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UPDATE: HILLARY CLINTON IS AGAIN UNDER INVESTIGATION BY THE FBI. IF SHE IS INDICTED, HER PEOPLE WILL UNDOUBTEDLY LAUNCH A CYBER ATTACK ON THE ELECTIONS AND BLAME THE RUSSIANS. HILLARY HAS TIPPED HER HAND MANY TIMES. IF THIS HAPPENS, YOU MUST HASTEN YOUR PREPARATIONS. IF HILLARY SKATES, AGAIN, WE STILL ONLY HAVE A SHORT WINDOW TO ALL HELL BREAKING LOOSE. PLEASE PREPARE NOW!
The Common Sense Show issued an alert yesterday with regard to the likelihood of widespread violence, regardless of who wins the election. The violence may not be dramatic on November, but I believe that a crescendo will be reached by the holidays. There are literally dozens of troop movements and a number of martial law events taking place as I write these words. The bottom line is, half of the country hates the other half of the country and pressure valve is ready to blow. And if Trump wins, the violence factor will escalate exponentially as evidenced by the firebombed GOP building in North Carolina.
When these events come to fruition, it could potentially paralyze this nation and bring the economy to a standstill. Subsequently, the grocery store shelves could be empty within two days and food riots would likely commence by sundown of the second day. All Americans would instantly be in danger. Local law enforcement would be overwhelmed. What would be your chances of survival? Yesterday, I wrote about the fact that FEMA has conducted research studies on America’s level of preparedness and the news is not good. FEMA concluded that 72% of all Americans are not prepared to survive what is coming In other words, when society begins to fragment, you and your fellow preppers are outnumbered by a 3 to 1 margin.
Are you prepared for 3 out of 4 of your neighbors climbing through your windows in search of life-saving supplies?
The FEMA Preparedness Reports In response to concerns about strengthening the nation’s ability to protect its population and way of life (i.e., security) and ability to adapt and recover from emergencies (i.e., resilience), the President of the United States issued Presidential Policy Directive 8: National Preparedness (PPD-8).
PPD-8 is a directive for the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate a comprehensive campaign to encourage Americans to practice national preparedness. Despite efforts by FEMA and other organizations to educate American citizens on becoming prepared, growth in specific preparedness behaviors has been limited. Government programs to this end are nearly nonexistent.
I have spent the past week illustrating how a coming economic collapse is unavoidable and how the elite have conspired to steal as many of your assets as possible prior to the collapse. This article presents some common sense things one can do which could increase the chances of surviving a major societal meltdown resulting from an economic collapse. If you have any doubts as to what is coming, I strongly encourage you to read what I have written about on this topic over the past several months. Even Ray Charles could see that our economy will not be around much longer in its present form.
It is always best to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. For the purposes of this article, it is possible that society will not totally collapse even if the dollar does. However, large segments of societies always collapse when an economic collapse happens. Surviving the worst case scenario is the purpose behind what will be covered here.
We have about 14 days to do the following 14 things: 1. The Creation of a Pseudo-Identity It may be necessary to become invisible in the event you think you believe that your name could be on a (Red) list because roundups will usually occur in dire situations. Therefore, the creation of a pseudo-identity could become very important.
2. It Takes Money to Prepare If you have read the articles at the above links, you should have concluded that it is the height of stupidity to leave your life savings in an institution that is planning to steal from you. You need to divert your cash, other than the ability to pay basic bills, in preparation for what is coming.
Getting your money out of the bank has become an art form and you need to be careful. There is a barrier to your ability to procure some of these life-saving and life-extending supplies. Right now, you do not have full access to your money.
As you move to withdraw the bulk of your money, there are three federal banking laws that you should be cognizant of, namely, Cash Transaction Report (CTR), a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) and structuring.
Cash Transaction Reports Federal law requires that the bank file a report based upon any withdrawal or deposit of $10,000 or more on any single given day.The law was designed to put a damper on money laundering, sophisticated counterfeiting and other federal crimes.
To remain in compliance with the law, financial institutions must obtain personal identification, information about the transaction and the social security number of the person conducting the transaction.
Before proceeding with the planned withdrawal of your money, I would strongly suggest that you read the following federal guidelines as it relates to CTR’s as produced by the The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). All the federal regulations contained in this article are elucidated in this series of federal reports.
Structuring and SAR There will undoubtedly be some geniuses whose math ability will tell them that all they have to do is to withdraw $9,999.99 and the bank and its protector, the federal government will be none the wiser. It is not quite that simple. The bank is required to file a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) which serves to notify the federal government of an individual’s attempt to structure deposits or withdrawals by circumventing the $10,000 reporting requirement.
Structuring transactions to prevent a CTR from being reported can result in imprisonment for not more than five years and/or a fine of up to $250,000. If structuring involves more than $100,000 in a twelve month period or is performed while violating another law of the federal government, the penalty is doubled.
Enforcement Much like the enforcement of our tax laws, the federal government’s enforcement of its banking laws as it relates to CTR’s, SAR’s and subsequent structuring is quite draconian. Civilian asset forfeiture laws come into play. The government can seize your bank accounts while it determines if a crime has been committed. The government can literally seize your assets in perpetuity without an order of the court. Of course, you could try and sue but you will be up against the deep pockets of the federal government and the case could take years. By the time your case is decided, the financial banking crisis that you are so desperately trying to avoid by withdrawing your money, could be over. So, proceed with caution.
Withdrawing Your Money From the Bank The best way to avoid getting your money caught in the bank in the midst of a bank run would be to not let the lion’s share of your money ever cross the bank. The simplest way to accomplish this is to prevent any form of deposit from going automatically into your account, as much as it is possible.
Secondly, you need to begin to pay cash for everything. Let’s say that every 30 days, Bob cashes his check at the bank from his work worth $5,000 net pay. Bob leaves just enough in the bank to be able to conduct normal banking business. Bob walks out of the bank every month with the majority of the cash from his check. Bob should begin to pay cash for as much as he can, such as eating out, paying the electric bill (pay the bill in person), buying groceries, etc. When it becomes necessary to make a “big ticket” purchase, Bob could temporarily leave more in the bank to cover the writing of a check.
You would also be wise to open multiple banking accounts ranging from the big five megabanks to your local credit unions. You could withdraw much smaller amounts until the sum total of your accounts is greatly diminished and is in your possession. To open the accounts, simply write a personal check from your home bank. Of course, in these cases, the bank could hold the check for 15-30 days.
I cannot promise you that if you become the target of federal investigators, that you will not have your every financial move scrutinized and the feds will eventually discover the aggregate patterns of withdrawal. People who I interviewed told me that they believe that the federal government is in the process of getting the banking computers to “talk” to each other in a way that would reveal structuring, but that technology is not yet online.
If you ever become the target of a federal investigation, do not, under any circumstances, allow yourself to be interviewed by federal officials without an attorney present. In many cases, people go to jail and pay huge fines, not because they have committed a federal crime, but because federal officials state that they have lied or misled them. And if you do not have an attorney present, it is your word versus the federal government. There are other sources besides banks that you can tap into for money which can be used to prepare for what is coming.
4o1K’s, IRA, et al If you were 100% convinced of an imminent crash, you would be foolish not to take your money out. However, the prepayment penalty of 50% is steep if you withdraw your funds before you are 59.5 years old.
If you are retiring soon, take the lump sum option and convert all of these retirement monies to survival supplies and gold which you will need as the world emerges from the crash.
The moral of the story is to become as liquid as possible, from a cash perspective. Getting access to your money is only the first part of being prepared to survive an economic crash.
3. Make a List Buy a good prepper book. Holly Deyo is an excellent source for this information (www.standdeyo.com). In the interim, procure your food, water, guns, ammo and home security adjustments. If you do not have a big dog, consider obtaining a pair. These animals will be your companion, home security system and ally if someone attempts to breach your home with bad intent. Of course, you will have to store dog food as well.
Sit down and construct a list of what you will need after reading a good prepper book.
Make all of you purchases in cash! You do not want to let the wrong people know what you are up to.
4. Rural Vs. Urban We have to live our lives for today and it may not be possible to move to a rural area because of your job. However, one survivalist that I was speaking with estimates that the rate of survival for a country in economic chaos would be 10 times higher for rural residents as opposed to urban residents. Consider buying a place in an isolated area and commuting to work in the interim.
5. Pay Off Your Mortgage and Car Loans If you have a CD, a 401k or any other long-term investment, you might want to consider taking the penalty and executing a withdrawal and apply what’s left of the principal, usually about 50% of the original value, and paying down your major debts.
After an economic collapse, you most likely will not have a job and your retirement and savings will likely be wiped out and confiscated. That is why it would be wise to pay down your debt while you can afford to do so because after the collapse, there will still be foreclosures and repossessions and if you and your family survive, you could be on the street if you cannot pay your bills.
6. Buy Gold and Silver While You Can Afford It Goldman Sachs has been shorting gold. The elite have been hording gold as have the BRICS. These entities are telling you, by action, what medium of exchange is going to be of value following the collapse that is coming.
Storing gold and silver is an economic survival strategy which will pay dividends after the smoke begins to clear in the post-collapse era.
7. Practice Austerity Before Austerity Is Imposed On You It is critical to immediately eliminate all unnecessary expenses. Give yourself some operating capital. You may be able to purchase a bug-out residence in a rural area. You will certainly be able to afford more survival gear.
In order to increase your immediate cash flow, start an at-home business. Start a business which has virtually no upfront and startup costs. Even if you are not able to generate much income, you will create a legal tax evasion strategy in which you can legally deduct many of your present activities and expenses (e.g. mileage, the purchase of any office supply, etc.) including survival gear.
8. Create and Store Your Own Food With regard to storing food, you need to do so immediately. I recommend storing two years worth of food. However, you need to master the art of growing food inside your home. There are plenty of resources which can teach you how to do that. However, you would be wise if you would create a hiding place in which you can store food and water safely in a hidden location . If you are ever robbed, you will not have exhausted your food supplies. You are most likely to be robbed by FEMA or one of their mercenary groups (e.g. Academia) during the beginning of the crisis because food and water will be used as weapons to control you. I am personally aware of FEMA going to selected homeowners to catalogue their reserve food and water supplies. Remember, water is sunlight and temperature sensitive. There are plenty of prepper manuals that you can consult for instructions on how to meet these needs. The time to do these things is yesterday.
The biggest threat to survival is death due to dehydration and starving to death. Contaminated water will also pose a threat. There are plenty of places to purchase large drums and obtain water tablets for water purification purposes. Obtain a pair of water filters in case you have to go mobile to survive.
Finally, learn to grow your own food within your residence. Your garden will likely be raided by humans and hungry animals alike. There are plenty of prepper manuals which can teach you how to accomplish this task.
9. Personal Supplies Of course you will need toothpaste, toiletries, eating utensils, feminine hygiene supplies, etc. For a complete list of personal items see Steve Quayles list on his website .
10. Horde Medicines and Medical Supplies If you or your family has a chronic health condition, it is critical that you have 6 months to a year in medicine. Also, you should research natural alternatives to treatment for health conditions in case you are not able to meet this goal due to the inability to obtain prescriptions. Don’t forget to obtain some pain medication and antibiotics in case of unforeseen emergencies. Make a trip to Mexico and sneak across medication in old pill bottles in order to escape detection by the Border Patrol who will ask you if you obtained medication in Mexico when you come back across the border.
If you can safely ration your existing medication doses, do so and store the excesses. Make sure you also have a first aid kit. Take a First Aid class including CPR at your local fire station.
Some are thinking that this is a lot of work. My response would be, how bad do you want you and your family to survive?
11. Guns and Ammunition Regardless of your moral convictions, ask yourself if you want your family to survive.
Buy your guns off the books from private parties and at gun shows. “Keep guns for show and guns for go”. In other words, have a safe location that you can bury guns so that when gun confiscation begins, you will not be left totally defenseless.
America needs to not only create safe and secure homes, but to create as many Warsaw ghettos as possible (look it up). We need to make ourselves a hard country to conquer and occupy. We cannot stop a treasonous leader from handing off the country to some foreign entity (e.g. the UN). However, occupation of America should be problematic for the blue-helmet wearing Russians, Chinese and other proxy forces training on our soil to occupy us.
It is recommended that you have 3 types of weapons: (1) pistols for close in fighting; (2) shotguns for defense of the entrance to your home; and, (3) a rifle with a scope in order to fight back against long-range snipers that do not want to storm your home because you appear to be prepared. Immediately, obtain weapons instruction for you and your family, firearms training and then practice! Conduct mock raids on your residence so that you can see your vulnerabilities. An armed populace makes a people more feared by an abusive government.
Do not forget about gas masks for each member of your family and make sure to store extras. If you have the means to obtain body armor, do so now, because Congress is preparing to outlaw the private use of body armor.
12. Prepare to Survive in the Raw Elements and Build a Way of Life
It is possible that you can learn to survive in the raw elements without heating and central air conditioning. You may not have lights. Obtain flashlights, many batteries and a hand crank radio.
Make sure you have clothes befitting all weather that you may encounter because a crisis that begins in January, may not be over by August.
Take a weekend and pretend the grid is down. This will allow you to see firsthand what supplies you will need. When should you perform this drill? There is no time like the present.
To people with generators, congratulations on your foresight. However, if you are the only house on the block with lights, how long do you think it will be until you have unwanted visitors with bad intent?
Get in shape, begin to walk, jog or run. The better shape you are in, the better.
Don’t forget about procuring non-electronic forms of entertainment. This should include board games and educational materials for your children. You will want to establish some normalcy for the sake of your children. You are preparing to adopt a new way of life. Make the new life worth living.
I would also recommend that every personal library contain The Constitution of the United States. After the chaos subsides, we will need to rebuild. You will not want to live in a “might makes right” society.
13. For Goodness Sake, Do Not Tell Anyone If your four adjacent neighbors broach the topic of preparedness, gauge the situation and then make an informed decision. If your neighbors are on board with preparing, that will help you form a defensive perimeter and a mutual alliance pact. Otherwise, tell nobody of your preparation plans. Do not tell your friends, family members, and co-workers. Make your preparations in cash or cashier’s checks as much as possible. Limit the paper trail to you. You do not want the government to know that you are prepared because you could be the first one on your block that is visited at 3AM. You and your mate should prepare in stealth. Kids talk and so do their friends.
14. PRAY! Survival is never guaranteed, salvation is! And do not forget one of your most important resources, your Bible. In a post-collapse America, it is likely that a religion will be forced upon the survivors and that religion will not be Christianity.
Conclusion In an upside-down world in which the banks legally own your money, getting your money away from these criminal banks has become an art form. I cannot promise you that you will be able to retrieve all of your assets. However, I can promise you that if you do not act, you will lose everything and you will lack needed supplies to weather what is coming.
I would strongly suggest that you keep your gas tank filled and you have plenty of cash, food and ammunition on hand. It is better to be safe than sorry.
Breaking News: FBI Investigation Reopens The elite may be pulling their support for Hillary. She is, again, under investigation by the FBI. IF her plug is pulled, the violence may come sooner than we anticipated- Get to work America, we do not have long.
DONATE TO THE COMMON SENSE SHOW Don’t wait for the collapse of the dollar because it will be too late.
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While covering the New Year’s Eve celebration live in New Orleans this year, CNN’s Don Lemon took ringing in the new year literally. After debating a tattoo or piercing, Lemon went with a piercing. Kathy Griffin suggested a nipple piercing, which Anderson Cooper show down. Shortly, Lemon downed a shot and had his left ear pierced on live television. Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 1 |
Politics Bombs Ready: The American Blob Is Already Oozing Into Syria
The US foreign policy establishment is laying the groundwork for Hillary to send the US military against the Syrian state Originally appeared at The Week
Syria is in absolute ruins. The ongoing civil war, a disorganized melee involving the Assad regime, various rebel groups, Russia, Iran, ISIS and other Islamists, Turkey, Kurdish forces, and the U.S., has been stuck in stalemate for month after month. Much of the country is in a state of utter collapse, hundreds of thousands have died, and refugees continue to pour into neighboring states and Europe.
With the election of a militarist-inclined Hillary Clinton looking all but certain, the Blob — White House aide Ben Rhodes' apt name for the permanent D.C. foreign policy establishment — is quickly coalescing around a new consensus that existing U.S. intervention should be dramatically scaled up, as Eric Levitz writes . The central policy for this effort is a no-fly zone to be enforced by American air power .
This is a seriously risky policy that stands little chance of meaningfully ameliorating the humanitarian disaster in Syria. But there's virtually nothing at this point that can be done to stop it.
This long background article in Spiegel Online provides a great overview of the dizzying complexity of this conflict, and good context for the debate over escalation. At the risk of stating the obvious, the central factor in the endlessness of the war is that nobody has been able to win. This in turn is the result of a rough parity of support from outside powers, particularly Russia and the U.S. Along with Iran, the former regards Assad as a crucial regional ally and source of an important Russian naval base; without their support the Assad regime would have collapsed years ago.
America's main concern, meanwhile, is fighting ISIS, done directly with U.S. forces and through Kurdish proxies, who have carved out a semi-autonomous Kurdish zone in northern Syria connected to Iraqi Kurdistan.
This infuriates Turkey's ( increasingly unhinged ) President Erdogan, due to the longstanding feud between the Turkish government and Kurdish organizations in the south of that country. The Turkish military recently hit Kurdish forces outside Aleppo with airstrikes , killing dozens — right as the Iraqi military and Kurdish troops were in the middle of a long-planned effort to oust ISIS forces from Mosul . This almost can't be a coincidence, and no doubt infuriated U.S. commanders.
Awkwardly, Assad's forces are also fighting ISIS, and responded to the Turkish bombardment with a threat to shoot down any more Turkish planes that violated Syrian airspace.
In sum, this is a tremendously complicated conflict, with multiple shifting factions. The U.S. goals — defeat ISIS and remove Assad without helping radical Islamists — are directly at odds with each other.
Let's grant for the sake of argument that the Blob is actually motivated by a desire to stop the bloodshed in Syria. (If they were, it would pressure the Saudi government to stop their disastrous war in Yemen instead of refueling their bombers, but that's a different story.) Here, their argument that hesitation on the part of President Obama has prolonged the conflict does have a grain of truth to it. If one great power or another had jumped in with overwhelming military force and steamrolled the opposition (or simply withdrawn from the conflict), the civil war could have ended years ago.
The problem, of course, is what comes after that. Sufficient force to end the war would have meant either an invasion or occupation, which was a disastrous bloody failure in Iraq, or a heavy air power intervention only, which was a disastrous bloody failure in Libya. If there's anything the last 15 years of foreign policy history has shown, it is that the American military is extremely good at smashing organized military forces, and it is extremely bad at establishing any sort of lasting political order in the aftermath.
And more fundamentally, if hesitation is really the problem, then a no-fly zone has the exact same problem as Obama's current policy. It's an escalation that is far short of the overwhelming force that would be necessary to impose peace on Syria. Why? Probably because the American public shows no sign of supporting the kind of force (read: a massive ground invasion) that would be necessary to impose peace on Syria.
What a no-fly zone would do, however, is risk immediate conflict with Russia, which has been assisting Assad with lots of air power. It's disturbingly easy to imagine getting into a shooting war with the world's only other nuclear superpower over this.
The general public apathy towards low-key military interventions gives the American president huge latitude to bomb and deploy special forces basically anywhere in the world — which is often devastating to the targeted communities . But the moment that creates large numbers of U.S. casualties, a political backlash is certain. Hillary Clinton, whose 2008 presidential campaign was lost because she supported the invasion of Iraq, probably realizes this, however grudgingly.
Ultimately, the Blob does not really care about carnage in Syria. Its overwhelming priority is the use of military force, which it views as good by definition. The civil war there is just a convenient pretext. Non-military means to stop violence will be downplayed or ignored — just like the last several consecutive failures of military intervention were, and the probable upcoming failure of the Syrian intervention will be. SYRIA: Kurds Repel Erdogan's Rebels, Lavrov Warns Ankara, Washington Shrugs Adam Hill Turks on Aleppo Approaches 6,289 | 0 |
Monday in an interview with MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki, Kellyanne Conway, an aide to President Donald Trump, downplayed the controversy surrounding national security adviser Michael Flynn having allegedly discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak before Trump’s inauguration. Conway told Kornacki Flynn continues to “enjoy the full confidence of the president” despite those allegations. “Yes, General Flynn does enjoy the full confidence of the president,” Conway said. “And it is a big week for General Flynn. He’s the point of contact for many of these foreign visits. If you look at the schedule, we had the prime minister of Canada Justin Trudeau here. Obviously for bilateral meetings. On Wednesday, we’re welcoming Benjamin Netanyahu here. Behind the scenes, where they’re talking about trade, they’re talking about terrorism, security, the fact that Canada and the U. S. are very important, neighbors to each other and will continue to be. And obviously, the national security advisor is a very important point person in those discussions. General Flynn has said he can’t recall. And that he had about 30 phone calls with, I guess leaders at the time. And since then, 70 I’m told, with different leaders, and I’ll just leave his comments at that. ” Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor | 1 |
By Maharshi University Of Management As the value of meditation becomes widely recognized, researchers are increasingly trying to understand the differences among approaches. A study published today... | 0 |
Every Sunday in February, we will feature and explore previously unpublished photographs from The New York Times’s archives, with a special focus on the 1960s. Revisit last year’s Unpublished Black History project, sign up for our newsletter and share your own experiences with black history in the comments. The bullet tore through a civil rights worker’s shoulder, stopping within an inch of his spine. The shotgun blast shattered the car windows of four voting rights activists and gouged the wall of a nearby home. And a fire destroyed voter registration equipment and materials outside the city’s Voter Registration Headquarters, leaving the street strewn with rubble. It was 1963 in Greenwood, Miss. a major battleground in the fight for civil rights, and white officials were playing down and ignoring a series of attacks intended to discourage thousands of from registering to vote. Claude Sitton, the renowned New York Times correspondent, shot photos and took meticulous notes, exposing the racial violence with his pen and with his lens. Mr. Sitton is best known for his words. But the typewritten letters that he sent, along with his film, to John Dugan, a Times photo editor, reveal that he was also determined to capture history with his camera. He carried a Leica, according to one of his sons, and wrote about light and shadows and underexposed frames. He lamented the gloom inside a crowded black church and the time constraints he faced as he scrambled to report the news and illustrate it at the same time. “I didn’t have very much time,” Mr. Sitton wrote apologetically, “and will try to give you a better selection the next time I offer something. ” Yet there is power in Mr. Sitton’s letters and in the images he captured on film in March of 1963. Shown together here for the first time — as part of a weekly series running throughout the month — they offer a firsthand glimpse of life on the front lines of the civil rights movement. In one frame, Robert P. Moses, the field secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, clipboard in hand, pointed to the holes left by the shotgun blast in the wall of a weathered home. In another, the charred detritus of the fire — set by a person or persons unknown — littered the street outside the old voting headquarters. Medgar Evers, the state field secretary of the N. A. A. C. P. addressed a packed voter registration rally at the local African Methodist Episcopal church in what may well be the only photograph taken of Evers by The Times. In another series of images, black women took their seats in a citizenship training school intended to train volunteers to help register black voters, and another woman stacked cans of food in the Sunday school room of a local church. The food was collected in Chicago for hungry black farm workers in Greenwood, who had been denied federal food assistance by white county officials in retaliation for their voter registration efforts. accounted for 61 percent of the county’s population. Yet only 1. 9 percent of blacks of voting age were registered, compared with 95. 5 percent of whites. The Justice Department, contending that whites were disenfranchising blacks with discriminatory voting laws, filed suit. Justice Department officials also sought a federal court order to prevent the city and county from denying blacks the right to protest, after the police unleashed a German shepherd dog on peaceful marchers and jailed voting rights activists. It was the first time that federal officials had taken such a step, Mr. Sitton noted in his article about Greenwood, which was published in April of 1963. (Only three of the many photographs that he took during his time in Greenwood were published with this article.) But with every step forward, it seemed, there were several steps back. Two months later, on June 12, 1963, an assassin killed Evers in Jackson, Miss. That afternoon, hundreds of took to the streets in protest. And Mr. Sitton was there with his pen, his notebook and his camera. | 1 |
The Democratization of Censorship
25 September 2016 , (Krebs on Security)
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/09/the-democratization-of-censorship/ | 0 |
Sam Sifton emails readers of Cooking seven days a week to talk about food and suggest recipes. That email also appears here. To receive it in your inbox, register here. Good morning. The bunting’s up, the beer cold in the fridge. There’s a lamb shoulder collapsing under the smoke of fruitwood out in the yard, and Julia Moskin’s salty pluff mud pie rests comfortably on the windowsill to cool. Independence Day is tomorrow, and friends will arrive to consume burgers and brats, ribs and potato salad, coleslaw, iced tea, prosecco, more. But today is for family. Today is for us. See if you can’t make it that way as well. Many of us here in the world of Cooking identify as hosts. The word has two definitions. The first is familiar: a person who receives or entertains guests. The second comes from biology and is a little grim: an animal in which a parasite or commensal animal lives. On holiday weekends, the former can sometimes feel like the latter. The best way to stay sane is to carve out a meal or two over the course of the weekend for the nuclear unit of family, even if the nuclear unit is one. So maybe make lamb sandwiches and that delicious pie. Or cook a simple omelet, according to the instructions of Jacques Pépin. You might try Julia’s recipe for a cucumber salad with yogurt, dill, sour cherries and, if you can find any, rose petals. Or you could make pad Thai and watch television. Make gazpacho and listen to Alejandro Escovedo and Ryan Adams sing “Castanets. ” Make Sunday a family day, and the coming holiday party will be all the more sweet. On Monday, you can go big with the cooking festivities. Eat leftovers on Tuesday night, with a big pot of rice and beans. For the Wednesday night meal, how about the recipe for flattened chicken thighs with roasted lemon slices that Julia brought to us last week, part of her awesome report on the state of the pan? If you’ve got two of the things, you could also make her recipe for crisp toffee bars, an adaptation of Charlotte Druckman’s adaptation of a Maida Heatter recipe. It’s incredibly good. Thursday night, we could go for some salmon. Maybe my recipe for fillets roasted with brown sugar and mustard? Or David Tanis’s recipe for salmon with green sauce? Have you made Melissa Clark’s recipe for baked potatoes topped with salmon roe and crème fraîche yet? You really ought to, before the world grows too hot to bake. And then on Friday night, you can put on your host face again, and assemble a taco bar for everyone who wants to join. A simple search for “tacos” on our site yields many, many good ideas for such a dinner. I’m thinking fish tacos, myself. You may prefer them with black beans and chard. Just browse the site and apps, and save the recipes you’re interested in cooking to your recipe box. (Here’s mine, if you want an example of how big they can get.) Rate their success on a scale of one to five stars. Leave a note on a recipe if you have one to add to the conversation. By all means, share them with friends and family via email and the wonders of social media. And don’t forget: If you run into problems along the way, we’ll be standing by to help (cookingcare@nytimes. com). Now, have you read Lorrie Moore on Helen Gurley Brown in The New York Review of Books? Or considered what the Houston Texans defensive end J. J. Watt eats each day, according to GQ? Or heard Sampha’s new song, up on the Fader website? Do all of that in blessed solitude, then get into the kitchen and make life better for others. Have a great holiday. | 1 |
DOUGLASVILLE, Ga. — “Caliente!” the director Lee Daniels howled toward Naomi Campbell, across the waiting room of a decommissioned county jail. “Wonderful, Naomi, wonderful — I love it!” After another take, Mr. Daniels crooned, “Cruella de Vil, Cruella de Vil,” gleefully comparing the ’s haughty, villainous performance to the infamous “101 Dalmatians” character. As both boss and head cheerleader, he was in his element. Mr. Daniels, though not officially directing that day in was overseeing the filming of his new Fox series, “Star,” about a girl group clawing its way through Atlanta’s booming music universe. Ms. Campbell’s scene, a showdown between two disparate matriarchs over the fate of a young woman caught between worlds — after an episode of police brutality — had him charged up. “It’s all fabulous,” Mr. Daniels said. “The physical altercation” — between Ms. Campbell’s character and one played by Queen Latifah — “is even better than I thought it was going to be. You see two different classes of black women, and yet the rich one pushes the poor one. So much privilege!” It’s exactly that blend of social consciousness and histrionic soap opera that has driven Mr. Daniels’s triumphs in film (“Precious,” “The Butler”) and television, where he scored big for Fox with the Shakespearean melodrama “Empire,” beginning in 2015. But while “Empire,” now in its third season, relies on bombast and opulence, with a plot twist every few scenes — “Dynasty” and “Dallas” by way of peak Puff Daddy and Bad Boy Records — “Star” finds its creator returning to his earlier, grimier palette, including foster homes and addiction, for a slightly more earthbound tale. Still, the new show, part of Mr. Daniels’s “Empire” production deal with Fox, will be expected to deliver in prime time the way its predecessor did. Its premiere in December, following the “Empire” midseason finale, drew strong viewership — especially considering its leading trio of unknown actresses — but starting with its second episode on Wednesday, Jan. 4, “Star” will be going it alone. (Adding pressure, “Empire,” once a ratings juggernaut, has seen its impact wane recently, hitting viewership lows, though it remains the network’s cornerstone.) “I’m doomed,” Mr. Daniels, uncensored and casual in luxurious black sweats, said playfully a few weeks before his set visit, during an interview at his Midtown Manhattan apartment. “Hollywood builds you up to take you down — I’ve learned that from many friends. ” Yet instead of returning victoriously to movies, particularly a Richard Pryor biopic, Mr. Daniels was persuaded to double down on another network show about the music business, despite the mixed results of recent programming — “Vinyl,” “Atlanta,” “The Get Down” — set in the record industry. “My boyfriend said, ‘On TV, more people will appreciate your work, even if it’s not as potent, than on any film you ever do,’” Mr. Daniels recalled. He seemed unconcerned about competition. “Which one’s ‘The Get Down’?” Mr. Daniels asked. “Do they sing in ‘Atlanta’?” “Star,” which addresses Black Lives Matter and transgender issues in the first episode, also comes at a loaded moment politically. Mr. Daniels assumed, as he was sketching the first season, that Hillary Clinton would win the presidency. He imagined the show’s diverse girl group — one poor and white, one rich and black, one of mixed race — as an imperfect yet inspiring portrait of racial unity and healing. “I was going to hit you with stings of ‘this is what’s going on in the streets,’” Mr. Daniels said. Now, instead of ratcheting up the politics under the coming administration of President Donald J. Trump, “It’s really going to be more of a place of escape. ” He cited 1960s sitcoms like “Bewitched” and “I Dream of Jeannie” as mass entertainment necessary in uncertain times. Even if he hopes to avoid positioning “Star” as a protest show, though, it still has progressive, confrontational themes at its core — albeit expressed through Mr. Daniels’s idiosyncratic lens. In casting Star, the title character, amid a period of racial tumult stemming from police shootings, Mr. Daniels said, “I wanted to show a white girl that had some swag” as “part of the healing process. ” He added: “I wanted white people to feel cool. I wanted them to not be made fun of. We are one. ” He found his girl in Jude Demorest, a performer from Detroit, with a pile of ringlets and earrings the size of her face. The character, as written, “had all but her Social Security number,” Mr. Daniels said. Ms. Demorest agreed: “It was the first role where I never had to fake an accent or not wear my hoops to the audition or straighten my hair. ” (The show nods at racial dynamics in the industry, with one character joking, “a white girl who can sing RB — even the mediocre ones go platinum. ”) On the other hand, Mr. Daniels said he created Derek, the show’s young Black Lives Matter activist played by Quincy Brown, as a message to his son, who had recently left what Mr. Daniels called his Upper West Side “bubble” and began experiencing racism. “Star,” despite its modern milieu, with original songs by a team including the longtime producer Rodney Jerkins that recall Rihanna and Fergie, is filled with other personal flourishes for Mr. Daniels, who said the show’s essence was inspired by his time trying to break into Hollywood: “What happens when you’re young and naïve, and you’ll do anything to get to where you want to go?” Queen Latifah, who plays Carlotta, a beautician and den mother to the singers, said: “So many parts of this take me back. I’ve come full circle after starting as a hungry wanting to get a deal and change the economic circumstances of my family. ” She also recalled seeing striving’s ugly side — “how hungry people can be, selling their soul to have that success. ” The idea of using desperate, wily young women to tell a version of that story grew out of Mr. Daniels’s childhood love of “Dreamgirls,” which he said taught him that “we’re from the ’hood and we can still be fabulous. ” Other influences included “Valley of the Dolls” and “Paris Is Burning,” both of which Mr. Daniels had considered remaking Ms. Demorest also said that he told her to watch “Sweet Charity” and “Female Trouble” during the audition process. As for making them a modern pop trio — Ryan Destiny plays Alexandra, who has determined to make it in music without the help of her internationally famous father (Lenny Kravitz) and Brittany O’Grady plays Simone, Star’s shy, damaged half sister — Mr. Daniels said he liked that there wasn’t a notable girl group at the moment, though he later learned of the existence of Fifth Harmony. (Ms. Demorest, coincidentally, was a writer on that group’s biggest hit, “Work From Home. ”) “They only last for a few years — because they implode,” Mr. Daniels said, with delight, of girl groups. “That’s just the nature of the beast. ” (In fact, Fifth Harmony would lose a member to a solo career not long after “Star” had its premiere.) Careful attention to group chemistry led Mr. Daniels and Fox to audition Ms. Demorest, Ms. Destiny and Ms. O’Grady about a dozen times, mostly as a unit, before choosing them for the roles. Despite Mr. Daniels’s approach at every opportunity — he will direct the “Star” season finale in addition to its first two episodes — learning to relinquish some authority has been a sometimes rocky process in his shift to TV. “It’s not like a movie where you can control it from A to Z,” he said. “There’s a director who has an interpretation of your interpretation, and you haven’t personally written all of the episodes. ” He created “Star” with Tom Donaghy (“The Mentalist”) not his “Empire” Danny Strong, who also wrote “The Butler. ” “I don’t think Danny would understand this world,” Mr. Daniels said. “This would not have been the right partnership for us, because of the specifics — it’s an underbelly. ” Early episodes touch on sexual abuse, human trafficking and an assault of a transgender woman outside a strip club. Gary Newman, the chairman and chief executive of Fox Television Group, credited Mr. Daniels’s work for the authenticity of “Star. ” “It’s hard, but we want to be a network,” he said. “We want all people to feel they’re welcome. ” Mr. Daniels’s broad demographic appeal is also “good business,” Mr. Newman said. “Prior to ‘Empire,’ I think there was an underserved audience. ” At the same time, despite his role in diversifying TV, Mr. Daniels can be sent into a fit of frustration at a mention of last year’s #OscarsSoWhite controversy over representation at the Academy Awards. (He was nominated for best director for “Precious” in 2010.) “Go out and do the work,” he fumed over oatmeal at his apartment. “Oscars so white! So what? Do your work. Let your legacy speak and stop complaining, man. Are we really in this for the awards? “If I had thought that way — that the world was against me — I wouldn’t be here now,” he added. “These whiny people that think we’re owed something are incomprehensible and reprehensible to me. I don’t expect acknowledgment or acceptance from white America. I’m going to be me. ” | 1 |
5 Possibilities Why Comey Reopened Hillary Email Investigation 10/29/2016
explains 5 possibilities why FBI Director James Comey reopened the Hillary Clinton email investigation from covering his ass to the extreme. 10/27/2016 TRUTH REVOLT http://youtu.be/PsVNKmb6jEc There’s a lot of accusations going around that the 2016 election is r ... Netflix Ceo: TV’s Future includes Hallucination Pills 10/27/2016 INDEPENDENT The future of TV might everyone taking hallucinogenic drugs, according to the head of Netflix. The thr ... | 0 |
The Muirfield Golf Club took advantage of a mulligan, and, in its second vote in 10 months, straightened out enough of its wayward members to surpass the majority needed to admit women. Tuesday’s victory was perhaps more about pragmatism than principles. Just over 80 percent of the men of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh, which runs Muirfield, determined that it is better to have to share membership privileges with the occasional woman than to be excluded from hosting a British Open. Of the 621 members who voted, 498 were in favor of admitting women. Last May, 616 members cast ballots, with fewer than 400, or 64 percent, voting for the resolution. Any inclination to warmly welcome the gentlemen of Muirfield into the 21st century is tempered by the fact that 123 members — even confronted with a boycott of their storied course by the Royal and Ancient, the organizer of the British Open — stubbornly thumbed their noses at what passes for progress in the rest of the civilized world by voting against admitting women. In their defense, the pace of change must be dizzying for those stuck in the era of trousers, ruffled cravats and tweed jackets. For more than a century, Muirfield had been able to welcome the world to its storied course while keeping women out, except as guests and visitors. Sixteen times, most recently in 2013, Muirfield managed to keep its discriminatory membership policy and host one of golf’s most prestigious championships, too. So it must have seemed like a bad dream when many gentlemen of Muirfield woke up one morning — got out of their marital beds to go play golf with their chums, as the former chief executive of the RA, Peter Dawson, so memorably described it in 2013 — and realized that the ground beneath their feet had moved. It is proof of the seismic shifts remaking the glacial game of golf that in a matter of a few years, Muirfield went from being too famed a course to leave out of the British Open rotation to being too fetid to include. Muirfield, formed in 1744, was one of the last clubs to host a major golf event to dig their heels in on membership. The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews opened its membership to women in 2014. Royal St. George’s, another British Open site, followed suit a year later. Last year, Royal Troon ended its membership policy — a few weeks before hosting the British Open. Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters, deserves credit for offering membership to women in 2012, however belatedly, and, in doing so, daring the rest of the heel diggers to fall in line behind it. Renee Powell, one of the first women offered membership to the Royal and Ancient, had a mixed reaction to Muirfield’s mulligan vote. “I’m delighted it passed, first of all,” she said Tuesday by telephone. “I’m also a little bit bewildered why anyone would vote against it. ” Pioneers like Powell have been joined in the fight by younger generations of men who seem as confused as anyone by the old guard’s intransigence. After last year’s voting results were announced, Rory McIlroy, a major winner from Northern Ireland, expressed disbelief. It was hard for him to wrap his head around a host of the major he loves perhaps more than any other discriminating against women. On Tuesday, the reigning Masters champion Danny Willett, an Englishman, expressed delight in the voting reversal. “I think that’s great,” he said. “I think it shows how times have changed. It shows how golf’s changed. ” Muirfield’s waiting list for membership stretches at least two years, so women will have to keep a stiff upper lip — there will be no line jumping for history’s sake. It is hoped the club doesn’t follow the example of the Royal and Ancient and earmark for membership a couple of nonagenarian women who don’t have time on their side. After the vote was announced, the RA affirmed Muirfield would go back into the British Open rotation. The first Open that Muirfield could host is in 2022, and by then, it is hoped, its membership will include a handful of women. Twenty years from now, no one is likely to care that the gentlemen of Muirfield were grudging in their acceptance of women. It will be like the 74 that Willett posted in the second round last year at Augusta — a footnote to his victory. Two decades on, when women are mingling with men in the golf clubs where access to power is one of the privileges of membership, few will remember that it wasn’t always like that. History is long, but collective memories, blessedly, are short. The next battleground is Kasumigaseki Country Club, which was chosen as the site of the men’s and women’s golf competition at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. The club denies women full membership and prohibits them from playing on Sundays. In an interview with Reuters last month, the International Olympic Committee’s vice president, John Coates, said that if the club did not “achieve gender equality,” the Olympic competition would be moved to another course. One can argue that a club with discriminatory membership policies never should have been chosen as the host course in the first place. But as the RA demonstrated with Muirfield, the spotlight can be a powerful tool, starting conversations in which clubhouse politicking ends. | 1 |
Obama's weakness is very dangerous. | 0 |
Wife of FBI Official Investigating Hillary Got $500K from Hillary Allied PAC October 27, 2016 Daniel Greenfield
The system is broken. It's deeply corrupted by insider politics . The situation at the center of power has reached the point of utter unaccountability. Insider politics function as a shadow government. That needs to change. Restoring America requires dismantling much of the Federal government not only for Constitutional reasons, but because it's a simple matter of saving the Republic.
