to Cubans arriving in the United States, they have essentially denied Cuban migrants the opportunity to take advantage of its benefits. Cuba, likewise, still has a law in place that denies to migrants once they have been gone for four years or more Mr. Rhodes said officials in Havana have pledged to repeal it once the United States Congress scraps the Cuban Adjustment Act. Cubans who believe they will be persecuted if they return home will still be permitted to apply for political asylum when they reach the United States. According to the agreement, which was signed on Thursday in Havana, the Cuban government said it would accept 2, 746 people who fled in the Mariel boatlift of 1980 back into the country, and consider accepting back others on a basis. The Obama administration also eliminated the Cuban Medical Parole program, in which Cuban medical professionals stationed in international missions could defect and get visas to the United States. Obama administration officials had initially said they were not planning to change the policy after efforts to normalize relations with Cuba. But the thaw prompted speculation that once diplomatic relations resumed — as they did in 2015 — the arrangement would end. On Thursday, the officials said they had deliberately played down talk of revising the policy for fear of setting off an even larger exodus from the island nation. The number of Cubans trying to arrive by sea surged after the United States and Cuba announced the decision to restore diplomatic relations in 2014. In the 2014 fiscal year, almost 4, 000 Cubans either landed or were caught. Two years later, the number shot up to 7, 411, according to the Coast Guard. The number of Cubans who have since begun to arrive in the United States by land has also soared in recent years. The number of Cubans who arrived at the Southwest border has increased more than fivefold since 2009. Last year, almost 55, 000 Cubans arrived nationwide, the Department of Homeland Security said. Kevin Appleby of the Center for Migration Studies of New York praised the specific change, while questioning the broader rules covering asylum. “The good news is that it ensures equal treatment between Cubans and from other nations,” he said. “The bad news is that our asylum system is broken and does not afford adequate due process and protection to those who need it. ” Phil Peters, president of the Cuba Research Center, said that the number of Cubans entering the United States is actually much higher because tens of thousands more overstay their visitor visas and still others migrate legally. “This is a favor to Trump because it’s a tough measure to take, but it’s the right measure to take,” Mr. Peters said. “These are economic migrants coming here that, unlike any other nationality, get a big package of government benefits without any justification. ” There was a mixed reaction among Cubans in Havana to news of the sudden change in policy. Some said they felt its repeal was long overdue. Others thought the impact would be widely felt among Cubans still hoping to leave their island. Michel, 33, who declined to give his last name for fear of running afoul of the government, said he tried to escape on a makeshift boat in the early 2000s, but the vessel broke down halfway to the Florida Keys. Since then, he has given up on his desire to move to the United States. But he knows many Cubans who still hope to leave and who would be devastated by the change in policy. “This is going to make a lot of people’s lives very hard,” he said. Alberto Herrero, 58, a high school biology teacher, applauded the move by the Obama administration, saying the previous regulation was “an unfair law. It’s unfair to the rest of the world’s people, especially those in Latin America. ” “It’s exclusive to us, and that’s not fair to the world,” he said, adding that he hoped the removal of the policy was a signal of a of other outdated measures taken by the Americans against Cuba. “Maybe other restrictions will be lifted, like the embargo,” he added. | 1 |
Woman who cried at Pride of Britain awards delighted by benefit cuts 02-11-16 A WOMAN moved to tears by the Pride of Britain awards is also pleased about new benefits cuts. Shop manager Emma Bradford cried several times at the televised stories of people struggling against adversity, but feels new benefits cuts for poor families are a great thing. Bradford said: “Seeing all those people coping with difficult circumstances was very moving, I was in bits over the little lad who raised £10,000 selling homemade biscuits on the internet to buy a new wheelchair for his mum. “But that in no way affects my view that there are too many scrounging benefits bastards. “You wouldn’t get a benefits person jumping into a river to save someone because they’d be at home eating frozen pizza and smoking. “I think Pride of Britain proves that the worse people’s problems are, the more they try to overcome them, so we could motivate the unemployed by giving them serious illnesses. “If they battled their illness and managed to get a job as well you could give them an award. That would make a really good TV programme.”
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Dr. David Duke releases an interview with himself undertaken by CNN, on President-elect Donald Trump and his views–which was of course unused by that broadcaster. | 0 |
12 Signs Of Extreme Optimism In America Now That Donald Trump Has Been Elected By Michael Snyder, on November 23rd, 2016
The election of Donald Trump has brought a giant wave of optimism to conservative America unlike anything that we have seen since probably the days of Ronald Reagan. Millions of Americans that were once deeply pessimistic about the future of this country now have hope again thanks to what many consider to be the greatest miracle in the history of U.S. politics . And just like so many of the pre-election polls, the predictions about how the nation would immediately respond to a Trump victory have turned out to be completely wrong as well.
Instead of a historic stock market crash as many in the mainstream media were projecting, we have seen an unprecedented stock market rally in the days following Trump’s win.
Instead of an immediate economic downturn, many economic indicators have surged to their highest levels in quite some time in recent weeks.
And instead of feeling gloomy about the future, many Americans are feeling really good about what is ahead for the first time in a very long time.
The following are 12 signs of extreme optimism in America now that Donald Trump has been elected…
#1 The U.S. dollar is once again the strongest currency in the world. It has soared in value since Trump’s stunning election victory and on Wednesday the U.S. dollar index hit the highest level that we have seen since March 2003 .
#2 Stocks continue to skyrocket in the aftermath of Trump’s win. On Wednesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a brand new all-time record closing high of 19083.18 .
#3 The University of Michigan’s consumer expectations index has hit the highest level in 18 months .
#4 The percentage of Americans that believe that the U.S. will experience “continuous good times” over the next year has risen to 46 percent , which is up 11 percent from the reading in October.
#5 Some other newly released numbers show that U.S. consumers are the most optimistic that they have been in a decade …
According to the latest report , in some cases, Americans are the most hopeful they have been in more than a decade. For the first time since 2006, 37 percent of households said they expect their personal finances to improve in 2017. Also hitting decade highs: real income expectations, as wage growth continues to gain strength in a broadening swath of the economy.
#6 Investor optimism about stock prices has risen to the highest level in 21 months .
#7 U.S. manufacturing PMI has hit the highest level in 13 months .
#8 The number of U.S. oil rigs in operation has hit a 10 month high .
#9 The Federal Reserve appears to think that the U.S. economy is now “strong enough” for a hike in interest rates in December .
#10 Now that Trump has won, gun stores are reporting that sales are down significantly as Americans embrace a more positive outlook regarding the future.
#11 A new Gallup poll has found that 51 percent of Americans have become “more confident” in Trump’s ability to lead the country since the election, and only 40 percent have become “less confident”.
#12 As I discussed just a few days ago , Gallup has also found that the percentage of Republicans that believe that the U.S. economy is “getting better” jumped from 16 percent just prior to the election to 49 percent after the election.
Now that Donald Trump has been elected, many Americans are convinced that the U.S. economy will become stronger than ever before.
Now that Donald Trump has been elected, many Americans are convinced that the U.S. military will be rebuilt and will become so strong that nobody will ever dare to mess with us.
Now that Donald Trump has been elected, many Americans are convinced that the United States will once again become the most loved and most respected nation on the entire planet.
Now that Donald Trump has been elected, many Americans are convinced that relations with Russia, China and other major foreign powers will significantly improve.
Now that Donald Trump has been elected, many Americans are convinced that we are on the verge of a “financial harvest” unlike anything we have ever seen before.
Now that Donald Trump has been elected, many Americans are convinced that honor and integrity will be restored throughout our judicial system.
Now that Donald Trump has been elected, many Americans believe that “law and order” will be restored to our cities.
Now that Donald Trump has been elected, many Americans are convinced that we are entering a new golden age of peace and prosperity for the United States.
None of those things are true.
You may not believe me right now, and that is okay, but ultimately all of the things that I have been warning about are going to hit America. We are headed for the worst times that this nation has ever experienced, and in the end it isn’t going to make a difference whether Donald Trump is in the White House or not. November 23rd, 2016 | Tags: Conservative , Donald Trump , Miracle , Optimism , Optimistic , Pain , Painful , Pessimism , Pessimistic , The Future Of America , Trump | Category: Christian , Commentary , Financial , Politics America Is Falling: More Men Than Ever Want To Watch Their Wives And Girlfriends Have Sex With Other Men » Guest
LOL. When I saw the title of this article, Michael, I thought that you had changed your view of things.
Personally, I’m tired of it all. Maybe I spend too much time on the internet reading alternative news sites. My goal is to fast from the internet tomorrow. I’m going relax and spend time with my family and give thanks for the blessings in my life. | 0 |
Regarding the federal Judge's decision noted:
Yes, he correctly notes that oil is different than gas pipelines from a regulatory standpoint, BUT, the Clean Water Act permits required for stream crossings can be DENIED by EPA and/or the State regulatory agency.
If I were ND State agency head or US EPA Regional Administrator, I could do that and make it stick legally.
The regulatory framework is seriously flawed, but still is sufficiently powerful to kill these pipelines - IF it were enforced vigorously, which is is NOT.
Activists need to get up to speed on these issues and start holding State regulatory agencies, Governors and EPA accountable. | 0 |
DAKAR, Senegal — One robot slammed into some blocks and nearly fell to the floor. Another sideswiped a wall. Yet another spun in dizzying circles. So when the robot built by students from an school finally navigated the twists of the maze, flawlessly rounding every corner and touching every required flag, the crowd went nuts. The girls were among students from 25 schools who gathered in Dakar to compete in the second annual Robotics Competition. For five days, in a city where horses and carts are still fixtures on the many unpaved roads, boys and girls from sixth grade to high school hunched over laptops and tablets at a camp, entering code to guide their small blue robots through a labyrinth meant to test their skills in a competition on the final day. The event was organized by Sidy Ndao, a engineering professor at the University of who is on a mission to help further science, technology, engineering and math education, known as STEM skills, in West Africa. In America, the need for more STEM education has become a stump speech delivered by many economists and business leaders. They emphasize that improving these skills will help the United States create more jobs, compete better globally and increase its economic growth. The same is true, Dr. Ndao said, in Senegal and across West Africa, where incorporating STEM education can help set a course to improve everything from sanitation systems to agriculture and can create jobs in a place with soaring unemployment. “There’s a lot of work to be done here,” said Dr. Ndao, 33. It is not that schools in the region do not emphasize math and science already. The school at the competition, the Mariama Bâ de Gorée School, is known as one of the best math schools in Senegal. Though some schools outside Dakar, the capital, do not even have electricity, many private schools in the city have computer labs, include math and science clubs, and offer more technology courses than in the past. But Dr. Ndao said the schools sometimes emphasized rote memorization rather than focusing on contextual learning. Students do not connect theories they learn with practical experiences, he argued. “We have kids brought in from math and science schools, and when they see an airplane flying, they think it’s magic,” Dr. Ndao said. “But if you give them any math problem, they can solve it. ” Dr. Ndao went to school in Senegal until his teenage years, struggling through elementary school. But something clicked in junior high, and he decided math was his thing. Dr. Ndao’s parents wanted a better education for him, so he went to New York, where he lived with a relative and enrolled in high school. Dr. Ndao said he had quickly risen to the top of his high school class and received a scholarship to City College of New York, where he studied mechanical engineering. But there was a catch, he said: He was in the United States illegally. “People wanted to hire me, but I didn’t have any papers,” he said. Dr. Ndao is an author of a paper titled “ Heat Transfer Enabled Nanothermomechanical Memory and Logic Devices. ” But when he first got out of college, he went to work sweeping the aisles of a store in the Bronx. Eventually, he entered a master’s degree program at City College, then went on to complete doctorate and postdoctoral work at New York’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His documentation issue was resolved when he married an American citizen, he said, adding that he has a green card now. At the University of Nebraska, Dr. Ndao, a fan of nanotechnology, has focused on very small things and how they transfer heat. He is researching how heat, instead of electricity, can be used for computations in space exploration. Having settled into a position in Lincoln, where he lives with his wife and five children, Dr. Ndao wants to help West African children understand how math and science can improve their country. He persuaded the University of Nebraska to help sponsor the robotics event. In Senegal, entrepreneurs and government officials are embracing the idea of improving STEM education. A technology hub under construction in a new city being built outside Dakar will contain training and research facilities. Coding clubs for girls and women are popping up in the country and across the region. But there are challenges. Internet access is expensive, and schools in some areas do not have electricity. Dr. Ndao’s camp and competition are still a work in progress. Despite the title, the schools that sent students this year to the Dakar event were all from Senegal, something that Dr. Ndao hopes will change. His event aimed to tie together the farming societies of Nebraska, known for its corn, and Senegal, known for its peanuts. On some American farms, driverless tractors are being tested to help make farmers’ work more efficient. In parts of Senegal, farmers can be seen bending over fields carved by a plow. “We can change our future if we learn more about technology,” said Joanna Kengmeni, one of the students at the camp. At the camp, students built robots from a kit, learned to program them and then created models of farms of the future that incorporated uses for their robots. One team created a robot with a fan that could cool crops in desertlike heat, or at least monitor temperatures, students said. Another team planned to use its robot for weed removal. Another student at the camp, Arame Coumba Dieng, who was dressed in a head scarf and pink uniform, said she had taken to coding immediately. “For me, it’s not difficult,” Ms. Dieng said. “You just need concentration. ” Ms. Dieng’s parents had religious schooling, but they did not go to a traditional school to learn math and science. So they sent her from their village to Dakar to study at the Lycée de Thiaroye. One administrator there described her as Miss Mathematics. “I love math,” she said. Ms. Dieng said she was not sure how she would reach her goal of becoming an engineer. She needs to balance her dreams with returning to her home village after graduation to help her parents, who have trouble making enough money to survive. | 1 |
Sources: U.S. intel warning of possible al Qaeda attacks in U.S. Monday The source said there has been pressure on al Qaeda and its affiliates AQAP and AQIS (al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent) to regain relevance with its mission.
What is the message the U.S. government is sending with such accounts? Are we to love al-Qaeda or fear it?
Or are we to fall silent in awe of the sheer genius of Obama's strategic planning? h/t Mark Ames
P.S. That AQ and CIA "rebels" mercenaries are one bunch is, of course, not new. We wrote about Your Moderate Cuddly Homegrown Al-Qaeda since October 2013. What is new is the NYT, the house organ of the U.S. government, now openly reporting it. What is the message in this? Posted by b on November 5, 2016 at 02:41 PM | Permalink | 0 |
On the Thursday edition of Breitbart News Daily, broadcast live on SiriusXM Patriot Channel 125 from 6AM to 9AM Eastern, Breitbart Alex Marlow will continue our discussion of President Trump’s first 100 days. [Breitbart London’s Oliver Lane will offer analysis of the Dutch election results. Breitbart’s Washington political editor Matt Boyle will discuss the latest developments regarding House Speaker Paul Ryan’s Obamacare replacement bill, which is coming under intense criticism from all quarters and has been dubbed “Ryancare,” “ ” and “ ” by critics. Dr. Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to President Trump and author of the bestselling book Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War, will discuss the latest challenge to Trump’s new executive order on immigration and travel from six countries. Attorney Robert Barnes will also weigh in on the this latest challenge to Trump’s immigration executive order from an district judge in Florida. Congressman Phil Roe ( ) the chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, will discuss the VA Accountability First Act he introduced in Congress. Breitbart business and finance editor John Carney will discuss the Fed’s interest rate hike and what this means for the economy. Breitbart’s national security editor Frances Martel will discuss her article on UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. Live from London, Rome, and Jerusalem, Breitbart correspondents will provide updates on the latest international news. Breitbart News Daily is the first live, conservative radio enterprise to air seven days a week. SiriusXM Vice President for news and talk Dave Gorab called the show “the conservative news show of record. ” Follow Breitbart News on Twitter for live updates during the show. Listeners may call into the show at: . | 1 |
The British actor Jude Law, whose recent screen incarnations include playing a warlord (the forthcoming “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword”) and the pope (in HBO’s “The Young Pope”) can now add wizardry to his oeuvre: He’ll play a young Albus Dumbledore in the next installment of “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” J. K. Rowling’s prequel series to the Harry Potter tales. Played in the Harry Potter films by Richard Harris and then, after Mr. Harris’ death, Michael Gambon, Dumbledore is the beloved headmaster of the wizarding school Hogwarts. In the next “Fantastic Beasts,” Mr. Law’s Dumbledore will be the school’s professor of transfiguration. Released last November, the first “Fantastic Beasts” starred Eddie Redmayne and Katherine Waterston, and was a lucrative hit for Warner Bros. drawing $234 million domestically at the box office. It was Ms. Rowling’s first screenplay, and she has also written the second. David Yates, who directed the last four Harry Potter films as well as the first “Fantastic Beasts,” will return as director. The film is scheduled for a November 2018 release. | 1 |
The British government is pledging yet again to stop European Union migrants from claiming benefits after EU officials slapped down the plans last year. [Former Prime Minister David Cameron made the promise a key part of his demands while attempting to renegotiate the terms of Britain’s EU membership. However, other EU leaders would only agree to a temporary compromise, forcing Mr Cameron into an embarrassing climb down and helping fuel the Brexit vote. Now his successor Theresa May is looking at resurrecting the policy and bringing EU migrants in line with migrants from elsewhere in the world. The Times reports that the government is considering the move along with a series of other decisions over the future of Britain’s immigration system after Brexit. In February last year, government data showed the UK has paid over £1 billion in welfare payments to unemployed EU migrants. Figures showed that in alone, British taxpayers paid £886million for unemployed EU migrants living in the UK, and a further £814 million for EU migrants in work. Now the government is deciding whether to finally honour David Cameron’s pledge of ending these benefits, although they have so far refused to commit. The report comes as the government continues to give mixed signals over its Brexit strategy. David Davis, the Brexit minister, has hinted he would not like to see business affected by curbs on immigration, indicating at various times that Britain could stay in leave the Single Market. Chancellor Philip Hammond has also called for a “business friendly” Brexit, although has declined to go into details. However, Theresa May is determined to appear tough on immigration. In her speech to the Conservative Party conference in October, the Prime Minister said: “We are not leaving the European Union to give up control over immigration again. “We are leaving to be a fully sovereign and independent country — and that deal is going to have to work for Britain. ” | 1 |
Suspected cartel gunmen killed another journalist. This year, reporters exposing drug cartels and their ties to Mexican politicians have become targets with five murders taking place in 2017. [Mexico’s Rio Doce confirmed the murder of its founder, Javier Valdez, an investigator and author who had been reporting on Mexico’s organized crime. Valdez was driving a red Toyota Corolla along a city street in Culiacan, Sinaloa, when unidentified gunmen shot him, Rio Doce reported. The local print weekly and online publication is one of the few news outlets that continues to carry out investigations in Mexico exposing the deep ties between Mexican politicians and drug cartels. Valdez’s murder comes just weeks after cartel gunmen murdered respected journalist Maximino Rodriguez Palacios in Baja California Sur as he drove with his wife to a shopping center, Breitbart Texas reported. The murder remains unsolved. Just days before the murder of Rodriguez, cartel gunmen from the La Linea faction of the Juarez Cartel killed journalist Miroslava Breach, Breitbart Texas reported. Breach’s death occurred after her work exposed how the of one of the La Linea leaders was going to be running for mayor in the state of Chihuahua. Mexico’s Network of Journalists from the Northeast expressed their condemnation and demanded that Mexico’s government stop turning a blind eye to the escalating violence. “We come once again and as many times as necessary to harshly demand that authorities carry out their duty of protecting citizens from criminals and punish criminals according to the Rule of Law,” a prepared statement from the network revealed. Ildefonso Ortiz is an journalist with Breitbart Texas. He the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. Brandon Darby is managing director and of Breitbart Texas. He the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and Stephen K. Bannon. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart. com. This article has been updated to reflect the correct first name spelling for the murdered journalist, Javier Valdez. | 1 |
The FBI Agent Who Took Hillary’s Bribes Just Got Some Really Bad News Oct 28, 2016 Previous post
This week we learned that the wife of an FBI agent who was involved in the Hillary Clinton email investigation was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign finance donations. That FBI agent is now being asked to resign. The Political Insider reported: Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a long-time Clinton insider and former Hillary Clinton campaign chairman, helped facilitate donations – two separate payments, one for $467,500 and another for $207,788 – to the campaign coffers of the wife of Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe. McCabe just so happened to take on “an oversight role in the investigation into Secretary Clinton’s emails” just months later. The new Deputy Director didn’t feel the need to recuse himself from the case, creating a clear conflict of interest. Now, he could be in big trouble… Via the Washington Examiner: The FBI’s second in command is facing pressure over donations Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a top Clinton ally, made
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Former Australian cricket captain, Ricky Ponting, has put the blame squarely on our nation’s town planners in the wake of another “very, very poor batting performance” that led to a heavy second Test defeat.