Hillary Clinton headlined a major fundraiser for a political action committee shortly before the group steered nearly $500,000 to the wife of the FBI official who oversaw the Clinton email investigation, DailyMail.com has learned.
Clinton's ties to the Common Good VA - a Virginia state PAC run by Clinton's long-time friend and advisor Terry McAuliffe, its governor - came under scrutiny this week after the Wall Street Journal reported that the group donated heavily to the state senate campaign of Jill McCabe.
Her husband Andrew McCabe led the FBI investigation into Clinton's emails.
Andrew McCabe, now the deputy director of the FBI, told the Wall Street Journal that he complied with federal ethics rules and was not promoted to lead the Clinton probe until months after his wife's unsuccessful state senate bid ended.
Common Good VA was the largest single donor to Jill McCabe's campaign, election records show, giving her $467,000 between June and October of 2015.
She was the third-largest recipient of money from the group, which can only contribute to Virginia state candidates.
Her campaign also received an additional $207,788 from the Democratic Party of Virginia, a group over which McAuliffe exerts significant control. Combined, the money made up nearly one-third of her total funding.
Now McCabe, a pediatrician, suddenly decided to run for public office. Unopposed. That was certainly nice of the Dems to not only put a first timer unopposed, but to throw piles and piles of cash at her. And some of that cash was coming from a key former Clinton Foundation man at the center of the latest Foundation scandal.
Although Common Good VA is only allowed to fund state-level candidates, many of its largest donations came from outside of Virginia – including $50,000 from Clinton Foundation official Doug Band in New York, $100,000 from Clinton loyalist Robert Johnson in Maryland, and $10,000 from Clinton mega-donor Stephen Cloobeck in Nevada.
In the following months, Common Good VA received several major donations from other close Clinton associates, including $100,000 from Bill Clinton's business partner Ron Burkle in California and $50,000 from Ready for Hillary's finance committee member Leonard Lauder in New York.
There are basic conflicts here. Someone this linked to the Clinton network should never have been investigating Hillary regardless of the dates and timing. But this is exactly what happened with Benghazi. | 0 |
Usually, the post office is where you send mail or pay your bills. In Saudi Arabia during the hajj, it’s where you pay for your animal sacrifice. It costs 460 riyals, or about $120, to have a sheep slaughtered. The sacrifice, known as the hadi, is incumbent on all pilgrims, who must donate at least of the meat to the poor. Modern pilgrims usually have a slaughterhouse near Mecca do this for them, via the local post office. How do you know your animal was sacrificed? By text message, of course. Outside Saudi Post in Mina, the sprawling tent city where pilgrims live for part of the hajj, Marwan Nabil, 22, who is from Yemen, began to worry when he had not received his confirmation. “The system is down, but don’t worry, it will be done in an hour,” said Faisal a postal worker. It was all so neat and tidy. Not so in a humid, sweaty slaughterhouse on the edge of Mecca: Men in stained robes hauled flailing sheep into the building. One man dragged his prey by its leg, and another carried one of the animals on his back. Butchers in red hacked with curved blades at skinned sheep hanging on hooks. Cleaners in yellow dumped sheep guts into drains under the killing floor. Nearby, men in muddy clothes sat on a dirty red carpet, watching animals being chopped up. Outside the slaughterhouse, a Pakistani woman shook an empty plastic bag. “Meat?” she asked, hoping charitable locals would oblige. For pilgrims who are not strong enough to endure the long trek of the hajj, there are men with wheelchairs for hire who will push them from site to site, ritual to ritual. But it’s not cheap. One wheelchair pusher told me he charged older clients 200 riyals, or about $53, for a day. I asked him how he set his price, and if he charged by weight. On the third day of the hajj, pilgrims throw rocks at three stone pillars near Jamarat Bridge in a of Ibrahim (or Abraham) stoning the devil as he tries to follow God’s commandment. Jamarat has been a notorious choke point for hajj crowds. That’s where hundreds, maybe thousands, of pilgrims died last year in a crush of people. In 2004, my sister was caught in one of the hajj throngs. Security officials this year are trying to limit the number of pilgrims who can go to Jamarat at any given time. To avoid dangerous backups, officials have instituted pedestrian roads for pilgrims from the tent city of Mina to the Jamarat building. And directions flash in English and Arabic to keep people moving. I collected 49 small rocks in an empty water bottle for the ritual, and some more experienced pilgrims showed me how to carefully but purposefully throw my stones. Tip: Nobody likes a lefty. After throwing my first batch of stones with my left hand, I was politely corrected. I joked that any devil could duck my throw. I grew up in an observant Muslim family in Canberra, Australia, but stopped wearing a head scarf in college and now, at 38, lead a largely secular life. Naturally, as a reporter, I came on my first hajj — the pilgrimage, filled with rituals, that is required of every Muslim — with many questions. How would people from stunningly different places, like Inner Mongolia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and New Jersey, interact? Who gets to kiss the rock lodged inside the Kaaba, the black cube that pilgrims circle seven times? What would I pray for on the second day atop Mount Arafat, a time and place in which our tradition tells us God answers petitions? Where do two million people poop? I’m still working on my list (scroll down for video and snapshots) but I took some time to answer questions that readers submitted on nytimes. com. What is inside the Kaaba? Has it been rebuilt over the centuries? Do men and women walk around the Kaaba at the same time? — Swaroop Conjeevaram, North Royalton, Ohio Are women and men allowed to circle the Kaaba together, or are the genders segregated? — Mary Ann Hall, North Charleston, S. C. Only very delegations are allowed in the Kaaba, and not often. There are blurry videos online that seem to show it mostly empty save for two pillars, an altar, incense lamps and plaques on the wall. What we can say for sure is what is not there: images of the gods that Arabs once worshiped and kept inside the Kaaba. I love the idea that the place Muslims must pray to is empty. Muslims are internalizing in every prayer that the one god they worship cannot be represented in an image and cannot be imagined, to the point where the house sanctified to God is empty. The Kaaba is renovated from time to time, but sparingly so, out of respect for the structure’s importance to Islam. Men and women do walk around the Kaaba at the same time. In that way, it’s a unique holy site in Islam where the sexes mix and undertake their rites together. What is the connection between the Kaaba and Allah? — Daan Bijdevaate, the Netherlands Muslims believe that the prophet Ibrahim — the biblical Abraham — built the Kaaba to worship the one true God. Some think it sits on the site where Adam, the first human, had his own prayer space. In all cases, Muslims see it as the oldest house of worship for the one God it is also called Beit Allah, House of God. The pilgrim, in turn, is a “guest of the House of God. ” Are allowed to watch the hajj, such as tourists or visitors? — Sarah C. Santiago, Chile Why are not allowed in Mecca? — Fabian Babich, Sydney, Australia Are Christians welcome to observe the rituals? — Erin Bunting, Aliquippa, Pa. Only on the live television broadcasts. are not allowed to enter the holy sites, based on the Quran’s Chapter 9, Verse 28, which says, “O believers, verily the polytheists are impure, so let them not approach the Masjid after this, their final year. ” This is so rigidly enforced that there is a special highway bypassing the area. In any case, there’s no room. The Saudi government already limits the number of people allowed into Mecca during hajj to about two million many countries have a lottery system to select pilgrims. I met a Palestinian man who had applied for seven years and, at 72, had worried that he might die before seeing the holy sites. How is it going with the bathroom situation? — Lynn Bender, Davis, Calif. I think the Saudis have gone to some effort to try to make bathrooms as available as possible. Nobody has peed in front of me, as happened to members of my family when they came here. But we are on the move so much that sometimes I have to hold it in for hours. Luckily, we’re not eating much heavy food. Also, since my journalist visa makes me a V. I. P. guest of the Saudi government, I’m staying in a compound where there are clean toilets and showers. How accessible are relief stations for, say, heatstroke? — Ahad Chowdhury, Chino, Calif. That was something I worried about a lot before I came. I have not seen many medic stations, but I have seen ambulances and hospitals. Also, pilgrims are constantly spraying one another with water to avoid overheating, and many places have structures that emit a fine mist to cool you down. Do people stay with the people they came with (or stay alone) or do they also connect with strangers and make new friends? — Ani Grosser, Lenox, Mass. Well, my mum was hoping I’d find a husband here! Usually pilgrims come in delegations and stay with them in the same hotels, travel on the same buses and share the same meals. Except for interviews, it’s been hard to meet people because they tend to move in big units. In my news media delegation, there is a Yemeni woman who looks like a sweet granny until she flips on her niqab. She’s always smiling and she’s my favorite. Do young men and women try to make friends? — Mo Kareem, Houston I don’t see much mixing, and it’s hard to see where it could happen, except perhaps while circulating the Kaaba. Men and women mostly pray separately, and they sleep in separate quarters. It’s also forbidden for even married people to have sex during hajj, so I’m guessing that any premarital mixing, which Islam already sees as sinful, would be considered doubly bad! I saw an ad for the hajj at a tour company and one package had animal sacrifice as an option. What is the deal with this? — Beth Harrison, Millburn, N. J. I wish I had that option! One requirement of the hajj is for each pilgrim to ritually slaughter an animal — sheep, cow, camel or goat — at the end. If your hajj package does not have a sacrifice option, which means the tour company does it on your behalf, you can also buy a coupon here in Mecca for a slaughterhouse to take care of it. Pilgrims who do it soon enough receive a confirmation by text message that their chosen animal has been slaughtered, and the government undertakes to distribute the meat to the poor around the world. I am interested to know your (inner) feelings about bikini and burkini before and after the hajj. — Mohammed Basith, New York I think both bikinis and burkinis — the swimsuits designed to adhere to Islamic modesty codes and banned recently by some French beach towns — are fine. I find it offensive when any faith (including, yes, Islam) dictates what a woman should wear. I also find the contemporary secular obsession with women needing to be thin and to look young to be depressing. Is there an where one can do the full hajj but with fewer teeming multitudes? — Steven Adkins, Aucamville, France Nice idea, but the full hajj can begin only on the 8th of the last month of the Islamic calendar. The good news is that it’s a lunar calendar, so sometimes hajj is in the winter, a lovely time to visit this desert plain. If you really can’t handle crowds, there is always umrah, a kind of Muslims can do anytime. You mainly circle the Kaaba and walk between the hills of Safa and Marwa, which are now enclosed within the sprawling (and ) Grand Mosque. I get nervous and tetchy in crowds, but so far I’ve done O. K. The fear melts away, and at some point you stop caring about the sweat and viruses everybody is sharing. The pilgrims’ chants of “Here I am, O Lord” were barely audible over the of plastic water bottles squashed underfoot as we jostled toward Mount Arafat on Sunday, the greatest day of the annual hajj. Muslims believe it is when God will answer all sincere prayers offered there. As the sun blazed, men and boys splashed the crowds gleefully with the last ounces from their bottles. Some ducked their heads under gushes from a supply tower, and a few kind souls offered to turn their spray bottles onto strangers’ faces. At first I was disappointed to see the mess of bottles and mud, a cleaning man in bright yellow and green looking on helplessly: I had thought Arafat would be austere and clean. But the pilgrims’ cheery mood brightened my own. Of course it was dirty. Two million people were walking together on a hot day to a rocky hill and sucking down bottles of water. Of course the cleaner couldn’t sweep it up — yet he could cause a deadly crush if he got in the way of that river of pilgrims. So I, too, crunched the bottles, tried not to slip, let people spray me with water. I even prayed. At the end of the hajj, men are required to shave their heads, and women to cut a lock of hair. At the busy barber complex near the Grand Mosque, they’ll buzz you with a razor (disposable) or scissors for $4 a machine cut is $2. 70. Signs around the mosque warn pilgrims not to cut hair inside the complex — it turns out some people like to D. I. Y. at Islam’s holiest site. I mean no disrespect when I say Mecca is, well, a mecca for shopping. People have come here to pray, but even five times daily leaves time for the glittering gold shops that line Ajyad Street. This year’s big sellers: lightweight rings and white, rose and yellow bracelets so finely spun that they feel like cotton candy on the wrist. Traders, as they do, lament that last year was better — instability throughout the Middle East has left fewer buyers for the bling. For those with lighter wallets, children hawk velvet prayer rugs decorated with images of the Kaaba for $2. 60. People sell for the inevitable pilgrim who has lost her shoes somewhere around the Grand Mosque, calling out the prices in Urdu: “Panj! Panj! Panj!” Five! Five! Five! The pharmacy on Ajyad Street is constantly packed, doing a roaring trade in antibiotics — hajj flu again — and pills. Sitting next to a group of Saudi women who resembled large black crows in their billowing robes, double face veils and gloves, I noticed they all wore little rings that looked like miniature pedometers. When I asked how many miles one woman had walked that day, she laughed. It turned out the rings were electronic prayer counters. Muslims often keep track of individual prayers like “I seek God’s forgiveness,” believing that they earn credit for a good deed, or hasana, with each supplication. Prayers uttered at the Grand Mosque are said to be worth 100, 000 times those said elsewhere. One of the women, Hanan, showed me her counter: 266, and it was only noon. Then she thrust the device into my hands and told me to “keep it, so you can always count your prayers. ” I politely declined. The big and the small. For Syria. For refugees to find homes and acceptance. That children would go to sleep with full stomachs and mothers able to love and care for them. I prayed for my friend’s mother who has cancer, and tried to remember all the other friends, most of them secular, who shyly asked me to sneak in a word for them. Right before we had to leave Arafat, I remembered Mum making me promise to pray for a husband, and so I did. My mum, of course, has instructed me to pray for a husband as I make my first hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca required of every Muslim. Also: the health of her best friend and the release, from jail in Egypt, of the son of my aunt’s maid. On the second day of the hajj — this year, Sunday, Sept. 11 — pilgrims will clamber onto Mount Arafat to ask for God’s forgiveness and make specific requests by prayer. Muslims believe that a supplication at that place at that time will be answered. Along with Mum’s list, I’ll be praying for the health of a friend’s mother who is fighting cancer, and the continued happiness and health of my family and friends. A few friends who are secular Muslims like me asked that I throw in a word for them, and I will. God, if you are listening, peace would be really nice. I’m not so sure about the husband. I have been asking all the people I meet in Mecca what they’ll be praying for on Mount Arafat: ■ Mervat, a cardiologist from Yemen, said she would ask “to go to paradise with my parents” and that her country might find peace. ■ Hassan Abbas, a doctor from Nigeria, hopes that his country might find peace. ■ Sayida Bakri, 68, seeks for terrorism to be defeated and “for Egypt to stand on its feet” after years of instability. ■ Abd Aziz Hj Johari — who is 18 and from Brunei, and who wore a proclaiming, “I Love the Prophet” — shrugged at my question. His mother, Siti Hayun Hj Abdul Qadi, patted him affectionately and said she would ask that her son “become a good boy in the future, a good husband, especially, a good son. ” There are no pockets on the ihram that men wear during the hajj — the traditional dress consists of just two white sheets draped around their bodies. And it’s difficult for men and women to carry bulky bags in tight quarters. So the air rights above their heads become valuable personal real estate. I’ve seen people carrying canteens of Zamzam water on their heads others balancing their prayer mats like hats and men from Afghanistan, Sudan, Oman and Egypt top themselves with carefully arranged turbans that seem to delicately float above their heads. When I was a little girl and we traveled from Australia to Egypt to visit my mum’s family, I remember the enchanting women with large baskets perched on their heads, walking casually down crowded market streets, their empty arms swaying freely. I see some Palestinian women doing the same thing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where I work as a correspondent in The Times’s Jerusalem bureau. A good idea knows no borders. The hajj is hot and grueling, and pilgrims flock to the Aesra ice cream shop near the Grand Mosque, where there are separate lines for men and women. “After worship, there’s a treat,” said Arar Hafsi, 51, an Algerian pilgrim, giggling. I met one young woman in a niqab, her face and body covered in heavy black cloth, clutching a plastic cup filled with swirls of mango and strawberry. She said, laughing, that maybe she had one after every prayer — that’s five times a day. “Is it good?” I asked. “Well,” she said, “it’s all there is. ” I know you want to know, so: A woman wearing a niqab eats ice cream by filling the spoon, then raising her veil just a bit and sticking the spoon in her mouth. Qasim, 16, a worker I interviewed at the shop, gave free cups to me and the Saudi minder who follows me everywhere under the government’s rules for journalists covering the hajj. The ice cream tasted good. Also: It’s all there is. So as I made my first hajj, joining millions of Muslims from around the world on the annual pilgrimage to our holiest places, I did not have the antibiotics or disinfectant gel my family had insisted I carry to ward off what we call “the hajj flu. ” I did not have a proper head scarf or even a prayer mat. As the call to prayer sounded, I stood in a line of women on the street leading to the Grand Mosque and realized I would have no clean place to put my head during the full prostrations we make in a symbolic act of submission to God. I figured, never mind, this is the hajj, once in a lifetime. Then the woman standing next to me said, “I’ve made space for you. ” We had to pray very close together, our heads were touching on that tiny mat. Afterward, I thanked her. Her name is Samira, and she is a professor in Algeria. She kissed me on the cheek and said that was the way a Muslim should behave, and that I was her sister. One of the main hajj rituals is to walk seven times around the Kaaba, Islam’s holiest site. My brother and sister, who did the hajj years ago, had told me about the pigeons that circle, seemingly in sync with the pilgrims, overhead. A sign from God? Perhaps, but helped along by the women selling bird feed to people who flung it joyously into the air around the Grand Mosque. A group of Nigerian teenagers stood in a corner, calling out “Zamzam, Zamzam, Zamzam!” and passing out plastic cups of water. Zamzam is a well located within the Haram, the mosque that surrounds the Kaaba, Islam’s holiest site. Muslims believe God made it bubble up as the second wife of Ibrahim (Abraham in the bible) tried to soothe her thirsting child. A bottle sells for $4. 95 on the internet. I was spooked after reading an article saying Zamzam water had high levels of arsenic. But in the heat and exhaustion of the hajj, it tasted refreshing. I even stopped in front of an Egyptian man spraying people’s faces with the water as a small good deed — he said he did the same during the 2011 uprisings in Cairo. But I was worried when I saw pilgrims returning their empty cups to the Nigerians — this is how hajj flu spreads! My favorite passage of “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” was when he described the pilgrims being of all races and colors. It’s still like that. A Chinese woman showed me her Mandarin Quran. I saw women from Uzbekistan who had their national flag sewn onto their head scarves, and men with “Kurdistan” emblazoned on their jackets. There were Pakistanis with beards dyed a cartoonish red, and one guy, who knows from where, in a gold sequined hat. He looked fabulous. It reminded me of the little mosque of my childhood in multicultural Canberra, Australia. I grew up thinking it was normal to worship next to Muslims from Bosnia and Vietnam, Afghanistan and Jordan. Walking around the Kaaba was like Canberra, writ large. There was something very incredible and lovely about being a tiny little human among tens of thousands of other humans, saying the same prayers and doing the same rituals. | 1 |
By Carmen Di Luccio
We are having a New Moon in Scorpio on October 30th in most places around the world, and during the early hours of October 31st in Australia and New Zealand. It will occur at 5:38pm Universal Time ( click here for your time zone).
New Moons bring in a new wave of energy for the upcoming month. It is the beginning of the first half of the lunar cycle, which is when the Moon is waxing (gaining light), while the Full Moon is the transition into the second half, when the Moon is waning (losing light). Therefore, the energy of the New Moon serves as more of a guidepost for those first 10-14 days of the cycle.
Scorpio: Powerful, Deep, Intense, and Passionate Scorpio is a primal and passionate sign about desires, fears, and intensity. As a ‘fixed sign’ ruled by Mars and Pluto, it holds a high concentration of power that can be used to control or to transform. It likes and seeks what is real and refrains from anything that is lacking substance.
The deep merging of two individuals or parties, whether it be sexually, financially, or resourcefully, is Scorpio territory. This sign seeks loyalty, yet it must be earned after a period of being under scrutiny. It wants to know what is hidden beneath the surface to decide on how much trust is to be earned.
Scorpio is about being willing to look at and even embrace the deepest, darkest, and scariest aspects of others, oneself, and the world around us. It is the sign of death and rebirth, love and hate, as it is the sign of extremes. An example of all of this is how we have Halloween followed by ‘All Saints Day’, and then followed by ‘All Souls Day’ back to back during Scorpio season.
The shadow side of Scorpio is that it can be manipulative and controlling in a very calculated way. While the scrutinizing of others is to gain trust, it can also be about getting some sort of advantage to have more control over a person or situation. Although Scorpio seeks hidden aspects of others, it can be very guarded about one’s own secrets.
New Moon Conjunct Mercury and Trine Neptune Mercury is also in Scorpio moving away from a conjunction with the Sun that was exact 3 days before on October 27th. In the days leading up to this New Moon, many people could have experienced important communications, ideas, deep thoughts, or some sort of mental efforts towards joint resources/efforts, money, sexuality, and/or some sort of strategy. Whatever it is, think of it as something that has been ‘gathered’ or ‘set-up’ to be implemented or expanded on in this moon cycle and in the coming months.
The New Moon (with Mercury separating) is also in a trine with Neptune, which could assist us with our imagination, creativity, intuition, dreams, visions, and spiritual connection. Due to the nodes also being involved, there may also be a connection with how our past can help our future. For some lovers, it can be a time of feeling like soulmates. This energy is strong until November 2nd.
Venus Conjunct Saturn, Mars In Capricorn Square Uranus The day before the New Moon, Venus made a conjunction with Saturn, which initiated a new 14 month cycle between the two. Venus is about fun, love, relationships, beauty, and pleasure while Saturn is serious and more concerned with responsibilities, structure, discipline, and commitments. Therefore, many of us will experience some sort of merging of these themes both in either favourable or unfavourable ways. Occurring in Sagittarius, it can be related to our beliefs, visions, travel, education, publishing, or marketing.
Mars, a ruler of Scorpio, has been in the ambitious sign of Capricorn since September 27th. This has been an excellent time to really make things happen in terms of reaching our goals, and it will last until November 8th/9th.
During this New Moon, Mars is separating from a square with Uranus which was stronger in the 2 days prior. At worst, their could have been sudden change, separation, instability, and the need to take some sort of action as a result. For some people, it could have of been rebellion or wanting to break free from a controlling situation. In other cases it could of positively brought innovation towards our ambitions. These are just some examples of how it could be manifested, but whatever it is for each of us, it has created the landscape for some new beginnings.
Mercury and Sun Sextile Pluto, Venus Trine Uranus During the first week of the Moon cycle, Mercury (followed by the Sun) will be in a harmonious aspect with Pluto in Capricorn. Pluto, being the modern ruler of Scorpio, indicates that this is an excellent time to expand on what was initiated during the previous week when Mercury was conjunct the Sun. Powerful thoughts, communication, or deep research to assist us in our careers, managing or earning resources/money, or implementing some sort of structure or strategy to help gain some of sort of success and fulfill a goal.
Venus is trine Uranus and will be strongest on November 4th-5th. This can be a fun and exciting time, and luckily it will fall on the weekend. This is a great time to connect with people, attend social events, especially since Venus is in Sagittarius, it is a good time to explore and try new things that can bring you enjoyment. This can be a great time for lovers as well with potential breakthroughs.
Things To Consider And Making Intentions For This New Moon Look at everything that has played out for you in the last week prior to this New Moon. The next 10 days following it is a significant time to make a great effort to expand on what has been initiated, and take steps to move beyond anything challenging that has occurred.
Your intentions for this Lunar Month should be related to improving on and/or facilitating the positive qualities of Scorpio energy into your life. This includes (but not limited to) improving your ability to earn or manage money/resources, tapping into and harnessing your inner power and sexual energy better, facing your fears, trying to understand complex things, seeing beyond fakeness or deceit, and becoming more in touch with what is real.
The best time to make your intentions for the Moon cycle is during the first 24 hours following the New Moon but it could even be done within the first 3 days. The closer to the New Moon, the better. The exact time will be at 5:38pm Universal Time, but you can click here to find out what it will be in your time zone.
Have you ever had a personal astrology reading? For a limited time, Carmen is offering a 33% discount on personalized readings/consultations based on your exact birth date, time, and location. Click here for more information.
Source: Collective Evolution
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Hillary Clinton is being treated for pneumonia and dehydration, her doctor said on Sunday, hours after she abruptly left a ceremony in New York honoring the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and had to be helped into a van by Secret Service agents. The incident, which occurred after months of questions about her health from her Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, and his campaign, is likely to increase pressure on Mrs. Clinton to address the issue and release detailed medical records, which she has so far declined to do. Mrs. Clinton was taken from the morning event at ground zero to the Manhattan apartment of her daughter, Chelsea. About 90 minutes after arriving there, Mrs. Clinton emerged from the apartment in New York’s Flatiron district. She waved to onlookers and posed for pictures with a little girl on the sidewalk. “I’m feeling great,” Mrs. Clinton said. “It’s a beautiful day in New York. ” Mrs. Clinton left in her motorcade without the group of reporters that is designated to travel with her in public. A campaign spokesman, Nick Merrill, indicated that she had returned to her Chappaqua, N. Y. residence sometime after 1 p. m. and Mrs. Clinton was not seen publicly the rest of the day. Mr. Merrill initially described Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, as feeling “overheated” at the commemoration ceremony. But just after 5 p. m. a campaign official said Mrs. Clinton’s physician, Dr. Lisa R. Bardack, had examined the candidate at her home in Chappaqua, and Dr. Bardack said in a statement that Mrs. Clinton was “rehydrated and recovering nicely. ” “Secretary Clinton has been experiencing a cough related to allergies,” Dr. Bardack’s statement said, adding that on Friday morning, after a prolonged cough, Mrs. Clinton was given a diagnosis of pneumonia. “She was put on antibiotics, and advised to rest and modify her schedule,” Dr. Bardack added. “At this morning’s event, she became overheated and dehydrated. ” Dr. Bardack did not indicate what sort of pneumonia Mrs. Clinton had or elaborate on the nature of the examination last week, whether Mrs. Clinton had a fever today, or a host of other issues that could offer more precise insights about her condition. Late Sunday night, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign said she was canceling her plans to travel to California on Monday for what had been a planned trip there. A video of Mrs. Clinton taken by an attendee at the ceremony captured what appeared to be her legs buckling as she struggled to steady herself and walk to her van. She required assistance from two Secret Service agents, who held her on either side, to move off a curb and into the van. images revealed that her feet were dragging as she was hoisted into the vehicle. The episode thrust questions about Mrs. Clinton’s health and the transparency of her campaign squarely into the last two months of the race, which many polls show has grown tighter. For months Republicans have, with scarce evidence, questioned the stamina of Mrs. Clinton, 68, and claimed she is ill, often pointing to her repeated coughing bouts. She has brushed off such claims. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump, 70, have shared substantially less information about their health than some previous presidential candidates. And Mrs. Clinton revealed that she had pneumonia and had been prescribed medication only after the startling video emerged of her being unable to walk under her own volition after the ceremony. Her campaign initially did not offer any information about why she had left early or her whereabouts. Twice during the day, she abandoned the group of reporters assigned to cover her public movements. Campaign officials did not respond to multiple inquiries about whether Mrs. Clinton had been treated by a doctor or had taken any medications. Even some members of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign staff had been unaware of her recent diagnosis. Huma Abedin, Mrs. Clinton’s aide, sent an email to the full campaign staff on Sunday that included the doctor’s note, to share with them “the full picture. ” “Onward as H. R. C. would say,” Ms. Abedin wrote in the message, the contents of which were disclosed by a Clinton aide who requested anonymity to share an internal campaign email. Temperatures were in the high 70s on Sunday morning in New York, and humidity was high. Mr. Trump also attended the ceremony, as did many other dignitaries. Other attendees at the event said afterward that Mrs. Clinton had not appeared ill when she first arrived at the former site of the World Trade Center. “She seemed fine,” said Representative Peter T. King of New York, a Republican, who recalled speaking briefly with Mrs. Clinton around 8:30 a. m. But about an hour later there was a minor commotion, Mr. King said. A number of New York’s current and former elected officials had been standing in silence as the names of the victims of the attacks were read. Suddenly, Mrs. Clinton, a former New York senator, left her position. Mrs. Clinton emerged last week from an August mostly focused on private with campaign events in Ohio, Illinois, Florida, North Carolina and Missouri. On Wednesday, she participated in an NBC forum on national security, and on Friday she attended a Manhattan where she characterized half of Mr. Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables. ” The candidates had taken their advertisements off the air to honor the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, and Mr. Trump said nothing when he was asked on Sunday about Mrs. Clinton’s condition. But he and his supporters have aggressively sought to raise questions about Mrs. Clinton’s health in recent months. Mr. Trump has highlighted her recurring cough and wrote on Twitter last month that “both candidates” should “release detailed medical records. ” (Mr. Trump has issued only a limited summary of his health.) Questions about the health of presidential hopefuls are hardly new to this campaign, but long before the exacting scrutiny of the modern media environment, campaigns were often able to suppress information about the ailments of candidates. Rumors about Franklin D. Roosevelt’s health, for example, pervaded his final presidential campaign in 1944, but he campaigned vigorously and his aides kept the extent of the heart disease that would kill him the following year out of the news. More recently, Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole and Senator John McCain, each of whom was the Republican presidential nominee while in his 70s, faced questions about their physical condition. “The physical demands of running for president, even with private planes and Secret Service protection, are more difficult than the mental demands,” said Scott Reed, who managed Mr. Dole’s 1996 campaign. Mr. Trump has also been criticized for sharing few details about his health, providing only a brief statement from his personal physician in December. Short on particulars like heart rate, cholesterol level or family history, it described Mr. Trump in laudatory terms, saying that he would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency. ” The physician, Dr. Harold Bornstein, later told NBC News that he had written the statement in five minutes while a black car waited outside his office to collect it. Mrs. Clinton’s campaign has tried to bat away rumors about her health, including releasing a letter from Mrs. Clinton’s doctor saying she was in “excellent health. ” But aides have dismissed such questions as a way to distract from the issue of Mr. Trump’s not releasing his tax returns. In July 2015, Mrs. Clinton issued a detailed letter from her physician that included a concussion she sustained in 2012, while she was secretary of state it left her with a blood clot in her head and double vision. Dr. Bardack, Mrs. Clinton’s physician, said those symptoms had been resolved within two months. The candidate’s husband, Bill Clinton, however, has said that she “required six months of very serious work to get over” the concussion — a statement that helped feed conspiracy theories among Republicans that the injury was worse than initially disclosed, though there is no medical evidence to support those theories. Asked whether she was concerned that such questions about her health would affect the election, as the polls have tightened, Mrs. Clinton told reporters on her campaign plane last week: “I’m not concerned about the conspiracy theories. There are so many of them, I’ve lost track of them. ” | 1 |
Since 2011, VNN has operated as part of the Veterans Today Network ; a group that operates over 50 plus media, information and service online sites for U.S. Military Veterans. Abby Martin Exposes What Hillary Clinton Really Represents By VNN on October 26, 2016 Digging deep into Hillary's connections to Wall Street Hillary Clinton’s lucrative life of crime…
Published on Apr 17, 2016 Digging deep into Hillary’s connections to Wall Street, Abby Martin reveals how the Clinton’s multi-million-dollar political machine operates.
This episode chronicles the Clinton’s rise to power in the 90s on a right-wing agenda, the Clinton Foundation’s revolving door with Gulf state monarchies, corporations and the world’s biggest financial institutions, and the establishment of the hyper-aggressive “Hillary Doctrine” while Secretary of State. Learn the essential facts about the great danger she poses, and why she’s the US Empire’s choice for its next CEO. Related Posts: | 0 |
Eight individuals were killed — including a deputy sheriff — during a rampage in Mississippi on Saturday night. [The suspect, Willie Cory Godbolt, was arrested after allegedly “holding a hostage. ” The Daily Leader reports that Godbolt was “captured this morning shortly before 7 a. m. at Super Jack’s at East Lincoln Road and Hwy. 84. ” Lincoln County Sheriff Steve Rushing provided a few details tied to the attacks: It appears the deputy responded to a call at Lee Drive of a resident wanting the suspect removed from the property. Rushing said the deputy and three others were killed there. Two more people were shot and killed at a residence on Coopertown Road, he said. A third crime scene was located near where Godbolt was captured. According to Fox Godbolt has a criminal record that includes: Godbolt told the Ledger that he intended to die via “suicide by cop. ” Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) released the following statement: I ask all Mississippians to join Deborah and me in praying for those lost in Lincoln County. Every day, the men and women who wear the badge make some measure of sacrifice to protect and serve their communities. Too often, we lose one of our finest. I thank the law enforcement agencies involved for their hard work. May the peace of the Almighty wash over those hurting after this senseless tragedy. AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 1 |
Many restaurants host an evening for friends and family before a formal opening as a dress rehearsal for the real thing. Such was the case on Sept. 16 at the Brooklyn bistro 21 Greenpoint, formerly known as River Styx. It was reopening, under the same owners, with a new menu and a new look. Most nights are intimate affairs. Not this one. There were camera crews on the sidewalk and a line of people stretching from Greenpoint Avenue nearly to the East River. The restaurant’s Homer Murray, had let it be known that there would be a special guest bartender on duty that night: his father, the actor and urban folk hero Bill Murray. But at 7:15 the star of “Ghostbusters,” “Groundhog Day” and “Lost in Translation” had yet to arrive for a shift scheduled to begin at 7. From inside 21 Greenpoint, the younger Mr. Murray and the restaurant’s bar director, Sean Patrick McClure, a veteran of Le Bernardin and Dirty French, kept an eye on the growing crowd. Asked to describe his father’s bartending skills, Mr. Murray said: “He just kind of pours Slovenia Vodka into people’s glasses when they look thirsty. He’s about efficiency. . ” The throng seemed to press against the doors shortly before 7:30, and the owner decided to open for business, although the main attraction had yet to appear. At 8:05, Bill Murray stepped in at last. The place lit up with smartphone flashes as he moved toward the bar. Those not occupied with capturing his likeness for their Instagram accounts gave him a round of applause. His first order of business was to grab a bottle of Slovenia Vodka from behind the bar. He twisted off the square black cap, poured a shot into it, drank it and placed the cap on his head to big cheers. Then he got to work. People who shouted the names of complicated cocktails got nowhere fast. But when someone said, “Mezcal, rocks,” the guest bartender served it up chop chop. Mr. Murray was equally quick with tequila shots, for himself and for anyone who asked. As he went about his business, he sang along to the music — “Disco Inferno,” Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground,” The Rolling Stones’ “Miss You” and “Street Fighting Man. ” One man asked him if he knew how to make a Bellini. “I know people who do,” Mr. Murray said. He refused another man’s order until, at Mr. Murray’s request, the guest removed his hat. Mr. McClure had whipped up a cocktail in honor of the restaurant’s reopening, mentioning that he had yet to come up with a name for it. Mr. Murray took a sip of the drink, eyes closed. Then he turned to Mr. McClure and said, “The . ” And so it shall be known. (Recipe below.) The orders kept coming. Smartphones kept flashing. Mr. Murray slid a bourbon shot toward one patron, saying, “Old will make you feel more intelligent. ” When a fellow bartender was in the middle of making a cocktail, Mr. Murray swiped the jigger and drank its contents. A bit later, he said, half under his breath, “I’m making nothing in tips. ” A group of firefighters entered the place, hoping for a photo with the special guest. Mr. Murray took a pineapple from the bar and cradled it like a baby as he posed with them. As the evening wore on, he left his station briefly and nearly bumped into a young woman. As if to make up for his lapse, he put his hands on her shoulders, kissed her on the nose and told her she was beautiful. Around 10, the music cut off, and Mr. Murray gestured toward the with the drink he held in his hand. “This is my firstborn son, Homer,” he said. “And I am so happy for myself, and his brothers and sisters and mom, and all of you, that he has not continued in the family business. Instead, he has taken the joy of the family — to have a drink, and to have a meal, and to have friends together in one place — and made it his life’s work. To my son, and his friends, and his work, and all his partners. Homer Murray!” More cheers from the crowd. Mr. McClure praised Mr. Murray’s performance. ”A mixologist simply knows how to mix drinks,” he said. “A bartender knows how to run a bar: interact with guests, have fun, have conversations with them. Bill is a bartender. ” Mr. Murray looked fatigued toward the end of his shift. When asked what he had learned on the job, he said, “Well, if your barback isn’t getting you the right glasses” — he glared at a fellow bartender — “then you’re put in an instant of creativity, where you have to make a drink with the glasses you have. And that, to me, is a life of service. ” 1 ounces Slovenia Vodka ounce Amaro liqueur ounce fresh lemon juice 2 ounce soda water 1 pinch dried rosebuds Pour the vodka, Amaro and lemon juice into a shaker with ice. Shake vigorously, and strain into a highball glass. Top with ice, soda water and garnish with dried rosebuds. Serve with a straw. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — The Office of Government Ethics has informed lawyers for Donald J. Trump that only a divestiture of his financial stake in his sprawling real estate business will resolve ethical concerns about conflicts of interest as he assumes the office of the presidency. The revelation from the normally secretive federal agency came Wednesday in a bizarre series of oddly informal postings on its Twitter account after officials apparently concluded, erroneously, that Mr. Trump had committed on his own Twitter account to divesting his assets. “As we discussed with your counsel, divestiture is the way to resolve these conflicts,” the office wrote on Twitter, revealing legal advice that would normally be confidential and adding in a separate post: “Bravo! Only way to resolve these conflicts of interest is to divest. Good call!” In fact, Mr. Trump had made no such commitment, at least publicly. In a series of posts on Twitter, Mr. Trump said he would separate himself from the operations of his vast global business empire. Mr. Trump provided few details in his posts and did not say whether he would divest his assets. But he promised to hold a “major news conference” with his adult children in two weeks to reveal legal documents that would remove him from what he called the “business operations” of his company. He vowed to leave the Trump Organization “in total” to focus on running the country. But his vague promise to “in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses” drew an immediate rebuke from legal and ethics experts in Washington, who said that a close reading of the actual words in the posts suggested that Mr. Trump was not planning to take sufficient steps to eliminate conflicts. The emphasis on “business operations,” not on ownership, hinted that Mr. Trump was not ruling out retaining a financial stake in the Trump Organization or putting his children in control. Ethics experts said such moves would leave Mr. Trump vulnerable to accusations that his official actions were motivated by personal financial interests. “Although it is of course important that he have no involvement in Trump business operations, in order to avoid conflicts he must also exit the ownership of his businesses through using a blind trust or equivalent,” Norman L. Eisen, who was a White House ethics lawyer in the Obama administration, and Richard W. Painter, an ethics lawyer in the Bush administration, said in a joint statement to The New York Times. Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal nonprofit group that promotes ethics in government, said: “Unless his solution is to sell the business outside the family and put the proceeds in a blind trust, he’s not really doing anything to solve the problem. Just because you say something on Twitter doesn’t make it so. ” Every president in the past four decades, Mr. Eisen and Mr. Painter noted, has taken personal holdings he had before being elected and put them into a blind trust in which the assets were controlled by an independent party. If Mr. Trump were willing to sell his assets, one option would be to seek a certificate of divestiture from the Office of Government Ethics, which would allow him to sell his real estate holdings and other businesses with an enormous tax advantage. This system was set up to allow wealthy Americans to take jobs in the government and avoid conflicts of interest without a large financial impact. It allows incoming government officials to defer paying capital gains taxes on any earnings on the investment. This could generate an enormous windfall for Mr. Trump, given his vast real estate holdings. After Henry Paulson was nominated by President George W. Bush to serve as Treasury secretary, he left a job at Goldman Sachs and took advantage of this provision, avoiding conflicts of interest by selling an estimated $500 million in Goldman stock. Money generated from the liquidation of Mr. Trump’s assets would have to be invested in “permitted property,” which is limited to Treasury bonds or diversified mutual funds, ending the real estate ventures that are so tied to the Trump family’s identity. Still, that is what the Office of Government Ethics has said he should do. The office is normally a staid agency that rarely talks to reporters on the record, but Wednesday’s Twitter posts were oddly enthusiastic. The series of nine posts suggested that officials were celebrating what they thought was a decision by Mr. Trump to accept their legal advice. In their posts, officials at the ethics agency referred to a 1983 legal opinion in which the office urged presidents to “conduct themselves as if they were” bound by conflict of interest laws, even though such laws do not apply to occupants of the Oval Office. In a statement, Seth Jaffe, an agency spokesman, said that officials there were “excited” by Mr. Trump’s announcements on conflicts of interest and that the messages were not based on any information about the ’s plans beyond what was shared on his Twitter feed. Asked later about the disclosure of the advice that the Office of Government Ethics had given to Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Mr. Jaffe said he could not provide additional comment. But the agency has left the posts on its official government account. Officials for Mr. Trump’s campaign and the Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment about the disclosures from the agency. And Reince Priebus, who will be the White House chief of staff, said on the MSNBC program “Morning Joe” that he was not ready to provide any more information about the legal discussions. “You should know that he’s got the best people in the world working on it,” Mr. Priebus said. In fact, the ’s plan to deal with conflicts remains unclear. Simply removing Mr. Trump from control of business decisions could still allow him to benefit financially from payments made to his companies by foreign governments, which may be prohibited by the emoluments clause of the Constitution, Mr. Eisen said. And Mr. Trump’s Twitter posts said nothing about whether his children, who serve as advisers on his presidential transition committee, would continue to have roles in his administration. If Mr. Trump’s business is run by his children, they must be entirely separated from government operations, Mr. Eisen and Mr. Painter said. That means they could not participate in meetings with world leaders, like the prime minister of Japan, as Ivanka Trump did last month. “Without an ethics firewall that is set up at once and continues into the administration, scandal is sure to follow,” Mr. Eisen and Mr. Painter said in their statement. Democrats on Capitol Hill immediately questioned on Wednesday whether Mr. Trump’s Twitter posts indicated a significant change in his plans, and called for a formal investigation by the House Judiciary Committee. A letter sent by Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, and signed by 15 other Democrats on the committee, said Mr. Trump’s posts raised “a number of questions,” including whether Mr. Trump intends to transfer ownership of his assets. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump emphasized the appearances he would need to maintain as president, saying he believed it was “visually important” to avoid conflicts between his government role and his businesses. Mr. Trump insisted, as he has before, that he is not legally required to take any steps to divest himself of his financial ties. In an interview with The Times last week, he said, “The law is totally on my side, meaning the president can’t have a conflict of interest. ” He also said in the interview, “I would like to try and formalize something, because I don’t care about my business. ” Divesting could be costly and complicated. “That’s a very hard thing to do, you know what, because I have real estate. I have real estate all over the world,” he said in the interview. “Selling real estate isn’t like selling stock. Selling real estate is much different. It’s in a much different world. ” | 1 |
It is hard to find anyone more passionate about the idea of steering public dollars away from traditional public schools than Betsy DeVos, Donald J. Trump’s pick as the cabinet secretary overseeing the nation’s education system. For nearly 30 years, as a philanthropist, activist and Republican she has pushed to give families taxpayer money in the form of vouchers to attend private and parochial schools, pressed to expand publicly funded but privately run charter schools, and tried to strip teacher unions of their influence. A daughter of privilege, she also married into it her husband, Dick, who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Michigan a decade ago, is heir to the Amway fortune. Like many education philanthropists, she argues that children’s ZIP codes should not confine them to failing schools. But Ms. DeVos’s efforts to expand educational opportunity in her home state of Michigan and across the country have focused little on existing public schools, and almost entirely on establishing newer, more entrepreneurial models to compete with traditional schools for students and money. Her donations and advocacy go almost entirely toward groups seeking to move students and money away from what Mr. Trump calls “failing government schools. ” Conservative school choice activists hailed her on Wednesday as a fellow disrupter, and as someone who would block what they see as federal intrusion on local schools. Former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, where Ms. DeVos helped push legislation establishing tax credits for scholarships to private schools, called her an “outstanding pick,” a “passionate change agent to press for a new education vision. ” “Her allegiance is to families, particularly those struggling at the bottom of the economic ladder, not to an outdated public education model that has failed them from one generation to the next,” he wrote on Facebook. Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies for the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington, called Ms. DeVos a “smart, principled conservative who’s experienced in politics and versed in the relevant policy. ” But to teachers’ unions, she is anathema. Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, called Ms. DeVos “the most ideological, education nominee” since the secretary of education was elevated to the cabinet level four decades ago. Even some groups that share her support for charter schools worried that picking someone so closely identified as a champion of vouchers signaled that the Trump administration would try to starve public schools. As a candidate, Mr. Trump proposed steering $20 billion in existing federal money toward vouchers that families could use to help pay for private or parochial schools, perhaps tapping into $15 billion in Title I money that goes to schools that serve the country’s poorest children. He called school choice “the civil rights issues of our time. ” Amber Arellano, the executive director of the Education an advocacy group in Michigan that supports charters but has been critical of a Michigan charter school law that Ms. DeVos has spent millions to defend, said the pick had “the potential to undermine the nation’s progress by diverting resources from the young people who most need them, or by failing to uphold the federal government’s responsibility to protecting the needs and interests of all students — especially the most vulnerable. ” Michigan is one of the nation’s biggest school choice laboratories, especially with charter schools. The Detroit, Flint and Grand Rapids school districts have among the nation’s 10 largest shares of students in charters, and the state sends $1 billion in education funding to charters annually. Of those schools, 80 percent are run by organizations, a far higher share than anywhere else in the nation. The DeVoses, the most prominent name in state Republican politics, have been the biggest financial and political backers of the effort. But if Michigan is a center of school choice, it is also among the worst places to argue that choice has made schools better. As the state embraced and then expanded charters over the past two decades, its rank has fallen on national reading and math tests. Most charter schools perform below the state average. And a federal review in 2015 found “an unreasonably high” percentage of charter schools on the list of the state’s schools. The number of charter schools on that list had doubled since 2010, after the passage of a law a group financed by Ms. DeVos pushed to expand the schools. The group blocked a provision in that law that would have prevented failing schools from expanding or replicating. Ms. DeVos, 58, got into education advocacy primarily as a backer of vouchers, and has served on the board of several organizations that have campaigned for them across the country. A ballot initiative she led to establish vouchers in Michigan failed in 2000. The next year, she established the Great Lakes Education Project, which became an ardent proponent of charter school expansion, and has donated generously to candidates who have supported it. The Michigan law pushed by Ms. DeVos to establish charter schools 20 years ago allows an unusually large number of organizations to start such schools, yet established little mechanism for oversight. Even Republican supporters of charter schools say the law has allowed failing charter schools to expand or replicate. Last spring, the group was the chief force behind the defeat of legislation that would have established standards for identifying and closing failing schools, both charter and public, in Detroit, where a flood of charter schools in the past decade has created what even charter school supporters call chaos. Ms. DeVos was born in Western Michigan, the more conservative and religious part of the state, where her father created a successful auto parts company. Her brother is Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, the troubled private security contractor that was awarded billions in United States government contracts in the Middle East. Like many conservatives who supported Mr. Trump, she does not support Common Core, the set of standards for what students should know at each grade level that was developed by the National Governors Association and other groups — and that has been incorrectly branded as a federal policy. She also had not supported Mr. Trump her family was behind Senator Marco Rubio of Florida in the Republican presidential primary. On Wednesday, she wrote on Twitter: “I am honored to work with the on his vision to make American education great again. The status quo in ed is not acceptable. ” | 1 |
Next Prev Swipe left/right So Friends, Star Trek and Fresh Prince of Bel Air all live in the same universe and chairs PROVE it
The brilliant @Edjeff over on Twitter notes, “Oh my god, Friends and Star Trek exist in the same chairiverse”
He’s right you know.
Friends chair:
Star Trek chair:
They are THE FUCKING SAME.
Now this is where it gets weird. @Hiddenasbestos says, “Hope you’re sitting down – so does The Fresh Prince of Bel Air”
Fresh Prince chair:
Yep. Definitely proof all three shows are in the same universe.
Or “chairiverse” as @Edjeff so eloquently puts it. | 0 |
Matt Bissonnette, a former member of Navy SEAL Team 6 who wrote an account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, agreed on Friday to forfeit $6. 8 million in book royalties and speaking fees and apologized for failing to clear his disclosures with the Pentagon, according to federal court documents. Mr. Bissonnette also recently forfeited $180, 000 in fees for consulting work that he did for military contractors while he was still on the SEAL team, his lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, said in an interview. If approved by a federal judge in Alexandria, Va. the royalty settlement would bring an end to more than two years of civil and criminal investigations into Mr. Bissonnette, who won several awards for valor in Iraq and Afghanistan before writing “No Easy Day,” his book on the Bin Laden raid, under the pen name Mark Owen. The firsthand account of the daring raid was one of several books and movies involving former Navy SEALS that has led to criticism within a community once known for discretion that Mr. Bissonnette and the others were cashing in on their exploits. The Justice Department conducted criminal investigations into whether Mr. Bissonnette had disclosed classified information in his book or speeches and whether he had violated laws in consulting for companies that had contracts with SEAL Team 6. In the end, the department did not bring any criminal charges, settling instead for the cash forfeitures. Mr. Bissonnette said in a statement Friday that he regretted his failure to submit “No Easy Day” for vetting before it was published in 2012 so Pentagon officials could ensure that it did not include classified information. Mr. Bissonnette acknowledged that he was required under his security clearances to let the Pentagon review the book, and he blamed another lawyer for advising him that he did not need to do so. “I acknowledge my mistake and have paid a stiff price, both personally and financially, for that error,” he said. “I accept responsibility for failing to submit the book for review and apologize sincerely for my oversight. ” Documents filed in Federal District Court in Alexandria on Friday indicated that Mr. Bissonnette must transfer nearly $6. 8 million to the government as part of the settlement. The amount includes all of the $6. 7 million in royalties he has earned on “No Easy Day,” as well as $100, 000 in fees for six speeches he gave in early 2013 before the government approved the slides he used in such presentations. Mr. Bissonnette wrote in “No Easy Day” that he was one of the SEALs who shot Bin Laden, and he and Robert O’Neill, another former SEAL Team 6 member who claims his shots were the fatal ones, have competed on the lecture circuit. Military officials said that Mr. O’Neill is writing a book of his own and has asked the Pentagon to vet it. While Mr. Bissonnette’s fight with the Pentagon over his book has received public attention, some details of his consulting work while he was still a SEAL Team 6 member, as well as his fee forfeiture, have not been disclosed. Mr. Luskin said that Mr. Bissonnette and the federal authorities reached a “nonprosecution agreement” in May in which Mr. Bissonnette forfeited $180, 000 in fees for advising three equipment manufacturers who were doing business with SEAL Team 6 while he was on the team. Mr. Luskin said the fees dated back as far as 2006, when Mr. Bissonnette was the research and development representative for his squadron within Team 6. Other former SEAL members have said that his job was to figure out what types of equipment they needed. Mr. Luskin said that the $180, 000 came from a helmet maker now owned by the Gentex Corporation in Carbondale, Pa. and two manufacturers based in Virginia Beach — SS Precision and London Bridge Trading. No executives at the three companies were available for comment. Mr. Luskin said that Mr. Bissonnette and other SEAL members also received consulting fees from companies that designed tactical clothing and gear for other parts of the military or for sales to outdoor enthusiasts. Mr. Bissonnette has maintained that he cleared the consulting work in advance with a Navy lawyer, and Mr. Luskin said that helped persuade prosecutors that “there was clearly on Matt’s part no intent to breach the laws. ” Navy officials say they have restricted such moonlighting since then. Mr. Luskin also noted that a number of officials have assisted other authors writing about the Bin Laden raid as well as the creators of the movie “Zero Dark Thirty. ” But, he said, only Mr. Bissonnette has paid any penalties for the disclosures. | 1 |
SEOUL, South Korea — He seemed like an ordinary passenger in the departure hall of the airport for Malaysia’s capital, awaiting a flight to Macau. Moments later, he felt dizzy and was carried out on a stretcher, apparently dying from punctures or perhaps a toxic liquid splashed on his face by two women who ran away. The ruckus caused by the man’s death on Monday at the international airport for Kuala Lumpur was minor news until a thunderbolt from the South Korean and Malaysian news media a day later: The victim was Kim 45, the estranged older half brother of Kim the unpredictable and ruthless leader of North Korea. The death immediately turned into an international assassination intrigue connected to the opaque regime of the Kim family, which has ruled North Korea for more than 60 years. It came as Kim 33, who has ordered scores of subordinates executed when he questioned their fealty, has further shaken up the ranks of his closest aides, purging the chief of the secret police less than two weeks ago. In addition, Kim has stoked a new international crisis with a ballistic missile launching and threats of more nuclear weapons tests. The South Korean news channel TV Chosun said that two women had stabbed Kim with poisoned needles and fled in a taxi and that the local police were searching for them. The Star, a Malaysian newspaper, quoted the police as saying the victim had sought help from a departure hall receptionist after someone “grabbed him from behind and splashed liquid on his face. ” He died as medics rushed him to a hospital. Political experts on North Korea’s politics immediately speculated that Kim had ordered the assassination of his older half sibling, who at one time had been the heir apparent and had been favored by China, the country’s ally and principal benefactor. “Maybe Kim was about to do something drastic that would either compromise the regime or the family,” said Jae H. Ku, director of the U. S. Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “By the nature of things in North Korea, the fact that he is in the bloodline represented a threat. ” Others were even more emphatic in their suspicion that Kim had been responsible, partly because Kim had been publicly critical of the transfer of power that made Kim the top leader after the death of their father, Kim in 2011. “The apparent murder today of Kim in Malaysia by agents of his brother is the latest explosive turn in Pyongyang’s vicious palace intrigue,” said Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist who specializes in North and South Korea at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. “The question remains: Do these deadly measures secure his rule or serve to undermine it?” There also was speculation that Kim might have ordered Kim killed because China might have been planning to support him as a replacement for Kim who has angered Chinese leaders with his provocative weapons and missile tests. “Kim reportedly has been Beijing’s favorite, which may mean one day the Chinese Communist Party may overthrow Kim and install Kim ” said Lee a North Korea expert at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. The Royal Malaysia Police identified the dead man as Kim Chol, an alias that South Korean officials said had been used by Kim . A police statement said the cause of death was under investigation. In Seoul on Wednesday, Prime Minister Hwang who is serving as acting president during the impeachment trial of President Park called a meeting of cabinet ministers and urged his government to work closely with the Malaysian authorities to help uncover who killed Kim . “If he was killed by the Kim regime, it will be an example of its cruelty and inhumaneness,” Mr. Hwang said. North Korea’s media has said nothing about the reports. Kim the eldest son of Kim had been widely considered next in line to succeed him until 2001, when he was caught trying to take his son to Tokyo Disneyland with a fake visa. He was detained for several days, then deported to China. Other analysts in South Korea say Kim fell out of the succession race after his mother, Sung was rejected by the North Korean leader, who favored Kim ’s mother, Ko . Ms. Ko and Kim had another son, Kim who was seen at an Eric Clapton concert in London in 2015. North Korea began grooming Kim as heir after his father had a stroke in 2008. As his youngest brother consolidated power, Kim lived in abroad. Until recently, he was sometimes seen in Macau. TV Chosun said he had also been visiting Singapore and Malaysia, where he had girlfriends. Kim ’s son, Kim had once studied in Bosnia and later in France. In an interview with a European television channel in 2012, the son said he did not know how his uncle, Kim “became a dictator. ” Kim was once questioned in Macau by a reporter about the likelihood that his half brother would take over, and he seemed to accept his fate. “It is my father’s decision,” he said. “So, once he decides, we have to support. ” But at other times, he was critical of Kim ’s ascendance. “I believe that my father originally was against the notion of a third generation succeeding him,” Kim interviewed in November 2010, told the Japanese journalist Yoji Gomi in the book “My Father, Kim and I. ” “There must have been some internal reasons that made him change his mind. ” Kim also once predicted doom for his half brother’s rule while talking to reporters from Japan, North Korea’s sworn enemy. His criticism fueled speculation that China and certain generals in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, might be protecting him in case anything should go wrong with Kim ’s rule. Mr. Gomi said in an interview on Tuesday that the last time he had contacted Kim in January 2012, he had said North Korea should follow China’s economic path. China supported Kim financially for many years because if Kim died, North Koreans, indoctrinated to venerate the Kim family, would look to Kim to step in as leader, according to Kang Chunnu, 51, a distant relative of the Kim family who lives in Britain. “Kim is a person which China can control and the North Korean people can trust,” she said by telephone. There seemed little question in South Korea that Kim was behind his half brother’s death. A spokesman for South Korea’s governing Liberty Korea Party, Kim said the killing was a “naked example of Kim ’s reign of terror. ” Since taking power, Mr. Kim has executed more than 140 senior party and military officials deemed a threat to his authority, often ordering them killed by machine guns and even flamethrowers, according to the Institute for National Security Strategy, a research group affiliated with the South’s National Intelligence Service. Thae who was the North’s No. 2 diplomat in London until his defection to South Korea last summer, said he had fled partly because of Kim ’s ruthlessness. In 2015, South Korean officials said that Gen. Hyon the defense minister, had been executed with an antiaircraft gun in Pyongyang after dozing off during military events and Mr. Kim’s orders. In August last year, they said Mr. Kim found fault with a deputy premier’s “disrespectful posture” during a meeting and had him executed by firing squad. Relatives were not spared. An uncle and the country’s No. 2 official, Jang was executed in 2013 on charges of factionalism, corruption and sedition. Defectors from North Korea live in fear of retaliation. In 1997, Lee a nephew of Kim ’s mother, was shot and killed in Seoul. South Korean officials suspected that a North Korean agent killed Mr. Lee, who had become a bitter critic of the government in Pyongyang after defecting to Seoul in 1982. Cheong a longtime researcher on the Kim family, said that the killing of Kim could have been carried out only on the orders of Kim . Ken E. Gause, a specialist in leadership studies at the CNA Corporation, a research group in Alexandria, Va. said the assassination also might have been meant as a warning to all North Korean expatriates. “Given the recent defections,” he said, “Kim felt the need to show that the regime could get to anyone who may be contemplating opposing the regime. ” | 1 |
Trump llama a mantenimiento porque el botón nuclear no funciona "O FALLAN O LO ESTOY HACIENDO MAL", HA DICHO CINCO MINUTOS DESPUÉS DE RECIBIR LOS CÓDIGOS NUCLEARES Tercera Guerra Mundial
Sólo unas horas después de derrotar a Hillary Clinton en las elecciones presidenciales, Donald Trump ha querido reunirse con el servicio secreto para informarles de que el botón que pone en marcha todo el dispositivo nuclear del ejército de Estados Unidos no parece responder, según ha informado su gabinete de prensa.
“No va”, ha declarado Trump.
“Es que no hace nada”, ha insistido el nuevo presidente de los Estados Unidos, que achaca el mal funcionamiento a la falta de uso.
Según él mismo ha dicho nada más salir victorioso en las últimas elecciones americanas, tiene “mucha prisa y mucha ilusión” por asumir todas y cada una de las competencias que deberá desempeñar los próximos cuatro años. “Estoy ansioso por asumir todas mis responsabilidades, la del botón de las bombas y también las demás”, ha declarado el republicano en su discurso de agradecimiento a sus votantes.
“Quiero ponerme a trabajar cuanto antes”, ha repetido en varias ocasiones a lo largo de su primer discurso como presidente.
“Acabo de recibir la llamada de la secretaria Clinton. Nos ha dado la enhorabuena por la victoria, yo le he felicitado por toda la campaña y le he preguntado si su marido sabe cómo funciona el maletín, porque me lo acaban de traer y creo que está roto porque se queda igual y no responde”, ha dicho. También ha pedido “un poco de paciencia” a los americanos.
“Paciencia, paciencia, paciencia”, ha repetido el nuevo presidente.
El magnate no ha querido detallar por qué sabe que el botón no funciona. | 0 |
Wells Fargo was flowing with regrets on Friday, taking out ads in nearly a dozen newspapers saying the bank took “full responsibility” for creating sham bank accounts without its customers’ permission. The bank’s chief executive officer, John Stumpf, even called one prominent Democrat in Congress to express his willingness to assume personal responsibility for the mess. The bank fired at least 5, 300 employees and refunded millions of dollars to customers. But with its banking regulators, Wells Fargo was not as contrite. The bank agreed to pay $185 million in fines and hire an independent consultant to review its sales practices, but it was able to settle the investigation into the questionable accounts without officially admitting to any of the suspected misconduct. It was classic Wall Street. Since the financial crisis, regulators have brought dozens of cases against banks and other financial firms, hitting them with tens of billions of dollars in fines and requiring the companies to overhaul their business practices. But frequently, regulatory cases are settled without a bank having to admit doing anything wrong. Some Congressional officials and governmental watchdog groups say regulators may be too eager to extract a fine and to settle a case quickly than to prove a bank’s guilt in court. It could take years of court battles for regulators to prove that every one of the 1. 5 million accounts that Wells said may have been unauthorized was indeed phony. “It’s very troubling,” Senator Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat and member of the Banking Committee, said in a telephone interview Friday. “Wells Fargo is saying they take responsibility, but they aren’t actually taking responsibility in the official sense. ” Mr. Merkley said he wants the leadership of the Banking Committee to hold hearings on the Wells Fargo scandal. He hopes to hear testimony not only from bank executives, but from regulators on why they agreed to the settlement terms without an admission of wrongdoing from the bank. Republican staff members of the banking committee were briefed by Wells Fargo executives on Friday. The staff is still collecting information from the bank to help committee members decide whether the scandal warrants hearings, people briefed on the matter said. A Wells Fargo spokeswoman said that while the bank readily admits that it created questionable accounts, it does not agree with other findings by its banking regulators, namely that the bank’s culture and business model fostered such behavior. “We recognize that these instances occurred, and we want to be very open about that and make sure they don’t happen again,” said Mary Eshet, the Wells Fargo spokeswoman. “But this was not part of an intentional strategy. ” Legal experts say that not admitting wrongdoing may have another benefit for Wells Fargo: helping the bank defend itself against lawsuits from aggrieved customers. “It ends up being a ”’ said Robert Hockett, a professor at Cornell Law School. “The regulator gets some kind of payment from the accused, and the accused gets to ease the risk of private plaintiff litigation by not admitting to guilt. ” Wells has already been hit with a number of lawsuits over the phony accounts. In addition to the 1. 5 million sham bank accounts that regulators say may have been opened, there were an additional 565, 000 credit card accounts that bank employees may have applied for without customer consent. In some cases, bank employees would move money from a customer’s existing deposit account to open up another one. The unauthorized account was then quickly closed, but the bank employee got credit for drumming up new business. Regulators said employees were given financial incentives to open up as many new accounts as they could, as part of a bank culture to grow business. Much of the illegal activity took place in California, including in and around Los Angeles, where the city attorney filed a lawsuit against the bank last year over the questionable accounts. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency then joined the investigation, which broadened to encompass several other states. As part of the settlement, Wells agreed to pay $100 million to the consumer protection bureau, the largest fine ever levied by that agency. Still, the fine pales next to the penalties that banks like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America paid to settle civil investigations into soured mortgage securities sold in the to the financial crisis. “Wells is paying what amounts to a couple of parking tickets for each of the 1. 5 million accounts,” Mr. Hockett said. Regulators say that the Wells Fargo fine may look small by comparison, but that the amount of financial harm to the consumer is relatively small. Wells said that the average refund to consumers was $25. Some regulators have vowed to push more financial firms to officially own up to their misdeeds. In a speech in 2013, Mary Jo White, the chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, noted that in criminal court, judges will not accept a guilty plea unless the accused admits to the unlawful conduct. Ms. White said in the financial industry, pushing companies to officially admit to their actions was important to public accountability. “Anyone who has witnessed a guilty plea understands the power of such admissions,” Ms. White said in her speech. “It creates an unambiguous record of the conduct and demonstrates unequivocally the defendant’s responsibility for his or her acts. ” That said, there will still be times that the securities agency would settle cases without such admissions. Just this week, the S. E. C. settled a case with the investment firm Raymond James over trading commissions. The firm settled the case “without admitting or denying the findings” by the agency. | 1 |
Obama and Hillary DON'T CARE what the peons think. Apparently, Obama doesn't care if his legacy is tarnished. He's pushing the TPP like crazy, making concessions, and doing whatever he needs to do to get it passed. Look for him to smooth talk us into the TPP once the elections are over.
Personally blamed for ISDS lawsuits? Has Bill Clinton been blamed for the $15 billion dollar TransCanada lawsuit filed under NAFTA? No, he's walked away a very rich man.
What will be left for Warren to save? The TPP has NO termination date. | 0 |
Email
"The Russian government has engaged in espionage against Americans,” hacking “American websites, American accounts of private people, of institutions … in an effort, as 17 of our intelligence agencies have confirmed, to influence our election,” Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton told Chris Wallace of Fox News in the third and final debate before the November election.
But Wallace did not even ask about who hacked her e-mails, some of which have been made publicly available by WikiLeaks. Wallace asked Clinton about a private speech she had delivered to bankers in Brazil, in which she said she dreamed of “open borders” throughout the Western Hemisphere. But because Wallace had noted that the source was WikiLeaks, Clinton chose to discuss how the information had been obtained, rather than her shocking statement that she wants America’s borders to be open to any person in the Western Hemisphere who desires to come to the United States.
Of course, that would most likely include the majority of the population of North and South America. Certainly it would be millions of immigrants, at the very least.
Donald Trump countered Clinton’s bold claim that Russians hacked her e-mails, saying that she “has no idea whether it’s Russia, China, or anybody else.”
In rebuttal, Clinton simply repeated her claim, and chastised Trump for even questioning the integrity of U.S. intelligence officials who have taken an oath to defend the country.
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the hacks were perpetrated by the Russian government, or at least that there was strong evidence for such. Should the Obama administration be announcing this to the general public? However, considering that the White House has demonstrated so little concern for the well-being of the United States, it is not surprising that Obama would opt to reveal this information less than a month before the election — an action designed to help the candidate of his political party.
Of course, Clinton defended U.S. intelligence agencies as above politics. But the reality is that politics has clearly played a role in some decisions of intelligence agencies, such as in 2012, when the CIA interjected itself in the last political campaign by creating Benghazi talking points. And then there was the distortion of analysis on ISIS and Syria by SOUTHCOM — the U.S. Southern Command, responsible for all military activities in South America and Central America — which conformed to Obama’s foreign policy position.
If the Russians were able to hack into Clinton’s e-mails when she was secretary of state, because she was so careless (at best) as to use a private e-mail server, then does that not offer a reason that she should have been indicted?
Hillary did not tell the truth when she claimed that 17 intelligence agencies had determined the Russians were responsible for the hacking. Only two agencies — the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) — have even addressed this issue, and their conclusion is somewhat different from Hillary’s interpretation of it. The joint statement by DHS and DNI was that the hacks are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts, with the presumed intention to interfere with the election process in the United States.
Certainly, the Russians have a history of interfering in the internal affairs of other nations — the KGB and other Soviet agencies regularly used disinformation to plant stories in the Western media. And, of course, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was a high-ranking KGB agent during the Cold War, has publicly stated that he would like to see the restoration of the Russian Empire of the Soviet Era.
But all that does not prove Russia had anything to do with this specific hack.
The accusation conforms with the narrative that the Clinton campaign has been spouting for the past few months: that Putin prefers Trump over Clinton. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Again, it is interesting that when it was clear that Soviet dictators preferred someone other than Ronald Reagan as president, the Democrats did not consider that a reason to vote for Reagan. Rather, they argued that the United States should “deal” with Brezhnev, Chernenko, Adropov, and Gorbachev, and were highly critical when Reagan did not do so in the early years of his presidency.
Clinton herself vowed to have a “reset” on relations with Putin and Russia when she became secretary of state; however, relations have clearly deteriorated with Russia since she and Obama took over American foreign policy.
Others do not buy the Russian-hacker theory, anyway. Willliam Binney, a former high-ranking intelligence officer with the National Security Agency, recently told radio host Aaron Klein that he believed it is more likely it was a “disgruntled U.S. intelligence worker” who is responsible. Binney even argued that the FBI has long had access to the database of the NSA, and because of that, “if the FBI really wanted [the e-mails of Clinton], they can go into that database and get them right now.” He insisted that the NSA has all of Clinton’s e-mails, including the deleted correspondence.
Judge Andrew Napolitano, speaking on Fox Business’s Judge Napolitano's Chambers , challenged the Clinton assertions, declaring bluntly, “the Russians had nothing to do with it.”
The entire discussion of the role of the Russians in passing the information on to WikiLeaks is a diversion from the startling statement Clinton made to Brazilian bankers: that she wants no borders in the Western Hemisphere. This means that it is highly likely that a President Hillary Clinton will follow the pattern of President Barack Obama, who has regularly ignored laws, such as those concerning immigration, with which he does not agree.