“How do we expect to find any young talent when majority of our countries junior players are growing up in apartments? Or worse off the grid housing developments?” Amid concerns about coaching levels and the strength of club and Shield cricket, Ponting says we need to focus on decentralising our nation’s capital cities, so that kids ‘can grow up with a bit of space’. “Kids don’t learn how to knock them if they’ve got to constantly be worried about putting a hole through dad’s OLED television” “Or knocking grandpas ashes off the mantlepiece”
Ponting warned Australia’s current players are starting to make Watson look tough, while the game in this country had been weakened by a rising number of children that have to use an elevator before they can even find a fucking drive way to roll the arm over.
“It’s ridiculous. In my day we didn’t even have a neighbours window to worry about. This kids are too crammed” Leave a Reply Your email address will not be published. Our latest Tweets! | 0 |
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Republican consultant Ana Navarro tore into Trump surrogate, former Speaker of the House, and unrepentant dirty old man Newt Gingrich during a segment tonight in CNN. The correspondent laid into Gingrich over his disgraceful behavior last night on the Kelly File , calling out the absurd hypocrisy of his attempts to defend Donald Trump’s admitted sexual assaults and accusing host Megyn Kelly of being “fascinated with sex.”
“I think the word you were looking for was ‘hypocritical. Remember Newt Gingrich’s wife? When he was running in 2012, told all of us, told the media the media, said it to the camera. Newt Gingrich offered her the choice between an open marriage or a divorce. So maybe, just maybe, if all of that baggage is on your shoulders, maybe you shouldn’t be the surrogate out there wagging your finger and accusing the woman who was reporting on sexual assault — let me explain it slowly — sexual assault and sex are two things. One is unwanted. One is wanted. So maybe they need to understand that to begin with.”
Newt Gingrich began having an affair while his wife Jackie Battley was battling cancer and told her he was divorcing her when she was still in the hospital. Gingrich’s campaign treasurer said that Newt told him dismissively that “She’s not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of the President. And besides, she has cancer.” He then cheated on his second wife with another woman twentysome years his junior. It’s obvious why Gingrich is defending Trump: he’s from the same stock of ageing windbags who view women as objects to be used and discarded when they tire of them.
For Gingrich to become so upset at Kelly for not immediately discarding the allegations of sexual assault facing Trump just shows how out of touch the Trump campaign truly is. Kelly, who has almost certainly weathered her fair share of sexual harassment and unwanted advances from the lecherous codgers at FOX , has good reason to believe these women, because she knows what kind of man Donald Trump is – the same kind of man that sexual predator Roger Ailes is; the same kind of man that rampant philander Newt Gingrich is; the kind of men who have run the Republican Party for decades. The party of “family values” indeed.
Watch Navarro’s brutal takedown here: | 0 |
America’s Post-Trump Widening Divide November 19, 2016
An ugly side of Donald Trump’s victory has been the unleashing of bigotry against minorities and women with the President-elect only mildly reining in these belligerent followers, writes Michael Winship.
By Michael Winship
A friend of mine who has dual Israeli-American citizenship tells the story of entering an elevator in Jerusalem shortly after a bullying right-wing government had taken over the country. The other passenger was ostentatiously puffing on a big cigar. My friend pointed to the no smoking sign and politely, in Hebrew, asked the man to douse his smoke.
“Eff you,” the man replied. “We’re in charge now.” Only he didn’t say, “Eff.” The Confederate battle flag, seen by many around the world as a symbol of white supremacy, has had a resurgence in public displays following Donald Trump’s victory.
Sound familiar? Well, it’s a tiptoe through the tulips compared to what’s going on in the United States right now. Incidents of hate-related violence and other abuses have proliferated throughout this lovely land of ours.
The presidential campaign and now the election results have further allowed the pinheads of society to let their racist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic freak flags fly. Despite denials from many on the Right and the Trump transition team, this is really happening — unlike that avalanche of fake news stories that have been overwhelming social media. (And yes, I know have been scattered incidents in which Trump followers have been vilified on the streets, but far fewer.)
Journalists who investigated Trump, his businesses, family and associates have been mailed anti-Semitic screeds or threatened with violence and even death. Women who have reported on Trump have been sent the vilest sexist epithets. Kshama Sawant, the socialist city council member from Seattle who recently urged protests at Trump’s inauguration in January, has been targeted for email and phone attacks, some of which have suggested that she kill herself.
Just about everyone I know has a story or two or three from the last week and a half. My friend Deana tells of a part-Asian co-worker swung at by a white male who mistook him as being from the Middle East, of a friend’s boyfriend who was told to “Go back to Africa” on his Facebook page, of another friend’s middle-school-aged daughter and other girls who were pushed around by boys in her class, some wearing Trump T-shirts and shouting hateful things about women.
An Upsurge in Ugliness
From the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) : “Between Wednesday, Nov. 9, the day after the presidential election, and the morning of Monday, Nov. 14, [SPLC] collected 437 reports of hateful intimidation and harassment… Venues of harassment included K-12 schools (99), businesses (76) and universities (67). Common also was vandalism and leafleting on private property (40) and epithets and slurs hurled from moving vehicles (38).” Trump and his running mate Mike Pence thank their supporters for the upset victory on Nov. 8, 2016. (Photo from donaldjtrump.com)
A new report from the FBI states that last year, hate crimes were up 6 percent, with a two-thirds increase in attacks against Muslims. According to their statistics, “There were 5,818 single-bias incidents involving 7,121 victims. Of those victims, 59.2 percent were targeted because of a race/ethnicity/ancestry bias; 19.7 percent because of a religious bias; 17.7 percent because of a sexual-orientation bias; 1.7 percent because of a gender-identity bias; 1.2 percent because of a disability bias; and 0.4 percent because of a gender bias.”
Camila Domonosket at NPR notes, “The FBI report is based on local law enforcement data. It almost certainly understates the scale of the problem: In 2014, the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated, based on victim surveys, that 60 percent of hate crimes are never reported to police.”
Here in New York City, the police department reports that so far in 2016 , hate crimes have jumped 30 percent from the same period last year, “including a spike during last week’s hotly contested presidential election,” according to DNAInfo New York . “NYPD statistics show that anti-Muslim and anti-‘sexual orientation’ motivations were responsible for much of the rise.”
But what was Donald Trump’s response to the reports of the upswing in hate crimes after his election? “I am very surprised to hear that,” he told 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl . “I hate to hear that, I mean I hate to hear that.”
Lesley Stahl: But you do hear it?
Donald Trump: I don’t hear it — I saw, I saw one or two instances…
Lesley Stahl: On social media?
Donald Trump: But I think it’s a very small amount. Again, I think it’s —
Lesley Stahl: Do you want to say anything to those people?
Donald Trump: I would say don’t do it, that’s terrible, ‘cause I’m gonna bring this country together.
Lesley Stahl: They’re harassing Latinos, Muslims —
Donald Trump: I am so saddened to hear that. And I say, “Stop it.” If it — if it helps. I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: Stop it.
“Stop it.” Really? That’s all? You sounded like a parent telling the kids in the back seat to quit fidgeting. Make your condemnation swift, adamant and loud. We know you know how to do loud. Demand that it cease.
The Bannon Factor
And while we’re at it, Mr. President-elect, the appointment of your campaign CEO Steve Bannon as counselor and chief White House strategist makes a hideous situation even worse. Cancel it. Steve Bannon, political adviser to Trump. (Photo from YouTube)
This is, after all, the person who — more than a year ago! — Joshua Green at Bloomberg BusinessWeek succinctly described as “the most dangerous political operative in America.”
Julia Zorthian at TIME magazine writes that as head of the alt-right news website Breitbart , “Bannon has given voice to some of the unsavory forces floating around the conservative movement’s fringe, including a resurgence of white nationalism. His appointment has fueled anger , with critics decrying Bannon’s connections to racist and anti-Semitic views.”
In recent days, many of you have seen some of Breibart ’s headlines: “Bill Kristol: Republican spoiler, renegade Jew,” “Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy,” “Would you rather your child had feminism or cancer?” and “Gay rights have made us dumber, it’s time to get back in the closet.”
Even The Washington Post’ s Kathleen Parker, who cut Bannon some slack in a recent column , concluded that “he has been willing to strategically encourage people’s hate as a way of inciting them to action. How these methods will manifest themselves in the White House remains to be seen. But we can uncomfortably imagine that Trump under Bannon’s direction will do whatever it takes to get what he wants.” Swell.
So hate speech and Steve Bannon: a perfect pair. Donald Trump, you’ve let this evil genie out of the bottle. Set an example for a country so viciously torn asunder. Use one of your two remaining wishes and end this madness.
Michael Winship is the Emmy Award-winning senior writer of Moyers & Company and BillMoyers.com, and a former senior writing fellow at the policy and advocacy group Demos. Follow him on Twitter at @MichaelWinship . [This article originally appeared at http://billmoyers.com/story/none-normal-un-american/ ] | 0 |
WASHINGTON — President Trump ordered a cruise missile strike against a Syrian regime military airbase, in response to a chemical weapons attack carried out by the regime earlier this week. [At 8:40 p. m. EDT, the U. S. launched 59 Tomahawk land attack missiles at the Shayrat Airfield located in the Homs Governorate in Western Syria, according to Pentagon officials. The strike lasted minutes. “This was in response to the Syrian chemical weapons attack April 4th in Khan Sheikhoun … That attack killed and injured hundreds of innocent Syrian people, including women and children,” said Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis. “The strikes were intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again,” he said. The missiles were launched from U. S. destroyers USS Porter and Ross, which were in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea at the time, he said. The missiles hit aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage areas, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems and radars, he said. Davis said the U. S. military took care to avoid any human casualties. It notified Russia — and “many countries” — of the planned strikes ahead of time. There were Russian troops at the airbase, although it’ is not clear if they were still there during the strikes. Davis said the U. S. struck an area where Russian and Syrian troops were not located. “In this case in particular, every precaution was taken to execute these strikes with minimal risk to personnel at the airfield,” Davis said. The strike was aimed at deterring another chemical weapons attack by the regime. The airbase was the same one the regime used to carry out the chemical weapons attack, Davis said. The U. S. military said it tracked the two aircraft that the regime used to conduct the attacks. The airbase also housed one of Syria’s main chemical weapons storage facility prior to 2013, he said. Trump had hinted on Wednesday during a Rose Garden briefing with the King of Jordan that he would take action against the regime. He said the attack had crossed “many, many lines, beyond a red line — many, many lines. ” “That attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me. Big impact,” Trump had said. “That was a horrible, horrible thing, and I’ve been watching it and seeing it, and it doesn’t get any worse than that. ” Trump reportedly spoke with lawmakers before the strike. Sen. Rand Paul ( ) called on the president to come to Congress to seek congressional authorization for military action in Syria. “While we all condemn the atrocities in Syria, the US was not attacked,” he said in a statement. “The President needs congressional authorization for military action and I call on him to come to Congress for a proper debate on our role. Our prior interventions in this region have done nothing to make us safer and Syria will be no different. ” Sen. Ted Cruz ( ) called Syrian President Bashar a “monster” and a “puppet of Russia and Iran” but said he looked forward to the president “making the case to Congress and the American people” in the days ahead. Meanwhile, Republican and Democratic defense hawks praised the airstrikes. “Unlike the previous administration, President Trump confronted a pivotal moment in Syria and took action,” said Sens. John McCain ( ) and Lindsey Graham ( ). “I think it was an important step,” Sen. Marco Rubio ( ) said on CNN. “This was not some symbolic measure. ” “I support the admin’s strike on the air base that launched the chemical attack. I hope this teaches Assad not to use chemical weapons again,” said Sen. Bill Nelson ( ). In a statement, President Trump explained the urgency behind the strikes: My fellow Americans, on Tuesday, Syrian dictator Bashar launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians. Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many, even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror. Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where a chemical attack was launched. It is in the vital, national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the chemical weapons convention and ignored the urging of the U. N. Security Council. Years of previous attempts at changing Assad’s behavior have all failed, and failed very dramatically. As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilize, threatening the United States and its allies. Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types. We ask for God’s wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world. We pray for the lives of the wounded and for the souls of those who have passed and we hope that as long as America stands for justice, that peace and harmony will, in the end, prevail. Good night and God bless America and the entire world. Thank you. | 1 |
China will “most likely” try to expand its military footprint in countries that share Beijing’s strategic interests and have long been considered its ally, namely Pakistan, as the communist country increases its “power projection into the Indian Ocean,” reports the Pentagon in an annual report to the U. S. Congress. [In the report issued Tuesday, the U. S. Department of Defense (DoD) warns under a subsection titled “Military Cooperation”: As China’s regional and international interests grow more complex, the PLA’s [People’s Liberation Army] international engagement will continue to expand, especially in the areas of PKO [peacekeeping operations] counterpiracy, [humanitarian relief, counterterrorism, and joint exercises. The Pentagon later adds that “China most likely will seek to establish additional military bases in countries with which it has a longstanding friendly relationship and similar strategic interests, such as Pakistan, and in which there is a precedent for hosting foreign militaries. ” In August 2016, Beijing reached a military counterterrorism pact with Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Tajikistan. Beijing believes terrorism, primarily stemming from Pakistan and, to a lesser extent, Afghanistan, poses a threat to China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative, known as the 21st Century Silk Road project. As of 2015, China was the globe’s arms supplier, with Pakistan being one of its top customers. Pakistan receives more weapons from China than any other country. “China is one of only a few global suppliers of such [armed unmanned aerial vehicles — UAV] equipment and faces little competition for sales to the Middle East and North Africa,” notes the Pentagon. “This likely will result in the Middle East and North Africa surpassing Africa as China’s second largest arms export market. ” Pakistan and China, which consider India to be their regional foe, have agreed on the construction of the estimated $55 billion Economic Corridor (CPEC) a component of Beijing’s nearly $1 trillion modern Silk Road, officially known as Chinese President Xi Jinping’s OBOR initiative. It appears China is using its OBOR project as justification to expand its military footprint to many of the 60 countries in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa that are involved in the ambitious project. Leaked documents recently obtained by Pakistan’s DAWN purportedly revealed that Beijing is planning to use CPEC to suppress Islamic terrorism, diversity, and democracy in its ally. It appears China is seeking to expand its military might beyond neighboring Pakistan and Afghanistan across various other countries. “China’s overseas military basing may be constrained by the willingness of countries to support a PLA [People’s Liberation Army] presence in one of their ports,” it adds. Pakistan, the top recipient of Chinese weapons as well as other military assistance and foreign aid, is already collaborating with Beijing’s military ambitions. With Pakistan’s blessing, China has deployed naval ships to the Singapore Gwadar Sea Port to safeguard the port and trade under the Economic Corridor. From Gwadar port, China’s area of operation would include a region from the Arabian Sea to the African coast, and, of course, the Gulf would be its area of operation. India is opposed to China’s plan to set up military bases within its periphery. Nevertheless, China has already begun to establish military bases in the Indian Ocean, namely Djibouti and in the Gwadar port in Pakistan’s Balochistan province. As has been Beijing’s policy for a long time, China’s goal is to isolate India. In the Indian Ocean, China intends to construct a military base network that would include Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Seychelles, and Djibouti, among others. The Pentagon reports: In May 2016, a large PLAN [PLA Navy] task force conducted an extensive deployment through the South China Sea, eastern Indian Ocean, and Western Pacific Ocean. The force conducted island assault training in the Spratly Islands and maritime interdiction training in the Indian Ocean before linking up to conduct an exercise in the Philippine Sea. DoD also notes: China also continued to send submarines to the Indian Ocean, ostensibly in support of its counterpiracy patrols. In May 2016, a powered attack submarine conducted a port call in Karachi, Pakistan, during a visit by the PLAN Commander, marking China’s first port call in South Asia by a nuclear submarine. These submarine patrols demonstrate the PLAN’s emerging capability both to protect China’s SLOCs [sea lines of communication] and to increase China’s power projection into the Indian Ocean. In what seems to be a pushback to China’s ambitious OBOR project, India and Japan are embarking upon multiple infrastructure projects across Africa, Iran, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia. Last month, the Economic Times noted, “India has conspicuously stayed away from the New Silk Road, launched with much fanfare by Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sunday, because of strategic and security concerns. ” The Economic Corridor is expected to run through the disputed Kashmir (POK) a move that will certainly cause tension with India since New Delhi claims ownership of the region. China considers the growing Islamic terrorism threat it is facing to stem from Pakistan and to a lesser extent Afghanistan, according to the U. S. Economic and Security Review Commission. Beijing and Kabul have already signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to integrate Afghanistan into the 21st Century Silk Road. Kashmir and Afghanistan border China’s autonomous and largest Xinjiang province, home to the country’s Muslim Uighur minority. | 1 |