So, the entire discussion of whether WikiLeaks obtained its information from the Russians or someone else is important, but if Hillary Clinton’s “dream” of a borderless Western Hemisphere were to come true, no one would have much motivation to hack into the e-mail of an American secretary of state. After all, how long could the United States continue to exist, in any meaningful way, without borders? Please review our Comment Policy before posting a comment
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When Micah Johnson went on a deadly shooting rampage in Dallas last week, body cameras worn by police officers were rolling, capturing at least 170 hours of video of the mayhem. That footage is now stored on a sophisticated cloud computing system that lets police manage digital evidence and hosts more hours of video than Netflix has available to stream. These paired offerings — body cameras for police and cloud storage — have transformed policing in recent years, adding a new level of transparency and accountability but also raising questions about privacy and who has the right to view those videos. Behind the scenes, one company is at the center of it all: Taser International. Best known for making Taser stun guns, it controls about of the body camera business in the United States. Until recently a provider of electrical weapons, Taser has swiftly cornered the market for body cameras and related software, making it one of the most important suppliers of technology to law enforcement today. Its Axon body cameras are worn by officers in dozens of big cities including Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Washington and, yes, Dallas. And using computing power from Microsoft and Amazon, Taser runs Evidence. com, the site that lets police host and manage body camera video. Demand for the products has soared in the two years since Michael Brown was shot dead by an officer in Ferguson, Mo. and analysts now estimate that the market will soon be worth $1 billion a year. “When the rest of us are snapping pictures and videos, police can’t pull out a note pad and start writing,” said Patrick W. Smith, the chief executive of Taser. “There’s now an expectation from society that they’re getting good documentation of what they’re involved in. It’s in everyone’s interest to know what happened. ” Mr. Smith and his brother, Thomas, founded Taser in Scottsdale, Ariz. in 1993, and the company now is worth about $1. 3 billion. Taser cameras have captured thousands of altercations between the police and the public and several controversial police shootings, including ones in Albuquerque and Cincinnati. Yet as Taser works to sell cameras and software to more departments, it is coming under fire for questionable business practices. In some instances, it has paid police chiefs to travel to Taser conferences. In other cases, chiefs who have bought Taser products have joined the company as consultants shortly after leaving public service. And several cities have awarded contracts to Taser without competitive bidding. So far, these issues have done little to blunt Taser’s momentum. Last quarter, for the first time, Taser booked more sales for body cameras and related software than it did for its stun guns. Interest in body cameras was already picking up two years ago, as police departments around the country started responding to calls for greater accountability. Then, in August 2014, a white police officer killed Mr. Brown, an unarmed black teenager, in Ferguson. The officer was not wearing a body camera, and witnesses disputed his account of the altercation that led to the shooting. The officer was not charged, and critics said that had he been wearing a body camera, the outcome might have been different. Video captured by body cameras can be difficult to interpret. Yet as more Taser cameras are deployed around the country, the grainy images they produce are playing an increasingly important role in the aftermath of deadly shootings. At times, the video can exonerate officers. In 2009, shortly after Taser began selling its cameras through its Axon division, Sgt. Brandon Davis shot and killed a man in Fort Smith, Ark. Video recorded by his body camera captured the shooting, and Mr. Davis was cleared of wrongdoing. In other instances, the footage can portray police as needlessly aggressive. In 2014, a Taser Axon camera worn by an officer in Albuquerque captured the fatal shooting of a homeless man by officers who did not appear to be threatened. The two officers have been charged with murder and are expected to stand trial soon. Even when body cameras are worn, they are not always effective. When two police officers fatally shot Alton B. Sterling in Baton Rouge, La. on July 5, they were wearing body cameras made by a Taser competitor. A police spokesman said the cameras became dislodged during the altercation with Mr. Sterling, and the video was unlikely to reveal much Baton Rouge is making a transition to Taser cameras. In another incident last week, the officer who killed Philando Castile during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights, Minn. was not wearing a body camera. But Mr. Castile’s girlfriend streamed the aftermath on Facebook Live. “The whole world wants to know what the heck happened in the moments leading up to that shooting,” said Mr. Smith of Taser. “Would a body camera have changed the behavior? Maybe. But it sure would have answered some questions. ” Just a few years ago, many police were reluctant to wear body cameras, fearing that their every action would be scrutinized. “There was a real hesitation at first,” said Officer Jeff Garwacki, who oversees the body camera program at the Fort Worth Police Department. But as the devices have become more common, many police officers have come to rely on them. In Fort Worth, which has bought 800 body cameras from Taser and uses its Evidence. com service, Mr. Garwacki said most officers wanted to wear cameras at all times. “The body cameras are showing that the officers are doing what they say they’re doing,” he said. Though research is limited, some studies suggest that the use of body cameras can reduce the use of force by officers and complaints by the public. In a study published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, researchers found that when officers in Rialto, Calif. began wearing body cameras, use of force by officers dropped 59 percent, and complaints against officers dropped 87 percent. “When police use body cameras and tell people that they are using them, it tends to produce better behavior by both the police and the public,” said Chad Marlow, advocacy and policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. Yet Mr. Marlow expressed concern that Taser had achieved such dominance in the body camera industry so quickly. “The fact that a lot of police departments are familiar with Taser has created an inclination to go with them,” said Mr. Marlow. “Other companies are not getting the opportunity to show off their products. ” Some of Taser’s rivals, Mr. Marlow said, were developing software that made it easier to redact identifying features of people captured on camera, better protecting their privacy. There is no doubt that Taser has managed to use its longstanding relationships with police departments, which have used the company’s stun guns for decades, to gain its early lead in the market for body cameras and related software. But several competitors, and some city officials, accuse the company of cozying up to police chiefs to secure lucrative contracts. Nearly all of the roughly 18, 000 law enforcement agencies in the United States have bought Taser’s stun guns. “Taser is very much intertwined with police departments,” said Mark Strouse, an analyst at JPMorgan Chase. In several instances around the country, Taser has either paid for the travel of police chiefs who went on to award the company contracts, or hired recently retired chiefs who had awarded Taser contracts. In other cases, cities have skipped traditional steps like competitive bidding and city council approval, and awarded contracts to Taser with little oversight. Investigations by The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal turned up examples of such practices in Fort Worth, Memphis, Los Angeles and Chicago. The New Mexico attorney general has opened a criminal investigation of former Chief Ray Schultz of the Albuquerque police in connection with a $2 million contract his department awarded Taser. “We think there’s an ongoing pattern of police chiefs getting lucrative consulting contracts after they retire, if they give Taser contracts,” said Robert McKeeman, chief executive of Utility, which makes a rival body camera. Taser defended its sales tactics, saying they were commonplace, and said that many police departments were familiar with the company. It now makes law enforcement officials wait a year after leaving government service before it will hire them as consultants. Taser also said that while it was sometimes awarded bids, the departments doing the purchasing have often run a competitive process to test other cameras. “If you’re going to solve customers’ needs, you have to have close relationships,” Mr. Smith said. “I don’t think we did anything that was misleading. ” Taser was initially founded to sell electrical weapons. The Smith brothers’ partner, Jack Cover, was an engineer who worked with NASA and went on to develop the original technology used in the stun guns. The company struggled for several years. brand extensions like the Auto Taser, a device that electrified steering wheels to prevent car theft, nearly bankrupted the company. But sales picked up when Taser introduced a powerful electrical weapon, the M26, which resembled a handgun. Taser went public in 2001. Sales soared in the years after, with thousands of law enforcement agencies buying Taser stun guns. Though the guns were designed to be nonlethal, many people shot with Tasers died, miring the company in controversy. The company began selling video recorders that worked with Taser weapons in 2006, and it introduced its first body camera, the Axon Pro, in 2009. Mr. Smith predicted that sales of Axon cameras and Evidence. com would soon dwarf sales of Taser’s weapons, and that the company would one day be renamed to reflect the growing prominence of its body camera business. “We had a very successful business selling Taser weapons,” Mr. Smith said. “Now it’s not just about weapons, but about providing transparency and solving related data problems. ” | 1 |
Abby Martin Exposes What Hillary Clinton Really Represents ‹ › Since 2011, VNN has operated as part of the Veterans Today Network ; a group that operates over 50 plus media, information and service online sites for U.S. Military Veterans. 65 US ‘journalists’ at a private dinner with Hillary Clinton’s team and John Podesta By VNN on October 26, 2016 We wanted to make sure everyone on this email had the latest information on the two upcoming dinners with reporters. Both are off-the-record.
Hang The Bankers
Several top journalists and TV news anchors RSVPed “yes” to attend a private, off-the-record gathering at the New York home of Joel Benenson, the chief campaign strategist for Hillary Clinton, two days before she announced her candidacy in 2015, according to emails Wikileaks has published from John Podesta ’s purported accounts.
The guest list for an earlier event at the home of John Podesta was limited to reporters who were expected to cover Clinton on the campaign trail.
The email thread starts with Jesse Ferguson, the campaign’s Deputy National Press Secretary and Senior Spokesman, describing the venues and target audience of each gathering:
We wanted to make sure everyone on this email had the latest information on the two upcoming dinners with reporters. Both are off-the-record.
1) Thursday night, April 9th at 7:00p.m. Dinner at the Home of John Podesta… This will be with about 20 reporters who will closely cover the campaign (aka the bus).
2) Friday night, April 10th at 6:30p.m. Cocktails and Hors D’oeuvre at the Home of Joel Benenson… This is with a broader universe of New York reporters.
The “broader universe of New York reporters” includes several top news anchors for network and cable channels, many of whom are listed as a “yes” for the appearance:
From ABC: Cecilia Vega, David Muir, Diane Sawyer (who could only stay for 30 minutes), and George Stephanopoulos.
From CBS News: Norah O’Donnell.
From CNN: Brianna Keilar, Gloria Borger, John Berman, and Kate Bolduan.
From MSNBC: Alex Wagner and Rachel Maddow (“TRYING”).
From NBC: Savannah Guthrie.
“Yes” respondent George Stephanopoulos worked for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign and was a Senior Adviser to the President during Clinton’s first White House term. Stephanopoulos does not disclose this fact when reporting on the 2016 Clinton campaign for ABC News.
The nascent Clinton campaign invited Jeff Zucker and Phil Griffin, the presidents of CNN and MSNBC, respectively. Zucker declined while Griffin RSVPed “yes.” CNBC’s John Harwood
Wikileaks’ release of emails from the Democratic National Committee showed then-DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz scheduled or attempted to schedule private meetings with both executives.Other “yes” RSVPs come from journalists who have been sighted in the Wikileaks Podesta emails, outing them as friendly or fawning towards Hillary’s campaign.
CNBC’s John Harwood, who was also a moderator for a 2015 presidential debate, emailed Podesta frequently , practically begging for approval and access . Politico’s Glenn Thrush
Politico’s Glenn Thrush also emailed Podesta periodically. On Monday, a newly-released email revealed a particularly humiliating incident where Thrush sent Podesta a passage from an upcoming article for his personal approval.
“Because I have become a hack I will send u the whole section that pertains to u,” Thrush wrote. “Please don’t share or tell anyone I did this… Tell me if I fucked up anything.”
Sandra Sobieraj Westfall, Washington Bureau Chief at PEOPLE magazine, boasted two days after this confab that stories on Clinton’s campaign were generating “absolutely off the charts” traffic and asked for “color you can whisper on background” about what Hillary was up to. Joel Benenson – Clinton Chief Strategist
The full RSVP list for Benenson’s gathering is shown in an attachment on a separate email :
This is an off-the-record cocktails with the key national reporters, especially (though not exclusively) those that are based in New York. Much of the group includes influential reporters, anchors and editors.
The goals of the dinner include: (1) Give reporters their first thoughts from team HRC in advance of the announcement (2) Setting expectations for the announcement and launch period (3) Framing the HRC message and framing the race (4) Enjoy a Friday night drink before working more
TIME/DATE: As a reminder, this is called for 6:30 p.m. on Friday, April 10th .
There are several attendees – including Diane Sawyer – who will be there promptly at 6:30 p.m. but have to leave by 7 p.m.
…
FOOD: This will include cocktails and passed hours devours.
REPORTER RSVPs | 0 |
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Trump Win Jitters New World Order Financial Markets November 02, 2016 Trump Win Jitters New World Order Financial Markets
(LONDON) - World stocks, the dollar and oil fell on Wednesday, while safe-haven assets such as gold and the Swiss franc rose as investors were rattled by signs the U.S. presidential race was tightening just days before the vote. Investors were beginning to rethink their long-held bets of a Nov. 8 victory for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton amid signs her Republican rival Donald Trump could be closing the gap, deepening the recent decline across major stock markets. Asian stocks hit a seven-week low on Wednesday, while European bourses followed Wall Street's lead overnight and slid to a four-month low. Bonds rose alongside gold, the Swiss franc and Japanese yen, with the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasuries falling for the third day in a row. British gilts, which have recently been slammed by uncertainty surrounding the post-Brexit UK outlook, surged too.
"The lead up to the U.S. presidential election was always expected to be lively but the events of the last couple of days have seriously taken their toll on investor sentiment," said Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at Oanda in London.
Investor anxiety has deepened in recent sessions over a possible Trump victory given uncertainty on the Republican candidate's stance on key issues including foreign policy, trade relations and immigrants, while Clinton is viewed as a candidate of the status quo.
READ MORE: EUROPE IS HOPING FOR A CLINTON WIN BECAUSE THAT MEANS MORE DEALS WITH IRAN
Europe's index of leading 300 shares was last down 0.4 percent <.FTEU3>, having earlier hit a four-month low of 1,313 points. Britain's Britain's FTSE <.FTSE> and Germany's DAX <.GDAXI> fell 0.4 and 0.7 percent, respectively.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.MIAPJ0000PUS> dropped 1.1 percent to seven-week lows while the yen's rise to a two-week high helped push Japan's Nikkei <.N225> down 1.8 percent.
U.S. stock futures recovered earlier losses, pointing to a fall of only 0.1 percent at the open. This would still signify a fresh four-month low for Wall Street.
PRICING A TRUMP VICTORY
The tumultuous presidential race appeared to tighten after news that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was reviewing more emails as part of a probe into Clinton's use of a private email server.
While Clinton held a five-percentage-point lead over Trump, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Monday, some other polls showed her Republican rival ahead by 1-2 percentage points.
Barclays strategists estimate that a rise in Trump's polling odds to 50 percent could see the S&P 500 fall 4-5 percent, and potentially as much as 10-11 percent if he wins.
This has unnerved markets and the CBOE volatility index <.VIX>, often seen as investors' fear gauge, rose to a two-month high above 20 percent.
The tension in markets came as the Federal Reserve holds its two-day policy meeting, with its statement due later on Wednesday. While traders do not expect a rate hike just a week ahead of the presidential election, they are looking for signs that the Fed will move in December.
Investors have grown increasingly confident in recent weeks that the Fed will follow through next month, attaching an 80 percent probability to such a move, according to fed funds futures pricing.
But currency traders have sold the dollar this week in part because they suspect Trump would prefer a weaker dollar given his protectionist stance on international trade, and in part because the uncertainty surrounding a Trump win might lead to a more dovish stance from the Fed in the months ahead.
The dollar fell again on Wednesday, after posting its biggest one-day fall on Tuesday in two months.
The euro rose 0.4 percent to touch $1.11 for the first time in more than three weeks. It is up about two percent from its 7-1/2-month low of $1.0851 hit last week.
Against the yen, the dollar fell 0.8 percent to 103.24 yen from three-month high of 105.54 yen set on Friday.
"If you had a long dollar position on the view that the dollar would gain because Clinton would win, you would surely close that position because her victory is less certain," said Koichi Yoshikawa, executive director of financial markets at Standard Chartered Bank.
Other safe-haven assets also rose. The Swiss franc hit a four-month high of 1.0750 francs per euro , its highest level since late June, while gold reached a four-week high of $1,297 per ounce.
Oil prices fell for the fourth day in a row, sliding to one-month lows. Brent crude futures fell more than 1 percent to $47.53 per barrel, and U.S. crude was down as low as $46.06 . Oil has lost 10 percent in the last two weeks.
Story contribution by Reuters ; Commentary by TRUNEWS Article by Doc Burkhart , Vice-President, General Manager and co-host of TRUNEWS with Rick Wiles Got a news tip? Email us at Help support the ministry of TRUNEWS with your one-time or monthly gift of financial support. DONATE NOW ! DOWNLOAD THE TRUNEWS MOBILE APP! CLICK HERE! Donate Today! Support TRUNEWS to help build a global news network that provides a credible source for world news
We believe Christians need and deserve their own global news network to keep the worldwide Church informed, and to offer Christians a positive alternative to the anti-Christian bigotry of the mainstream news media Top Stories | 0 |
LAPD Investigating Boyle Heights Vandalism as Possible Hate Crimes Sparked by Gentrification Fight Brittny Mejia, Los Angeles Times, November 3, 2016
The Los Angeles Police Department is treating three acts of vandalism in the last month targeting art galleries in Boyle Heights, including graffiti at one gallery that attacked “white art,” as possible hate crimes.
The probe comes amid a debate in the predominantly Latino Eastside neighborhood over the growing art scene there and whether it’s part of a gentrification that some activists fear will push working-class families out. Galleries have been popping up in the area over the last few years as some artists get priced out of downtown’s Arts District and other areas.
“We don’t know who actually did [the vandalism], but because it actually made a reference to anti-white art or anti-white, it’s basically saying that it’s a hate crime based on that,” Det. John Parra of the LAPD’s Hollenbeck station said of a vulgar curse against “white art” that in one of the incidents was spray-painted on the Nicodim Gallery.
Boyle Heights has become a flashpoint as Los Angeles undergoes a wave of gentrification fueled by rising home prices and a renewed interest in urban neighborhoods by many. It’s already transformed once-working-class communities such as Echo Park and Highland Park. But some in Boyle Heights–for decades the heart of L.A.’s Mexican American community–have vowed to fight the change.
In the last three years, more than a dozen galleries have appeared in the area , many in an industrial zone just west of the 101 Freeway. Community activists fear the galleries will inflate property values and push poorer residents out.
In September, activists marched through Boyle Heights and posted mock eviction notices for “gentrifiers,” which included a couple of galleries.
{snip}
But the three incidents prompted the Hollenbeck Division to call a meeting with gallery owners last week to try to get an understanding of the problem and come up with a plan, including attempting to open a dialogue with the activist group Defend Boyle Heights, which has been a driving force of opposition to the galleries.
{snip}
On Thursday afternoon, Defend Boyle Heights issued a statement saying it was not responsible for vandalizing the galleries.
“We don’t know who tagged up these galleries, but we . . . certainly don’t condemn it. It is right to rebel! We are glad to see the community rise up to resist displacement, art washing and gentrification–however they see fit! Your anger is justified,” the statement read.
“Gentrification is the true, highest form of hate crime!”
Activists have demanded that the art galleries leave the neighborhood and allow the community to decide what will take their place.
{snip} | 0 |
Home » Headlines » World News » Obstruction of Justice – Hillary Clinton Could Face 20 YEARS In Prison
Is THIS why James Comey took the UNPRECEDENTED step of notifying Congress of the new investigation? If the FBI discovers that Hillary Clinton altered, destroyed or concealed any emails that should have been turned over to the FBI during the original investigation, she could be charged with obstruction of justice . That would IMMEDIATELY end her political career, and if she was found guilty it could send her to prison for the rest of her life…
From Michael Snyder :
In the world of politics, the cover-up is often worse than the original crime. It was his role in the Watergate cover-up that took down Richard Nixon, a nd now Hillary Clinton’s cover-up of her email scandal could send her to prison for a very, VERY long time.
When news broke that the FBI has renewed its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, it sent shock-waves throughout the political world. But this time around, we aren’t just talking about an investigation into the mishandling of classified documents. I haven’t heard anyone talking about this, but if the FBI discovers that Hillary Clinton altered, destroyed or concealed any emails that should have been turned over to the FBI during the original investigation, she could be charged with obstruction of justice. That would immediately end her political career, and if she was found guilty it could send her to prison for the rest of her life.
I have not seen a single news report mention the phrase “obstruction of justice” yet, but I am convinced that there is a very good chance that this is where this scandal is heading. The following is the relevant part of the federal statute that deals with obstruction of justice…
Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsified, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under Title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
If Hillary Clinton is sent to prison for 20 years, that would essentially be for the rest of her life.
I have a feeling that the FBI is going to find a great deal of evidence of obstruction of justice in Huma Abedin’s emails. But unfortunately there is not likely to be a resolution to this matter before November 8th, because according to the Wall Street Journal there are approximately 650,000 emails to search through…
As federal agents prepare to scour roughly 650,000 emails to see how many relate to a prior probe of Hillary Clinton’s email use, the surprise disclosure that investigators were pursuing the potential new evidence lays bare building tensions inside the bureau and the Justice Department over how to investigate the Democratic presidential nominee.
Metadata found on the laptop used by former Rep. Anthony Weiner and his estranged wife Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide, suggests there may be thousands of emails sent to or from the private server that Mrs. Clinton used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter. It will take weeks, at a minimum, to determine whether those messages are work-related from the time Ms. Abedin served with Mrs. Clinton at the State Department; how many are duplicates of emails already reviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and whether they include either classified information or important new evidence in the Clinton email probe.
Of those 650,000 emails, an inside source told Fox News that “at least 10,000” would be of interest to the investigation.
At this point, FBI officials have just begun searching through the emails, after a search warrant was obtained late Sunday evening. The following comes from CNN…
Government lawyers haven’t yet approached Abedin’s lawyers to seek an agreement to conduct the search. Sources earlier told CNN that those discussions had begun, but the law enforcement officials now say they have not.
Either way, government lawyers plan to seek a search warrant from a judge to conduct the search of the computer, the law enforcement officials said.
But the FBI is reportedly already searching a laptop that was co-owned by Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin, and no warrant was necessary for that search because Weiner is cooperating with the FBI.
Many have been wondering why FBI Director James Comey would choose to make such a bold move just over a week until election day. Surely he had to know that this would have a dramatic impact on the election, and it is unlikely that he would have done so unless someone had already found something really big. In addition, Comey was reportedly eager to find an opportunity to redeem himself in the eyes of his peers at the FBI. The following is an excerpt from a Daily Mail article that was written by Ed Klein, the author of a recently released New York Times bestseller about the Clintons entitled “Guilty As Sin“…
‘The atmosphere at the FBI has been toxic ever since Jim announced last July that he wouldn’t recommend an indictment against Hillary,’ said the source, a close friend who has known Comey for nearly two decades, shares family outings with him, and accompanies him to Catholic mass every week.
‘Some people, including department heads, stopped talking to Jim, and even ignored his greetings when they passed him in the hall,’ said the source. ‘They felt that he betrayed them and brought disgrace on the bureau by letting Hillary off with a slap on the wrist.’
According to the source, Comey fretted over the problem for months and discussed it at great length with his wife, Patrice.
He told his wife that he was depressed by the stack of resignation letters piling up on his desk from disaffected agents. The letters reminded him every day that morale in the FBI had hit rock bottom.
So what happens next?
In the most likely scenario, the FBI will not have time to complete the investigation and decide whether or not to charge Hillary Clinton before the election. This means that we would go into November 8th with this scandal hanging over the Clinton campaign, and that would seem to be very good news for Donald Trump.
However, it is possible that once the FBI starts searching through these emails that they could come to the conclusion very rapidly that charges against Clinton are warranted, and if that happens we could still see some sort of announcement before election day.
In the unlikely event that does happen, we could actually see Hillary Clinton forced out of the race before November 8th.
Once again, this appears to be very unlikely at this point, but it is still possible.
If Clinton was forced to step aside, the Democrats would need to come up with a new nominee, and that process would take time. In an article later today on The Most Important News I will reveal who I believe that nominee would be.
In such a scenario, the Democrats would desperately need time to get their act together, and so we could actually see Barack Obama attempt to delay or suspend the election. The legality of such a move is highly questionable, but Barack Obama has not allowed a little thing like the U.S. Constitution to stop him in the past.
This week is going to be exceedingly interesting – that is for sure.
The craziest election in modern American history just keeps getting crazier, and I have a feeling that even more twists and turns are ahead.
It sure seems ironic that Anthony Weiner is playing such a central role this late in the story, and I can’t wait to see what is in store for the season finale. | 0 |
Dolce Gabbana has released “#BoycottDolceGabbana” in response to activists who threatened to boycott the company over their approval of Melania Trump. @flotus ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ #DGWoman ❤️❤️❤️ THANK YOU 🇺🇸🇹 A post shared by stefanogabbana (@stefanogabbana) on Jun 12, 2017 at 1:58pm PDT, DolceGabbana boycotts itself. #BoycottDolceGabbana available from tomorrow on our Online Store. Photo by Nello Esposito, A post shared by Dolce Gabbana (@dolcegabbana) on Jun 8, 2017 at 1:38pm PDT, #Repost @stefanogabbana Boycott, boycott, boycott! the moments of #BoycottDolceGabbana The #BoycottDolceGabbana is available on the Online Store tomorrow! A post shared by Dolce Gabbana (@dolcegabbana) on Jun 8, 2017 at 1:36pm PDT, ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ #boycottdolcegabbana online, A post shared by stefanogabbana (@stefanogabbana) on Jun 11, 2017 at 3:39am PDT, After being criticized for dressing the First Lady in April, Gabbana told protesting users to “f*ck off” and “go to hell,” calling them “ignorant” for threatening to boycott the company. When other users claimed that they would never buy a Dolce Gabbana product again, Gabbana also replied “I don’t care. Really! !” Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 1 |
Country: Iraq Iraq is going to invade and destroy Saudi Arabia. They would have done it back in 1990 except for waffling by George H.W. Bush who had initially authorized the move and then rescinded approval, according to statements made by former Congressman Ron Paul, based on WikiLeaks State Department hacks. Saddam was blocked in 1990, and that may well have been a huge mistake on the part of everyone involved. When the US returned in 2003, it was Saudi cash that financed the Sunni Wahhabist was against the coalition government in Baghdad, a war that continues to this day, with the same cast of characters, the same Saudi cash, but they now call it “ISIS.” 5000 Americans died fighting Saudi paid jihadists. Saudi Arabia has always known that Iraq has only allowed them to continue their mischief so long as they served a purpose. When the war with Iran ended in 1988, that purpose had ended also. Saudi mischief in Iraq, playing tribe against tribe, pushing for Kurdish separatism and partnering with Israeli intelligence, ramped up as America scaled back her military presence under President Obama. By 2014, a logistics and command structure to destroy both Syria and Iraq had been established, headquartered in the Saudi embassies in Beirut and Amman and operating military operations centers, designed and built by the Israelis, at key locations in Turkey and quickly bolstered by satellite facilities across Iraq and Syria. The Saudi’s were feeling time getting away from them, their decades of military buildup, based on endless oil and investment performance, no long sustainable. They had to knock out Syria and Iraq, using Israel, Turkey and NATO as surrogates, push the US into destroying Iran and cleanse Yemen of threats. They bribed everyone they got near. Were the Saudi’s really the ones behind the Arab spring? Do we see the hands of Saudi Arabia when Israel channels Hamas fighters into the Yarmouk Camp, outside Damascus, to bolster ISIS forces? These are the telling events few see, but that prove the hypothesis and provide what is needed to predict a future that may well no longer include the Dark Kingdom. With a world obsessed with Islamic extremism and terror threats, why is no one looking at where it comes from, who finances, whose ideas are behind it and who it serves? With fingers pointing at the Mossad or CIA and so many others, the real issue is Wahhabism and the real root of it all is Saudi Arabia. There is no version of 9/11 that doesn’t credit Saudi Mohammed Atta as planner of 9/11, whether assisted by Israeli art students or Osama bin Laden, depending on which theories you follow. The Saudi’s did it and American civil courts are busy now assessing the damages. Oil money and sovereign immunity and, oh yes, control of the UN Human Rights Council, from which Russia was just expelled, protect them also, despite their abuses and love of head chopping. What is playing out now will lead only one direction, to a stronger Iraq, one under Shiite control with the economically powerful Sunni families, quietly migrating to their second homes in Dubai and Qatar. The crippled military the US saddled Iraq with will be gone, replaced by powerful Iranian trained militias. The American trained army joined ISIS. Had Prime Minister Maliki, back in 2014, been more aware of the threat, he would have moved against the Army. That, however, would have renewed the civil war, a war that could only have been ended with Iranian military intervention and Iran was still reeling with sanctions and the threat of American invasion. That threat is gone also. That world is gone, or soon will be as is being played out in Mosul and Aleppo. No one would have imagined Baghdad’s resolve or the partnership between Russia and Iran. Still in question is Turkey’s role. It is clear someone promised them Aleppo and Mosul, as is reflected in their military incursions into Syria and Iraq. If Saudi Arabia thinks Turkey will lift a hand to block Iraq’s wrath, they are delusional. Turkey knows it can have peace with Iran and that both share similar ideas about the Kurds. This far outweighs any Turkish ambitions to the South. Turkey may well be planning a new Ottoman Empire, but Saudi Arabia is not in the cards for Turkish occupation. This leaves the protection of the United States and the upcoming election. Is there any American political leader that would oppose Iraq were they to hit Saudi Arabia, by 2020 or 2021? The prediction is that Iraq will come out of this war intact and, if they do, with a victorious army for the first time genuinely answerable to Baghdad and reeling from the battle of Mosul, likely to leave 20,000 civilians dead in its wake or more, the national enmity for Saudi Arabia will know no bounds. The Sunni gangsters from Anbar that aligned with the Saudis are mostly dead, many beheaded by ISIS. The promised Kurdish state in Erbil, the so-called “Barzani Sultanate” will not be handed control of the massive Kirkuk oil fields and the Ceyhan Pipeline by ISIS, as may well have been planned. Without these assets, Erbil will still enjoy a strong commercial presence but will never be able to reach into the Kurdish diaspora and bring the millions home and under questionable rule, subject to Erbil’s deal making with everyone. Eventually Erbil will become a ghost town, the sons that returned will again migrate and Turkish ambitions, seemingly undone, will be fulfilled. As it appears now, Iraq will survive. Iraq also knows that what Saudi Arabia tried twice, they will try again and that the only way Iraq can be free is if Saudi Arabia falls. And then there is Iran. Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today , especially for the online magazine “ New Eastern Outlook .” Popular Articles | 0 |
DEEP UNDERGROUND BASES & THE SATANIC BREAKAWAY STATE — Dr. Richard Sauder Published on Sep 30, 2016 With more than $6.5 TRILLION missing from the Pentagon and countless top secret deep underground military and government bases scattered across the United States, it’s clear that the deep state – or breakaway civilization – is taking our nation, and the world, in a very dangerous direction. Author Dr. Richard Sauder joins me to discuss his studied work in this area, work which has led Sauder to conclude, “This is a battle for the planet and the brood of vipers has set up its nest within the bowels of the so-called United States and so-called United States military and the associated alphabet soup agencies.”
NOTE: Richard is living in Ecuador and could use our help. If you would like to donate to Richard, any amount will help. Richards writes:
Here is how people can donate to me:
1) People can send me Amazon.com gift cards at [email protected] using the link: https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Amazon-…
2) I can receive Bitcoin at: 1Dht92qEzCmvuLRKQD2MSJ1JdQ7rFRMVdA
Those are the easiest ways. I do not have a bank account and cannot feasibly get one at present.
3) I can also receive modest non-bank money transfers, but people should e-mail me at [email protected] for the details as to how to do that.