Country: South Korea We are continuing to inform our readers on the scandal around Choi Sung-sil – confidante of President Park Geun-hye , as the crisis caused by her interference in the affairs of the state and linked to corruption continues to roll on. To recap, Choi Sung-sil had no official right to do so but had access to and read official materials, corrected the President’s speeches (though there is still no evidence of an ideological (rather than stylistic) nature of the corrections) and is suspected to have raised funds from major companies, including Lotte and SK Group, for MIR and K-Sports Foundations related to her. On November 4, 2016 the South Korean President appeared on live TV and apologized, admitting that “over-reliance on Choi Sung-sil had blinded my objectivity and allowed my guard to drop”. She spoke with great emotion, which is unusual for her, took full responsibility for the scandal and said that she was very sorry that she had disappointed the people who had entrusted her with the right to rule the state. Park said that she had been working on improving the economy and living standards, but some individuals had been acting illegally in their own interests, about which she is deeply concerned. Her emotional reaction is reasonable. Looking into her biography – after her parents’ death and against the background of very difficult relationship with her family, Choi Sung-sil, the daughter of her spiritual advisor, was her closest friend and a companion-in-arms for a very long time. The President emphasized that she was ready to accept all the demands of the population and the National Assembly in the course of performing her duties. This includes, if necessary, rendering assistance to the prosecutor’s office investigation and taking part in the special investigation, although formally she could legitimately refuse to do so. However, Park Geun-hye noted that the country’s security and economics are currently under great threat. Therefore, it is impermissible for the implementation of state policy to be halted. However, the president’s apologies have not gone down well with everyone. The (incumbent) Saenuri Party received the President’s speech quite positively, stating that the President had agreed with all the public demands and had expressed a firm commitment to clarify all the details of the scandal and prevent similar situations in the future. The head of the opposition Toburo Democratic Party, Choo Mi-ae, on the contrary, said that the apologies of Park Geun-hye did not provide any answers, which the outraged people were waiting for, and called the President’s speech “mere disingenuous apologies”. The Chairman of the Interim Committee of the People’s Party, Pak Chi-wong, pointed out the unacceptability of Park Geun-hye’s statements that the Choi Sung-sil matter had its roots in actions aimed at improving the economy and living standards of the population, but praised the willingness of Park Geun-hye to cooperate with the prosecutor’s office in the investigation. As a result, the opposition only increased its pressure and actually presented an ultimatum to the President – either the Parliament initiates impeachment or Park steps down from domestic politics and removes the Prime Minister newly appointed by her. He is a representative of the Left, but not the one who would satisfy the opposition leaders. This demands are all backed up by the disgruntled general public. On November 5, there was a candle-lit demonstration in Seoul, which according to official data was attended by 45 thousand people. According to the data of the opposition – attendance reached 100 thousand (some even mentioned two hundred thousand, but this is an obvious exaggeration). There were no outright confrontations. The police (about 20 thousand officers in 220 cars) behaved appropriately, but on November 12 protests recurred. How is the investigation going in the meantime? On November 3, Choi Sung-sil was detained in custody, but WITHOUT being charged. This is a practice in the Republic of Korea (which has been repeatedly criticized by human rights activists). It is permitted to hold persons in custody for up to 20 days even if there is not enough evidence to press charges against them. The decision to hold Choi was made by the Seoul Central District Court at the request of the prosecutor’s office. On the same day, another person involved in the corruption scandal – the former senior advisor for policy, Ahn Jong-beom,, said during interrogation that the MIR and K-Sports Foundations (the subject of the investigation) were established under the orders of President Park Geun-hye, which could explain how quickly they were officially registered. Ahn Jong-beom, stated, that in her policy the head of the state pays great attention to culture and the creative economy, and rejected suspicions of her involvement in fund-raising from large companies to aid the aforementioned foundations. He said that representatives of the business community were under no pressure and voluntarily decided to participate in the establishment of the foundations. The Former Secretary of the President of the Republic of Korea for civil affairs Woo Byung-woo has also been summoned for questioning by the prosecutor’s office. He is suspected of involvement in fund-raising from companies for MIR and K-Sports foundations, and will be questioned as a witness, although (depending on the investigation results) he may become a suspect. There are suspicions (as yet unproven) that he spent the funds of the foundations for personal use, registered property belonging to his wife to a fraudulent third party and used his influence to help his son complete compulsory military service in the police as opposed to the armed forces. In general, there is no convincing evidence of material cases of corruption or interference in the affairs of the state yet – there is only “reasonable suspicion” or rumours running rife in the left-wing and right-wing media. There is no evidence of ideological corrections to the presidential speeches yet, neither are there any statements by representatives of the FIG concerning the fact that they were forced to sponsor the foundations against their will and there are no financial documents confirming the transfer of funds to the personal accounts of Choi Sung-sil. However, it seems that they are trying to hang all recent scandals and abuses of power on the friend of the President. While a document from WikiLeaks saying that “there are rumours that Park is overly dependent on a person who can be compared with Rasputin”, is quoted not as reference to rumours, but as a proof of some kind. Park has not given in to pressure (many thought that her TV appearance would be more than an apology and saw her voluntary retirement as well) and remains under fire – the left will try not to miss a chance to dethrone a “symbol of dictatorship”, guilty at least of being the daughter of Pak Chung-hee. For the right, this is not only a chance to drown their opponent in the factional struggle, but also blame the “shaman” (as a scapegoat) for all the failures of government policy, and then, after cutting ties with her, try and enter a new round of the presidential race with a new image. It is the conservatives who can remind her of the resumption of the fight against corruption and the Eurasian Initiative, with which she tried to at least partially get out from under American influence and improve relations with Moscow and Beijing. It is no coincidence that the former leader of the ruling Saenuri Party, Kim Moo-song (a strict conservative, far more to the right than the President) demanded that the President leave the party. He stressed that the head of the state, as the guarantor of the Constitution, was ruling the country, violating the constitutional principles and values, and demanded the formation of a national unity government within the shortest possible time. The members of the Supreme Council of the party protested against such a demand, but its leader, Lee Jong-hyun (ex-supporter of Park), announced that he would soon step down. He only asked for a little time to help the head of the state to deal with the situation. In this context, it’s important to remember that the Park Geun-hye’s “lean to the right” was not caused by irrational reasons but by the general political situation, which included North Korea’s provocative position (i.e. its fourth nuclear test, which needed a clear response), the categorical rejection by the left of all the president’s actions (which excluded the opportunity of any dialogue for the implementation of a moderate programme) and significant pressure from the right wing. So, let’s wait and see how events will unfold, since according to statements made by government representatives, the authorities will do everything to try and settle the scandal. Konstantin Asmolov, Ph.D. in History, Chief Research Fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “ New Eastern Outlook. ”
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The two-party corporate duopoly remains mired in crisis in the closing days of the 2016 Presidential elections. Donald Trump's virtual hijacking of the Republican Party has stripped the competition between the two dominant sections of the ruling class down to its most naked form. The corporate media's non-stop coverage of Trump was supposed to legitimize the candidacy of Hillary Clinton and rake in enormous profits for the monopoly outlets. The eyes of the rich have been on Hillary Clinton to rescue the two-party system from the danger of Donald Trump. However, thanks to WikiLeaks, Hillary Clinton appears poised to take the Democratic Party down its own path of destruction.
The FBI announcement that it will reopen the investigation of Clinton's private email server has significantly eroded the momentum of the Democratic Party campaign. Trump appeared finished by the end of the third Presidential debate. His campaign was mired in sexual assault allegations and media inquiries into possible tax evasion. The billionaire white nationalist has suddenly found himself within one point of Hillary Clinton in recent polls. No matter how many traps Trump falls into or how vile his campaign rhetoric, Clinton has proven that no amount of Trump debauchery can save her from her political record.
Unfortunately, the email scandal has been subject to the limitations of corporate media coverage. The threat to "national security" has been cited as the number one issue with Clinton's breach of State Department privacy. Indeed, Clinton did break the law and from this framework it is no doubt appropriate that she face the consequences. But under imperialism, where billions of people are exploited for the profits of monopoly corporations, the legitimacy of ruling class law is of little worth to the vast majority of humanity. What matters is the content of the emails themselves. The emails reveal that the current conditions of the imperialist system have thrown the two-party system into a permanent crisis of legitimacy.
The first batch of emails dumped by WikiLeaks exposed how US imperialism serves the masters of war and capital. The initial emails proved that Clinton destabilized Libya in 2011 in order to stop the Gaddafi-led government from instituting an independent gold currency across the African continent . The emails also exposed that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) spent copious amounts of time deriding the Sanders campaign . Another batch of emails further damaged the Clinton cache with contents from her speeches to the big banks. It was in these speeches where she told Wall Street that she takes a different position in public than she does in private. In private, Clinton serenaded the ears of the rich with her desires to privatize Social Security and create a "hemispheric common market."
The emails have not been the only development that has soured Clinton's election campaign. The Obama Administration announced in late October that premiums for the Affordable Care Act market-based exchanges are set to increase by 25 percent next year . Bill Clinton also made negative headlines through a leaked memo that revealed the former President utilized the Clinton Foundation to make profitable deals with private corporations . In other words, the Democratic Party has been unable to avoid looking like the corporate servant and imperialist party it always has been. With less than a month left until voting day, a Clinton victory is anything but secure.
MORE... The banana republic of America: Democracy be damned To the Superdelegates: Stand tall in statesmanship! Anointment of Hillary Clinton exposes a democracy that never was Democratic Party ignored its 2012 platform There are some in the US who believe that the demise of the Democratic Party will be a bad thing. Clinton has fewer staunch supporters among working people than she does individuals who are willing to hold their nose for Clinton in order to avoid a Trump Presidency. However, the stench emanating from the Clinton camp is becoming unbearable. Her campaign's reliance on anti-Putin Russophobia threatens World War. Her policy record is equally, if not more deplorable, than Donald Trump's capitalist, racist, and misogynistic machinations. The new email investigation could be the first nail of many to come in the Democratic Party coffin.
However, the fear of Trump is deeply embedded into the psyche of a large section of American voters. The corporate media has constantly fed many of her lies and suspicions to the masses. One of these myths is the alleged WikiLeaks-Russia-Trump alliance. No such alliance exists. Neither Putin nor WikiLeaks has announced any sort of allegiance to Trump. Putin has simply commented on Trump's advocacy of a US-Russian partnership was a "smart" thing to say. Furthermore, Julian Assange has denied publicly that Trump would somehow present a better option than Hillary Clinton. But the truth matters little in a political environment that equates opposition to Clinton with support for Trump.
Clinton has turned the Russian blame game toward the FBI. In a campaign speech, Clinton insinuated that the FBI is hiding information regarding the Putin-Trump alliance. Her claims were promptly proved false . Such remarks may cause more damage to an already unpopular campaign. US intelligence agencies are powerful institutions that current and future Presidents must curry the favor of to achieve the objectives of US imperialism. When President John F. Kennedy signaled that he wanted to break the CIA into a "thousand pieces," he was assassinated shortly thereafter. It was revealed last year that the CIA was heavily involved in the cover-up of its involvement in his murder. US intelligence is thus the wrong crowd for a future US President to anger, especially given the vast surveillance apparatus now at its disposal.
Speculation aside, the Clinton campaign emails present useful information on the depth of US imperialism’s crisis. US imperialism has been mired in a period of stagnant economic growth and endless war for decades. It was only a matter of time before this crisis would express itself through its electoral system. Never has it been clearer that the two corporate parties in front of US imperial policy work solely for the ruling class. The task now is to utilize the developments of this election cycle in service of the people. That means shedding all fear of what the results of the election will be and basing our action on principles instead. | 0 |
‘Most wanted’ drug baron hands himself in, says life on the run... ‘Most wanted’ drug baron hands himself in, says life on the run ‘got too much’ By 0 157
A notorious British drug baron turned himself in to the cops because the “pressure” of life on the run became too much for him.
Robert Gerrard, of Liverpool, handed himself over to National Crime Agency (NCA) officers in Manchester after being named on a Most Wanted list of criminals.
The 53-year-old made the arrangements through his solicitor after complaining the “ pressure of being on the run had got too much for him .”
He was added to the UK’s Most Wanted list as part of Operation Return, a campaign to capture criminals on the lam.
He appeared in Manchester Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday, where he was charged with conspiracy to import cocaine in a £60 million (US$75 million) plot.
Gerrard is believed to have used Café de Ketel, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, as a front for international drug trafficking.
NCA regional head of investigations Greg McKenna said: “ Robert Gerrard handing himself in shows the impact we are having with our Most Wanted campaigns. Three arrests in under a week is a tremendous result.
“ We don’t know at this stage how long Gerrard has been back in the UK for, but he told our officers that the pressure of being on the run had got too much for him .
“ The fugitives on our Most Wanted list really do have nowhere to hide. I would urge any of the remaining ones to take note – save yourself the trouble and hand yourself in because we will never stop hunting you and you will face justice, ” he added.
Crimestoppers director of operations Roger Critchell said: “ The fact Robert Gerrard handed himself in to police is again an indication that when the pressure mounts, hiding places become harder to find.
“ This is a great result as it follows two fugitive arrests in the last week from our sister campaign targeting those on the run in Spain. These campaigns really do work .”
His next hearing will be at Manchester Magistrates’ Court on November 23.
Via RT . This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license. | 0 |
Greg Zimmerman, an environmental activist, was scrolling through the website of a coal industry association when he came across a presentation that startled him: “Survival Is Victory: Lessons From the Tobacco Wars. ” What surprised Mr. Zimmerman, the deputy policy director at the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation advocacy organization based in Denver, was that the coal industry was, at least in this presentation, deliberately drawing a comparison between itself and the tobacco companies. That is more typically the argument of environmentalists, who often compare fossil fuel companies to the tobacco industry. They note that the tobacco giants for many years funded science and advocacy groups to spread doubt about risks of smoking. Fossil fuel companies, they argue, have engaged in similar efforts, and investigations by state attorneys general have focused on the tactics of Exxon Mobil, which has funded groups that deny the scientific evidence that human activity has increased global warming. Fossil fuel companies and their allies generally ridicule the comparison to tobacco. But here was an internal document from the industry that, as Mr. Zimmerman said, “has sort of done our job for us. ” Others have taken note of it as well. After reviewing the presentation, shared with him by a reporter, the state attorney general leading the investigation of Exxon Mobil, Eric T. Schneiderman of New York, called it important. “This is just the latest example of the fossil fuel industry explicitly adopting the Big Tobacco playbook,” he said. Mr. Schneiderman reached a settlement last year with Peabody Energy, the giant coal company, after finding that it had not properly disclosed to the public and its shareholders the risks of climate change and regulation to its business — an investigation similar to Mr. Schneiderman’s efforts to determine whether Exxon Mobil had committed fraud in its public statements about climate change. The “Survival Is Victory” presentation was given a year ago at the convention and annual meeting of the Rocky Mountain Coal Mining Institute, an industry group representing coal interests in Western states. The author of the presentation, Richard Reavey, is the vice president for government and public affairs at Cloud Peak Energy, a mining company based in Wyoming. From 1990 to 2007, Mr. Reavey served as an executive with Philip Morris International, working in communications and government affairs. The slides did not acknowledge the scientific consensus on climate change, but stated that public opinion had shifted so substantially that the question was moot. “We need to get out of the binary debate on climate change,” one slide read. “Right, but dead, is not a victory. ” The presentation called on the industry to prepare for more stringent regulation, and to build a better future for the industry and its workers by pushing for more research into technology that can capture carbon dioxide from smokestacks, which could extend the use of coal. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has recognized a possible role for carbon capture in meeting global goals for limiting carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, but commercial development of the technology has proved somewhat troublesome. Mr. Reavey noted that the tobacco industry had settled lawsuits with 48 states in 1998 and agreed to regulation by the Food and Drug Administration. The deal looked to some like the “End of Days,” he wrote in a slide, but “a much more heavily regulated tobacco industry is viable and profitable. ” Like so many elements of climate change, coal is a polarizing issue for political parties. The 2016 Republican Party platform strongly supports a continued role for coal, referring to it as “an abundant, clean, affordable, reliable domestic energy resource,” and calls for killing the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which would continue the process of reducing dependence on coal for producing energy. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate for president, has promised to “defend and implement” the Clean Power Plan while providing economic opportunities in coal communities affected by it. For its part, Exxon Mobil has stated that it now accepts the validity of climate science and favors a carbon tax it also says that since the it has not funded groups that play down scientific evidence of the human role in global warming. In an interview, Mr. Reavey, who developed the slide presentation, said it simply recognized the “political reality” that Americans accepted climate science in increasing numbers. And while the presentation compared coal and tobacco, the two industries are “completely different,” he added. “At the end of the day, energy is something that we, as a society, require. Tobacco is not. ” But a string of recent bankruptcy filings by coal companies has shown the extensive support from the industry for groups that deny the scientific validity of climate change and oppose environmental regulations. Mr. Reavey said that his company, Cloud Peak, “has never fought climate change — never fought it, never denied it or funded anyone who does. ” The executive director of the industry group, Judy Colgan, recalled that Mr. Reavey’s presentation delivered a message the audience was ready to hear. The industry, she said, has recognized that the time for arguing over climate science has passed. “We can fight this climate debate all we want to it’s not going to help the industry survive,” she said, adding that very few people are going to change their minds. Instead, she added, developing carbon capture should be the top priority. Naomi Oreskes, a historian who has compared the science and public relations of the tobacco and fossil fuel industries, said that while much of the investigative attention in the past year has focused on Exxon Mobil, the coal industry presentation “is a reminder that this is a much more complicated story than just Exxon Mobil. ” Money the coal industry spent on attacking climate science might have been invested to develop effective carbon capture technology, she said. “That, to me, is a little bit heartbreaking,” she added. “Now I think, ‘Guys, that’s a day late and a dollar short. ’” | 1 |
I have another slogan ; “Hang the Bitch or Burn the Witch” !!! | 0 |
Freitag, 28. Oktober 2016 Alle machen Jagd auf ihn! Horror-Clown traut sich nicht mehr vor die Tür Mönchengladbach (dpo) - Sind Leute wie er die wahren Opfer des aktuellen Hypes? Horror-Clown Zimbo Wiegmann aus Mönchengladbach traut sich schon seit Tagen nicht mehr vor seine Wohnungstür. Zu viel Angst hat der 33-Jährige, auf der Straße von kreischenden Fremden angegriffen zu werden. An der Tür empfängt uns der sichtlich nervöse Horror-Clown. "AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, Entschuldigung. Alte Angewohnheit. Kommen Sie rein. Hoffentlich hat mich keiner gesehen", begrüßt uns Wiegmann in seiner Zweizimmerwohnung, wo das Interview aus Sicherheitsgründen stattfinden muss. "Sie dürfen mich gern Zimbo nennen. Ich würde Ihnen ja die Hand geben, aber Sie haben sicher keine Lust auf einen Stromstoß." Was er in den letzten Wochen erlebt hat, kann man sich kaum vorstellen: "Seit dieser Hype begonnen hat, kann ich kein normales Leben mehr führen", berichtet er. "Anfangs rannten die Leute einfach nur vor mir weg, aber inzwischen greifen sie mich an. Ich habe Angst, traue mich nicht einmal mehr mit Kettensäge vor die Tür." Die nackte Angst steht Zimbo ins Gesicht geschrieben. Selbst seine Vorhänge hält er ständig geschlossen, damit kein Nachbar die Polizei ruft, wenn er regungslos am Fenster steht. "So kann es einfach nicht weitergehen." Auch seinen Job in einer Geisterbahn hat der 33-Jährige inzwischen verloren, nachdem er seit über eine Woche nicht mehr bei der Arbeit erschien. "Ich kann ja momentan nicht einmal Zigaretten holen gehen, ohne dass mich gleich ein paar Jugendliche verfolgen." Er kratzt sich nervös an seiner roten Nase, steckt dann eine Zigarette in seinen riesigen, von langen krummen Zähnen gespickten Mund. "Die hat mir ein Bekannter gegeben, der mir auch hin und wieder etwas rohes Fleisch mitbringt, damit ich hier genug Essen habe." Am Mittwoch habe er erstmals seit fünf Tagen versucht, seine Wohnung zu verlassen. "Ich habe mich extra mit Hautfarbe geschminkt, meine am wenigsten blutverschmierten Sachen angezogen, eine falsche Menschennase getragen und meine Glatze unter einem Hut versteckt", berichtet Wiegmann. "Ich sah aus wie ein normaler Mann mit Schuhgröße 93. Aber so nach einer Viertelstunde gab es ein Gewitter und meine Tarnung löste sich auf." Er schaffte es gerade noch rechtzeitig nach Hause, bevor ihn ein wütender Mob einholen konnte. Was ihn noch trauriger stimmt: "Bald ist Halloween. Normalerweise freue ich mich darüber, weil das der einzige Tag im Jahr ist, an dem ich völlig ungestört Party machen kann. Aber diesmal bleibe ich zu Hause und hoffe darauf, dass danach dieser Hype endlich aufhört und ich wieder ein ganz normales böses Clown-Leben führen kann." Aus Zimbos Augen laufen bittere Bluttränen, als wir ihn und unseren inzwischen mit einer Axt ermordeten Fotografen in seiner Wohnung zurücklassen. ssi, dan; Fotos [M]: Shutterstock Artikel teilen: | 0 |
BREAKING : New Poll Shows Trump is About to TAKE MICHIGAN! BREAKING : New Poll Shows Trump is About to TAKE MICHIGAN! Breaking News By Amy Moreno November 2, 2016
They call Michigan a “Brexit” state – along with Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
The states that can change it all and send the evil globalists packing.
Michael Moore, a Hillary supporter, and a Michigan native is on the ground talking to people, and he sees the groundswell of support for Trump in the “Brexit” states.
While he’s no FAN of Trump, he is a realist.wrote down his thoughts about the Trump movement.
He wrote down his thoughts about the Trump movement and read it to a crowd of liberals.
I can’t watch this without crying my eyes out.
Please watch this powerful video:
Trump is now within one point of Hillary Clinton in Michigan.
I believe he will take Michigan.
Michigan is my home state.
My family was elbow-deep in the car industry – and I have witnessed firsthand what globalism has done to Michigan.
People are tired.
Americans want to come first.
We need change. | 0 |
Children’s Medical Safety Research Institute
It would probably surprise few people to hear that food allergies are increasingly common in U.S. children and around the world . According to one public health website , food allergies in children aged 0-17 in the U.S. increased by 50% from 1997 to 2011.
Although food allergies are now so widespread as to have become almost normalized, it is important to realize that millions of American children and adults suffer from severe rapid-onset allergic reactions that can be life-threatening. Foods represent the most common cause of anaphylaxis among children and adolescents. The United Kingdom has witnessed a 700% increase in hospital admissions for anaphylaxis and a 500% increase in admissions for food allergy since 1990.
The question that few are asking is why life-threatening food allergies have become so alarmingly pervasive. A 2015 open access case report by Vinu Arumugham in the Journal of Developing Drugs , entitled “ Evidence that Food Proteins in Vaccines Cause the Development of Food Allergies and Its Implications for Vaccine Policy ,” persuasively argues that allergens in vaccines—and specifically food proteins—may be the elephant in the room. Historical Perspective
As Arumugham points out, scientists have known for over 100 years that injecting proteins into humans or animals causes immune system sensitization to those proteins. And, since the 1940s, researchers have confirmed that food proteins in vaccines can induce allergy in vaccine recipients. Arumugham is not the first to bring the vaccine-allergy link to the public’s attention. Heather Fraser makes a powerful case for the role of vaccines in precipitating peanut allergies in her 2011 book, The Peanut Allergy Epidemic: What’s Causing It and How to Stop It . In that fascinating book, Fraser notes that mass allergic phenomena (called “serum sickness” at the time) first emerged at the close of the nineteenth century in tandem with mass vaccination. Allergens in Vaccines
What food proteins are found in vaccines? The list includes ovalbumin, casein, gelatin, and soy. As Arumugham ascertained, however, synthetic vaccine ingredients such as polysorbate 80 and sorbitol also are sourced from food items, including coconut, palm, sunflower, wheat, and corn. Arumugham observes that it is likely impossible to fully eliminate residual allergen proteins deriving from these sources. Moreover, it takes very low-level exposure to food proteins to cause allergic sensitization. Synergy with aluminum-based adjuvants
A more subtle and troubling point is that the aluminum adjuvants contained in many vaccines augment the food proteins’ immunogenicity (a substance’s ability to provoke an immune response). When numerous food proteins and adjuvants get injected in one sitting, as is the case when multiple shots are administered simultaneously, the probability of sensitization greatly increases. Implications
The Institute of Medicine admits that food proteins in vaccines “occasionally induce…sensitization…and subsequent hypersensitivity reactions, including anaphylaxis.” Despite this knowledge, the allergen content in vaccines is entirely unregulated. No safe level or limits have ever been established or enforced for the allergens contained in vaccines .
In this context, it is hard to disagree with Arumugham’s suggested solutions. The most obvious response—one that would likely alleviate much suffering—is to remove food proteins and aluminum compounds from vaccines as soon as possible. To decrease the odds of allergic sensitization, it also makes sense to adopt the precaution of decelerating the vaccine schedule and administering one vaccine at a time. In the interim, the link between vaccines and food allergies needs to be openly discussed so that the public can be more fully informed about vaccine risks.
CMSRI.org.
Comment on this article at VaccineImpact.com. Leaving a lucrative career as a nephrologist (kidney doctor), Dr. Suzanne Humphries is now free to actually help cure people. In this autobiography she explains why good doctors are constrained within the current corrupt medical system from practicing real, ethical medicine. FREE Shipping Available! Order here . Medical Doctors Opposed to Forced Vaccinations – Should Their Views be Silenced? eBook – Available for immediate download.
One of the biggest myths being propagated in the compliant mainstream media today is that doctors are either pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine, and that the anti-vaccine doctors are all “quacks.”
However, nothing could be further from the truth in the vaccine debate. Doctors are not unified at all on their positions regarding “the science” of vaccines, nor are they unified in the position of removing informed consent to a medical procedure like vaccines.
The two most extreme positions are those doctors who are 100% against vaccines and do not administer them at all, and those doctors that believe that ALL vaccines are safe and effective for ALL people, ALL the time, by force if necessary.
Very few doctors fall into either of these two extremist positions, and yet it is the extreme pro-vaccine position that is presented by the U.S. Government and mainstream media as being the dominant position of the medical field.
In between these two extreme views, however, is where the vast majority of doctors practicing today would probably categorize their position. Many doctors who consider themselves “pro-vaccine,” for example, do not believe that every single vaccine is appropriate for every single individual.
Many doctors recommend a “delayed” vaccine schedule for some patients, and not always the recommended one-size-fits-all CDC childhood schedule. Other doctors choose to recommend vaccines based on the actual science and merit of each vaccine, recommending some, while determining that others are not worth the risk for children, such as the suspect seasonal flu shot.
These doctors who do not hold extreme positions would be opposed to government-mandated vaccinations and the removal of all parental exemptions.
In this eBook, I am going to summarize the many doctors today who do not take the most extremist pro-vaccine position, which is probably not held by very many doctors at all, in spite of what the pharmaceutical industry, the federal government, and the mainstream media would like the public to believe. Read : Medical Doctors Opposed to Forced Vaccinations – Should Their Views be Silenced? on your mobile device! | 0 |
The former papal spokesman has denied rumors that Pope Benedict XVI resigned under “tremendous pressures,” including from the Obama administration, asserting rather that he did so under his own volition. [In response to recent statements by Italian Archbishop Luigi Negri that suggested Benedict had resigned under significant duress, Father Federico Lombardi (pictured) said Thursday that the Pope Emeritus must be taken at his word when he said he had stepped down “in full freedom and responsibility. ” “There is no mystery to be revealed,” Lombardi said. “Benedict XVI is a man who put the truth first. How can someone so blatantly contradict what he said and then solemnly reaffirmed?” In statements earlier this week, Archbishop Negri claimed that the Obama administration may have been complicit in the “tremendous pressures” that led the former pope to resign in 2013. It is “no coincidence” that some Catholic groups “have asked President Trump to open a commission of inquiry to investigate whether the administration of Barack Obama exerted pressure on Benedict,” Negri said in an interview Monday, citing revelations by Wikileaks regarding efforts by the Democratic Party to influence the Catholic Church in the United States. Father Lombardi, who was papal spokesman during the Benedict years, noted that the former pontiff offered a substantially different account of his resignation from the one offered by Negri, and he did so “publicly before the cardinals gathered in Consistory and the world” and again in an interview book with Peter Seewald titled Last Testament. According to Father Lombardi, Negri’s comments have provoked questions and “unnecessary confusion. ” Negri, who claims to be Benedict’s “friend,” offers an odd demonstration of friendship in “triumphantly” contradicting what his friend has said, Lombardi observes. “I do not think it is necessary to think of terrible pressures from overseas,” Lombardi states. “We can easily think that his was a very wise and sensible decision, before God and before men. ” “I believe that several of his successors will be grateful,” he said. Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome | 1 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. _____ 1. Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain became the first foreign leader to meet President Donald Trump. Ms. May had been on edge over Mr. Trump’s gleeful support of her country’s withdrawal from the European Union, which she opposed but has to carry out. But they vowed to work together on security and trade as they met at the White House, affirming the “special relationship” between the two countries. Our reporters offered analysis, which you can see along with the video of their press conference here. Later in the day, Mr. Trump traveled to the Pentagon, where he ordered “new vetting measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists out” of the country. He closed the nation’s borders to refugees from around the world and temporarily suspended immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries The American Civil Liberties Union described it as a “euphemism for discriminating against Muslims. ” The move was met with disappointment across the Muslim world, with many saying it would be interpreted as a sign that Mr. Trump sees Islam itself as the problem. _____ 2. Mr. Trump also addressed his feud with President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico. The two spoke by phone on Friday morning, a day after Mr. Peña Nieto canceled a trip to Washington. Mr. Trump said that it was a “very friendly call” but repeated that he would take a tough stance on trade. Mr. Peña Nieto’s office released a statement saying that they had agreed not to speak publicly about who will pay for the wall. Above, some of the existing fencing. _____ 3. On the Mexican side of the border, there’s deep worry over the impact of Mr. Trump’s immigration policies. Many places are already overwhelmed by migrants from Central America. In Tijuana, above, Haitians hoping to cross the border have crowded into churches and community centers. Immigrants’ advocates say the Mexican government isn’t doing enough to address the crisis, and local charities don’t have the capacity to deal with a big wave of deportees. _____ 4. Vice President Mike Pence spoke at the March for Life on the National Mall. He became the official ever to speak in person at the march, which has taken place every year since the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, in 1973. With the Trump administration on their side, activists opposed to abortion rights are preparing to seize a political opportunity. _____ 5. France has banned soda refills in an effort to combat obesity and diabetes. The French are, on average, less overweight than Americans and other Europeans. The proportion of overweight or obese adults in France was reported to be 15. 3 percent in 2014. In the U. S. it is 36. 5 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. _____ 6. The Australian Open finals are this weekend. Rafael Nadal, above, beat Grigor Dimitrov in a match that lasted nearly five hours. That set him up to face Roger Federer in Sunday’s final. Nadal and Federer have not met in a Grand Slam final since the 2011 French Open. It’s a nostalgic counterpoint to the women’s championship match between Venus Williams and Serena Williams on Saturday. _____ 7. An audacious plan to respond to climate change by building a city of floating islands in the South Pacific is moving forward. The government of French Polynesia has agreed to consider hosting the islands in a tropical lagoon. The project is led by a California nonprofit, the Seasteading Institute, which has raised about $2. 5 million and says work on the project could start as early as next year. _____ 8. Some theater news: Bryan Cranston, above, will star at the National Theater in London in a stage adaptation of the film “Network,” about TV executives and their Machiavellian maneuvers for higher ratings. And Elton John and the playwright Paul Rudnick have signed on to write a musical adaptation of “The Devil Wears Prada” for Broadway. _____ 9. One night six years ago, a reporter found an old photo album on the sidewalk near her home in Brooklyn. It revealed a rich history of black lives, from the segregated South to Harlem dance halls. Last spring, she began the long process of finding its owners. Here is their story. If you’re interested in other projects that explore race, ethnicity and related issues, please consider subscribing to our newsletter. _____ 10. Finally, do you remember your dreams? If not, here are some tips on how to do so, from a sleep expert at Harvard. First, drink water. awakenings are frequently accompanied by dream recall. Next: Resolve to remember them. Keep a pen and notebook by your bed. When you wake up, don’t move. Just lie there, . Sink back into the dream, trying to gather more detail. Have a great weekend. _____ Photographs may appear out of order for some readers. Viewing this version of the briefing should help. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s last night’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
PARIS — First it was the Netherlands. After President Trump vowed to put “American first,” a Dutch television show made a satirical case for why the president should consider its country second. Now, the race for has spread. Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Portugal and Switzerland have all joined in with videos that capture the president’s trademark bombast, demonstrating a rare case of European unity through satire — and . In the Dutch video, a runs through a list of the country’s hallmarks and traditions that may pique Mr. Trump’s interest: the language, the tax code, the windmills and Black Pete, a contentious Christmas tradition in which Dutch people wear blackface. (“It’s the most offensive, the most racist thing you’ve ever seen,” the voice says. It adds: “You’ll love it. It’s great. ”) Arjen Lubach, a Dutch host whose show, “Zondag met Lubach” (“Sunday With Lubach”) made the video that started the trend, said, “Because we realize it’s better for us to get along, we decided to introduce our tiny country to him in a way that will probably appeal to him the most. ” The on this video belongs to a American comedian named Greg Shapiro. “I’ve been working on the imitation for a while,” Mr. Shapiro said in a phone interview on Sunday from Paris. All it takes, he said, is repeating Mr. Trump’s interviews or tweets verbatim. “There’s hardly any heightening necessary,” he said. After the video went viral, Mr. Shapiro said, “it was nice having family from America send me these clips saying, ‘Oh, this is like Dutch and Trump.’ And I’d say, ‘Yeah, that’s my voice.’ My mom did recognize it. ” Mr. Shapiro, 48, has seen a bump on his YouTube channel, where he offers lessons in Trump impressions on his “United States of Europe” show and posted a spoof news conference on Monday, in which he impersonates the president. Germany’s video pleads its case — and expresses indignation that the Netherlands beat it to the idea. Its video lists Oktoberfest, the country’s experience with walls and Hitler, who, the video notes, “made Germany great again. ” “Germany wants to be second,” Jan Böhmermann, host of the talk show “Neo Magazin Royale,” said in the video. “Because we are strong, we are big, and who — if not us — deserves a third chance?” (Last year, Mr. Böhmermann’s satire of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan caused an international incident.) What did the Swiss think Mr. Trump would like about their country? The video championed the nation’s mountains (it’s not flat like the Netherlands) its nonmembership in the European Union and its cleanliness. It also said Mr. Trump, who was caught on video boasting about sexual assault, might appreciate the country’s history on women’s rights. “We also love to treat our women badly,” the Trump impersonator in its video said. “Love it. We didn’t let them vote until 1971. In some places, even until 1990. ” It added: “You love gold? We love gold. During World War II, the Jews gave it to us for safekeeping. They never returned — so strange — so we melted it, like fondue, our national dish. ” Portugal’s video noted that Portuguese has an untranslatable word, “saudade,” a combination of longing and nostalgia. “We can assure you that ‘saudade’ is something that billions of people are feeling right now about Barack Obama. ” It also jokes that its prime minister, António Costa, like Mr. Trump, came to power without winning the popular vote. “If you have any problems with Putin — which you will — immediately call António Costa,” it said. Belgium extended an olive branch to Mr. Trump in its video, agreeing with his comments last March that its capital, Brussels, was a “hellhole,” but urging him to check out the north of the country. (It dismissed the French speaking south as “the Mexicans of Belgium” and told him to steer clear.) Denmark’s video, broadcast by the talk show “Natholdet” (“The Nightshift”) explained the difference between Danes and danishes, and cited Hans Christian Andersen, creator of beloved fairy tales, as a point in the country’s favor. “You have the Statue of Liberty, we have the Little Mermaid,” the video’s Trump impersonator said. “But don’t let the name fool you, O. K.? The Little Mermaid is actually pretty huge. ” In its video, Luxembourg boasted, “We have money, a lot of money,” adding: “And you know what, Mr. President? You don’t even have to pay taxes. None. Zero. Nada. Promise. ” Lithuania, a small Baltic country and NATO member that has been rattled by Mr. Trump’s fondness for Russia, attempted to win him over with its fast internet speed. “Just imagine how fast you can tweet when you have the fastest internet?” The video added that the Lithuanian president is a woman. “She probably rigged the election,” the said. | 1 |
Time: Investigating Hillary is an Attack on All Women November 1, 2016
Good morning. It's Tuesday.