Best regards, | 0 |
shorty Share This: T he Orwellian system of “news” distribution which passes for journalism in the United States has never been so hyperactive and audacious, its lies breaking all previous records for sheer cynicism and outright dishonesty. In this space we aim to offer samples, for the record, as it were, although just about ALL the reporting on the MSM on any topic of interest to the US-led plutocracy—from Syria to the Ukraine and Russia, China, Iran, etc, and reports touching on the nature of the US political system (which the plutocracy and its minions continue to hail as a “democracy”), history, the economy, etc., are to be regarded as extremely devious and toxic. .. The saddest part is that this enormous machinery of deception—which by design weaves crude and subtle lies in its tapestry— does have a real and dangerous impact on the way people think here and around the world, and certainly affects the minds and temperaments even of many people who still think of themselves as “progressive” and well educated. Given the multitude of instances, there is no way we can provide on this site a blow by blow analysis of these people’s treacherous statements and pseudo facts. The ONLY antidote we can think of is for you to educate your mind to detect falsehoods by reading regularly sites like The Greanville Post. Eventually you will spot the chicanery a mile away and take appropriate defensive measures. And, we hope, fight back. DISINFORMER OF THE DAY: CBS CORRESPONDENT ELIZABETH PALMER Things to note in this report: • Palmer is reinforcing the American establishment/Clinton propaganda trope that the Kremlin has actually interfered with the purity of US elections (sic). This is not just a Clinton-disseminated lie, but a lie pushed by the entire US establishment as it prepares the nation for war against Russia, China or any other nation that would dare deviate from or question US global hegemony. • Palmer, besides having an anti-Russia agenda, like all US “journalists’ is grossly ignorant of the culture it is reporting about, and obviously intellectually lazy. So she gravitates to what is easy, in this case dependable pro-US shills living in Moscow, like the editor of the Moscow Times, an outfit that is simply laughable on its face. This is what she uses to help her audience “interpret” the reality in Russia. The Moscow Times, with an equivocal agenda, is part of the extensive, underhanded network of US hybrid war assets, along with its notorious global web of NGOs supporting “color revolutions” in the name of “democracy,”“human rights” and other worthy, high-falutin’ concepts. RESOURCES The Greanville Post and its sister site, Cyrano’s Journal carry extensive repositories dedicated to the study of disinformation. Below, some links that may serve as a down payment on this important area of study. We suggest that you read and download these, for we are not sure how long we may stay afloat. | 0 |
In 2003, researchers declared Coral Castles dead. On the floor of a remote island lagoon halfway between Hawaii and Fiji, the giant reef site had been devastated by unusually warm water. Its remains looked like a pile of drab dinner plates tossed into the sea. Research dives in 2009 and 2012 had shown little improvement in the coral colonies. Then in 2015, a team of marine biologists was stunned and overjoyed to find Coral Castles, genus Acropora, once again teeming with life. But the rebound came with a big question: Could the enormous and presumably still fragile coral survive what would be the hottest year on record? This month, the research team finished a new exploration of the reefs in the secluded Phoenix Islands, a tiny Pacific archipelago, and were thrilled by what they saw. When they splashed out of an inflatable dinghy to examine Coral Castles closely, they were greeted with a vista of bright greens and purples — unmistakable signs of life. “Everything looked just magnificent,” said Jan Witting, the expedition’s chief scientist and a researcher at Sea Education Association, based in Woods Hole, Mass. Global climate change is wreaking havoc on corals worldwide. Coral bleaching has caused extensive damage to regions extending from the Great Barrier Reef to the Caribbean and nearly everywhere in between. “Threats to tropical coral reefs worldwide have escalated to a level that imperils the survival of these complex, diverse and beautiful ecosystems,” Janice M. Lough, an Australian researcher, wrote in a February opinion piece in Nature. Coral can be severely damaged by rising water temperatures, which cause acidification, as well as by pollution and human activity like tourism, fishing and shipping — prompting some governments to restrict such activities. If Coral Castles can continue to revive after years of apparent lifelessness, even as water temperatures rise, there might be hope for other reefs with similar damage, said another team member, Randi Rotjan, a research scientist who led and tracked the Phoenix Islands expedition from her base at the New England Aquarium in Boston. No one actually knows what drives reef resilience or even what a coral reef looks like as it is rebounding. In remote, places, our understanding of coral is roughly akin to a doctor’s knowing only what a patient looks like in perfect health and after death, Dr. Rotjan said. Coral Castles’s revival might be an isolated situation, a fluke in a faraway place. But Dr. Rotjan and her team are on a quest to find out why this coral and other reefs nearby came back to life. “There’s a recipe book that can be developed out of what we’re learning here,” Dr. Witting said. “You need to make a strong case that this can work before anyone else will try it. ” The lagoon sits in the middle of the largest of the Phoenix Islands, which are inhabited by just a few dozen people, part of the island nation of Kiribati (pronounced ). The chain has been listed as a World Heritage Site for its beauty and abundance of wildlife: birds, sea turtles, schools of fish, deepwater sleeper sharks and 200 species of coral. The area has also been a cemetery for sunken ships since voyagers first set out across the Pacific. To understand the stresses facing corals — from pollution and climate change, for example — researchers would like to isolate each problem. Almost everywhere on Earth, corals must endure climate change and human activity. But not in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area, created by the government in 2008. Shipping lanes skirt the preservation area. Commercial fishing there ceased last year. Dr. Rotjan, who is also the chief scientist for the area’s conservation trust, said the recent protections might have fostered the coral rebound. The algae that live in corals may also be evolving to cope with warmer temperatures, or hardier coral species may be supplanting others, she said. In a letter published in Nature earlier this year, another global team of researchers reported a similar coral recovery after they reduced the acidity in three lagoons in the southern Great Barrier Reef, off Queensland, Australia. Carbon emissions increase the acidity of seawater. “It’s encouraging, because if we do the right things, health might restore in a pretty responsive manner,” said Rebecca Albright, one of the paper’s authors and a postdoctoral scientist at Stanford University. But few creatures are more vulnerable to ocean acidification from climate change than corals, which have been declining for decades. About a quarter of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere is absorbed by the world’s oceans, measurably lowering their pH levels, Dr. Albright said. Forecasters predicted this year would be the warmest on record, driven by the El Niño weather event that started relatively close to the Phoenix Islands. Late last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared the global coral bleaching event, affecting corals in every tropical ocean, and declared that the was being prolonged by El Niño. The crisis has made the work in the Phoenix Islands even more crucial, said Verena Schoepf, a coral expert at the University of Western Australia. “It’s critical that we understand what happened there, because that would help us understand how corals might be able to cope with climate change in the long run,” she said. Corals are “animal, vegetable and mineral all rolled into one,” Dr. Rotjan said as she held up displays. The mineral part, beige with white patches, resembles a featherweight stone full of holes. In a small vial of liquid, she points to the animal part: small beads linked by connective tissue. These living beads act as mouths, drinking in nutrients, and make the calcium carbonate that forms their protective home. The animal shares this structure symbiotically with algae that photosynthesize sunlight, producing food that the animal eats. Warming water can cause the coral to expel its algae, leading to bleaching. Acidic water weakens a coral’s calcium carbonate skeleton, so it cannot contain the coral and grow. And when the nutrients in the surrounding water change, the coral may have trouble getting food. Adjusting to climate change, Dr. Rotjan said, is not just about getting used to warmer water. A coral depends on its entire context — its ecosystem, the mineral content of the surrounding water, the sociopolitical climate of nearby human populations. (Reefs off the coast of Somalia, in Africa, may be unusually healthy, for instance, because most boaters have been scared away by pirates, she said.) Even old shipwrecks make a difference. As the Pacific grows warmer, rusting hulks alongside the Phoenix Islands seem to be releasing more iron oxides. The corals nearest the wrecks are not rebounding as well as those farther away, suggesting that the minerals interfere with coral resilience, according to another member of the team, Sangeeta Mangubhai. Climate change isn’t just about heating water, Dr. Rotjan said. “It’s about the little sparks along the way that no one is expecting. We flipped the switch, and now we’re watching the fireworks. ” The difference between this year and last is striking, Dr. Witting said. Last fall, in the thick of El Niño, the team’s boat had to use its motor for the whole journey from Hawaii this year, there has been enough wind for the team to sail. “Last year, the whole place was holding its breath,” Dr. Witting said. This summer, it has sprung to life with plankton visible everywhere, he said, comparing it to a garden that is six times as productive as usual. “The whole ocean’s in bloom this year. ” The fluctuations of nature are a part of life, of course, and the corals adapt to these variations. Last year, after visiting Coral Castles, the research team headed to American Samoa to see another giant coral, known as Big Momma, genus Porites, which is among the planet’s largest and oldest, and had been on Dr. Rotjan’s bucket list. “It is 40 meters in circumference, bigger than the size of this room” she said in a conference room. “She was around and now she’s around for the world’s biggest bleaching event. ” It’s still unclear how Big Momma weathered El Niño, which came just a year after another bleaching event. “Are we the last ones to see her alive and healthy?” Dr. Rotjan asked. “I hope not. ” | 1 |
Fox News Channel’s Jeanine Pirro went after the GOP establishment Saturday on “Justice. ” Pirro accused the establishment Republicans leaders of watching the Democrats “railroad their president, and then urged them to prove their loyalty by convincing everyone that they are not in on the “effort to take down” President Donald Trump. “The Republican establishment not fighting for the as day after day they watch him being savaged, forcing him to defend himself and run the country. Think about it. If he’s knocked out, the succession is clear and things go back to the way they were,” Pirro said. “You’re in power, damn it!” she later exclaimed. “Do something, pass something, cut this kumbaya crap, put on your big boy pants and act like you’re in power, act like you give a damn! And more importantly, convince us that you are not in on the effort to take down the president of the United States. ” Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 1 |
Black Lives Matter activist and Christian minister Nyle Fort, a doctoral candidate at Princeton University who calls for revolutionary violence in the face of “white supremacist terror,” will return to Bucknell University this week. [As a part of an ongoing lecture series organized by the Griot Institute at Bucknell University entitled, “The Black Body (Re) Considered,” activist Nyle Fort will return to campus to “explore the moral and spiritual dimensions of the Black Lives Matter movement. ” His lecture is by the English department. In the 2014 issue of Syndicate Theology, a periodical, Fort wrote,”under conditions of white supremacist terror, revolutionary violence can be an expression of Christian love. ” I addressed Mr. Fort’s work last year in the introduction to an event featuring editor Milo Yiannopoulos, arguing that that the administration’s liberal politics motivated their respective responses (or lack thereof) to the Yiannopoulos and Fort events. Before Yiannopoulos spoke at Bucknell last February, the administration sent out a email to calm the community’s concerns over his upcoming visit. Bridget Newell, then the university’s Associate Provost for Diversity, suggested that Yiannopoulos’ values contradicted the “qualities of inclusiveness and respect that we want to emulate” at Bucknell. Although he criticized President Obama and the Black Lives Matter movement in his event at Bucknell, Yiannopoulos argued that “there is stuff left to do on race in America … ( ) are still owed something. ” Yiannopoulos addressed the struggles faced particularly by females, who he suggested are on the receiving end of institutional discrimination. Just weeks before Yiannopoulos appearance, Fort spoke at Bucknell without the smallest amount of resistance from those in the community on the right. This week, he’ll return to Bucknell in the aftermath of an incident in which Bucknell Professor Marcellus Andrews slandered my peers and me, publicly calling us “racists” and instructing students to “impose a steep and lasting price” on us for organizing last year’s Yiannopoulos event. “I praise Mr. Ciccotta for helping the young and dark understand that there is not much that the administration can do about racism on campus, because y’all can’t,” Bucknell Professor Marcellus Andrews wrote in an email to University President John Bravman and I after I brought my concerns over Andrews’ conduct to the administration. If there were to be “revolutionary violence” at Bucknell, as Fort calls for, who would it be directed towards? In a political climate in which the labels “racist” and “white supremacist” are thrown around arbitrarily without hesitation, and sometimes, without legitimate cause, Fort’s call for violence should be deeply concerning to university administrators that host him on their campuses. Fort even acknowledges that his theories on violence are controversial, but justifies his radicalism by arguing that the theological concept of a god being “one in three persons” is equally controversial, but nonetheless worthy of serious consideration. To say Christian love can embody revolutionary violence is controversial. But so is saying God is “One in three persons”! Just because something is controversial doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take it seriously or even embrace it. The idea of the Trinity is controversial to many as is revolutionary violence. Interestingly, however, most Christians are silent about State violence on black bodies, and yet condemn the very idea of those same bodies engaging in counter, revolutionary violence. He adds that Christians must start to recognize “that the face of Jesus Christ is the body of Michael Brown,” because “Jesus shows up in the suffering of black bodies and all the world’s crucified peoples. ” Fort, of course, should be allowed to speak, even without a disclaimer from the University, but it is concerning that the same community that took such issue with Yiannopoulos’ brand of provocation and humor gave Minister Fort, and his justification of violence in the name of Christianity, a warm embrace, and will do so again this week at Bucknell a second time. This isn’t a conversation about violence, but rather the failure of university administrations to act objectively when faced with matters. Last week, before American Enterprise Institute Scholar Charles Murray spoke at Middlebury College, the school’s president Laurie Patton injected her personal politics into the discussion and denouncing his scholarship, claiming that she “profoundly disagrees with much of Mr. Murray’s views. ” In January, Dean of Students Amy Badal attended a candlelight vigil held at Bucknell in response to President Trump’s executive order on immigration. Can students feel comfortable expressing their support of such legislation on campus if administrators like Badal are willing to take such a strong and public stance? Instead of defending my peers and I against Andrews’ threat and accusations of racism, Badal and the administration claimed that I had “mischaracterized” the email (which you can read in its entirety here). The administration argued that the university “values and encourages the free exchange of diverse ideas and perspectives,” despite the texts assigned throughout my economics curriculum consisting almost exclusively of leftist and market perspectives. University administrators must adopt an objective set of moral principles that isn’t derived from partisan ideology if they are to ensure that all students are treated fairly, educated comprehensively, and so that they can rightfully condemn conduct that infringes upon students’ ability to participate in the tradition of open intellectual inquiry upon which the academy was founded. Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about education and social justice for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart. com | 1 |
YUCCA VALLEY, Calif. — The Pioneertown Motel is a dusty, inn with 20 rooms in a remote community named Pioneertown, in the middle of the desert in Southern California. The motel, recently renovated by its new owners, has an outdoor makeshift lobby and offers few amenities aside from morning coffee, and a parking space large enough for a pickup truck outside each room’s door. Across the parking lot is a street that was built as a film set, with an saloon, post office, bowling alley and a trading post. In April, the motel was fully booked, with a wait list. Hundreds of music lovers had caravaned from the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, Calif. looking for a party. They found it in Pioneertown where a jamboree called the Speakeasy was in full swing. and their boyfriends sprawled out on colorful couches under tents outside the motel. They drank canned beer and smoked cigarettes by day, huddling around firepits at night, starlight and guitars in ample supply. This setting may seem incongruent to its backdrop. But this is the new Old West. Pioneertown, 125 miles outside Los Angeles, was founded in 1946 by a group of Hollywood legends including Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Russell Hayden and Dick Curtis. They were tired of traveling far to film the westerns that were popular at the time. They built facades and spaces to replicate a western town, as well as the motel, where they stayed up into the night, drinking, playing cards, staging duels and then sleeping it off before starting again. The dream of turning Pioneertown into a permanent playground with golf courses, hotels, restaurants and large homes never materialized. There wasn’t enough money or water. But 70 years later, Pioneertown is having something of a renaissance, thanks to an influx of artists, entrepreneurs and other beautiful people from Los Angeles, Silicon Valley and New York City looking for a new hub for work and play. Julian T. Pinder, a filmmaker, moved to Pioneertown in 2014 from Los Angeles with his wife, Yasmina Jones. Their friends were perplexed by their decision to do so, initially. “At first they are like: ‘What are you doing in the middle of the desert? What do you do up there? You are insane,” said Mr. Pinder, 34. “Then they come up here and stay for a weekend, and they meet all these amazing artists and everyone is just totally laid back and there is a stress level that is gone. ” Mr. Pinder and Ms. Jones were attracted to Pioneertown as an alternative to the Los Angeles lifestyle. “We were paying six grand a month, and we were doing jobs we didn’t want to do,” he said. “Finally, I said: ‘Forget it. Instead of wasting this money on rent, I can come here and buy 40 acres for 100 grand. ’” Theirs is one of the first homes seen when driving from the main highway into Pioneertown. Mr. Pinder and Ms. Jones renovated what was a mining cabin into an airy family home that has huge windows, a beamed roof, an open kitchen and 40 acres of uncultivated land. Somewhat by necessity, Mr. Pinder has learned to kill rattlesnakes. Pioneertown is an unincorporated community, so small that you can address parcels with someone’s first name and they will arrive at the right place. You can drive for miles without seeing another human or even a building people’s homes can be about a drive apart. The boulders, the sand and the Joshua trees make the landscape look otherworldly. Cellphone service is spotty. But the remoteness is among its greatest attributes, say people who have moved there recently. Yves Kamioner, a Belgian jewelry designer, and his partner, Hugh Glenn, a retired executive, left their New York life and their Fifth Avenue apartment four years ago. Since then, they have bought and restored three homes in the area, including one that came with a church. “The desert is a blank page, and people come here to reinvent themselves,” said Mr. Kamioner, 59. “You are like a kid again. There is oxygen up here. ” Claire Wadsworth, a teacher, and Nikki Hill, a chef, were residents of Los Angeles when they took a weekend visit to Pioneertown in April 2015. They decided on the spot to move there. “Someone told us there was a restaurant for sale, and 10 days later we had the keys,” said Ms. Wadsworth, 31, who married Ms. Hill, 33, last year. “We were just so in love and wanting something different in life,” Ms. Wadsworth said. The couple opened the doors to their new restaurant, La Copine, in the area about six months ago. It would be hard to find the tiny restaurant, on the side of a sparsely populated highway, if not for the crowds of people and cars that always surround it when it’s open — mostly for brunch, Thursday to Sunday. The crowd could rival that of the newest haunt in the West Village: Beautiful artist or graphic designer couples come with friends to laugh and gossip over juice spritzers and organic grits. To kick off the Speakeasy festival in April, La Copine hosted an dinner of spring pea and tendril salads and coq au vin (wine was B. Y. O. B.) for locals and tourists alike. The local music business is growing. Rocco Gardner, a musician, has built a music recording studio. “We now have the stuff you need to have Beyoncé come and stay and record,” he said. This spring, he gave a party to show off the studio. Musicians, actors and other scantily dressed, partygoers took selfies in the hot tub against the unobstructed views of valleys and Joshua trees. The fashion scene, with an aesthetic influenced by Pioneertown’s proximity to music festivals, is developing as well. Promised Land, a vintage store, opened five months ago nearby. Its racks and shelves are overflowing with Bohemian skirts, maxi dresses, jumpsuits and leather jackets. Jay Carroll, 36, a brand consultant who once was a creative director for Levi’s, moved to Pioneertown in 2015. With a partner, he is starting a men’s wear line. With his wife, Alison, he is starting a company called Wonder Valley that sells olive oil. Mr. Carroll understands the lure of the dusty western town. “I’m sure it correlates to the fact that the market in L. A. has gone up,” he said. “There is also the fact that simple living is such a new hot topic with young people, and this is definitely a place you can do it with it being two hours from L. A. ” Not everyone is excited about the newness of the old Pioneertown. Jim Austin, 58, has lived there for 12 years in a house called Rimrock Ranch on a quirky plot of land with numerous structures, including a red barn with the word “breathe” written on it. Nearby, there is a display of rocks in the shape of a heart that surrounds two Joshua trees. From some vantage points, it looks like trees are kissing. Mr. Austin came to Pioneertown when it was truly a sleepy nowheresville. Now he thinks it is time to move on. He sold the ranch to a young couple from Oakland. “It is a little too crowded for me,” he said. “It was time for me to bug off rather than becoming that grumpy old dude trying to stop change. ” Matt and Mike French, brothers from Portland, Ore. are among those fueling the change. Mike, 27, and Matt, 32, bought the Pioneertown Motel in December 2014, after discovering it while visiting their parents in Palm Springs, 30 miles away. After a refurbishment of the hotel, the brothers celebrated its reopening, welcoming some 80 friends and relatives to Pioneertown. They enjoyed an outdoor dinner under the stars, a sunrise dance party and hikes in Pioneertown Mountains Preserve. “We want to be the door to the desert,” Mike said. | 1 |
MATAMOROS, Tamaulipas — While authorities and cartel gunmen have been fighting for days Reynosa, this border city has managed to avoid most of the recent violence. However during a recent gun battle, one of the most feared cartel leaders allegedly responsible for having incinerated hundreds of victims was killed. [Known only as “El Fily” or “Ciclon 40” the burly man who was covered in tattoos has been singled out as one of the most bloodthirsty leaders within the Gulf Cartel. Citizen journalists and unofficial sources point to the feared criminal having been killed during a recent gun battle with authorities this week along the highway that leads to the area known as Playa Azul. El Fily was in charge of the areas including Camino Real, El Longoreño, El Ranchito and other rural communities leading to Playa Azul. A series of photographs published by citizen journalists appear to show Fily’s body after he apparently died in combat. The photographs show the corpse wearing black clothing with a tactical vest. The man seemed to be clutching an rifle and a pistol. Authorities have not released any official information that confirms or disproves the death of the man known as Fily. Breitbart Texas previously reported about how the Gulf Cartel, through Fily, had incinerated countless bodies in the rural community known as La Bartolina. Breitbart Texas interviewed a former cartel hitman who confirmed that in the Bartolina, also known as La Cocina, the criminal organization would have incinerated about 500 victims reducing them only to ash. The case was by state authorities under the previous administration who claimed that forensic specialists were not able to tell if the remains found in shallow holes or in drums in the Bartolina were human or animal. The incinerations would take place in barrels which were filled with fuel so the bodies could be consumed. Breitbart Texas published a video with strong images where alleged members of the Gulf Cartel kick a victim’s head while they prepared to incinerate. Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “J. A. Espinoza” from Matamoros, Tamaulipas and Breitbart Texas’ Ildefonso Ortiz. | 1 |
NEW DELHI — In the dense smog that engulfed India’s capital early this month, a baby named Vaishnavi gasped through the night. In the concrete room that her father and mother rent for $20 a month, they took turns staying up, laying a hand on her rib cage, feeling it move up and down. Her coughing fits became so violent that she vomited, milk mixed with ropes of sputum. Three times they thought she would not survive until morning. Twenty miles away, in an elegant, house in an elite neighborhood, a boy named Mehtab was also struggling to fill his lungs with air. His mother, heavily pregnant, sat beside him, administering corticosteroids through a nebulizer mask once an hour. But once an hour wasn’t enough. Mehtab’s father fought waves of panic as they waited for the sun to rise. The boy looked, to him, like a fish suffocating in the air. For seven days at the beginning of this month, a thick cloud settled over this metropolis of 20 million people. Held in place by a weather system known as an anticyclone, the pollution was pulled inward and down, trapping the people of this city in concentrations of hazardous never before recorded here. The rich, who are buffered from so many of Delhi’s dangers, bunkered themselves inside, filtering out particles in their own air through expensive, purifiers. But the nature of air pollution is that it is pervasive. Researchers in China have found that exposure rates for the rich and the poor are virtually indistinguishable. As average daytime levels of PM 2. 5, the most dangerous particles, passed 700 micrograms per cubic meter, 28 times the concentration the World Health Organization considers safe, the authorities in Delhi took the unprecedented step of shutting schools for three days. Protesters marched in surgical masks, carrying posters likening the city to a gas chamber. Eventually, the wind picked up, reducing the city’s pollution down to its usual, atrocious winter level. But the air quality in north India will remain dangerous for months, as poor people fight the dropping temperature by burning things — leaves, plastic, anything — to stay warm. There is a clear body of evidence that death rates, emergency room visits, heart attacks and strokes all rise when particulate concentrations are high. Recent data from the W. H. O. ’s Global Burden of Disease project indicates that the number of premature deaths related to air pollution in India has caught up with the number in China, and is now surpassing it. The will be the very old, who are susceptible to heart disease and stroke, and the very young, whose lungs are taxed so badly by polluted air that they cannot develop normally. Children are more vulnerable because they are smaller, with shallower breaths and higher heart rates they breathe more air. In the very different homes of Vaishnavi and Mehtab, four parents are waiting to see what the rest of this winter will do to their children. Vaishnavi’s father, Ravi — who, like many in India, does not use a last name — remembers the day when he woke up and smelled something burning. The rubber casing of an electrical wire is burning, that was his first thought. He splashed his eyes with water to stop the stinging. On the ride into central Delhi, where he sells trinkets on a street corner, he passed columns of smoke: wisps from piles of trash, and black pillars from fields where farmers were burning the straw left over from their rice harvests. Scientists had been tracking the progress of a mass of smoke via NASA satellite images, as it rose off farmers’ fields in the nearby states of Punjab and Haryana and floated across the plains toward the city, a drift. In Delhi, it merged with emissions from cars, power plants, burning of trash and dust from construction. This year, the emissions happened to arrive on the eve of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, when smoke from millions of celebratory fireworks typically send concentrations of the harmful PM 2. 5 particles skyrocketing. Ravi has worked on the same corner since he was a child, and his mother worked there before him. He had never seen a smog so thick that it obscured the Hotel. He knew something was not right: He felt dizzy, as if he had been sniffing glue. What worried him more was his only child, Vaishnavi, just 18 months old, whose spasmodic nighttime cough no longer quieted with the arrival of morning. He bought her a surgical mask for 40 rupees — about 60 cents — from a merchant at an intersection, but she kept pulling it off. On the way home, he furiously jumped out of the and confronted a man burning a pile of trash on the road. “Please don’t burn this, my daughter is crying,” he said. The man responded with a string of especially dirty abuses. The air that week was utterly still meteorologists measured both horizontal and vertical movement at nil. Madhurbain Singh Anand, the father of Mehtab, peered into the garden behind their house as the cloud of pollution settled on the city the garden wall, maybe 20 feet away, was no longer visible. When someone opened a door, a haze filled the room. “It’s like those horror movies,” he said. “You open the door and the thing comes in. ” Mr. Anand, an executive at a clothing company, grew up in the house, and moved his family back to it from Mumbai shortly after his son, their only child, turned 2. He hoped Mehtab could enjoy the same protected Delhi boyhood that he did, tumbling out the door after school and running around with a gang of neighborhood children until dinner. But Mehtab’s life is nothing like that. In the winter, when the air quality plummets, he barely goes outside for fear of setting off his breathing problems. His mother, Guntas Kaur, enrolled him in tennis lessons, and then swimming, but both had to be cut short because of wheezing attacks. She says she had to allow him more television time instead. After a severe attack last year that led to a hospitalization, Ms. Kaur moved Mehtab into his parents’ bedroom and set her iPhone alarm for every two hours, so she could strap on his nebulizer mask at intervals throughout the night. On the night of Diwali, the couple sat inside, listening to the neighbors celebrate. They could hear firecrackers going off outside, the expensive kind that sizzle and pop and burn for half an hour. “We were feeling so disturbed,” Ms. Kaur said. “We knew what was going to happen. ” The two children, 20 miles apart and at different ends at the economic spectrum, got sick on the same night. hours after Diwali, the pollution had pooled close to the ground. Delhi’s airport, Indira Gandhi International, reported visibility of around 1, 000 feet, the worst conditions in 17 years. After episodic smog events, it typically takes between one and three days for severe effects to emerge in children, according to Bhargav Krishna, who manages the Public Health Foundation of India’s environmental health system and is a of Care for Air. The crisis typically comes in the form of a lower respiratory infection, like bronchitis or pneumonia, that can become dangerous, with fluid filling the lungs and plummeting levels of oxygen in the blood. In the migrants’ settlement where her family lives, Vaishnavi coughed incessantly: Her face was red, and the tendons on her neck were popping out. Ravi stirred from a nap to hear his wife howling. He did not sleep again until morning, but instead rubbed the baby’s feet and hands, and listened for a heartbeat. “There was not a sound coming from her,” said Bhanwari, her mother. “You hear a wheezing sound inside her. A rattling. ” Mehtab, too, was in trouble. His mother, weary of confining him, had finally allowed him to go to school, but he was sent home right away, sniffling. That much exposure to the air was enough. When night fell Ms. Kaur began administering the steroids every hour, something she had never done. He began to gasp, his rib cage heaving, 15 minutes after she removed the mask from his face. “It was really bad,” Mr. Anand said. “I can’t explain it in words, actually. ” The decisions came quickly after that. Mr. Anand brought home an air purifier that cost 29, 000 rupees — about $425 — and switched it on, peering at the display to see the concentration of PM 2. 5. It was above 700 inside the house. Three days later, Ms. Kaur took Mehtab out of Delhi, boarding a train for her parents’ home, a few hours north. What shocked her was how quickly his breathing eased. They arrived at night, and he slept so peacefully that she reduced the steroid treatments to every four hours. The next morning, she watched through the window as he played outside. She called her husband, crying, and said it was time to leave Delhi. Not so for Vaishnavi. This week, she sat on her mother’s lap, sucking on a lollipop, while her aunt cooked on a clay stove in the room, filling it with fumes. The worst season here in Delhi has just begun. It will continue for three months, growing worse when the city’s vast homeless population begins setting nighttime fires for warmth, and when dropping temperatures push the emissions toward the ground. Some emergency protective measures introduced during the week after Diwali, including a moratorium on construction, have been reversed. The Badarpur power plant will remain shuttered until Jan. 31. But it will then reopen, and new standards being imposed on coal plants next year will apply only to newly built plants, Mr. Krishna said. “You stop being angry and start being cynical at some point,” he said. “Year after year, there are action plans issued with no . And every year, this kind of thing happens. ” With the tourists back on the street, Vaishnavi’s father, Ravi, was back at his corner, selling trinkets. He had consulted a roadside doctor about protecting his family from air pollution, and gathered that they were supposed to eat cane sugar. He had also bought a pair of glasses to protect his eyes from the pollution, and removed several bricks from the wall of the small, airless room his family occupies, which he thought would improve air circulation. Vaishnavi had improved with a course of antibiotics, but he felt no certainty that she would survive another week like the one that followed Diwali. Or, for that matter, that anyone would notice if she did not. “Delhi people have no memory,” he said. “It would be one in a hundred who would ask me how she died. ” | 1 |
A Berkeley student argues that free speech puts student safety at risk in an for the Daily Californian this week. [Juniperangelica Xiomara a transgender transfer student at UC Berkeley, argues in an for the Daily Californian this week that she will “not put down [her] lighter fuel” as long as speakers like Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter are permitted to speak on campus. “The concepts that America is great because of our ability to share perspectives and differing opinions, that UC Berkeley is beautiful because we can discuss and organize with opposite sides of the political spectrum … are bullshit,” argues, claiming instead that free speech sustains institutional structures of oppression. “This has done nothing more than maintain the white supremacist, capitalistic and patriarchal nature that allowed colonizers to protect their power centuries ago and that has allowed their descendants to elect an openly racist, queerphobic, and administration. ” View post on imgur. com, “Free speech has always been a tactic used by the state to grant the illusion that all voices in this nation are valued, yet there is a reason why Black female senators are discredited and why there is a white supremacist in the Oval Office,” argues. The column argues that free speech directly conflicts with the aims of those who seek to protect the freedoms of marginalized students, students that believes Yiannopoulos and Coulter want dead. “I’m not here for free speech. I’m here for Black lives. I’m here for undocumented lives, queer and trans lives, femme lives, incarcerated lives and poor lives. I am here for the lives Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter want dead. I am here for the lives Donald Trump wants to ban. I am here for the lives BCR cannot fit in their “socially moderate, fiscally conservative” fantasy,” argues. claims that free speech principles must be dismantled if marginalized individuals are to “confront [their] oppressors. ” ” “Are we committed to our peer’s survival, or are we keeping our heads down and continuing the pursuit of a degree? Are we willing to confront our oppressors head on, or do we want to play respectability politics and support university actions that disregard communities?” Comments on the article were overwhelmingly negative, with most expressing concern over ’s unwillingness to “put down [her] lighter fuel,” which many considered to be a direct endorsement of violence in response to political speech. “Words are words and violence are violence, and the two are not the same. In fact, the freedom to say as we think is a vital component to preventing violence, for if someone is not allowed to support their cause through speech, violence is the only option left to them,” one commenter wrote. “You endorse the suppression of dissenting opinions through violence. Lets (sic) not sugar coat your views with doublespeak about “protecting” minorities. The only things you protect are your own snowflake feelings,” another added. Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart. com | 1 |
By Jason Easley on Tue, Nov 1st, 2016 at 10:23 pm Republicans are so far removed from reality that Sean Hannity spread a fake news story on his radio show, and nobody noticed the difference. Share on Twitter Print This Post
Republicans are so far removed from reality that Sean Hannity spread a fake news story on his radio show, and nobody noticed the difference.
CNN reported, “The progression of events illustrates how fake news stories expand and spread from fringe web sites to nationally syndicated radio shows with millions of listeners. In this case, the fake news originated on a dubious site called “Your News Wire,” which publishes a mix of true, slanted and made-up news. Then, like a game of telephone, by the time the story got to Hannity, even the fake facts were wrong.”
Some right-wing websites spread the story, which turned into a tall tale that added new details at each stop. The fake news eventually reached The Gateway Pundit, and to Sean Hannity’s radio show.
After spreading the fake news to millions of listeners, Hannity downplayed his responsibility to get the facts right, “Bottom line it was brought up in an insignificant way, I was dealing with more important issues like HRC crimes and lies and how CNN has been colluding with the Clinton campaign and CHEATING Bernie Sanders.”
Hannity was busy dealing with real fake issues like Hillary Clinton’s “crimes” and how the election is being stolen from Donald Trump.
How Hannity put a fake story on the air is a perfect example of how the right-wing media echo chamber works. Nobody at any level bothered to check the facts because in the Republican Party belief has replaced fact. Conservative media knows that their audience wants confirmation of their beliefs, so that is what they provide.
It doesn’t matter if the confirmation is true. What matters is that the audience wants it to be true.
Sean Hannity is pushing fake news, and he doesn’t care.
This is why there is such a disconnect between Republicans and the rest of the country. Republican voters are living in a fantasy land that Donald Trump was able to exploit and ride the whole way to the Republican nomination.
The conservative media bubble is alive and well, and because of this, things will get a lot worse for Republicans before they begin to get better. | 0 |
Islamic Militant Compound Discovered Inside America’s Borders, Obama Refuses To Act (Obviously) Oct 26, 2016 Previous post
The threat of terrorism on United States soil continues to skyrocket at the hands of Obama’s weak policies. Not only have terrorist groups like ISIS gotten stronger internationally, but they are also finding ways to resettle inside the United States and carry out attacks here.
Within the past month, we have experienced three terrorist attacks on our own soil. A Muslim jihadi in Minnesota went on a stabbing spree the same weekend that a group of Muslims set off pressure cooker bombs in New York and New Jersey while pledging allegiance to ISIS.
It has been reported that an Islamic compound has been spotted on American soil. The facility is known as “Islamberg,” and it has many in the area very scared and worried.
Islamberg is located in the small town of Tompkins, Delaware County. As the video below will show, many have speculated that dozens of these Islamic compounds exist on American soil, and when these two reporters stumbled upon one, they confirmed our deepest fears.
They wanted to investigate reports of “unusual sounds of gunfire and explosions…emanating from the compound.”
Here is what else they found:
FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE CLICK LINK | 0 |
The Foreign Minister of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al Nahyan, came out strongly in defense of President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration Wednesday, the first such supportive comment from a Gulf Arab state. [As the Associated Press reports, Sheikh Abdullah first emphasized that the United States has the right to make a “sovereign decision” regarding its immigration policy. Abdullah went on to defend the order itself, rather than merely acknowledging President Trump had the right to issue it. He pronounced himself satisfied with Trump’s assurances that the order was not based on religion (i. e. “ ”) and noted that only seven out of the many countries were affected by it. He also said it was important to remember the ban would only last for three months. “Some of these countries that were on this list are countries that face structural problems. These countries should try to solve these issues … and these circumstances before trying to solve this issue with the United States,” the UAE’s top diplomat added. The AP observes that the UAE is traditionally a close American ally, has been involved in the fight against ISIS, hosts a U. S. effort, “prides itself on being a tolerant, nation,” hosts an enormous population of foreign residents, and is America’s largest Arab export market. A golf course named after Donald Trump also happens to be opening in Dubai soon. The AP does not mention that the Emirates are, or were (opinions among UAE officials vary) involved in Saudi Arabia’s coalition against the insurgents in Yemen. As with the Saudis, Houthi forces have attacked Emirati vessels off the Yemen coast. The UAE has good reason to maintain friendly contacts with its allies. Reuters notes that Sheikh Abdullah also offered a “guarded welcome” to President Trump’s proposal for safe zones in Syria: “If the aim behind these areas is humanitarian and temporary and under an international umbrella, I think this is a basis we can work on. ” | 1 |
The Senate has joined the House of Representatives in averting a government shutdown by funding most of the federal government for one week. The Senate approved the House’s Joint Resolution (HR Res 99) on a voice vote shortly after the House passed the Continuing Resolution on a 382 to 30 voice vote. [The CR, introduced in the House on Thursday, amends the Continuing Appropriations Act of 2017. The current CR was set to expire on Friday. “There’s no Democratic objection,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer ( ) told NBC News. ”There’s still some to be negotiated” on a deal, “but the negotiators were up ’til 1:30 last night … so certainly we’re willing to give it a few more days. ” “The measure was needed after negotiations between the two parties in Congress and the administration on a bill fell short of Friday’s deadline,” NBC reported on Friday. “The CR also amends the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 to extend through May 5, 2017, a provision that provides health care benefits for certain retired miners and their families,” the congress. gov website states. President Donald Trump has until midnight tonight to sign the Continuing Resolution. | 1 |
When President Trump signed an executive order last month temporarily barring visitors from seven mostly Muslim countries, he said he was moving to protect the United States from terrorist attacks. The Homeland Security secretary, John F. Kelly, echoed the president, saying the travel ban was necessary because vetting procedures “in those seven countries are suspect. ” But an internal report written by intelligence analysts at Mr. Kelly’s department appears to undercut the assessment that people from the seven countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — pose a heightened threat of terrorism. The report found that “country of citizenship is unlikely to be a reliable indicator of potential terrorist activity. ” The report adds to the difficulties the Trump administration has faced in carrying out the travel ban. Federal judges have suspended the order, and the administration has said it will redo it to withstand legal scrutiny, but has not given a timetable. The Department of Homeland Security 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. In addition, the report noted, while terrorist groups in Iraq, Syria and Yemen pose a threat to the United States, militant groups in the other four countries have a more regional focus. The report also found that in the past six years, the terrorism threat reached much more widely than the seven countries listed — individuals from 26 countries had been “inspired” to carry out attacks in the United States. Furthermore, few individuals from the seven countries affected by the ban have access to the United States, the report said, noting the small numbers of visas granted by the State Department to citizens of those nations. The White House and the Department of Homeland Security sought to play down the significance of the report. The White House said that it was politically motivated and disregarded information that would have provided support for the travel ban. The Department of Homeland Security said the report was just a draft and “not a final comprehensive review of the government’s intelligence. ” Stephen Miller, a senior aide to Mr. Trump, told Fox News on Tuesday that the redrawn executive order would “have the same basic policy outcome. ” The Trump administration on Friday also took the first steps toward following through on the president’s plan to build a wall along the border with Mexico. Customs and Border Protection, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, announced that it would begin accepting design proposals for a wall. The agency said it would need the proposals by March 10. After it chooses a list of potential vendors, full proposals would be required a few weeks later. The agency said it could make a final decision by the middle of April. | 1 |
BREAKING : DOJ Says They Will “HELP” Review the 650K Emails BREAKING : DOJ Says They Will “HELP” Review the 650K Emails Breaking News By Amy Moreno October 31, 2016
Oh great, now the biased DOJ is going to “help” the FBI go through the 650K emails because they want to “HURRY THROUGH” it?
That’s unsettling and smells of more “rigged favors” from Loretta Lynch.
On Friday the FBI announced they were reopening the email investigation into Hillary’s mishandling of classified information.
In a statement, the FBI said that they discovered “new emails” pertinent to the earlier investigation on “several devices.”
We now know there were 650K emails found on Huma and Anthony’s private computer.
How do you feel about the DOJ “helping” sift through the emails?