Who's up for another silly attempt to claim that Hillary Clinton is only being investigated for her rogue email setup because she's a woman? This gem comes from Robin Lakoff, a Berkeley professor in sustained incoherence and special pleading.
Hillary Clinton’s Emailgate Is an Attack on Women
'It's not about emails; it's about public communication by a woman’
I am mad. I am mad because I am scared. And if you are a woman, you should be, too. Emailgate is a bitch hunt, but the target is not Hillary Clinton. It’s us.
The only reason the whole email flap has legs is because the candidate is female. Can you imagine this happening to a man?
His name was General Petraeus. Thank you. Have a nice day.
Clinton is guilty of SWF (Speaking While Female), and emailgate is just a reminder to us all that she has no business doing what she’s doing and must be punished, for the sake of all decent women everywhere. There is so much of that going around.
That escalated quickly. And incoherently. Also I'm pretty sure it's not the 20s or whatever decade Robin is parodying or channeling. But yes, Hillary Clinton is only in this mess because she's a woman. It has nothing to do with anything else. That must be why Albright and Rice weren't in the center of similar scandals.
If the candidate were male, there would be no scolding and no “scandal.” Those very ideas would be absurd. Men have a nearly absolute right to freedom of speech. In theory, so do women, but that, as the creationists like to say, is only a theory.
Emailing classified information on your server to avoid transparency regulations is not free speech. It's illegal for both public officials of both genders.
But here’s Hillary Rodham Clinton, the very public stand-in for all bossy, uppity and ambitious women. Here are her emails. And since it’s a woman, doing what decent women should never do—engaging in high-level public communication—well, there must be something wrong with that, even if we can’t quite find that something.
Illegally... emailing... classified... information. | 0 |
Russia, India will expand military cooperation with focus on Navy projects 26 October 2016 TASS The Russian defence minister pointed out that the progress of joint production of Ka-226 helicopters, BrahMos and S-400 indicates technical cooperation with India should be expanded. Facebook india , russia , shoigu Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, right, and Defense Minister of India Manohar Parrikar at a ceremony of signing a final protocol of the meeting of the Russian-Indian Inter-Governmental Commission on Cooperation in Military Industry, in Delhi. Source:Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation
The Russian and Indian defence ministries have been instructed to expand military and military-technical cooperation, Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Wednesday.
"The extra tasks set in the course of the meeting Russian and Indian leaders held on October 15-16 indicate that we should expand the sphere of our military-technical cooperation," Shoigu said as the Russian-Indian inter-government commission for military-technical cooperation met in session for the 16th time.
India could get delivery of the S-400 in 2020
The parties have already begun a discussion of all issues that are related to the post-warranty maintenance and life cycle contracts for the military technologies to be provided or provided earlier, Shoigu said.
"It goes without saying that we have noted with great satisfaction the progress achieved in our major projects, such as the joint production of Ka-226 helicopters, missile systems BrahMos and air defence systems S-400 ," he said.
Source: mil.ru
There is a special major program for naval ships, including submarines, Shoigu added.
"I believe that today there is a good opportunity for reviewing the results of the previous year and identifying targets for next year. We are ready to discuss all crucial problems, issues and prospects for our military and military-technical cooperation," Shoigu concluded. Fight against terrorism
Kadakin: Russia with India. Terrorism is greatest human rights violation
The struggle against international terrorism requires consolidation of all forces and rules out double or triple standards, Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Wednesday.
"What is absolutely unacceptable in the struggle against terrorism is the use of double and sometimes triple standards. Those who are terrorists on Monday cannot turn into moderate opposition on Tuesday. There will have to be fundamental consolidation of all sound forces in the struggle against this ill of the 21st century," Shoigu said at a meeting of the Russian-Indian inter-governmental commission for military-technical cooperation.
He pointed out that the struggle against terrorism was a major issue.
First published by TASS . | 0 |
LONDON — The actor Samuel L. Jackson has sidled into a debate about the roles for black actors on both sides of the Atlantic. In an interview with the radio station Hot 97 posted online on Monday, Mr. Jackson questioned the casting of the black British actor Daniel Kaluuya in the film “Get Out,” about a black American’s encounter with his white girlfriend’s creepy family. Mr. Jackson suggested that “an American brother” might have brought a deeper perspective to the role, and suggested that black Britons had endured less racism than . He noted that British actors often secured American roles because they are less well known and therefore paid less, and because many of them are valued for their classical training. Jordan Peele, the writer and director of “Get Out,” has acknowledged that he was hesitant to cast a British actor, given that the film focuses on the experience. Mr. Jackson said on Wednesday that his intention had been to comment on Hollywood, not to “slam” Mr. Kaluuya. And while his comments have been criticized by many black commentators — American and British — some British performers do seem to find it easier to get roles in the United States than at home. Here is what some British minority actors who have worked in the United States have said about the issue. Mr. Boyega, who is from South London, plays Finn in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens. ” While the role is not American per se, given that the film unfolds in a distant galaxy, Finn speaks with an entirely convincing American accent. In a tweet on Tuesday, Mr. Boyega appeared to dismiss Mr. Jackson’s comments: “Black brits vs African American,” he wrote, saying that the conflict was “stupid” and one “we don’t have time for. ” It’s not just black British actors who have found success in the United States. Mr. Ahmed, a British actor of Pakistani descent, has slipped into several American roles, including the lead character, Nasir, on HBO’s series “The Night Of,” and a philandering surfing instructor on “Girls,” also on HBO. He recently addressed Parliament about a lack and misrepresentation of minority characters in the arts, suggesting that the problem might even be driving young Britons toward extremist beliefs. “We end up going to America to find work,” Mr. Ahmed said. “I meet with producers and directors here and they say, ‘We don’t have anything for you all our stories are set in Cornwall in the 1600s. ’” Ms. Harris, who plays Paula, the mother of the lead character, Chiron, in the “Moonlight,” is from London. She had to film her scenes in the movie in just three days, because of issues securing a visa to the United States. “I definitely think that for my career to have continued I definitely had to go to America, and I’m really glad that I did there is just a lot more material,” Ms. Harris told reporters at the premiere of “Moonlight” at the London Film Festival last year. Mr. Ejiofor portrayed Solomon Northup, a free who was abducted and enslaved in the century. He has made an acting career with a foot on both sides of the Atlantic. In a 2015 interview with Time Out, he seemed to shy from discussion of the role race had played in his career, but suggested that the notable success that British actors of all races have enjoyed in the United States may have to do with different career expectations. “We all wanted to be theater actors,” he said of his fellow Britons. “It’s less glamorous much more about the work. You have to get on with it. You have to know when something’s not working. And you have to hone your craft. Maybe that gives us an advantage. ” Mr. Oyelowo, who is based in the United States, toiled in smaller roles before landing the part of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 2014 drama “Selma. ” In a speech on diversity in London last year, Mr. Oyelowo pleaded with members of the British film industry to create more roles for minorities in Britain, noting that many actors felt obliged to move to the United States. “Please stop this talent drain,” he said. “You have to change the demographics of the people who are making these decisions. ” Mr. Elba grew up in London and broke into the American market with his starring role as the Baltimore drug lord Stringer Bell on HBO’s “The Wire. ” In an address to Parliament last year, Mr. Elba called on media representatives to make more room for minorities. “The Britain I come from is the most successful, diverse, multicultural country on Earth,” Mr. Elba said. “But here’s my point: You wouldn’t know it if you turned on the TV. ” Sophie Okonedo described herself as a Jewish, Nigerian Brit when accepting her 2014 Tony Award for playing the character Ruth Winger in “A Raisin in the Sun” on Broadway. She told The Guardian in 2014 that she saw far more opportunities for roles in the United States than in Britain. “I do notice that — over the last year — I’ve had maybe two scripts from England and tens and tens from America,” she said. “The balance is ridiculous. ” | 1 |
The Russian Embassy in the UK upset journalists and social justice warriors after posting a picture of internet meme “Pepe the Frog” on Twitter. [“In today’s papers: pundits call on @Theresa_May to disrupt possible thaw,” wrote the official embassy account, along with a picture of Pepe. “No trust in Britain’s best friend and ally?” In today’s papers: pundits call on @Theresa_May to disrupt possible thaw. No trust in Britain’s best friend and ally? pic. twitter. — Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) January 9, 2017, The post led to social justice warriors claiming that the Russian Embassy had just shared a “white nationalist” symbol, despite their claims being based off of discredited “evidence” featured in an interview with two notorious trolls. “[H]i there, reporter here. are you aware of that image’s popularity among white nationalists?” responded Talia Jane, a reporter for Mic — the site that sabotaged a fundraiser for a gay military charity in October due to the fact that it was taking place at a art show. @RussianEmbassy hi there, reporter here. are you aware of that image’s popularity among white nationalists? — talia jane (@itsa_talia) January 9, 2017, “Hi there, someone who actually understands the internet here,” replied another user to Jane in defense of Pepe. “Are you aware that you’re a complete moron?” “Whatever Pepe started as, it’s now a white dog whistle @RussianEmbassy is tweeting it … ” claimed another verified user, who also pointed out that the embassy was “‘liking’ the tweets of the trolls defending pepe. ” Whatever Pepe started as, it’s now a white dog whistle @RussianEmbassy is tweeting it … https: . — Joel (@JoelNihlean) January 9, 2017, And the @RussianEmbassy is ’liking’ the tweets of the trolls defending Pepe. But he’s still a hate symbol: https: . pic. twitter. — Joel (@JoelNihlean) January 9, 2017, “Stop spreading lies. Pepe (Kek Be Upon Him) is a meme of peace,” replied one user in response to the false claims that Pepe is a “hate symbol,” while another simply commented, “It’s a fucking meme you dolt. ” @JoelNihlean @RussianEmbassy Stop spreading lies. Pepe (Kek Be Upon Him) is a meme of peace. — STBill🐸 (@SoreThumbsBill) January 9, 2017, @JoelNihlean @RussianEmbassy It’s a fucking meme you dolt, — Brandon (@Fearknight29) January 9, 2017, Other accounts also insinuated that Pepe the Frog was a hate symbol, seemingly unaware of the discredited source behind these claims. @RussianEmbassy Nice of you to embrace Hitler. How many Russians did he kill? — Bruins73 (@Bruins1973) January 9, 2017, @RussianEmbassy This is grossly offensive. Pepe is a recognised symbol of Neo Nazis . U people are in the gutter with them obviously, — Spartacus (@Livlonanprsper) January 9, 2017, Popular internet meme Pepe the Frog was added to the League’s hate symbol database in September, where it currently sits alongside the swastika, Nazi SS lightning bolts, and various Ku Klux Klan imagery. Hillary Clinton, George Stephanopoulos, NBC’s Katy Tur, and Heat Street have also branded the cartoon frog a symbol for white supremacy, seemingly basing their claims on a Daily Beast article that interviewed two notorious trolls, Jared Taylor Swift and Paul Town. During the interview, Swift and Town attempted to link the meme to white supremacy, with Swift boasting that he had managed to trick the media on his Twitter account afterwards. Following this interview, Pepe has been used as a scapegoat by the left to brand conservatives, libertarians, and even Donald Trump, Jr. as racist. The branding has prompted many users to fight back against the Clinton Campaign, mainstream media, and ADL’s ruling that Pepe is an offensive icon, branding it a “war on memes. ” Several popular YouTubers have also defended the cartoon frog, while iPhone game Build the Wall: The Game was rejected from Apple’s App Store for featuring Pepe, and eventually even his silhouette. Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 1 |
Pollster and analyst Pat Caddell spoke with Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam on Wednesday regarding President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey. [Caddell said the hypocrisy of many Democrats reacting to the Comey firing is “enough to choke a horse. ” He pointed out how many, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, are already on record as having no confidence in Comey. “The notion that this is somehow relatable, or even comparable to what I was actually here for, which was what happened in the ‘Saturday Night Massacre,’ that’s when we jumped the shark, politically,” said Caddell. Added Caddell, “The atmospherics going on, which I must say are really remarkable, the number of people who wanted Comey gone on the Democratic side, including Chuck Schumer, who announced that this was the end of the world once again confirmed for me the hypocrisy here is enough to choke a horse. ” Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. | 1 |
At 1:00 a.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2016, Scott Michael Greene, a 46-year-old father of three, would change Urbandale, Iowa, forever. Officer Justin Martin and Sargent Tony Beminio were found shot and killed 20 minutes apart, Wednesday morning. Per authorities, Greene ambushed both Martin and Beminio while in their police cruisers, at two separate locations. Ambush-style shootings on police officers have been a common story on local and national news outlets.
On July 17, Gaven Long took the lives of three Baton Rouge police officers. His motives were uncertain but his anger toward white police officials was clear. Recordings of Long ranting and raving about racial injustice surfaced on social media websites days prior to the shootings. Also, Long wore a self-made body camera and visited Dallas, where five officers were killed less than two weeks before his own rampage. There is no physical connection between Long and the Dallas shooter, their mental states were similar.
Micah Xavier Johnson, who fatally shot five Dallas officers, believed racial injustice was out of control. Despite his feelings toward police and the black community, Johnson’s stepmother was white and he was not known to “pick particular sides with race.” Johnson was killed by police officers who used a bomb-wearing robot, following the shootings. This left his motivation for the shootings a mystery. Not all police ambushes are incited by racial discrimination.
On Sept. 12, 2014, Eric Frein opened fire on the Blooming Grove state police barracks, in Pennsylvania. One officer died and another was severely wounded. U.S. Marshals would later find Frein, 50 days later, in an airport hangar. He was discovered 23 miles from the barracks. Frein had expressed anger toward law enforcement but the reason for his anger has not been understood. What drives people such as Frein, Johnson, Long, and Green to go and act out such heinous crimes? Perhaps a mental illness can be blamed for such disturbing behavior.
The mourning continues for the two officers who lost their lives early Wednesday morning. When a tragedy strikes a community, historically, the people come together. This is what is happening in Urbandale, Iowa.
By Amy Weins
Edited by Jeanette Smith
Sources:
Des Moines Register: Suspected police killer had history of run-ins with authorities
The Advocate: Before Bloodshed: Where Gavin Long stayed, what he preached, odd encounters all on video
Dallas News: Ousted from army, Dallas shooter used military skills for murder
Pocono Record: Suspected State Police killer Frein Caught near abandoned airpark
Image Courtesy of Brandon Anderson’s Eric Frein , Gavin Long , Micah Johnson , Scott Greene , shooting | 0 |
nature, tribes, ancient civilizalions way of living… how our close relatives in the tree of life live? how did our ancestors lived? and the monkeys and dogs and cats? for free, from the earth… capitalism is directly applied to futile things and objects and things people don’t live for and want… people are like animals and plants that drink and eat, and that’s the system everyone needs. go back to nature, purity original form. | 0 |
ANKARA (AFP) — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is set to return as chairman of Turkey’s ruling party on Sunday in a special congress, swiftly exploiting a key change agreed in the controversial April referendum on expanding his powers. [Erdogan rejoined the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) on May 2 after the public approved changes to create an executive presidency on April 16. Under the old constitution, the head of state had to sever ties with their political party and Erdogan left as AKP chairman in August 2014 after his election as president. Rejoining the AKP was the first major change permitted after the vote, allowing the president to be affiliated with a political party almost immediately. Erdogan narrowly won with 51. 4 percent of the vote but most of the new system, including axing the role of premier, will not come into force until November 3, 2019. However, as leader Erdogan can decide the party’s direction. Current party leader and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim will be given a role of “vice chairman” AKP deputy chairman Hayati Yazici said on Saturday. Erdogan led the party for three terms during his premiership between 2003 and 2014, after he it in 2001. The affectionately describes the most effective Islamic rooted political force in the history of modern Turkey as his fifth child. After becoming a party member again in an emotional grand ceremony in Ankara, Erdogan said he had “returned to my home, my passion, my love”. With Erdogan as party leader, all eyes will be on the cabinet, with Hurriyet daily speculating at the weekend that eight to 10 ministers could be reshuffled. — Era of transformation — Nearly 1, 500 delegates will vote to decide the new party leader, news agency Anadolu reported, in an election where there is only one candidate: Erdogan. If chosen, it will be the first time the president will be both party chairman and head of state since the end of the presidency in 1950 of Ismet Inonu, the successor and of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey’s modern founder. In the capital and on social media posters and images have appeared of Erdogan and slogans such as “iron will, strong Turkey” and “full steam ahead with the founding leader”. A special congress slogan reads “a new breakthrough period: democracy, transformation, reform” hinting at the expected restructuring of the government as well as changes to the party’s executive in the coming weeks and months. Erdogan told party officials “the new period means a new action plan” without giving details, Hurriyet reported on Saturday. Up to 60, 000 participants from across Turkey are expected to descend on Ankara for the congress in the stadium in the city centre, Anadolu reported. — ‘Party full of loyalists’ — Turkish media has been full of AKP officials speculating that Erdogan’s return will mean the end of the party’s internal rivalries and will boost morale. According to Aykan Erdemir, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Erdogan “could informally dictate the AKP’s MP candidates to a great extent” even after leaving in 2014. But the former MP for Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) said becoming chairman would mean Erdogan gains the “formal authority to determine who runs for office from AKP lists”. Erdemir told AFP: “This new prerogative will allow him to design both a party apparatus and a parliamentary group composed entirely of loyalists. ” Hurriyet columnist Abdulkadir Selvi previously said Erdogan would oversee a oversee a of AKP leaders at local level determined by their success in the referendum. “The most crucial outcome of his power grab within the AKP is that as the leader, Erdogan will hold the reins of the lawmakers who are supposed to check and balance the executive, and impeach the president, if necessary,” Erdemir said. “Hence, by becoming the AKP leader, Erdogan wants to make sure that he has enough loyalists in the parliament to block any impeachment attempts. ” | 1 |
Punishment Is Violent And Counterproductive By Robert J Burrowes
Punishment is a popular pastime for humans. Parents punish children. Teachers punish students. Employers punish workers. Courts punish lawbreakers. People punish each other. Governments punish enemies. And, according to some, God punishes evildoers.
What is punishment? Punishment is the infliction of violence as revenge on a person who is judged to have behaved inappropriately. It is a key word we use when we want to obscure from ourselves that we are being violent.
The violence inflicted as punishment can take many forms, depending on the context. It might involve inflicting physical injury and/or pain, withdrawal of approval or love, confinement/imprisonment, a financial penalty, dismissal, withdrawal of rights/privileges, denial of promised rewards, an order to perform a service, banishment, torture or death, among others.
Given the human preoccupation with punishment, it is perhaps surprising that this behaviour is not subjected to more widespread scrutiny. Mind you, I can think of many human behaviours that get less scrutiny than would be useful.
Anyway, because I am committed to facilitating functional human behaviour, I want to explain why using violence to punish people is highly dysfunctional and virtually guarantees an outcome opposite to that intended.
Punishment is usually inflicted by someone who makes a judgment that another person has behaved badly or wrongly. At its most basic, disobedience (that is, failure to comply with elite imposed norms) is often judged in this way, whether by parents, teachers, religious figures, lawmakers or national governments.
But is obedience functional or even appropriate?
Consider this. In order to behave optimally, the human organism requires that all mental functions feelings, thoughts, memory, conscience, sensory perception (sight, sound, touch, smell, taste), truth register, intuition must be developed and readily involved, without interference, in our life. If this happens, then all of these individual functions will play an integrated role in determining our behaviour in any given circumstance. This is a very sophisticated mental apparatus that has evolved over billions of years and if it was allowed to function without interference in each individual, human beings would indeed be highly functional.
So where does obedience fit into all of this? It doesnt. A child is genetically programmed to seek to meet their own needs, not obey the will of another. And they will behave functionally in endeavouring to meet these needs unless terrorized out of doing so. Moreover, they will learn to meet their own needs, by acting individually in some circumstances and by cooperating with others when appropriate, if their social environment models this.
However, if a child is terrorized into being obedient including by being punished when they are not then the child will have no choice but to suppress their awareness of the innate mental capacities that evolved over billions of years to guide their behaviour until they have learned what they must do to avoid being punished. For a fuller explanation of this, see Why Violence? http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence and Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice. http://anitamckone.wordpress.com/articles-2/fearless-and-fearful-psychology/
Unfortunately, as you can probably readily perceive, this process of terrorizing a child into suppressing their awareness of what they want to do so that they do what someone else directs is highly problematical. And it leads to a virtually infinite variety of dysfunctional behaviours, even for those who appear to have been successfully socialized into performing effectively in their society. This is readily illustrated.
Perhaps the central problem of terrorizing individuals into obedience of conventions, commands, rules and the law is that once the individual has been so terrorized, it is virtually impossible for them to change their behaviour because they are now terrified of doing so. If the obedient behaviours were functional in the circumstances then, apart from the obviously enormous damage suffered by the individual, there would be no other adverse social or environmental consequences.
Unfortunately, when all humans have been terrorized into behaving dysfunctionally on a routine basis (in the Western context, for example, by engaging in over-consumption) then changing their behaviour, even in the direction of functionality, is now unconsciously associated with the fear of violence (in the form of punishment) and so desirable behavioural change (in the direction of reduced consumption, for example) is much more difficult. It is not just that many Western humans are reluctant to reduce their consumption in line with environmental (including climatic) imperatives, they are unconsciously terrified of doing so.
By now you might be able to see the wider ramifications of using violence and threats of violence to force children into being obedient. Apart from terrorizing each child into suppressing their awareness of their innate mental capacities, we create individuals whose entire (unconscious) understanding of human existence is limited to the notion that violence, mislabeled punishment, drives socialization and society.
As just one result, for example, most people consider punishment to be appropriate in the context of the legal system: they expect courts to inflict legally-sanctioned violence on those guilty of disobeying the law. As in the case of the punishment of children, how many people ask Does violence restore functional behaviour? Or does it simply inflict violence as revenge? What do we really want to achieve? And how will we achieve that?
Fundamentally, the flaw with violence as punishment is that violence terrifies people. And you cannot terrorize someone into behaving functionally. At very best, you can terrorize someone into changing their behaviour in an extremely limited context and/or for an extremely limited period of time. But if you want functional and lasting change in an individuals behaviour, then considerable emotional healing will be necessary. This will allow the suppressed fear, anger, sadness and other feelings resulting from childhood terrorization to safely resurface and be expressed so that the individual can perceive their own needs and identify ways of fulfilling them (which does not mean that they will be obedient). For an explanation of what is required, see Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening which is referenced in My Promise to Children. https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/strategywheel/constructive-program/my-promise-to-children/
So next time you hear a political leader or corporate executive advocating or using violence (such as war, the curtailment of civil liberties, an economically exploitative and/or ecologically destructive initiative), remember that you are observing a highly dysfunctionalized individual. Moreover, this dysfunctional individual is a logical product of our societys unrelenting use of violence, much of it in the form of what is euphemistically called punishment, against our children in the delusional belief that it will give us obedience and hence social control.
Or next time you hear a public official, judge, terrorist or police officer promising justice (that is, retribution), remember that you are listening to an emotionally damaged individual who suffered enormous violence as a child and internalized the delusional message that punishment works.
You might also ponder how bad it could be if we didnt require obedience and use punishment to get it, but loved and nurtured children, by listening to them deeply, to become the unique, enormously loving and powerful individuals for which evolution genetically programmed them.
I am well aware that what I am suggesting will take an enormous amount of societal rethinking and a profound reallocation of resources away from violent and highly profitable police, legal, prison and military systems. But, as I wrote above, I am committed to facilitating functional human behaviour. I can also think of some useful ways that we could allocate the resources if we didnt waste them on violence.
If you share this commitment and working towards this world appeals to you too, then you are welcome to consider participating in the fifteen-year strategy outlined in The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth http://tinyurl.com/flametree and to consider signing the online pledge of The Peoples Charter to Create a Nonviolent World. http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com
Punishment can sometimes appear to get you the outcome you want in the short term. The cost is that it always moves you further away from any desirable outcome in the long run.
Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of Why Violence? http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence His email address is [email protected] and his website is at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com | 0 |
Sunday on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” Glenn Greenwald said Democrats who “suddenly love leaks” about President Donald Trump’s administration thought people who leaked to the media during the Obama administration were “villains,” “traitors,” and “they ought to go to prison. ” Greenwald said, “The problem is if you look at the last eight years, there has been a very concerted war on not just sources and whistleblowers, but also journalists, implemented by not Donald Trump but by the Obama administration. More sources prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act than in all previous administrations combined. Journalists such as James Rosen at Fox News and Jim Risen at The New York Times and those of us who worked on the Snowden reporting constantly threatened with prosecution or having our phone records subpoenaed and the like. ” “And Democratic officeholders in D. C. were virtually unanimous in the idea that people who leak information that’s classified are villains, they’re traitors, they ought to go to prison,” he continued. “This framework has been created both rhetorical and legal over the last eight years that says that people who leak classified information regardless of how important that information is ought to be punished. That’s the rhetoric and framework that Donald Trump is seizing on. And it the reason it’s been so damaging to have watched Democrats who suddenly love leaks now that it’s helping them have wage such an aggressive war on journalism and investigate reporting over the last eight years. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
By Allison Vincent Election 2016 , Faux Fox , News , Politics November 7, 2016 Sarah Palin Goes Off The Rails Again, Says Hillary’s Lead Is Because ‘Polls Are For Strippers’ (VIDEO) 903
If you were thinking this election couldn’t get any more ridiculous, just watch this interview between Sarah Palin and Bill O’Reilly on Sunday’s episode of The O’Reilly Factor.
Palin has been largely absent from the campaign trail in recent months, even skipping the Republican National Convention, but she has still been a very vocal supporter of Trump. Judging from her Facebook page, one might even assume that she is “hot, hot, hot for Trump!” since she enjoys using that phrase so much. That tone was evident in her interview with O’Reilly when she mentioned that she heard Bill saying earlier that maybe the “Trump momentum” had slowed down.
“You’re not in Michigan, then,” Palin said, “cos they are hot, hot, hot for Trump!”
O’Reilly, with uncharacteristic fairness, points out that Hillary Clinton is sill leading in the polls:
“The polls say that Clinton’s up by five. Are you willing to make a prediction that Trump will carry Michigan this time around?”
Palin’s response to that is so mind-bogglingly crazy, that you just have to watch it for yourself. And it doesn’t end there. Here’s the full video:
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140230 Views November 12, 2016 BROADCAST King World News
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Trump Is The First President To Truthfully Describe Our Situation
http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/incredible-last-minute-trump-ad-exposed-corrupt-elite/ri17542
The post Trump Is The First President To Truthfully Describe Our Situation appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org . | 0 |
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You wouldn’t know it by watching the news, but there are actually important things going on in the world that have nothing to do with the Presidential election. Today, we’ll talk about some of these non-election-related events on Survival Saturday, like the Dakota access pipeline, Russia, Venezuela, and our dystopian future.
For election coverage, go on over to my other website, DaisyLuther.com , which is all Hillary, all the time, right up until the election. (My goal there is to cover the stuff that the MSM is trying to sweep under the rug about their darling.) The Dakota Access Pipeline Protesters Are Being Brutally Attacked by Law Enforcement
Have you been aware of the ongoing protests by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe about a pipeline being forcibly built across their watershed via eminent domain? They have been joined by other tribes to form a coalition of water protectors who say that the pipeline is a violation of a treaty established between the Sioux and the federal government. ( Here are the important things to know about the protest . Trust me, you’ll want to read this.)
Everyone who was paying attention breathed a sigh of relief when the US Government for once took a stand on behalf of the little guys back in September.
“The federal government ordered a halt to work on a $3.8 billion four-state oil pipeline in the Upper Midwest on Friday, handing a temporary victory to the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and other opponents of the project…
…The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it wouldn’t authorize construction near Lake Oahe, a culturally important location to the tribe, until the agency determines if it needs to reconsider its previous approvals under the National Environmental Policy Act.” ( source )
Unfortunately, the government’s willingness to do the right thing was short-lived. Work has resumed on the pipeline and all hell is breaking loose – but not by who you might think. Protestors have been non-violent, but law enforcement has been absolutely brutal. They’ve beaten up on young people, old people, and independent journalists covering the story. Hundreds have been arrested.
These people are protecting their water sources and their way of life, and they are being brutalized by our own government. The story you’re getting on the mainstream is that the water protectors are standing there and that the police are standing there and that it is a relatively calm affair.
That couldn’t be further from the truth. The AntiMedia (who would get a major journalism award if real journalists got such awards) has provided truthful coverage, and it is ugly. Every single person who is against government overreach should be supporting the water protectors. Right now, this affects some people up in North Dakota. But what about when someone wants to build something across your land? What about when someone wants to seize your home? What about when Agenda 21 comes to your back yard?
Here’s what really happened at the Dakota Access Pipeline protests . It’s on film. It’s ugly. You owe it to your fellow human beings to witness this and be outraged. Go here to learn what you can do to help . With all of this “progress,” is humanity at risk of becoming obsolete?
Thousands of jobs each year are being turned over to computers as humans demand higher wages and better benefits for unskilled labor. We’ve all ended up on the endless loop of talking to customer service robots on the phone or going to a checkout counter and discovering it is push button and digital.
Is this all part of a greater plan to make the bulk of humanity utterly dependent on the whims of a few?
I don’t watch a lot of documentaries, but last night my daughter and I watched Obsolete . This film is available for free on Amazon , and it isn’t one of those dry, boring ones that keep you shifting in your seat in order to stay awake. It’s fascinating from the moment you hit play. When it was over, we sat there in silence for at least a minute, aghast that we could see the whole thing happening around us right now.
I can’t recommend this highly enough. Everyone should watch it. Let me quote Morpheus (from the Matrix ) for a moment here. “This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.”
This documentary is the red pill. Take it if you want to survive the future that is coming for us all.
Watch Obsolete then come back over here and let’s talk about it. I think this will spark a very interesting conversation. How will you prepare for a future in which humanity is largely obsolete? Meanwhile in Venezuela…
Things are still awful there, although there hasn’t been as much news coverage. Basically, this is how life is now for Venezuelans, and recovering from this collapse could take decades.
Currently, the people of the country are revolting against the unpopular president, Nicholas Maduro. A campaign had begun for a recall election in order to replace Maduro, but authorities halted the process. The electoral council cited fraud when faced with huge numbers of signatures on a petition. Thousands of demonstrators filled the streets. Source: Federico Parra /AFP/Getty Images
NPR reports :
The demonstrators were protesting “what they call a sharp turn towards authoritarianism. The Maduro government has jailed opposition leaders, stripped Congress of its powers and cracked down on the press.”
As for Maduro, he has blatantly threatened to jail anyone who tries to remove him from power, via elections or legal means, ironically citing the Venezuelan constitution :
“If they launch a supposed political trial, which is not in our constitution, the state prosecution service must bring legal action in the courts and put in jail anyone who violates the constitution, even if they are members of Congress.”
What’s more, in a conversation with the American DEA, Maduro’s nephew says that Venezuela is at war with the US, which is news to most Americans. Efrain Campo was busted doing a quick cocaine deal in order to make money for the Venezuelan First Family. He was caught attempting to smuggle $5 million of Columbian cocaine into the US. The Charlotte Observer reported :
Efrain Campo…was recorded saying “we’re at war” with the Americans and laughing about sending opposition leaders to jail, according to the transcript, which was filed in federal district court in New York.
“We need the money,” Campo said, according to the transcript. “Why? Because the Americans are hitting us hard with money. Do you understand? The opposition . . . is getting an infusion of a lot of money.”