I say, HELL NO! BREAKING: Justice Dept. says it’ll dedicate all needed resources to quickly review emails in Clinton case – AP This is a movement – we are the political OUTSIDERS fighting against the FAILED GLOBAL ESTABLISHMENT! Join the resistance and help us fight to put America First! Amy Moreno is a Published Author , Pug Lover & Game of Thrones Nerd. You can follow her on Twitter here and Facebook here . Support the Trump Movement and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter. | 0 |
It’s three months until Election Day. To guide you through this final, delirious phase of the presidential campaign, The New York Times is drawing on our team of reporters, columnists, magazine writers and analysts to create a new podcast. It’s called The . I will be your host. I’ve covered every twist and turn of the last two presidential campaigns for The Times — from Mitt Romney’s infamous “47 percent” remark to Barack Obama’s sudden shift on gay marriage, Marco Rubio’s debate night meltdown to Hillary Clinton’s inability to build trust. (Before that, I covered Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s City Hall, and that other cutthroat business: the American retailing industry.) Twice a week on The my colleagues and I will make sense of a campaign that has baffled, shocked and reordered the political world. We’ll also bring you interviews with some of the election’s most influential figures. You’ll be able to listen to a new episode of The each Tuesday and Friday on the digital platforms of The New York Times, as well as on iTunes, Google Play Music, Stitcher or the podcast app of your choice. If you have never listened to a podcast before, scroll down for some assistance. For our first episode, we explore whether Hillary Clinton, the most distrusted Democratic presidential nominee in a generation, is heading for an legitimate landslide — and if she is, or if she comes close, what that would mean for the future of both parties. Our guests: Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House Amy Chozick, who covers Mrs. Clinton for The Times and Nate Cohn, a data whiz from The Upshot. A teaser from the Gingrich conversation about Trump: Take a listen, and let us know what you think. You can reach us at therunup@nytimes. com, or find me on Twitter. From a desktop or laptop you can listen by pressing play on the button above. Or if you’re on a mobile device, the instructions below will help you find and subscribe to the series. 1. Open your podcast app. It’s a app called “Podcasts” with a purple icon. 2. Search for the series. Tap on the “search” magnifying glass icon at the bottom of the screen, type in “The ” and select it from the list of results. 3. Subscribe. Once on the series page, tap on the “subscribe” button to have new episodes sent to your phone free. You may want to adjust your notifications to be alerted when a new episode arrives. 4. Or just sample. If you would rather listen to an episode or two before deciding to subscribe, just tap on the episode title from the list on the series page. If you have an internet connection, you’ll be able to stream the episode. On your Android phone or tablet: 1. Open your podcast app. It’s a app called “Play Music” with an icon. 2. Search for the series. Click on the magnifying glass icon at the top of the screen, search for the name of the series, and select it from the list of results. You mightmay have to scroll down to find the “Podcasts” search results. 3. Subscribe. Once on the series page, click on the word “subscribe” to have new episodes sent to your phone for free. 4. Or just sample. If you ’would rather listen to an episode or two before deciding to subscribe, just click on the episode title from the list on the series page. If you have an internet connection, you’ll be able to stream the episode. | 1 |
A citizen’s complaint accusing Gov. Chris Christie of official misconduct in the closing of traffic lanes at the George Washington Bridge in 2013 can proceed, a municipal court judge in New Jersey ruled on Thursday, raising the possibility that Mr. Christie could face a criminal indictment. The judge, Roy F. McGeady of Bergen County, found that there was probable cause to believe the governor had engaged in official misconduct in connection with the lane closings, as claimed in a complaint filed in September by William J. Brennan of Wayne. As a result of Judge McGeady’s ruling, the Bergen County prosecutor’s office must now decide whether to seek an indictment against Mr. Christie. The unexpected development, which unfolded in a courtroom that typically deals with relatively minor crimes, is the latest problem for Mr. Christie, a Republican, related to the lane closings. In his complaint, Mr. Brennan, a retired firefighter with a history of filing lawsuits against government agencies, accuses Mr. Christie of failing to order subordinates to reopen access lanes to the bridge in Fort Lee on Sept. 11, 2013, the third consecutive day the lanes had been closed. The lane closings, which paralyzed traffic in the town, erupted into a scandal that helped derail Mr. Christie’s presidential ambitions and led to federal charges against three of his allies. Federal prosecutors say the closings were meant to punish Fort Lee’s mayor, a Democrat, for declining to endorse Mr. Christie for . Two of those allies are now on trial in federal court in Newark, accused of authorizing the closings and trying to cover up the true reason for them the third has pleaded guilty to his role in the closings and is the prosecution’s main witness. In his complaint, Mr. Brennan writes that the mayor, Mark J. Sokolich, and Fort Lee residents were deprived of “the benefit and enjoyment of their community as a consequence of this intentional act. ” Mr. Brennan, 50, said in an interview on Thursday that he had been moved to file the complaint after a particular day of testimony in the federal trial. He said the basis for his complaint emerged when David Wildstein, who has pleaded guilty to orchestrating the scheme, testified that Mr. Christie was told about the closings during a ceremony to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Mr. Brennan said he was in the federal courthouse listening to Mr. Wildstein testify and later obtained a transcript of his testimony to submit along with his complaint. “Here you have a prime example of the government turning its power against the citizens, and that is the definition of totalitarianism,” Mr. Brennan said. In New Jersey, a citizen is entitled to file a criminal complaint, which is then assessed by a judge who determines whether there is enough evidence, or probable cause, to issue a summons. If a judge fails to find probable cause, the complaint is dismissed. Citizen complaints are relatively common in New Jersey’s municipal courts, said J. C. Lore III, director of trial advocacy at Rutgers Law School. “It’s usually reserved for more petty disputes, between family or neighbors,” Mr. Lore said. Many such cases are resolved through mediation at the behest of the court, he said. Still, 13, 550 citizen complaints involving indictable offenses were filed in New Jersey’s municipal courts in 2015, and 87 percent yielded findings of probable cause, according to data provided by a court spokeswoman. Brian T. Murray, a spokesman for Mr. Christie, called Mr. Brennan’s complaint “dishonorable” and accused him of being a “serial complainant and political activist with a history of abusing the judicial system. ” “The simple fact is the governor had no knowledge of the lane realignments either before they happened or while they were happening,” said Mr. Murray, who added that the governor’s lawyers planned to appeal the ruling. “This matter has already been thoroughly investigated by three separate independent investigations. ” In a letter sent to Judge McGeady before he ruled on the complaint, Mr. Christie’s lawyers argued strenuously that Mr. Brennan had not met the probable cause threshold, calling his complaint “rife with distortions. ” Mr. Brennan’s litigation history dates to 1996, when he sued the township of Teaneck, claiming he had been harassed for speaking out about safety issues, according The Record, a northern New Jersey newspaper. A jury awarded him nearly $900, 000, though a judge later reduced the amount significantly. Mr. Brennan said he earned a law degree after retiring from the Teaneck Fire Department. According to New Jersey law, obtaining a conviction of official misconduct against Mr. Christie would require proof that he deliberately refrained “from performing a duty which is imposed upon him by law or is clearly inherent in the nature of his office,” in order to benefit himself or harm someone else. Such a conviction would carry a potential prison sentence of five to 10 years. Maureen Parenta, a spokeswoman for the Bergen County prosecutor’s office, declined to comment about whether it would pursue an indictment. Gurbir S. Grewal, the acting prosecutor, was appointed by Mr. Christie. | 1 |
A leading US senator: US Supporting War in Syria
A leading US senator said the war in Syria would have been over by now if the US had put an end to its intervention when Russia entered the war-ravaged country.
“If the United States had just stayed out of it at that point, the war would be over by now; people would be rebuilding, refugees would be returning back to Syria, but the United States rushed anti-Tank missiles, and we used these so-called moderate rebels as a conduit to supply al-Nusra Front (also known as Fatah al-Sham Front), which is al-Qaeda in Syria,” republican member of the Virginia State in US Senate, Richard Hayden Black said in an exclusive interview with Press TV.
“If we were not supporting the war in Syria, I believe that the Syrians, combined with their allied forces from Iran, Lebanon and Russia… would move very steadily and restore the borders of Syria.”
The senate member, who visited Syria in April, refused to distinguish between militants and terrorists fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad, saying, the two are “thoroughly integrated.”
“They really are one and the same, they’re part of the same army,” he said, citing a US defense intelligence agency’s investigation in 2013, which showed Washington’s ties with the terror group.
The outspoken state senator referred to plans by the CIA to transfer arms from Libya to Turkey and from there to Syria to supply the militants, noting that the move “evolved into an indiscriminate program of supplying all militant groups, including specifically ISIL and al-Qaeda.”
“We do it indirectly because it’s unlawful to do it directly,” he said, adding that the US keeps “extremely violent organizations… off the terrorist watch list because these are the agents that take our weapons and then distribute them to ISIL and al-Qaeda.”
In response to a question on why Iran and Russia are portrayed as the “bad guys,” while they are the ones really fighting terrorism there, as put recently by GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, Black said the Republican candidate has a “clear understanding of what’s happening over there.”
“Sometimes, his rhetoric has to match the political mood of the moment… but I know a number of his advisers and they believe that our determination to topple the government in Syria is suicidal, that it threatens not only the entire Middle East but literally the entire world.”
He further warned that the US itself could be “threatened,” arguing that, “if Syria falls, it will be dominated by some al-Qaeda-related organization; Lebanon will fall; Jordan will fall and the entire area will be destabilized.”
The Vietnam war veteran also elaborated on his personal definition of the Middle East “axis of evil,” naming Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and “particularly” Turkey over their support for terrorism.
“Probably, three quarters of the rebels are not Syrian at all, they are mercenaries recruited by Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia,” he asserted, describing the three countries as “the primary force behind the terrorist movement.”
“Turkey has invaded Iraq and Syria with heavy military forces. Turkey has really become a rogue nation,” he added, referring to a 1923 treaty that set the border between Turkey and Greece, saying that was even being questioned by President Rececp Tayyip Erdogan.
“And now you see this emerging threat against Western Europe by Turkey,” he noted, further adding that Erdogan “has made it clear that he looks to resurrection of the Ottoman Empire.”
“He has become more and more aggressive; he’s crushed the military, the free press; every powerful institution of the Turkish government has come under his iron fist and he’s now a total dictator. He’s a man who has said that he wants the constitution amended so that he will have power similar to those of Adolf Hilter… This is our great ally; we’re allied with a man who would be Hitler.”
He also blasted Washington’s alliance with Saudi Arabia, “where women are not allowed to walk out in the front yard to pick up the newspaper without a man’s permission; they can’t drive a car!”
“Somehow, this is part of the liberalization that we seek to impose on the Middle East,” he said ironically, calling it “bizarre.”
He also praised the resistance against the Saudi aggression by the people of Yemen, saying, “God bless them! The Yemenis are giving the Saudis a bloody nose,” despite being a “tiny little, poor nation.”
“I think the world recognizes that Saudi Arabia has just embarked in massive war crimes in Yemen,” he said, voicing regret over the US support for the monarchy.
“We don’t pay too much attention to them while engaged in war crimes because they’re our good allies,” he said, concluding that Washington is on a “suicidal course of action.”
“Saudi money pays the very top politicians in many Western nations. And they really have co-opted the American military into acting as mercenaries for Wahhabism.”Black referred to the Western media’s portrayal of Iran as a supporter of terrorism, saying, “The fact of the matter is that if you really look at global terrorism, it all emanates from Saudi Arabia.”
He exemplified various terrorists attack, including the 9/11, the Boston bombing, and the Brussels attacks, noting that they are all a “reflection of the Wahhabi philosophy.” | 0 |
Countering Hillary’s Coup With a Counter Coup – or Not? By DailyBellStaff - November 03, 2016
Video: Corruption, Cooptation, Cronyism: The Hillary Clinton “Takeover”, The “Counter-Coup”, Action of America’s Intelligence Community –Global Research
Is it possible the recent counter coup announced by Steve Pieczenik, a former official in numerous Republican administrations, is actually part of a much larger dominant social theme designed to reinforce positive perceptions regarding the most secretive and powerful government agencies?
Global Research, one of the very best alternative websites, does us the favor of providing “ a video presentation by Dr. Steve Pieczenik, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State.” It has also provided us with a transcript of Pieczenik’s remarks.
Pieczenik “has served as foreign policy expert in several US administrations including Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.”
More:
The analysis and focus presented below must be taken very seriously. It sheds light on the ongoing political crisis in the US and the opposition which is developing from within the US intelligence community against the Clinton crime cabal.
According to Steve Pieczenik, “Hillary and Bill Clinton are attempting a takeover of the United States and will stop at nothing. A coup d’état of this magnitude has never been affected in such a subtly calculated way.”
Pieczenik goes on to explain how the FBI, CIA, Pentagon and other official military-industrial agencies have gotten together silently to fight the silent “coup” of Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Basically the argument is that “pay-to-play” has been created by the Clinton Foundation, which is apparently under substantive investigation.
Hillary and Bill would use their contacts and influence to push the US government into taking action in ways which enhanced the interests and profits of certain countries and individuals if they contributed to the Clinton Foundation.
The Foundation is evidently a government-in-waiting for the Clintons and having such a large entity as their disposal enhances their power considerably.
But both Hillary and Bill Clinton don’t seem to be very stable people. Hillary has a horrible temper and is evidently contemptuous of those beneath her. Bill Clinton has been the subject of rape accusations and organized, international drug dealing – and Hillary has evidently abetted some of his worst behavior..
Yet it is certainly possible that neither Bill nor Hillary are fully aware of the scale of the manipulation in which they are enmeshed, nor its timeline. Are they now part of a rapidly unfolding psyop that has its roots decades ago?
Maybe Pieczenik, Julian Assange and others are indeed true heroes for countering the Clinton’s emergent authoritarianism, as they appear to be. This is certainly an incredibly admirable and deserved perspective. But there are other interpretations.
Our primary purpose is to analyze elite dominant social themes and that’s why we are raising these questions, hypothetical as they may be. Hillary Clinton is an apparent threat to the what’s left of the liberties of the USA but there is a possibility, perhaps a slim one, that this new “coup” narrative is not what it seems.
Regardless of the status of the US – corporation, democracy, republic – the US functions, day-to-day, with a certain expectation of freedom. This is why those on “right” – libertarian or conservative – are evidently shocked (on videos and in print) when the US government and those behind it take actions that one would not expect to take place in a “republic.”
Now we are informed that this sentiment is an animating force in parts of the Pentagon, CIA, FBI, etc. The counter-argument, of course, is that the FBI, CIA and Pentagon have not usually been seen as guardians of “freedom.”
The FBI has put hundreds if not thousands of people in jail because of flawed fingerprint and hair analysis that some in the bureau knew to be false all along. To the best of our knowledge, a lot of the damage was never properly addressed.
The CIA is responsible for the deaths, injuries and miserable lives of millions, even billions, around the world because it represses freedom in favor of elite control of countries and their governments.
Constitutionally speaking, the FBI and CIA probably should not exist, let alone be spread around the world. The Pentagon, which recently mislaid $8 trillion, supports CIA covert intel actions with its own more overt military activities.
It is wonderful that people within them are supportive of freedom. But the CIA, FBI, Pentagon, etc., don’t actually work for the people in the US. At the top levels, they seem to work for the private banking interests that have installed and organized them and are pursuing a greater globalism that likely includes the destruction of the US..
Today there is considerable conflict between private banking interests and the alternative ‘Net media, and the people it represents. One way to reduce this conflict would be to make it clear to people who value a culture of freedom that the most authoritarian agencies in the US are secretly aligned with them. (See also our skeptical comments regarding the Brexit vote in our “populism vs. globalism articles.”)
This seems beyond the pale and ludicrous but these banking interests are both subtle and powerful. One way or another, they evidently control the central banks of the world and thus hundreds of trillions of dollars. They may even have propagated a kind of nuclear myth, as we have pointed out here in the past, that has affected people’s sentiments and priorities for decades.
They tend to work through the dominant social themes we analyze because they are absolutely determined that people are to back their globalist plans on a voluntary basis without knowing they are doing so.
In the Internet era, these “memes” have begun to founder in critical ways. But those creating them continue to try. They are abetted by millions (and more), who are aligned with them professionally or emotionally – some because they don’t know any better.
At the very top, everyone else is likely disposable (except for a handful of owners) and apt to be manipulated as necessary.
This is probably an article that many may react to emotionally and even negatively. But we are certainly not trying to support Hillary’s campaign, only to point out that in this world not everything is at it seems, especially when it comes to authoritarian agents of the state.
Conclusion: Your first priority is to take care of yourself and your family. Politics, especially today, seems to offer the hope of greater freedom but usually does not. For more on the issues we’ve raised, please use a search engine to find “TheDailyBell” and “populism versus globalism” ( here , here and elsewhere). These issues may be tied to an an even larger propaganda campaign. | 0 |
LOS ANGELES — The offscreen stakes were minimal: “Rogue One,” the first in a series of “Star Wars” spinoff films planned by Walt Disney Studios, was always going to be devoured by moviegoers worldwide. No test of galactic franchise sustainability here. But Disney did face a enemy: Mother Nature, in the form of winter storms that blanketed the upper half of the United States and much of Canada. She turned out to be no match, either. “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” with a cast led by Felicity Jones and Diego Luna, collected an estimated $155 million at theaters in North America, on par with expectations and the December opening on record, behind last year’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens. ” In release in about 70 percent of the overseas market, “Rogue One” sold an additional $135. 5 million in tickets, according to Disney. “Rogue One,” about stealing blueprints to the planet vaporizer known as the Death Star, cost roughly $350 million to make and market worldwide. “We saw no real impact from the weather,” Greg Foster, chief executive of Imax Entertainment, said by phone on Sunday. “It boils down to the movie. Felicity plays an awesome character, and the movie feels very authentic to the ‘Star Wars’ universe. ” More than 700 Imax theaters played “Rogue One” worldwide, delivering the strongest opening results of the year for that chain. While a few critics found fault with the film, which was directed by Gareth Edwards, “Rogue One” received reviews that were 84 percent positive in aggregate, according to RottenTomatoes. com, making it the reviewed “Star Wars” entry in two decades, behind only “The Force Awakens. ” Ticket buyers gave “Rogue One” an A grade in CinemaScore exit polls, boding well for momentum in the weeks ahead. “Part of the hope here was to create a way for the uninitiated to have a way in and bring them along for future films,” said Dave Hollis, Disney’s executive vice president for theatrical distribution. About 40 percent of ticket buyers were under the age of 25. Terrible reviews most likely hurt the weekend’s other new movie, “Collateral Beauty. ” That latest effort by Will Smith sputtered with about $7 million in ticket sales, a career low for Mr. Smith, according to comScore, which compiles box office data. “Collateral Beauty,” about a man who writes letters to Love, Time and Death, cost New Line Cinema, a division of Warner Bros. at least $60 million to make and market. On the bright side: The film could do better overseas, where Mr. Smith’s star power remains more intact. Domestic interest in “Rogue One,” on the other hand, was strong enough to prompt some fans to camp outside theaters in temperatures one group in Ellensburg, Wash. set up an outdoor fireplace to keep warm. (Insert bad joke about the Hoth here.) Wearing costumes to screenings is a tradition for “Star Wars” fans, and “Rogue One” proved to be no exception. Disney, as ever, leveraged every asset in its empire to market the film. Exclusive “Rogue One” footage was shown on ABC. At one point, Disney used lighting effects to turn one of its theme park landmarks — the golf sphere at Epcot’s entrance in Orlando, Fla. — into the Death Star spaceship. An array of merchandise stretched to a Death Star popcorn popper and clothing for dogs. Notably, Disney had to fight months of online hyperventilation over leaked news that “Rogue One” underwent extensive “reshoots,” shorthand for going back after the end of principal filming to rework certain scenes or add to them. Once upon a time, such efforts were rare — it’s expensive to reassemble cast and crew — and usually meant the movie as a whole was a train wreck. But that is no longer the case, at least not always. Movies on the scale of “Rogue One,” productions with loads of visual effects, now schedule time for reshoots up front as a routine part of filmmaking. | 1 |
The question is, will a certain Inverted Jenny be cleared for landing at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan in the next few days? This has nothing to do with air traffic controllers or glide paths. This has to do with a postage stamp, one of the most famous ever printed, famous because it was a mistake. The experts say it was No. 76 on a sheet of 100 with biplanes — the instantly recognizable Inverted Jennies — that slipped past inspectors at a printing plant in Washington in 1918, to the chagrin of postal officials and the delight of stamp collectors ever since. The World Stamp Show New York, a jamboree for stamp people and the little pieces of paper they love, opens on Saturday. The American Philatelic Research Library, which claims that it is the rightful owner of this particular Jenny, wants to display it at the show (where a real Jenny, a restored Curtiss biplane from the early days of airmail a century ago, will also make an appearance). But legal turbulence may stall the arrival of No. 76. There is a reward at stake — actually, two rewards. In 2014, the library offered a $10, 000 reward for information leading to the recovery of No. 76, which was missing at the time, and $10, 000 for another missing Jenny. At the same time, a prominent stamp dealer, Donald Sundman of Camden, N. Y. offered rewards of $50, 000 for each of the two stamps. First, some history. Of the 100 Inverted Jennies, this is not the one that was taped to an exhibit page, a big to stamp collectors. Nor is this the Jenny that was sucked up by a vacuum cleaner when it fell out of a stamp album. That Jenny survived, but the collector who owned it soon bought another, No. 58, which is to be auctioned on May 31. Jenny No. 76 had been missing for 61 years. It disappeared at a stamp show in Norfolk, Va. in 1955. “Yes, it was one of our shows,” said Scott English, the executive director of the American Philatelic Society, which maintains the library. (He is also the administrator of the library.) At the time, Jenny No. 76 was part of a block of four Jennies that belonged to Ethel Stewart McCoy, the daughter of Charles M. Bergstresser, who with Charles Dow and Edward Jones founded Dow Jones Company. She had the money to finance her passion for stamps, specifically airmail stamps and stamps with palm trees. Her passion for stamps seems to have extended to men. After the death of her first husband, she married a philatelist. Who took off with her four Jennies remains a mystery. “That’s why you have armed guards that walk the floor of stamp shows these days,” Mr. English said. The Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated but never made any arrests. Eventually — no one knows exactly when — the block of Jennies was separated into four single stamps. One surfaced in 1958 in the hands of a stamp dealer. The F. B. I. decided not to prosecute him. That stamp made its way to the research library in the 1970s because Mrs. McCoy had given up her ownership rights and signed an agreement that said any Jennies that turned up should go to the library. A second stolen Jenny from her block appeared in 1982, two years after she died. No. 76 turned up last month at Spink USA, an auction house on West 57th Street in Manhattan. George Eveleth, the head of Spink’s philatelic department, said it was brought in by a man in his from Northern Ireland who had emailed him a few weeks earlier. “He said he was coming to New York, and he’d like to bring it to our office,” Mr. Eveleth said. The story the man told Mr. Eveleth — and, later, Mr. English — was that his grandfather had died a couple of years ago, leaving him some stamps. “He did not know the collection he inherited included a stamp that was of some value,” Mr. English said. “I think he got curious, looking to dispose of it, and started looking through the pile, did some research online and realized it might be worth some money. ” In “impeccable condition,” he said, Inverted Jennies “can go for a lot. ” The estimates for No. 58 range from $525, 000 to $1. 6 million. Mr. English said the man had maintained that he did not know how his grandfather had acquired the stamp. The only document that came with it was a curious letter from a Manhattan stamp dealer that Mr. English described as the stamp world’s equivalent of a pawnshop. The letter, from October 1965, outlined a buyback agreement. The stamp dealer, S. H. Engel Company, paid the collector who had brought it in $9, 500. Engel gave the collector the right to repurchase it, for $11, 500, within a year. Mr. English’s assumption is that the collector did not come back with the extra $2, 000 to reclaim it, and that the dealer sold it to another customer. Who that was, no one knows. Officials from Spink took the stamp to the Philatelic Foundation in Manhattan, which determines whether stamps are authentic. The executive director, Larry Lyons, and the curator, Lewis Kaufman, began studying the stamp and comparing it with photos and electronic scans of other Jennies. “We’re skeptical,” Mr. Lyons recalled of their reaction, “but 10 or 15 minutes later, we look at each other and say, ‘It’s genuine. ’” He said they called the F. B. I. An agency spokesman did not return a call seeking comment. Mr. Lyons and Mr. Kaufman determined that the stamp had been altered — the perforations on the left side and on the top were recut. They also began figuring out which of the 100 stamps it was, checking the position of the plane in the oval frame, the position of the frame itself and the position of the perforations. Robert G. Rose, the chairman of the foundation, said there were even subtle variations of alignment and ink from plane to plane and frame to frame. They concluded it was No. 76. So far, the man who brought the stamp to Spink has not been paid anything. Mr. English said last week that he expected to present an agreement to his board this week. If approved, the deal would allow the library to take ownership of the stamp during the stamp show, and it would clear the way for the man to receive a payment. (The United States attorney’s office in Manhattan would also have to have a hand in such an agreement to resolve the question of whether the stamp is stolen property, but a spokeswoman for the office declined to discuss the case.) Mr. Sundman said he would not mind paying for No. 76. But what about the fourth McCoy stamp, the one that has not been heard from since it disappeared? Mr. Sundman said he got a call about it last year from a man he had never met. “He said, ‘I know who has the stamps and who took them,’” Mr. Sundman recalled. “He had this theory it was the spouse of somebody who worked for the A. P. S. in the ’50s” — the philatelic society — “and he said, ‘They’re not going to give it up. ’” Mr. Sundman said he asked how the caller knew that. “He said: ‘I’m a psychic. These things just come to me.’ That was pretty much it. Other than the psychic, I have nothing on the fourth stamp. ” | 1 |
CNN has been forced to deny staging an protest by ‘Muslim Mothers’ for a “fake news” report, after raw footage appeared to show the event was choreographed for the cameras. [The video shows Anderson and a substantial crew appearing to direct the mostly female “demonstrators” who file under a cordon one at a time under the watchful eye of nearby police constables. Flowers are laid out around the group as it appears, and printed placards bearing slogans such as ‘#Love Will Win’ and ‘#TurnToLove’ are spread out. After crew members make sure everyone is in place, Anderson begins her report saying, “What I want to show you now, viewers, is a wonderful scene” — to muffled laughter from Mark Antro, who filmed the and other bystanders. This is outrageous. Propaganda. Choreography by ”news” channels. https: . — Raheem (@RaheemKassam) June 4, 2017, “Look at all the people around me here, behind me here, sad about last night but hopeful for tomorrow,” the normally the normally Abu journalist continued. “On the left here, Londoners came to help hurt, behind me you can see a sign here, hashtag ‘turn to love’ hashtag ‘for London’ hashtag ‘ISIS will lose’ and flowers left in remembrance of those who left their lives. ” U. S. media commentator Richard Grenell described the scene as “very disturbing” in a Twitter post which was later recirculated by Dr Sebastian Gorka, the Deputy Assistant to President Donald Trump. Other online commentators, such as former LBC host Katie Hopkins and popular Trump supporter Mike Cernovich, were more forthright. “WATCH. @CNN scripting a narrative. Right before your eyes. ” tweeted Hopkins. “CNN caught staging news!” tweeted Cernovich. “They even brought ‘peace group’ printed out papers and props”. The network fired back, however, with its public relations team insisting their employees had done nothing wrong. This is nonsense. Police let demonstrators through the cordon to show their signs. CNN along with other media simply filmed them doing so. — CNN International PR (@CNNPRUK) June 5, 2017, “This is nonsense,” they claimed. “Police let demonstrators through the cordon to show their signs. CNN along with other media simply filmed them doing so. ” | 1 |
3 549 11 0 Estamos presenciando el funeral del 'mainstream' occidental. El ataque rusófobo ha asumido un carácter tan delirante que ha provocado un efecto contrario. En lugar de odio, curiosidad. En lugar de desprecio, admiración. Al menos así lo ve el escritor y periodista italiano Giulietto Chiesa en su artículo de opinión para Sputnik.
El intento de los medios y apoderados occidentales de demonizar la figura de Vladímir Putin solo aumenta la popularidad internacional del líder ruso y lo convierte en el termómetro de una derrota, un 'auto de fe' del periodismo occidental.
Chiesa pone de relieve que los centros destinados al control de la opinión pública occidental muestran signos de gran desconcierto. "El ejército invisible de cientos de miles de propagandistas ya no parece ser capaz de producir y reproducir suficientes toxinas para envenenar al público europeo. Mientras que el mensaje que brinda el 'enemigo' declarado parece ser cada vez más sugestivo". © Sputnik/ Vladímir Trefilov V Международная научная конференция "Зиновьевские чтения"
Por ejemplo, para un número creciente de personas es cada vez más claro que Rusia ha sido el factor decisivo en la derrota del autodenominado Estado Islámico en Irak y Siria. Es así que Rusia ha ayudado a Europa en la lucha contra el terrorismo internacional. Es así que Putin resulta ser un amigo y no un enemigo. © Sputnik/ Evgeny Odinokov "Los medios occidentales hacen de Rusia un espantajo"
La idea de los asesinos 'comisionados' por Putin permanece fija en la memoria de muchos lectores/espectadores, pero para muchos otros —los que realmente indagan en el tema y cuyo número sigue creciendo— esto se convierte en poco más que un invento de los medios de comunicación, que no se sostiene por prueba consistente alguna y que, evidentemente, no se corresponde con la realidad. Las historias de una inminente invasión rusa en el Báltico y Polonia están bastante expandidas entre las poblaciones locales, pero resultan ridículas para millones de europeos. "Las sanciones contra Rusia no han encontrado apoyo en Europa y muchos son los que no se explican por qué los líderes europeos han decidido ir en contra de sus propios intereses económicos".
Lea más: Si Europa y Rusia fueran aliados…
En resumen, los hechos desmienten las conjeturas. Ahora solo les queda aumentar la dosis propagandística, como la del obsesionado Joe Biden, el vicepresidente de Estados Unidos, quien en la televisión llegó incluso a acusar a Rusia de poder y querer "alterar sustancialmente" el resultado de las elecciones en Estados Unidos. Pero se trata de un gol en su propia puerta, mostrando a EEUU como víctima de una agresión tecnológica de Rusia. La credibilidad de esa acusación es igual a cero (más que nada porque todo el mundo sabe que provienen del país que ha inventado las 'revoluciones de color' en una docena de países). © Sputnik/ Alexey Druzhinin "Nuevo orden de Rusia y China sustituirá la hegemonía de EEUU"
Las redes sociales son todas estadounidenses y trabajaban sin descanso por su causa, pero ahora nos traen mensajes contradictorios. Existe RT, que acumula alrededor de sí a todos los que aún no tienen el celebro lavado. Se ha roto así la línea de monopolio informativo y comunicativo. Y aquí es cuando se traza la nueva línea: 'detener la propaganda' del Kremlin, dado que nuestra propaganda no funciona como debe. Así, lo primero es reforzar el dogma según el cual todo lo proveniente "de aquella parte" es propaganda.
El segundo punto del plan: evitar que el canal del enemigo funcione, erigiendo barreras técnicas, políticas, administrativas, judiciales, policiales; detener a los periodistas enemigos (o matarlos, como en Ucrania); cerrar cuentas bancarias de RT en Gran Bretaña ; oscurecer las redes de radio y televisión en las que salen al aire las herejías del Kremlin.
"Somos testigos de la implementación de la censura en Occidente, que tanto se jactaba de su libertad y su pluralismo. Los papeles se han invertido. La confrontación de ideas, las más duras, difíciles, pero útiles para verificar las diferencias, vienen siendo sustituidas por la prohibición. En Occidente entra en juego el 'Ministerio de la Verdad' de George Orwell, y el que no forme parte de nosotros debe ser detenido, prevenido, eliminado, ensombrecido".
Lea más: ¿Libertad de expresión? Proyecto europeo propone amordazar a medios alternativos
"Precisamente aquí y ahora, estamos siendo testigos de un funeral. El funeral del principio que alguna vez hizo fuerte a Occidente y que ahora no está siendo implementado en la práctica", concluye Chiesa.
Las opiniones expresadas en este artículo son de exclusiva responsabilidad del autor y no coinciden necesariamente con las de Sputnik. ... | 0 |
The Far Left Is Planning The Biggest Political Protest In United States History For Inauguration Day 13th, 2016
We have seen very large protests in major cities all over America since Donald the biggest one of all is being planned for January 20th. Radical leftists are calling for thousands upon thousands of activists to descend upon Washington D.C. on Inauguration Day, and they are planning to disrupt the inauguration festivities as much as they possibly can. And if you doubt that the “Not My President” movement can pull this off, you may want to consider that 25,000 protesters showed up in New York City on Saturday on very short notice. These people are bitter, angry, frustrated and incredibly motivated. At this point they still have more than two months to organize their forces, and many are expecting that this is going to be the most chaotic Inauguration Day in American history.
One of the Facebook pages that is attempting to recruit protesters for Inauguration Day is entitled “Protest at the Inauguration: Stand Against Trump, War, Racism and Inequality”. So far, 7,800 that they will be attending on this page alone, and another 26,000 have expressed interest in the protest. The organizers of this particular page are very clear about why they believe that the inauguration of Donald Trump must be protested …
Donald Trump is a racist, sexist bigot. We believe that tens of thousands of progressive people will be in the streets on Inauguration Day and in the weeks and months afterward.
How one voted on election day is one thing, but even more important is whether we succeed in building a mass movement that can truly change the country, and the world.
Waiting for the same politicians who led to the rise of Trump to now stop him is a lost cause.
On Facebook and Twitter, the hashtag #DisruptJ20 is already generating an immense amount of buzz. This movement appears to be very well funded, and they have already produced some very slick videos promoting the upcoming inauguration protest. #DisruptJ20 : Call for a bold mobilization against the inauguration of Donald #Trump on January 20, 2017 pic.twitter.com/EGU65bOtNG
— stimulator (@stimulator) November 11, 2016
#DisruptJ20 even has an official website now, and they are openly calling for a national strike on January 20th in addition to the chaos that they plan to cause in Washington…
On January 20th, the day of the Presidential Inauguration, protesters will rally to interrupt Trump’s coronation. You can help organize, and you can attend the march . You can also heed calls to strike , wherever you are in the country.
On January 21st, millions of women will converge on Washington DC specifically to oppose the Trump administration’s promised attack on women’s rights and freedoms. Join them.
And on the #DisruptJ20 Facebook page , the organizers are very open about the fact that they plan to bitterly fight against Donald Trump every step of the way…
On Friday, January 20, 2017, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as call on all people of good conscience to join in disrupting the ceremonies. If Trump is to be inaugurated at all, let it happen behind closed doors, showing the true face of the security state Trump will preside over. It must be made clear to the whole world that the vast majority of people in the United States do not support his presidency or consent to his rule.
Trump stands for tyranny, greed, and misogyny. He is the champion of neo-nazis and white Nationalists, of the police who kil l the Black, Brown and poor on a daily basis, of racist border agents and sadistic prison guards, of the FBI and NSA who tap your phone and read your email. He is the harbinger of even more climate catastrophe, deportation, discrimination, and endless war. He continues to deny the existence of climate change, in spite of all the evidence, putting the future of the whole human race at stake. The KKK, Vladimir Putin, Golden Dawn, and the Islamic State all cheered his victory. If we let his inauguration go unchallenged, we are opening the door to the future they envision.
Trump’s success confirms the bankruptcy of representative democracy. Rather than using the democratic process as an alibi for inaction, we must show that no election could legitimize his agenda. Neither the Democrats nor any other political party or politician will save us—they just offer a weaker version of the same thing. If there is going to be positive change in this society, we have to make it ourselves, together, through direct action.
From day one, the Trump presidency will be a disaster. #DisruptJ20 will be the start of the resistance. We must take to the streets and protest, blockade, disrupt, intervene, sit in, walk out, rise up, and make more noise and good trouble than the establishment can bear. The parade must be stopped. We must delegitimize Trump and all he represents. It’s time to defend ourselves, our loved ones, and the world that sustains us as if our lives depend on it—because they do.
Some have noted that 2017 will be the 100 year anniversary of the communist revolution in Russia, and many on the radical left are now openly using the word “revolution” to describe what they would like to see here in the United States.
And this call to protest Donald Trump’s inauguration appears to have originated with a Marxist politician out in Seattle …
A self-avowed Marxist member of the Seattle City Council who is part of the George Soros-funded Occupy Wall Street movement has called for a “massive protest” Trump and a “nationwide shut down” on Inauguration Day.
Kshama Sawant went on an anti-Trump rant following the election that stirred up progressives’ emotions against Trump voters, calling them part of “a racist agenda.”
Sawant held a press conference calling for a mass protest in Seattle. That protest was attended by students, members of Seattle’s LGBTQ community, as well as Occupy members and Muslims.
Many had been hoping that the nationwide protests against Donald Trump would be quieting down by now, but that does not appear to be happening. Instead, they just seem to keep getting more intense. Just check out what took place around the country on Saturday …
Seventy-one people were arrested in Portland, Oregon, where crowds threw burning road flares at officers.
Hundreds gathered outside City Hall in Los Angeles to face off against riot police after a daytime march with drew 8,000 people.
Other rallies took place in Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Washington DC, and Phoenix, as the anti-Trump backlash continued to grow.
In Indianapolis, crowds chanted ‘kill the police’ as they threw rocks at officers in a separate protest.
At other times, Barack Obama has stepped in and condemned protests when they have gotten violent.
So why is he just sitting back and saying nothing now?
As the president of the United States, shouldn’t he be trying to calm everyone down?
It is easy to see how the “Not My President” movement could continue to grow and reach a crescendo on January 20th, 2017.
Normally Inauguration Day is a day of joy and gladness for the nation, but this time around we may see unprecedented scenes of chaos, rioting and violence.
At this point, there appears to be no possible way that the entire nation is going to unite behind President Trump, and many are wondering if we are now entering four years of the worst civil unrest that the United States has ever experienced. November 13th, 2016 | Tags: #DisruptJ20 , Extreme Pain , Inauguration Day National Strike , Inauguration Day Protest , Inauguration Day Protests , Inauguration Day Riot , Inauguration Day Riots , Not My President , Not My President Movement , Pain , Severe Pain | Category: Commentary , Politics watchmannonthewall
Why is Obama sitting back now and not saying anything? Could it be he was actually working behind the scenes to protect and help set up these organizations during his entire presidency? Seems obvious that with the speed and organization with which they have begun marching in the streets since Wednesday the organizations were in place well before the election was held, yes? Almost as if someone deliberately wanted Trump to win to begin the riots acoss the nation! A.S.