…The defense has sought to paint Campo and his cousin as victims of a U.S. political plot against the Venezuelan government and has asserted that they didn’t have the knowledge or capability to pull off such a complicated transaction. We’re irritating the snot out of Russia…
Lately, the Powers That Shouldn’t Be (great phrase borrowed from my friend Mel at Truthstream Media ) have been going out of their way to paint Russia and Vladimir Putin as the biggest threat to America. A bigger threat, even, than Hillary Clinton, and boy, that’s a stretch. I’m pretty sure you can put all of these recent headlines together and get a picture of where this is headed. ( Hint .) There are many more, but I don’t want this post to be a lengthy novel about idiocy. | 0 |
With his Twitter account, President Donald Trump can move the media — and can also apparently tip celebrities’ scales. [Singer Barbra Streisand tweeted Saturday that Trump is making her gain weight, because after hearing the morning news, she switches from liquids to pancakes doused in maple syrup. Donald Trump is making me gain weight. I start the day with liquids, but after the morning news, I eat pancakes smothered in maple syrup! — Barbra Streisand (@BarbraStreisand) March 5, 2017, Trump just accused Obama of tapping his phones. Seriously crazy times. Time for more pancakes. — Barbra Streisand (@BarbraStreisand) March 5, 2017, The singer and vocal supporter of former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton issued the tweets after Trump accused President Obama’s administration’s of tapping the phones at Trump Tower before the election in a series of tweets on Saturday. Former Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis denied the charge in a statement Saturday. “A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice,” Lewis said. “As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U. S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false. ” Streisand has been one of Trump’s most outspoken celebrity critics. Just last week, she penned a column for the Huffington Post saying that the new president’s first 40 days in office paled in comparison to those of his predecessor. “Trump has promised to ‘make America great again.’ What makes America great is when our government is as good as our people, and acts with compassion and decency and humility,” she wrote. “He has failed this test already in his first 40 days. ” At a pricey New York City fundraiser for Hillary Clinton in June, the singer mocked Trump by performing a rendition of Stephen Sondheim’s 1973 song “Send in the Clowns. ” Streisand previously called Trump “clueless, reckless, graceless and heartless,” and also “terrifyingly scary. ” In August, the singer vowed to move to Australia if Trump won the election. But Streisand isn’t the only celebrity who claims Trump is affecting their weight in February, Girls star Lena Dunham claimed that the pain of what she called the Republican’s “ ” election victory contributed to her recent weight loss. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 1 |
Shortly before he died, Johnny Cash scrawled down eight short lines in a shaky hand, mortality clearly on his mind. “You tell me that I must the flowers that I cherish,” he wrote. He considered the hell of “nothing remaining of my name,” before concluding with an affirmation of his own legacy: That poem, “Forever,” is part of a new collection, “Forever Words: The Unknown Poems” (Blue Rider Press) to be published next week. Edited by Paul Muldoon, a Pulitzer poet and Princeton professor, the book includes 41 works from throughout Cash’s life — the earliest piece, “The Things We’re Frightened At,” was done when he was 12 — that were among the papers left behind when Cash died in September 2003. In some ways the poems mirror Cash’s songwriting, with terse ballads of outsiders in love, and parables drawn from the Bible Cash’s version of Job is a wealthy cattleman who “cried out in he lost his children and his property. ” And for Cash, who in his last years drew a new audience with a set of stark and fragile recordings, the poems present yet another look at a legend of American music. “I want people to have a deeper understanding of my father than just the iconic, cool man in black,” said John Carter Cash, his son. “I think this book will help provide that. ” Some poems in “Forever Words” are unmistakably personal. “You Never Knew My Mind,” from 1967, captures Cash’s bitterness as he was going through his divorce from Vivian Liberto. (He married June Carter the next year.) “Don’t Make a Movie About Me” rejects the Hollywood machine but then slyly gives advice on a film treatment. “Going, Going, Gone,” from 1990, is a painfully detailed catalog of the ravages of drug abuse: “Liquid, tablet, capsule, and smoke and payoff is the same in the end. ” At other times, Cash seems to tinker with his own body of work. “Don’t Take Your Gun to Town,” dated to the 1980s, rewrites his classic 1958 song “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town,” in which a headstrong young cowboy dies when he ignores his mother’s advice. In the new version, a jaded man plans a “Taxi Driver” rampage against “ need silencing,” but this time he listens. “I believe he wanted to make a statement,” the younger Mr. Cash said. “He owned guns. But he definitely believed that you do not need to carry a gun in your pocket to town. ” Even so, Cash kept that version private, although, along with a handful of the poems in this collection, the manuscript for “Don’t Take Your Gun” was sold at auction. In his introduction, Mr. Muldoon places Cash in a poetic tradition that comes out of Scotch ballads, and also raises a point that was hotly debated after Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature last month: Are song lyrics really the same as poetry? Do lyrics lose something when removed from their musical context? Like Cash’s lyrics, the poems in “Forever Words” are written in plain language, usually with a clear rhyming meter. There are strikingly evocative images (“The dogs are in the the huntin’s lookin’ good”) as well as some phrases about soaring eagles and hell’s fury that might pass unnoticed in a song but jump out on the page. In an interview, Mr. Muldoon put Cash alongside Leonard Cohen, who died on Monday, and Paul Simon as examples of songwriters whose words hold up on their own. Even so, he added, the “pressure per square inch” on lyrics “can be a wee bit lower than in a conventional poem. ” “But that’s not necessarily a bad thing,” he continued. There are occasions when the simple, direct phrase is the one that works. ” Taken together, Mr. Muldoon said, Cash’s poems have a broad sweep. “You still see the same scenes — love, death, loss, joy, sadness,” Mr. Muldoon said. “The great themes of popular songs, and, indeed, poetry, which we welcome hearing about and making sense of as we go through our lives. ” The poems in “Forever Words” were chosen from about 200 pieces left by Cash in varying states of completion. Some may have been intended as lyrics, his son said, but it was not always clear. His father’s papers, Mr. Cash said, included biblical studies and even a copy of Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. ” “They weren’t hoarders,” Mr. Cash said of his parents, “but they really didn’t like to throw things away. ” The Cash estate has released a number of posthumous albums, including “Personal File,” in 2006, a collection of intimate home recordings. A couple of years ago, Mr. Cash said, he was considering new projects with Steve Berkowitz, a producer and record executive who has worked extensively with the estate, and they began sifting through the poems. Looking to recruit Mr. Muldoon as editor, Mr. Berkowitz said he met him for an “ breakfast” at an Upper East Side diner and read him excerpts from the poems without revealing the author. “‘This is pretty strong stuff,’” Mr. Berkowitz recalled Mr. Muldoon’s saying. “‘Who is it?’ I told him, ‘This is Johnny Cash. ’” (In an email, Mr. Muldoon said he did not remember the meeting, “which is not to say it didn’t happen. ”) The Cash estate is already at work on an album of songs based on the poems, with musicians including Kris Kristofferson, Jewel, Chris Cornell and Jamey Johnson, in a project similar to Billy Bragg and Wilco’s work with Woody Guthrie lyrics. The album is planned for release next fall. Over the last year, the Cash estate has brought on a new management and marketing team, and the album is one of many new projects. Also planned are a Broadway show and a Johnny Cash slot machine, and the trust recently registered trademarks for phrases like “What would Johnny Cash do?” to place on clothing memorabilia. When asked about these plans, Mr. Cash said that he and the managers of the trust — of which he is a beneficiary — strove to avoid crass commercialization, and also wanted to follow his father’s wishes. “We try to live by the moral guide that he laid down,” Mr. Cash said, which, among other things, means no alcohol or tobacco ads. “But he also did Taco Bell commercials. ” The goal of “Forever Words,” Mr. Cash said, was to establish his father as a major poet and a “cultural American literary figure. ” There is also a personal benefit. “When I read these things, it puts me back in touch with the man,” he said. “It lets me communicate with my father again. ” | 1 |
Behind the headlines - conspiracies, cover-ups, ancient mysteries and more. Real news and perspectives that you won't find in the mainstream media. Browse: Home / U.S. Elections “November Chaos”: What You’re Not Being Told Essential Reading The Advent of the Anti-Christ II By Rixon Stewart on August 6, 2010
If or more likely when war erupts with Iran it will herald the appearance of an ominous figure long foretold. And guess what? We think we’ve spotted him One Day in Birmingham By Nick Kollerstrom on February 12, 2010
The terror outrages in Britain last year may not have been the work of “Muslim extremists”. A series of virtually unreported events in a Birmingham hotel suggest the covert involvement of Britain’s intelligence agencies in orchestrating events Before and after the “Holocaust”: Jewish population numbers in 1933 and 1948 By wmw_admin on November 30, 2013
During the time Hitler was supposed to have killed six million Jews — between 1933 and 1948 — the world’s Jewish population actually increased from 15,315,000 to 15,753,000 Scallywag Magazine article on Lord McAlpine and Derek Laud By wmw_admin on November 15, 2012
We repost this original 1990s article as it marks the beginning of an ongoing saga of depravity in British politics Dimensional Shift and the New Earth- Has Jesus Christ Spoken? By wmw_admin on April 24, 2011
Is this the most important book written since the original Gospels 2,000 years ago? We leave you to decide The Liberation of the Camps By wmw_admin on January 27, 2016
It is tantamount to virtual heresy to question the ‘Holocaust’ today. But did the extermination of 6 million really happen as we’ve been taught? The Illuminati Chronicles Part II By wmw_admin on November 28, 2007
A Short History of the New World Order Part II By [email protected] Aug. 10, 1973 – David Rockefeller writes an article for the “New York Times” describing his recent visit to Red China: “Whatever the price of the Chinese Revolution, it has obviously succeeded not only in producing more efficient and dedicated administration, but also […] Bloody Bill Clinton – American Caligula By wmw_admin on September 1, 2006
The real legacy of Clinton’s term of office: the chilling body count of those connected with him, who died in unusual or suspicious circumstances Who Really Murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman? By wmw_admin on February 28, 2015
Revelations that a US soldier was the killer would have jeopardised public support for the “War on Terror”. Hence a frame-up was required. A Joe Vialls classic recovered. | 0 |
Doubles — pairs of friends, rivals and families contrasting ideologies and views of the world — animate Zadie Smith’s novels, as surely as doubles and doppelgängers haunt many Hitchcock movies. Her astonishing debut novel, “White Teeth” (2000) recounted the story of two World War II vets — polar opposites and best friends — and their extended families, opening out into a teeming, portrait of a multicultural London. “On Beauty” (2005) another magical novel (set mainly in Boston) also depicted two very different families with intertwined lives. And the disappointing “NW” (2012) used the diverging stories of two childhood friends to look at the potent and ever shifting dynamics of money and class. Ms. Smith’s latest novel, “Swing Time,” works a variation on this setup. This time, it’s two spirited London girls and their very different trajectories. There are echoes of Wendy Wasserstein’s captivating 1981 play, “Isn’t It Romantic” — in their titles, lifted from 1930s classics in film and song, and in their portraits of two friends’ coming of age and their conflicted relationships with their mothers. At the same time, this novel addresses many themes that have animated Ms. Smith’s work since the start: the competing claims that family, cultural heritage and politics exert on identity how personal imperatives are shaped (or not) by public events the mix of emulation, resentment and rebellion that inform children’s attitudes toward their parents. Told in the first person, the narrative cuts back and forth in time, alternating between persuasive chapters about the unnamed narrator’s memories of her childhood and adolescence (when she and her friend Tracey both aspired to become dancers) and dull, strangely generic chapters about her experiences, working as an assistant to a famous singer and humanitarian named Aimee, who can “procure a baby” for adoption “as easily as she might order a handbag from Japan. ” The novel’s flashback chapters, set in London, possess the tactile energy and emotional detail of “White Teeth. ” Ms. Smith conjures the electric pulse of the 1980s and 1990s, when goth and punk were taking over the streets, and the nostalgia of the Cool Britannia years, when people rode Vespas to work and decorated their cubicles with pictures of Michael Caine in “Alfie” — the boys looking like “rebooted Mods” with “Kinks haircuts from 30 years earlier,” the girls like “Julie Christie in short skirts with smudgy black eyes. ” She also captures the rituals of that era before smartphones and the internet transformed daily life — when email was still a rarity, and research was conducted not through Google, but in libraries, reading old newspapers and microfiche. She is more adept here than in “NW” at mapping the inner lives of her heroines, though the radical sympathy she evinced for her characters in “White Teeth” and “On Beauty” has given way to a somewhat more grudging attitude — perhaps accounted for by the fact that the story is told from the narrator’s decidedly subjective point of view. Ms. Smith conveys her heroines’ youthful passion for dance — a calling that only Tracey has the talent to seriously pursue — and the of their friendship. Tracey — whose absent father has been in jail, and whose angry mother is an enabler of Tracey’s worst impulses — is the diva, the heedless one, who wears flashy clothes, has lots of boyfriends and takes a lot of drugs. The narrator is the good girl, the prudent one, who plays Ethel to Tracey’s flamboyant Lucy. Eager to escape the shadow of her chilly, politically ambitious mother, the narrator goes off to college, and eventually takes a job that requires her to play Ethel to Aimee’s Lucy. Aimee is a complete celebrity stereotype — a rote of Madonna and Angelina Jolie, who possesses none of the satiric edge or surprising tenderness of, say, the Justin hero of Teddy Wayne’s 2013 novel, “The Love Song of Jonny Valentine. ” And the chapters that chronicle Aimee’s much publicized efforts to build a school in an unnamed African country are beyond tedious — Aimee jetting in from her cosseted life in Britain and America to visit a village and meet with children and politicians, all the while trailed by video cameras. These sections are so perfunctorily rendered that they often feel like stuffing, written to fill out the novel’s schematic structure, which moves between sections, and flashback, ones. Some of the narrator’s experiences in Africa with Aimee — combined with her efforts to understand shifting attitudes toward race in music and dance — are meant to raise larger questions about cultural appropriation, and the relationship between the privileged West and the developing world. But these issues do not spring organically from this clumsy novel — a novel that showcases its author’s formidable talents in only half its pages, while bogging down the rest of the time in formulaic and predictable storytelling. | 1 |
Posted Monday, October 31, 2016 at 12:42pm EDT
Low cholesterol and its consequence
Previously, we have seen that cholesterol is a critical element of our cells and tissues (1). In addition, scientific evidence suggests that high cholesterol is not necessarily harmful, but offers a protective effect against brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease (2). At this point, we should ask the opposite question: what about if we have too little cholesterol? What are the consequences?
Without cholesterol, we would die!
It is well known today that cholesterol performs several important functions in the body. One of the best important is not the most important function of cholesterol is to assist the proper regulation of the immune system. Indeed, people who have a low blood cholesterol have an anergic immune system, i.e. a lack of reaction by the body’s defense mechanisms to foreign substances (Vredevoe et al. 1998). In other words, your body cannot fight off pathogens, such as bacteria, viruses, parasites, and fungi. Without cholesterol, the different cells involved in an immune response (such as macrophages, lymphocytes, etc.) cannot recognize the invaders and destroy them. Interestingly, it was shown that the LDL particles are the ones needed for an adequate immune response (Masterjohn 2007). These particles neutralize microbes and toxins before they cause any damage to the tissues/organs. And we call these LDL particles bad cholesterol! Without them, we would be dead! Another fact is that a low blood cholesterol increases our risks of developing tuberculosis.
More importantly, a sufficient supply of cholesterol to the immune system is critical to eliminate cancer cells. Indeed, cholesterol is needed to slow down the progression of cancer. In addition to cholesterol, saturated fats, like palmitic and myristic acids, are also necessary for an optimum immune system. These fats are found in tropical oil such as coconut oil. Would this fact explain why Asian people have a lower rate of cancer than North Americans?
Is cholesterol protective not causative of heart disease?
There is a tremendous amount of evidence to suggest that microbial infections are one of the primary drive force of plaque accumulation in the arteries of the heart (5, 6). In support of this, a lack of buccal hygiene considerably increases your risk of heart disease (7). Some researchers have noticed that people who suffered from a heart attack also had the flu a few days prior (8, 9). It seems that those microorganisms change the structure of the blood vessels leading to inflammation and an accumulation of plaques at the sites of injury. Based on this evidence, we can propose that cholesterol actually minimizes the risk of developing heart disease via the elimination of dangerous pathogens. Indeed, it seems to be the case (10).
It is time to end this war on cholesterol. Science is very clear; cholesterol does not cause heart disease. On the contrary, cholesterol is a vital element of a vibrant health by making sure the immune system is strong, by being a critical component of vitamin D synthesis, by helping the body make sex hormones, among other functions. | 0 |
“Be ye therefore perfect . . . even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”
Let’s compare Christ with the perfected Sufi. First, what are Christ’s teachings on the attainment of perfection?
Almost everyone is familiar with Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. We have all heard of the Master’s injunction to his disciples: “Love thine enemy” and “Turn the other cheek.” These verses from the Gospel of St Matthew are perhaps the most quoted verses in the New Testament:
“Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also.
And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you:
Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also.
And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?
And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others ? do not even the publicans so?
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
(Matt. 5:38-48)
Here is a sufi story that addresses the very same concept, but in a different manner; that of strength as opposed to what is typically perceived as weakness. Don’t just read the story, reflect on it, extend it out in your mind and see where it takes you. In that search, you will discover issues within yourself that must be addressed.
There once was a sufi master who was a soldier.
During a protracted war, he was at one point engaged in fierce, mortal combat. In the thick of furious battle, he finally overcame a vicious, determined foe. Besting the enemy and driving him to ground, the sufi closed in for the kill.
At the very moment he was about to deliver a fatal thrust of his sword to the neck of his prostrate enemy, his foe cried out in anguish, “Ah, If only I had your sword for a single moment, how different things would be!”
At once the sufi stopped his attack and surrendered his sword to his fallen enemy.
The soldier was dumbfounded.
Taking the sword from the sufi, he said: “Why did you do this? You could have killed me! I was lost, and now you stop and present me with your sword! Why would you do such a stupid thing? — for it is now I who will kill you! ”
The sufi shrugged. “I come from a family that grants any request, no matter how great,” he replied cooly. “You asked for my sword. I am honor bound to fulfill your request.”
The fallen soldier rose, and recognizing the sufi as a perfected master, returned his sword to him. Falling at the feet of the man who had just spared his life, he asked to become his disciple.
From that day forth, he followed the sufi as his master. Like this? Share it now. | 0 |
non gaap has always been bullshit. | 0 |
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Numerous FBI officials, both current and former, say the Bureau is intentionally attempting to influence the presidential election in favor of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump by damaging the candidacy of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
The interworkings of the FBI have been generously described as “chaotic” since Director James Comey declined not to recommend Hillary Clinton face criminal charges over her private email server, and this is because, as one current FBI agent described, “the FBI is Trumpland.”
This is a view shared by numerous other agents , none of which would speak directly on the record for fear of both professional and personal reprisal.
Comey then turned about-face and wrote a vague letter to Congress to announce the FBI would soon begin the process of combing through new emails which it had recently discovered that were tied to Clinton by way of Anthony Weiner , a disgraced Democratic congressman and failed New York City mayoral candidate who happens to be married to Clinton’s top aid, Huma Abedin.
The FBI looked at Weiner because of accusations that he had been having illicit sexual conversations with an underage g irl. Comey’s letter was almost immediately leaked by Congressman and self-appointed Clinton inquisitor Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and the dominoes began to fall in Trump’s favor. Clinton’s polling numbers began to sink, and the negativity surrounding the allegations of various sex crimes committed by Trump began to dissipate as the nation’s perpetually wandering attention returned to the ersatz email “controversy’.
One FBI agent said that Clinton is viewed as “the antichrist personified to a large swath of FBI personnel” which is why the information about Clinton has been timed to coincide with the election, “they’re pro-Trump.”
However, not all of the information coming out of the FBI is entirely anti-Clinton. Trump’s former campaign manager and former Putinist operative Paul Manafort, is also said to have an active investigation open against him and that the investigation is in its early stages.
A former FBI official has a different take on the matter and said, “There are lots of people who don’t think Trump is qualified, but also believe Clinton is corrupt. What you hear a lot is that it’s a bad choice, between an incompetent and a corrupt politician.”
The content of the newly discovered emails, if they even exist at all, are unknown as Comey wrote his letter to Congress before the FBI acquired a warrant to read the emails. This is further evidence of the FBI’s bias against Clinton as the FBI exists to investigate facts rather than spreading propagandistic rumor — particularly weeks before a presidential election which many have said is a clear violation of the Hatch Act which was enacted to prevent individuals like Comey from using the power of their office to engage in partisan political activities.
Rudy Giuliani, the former Mayor of New York City, hinted towards these actions by the FBI against Clinton two days before they transpired . He said, “I think he’s (Trump) got a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next few days. I mean, I’m talking about some pretty big surprises.” Now would Giuliani know the FBI was going to write a vague letter which would shake up the presidential election unless the FBI had already decided to take the action and time the release of the letter specifically to damage Clinton?