Every person involved with those riots should be put in prison for life! They are vermin, cockroaches, evil people. I didn’t see republicans or conservatives protesting Obama like this after both of his election wins. I hope this country turns around soon. lg
God raises up leaders as he wishes. Apparently, there was a supernatural force behind Mr. Trump victory. At the time when he was prayed for by leading evengalicals God almighty put His hand on him. His saw the humidity in his heart. No matter what the enemy is throwing at him no harm shall come near him. With all the hate that has originated from the west coast toward Mr. Trump has not gone unnoticed by God. I believe a day of reckening will soon scent on the west coast. Brace yourself America. Keep Mr. Trump in your prayers.
their dustructive divisive agenda | 0 |
ERIN, Wis. — Brooks Koepka proved too big, too strong, and too tough for both the course and his competitors, firing a final round 67 to run away with the 2017 U. S. Open. [Koepka overpowered the lengthy Erin Hills track and separated himself from the field after birdieing holes 14, 15, and 16. After that thunder strike, it was a coronation for a player who is living up to high expectations placed on him since he turned professional. The biggest disappointment was the lack of drama over the closing holes as early in the day it looked like it would be a photo finish among numerous golfers. From the start, Koepka imposed his will on the course birdieing the first two holes to take a lead he would never relinquish. His drove long and straight and his approach shots, when tracked by the Fox shot tracker, seemed to align with the digital pin position. His accuracy and distance was a sight to behold. A All American at Florida State, Koepka took the unusual route of starting his career on the European tour. After a couple of victories in Europe, he won his first title on the PGA tour with a win at the 2015 Waste Management Open. Koepka flew under the radar coming into the championship, with most prognosticators picking the other American big hitter in Dustin Johnson. Koepka put together four solid rounds of 67, 70, 68, and 67 to tie the lowest score ever in the U. S. Open at par. favorite Rickie Fowler again failed to score when he needed it most. Reminiscent of the 2014 PGA and 2017 Masters, Fowler just never got his round going and bogeys on 12 and 15 put him out of contention. When Rickie wins one, there will be a big celebration because so many people are rooting for him. Brian Harman hung in there for 13 holes before being run over by the Koepka freight train. Harmon had relied on precision ball striking and pinpoint putting, but that abandoned him on the back nine and he finished at an even par 72. Koepka was subdued when he sank the winning putt, giving only fist bump. He seemed a little overwhelmed when being carted to the scoring area with girlfriend Jena Sims. In his champion’s interview with Curtis Strange, he opened up and talked about his mindset coming into Sunday and the most important golf round of his life. ““I felt like I was playing really good,” he noted. “Obviously, the wind picked up and I felt like that played right into my hands — good good putter. And I felt confident all week. So, to feel as confident as I did on a Sunday of a major and coming down the stretch was pretty neat. ” Koepka will not be a wonder when it comes to winning big golf tournaments. In fact, this win could kickstart an excellent career. Brooks Koepka hits the ball too far and too straight to become an on the PGA Tour. Look for big things to come from this big man. | 1 |
The year’s notable fiction, poetry and nonfiction, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review. This list represents books reviewed since Dec. 6, 2015, when we published our previous Notables list. ALL THAT MAN IS. By David Szalay. (Graywolf, $26.) Szalay writes with voluptuous authority about masculinity under duress in this novel in stories. ANOTHER BROOKLYN. By Jacqueline Woodson. ( $22. 99.) Girlhood and the of its memory are the subjects of this intense, moving novel, Woodson’s first for adults (she is a Newbery Honor winner) in years. THE ASSOCIATION OF SMALL BOMBS. By Karan Mahajan. (Viking, $26.) Mahajan’s smart, devastating novel traces the fallout over time of a terrorist attack at a market in Delhi. BARKSKINS. By Annie Proulx. (Scribner, $32.) Tracing two families and their part in the destruction of the world’s forests, Proulx’s latest novel is a tale of shortsighted greed. BEFORE THE FALL. By Noah Hawley. (Grand Central, $26.) A crash leads to a media firestorm in Hawley’s readable thrill ride of a novel. BEHOLD THE DREAMERS. By Imbolo Mbue. (Random House, $28.) In Mbue’s bighearted debut, set against the backdrop of the American financial crisis, a Cameroonian family makes a new life in Harlem. BLACK WATER. By Louise Doughty. (Sarah Straus Giroux, $26.) Expecting to be assassinated, the hero of this excellent novel grapples with guilt over his actions in Indonesia. CHILDREN OF THE NEW WORLD. By Alexander Weinstein. (Picador, paper, $16.) The terror that technology may rob us of authentic experience — that it may annihilate our very sense of self — is central to this debut collection of short stories. COLLECTED POEMS . By Adrienne Rich. (Norton, $50.) Work from seven decades displays Rich’s evolution from careful to free verse, and her embrace of lesbian feminism and radical politics. COMMONWEALTH. By Ann Patchett. ( $27. 99.) An engaging family portrait, tracing the lives of six stepsiblings over half a century. DO NOT SAY WE HAVE NOTHING. By Madeleine Thien. (Norton, $26. 95.) A professor probes the mystery of her father’s life amid upheavals in China in this ambitious novel. DON’T LET MY BABY DO RODEO. By Boris Fishman. ( $26. 99.) A family from the former Soviet Union embarks on an American road trip in a novel that is a joy to read. END OF WATCH. By Stephen King. (Scribner, $30.) The gloriously fitting final installment of King’s trilogy featuring the retired police detective Bill Hodges is a big romp. EVERYBODY’S FOOL. By Richard Russo. (Knopf, $27. 95.) This sequel to “Nobody’s Fool,” set 10 years later in the same upstate New York town, presents engaging characters and benign humor. THE FORTUNES. By Peter Ho Davies. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27.) This novel, a meditation on 150 years of the experience, asks what it means to be a . A GAMBLER’S ANATOMY. By Jonathan Lethem. (Doubleday, $27. 95.) A backgammon hustler with telepathic powers returns to Berkeley, Calif. for surgery in Lethem’s inventive 10th novel, the theme of which is remaining open to possibilities. THE GLOAMING. By Melanie Finn. (Two Dollar Radio, paper, $16. 99.) A woman tries to remake her life in Africa in Finn’s intricately plotted novel. GRIEF IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS. By Max Porter. (Graywolf, paper, $14.) A father and his sons struggle with a death in this luminous novel. HERE COMES THE SUN. By Nicole . (Liveright, $26. 95.) ’s tale of life in the impoverished neighborhoods of Montego Bay, Jamaica, sheds light on the island’s disenfranchised. HERE I AM. By Jonathan Safran Foer. (Farrar, Straus Giroux, $28.) Private and public crises converge for four generations of a Jewish family in this ambitious, often brilliant novel, Foer’s third. HOMEGOING. By Yaa Gyasi. (Knopf, $26. 95.) This wonderful debut by a novelist follows the shifting fortunes of the progeny of two half sisters, unknown to each other, in West Africa and America. Gyasi was one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 honorees in 2016. HOT MILK. By Deborah Levy. (Bloomsbury, $26.) In Levy’s evocative novel, dense with symbolism, a woman struggles against her hypochondriacal mother to achieve her own identity. HOUSE OF LORDS AND COMMONS. By Ishion Hutchinson. (Farrar, Straus Giroux, $23.) Exuberant work from a young poet who looks to the island’s teeming life and fractured past. I MUST BE LIVING TWICE: New and Selected Poems, . By Eileen Myles. ( $29. 99.) Charming and confounding poems from a provocative voice. IZA’S BALLAD. By Magda Szabo. Translated by George Szirtes. (New York Review, paper, $16. 95.) A meditative Hungarian novel about grief and history by the author of “The Door. ” LAROSE. By Louise Erdrich. ( $27. 99.) A man who accidentally killed his best friend’s son gives the man his own child in this powerful story about justice and forgiveness, set in and near a North Dakota Ojibwe reservation. THE . By David Constantine. (Biblioasis, paper, $14. 95.) A widow immerses herself in the letters her late husband received from an earlier lover in Constantine’s lyrical novel. THE LITTLE RED CHAIRS. By Edna O’Brien. (Little, Brown, $27.) In her harrowing, boldly imagined novel, O’Brien both explores Irish provincial life and offers an unsettling fabulist vision. LOOK: Poems. By Solmaz Sharif. (Graywolf, paper, $16.) Sharif’s skillful debut collection draws on a Defense Department lexicon of military terms. THE MIRROR THIEF. By Martin Seay. (Melville House, $27. 95.) Linked narratives and various Venices reflect one another in this clever first novel. MISCHLING. By Affinity Konar. (Lee Brown, $27.) Konar uses the unsettling and grievous history of Dr. Josef Mengele’s experiments on children, particularly twins, to riveting effect in her debut novel. MISTER MONKEY. By Francine Prose. ( $26. 99.) The dreadful revival of a musical based on a children’s novel about an orphaned chimp is observed through various points of view in this fresh, Chekhovian novel. MOONGLOW. By Michael Chabon. ( $28. 99.) In this beautifully written hybrid, a San Francisco writer named Mike presents a memoir about his grandparents, a World War II soldier and a Holocaust survivor. THE MORTIFICATIONS. By Derek Palacio. (Tim Duggan, $27.) This sweeping debut novel limns the exile and return of a family. MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON. By Elizabeth Strout. (Random House, $26.) A writer and her estranged mother attempt to reconnect during a brief visit in a Pulitzer Prize winner’s exquisite novel of careful words and vibrating silences. STORIES OF GOD. By Joy Williams. (Tin House, $19. 95.) This collection of is a treasure trove of tiny wry masterpieces. THE NIX. By Nathan Hill. (Knopf, $27. 95.) In this entertaining debut novel, full of postmodern digressions, a young professor tries to write a biography of his political activist mother. THE NORTH WATER. By Ian McGuire. (Holt, $27.) In McGuire’s darkly brilliant novel, the crew of a doomed whaling ship bound for the Arctic Circle must reckon with fierce weather, pure evil, and the shadows of Melville and Conrad. NUTSHELL. By Ian McEwan. (Nan A. $24. 95.) An unborn baby overhears his mother and her lover plotting to murder his father in McEwan’s compact, captivating novel. REPUTATIONS. By Juan Gabriel Vásquez. Translated by Anne McLean. (Riverhead, $25.) A slender but impactful Colombian novel about a political cartoonist who his accusations against a politician. THE SPORT OF KINGS. By C. E. Morgan. (Farrar, Straus Giroux, $27.) Three Kentucky dynasties — black, white and equine — converge in this vitally written if melodramatic novel. STILL HERE. By Lara Vapnyar. (Hogarth, $26.) In this novel, four Russian friends try to make their way in New York. SWING TIME. By Zadie Smith. (Penguin Press, $27.) Two multiracial girls in North London dream of becoming dancers (one has talent, the other doesn’t) in Smith’s exuberant new novel about friendship, music, race and global politics. TODAY WILL BE DIFFERENT. By Maria Semple. (Little, Brown, $27.) In this brainy, seriously funny novel by the author of “Where’d You Go, Bernadette,” a Seattle woman confronts private school parents, a husband’s secret life and more. THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. By Colson Whitehead. (Doubleday, $26. 95.) Whitehead’s stunningly daring novel turns the historical freedom network from metaphor to reality, complete with tracks, locomotives and platforms. The winner of this year’s National Book Award for fiction. VALIANT GENTLEMEN. By Sabina Murray. (Grove, $27.) An audacious historical novel about the Irish revolutionary martyr Roger Casement. THE VEGETARIAN. By Han Kang. Translated by Deborah Smith. (Hogarth, $21.) This novella in three parts is both thriller and parable. The winner of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize. WAR AND TURPENTINE. By Stefan Hertmans. Translated by David McKay. (Pantheon, $26. 95.) A masterly novel about memory, art, love and war, based on the author’s grandfather’s notebooks. WEATHERING. By Lucy Wood. (Bloomsbury, $26.) This poetic debut novel, set in a damp house near a roaring river, explores the relationship between mothers and daughters. ZERO K. By Don DeLillo. (Scribner, $27.) In the future of DeLillo’s moving, mysterious 16th novel, a man joins his billionaire father at a desert compound where people can be preserved forever. ALL THE SINGLE LADIES: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation. By Rebecca Traister. (Simon Schuster, $27.) A deeply researched and examination of the role of single women throughout history. AMERICAN HEIRESS: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst. By Jeffrey Toobin. (Doubleday, $28. 95.) In this riveting account, even the S. L. A. is shown some compassion. AT THE EXISTENTIALIST CAFÉ: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails. By Sarah Bakewell. (Other Press, $25.) A lucid joint portrait of the writers and philosophers who embodied existentialism. BLOOD AT THE ROOT: A Racial Cleansing in America. By Patrick Phillips. (Norton, $26. 95.) How a Georgia county drove out its black citizens in 1912 and remained for 80 years: a timely and important account. BLOOD IN THE WATER: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy. By Heather Ann Thompson. (Pantheon, $35.) A masterly — and heartbreaking — history, based in part on new materials about the Attica prison uprising and its terrible aftermath. BORN TO RUN. By Bruce Springsteen. (Simon Schuster, $32. 50.) Springsteen’s autobiography, explaining how he rose from Freehold, N. J. to international fame is both and eloquent. CITY OF DREAMS: The Epic History of Immigrant New York. By Tyler Anbinder. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $35.) A richly textured guide to the past of the nation’s chief immigrant city. DARK MONEY: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. By Jane Mayer. (Doubleday, $29. 95.) A formidable account of how the Koch brothers and their allies have bought their way to political power. THE DEFENDER: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America From the Age of the Pullman Porters to the Age of Obama. By Ethan Michaeli. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $32.) A powerful, elegant history of the influential paper. ELEANOR ROOSEVELT: The War Years and After. Volume Three: . By Blanche Wiesen Cook. (Viking, $40.) The conclusion of a monumental and inspirational biography. THE ENGLISH AND THEIR HISTORY. By Robert Tombs. (Knopf, $45.) A Cambridge historian’s clearsighted retelling of English history also analyzes how the English themselves have viewed their past. EVICTED: Poverty and Profit in the American City. By Matthew Desmond. (Crown, $28.) A sociologist shows what the lack of affordable housing means as he portrays the desperate lives of people who spend most of their incomes in rent. THE FACE OF BRITAIN: A History of the Nation Through Its Portraits. By Simon Schama. (Oxford University, $39. 95.) A splendid book to accompany a BBC series hosted by the eminently readable historian and art critic. FAR AND AWAY. REPORTING FROM THE BRINK OF CHANGE: Seven Continents, Years. By Andrew Solomon. (Scribner, $30.) Some 30 travel pieces, in prose sparkling with insight, describe “places in the throes of transformation. ” FROM THE WAR ON POVERTY TO THE WAR ON CRIME: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America. By Elizabeth Hinton. (Harvard University, $29. 95.) A study of the bipartisan embrace of punishment after the 1960s. THE GENE: An Intimate History. By Siddhartha Mukherjee. (Scribner, $32.) With scope and grandeur, the Pulitzer author of “The Emperor of All Maladies” presents the history of the science of genetics and examines the philosophical questions it raises. GHETTO: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea. By Mitchell Duneier. (Farrar, Straus Giroux, $28.) Duneier offers a stunningly detailed, timely survey of scholarly work on the topic. HERO OF THE EMPIRE: The Boer War, a Daring Escape and the Making of Winston Churchill. By Candice Millard. (Doubleday, $30.) Imperialism and courage are on display as Churchill fights the Boer War in Millard’s readable, enjoyable book. HIS FINAL BATTLE: The Last Months of Franklin Roosevelt. By Joseph Lelyveld. (Knopf, $30.) A gripping, deeply human account of Roosevelt’s last 16 months in office, when the president fought to create lasting global peace — despite having received a diagnosis of acute congestive heart failure. HITLER: Ascent . By Volker Ullrich. Translated by Jefferson Chase. (Knopf, $40.) The first volume of a timely new biography focuses on Hitler the man, seeing him as a consummate tactician and an actor aware of his audience. HOW EVERYTHING BECAME WAR AND THE MILITARY BECAME EVERYTHING: Tales From the Pentagon. By Rosa Brooks. (Simon Schuster, $29. 95.) A disturbing exploration of the erosion of boundaries between war and peace. HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS. By David France. (Knopf, $30.) A remarkable account of how activists and patients won the funding that led to AIDS treatment from a reluctant government. I CONTAIN MULTITUDES: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life. By Ed Yong. ( $27. 99.) A science journalist’s first book is an excellent, vivid introduction to the realm of our secret sharers. IN THE DARKROOM. By Susan Faludi. ( $32.) Faludi offers a rich and ultimately generous investigation of her father, who suddenly contacted her from his home in Hungary after undergoing surgery at the age of 76. IN GRATITUDE. By Jenny Diski. (Bloomsbury, $26.) In her final memoir before her death, Diski, who was by Doris Lessing, examines the origin, and the close, of her life as a writer. AN IRON WIND: Europe Under Hitler. By Peter Fritzsche. (Basic, $29. 99.) A deep reflection about World War II’s moral challenges for civilians. LAB GIRL. By Hope Jahren. (Knopf, $26. 95.) A geobiologist with a literary bent makes her science both accessible and lyrical, and offers a gratifying and moving chronicle of the scientist’s life. THE LIMOUSINE LIBERAL: How an Incendiary Image United the Right and Fractured America. By Steve Fraser. (Basic Books, $27. 50.) An incisive history of a metaphor and its effects. THE MAN WHO KNEW: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan. By Sebastian Mallaby. (Penguin Press, $40.) This thorough account of the former Fed chairman’s rise depicts him as political to a fault. NEW ENGLAND BOUND: Slavery and Colonization in Early America. By Wendy Warren. (Liveright, $29. 95.) Warren enlivens her study of Northern slavery with new research and a fresh approach. ORSON WELLES. Volume 3: Band. By Simon Callow. (Viking, $40.) Expertly and convincingly, Callow rejects the common disdain for Welles’s career. THE PEOPLE AND THE BOOKS: 18 Classics of Jewish Literature. By Adam Kirsch. (Norton, $28. 95.) Detailed and lucid accounts of seminal texts highlight the variety of Jewish experience. PLAYING TO THE EDGE: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror. By Michael V. Hayden. (Penguin Press, $30.) The former C. I. A. director makes the case for security measures. PRETENTIOUSNESS: Why It Matters. By Dan Fox. (Coffee House, paper, $15. 95.) A nimble case for pretentiousness as a willingness to take risks. PUMPKINFLOWERS: A Soldier’s Story. By Matti Friedman. (Algonquin, $25. 95.) Friedman has written a striking memoir about his stint in the Israeli Army in southern Lebanon in the 1990s. A RAGE FOR ORDER: The Middle East in Turmoil, From Tahrir Square to ISIS. By Robert F. Worth. (Farrar, Straus Giroux, $26.) The story of the 2011 Arab Spring and its slide into autocracy and civil war, beautifully told by a veteran correspondent. THE RETURN: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between. By Hisham Matar. (Random House, $26.) In this extraordinary history, Matar describes his search for his father, who disappeared into a Libyan prison in 1990. THE RISE AND FALL OF AMERICAN GROWTH: The U. S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War. By Robert J. Gordon. (Princeton University, $39. 95.) An economic historian’s magisterial assessment of the past and future of American living standards. SECONDHAND TIME: The Last of the Soviets. By Svetlana Alexievich. Translated by Bela Shayevich. (Random House, $30.) The Nobel winner offers a powerful oral history of Russia, . SHIRLEY JACKSON: A Rather Haunted Life. By Ruth Franklin. (Liveright, $35.) This thorough biography traces Jackson’s evolution as an artist and makes a case for her importance. SING FOR YOUR LIFE: A Story of Race, Music, and Family. By Daniel Bergner. (Lee Brown, $28.) A portrait of Ryan Speedo Green, an opera singer who overcame terrible childhood poverty and abuse. This season he has a lead role in the Metropolitan Opera’s “La Bohème. ” STRANGERS IN THEIR OWN LAND: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. By Arlie Russell Hochschild. (New Press, $27. 95.) A Berkeley sociologist takes a generous but disconcerting look at Tea Party backers in Louisiana to explain the way many people in this country live now, often to the astonishment of everyone else. TRUEVINE. Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother’s Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South. By Beth Macy. (Little, Brown, $28.) A riveting account of two albino brothers who were exhibited in a circus. UNFORBIDDEN PLEASURES. By Adam Phillips. (Farrar, Straus Giroux, $25.) Linked essays examine the idea that forbidden pleasures have a tendency to obscure the meaningfulness to our lives of the unforbidden ones. WEAPONS OF MATH DESTRUCTION: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. By Cathy O’Neil. (Crown, $26.) A frightening look at the risks of the algorithms that regulate our lives, by a former hedge fund “quant” (she got her Ph. D. in math at Harvard) who became an Occupy Wall Street activist. WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR. By Paul Kalanithi. (Random House, $25.) A brilliant young neurosurgeon reckons with the meaning of life and death when he learns he has advanced lung cancer a moving and courageous account. WHEN IN FRENCH: Love in a Second Language. By Lauren Collins. (Penguin Press, $27.) Collins, a New Yorker staff writer married to a Frenchman, writes a very personal memoir about love and language, shrewdly assessing how language affects our lives. WHITE RAGE: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. By Carol Anderson. (Bloomsbury, $26.) A timely and urgent call to confront the forces opposed to black progress since the Civil War. WHITE TRASH: The Untold History of Class in America. By Nancy Isenberg. (Viking, $28.) A masterly and ambitious cultural history of changing concepts of class and inferiority. YOU’LL GROW OUT OF IT. By Jessi Klein. (Grand Central, $26.) Humorous riffs on being a woman by Amy Schumer’s head writer. | 1 |
Politics Lessons of Syria: Russia to Form a 'Superlight' Brigade Equipped With 'Technicals'
Russian Ministry of Defense wants to take a UAZ pickup and strap on it a machine gun, a grenade launcher or anti-tank missiles and use them to conduct raids over open terrain Originally appeared at Russian Defense Policy
Izvestiya reports that Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu is organizing some “superlight” army brigades. It’s an interesting turn given that his widely discredited predecessor Anatoliy Serdyukov also looked at forming light motorized rifle brigades based on wheeled vehicles. Perhaps the latter’s mistake was that the vehicles weren’t necessarily Russian-made.
Shoygu’s “superlight” brigades will use the UAZ Patriot — either the SUV or Pickup variant. The SUV is referred to as a jeep at times. An earlier model — the Hunter — actually resembles a jeep. uaz-hunter.jpg UAZ Hunter
The intent, reportedly based on Syrian combat experience, is for these “superlight” motorized rifle brigades to slip around or through heavier enemy forces to conduct raids at distances of several hundred kilometers.
According to Izvestiya, the UAZ Patriot or Pickup is supposed to carry up to seven soldiers (a highly dubious proposition), their weapons and gear, as well as additional fuel, supplies, and ammo. It will be armed with either a 30-mm AGS-30 automatic grenade launcher or Kornet or Konkurs ATGMs, as well as a 12.7-mm Kord machine gun. The brigade’s mortar batteries are supposed to have 82-mm 2B14 Podnos mortars mounted on the UAZ vehicles.
An MOD official familiar with the developments told Izvestiya the formation of the “superlight” brigades has begun, and they will appear “soon” in the Southern and Central MDs. They will have less personnel and equipment than traditional MRBs, but will be more mobile and maneuverable. The “superlight” brigades will also have one battalion in BTR-82s as well as artillery and MRL battalions.
Izvestiya got a comment from Vladislav Shurygin:
“These battalions are being developed from the experience of combat actions in Syria. In a day, the typical motorized rifle battalion equipped with armored personnel carriers or infantry fighting vehicles can complete a march of not more than100 km. But an MRB in the UAZ Patriot can go several hundred kilometers in a day.
Moreover, acting in small groups, motorized rifle platoons and companies in pickups can slip through enemy forces and deliver quick strikes. But these battalions are only effective in desert, steppe, and semidesert terrain. In forests and forest-steppe, automobile-mounted infantry loses out to infantry in BMPs and BTRs in combat capability.”
Izvestiya notes that, in 2009, Serdyukov put the 56th Independent Air-Assault Brigade in the UAZ Hunter, but the experiment was quickly abandoned. The MOD official says they were needed and worked well in the Volgograd steppe, but it was difficult to fit personnel and equipment in the Hunter. Soldiers, he said, sat cheek to cheek in very cramped conditions. That brigade returned to its venerable GAZ-66 trucks.
The same problem is likely with the UAZ Patriot and Pickup. They look like four-seaters.
This sounds like a sweet little deal for UAZ. It is part of the larger Sollers automobile manufacturing group, itself owned by Russian steel conglomerate Severstal.
It’s odd there’s no photo of an UAZ Patriot or Pickup military prototype when the first “superlight” brigades are reportedly almost ready to appear.
And there is also potential competition. The Military-Industrial Company (VPK) has its Tigr light armored vehicle with a 30-mm gun or Kornet or Konkurs ATGM launchers mounted. The Tigr, however, is a larger, heavier, and much more expensive vehicle.
GAZ might make something comparable to the Patriot or Pickup. GAZ already makes the BTR-82. Like VPK, GAZ is owned ultimately by Oleg Deripaska. Did you enjoy this article? - Consider helping us! Russia Insider depends on your donations: the more you give, the more we can do. $1 $10 Other amount
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Elections 2016
Top democrats have repeatedly waved off substantial questions arising from their hacked emails by falsely implying that some of them are forgeries created by Russian hackers.
The problem with that is that no one has found a single case of anything forged among the information released from hacks of either Clinton campaign or Democratic Party officials.
Clinton strategist Joel Benenson, asked about an email in which Clinton campaign staffers decide to accept foreign lobbyist money, used that line on MSNBC on Sunday.
“These emails, we have no idea whether they’re authentic or not,” he said. “Or whether they’ve been tampered with. I know I’ve seen things that aren’t authentic, that we know aren’t authentic, and it’s not surprising.”
Jennifer Granholm, a senior adviser to the pro-Clinton Super PAC Correct the Record, was asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper whether the Clinton campaign should be responding to revelations revealed by Wikileaks.
“There are reports that these have been doctored,” she told Tapper on October 19. “And Newsweek had found that, in fact, that was happening.”
In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on October 18, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, was asked if the Russian government would impact the election by hacking voting systems.
“What worries me the most … is between now and the election the Russians dump information that is fabricated,” Schiff warned. “To get a last minute dump of emails that contain fabricated emails that are widely reported in the press, and there isn’t enough time to fact check and demonstrate the forgery, that is what really concerns me.”
CNN host Wolf Blitzer pushed back, “But have you confirmed that any of these emails released over the past two weeks, if you will, by Wikileaks are fabricated or doctored?”
“You know I’m not in a position to be able to do that,” Schiff demurred.
Everything considered, the conclusion has to be that Wikileaks emails are probably authentic and if they weren’t they would have been disproven a long, long time ago. The question is if are you willing to vote for a person that (we saw in the emails) is capable of doing very, bad, dirty stuff. And if the answer is yes then this country has a BIG, BIG PROBLEM. If Clinton Campaign Believes WikiLeaks Emails Are Forged, Why Don’t They Prove It!? Share this: | 0 |
Following Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election, Russian leader Vladimir Putin said that his country is ready and looking forward to restoring bilateral relations with the United States.
Via Yournewswire
Former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has also said that one of the first things the new US leader should do is reach out to Russian President to reset relations. He said anti-Russian sentiment in America has reached boiling point and was at its worst level since the Cold War. Putin was one of the first world leaders to congratulate Trump on his victory, expressing hope that the two countries will continue collaborative work on international issues
“We heard [Trump’s] campaign rhetoric while still a candidate for the US presidency, which was focused on restoring the relations between Russia and the United States,” President Putin said, speaking at the presentation ceremony of foreign ambassadors’ letters of credentials in Moscow.
“We understand and are aware that it will be a difficult path in the light of the degradation in which, unfortunately, the relationship between Russia and the US are at the moment,” he added. Speaking about the degraded state of relations between the countries, the president once again stressed that “it is not our fault that Russia-US relations are as you see them.”
Earlier today, in a message to Donald Trump the Russian President expressed confidence that the dialogue between Moscow and Washington, in keeping with each other’s views, meets the interests of both Russia and the US.
The Russian leader noted in the message that he hopes to address some “burning issues that are currently on the international agenda, and search for effective responses to the challenges of the global security,” RIA Novosti reported.
On top of it, Putin has expressed confidence that “building a constructive dialogue between Moscow and Washington, based on principles of equality, mutual respect and each other’s positions, meets the interests of the peoples of our countries and of the entire international community.”
Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin has also expressed hope that Trump’s victory in the presidential election will help pave the way for a more constructive dialogue between Moscow and Washington.
“The current US-Russian relations cannot be called friendly. Hopefully, with the new US president a more constructive dialogue will be possible between our countries,” he said. “The Russian Parliament will welcome and support any steps in this direction,” Volodin added on Wednesday.
A member of the Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security, Senator Aleksey Pushkov, has meanwhile noted that Hillary Clinton’s stake on the conflict with Russia has eventually done her a terrible disservice.
“[Playing the] ‘Russian card’ and portraying Putin as a bad guy did not help Clinton. On the contrary, staking on the conflict with Moscow has only caused fear, doing her a disservice,” he tweeted.
According to many observers, US-Russia relations are now at their lowest point since the Cold War. Putin has repeatedly noted that the worsening of Russia’s relations with the US “was not our choice,” however. For things to improve between Moscow and Washington, the US should first and foremost start acting like an equal partner and respect Russia’s interests rather than try to dictate terms, Putin said last month.
The US will have to negotiate with Russia on finding solutions to international issues as no state is now able to act alone, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last week, adding that problems in bilateral relations began to mount long before the Ukrainian crisis broke out in 2014.
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George And Laura Bush Celebrate Their 70th Birthdays By: Hank Berrien October 26, 2016
On Saturday, former president George W. Bush and former first lady Laura Bush celebrated their 70th birthdays together in Crawford, Texas.
President Bush’s birthday was July 6, and Laura’s is on November 4.
Some of the attendees included former commerce secretary Donald Evans, Dallas Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones, and Ross Perot Jr., the son of H. Ross Perot. George Strait performed, and sang “Happy Birthday,” per People. Typical of Bush’s down-home style, he wore jeans, a western-style shirt and a prominent belt buckle.
The dinner included an avocado and grapefruit salad, Mesquite smoked peppered beef tenderloin, Southern fried catfish, roasted corn and poblano pudding, bourbon carrots, and cheddar and black pepper biscuits. The dessert was a Texas chocolate sheet cake.
Bush also invited guests to his art studio at the ranch, dubbed Studio 43, where he works on his paintings.
Laura Bush was working as a librarian in the Austin Independent School District when she met George in 1977; their friends Joe and Jan O'Neill invited them to a barbecue. They were married in November 1977 at the First United Methodist Church in Midland, where she had been baptized. She wore a tan, two-toned dress she had bought off the rack.
George W. Bush later called his proposal to his wife the "best decision of my life." Laura, an only child, said she gained "brothers and sisters and wonderful in-laws" and made her feel part of the family. Tags | 0 |
By wmw_admin on November 3, 2016 The Saker — The Saker.is Nov 3, 2016 Last May I wrote an article entitled Counter-propaganda, Russian style in which I explained that far from banning or censoring the western anti-Putin/anti-Russia campaign, the Russia media reported about it in meticulous detail. Half a year later, not only is this still true, but the level of coverage has now sharply increased. Check out this screenshot from the latest (and most watched) weekly news show: Putin bashing reported on Russian TV. Click to enlarge Remember that roughly 80% plus of the audience watching this are strong supporters of President Putin. You can imagine what they think when they see these reports. The fully understand that the West hates Putin so much precisely because Putin is one of them, a real Russian who cares for the interests of the Russian people. So when the West demonizes Putin, it is really all the Russian people who are demonized and their conclusion is simple: the West does not hate Putin, the West hates *us*. As for “Blame it on Putin” – it has now become a real joke. One of the main effects of this kind of demonization is that the Russian public fully understands that there is no way back. In practical terms, most Russians believe that even if Russia pulled out of Syria, stopped supporting the Donbass or even decided to hand Crimea to the Ukies, the West would still continue to demonize Russia and try to subdue her . Furthermore, the Russians remember that the only time when the West liked Russia was when she was run by the drunken Eltsin and his coterie of Jewish oligarchs who pillaged Russia and whose reign had consequences similar to what a major war would result in. Any other Russia is simply unacceptable to the AngloZionist Empire. Seen in this light, the alliance of the West with both the Nazis in Kiev and the “moderate terrorists” in the Middle-East makes sense. This is not fundamentally different from the European’s alliance with the Ottomans during the Crimean War or the USA supported Japan against Russia in 1905 (only to then end up fighting against Japan a few years later). As long as X is anti-Russian, the West support X. It’s that primitive and that stupid. The Ukronazi regime in Kiev has understood that it has only one “commodity” left which it can sell to the West: its rabid russophobia. And since they are desperate, they make desperate and, frankly, comical efforts. Check out the new symbol of the Ukie military intelligence service: The Ukies point a dagger at the heart of Russia. Click to enlarge I don’t think I have ever seen the Ukie inferiority complex better illustrated. The Latin sentence “ Sapiens Dominabitur Astra ” (“the wise will rule the stars”) is a nice touch as it combines a non-cyrillic (Latin) alphabet, a reference to European astrology in the Middle Ages and a typically Ukrainian (cosmic) megalomania. Yet another proof, if needed, that all the Ukraine is is an “anti-Russia”. Make no mistake though, there is absolutely no fear of the West in Russia. Most Russians believe that the Russian armed forces are more than enough to keep West in check. And they are quite correct. But there is this acute awareness that were in not for the Russian military, Russia would be treated just like Iraq. In the meantime, the Russia media is gleefully feeding the Russian public every bit of russophobic propaganda produced in the West. Future generations will probably study this period and wonder at the absolutely mind-boggling stupidity of a western propaganda machine which is apparently completely oblivious at the impact of its propaganda on a nuclear superpower. The Saker | 0 |
( henrymakow.com ) “Salman Hossein (left) was forced to flee Canada in 2010 with police on his tail for antisemitic activities. From his exile in Dhaka, Bangladesh, he says Hillary will win and lead the US to world war. Masonic Jewish central bankers can’t allow Trump to win because he will turn on them. They are already losing world control and Trump would be the final nail in their coffin.” — Henry Makow
LD: Salman was a prolific commenter on this site whose posts had to be carefully monitored because of their constant obscenities and bloodcurdling threats of mass extermination. A Muslim radical, to put it mildly.
Salman’s prediction that Hillary will win is not, in my opinion, a far-fetched one. I think it is a distinct possibility if all this, as I suspect, is pure theater. A huge surprise could be in store for us in the next few days.
A sudden announcement by FBI Director James Comey, two days before the election, giving Hillary a clean bill of health over her problematic emails, could result in a last-minute surge in support of Hillary that could sweep her into the White House. According to one report, the FBI “may be able to sift through them [the emails under investigation] before election day .” Additional information harmful to Trump, involving “ his close links to the Kremlin “, could also be manufactured in a bid to help Hillary.
All this, however, is pure speculation. [LD]
SALMAN HOSSEIN : After 9-11, there were eight regimes that had not submitted to the authority of the Jewish bankers. Four of them either got taken out or bullied/bribed/coerced into bowing down – Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Sudan. The only problem is that recently China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Turkey have broken out of the sphere of control. Syria is still independent and fighting to maintain its sovereignty against Israeli expansionism and Banker domination.