The Director of the FBI is a position that can only be appointed by a sitting president, and the director is given a 10-year term. The concern is due to the FBI’s bias against Clinton, and the likelihood of her victory, it would appear all but impossible that James Comey would be capable of fulfilling his duties. The president has the discretion to unilaterally fire an FBI Director. The Congressional Research Service found “there are no statutory conditions on the President’s authority to remove the FBI director.” If Clinton is able to beat back the FBI’s last-minute attempts to influence the election, it is all but assured that she will fire Comey on her first day in the Oval Office. Related Items: | 0 |
BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbian officials warned on Friday of another war in the Balkans if Albanians try to form a joint state with Kosovo in the European region and the West does not reject such a plan. | 1 |
An inspirational poster hangs above the Trump Tower desk of Hope Hicks, the press secretary for Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign, squeezed in among the framed Time magazine covers of Mr. Trump and exuberant notes written in his inimitable scrawl (“Hopie — You’re the greatest! ”). “Fate whispers to the warrior, ‘You cannot withstand the storm,’” it reads. “And the warrior whispers back, ‘I am the storm. ’” Ms. Hicks, a onetime champion lacrosse player who signed a Ford modeling contract as a teenager, had never worked in politics before last year, and her widest exposure had been as a in a Nickelodeon children’s television special about golf. Now she plays confidante and sometime gatekeeper to the presumptive Republican nominee for president and, improbably, serves as Mr. Trump’s sole liaison to the teeming national press corps. Hillary Clinton employs a media handlers who field hundreds of daily requests. Mr. Trump has Ms. Hicks, who was working for his daughter Ivanka’s luxury lines and for the Trump real estate brand when the candidate called her to his office in early 2015 and declared that she was joining his campaign. “Mr. Trump sat her down and said, ‘This is your new job,’” said her mother, Caye Cavender Hicks. “It was a shocker. ” Hope Hicks had trained at Hiltzik Strategies, the powerful public relations firm that represents Hollywood clients and corporate executives, before Ms. Trump brought her . She was commuting from an apartment she shared with her sister in Greenwich, Conn. above the dive bar where her father had his first beer at 18. Suddenly, she found herself a presence by Mr. Trump’s side, flying in his jet, living in a apartment and attending to his mercurial moods. She is arguably the least credentialed press secretary in the modern history of presidential politics. But for journalists who cover the campaign, she is sometimes the Jekyll to Mr. Trump’s Hyde, emailing angry complaints from her boss (“dishonest”) and often concluding with her own polite : “Best, Hope. ” Seemingly unfazed by her boss’s outbursts, she can detect the best moments for reporters to make requests — knowing, for instance, not to bother Mr. Trump while he is watching a major golf tournament. “Her most important role is her bond with the candidate,” said Paul Manafort, the veteran Republican adviser who, as of this past week, had been put in charge of the campaign. “She totally understands him. ” Or, as Ivanka Trump said in an interview: “My father makes people earn his trust. She’s earned his trust. ” And not without some steeliness. Ms. Hicks remained in her role even as Mr. Trump fired Corey Lewandowski, his campaign manager and another early member of his team. Mr. Lewandowski and Ms. Hicks are close friends: He has visited her family in Greenwich for dinners and, days after Mr. Trump clinched the Republican nomination (and fired a key political aide) they took in a Hall Oates concert with her parents in the V. I. P. tent at the Greenwich Town Party. But it was ultimately Ms. Hicks who announced Mr. Lewandowski’s departure, describing it as “a parting of ways. ” Friends of Ms. Hicks say they are thrilled by her sudden rise, dismissing concerns that her ties to Mr. Trump could damage her nascent career. “She believes in him, his leadership and abilities, and she’s thrown herself completely into this,” said Michael Feldman, a prominent Democratic strategist and family friend. “I don’t think that ties her personally to everything that’s been said. ” But some say they are alarmed that Ms. Hicks is promoting, and defending, a candidate who has been denounced as a demagogue, a racist, a misogynist and even a fascist. In Greenwich, where her family is part of the civic firmament, the topic of her association with Mr. Trump can get touchy. “Believe me, there are times when I would like to voice my opinion,” said Drew Marzullo, a Greenwich town selectman and Democrat who is close with Ms. Hicks’s sister, Mary Grace. He recalled doing a double take after spotting Mr. Lewandowski and other Trump aides with the family at the Hall Oates concert. Still, he added, “It would be unfair for someone to judge Hope or the family based on her job. ” In fact, Ms. Hicks is the third generation of her family to represent a powerful but highly controversial client. Her grandfather led public relations for Texaco during the 1970s oil crisis. Her father, Paul B. Hicks III, represented a major tobacco company in Connecticut and later was the top communications executive for the National Football League, where he dealt with scandals over player safety and the Patriots’ deflated footballs. Her establishment pedigree aside, Ms. Hicks does not fit the part of the typical campaign press secretary, spinning reporters and gossiping over expensed drinks on the trail. Among journalists, Ms. Hicks is not known to wrangle, cajole or mingle, serving as more of a conduit for her intensely boss, who likes to act as his own chief spokesman. Unlike her Clinton counterparts, who take pains to shape their candidate’s image, Ms. Hicks is not active on Twitter and does not show up on cable talk shows. Contacted for this article, she declined to be interviewed, insisting that she did not want to draw attention away from her candidate. Reporters praise Ms. Hicks for her poise amid a chaotic campaign. But some say that she can be unresponsive to questions, a habit so pervasive that it spawned a mocking, anonymous Twitter account, @HicksNoComment. On the trail, political reporters say Ms. Hicks rarely interacts with them at rallies, preferring to communicate by text or telephone. Ms. Hicks — perhaps the only campaign press secretary to have been photographed as a teenager by the fashion photographer Bruce Weber, in a campaign for Naturalizer shoes — favors Burberry trench coats and heels, a break from the scruffy ranks of harried campaign operatives. One reporter recalled staggering into a New Hampshire rally after a snowstorm, soaked in water and ice, only to find Ms. Hicks dressed impeccably, her makeup unmussed. Still, the stresses of the campaign have occasionally spilled into public view: Despite their friendship, Ms. Hicks and Mr. Lewandowski were spotted in a screaming match on a Manhattan sidewalk, which later turned up in The New York Post, fueling reports of internal tensions. Mostly, however, Ms. Hicks is a friendly, if disciplined, presence — Southern charm by way of Fairfield County. (Upon accompanying Mr. Trump to Scotland this past week, she told a reporter wryly, “I don’t do well in plaid. ”) And she is unfailingly deferential to her employer, whom she refers to only as “Mr. Trump” or “sir. ” He seems to appreciate it. “I’m lucky to have her,” Mr. Trump said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “She’s got very good judgment. She will often give advice, and she’ll do it in a very manner, so it doesn’t necessarily come in the form of advice. But it’s delivered very nicely. ” Did he have qualms about hiring a campaign spokeswoman with no political background? “Well, I have a lot of political experience, so I wasn’t really concerned about it,” Mr. Trump said. “And if it didn’t work out, I would be able to make a fast change,” he said. “But it has worked out. ” Mr. Trump sent flowers to Ms. Hicks’s family when her grandmother died earlier this year. Her parents also visited Mr. Trump’s Florida resort, where he greeted them and teased Mr. Hicks about the N. F. L. “He could not have been nicer,” Caye Hicks said. Ms. Hicks’s success has not surprised her family (“Hope’s a fighter,” as her father said) even as they harbor some concern about the intensity of her work. “She doesn’t really talk to anybody anymore, she has no life,” Caye Hicks said. Mr. Trump’s rallies, where violent protests sometimes break out, can also be disconcerting. “I have to hope the Secret Service is keeping them all safe,” Caye Hicks said. “It’s a crazy atmosphere. ” She added: “I can’t actually let her know how worried I am. ” On free nights, Ms. Hicks retreats to her parents’ home in Greenwich — her mother sometimes hears a creaking door at 2 a. m. — to unwind. Her sister, Mary Grace, is a paramedic there, and her father, a former town selectman, remains a prominent figure: This spring, Greenwich proclaimed April 23 as Paul B. Hicks III Day to recognize his philanthropy. Ms. Hicks grew up in Greenwich swimming and golfing. When she was in sixth grade, a neighbor invited Ms. Hicks and her sister to a Ralph Lauren tryout soon their photographs were in Bloomingdale’s. She made a cameo on “Guiding Light,” appeared on the covers of young adult paperbacks like “Gossip Girl” and once read lines for a film role with Alec Baldwin. At age 13, Ms. Hicks told Greenwich Magazine, for a cover story about the Hicks sisters’ modeling careers, that she was “not ready to decide if modeling is what I want to do with my life. ” “If the acting thing doesn’t work out,” she said, “I could really see myself in politics. Who knows?” The Hicks sisters earned enough from modeling to file tax returns. But Hope preferred lacrosse, leading Greenwich High School to a state championship and later playing at Southern Methodist University, where she majored in English. After graduation, she and her father bumped into Mr. Baldwin at the Super Bowl. The meeting led to an interview and job offer from Matthew Hiltzik, whose clients include Mr. Baldwin and, fatefully, Ivanka Trump, who was impressed by Ms. Hicks and eventually hired her away. Aside from Mr. Trump’s children, Ms. Hicks is now the aide on his presidential bid. Mr. Feldman, the family friend, said he doubted that anyone anticipated it would last this long. “You do the best you can under very unusual circumstances,” he said. “In this case, circumstances that are more unusual than most. ” The campaign is looking to hire a communications director. But as the general election looms, Ms. Hicks, who has recently been featured in Marie Claire and GQ, remains loyal, apparently unperturbed by the controversies swirling around her candidate and prepared to stick it out. Mr. Trump, asked if Ms. Hicks would have a spot in his administration, replied, “She would definitely have a role. ” How about press secretary? “I don’t want to comment on that,” he said. “It’s too early. I don’t want to be making those prognostications yet. But she’ll certainly be involved with us. She’s terrific. ” | 1 |
Fights broke out Saturday before and soon after Russia earned a draw against England with a goal in a Group B match at the European Championships in Marseille, France. Fans of the two teams rioted before the game in Marseille’s Old Port district and briefly outside the nearby Stade Vélodrome in a third straight day of violence in the city. The police fired tear gas and water cannons at the fighting fans. The clashes started again moments after the final whistle when a large group of Russia fans in a stand behind one of the goals advanced on England supporters in a neighboring area, throwing objects and breaking through a line of stewards. England fans ran for the exits in panic. UEFA, the governing body overseeing European soccer, will open disciplinary proceedings over the violence in Marseille, with Russia facing a stronger punishment after the events inside the stadium. Vasily Berezutsky scored Russia’s equalizer with a looping header in the second minute of injury time, canceling out an Eric Dier goal from a free kick in the 73rd. “It’s disappointing because we were so close to an important and big win in our first game,” said Dier, a defensive midfielder. England failed to finish any of a flurry of chances in a dominant performance and faded until Dier put it ahead. However, what happened during the match was overshadowed by the fan violence. The police tried, largely unsuccessfully, to rein in the violence, which the authorities said had left at least five people injured. Some fans walked through the city and with blood dripping from head wounds. About two hours before the game, the police used water cannons on some fans at the Old Port. About an hour later, the police fired tear gas at a group of about 200 people heading from the Old Port area to Stade Vélodrome. The trouble had largely died down by the time the match started, but it reignited just as the game finished. Shortly before the final whistle, Russian fans appeared to have seized a power cable running around the front of a stand before a group attacked nearby English supporters. As England fans fled, Russia fans gave chase, snatching English flags that had been on display. Large numbers of stewards struggled to restore order. In other games at the European Championships, Wales beat Slovakia, in a Group B match in Bordeaux, France, and Switzerland defeated Albania, in a Group A match in Lens, France. Gareth Bale, who about two weeks ago won the Champions League with Real Madrid for the second time in three seasons, played a pivotal role as Wales made a triumphant return to a major competition after a absence. He put Wales ahead in the 10th minute with a curling free kick and was the driving force behind much of his team’s attack. Still, although Bale was the focus of much of Slovakia’s planning, it was a substitute — Hal — who secured Wales’s victory. A shot in the 81st minute restored Wales’s lead after another substitute, Ondrej Duda, had equalized for Slovakia in the 61st. Switzerland earned its win behind an early goal by defender Fabian Schär. Although it dominated for most of the game, Switzerland failed to increase its lead after Lorik Cana, the Albania captain, was sent off in the 37th minute following a second yellow card. CONSOLATION FOR COSTA RICA Costa Rica benefited from an own goal by Colombia in a upset victory in Houston that wrapped up Group A play in the Copa América. Colombia had already advanced, having earned a berth in the quarterfinals with a win over Paraguay on Tuesday, and Costa Rica was eliminated from contention with the United States’ victory over Paraguay earlier Saturday. Still, this result made Colombia’s path in the tournament more difficult: The team will now probably have to face Brazil. Colombia could have drawn Ecuador or Peru with a win. Playing in front of a crowd that overwhelmingly favored Colombia, Costa Rica took a lead in the second minute with a strike from Johan Venegas. The goal was the team’s first in Copa América play since it beat Bolivia, in 2011. | 1 |
Wednesday 16 November 2016 by Spacey Oxford Dictionaries reveal word of the year as “clusterfuck”
In the era of Donald Trump and Brexit, Oxford Dictionaries has declared “clusterfuck” to be its international word of the year after its use increased by 200,000% compared to last year.
Defined by the dictionary as “denoting circumstances in which everything has gone completely tits-up”, clusterfuck is also the collective noun for a group of government ministers.
Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year is intended to “reflect the passing year in language”, with clusterfuck following last year’s controversial choice of the “I can’t even be bothered with words” emoji.
Contenders for the title had included “alt-right”, shortened from the fuller form “white supremacists” and defined as a ”media term that normalises extreme racism”.
Also in the running were terms including coulrophobia, the fear of clowns, and Brexiteer, the clowns of fear.
“2016 has been eventful,” explained lexicographer Simon Williams.
“A number of hugely influential and much-loved celebrities have died, and yet Rupert Murdoch celebrated his 85th birthday and married a former supermodel.
“We voted for Brexit following a campaign in which objective facts were considered utterly worthless.
“Donald Trump is the US president-elect.
“It’s been a total clusterfuck!” Get the best NewsThump stories in your mailbox every Friday, for FREE! There are currently witterings below - why not add your own? | 0 |
Weinergate: NYT reports that ‘one federal official said [emails] numbered in the tens of thousands’ Posted at 6:43 Share on Facebook Share on Twitter
Well, this escalated quickly: NYT report on new emails now notes that “one federal official said they numbered in the tens of thousands” https://t.co/OUDPcphwx0
From the New York Times :
WASHINGTON — A new trove of emails that appear pertinent to the now-closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server was discovered after the F.B.I. seized at least one electronic device shared by Anthony D. Weiner and his estranged wife, Huma Abedin, a top aide to Mrs. Clinton, federal law enforcement officials said Friday.
The F.B.I. is investigating illicit text messages that Mr. Weiner, a former Democratic congressman from New York, sent to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. The bureau told Congress on Friday that it had uncovered new emails related to the Clinton case — one federal official said they numbered in the tens of thousands — potentially reigniting an issue that has weighed on the presidential campaign and offering a lifeline to Donald J. Trump less than two weeks before the election.
And don’t expect any information on what the FBI finds until after the election, natch: NEW: Review of new emails — there are possibly thousands — anticipated to extend beyond Election Day, sources tell @jeffpeguescbs .
— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 28, 2016
*** | 0 |
The footage is grainy, randomly framed. A pit bull on the Upper West Side noses open a refrigerator door. A Pomeranian obsessively rearranges her bedding. A rabbit in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, waits for his nightly bowl of oats. A bulldog in the East Village makes passionate love to a pillow. All the while, as the animals go about their business, the cameras roll. This summer’s hit movie “The Secret Life of Pets,” set in a New York City, offers fantastical answers to the question: What do Fido and Fluffy do when we’re not around? In the film, they listen to heavy metal, massage themselves with eggbeaters, throw noisy parties, hijack trucks and tumble down sewers. But in real life in the age, there is no need to wonder. There are cameras — nanny cams, pet cams, indoor systems — streaming countless of empirical data each day across the screens of New Yorkers. So what do these animals do, cooped up in empty apartments? They sleep, a lot. Even when awake, they spend a lot of time just waiting around, especially if they’re dogs. “What they’re not ever doing is exactly what ‘The Secret Life of Pets’ is about, which is that they have independent lives that they resume when you leave,” said Alexandra Horowitz, director of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College. “This is not when they come into themselves. It is when they’re waiting for the person to return so they can resume normal programming. ” Yet in those hours of suspended animation, there are moments when life puts itself on display. In a brief YouTube video called “Home alone,” a Manhattan Labradoodle puppy named Kody knocks a roll of paper towels off a dresser, studies it, rolls it with a paw and begins to chew it to shreds: Project sought, project found. People — largely people with digitally oriented desk jobs, it seems — train surveillance cameras on their pets for a number of reasons. Because they want to make sure the dog walker shows up. Because they miss their companion or feel a little guilty about leaving it home all day. Or just because they can. “It’s like white noise — I just have it on in the background,” said Dave Stangle, 31, an advertising director for the dog product and entertainment company Bark Co. and owner of Frank, the bulldog. “It just provides peace of mind that when you’re not there, the dog is just walking around or sleeping. ” Jo Victor has noticed that her chocolate lab, Mista Pikle Butt (pronounced like pickle butt) is “basically like a human when I’m gone. ” “He just kind of walks around, sits on the couch, watches TV, gets up,” said Ms. Victor, the service coordinator for Swifto, the site. She leaves the television tuned to the Food Network for him. Others, like Kevin Dresser, find the sight of a bored animal disconcerting. Mr. Dresser, a TV pioneer, ran a popular webcam called Bklyn Bunny starring Roebling, a white buck with a stylish black eyepatch, from 2005 until Roebling’s death last year. “When we would be out to dinner with friends or somewhere traveling around the city and we would check in, it would be nice to know that he was there,” Mr. Dresser, a graphic designer, said. ”But sometimes it would make you a little sad because you think ‘I should be at home with him.’ ” Especially around Oaty Time. “At 10 o’clock every night, we would give Roebling a bowl of oats,” Mr. Dresser said. “So around 10 o’clock he would go sit by his oat dish and wait. If we weren’t home, we would get emails from people, ‘Hey, looks like Roebling is ready for his oats.’ ” “These camera companies talk about how great it is to be able to see your dog while you’re at work, but there is some kind of gloominess about it,” he added. “There’s your dog, sitting in the corner, and no one’s at home with him. ” Ms. Horowitz, the dog scientist whose new book, “Being a Dog,” will be published in the fall, concurred. A dog left alone may sleep all day, she said, “but that’s from lack of stimulation, not from need to sleep. “Think of any working dog who is given anything to do,” she said. “They are walking around pursuing whatever they’re doing for a full day and they don’t need to take naps. It’s just that these dogs don’t have a job. ” She got a second dog in part to keep her first dog company. Her finding: “Our two dogs spent a truly impressive amount of time asleep on the sofa. ” Pet cams occasionally transmit important news. Kody’s owner, Katelyn Lesse, once checked in on him just in time to see him raiding a container of allergy pills. “I ran home and rushed him to the vet,” Ms. Lesse, 23, a software engineer, said. (He had eaten three or four but was fine.) Dan Graziano learned a useful fact about his young goldendoodle, Theo: He poops on the floor, then eats it. “Of course when I get home, he wants to lick my face,” said Mr. Graziano, 27, an associate editor at CNET who lives on the Upper East Side. “I’m like, ‘No, I know what you did today.’ I’ll take a pass on the on those days. ” Sometimes the camera offers a disconcerting glimpse. Andy P. Smith’s terrier mutt, Luigi, goes to a doggy day care with a webcam. “Every time we check it,” said Mr. Smith, a writer who lives in Greenpoint, “he’s sitting off by himself, in a big room with 40 other dogs playing and having a good time around him. He’s like the weird kid at the playground. ” Sometimes, it solves a mystery. One evening, Ms. Lesse found shirts and underwear strewn across the bedroom floor. “I was like, ‘How did this happen?’ So I rewound the video and there was one tiny corner of a shirt sticking out of the drawer. Kody grabbed onto the shirt and the drawer opened and he got at everything inside. ” Lydia DesRoche, a Broadway animal trainer, got a camera to watch her pit bull, Red, after he got into a cabinet and ate a box of Kind bars. One day, she arrived to walk him and found the refrigerator door wide open. The remains of some fancy dog food lay on the couch. A pan of paella had been ravaged. Rewind, and there was Red, pushing the door open with his snout, then heading for the couch with a prize in his mouth. “He has no shame,” she said. Red has a kindred spirit in Banjo, a terrier mix, who has spent six years raiding the fridge of his owner, Garland Harwood, a publicist for Bark Co. Mr. Harwood has yet to catch Banjo in the act, but he has assembled an impressive array of crime scene photos. And then there are those times when seeing your pet’s secret life only deepens the mystery. One day, Richard Blakeley, a digital product director, got a motion alert on his phone. He tuned in to witness a outburst that he posted on YouTube under the title “Richard Blakeley has a dog named Bagel that goes crazy. ” Action: Bagel jumps on the couch and digs frantically between the cushions. She growls. Then she freezes. She leaps as if chasing prey. She runs from one end of the couch to the other, over and over. She barks and yips. She digs furiously. Finally she bounds onto a chair and out of view. “I just couldn’t believe that was my dog, because she’s never like that,” Mr. Blakeley said. “She’s a pretty timid dog. ” Lindsay Kaplan, Mr. Blakeley’s wife, has a theory about what Bagel gets up to when she thinks no one is watching: “She has an imaginary squirrel. ” | 1 |
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