Putin recently put out an arrest warrant for George Soros for currency manipulation and has issued a decree banning the Rothschild clan from Russia. Russia is also causing problems for the Israelis and the West by defending the regime of Bashar Al Assad from Nusra and Da’esh/ISIS. Israeli expansionism has been kept in check by Russia. China has also more or less wrested free of control from the International Jewish oligarchy. As a pro-Israeli asset , Trump is not a threat to Israeli expansionism in Gaza and the West Bank. He has even opened up a campaign office in Israel. He is essentially aligning white gentile power with the Israeli-Jewish supremacist camp. He only cares about Israel and will facilitate even worse oppression of Arabs and Muslims not only in Palestine and the rest of the Greater Middle East but in the Western world as well. He consistently repeats the false “ Muslim terrorist “ narrative. He is even worse than George W. Bush Junior . As the alternative to the US Dollar, the new BRICS monetary system is also challenging Jewish control of international finance. The heavyweights in the BRICS alliance are Russia and China. There are those who claim that BRICS is also covertly run by the Jewish bankers. I don’t buy this. The Chinese are fully aware of the Jewish question . The Russians kicked out Jewish criminals . They won’t be able to penetrate the economy as well as they have done in the Western world. THE DILEMMA OF JEWISH SUPREMACISM Jewish supremacists view European gentiles as either pawns for their game of global conquest and perpetual warfare or if that is not feasible – their targets of destruction and hatred. Historically speaking, Jews have been expelled over 109 times in history. 105 of these times have been in Europe. That is why left-wing Jewish groups are so vehemently pushing for the replacement and liquidation of indigenous Europeans by either making them a minority or making those countries uninhabitable via the anticipated thermonuclear warfare which they are instigating . Most White Americans, Australians, Canadians, and New Zealanders are also of European ancestry – and are also targets for destruction/revenge by these Jewish extremists/supremacists for many decades now. The influx of refugees by Jewish groups with the assistance of organized crime gangs is Talmudic vengeance par excellence. For the Diaspora Jews, its an all-or-nothing zero sum game. They either take their chances with NATO and go all in against China, Iran, Russia, and eventually Turkey or eventually risk losing more countries from their grip and/or control. However, going head on against them will lead to World War Three. Their hatred for white gentiles is so great (due to past perceived historical injustices) that they are willing to risk death themselves in the process of getting others killed. There is no where the so-called (Jewish dominated) elite can really hide or travel to. All their contingency plans are being exposed . TRUMP IS LESSER OF TWO EVILS Trump is the lesser of the two evils because he does not appear insane enough to go after China and Russia at the same time. However, I personally prefer NATO going up against China and Russia. The West has been killing defenseless people as target practice alone for the last few centuries alone – they need a challenge this time. Russia along with assistance from China will put them in their place. The great news is that the Jewish war-mongers have already won! Hillary has already been declared the war president of the United States. I support Hillary Clinton in her desire to go to war against Russia. I have been praying for the day this would happen. In fact, thermonuclear warfare is just right around the corner. Nobody should be complaining about this. Without thermonuclear warfare, there is no way International Jewry’s grip on temporal power can be crushed. That is the other reason I left Canada! I’d like to end this piece by sending out the following Halloween message to everyone: Enjoy the party while it lasts! Make sure you have a blast! Hasta La Vista Baby!!! Like this? Share it now. 8 thoughts on “ Muslim Radical Salman Hossein says Hillary will win ” LD says: | 0 |
How Donald Trump is already indirectly helping Russia and Syria November 11, 2016 - Fort Russ - Ruslan Ostashko, PolitRussia - translated by J. Arnoldski - Perhaps the most famous media project of Donald Trump is the reality show “The Apprentice” on NBC, in which Trump played himself and subjected people wanting to work in his business to various tests. Trump not only played the lead role in the show, but also successfully produced it, which proves that he can not only built hotels, but also very well understands modern show business. This also shows how his opponents greatly underestimated him during the presidential race. Before Trump launched his presidential slogan “Make America Great Again,” in the public’s mind he was already associated with another catchphrase: “You’re fired!”, which he yelled at the careless participants of his TV show. Some American commentators have even written that voters might have voted for him just to see whether he would dress down Washington officials in the same way he did on TV. So far, at least in front of cameras, Trump is behaving relatively restrained, especially since he has no official rights yet. But the press is already leaking information about what he is doing behind closed doors. For example, USA Today , a newspaper which is very skeptical towards the new president, reports that Trump’s first victims are Pentagon generals. He has set before them the unspoken task of working out a plan for mass, effective airstrikes on ISIS. The due date is in 30 days and will have unpredictable, negative consequences for those generals who will not fulfill the order or will handle it poorly. The sources of American journalists are even complaining that these generals could be forced to - get ready - cooperate with Russia and even share information with the Russian air force, something which for many senior US commanders is worse than having to shred their insignia. Now let me explain why this plan for “massive bombardments against ISIS” is important. Remember what our diplomats and officers constantly say about the US’ actions - the Americans have only been supposedly bombing ISIS for several years, and the number of flights is scanty and their successes feature, for example, only two killed ISIS leaders. It is clear these bombardments were carried out in such a way so as to not harm the terrorist groups sponsored by Qatar and Saudi Arabia and those groups whom Clinton considered to be the main tool in the fight against Assad. And now it turns out that Trump is already going to force the American military machine, under threat of dismissals, to really bomb their yesterday allies. Obama has oriented himself in this situation best of all, since he might need to be given a consolation prize for being the most quirky American politician. After three years of inactivity and after his peace deal with Putin that Clinton’s supporters (the same “forces in Washington” that Putin spoke about at Valdai) tore up, the departing American president has decided to indulge this opportunity to the fullest. Here’s what American media are writing today. The Washington Post , citing senior officials in the outgoing administration, writes that Barack Obama has ordered to find and destroy leaders of the terrorist group Jebhat Al-Nusra. Although it is better to wait for official statements, it can be assumed that this information is accurate since the Washington Post is a newspaper with good sources in the US Democratic Party. Why does Obama need to do this? First of all, this is an opportunity to complete what he was not allowed to do a few months ago. Secondly, this is an opportunity to leave the White House with an image of a great fighter against terrorism. Remember how Hillary Clinton virtually claimed for herself the laurels as the “killer of Bin Laden”? Now the outgoing president has the opportunity to level the score and, if lucky, deprive Trump of the ability to win the laurels for being an active fighter against terrorism and the first to start really bombing ISIS. Here it needs to be said that everyone can understand the consequences of these decisions without resorting to any conspiracies. For example, The Washington Post ’s last issue was published with the headline: “Obama directs Pentagon to target al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, one of the most formidable forces fighting Assad.” Translated from journalistic lingo into common speech, this sounds like “Help! Obama has decided to whack our main allies and reconsidered removing Assad!” Amazing. Trump hasn’t even taken office yet, but there are already encouraging changes in how American politicians and the military are acting. Some simply don’t want Trump’s catchphrase “You’re fired!” thrown in their faces, while others are simply trying to solve their own problems. But no matter what, this all suits us. One thing is already clear: life will be difficult for Assad and Russia’s enemies in Syria when the Russian combat group approaching the coast of Syria begins its work. It will be quite difficult for them. Now they can only hope for a miracle. Follow us on Facebook! | 0 |
Harambe, the Western lowland gorilla shot dead at the Cincinnati Zoo late last month after a boy fell into his enclosure, may be physically gone, his tissues harvested for research and his sperm extracted to help diversify the captive breeding gene pool. Yet the silverback leaves another metaphorical gorilla in the room, raising questions that extend far beyond the particulars of the case, including whether the zoo or the boy’s mother were more to blame for Harambe’s death. For primatologists and conservationists who devote their lives to studying the great apes and to doing what they can to help protect the rapidly vanishing populations of the primates in the wild, a linked set of ethical and practical dilemmas looms almost unbearably large. As research continues to reveal the breadth of our genetic, emotional and cognitive kinship with the world’s four great apes — gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans — many primatologists admit to feeling frankly uncomfortable at the sight of a captive ape on display, no matter how luxe or “natural” the zoo exhibit may be. “When I visit zoos, I have to turn off my feelings and just tell myself that I am at a museum admiring nature’s masterpieces,” said the primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, professor emerita at the University of California, Davis. “Otherwise, I can’t really justify keeping great apes in cages. ” At the same time, researchers acknowledge that apes in today’s zoos, at least in the industrialized world, were all born and raised in captivity, and could no more survive being “set free” into the forests of Africa or Indonesia than could the average tourist on safari. Catherine Hobaiter of St. Andrews University in Scotland, who studies chimpanzees in Uganda, described the reaction of zoo gorillas that had been raised in indoor enclosures when the zoo finally added an outdoor annex to the exhibit. “It was heartbreaking to see,” she said. “The gentlest specks of rain, and the gorillas were drumming on the door to get back inside. They were afraid of getting wet. ” Yet while primatologists concur that people have a moral obligation to care for the thousands of apes who are now in captivity and may live 60 years or longer, they differ on what that care should look like. Barbara Smuts, a renowned primatologist at the University of Michigan, recently distributed a petition asking that the other gorillas at the Cincinnati Zoo be relocated to a sanctuary far from the ogling, screeching crowds of their clothed relations. Researchers also disagree on whether we should continue breeding apes in captivity, and if so, to what end. Some experts believe that zoos play an essential educational role, and that exposure to a ape can be a transformative experience, especially for children. “I remember going to the Milwaukee zoo when I was a kid and seeing the gorilla,” said Peter D. Walsh, a biological anthropologist at Cambridge University who works on gorilla conservation in Africa. “I was rapt. It’s like a drug. You don’t get that emotional bond from an IMAX movie. ” Others deride most zoos as little more than amusement parks with educational placards that few people bother to read. “There’s no good evidence that captive apes are having any positive effect on their wild relatives,” said Marc Bekoff, a behavioral ecologist and professor emeritus at the University of Colorado. As for education, he added, “one of the most wonderful and educational lessons in biodiversity I’ve ever seen was a snail exhibit at the Detroit Zoo. ” Peter Singer, a bioethicist at Princeton University, said, “Our primary concern ought to be the of gorillas, but zoos are constructed the other way around: The primary concern is that humans can see the gorillas. ” No matter their feelings about zoos, primatologists despair at the shocking statistics on wild apes. According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, all species and subspecies of wild apes rank as endangered or critically endangered, and in all cases, the trends point implacably downward. Apes are being lost to poaching, the bushmeat trade, habitat destruction and disease. In Sumatra and Borneo, forests have been pulped to make way for palm oil plantations, with devastating consequences for orangutans. Since the 1990s, 80 percent of Eastern lowland gorillas in Central Africa have died of Ebola. Even among Jane Goodall’s celebrated chimpanzees of the Gombe forest in Tanzania, human activities have lately slashed the population by almost 40 percent. By the Red List reckoning, the planetwide total for all wild apes amounts to 350, 000 individuals, down from premodern figures estimated in the millions. Nor does it help, said Dr. Walsh of Cambridge University, that the public’s concern for the environment is now focused almost exclusively on climate change: “I feel like shouting, ‘Hey, guys, you could end climate change tomorrow and we’d still be facing the greatest extinction crisis we’ve ever seen. ’” There’s a reason humans and the great apes are bunched together taxonomically in the family Hominidae. We split off from chimpanzees and gorillas only about six million to 10 million years ago. The DNA of a chimpanzee is about 98 percent analogous to ours. Apes are avid tool users and tool makers. Chimpanzees fashion sticks to fish termites from a mound and to hunt monkeys hidden in tree holes. Orangutans can learn to row a boat and flip pancakes on a griddle. In observations at the Prague Zoo, Khalil Baalbaki watched gorillas turn empty crates into a series of household objects: tables, chairs, stepping stools to extend their reach, trays to carry their food and as weapons to be thrown in a fight. One young female gorilla extracted wood stuffing from a crate to fashion a pair of slippers, padding her feet with the fibers before venturing onto the snow. According to of intelligence studies, the average ape has the cognitive, quantitative and spatial skills of a to human child. Yet Tetsuro Matsuzakawa’s laboratory in Japan showed that an exceptionally chimpanzee named Ayuma was twice as good as any university student at recalling numbers flashed on a screen. The great apes also exhibit basic temperamental differences. David Watts, a primatologist at Yale University who has studied chimpanzees and gorillas in the wild, found that while chimpanzees generally didn’t like people or show much interest in their affairs, gorillas were deeply curious. “I quickly realized that the gorillas not only wanted to touch me, but to climb all over me,” he said. In one famous incident, a female gorilla stuck her hand down the shirt of a female primatologist and started feeling around. That innate curiosity, researchers suggest, may explain some of Harambe’s behavior seen on the video of his fatal encounter with the boy who fell into his enclosure — fiddling with the boy’s clothing, taking a quick peek as he pulled the boy’s pants upward. He tried pulling the boy into a grotto, perhaps to protect him or to claim the fascinating new playmate for himself. But with the mounting commotion and screams from the onlookers above, researchers said, Harambe grew agitated and soon assumed the stance of a male silverback in dominance display mode. “It’s what we used to call strutting, and male gorillas do it all the time,” Dr. Watts said. “A silverback will stand or walk around with arms and legs stiffly extended, his hair piloerect, to make himself look bigger and more impressive. Harambe was definitely doing that when he was standing over the boy. ” The behavior is mostly bluster: If Harambe had been intent on killing the boy, Dr. Hrdy said, as an interloping male gorilla might kill the babies sired by the silverback he just deposed — the quicker to claim the resident females for himself — “he would have done it in seconds,” probably with a bite to the skull. Nevertheless, the strut introduced risks of its own, particularly when Harambe began dragging the boy around the enclosure, as a displaying gorilla will sometimes drag around a large branch. Dr. Watts, who said he had been “punched, knocked over and dragged” by male gorillas but never seriously injured, wishes he had been at the Cincinnati Zoo as the crisis unfolded. He would have volunteered to enter the enclosure and assume a submissive fetal position on the floor to try drawing the gorilla’s attention from the boy. (He admits he is engaging in a kind of Monday morning of his own.) The look and logic of zoos have changed drastically over time. When the first apes were exhibited in the West, in the late 18th century, they were seen as trophies, evidence of imperial victory over savagery. The unfortunate souvenirs usually died within months of their arrival from disease or malnutrition. As zoos sought to improve the health of their resident apes, the enclosures often assumed a blandly sterile configuration, devoid of risky foliage or toys. That approach led to problems of its own, like boredom, repetitive behaviors and depression. More recently, most zoos have worked hard to give apes the mental and emotional stimulation they need, with tires for swinging, rocks for climbing, social groups for mutual grooming or bouts of contagious laughing or yawning. Frans de Waal of Emory University and the Yerkes National Primate Research Center said he was a “big fan” of quality zoos, although perhaps not for large, gregarious animals like killer whales and elephants. “But for great apes, the record now is excellent,” he said. Their health is good, they reproduce readily in captivity and they live 10 years or more longer than their wild peers. Indeed, the first gorilla born in captivity, a female named Colo, is still alive at the zoo in Columbus, Ohio, for which she was named. She will turn 60 in December, a birthday the grandmother will not celebrate, zoo officials said, by wearing the adorable pinafore and straw bonnet her caretakers dressed her in as a youth. Dr. de Waal said that it was easier than ever to keep apes enriched and entertained. “They like to work on computers,” he said. “When you bring in a touch screen, they get excited about that, and it’s a great way to teach the public about how smart they are. ” But what the public must accept, he said, is that the pleasant notion of zoos as nurseries for restocking wild populations of endangered animals has proved a fantasy in all but a handful of cases, most notably the successful reintroduction of golden lion tamarins into the Atlantic Forests of Brazil. By contrast, when the British aristocrat Damian Aspinall released 11 of his lowland gorillas into the wilds of Gabon in 2014, five were soon violently dispatched, probably by a resident gorilla, while others disappeared. Yet critics say that zoo life has its serious downsides, too, as Harambe’s story made plain. The captive ape is the designated “ambassador” for its kind, an object lesson in evolutionary fraternity and shared fate for those of us who remain on the other side of the glass, proclaiming the primacy of human needs, desires and lives. | 1 |
Alas, Tyler, Hillary was/is an unapologetic booster of the fossil fuels industries, including making frequent trips abroad when she was Secretary of State boosting fracking technology. Like Obama, nothing with teeth was ever attempted by Hillary in the direction of environmentalism. In fact, quite the contrary.
You can research Hillary's anti-environmental history on your own, but here are two places to start ...
- https://theintercept.com/2016/...
- https://theintercept.com/2016/...
Also ...
- http://www.motherjones.com/env... | 0 |
After eluding prosecution in the United States for decades and escaping from prison twice in Mexico, the crime lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera, better known as El Chapo, appeared on Friday in federal court in Brooklyn and pleaded not guilty to charges that he had overseen a drug empire. Prosecutors said the operation had moved at least 200 tons of cocaine into the United States, had earned $14 billion in profits and had been protected by an army of assassins who killed thousands of people. Mr. Guzmán’s arraignment, in Federal District Court, was both a news media spectacle and a pro forma counterpoint to his sudden extradition from Mexico on Thursday afternoon, when a police jet flew him from the border to MacArthur Airport in Islip, on Long Island. The brief court proceeding took place under tight security, with police vehicles, heavily armed guards and dogs patrolling the grounds outside the courthouse. Dressed for his arraignment in a blue blue pajama pants and blue sneakers, Mr. Guzmán, 59, stood with his lawyers in front of Magistrate Judge James Orenstein in a courtroom packed with prosecutors, federal agents and reporters. “Are you Mr. Guzmán?” Judge Orenstein asked the defendant. “Sí, señor,” Mr. Guzmán said. The judge then asked Mr. Guzmán if he understood the charges he was facing. “Sí, señor,” he said again. Those charges had been detailed earlier on Friday at a news conference. At the briefing, Robert L. Capers, the United States attorney in Brooklyn, called the extradition of Mr. Guzmán, whose nickname means Shorty, a milestone in the pursuit of a trafficker who achieved mythic status in his homeland as a Robin outlaw and a serial prison escapee. Saying that Mr. Guzmán now faced life in prison on a charge of running a continuing criminal enterprise, Mr. Capers sought to play down Mr. Guzmán’s role as a folk hero and promised that he would not escape his American jailers. “Who is Chapo Guzmán?” Mr. Capers said, flanked by a phalanx of officials from local, state and federal agencies. “In short, he is a man who has known no other life than one of crime, violence, death and destruction. ” Even at a courthouse that has seen the prosecution of Mafia dons like John J. Gotti, the onetime Gambino family boss, and corrupt public officials like Meade Esposito, the former Brooklyn Democratic leader, the arrival of Mr. Guzmán sent a charge through the building, where scores of international reporters were on hand. In an extraordinary confluence of events, Mr. Guzmán was taken from Mexico by plane on the eve of the inauguration of Donald J. Trump and was arraigned in Brooklyn only hours after Mr. Trump was sworn in. After the hearing, he was returned to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, a federal jail that has housed some of New York’s federal defendants, including many facing terrorism charges. As the day began, prosecutors in Brooklyn issued a memo laying out their arguments for keeping Mr. Guzmán in custody. They noted his vast wealth and asserted his propensity for violence and his penchant for escaping Mexican prisons — most notably, the Altiplano prison, where he lived in isolation under surveillance. Nonetheless, he managed to flee after his associates dug a tunnel directly into his shower. Speaking at the news conference, Angel M. Melendez, the special agent in charge of Homeland Security investigations in New York, said he had been at the airport Thursday night when Mr. Guzmán arrived. Mr. Melendez said he looked into Mr. Guzmán’s eyes and saw “surprise, shock and even a bit of fear” now that he was facing “American justice. ” Mr. Guzmán’s escapes in Mexico came while he was serving a long sentence on offenses. Although officials at the gathering refused to discuss details about security measures, Mr. Melendez said, “I can assure you no tunnel will be built to his bathroom. ” Mr. Guzmán is facing charges in six federal districts, and Mr. Capers said the decision had been made to prosecute him in Brooklyn, with the assistance of federal prosecutors in Miami, because the two offices working together could bring “the most forceful punch” to the case against the leader of the Sinaloa cartel. Mr. Capers added that cases in Texas, in California, in Illinois and elsewhere would, for the moment, remain open. The investigation into Mr. Guzmán’s crimes was conducted by a host of agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In its memo filed Friday, Mr. Capers’s office said it would seek a criminal forfeiture of $14 billion against Mr. Guzmán and announced that it planned to call dozens of witnesses to testify about the staggering scope of Mr. Guzmán’s criminal enterprise: its shipments of drugs in trucks, planes, yachts, fishing vessels, container ships and submersibles, as well as its numerous killings of witnesses, law enforcement agents, public officials and rival cartel members. The memo also said the government had a vast array of physical evidence, including seized drug stashes and electronic surveillance recordings. The memorandum of law — supplemented with photographs of seized drugs and the planes, boats and submersibles used to smuggle them — reads like a history of the modern narcotics business. Prosecutors contend that Mr. Guzmán transformed the drug trade with unchecked brutality, remarkable efficiency and brazen corruption. The document tracks his progression from the 1980s, as a smuggler who transported Colombian cocaine to the United States and returned the profits to traffickers there so efficiently that he earned the nickname El Rápido, through the ’90s, when he began consolidating his control in Mexico. As Colombian traffickers faced increased enforcement of extradition laws, and thus greater threat of prosecution in the United States, they ceded elements of the distribution networks in the United States to Mexican cartels, according to the memo. As Mr. Guzmán’s operations grew, prosecutors say, they became increasingly sophisticated. Mr. Guzmán also established a complex communications network to allow him to speak covertly with his growing empire without detection by law enforcement, according to the memo. This included “the use of encrypted networks, multiple insulating layers of and methods of communicating with his workers. ” Mr. Guzmán also established distribution networks in New York, New Jersey, Georgia, Illinois, Texas and California and created “massive efforts that delivered billions of dollars in illegal profits generated from the cocaine sales in the United States to the Mexican traffickers and their Colombian partners,” the memo said. “These changes,” it added, “enabled Guzmán to exponentially increase his profits to staggering levels. ” | 1 |
LOS ANGELES — Here in Los Angeles, where nearly half of the city’s residents are Latino, Mayor Eric Garcetti has vowed to do everything he can to fight widespread deportations of illegal immigrants. In New York, with a large and diverse Latino population, Mayor Bill de Blasio has pledged not to cooperate with immigration agents. And Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago has declared that it “will always be a sanctuary city. ” Across the nation, officials in sanctuary cities are gearing up to oppose Donald J. Trump if he follows through on a campaign promise to deport millions of illegal immigrants. They are promising to maintain their policies of limiting local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration agents. In doing so, municipal officials risk losing millions of dollars in federal assistance for their cities that helps pay for services like fighting crime and running homeless shelters. Mr. Trump has vowed to block all federal funding for cities where local law enforcement agencies do not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. But as Mr. Trump prepares to take office, Democratic bastions, including Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco, have reaffirmed plans to defy the administration and act as a kind of bulwark against mass deportations. “I like to compare this to conscientious objector status,” said Mayor Libby Schaaf of Oakland, Calif. “We are not going to use our resources to enforce what we believe are unjust immigration laws. ” Supporters of tougher immigration policies, however, expect a swift response. Dan Stein, the president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which opposes legalization for unauthorized immigrants, predicted “a very aggressive, support for using the full power of the federal government to discourage this kind of interference. ” “These local politicians take it upon themselves to allow people who have been here for a long time to stay here and receive services,” Mr. Stein said. “The Trump administration is basically saying, ‘If you want to accommodate, don’t expect the rest of us to pay for your services. ’” Some believe Mr. Trump could go further than simply pulling federal funding, perhaps fighting such policies in court or even prosecuting city leaders. “This is uncharted territory in some ways, to see if they’re just playing chicken, or see if they will relent,” said Jessica Vaughan, the director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports reduced immigration. Cities have “gotten away with this for a long time because the federal government has never attempted to crack down on them,” Ms. Vaughan said. The fight could also signal a twist in the struggle over the power of the federal government, as this time liberal cities — rather than conservative states — resist what they see as federal intervention. Cities “may not have the power to give people rights,” said Muzaffar Chishti, the director of the Migration Policy Institute’s office at the New York University School of Law. “But they have a lot of power of resistance, and that’s what they’re displaying right now. ” No legal definition of sanctuary cities exists, and many mayors dislike the label, saying it unfairly describes policies that merely stop local law enforcement from acting as immigration deputies. Generally, the term refers to jurisdictions that have placed limits on when local law enforcement agencies comply with federal requests to hold undocumented immigrants for detention and turn them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Those requests greatly increased after the Obama administration extended nationwide an electronic monitoring system by which the fingerprints of every person booked by local or state police are sent to the Department of Homeland Security for checking against immigration databases. More than 500 counties and cities have some kind of policy limiting cooperation with the immigration authorities, according to an estimate from the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, an advocacy and legal assistance group in San Francisco and Washington. The latest fight is beginning to play out much like one that occurred in the when activists in the nation’s big cities resisted the immigration policies of the Reagan administration. Central Americans had become the subject of fierce political jockeying, and scores of churches opened their doors as sanctuaries to flout the Reagan White House. Members of churches and synagogues are again offering their houses of worship as sanctuaries for undocumented people fearing deportation, according to groups that work with immigrants and refugees. A network known as the “sanctuary movement” was revived in the past few years to take in those at risk of deportation by the Obama administration. In Oakland, a site of resistance a generation ago, Ms. Schaaf has no doubt that the community will again marshal its resources to help undocumented immigrants. The city is exploring ways to offer legal services to immigrants. “We do have many undocumented immigrants, but often these are residents who came to our city as toddlers. They have grown up here and gone to our public schools,” Ms. Schaaf said. “These are not illegal aliens, they are friends’ children, people sitting next to us in our church pews and on the bus. Here it feels much more personal. ” Oakland stands to lose as much as $140 million in federal funding for homeless shelters, meals for the elderly and preschool programs. Ms. Schaaf has started asking local philanthropists if they will put up money to replace any lost federal funds. “This is our highest priority as far as our response to this election,” she said. In the past, conservatives have embraced the notion that state and city officials can assert themselves with immigration laws. One of Mr. Trump’s immigration advisers is Kris W. Kobach, who helped write a law in Arizona that allowed the police to question people they detained about immigration status. That provision was upheld by the Supreme Court. Rudolph W. Giuliani, an adviser to Mr. Trump who is expected to join his administration, unsuccessfully sued the government in 1996, when he was the mayor of New York, over a federal law he said infringed on local protections for undocumented immigrants. The latest clash will be most acutely felt in California, home to an estimated 2. 3 million of the country’s 11 million undocumented immigrants. Not only does the state allow such immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses, but it also offers them college tuition and allows them to hold professional licenses to work as lawyers, architects and nurses. A state law passed in 2014 limits counties’ cooperation with federal officials. The policies came under renewed attack last year, after a young woman was shot by an immigrant with a criminal record who lived in the state illegally and had been released by the authorities in San Francisco. Los Angeles, which in 1979 became the first city to specifically bar officers from stopping people to ask about their immigration status, could lose as much as $500 million of its $9 billion budget. The amount includes money for antiterrorism programs and community health centers. “Taking away funding because our law enforcement will not act as federal agents would not only be irresponsible but immoral,” Mr. Garcetti said. “It would be an unprecedented overreach of federal executive power to take even more of our taxes away. ” Mr. de Blasio in New York has signaled that he will look for more ways to fight widespread deportations, and the city is directing undocumented immigrants to its free legal services. New York has the country’s largest municipal identification program and maintains a database of nearly a million people. Mr. de Blasio has pledged not to give any information from the program to the federal government. Melissa Keaney, a lawyer at the National Immigration Law Center, said the federal government could not compel states to carry out immigration enforcements. “Anything that tries to coerce a local government is going to be challenged because these agencies are only responsible for local arrests,” Ms. Keaney said. “Their responsibility is for carrying out public safety criminal law, and it is not within their responsibility or authority to act as federal agents. ” How much cities can fight off deportations, however, remains unclear. Legal experts say that city officials cannot bar immigration agents and that it is unlikely that they could declare a physical sanctuary on public property. Much of their resistance may lie in simply not cooperating. Rick Su, a law professor at the University at Buffalo who has researched immigration and local government, said that unless Mr. Trump ratchets up the number and reach of federal immigration agents, “it is difficult to see how he can achieve the two to three million removals that he has proposed without state and local assistance in identifying and detaining suspected unauthorized immigrants. ” For now, many city leaders are focusing on calming undocumented immigrants’ frayed nerves. Jorge Elorza, the mayor of Providence, R. I. and the son of undocumented Guatemalan immigrants who were eventually naturalized, stood behind a lectern one recent evening to reassure about 150 people who had filled a high school cafeteria. “Folks may feel threatened by what they hear,” Mr. Elorza told them, addressing the crowd in English and Spanish. “We will protect our communities and our families so they can continue to live their lives free of fear and safe in our communities. ” | 1 |
Bundy Family Redeemed with Not Guilty Verdict in Oregon Case October 28, 2016 Bundy Family Redeemed with Not Guilty Verdict in Oregon Case
A federal court jury delivered a surprise verdict on Thursday acquitting anti-governme leader Ammon Bundy and six followers of conspiracy charges stemming from their role in the armed takeover of a wildlife center in Oregon earlier this year. The outcome marked a stinging defeat for federal prosecutors and law enforcement in a trial the defendants sought to turn into a pulpit for airing their opposition to U.S. government control over millions of acres of public lands in the West. Bundy and others, including his brother and co-defendant Ryan Bundy, cast the 41-day occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge as a patriotic act of civil disobedience. Prosecutors called it a lawless scheme to seize federal property by force Article by Doc Burkhart , Vice-President, General Manager and co-host of TRUNEWS with Rick Wiles Got a news tip? Email us at Help support the ministry of TRUNEWS with your one-time or monthly gift of financial support. DONATE NOW ! DOWNLOAD THE TRUNEWS MOBILE APP! CLICK HERE! Donate Today! Support TRUNEWS to help build a global news network that provides a credible source for world news
We believe Christians need and deserve their own global news network to keep the worldwide Church informed, and to offer Christians a positive alternative to the anti-Christian bigotry of the mainstream news media Top Stories | 0 |
shorty By Darío Mizrahi T homas Sankara was a young communist officer who attempted to take Burkina Faso out of the neocolonial orbit of France, but was murdered by his closest comrades. During Sankara’s short time in power, Burkina Faso became self-sufficient in grains. “He was the first to forbid female genital mutilation, and included women in all realms of public administration.” His killer, Blaise Compaoré, ruled for 27 years, until run out of the country in 2014 . This article previously appeared in The Dawn [3] . “He created the Communist Officers’ Group, which overthrew the government on November 7, 1982.” Earlier this month, Burkina Faso began to exhume the remains of the leader that founded the country in 1984. They seek to reveal the murderous conspiracy that ended his life, after four years of leading a revolutionary government. Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara was born on December 21, 1949 in what is known today as Burkina Faso, but was then still a French colony called Alta Volta . When he finished secondary school, at 19, he began a prolific military career that would be inextricably linked to politics. Just 14 years later, Sankara made a coup d’état through armed struggle and an overwhelming support from the population and assumed the leadership of the country. Back then, he was already a symbol throughout the continent. Thanks to a combination of charisma, courage and intelligence and his undoubtedly revolutionary convictions, the world began to talk about “African Che Guevara.” Just like the Argentine guerrilla, he had an early, tragic death, due to the betrayal of his closest comrade. Now, 28 years after his murder, and after the work to exhume his remains began, to unveil his mysterious end, Infobae interviewed Spanish writer Antonio Lozano, one of the most notorious experts on the Burkinese leader. As a corollary to his investigations, in 2006 he published The Sankara Case (Almuzara Ed), a novel that combines historical accuracy with fiction to retell his eventful life and tragic murder. The creation of a revolutionary leader “Sankara wanted to be a doctor, but his family was poor and his only option if he wanted to study was to attend a military academy. He was a Christian and that was always a part of his ideology,” Lozano says. “Surprisingly, at the time many of the professors of the military academy were Marxists”, Lozano explained, “so there he came into contact with these ideas. When he finished the first level of studies, his good grades allowed him to train as an Official of the Army in Madagascar, a country where there were constant popular revolts”. When he returned to Alto Volta, Sankara had strong convictions and thought that it was essential to break with the colonial oppression of his nation, which was one of the poorest of the planet. They sent him to the city of Pô, where his military and political career began. He had soldiers under his command which he taught his ideas. And on the other hand he worked with the poor people of the city and earned their respect and admiration. “When he went to Rabat, Morocco, to take a course he met Blaise Compaoré, who became a great friend and comrade-in-arms of his, and who would later do the revolution with him. When he returned to Alto Volta, he participated in a short war against Mali, where he shined for an incursion he did with his men and made him famous and praised by the population,” the historian says. “Sankara had strong convictions and thought that it was essential to break with the colonial oppression of his nation, which was one of the poorest of the planet.” I n 1981, he was appointed Secretary of Information of the State. But six months after, he announced his resignation in an explosive press conference, in which he denounced the authoritarianism of the government and the attempts to “put a gag on the people.” This consolidated his fame as one of the most notorious figures of the country. He had created, together with Campaoré and other members of the Armed Forces, the Communist Officers’ Group. This group overthrew the government on November 7, 1982, and appointed a new President: Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo. Sankara was appointed Prime Minister in January 1983. “Muammar Khadafi, who was already governing Linya and was one of the biggest figures of Arab socialism at the time, invited him to his country and considered him a comrade. At that time, every rally he held in Alto Volta was attended by thousands.” But France wouldn’t have this. “Due to the pressure of France and the right-wing coalition that was still in the government, he was imprisoned”, Lozano recounts. “So Compaoré and his allies started to act” to get him released, and “with the help of mass mobilizations of the Burkinese people”, they recovered Sankara from the claws of the metropoli. In August 4, 1983, they took the power through armed struggle. At 33, he was appointed president and the Sankara’s Revolution began. The foundation of a new country “He created a revolutionary process that was unheard of in Africa. On August 4, 1984, he changed the name of Alto Volta to Burkina Faso, which means “Land of the Honest People” which reflects his struggle against corruption, an endemic disease of African governments. He lead by example: he continued earning the same amount he made as Captain of the Army, sold all of the expensive cars owned by the state and adopted as official vehicle the cheapest car in the market, the Renault 5.” He decreased the salaries of all public officers, forbade the use of chauffeurs and mandated that all ministers had to travel in tourist class. He also stood against nepotisms and didn’t allow family-members to work for the state. His austerity was a characteristic that defined him until his death. “At the time he was murdered, his only possessions were a mortgaged house and three bikes” Lozano says. The other main axis of his administration was the incentive to education and culture. “In a single year, the alphabetization rate went from 12 to 36%, and it kept raising thanks to the rural schools he created throughout the country.” He also made great advances in health. He created vaccination commands that in just a few months immunized almost all Burkinese children against infectious diseases that were causing great harm. “At the time he was murdered, his only possessions were a mortgaged house and three bikes.” B ut the greatest revolution he led was the one in favor of women’s rights . He was the first to forbid female genital mutilation. He promoted the celebration of March 8 and included women in all realms of public administration. In the economic aspect, “he made an agrarian reform that redistributed land and gave out fertilizers and seeds to peasants, and created small dams. Through this, he managed to make Burkina Faso one of the few countries of the region to acquire self-sufficiency in the cereal supply, which is the base of the population’s diet.” Sankara knew that in order to be able to implement his agenda of reforms, he had to achieve “economic independence” for the country. This led him to confront the international financial system, and particularly the French one. Despite the declaration of independence, the country was still heavily tied to its former metropoli. The refusal to pay the external debt, which had been taken by previous governments, was one of his main measures. “In his last big speech, which he gave in September 1987 in the context of the General Assembly of the African Union, he defended these ideas once again and said that if they didn’t stand with him, he wouldn’t be there the following year. And, in fact, he didn’t live to see the 1988 assembly,” the biographer said. “He said that the only one with the ability to kill him was Blaise Compaoré, because he knew him better than anybody else.” S ankara had made powerful enemies, both inside and outside the country. “He saw the end coming. In an interview he gave 15 days before his death to a newspaper from Belgium, when they asked about potential conspiracies he said that the only one with the ability to kill him was Blaise Compaoré, because he knew him better than anybody else. His circle told him several times to cut him off because he was a threat. But his answer was always the same: he was like a brother.” Compaoré disagreed with many of Sankara’s policies, especially with the ones that restricted the acts of public officers. On October 15, 1987, an armed group entered Thomas Sankara’s office while he was in a meeting with the 12 members of the National Council of the Revolution. Sankara, who was 37 at the time, was murdered along with the rest of the attendants. Simultaneously, Compaoré made a coup d’état and became the President of Burkina Faso. He stayed in power for 27 years, until mass revolts forced him to flee the country in 2014. Source URL: http://blackagendareport.com/thomas_sankara_murdered_29_years_ago | 0 |
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Alyssa had known that having a baby wouldn't be easy. According to Fox News 5 , a variety of health problems — including cerebral palsy, hyperthyroidism, and diabetes — guaranteed that her pregnancy would qualify as a high risk one.
Still, she and her husband wanted nothing more than to be parents. Image Credit: Alyssa Young/Independent Journal Review
So, when Alyssa learned she was pregnant, it was a joyous moment in what had been a very difficult year for their family. Immediately, Alyssa decided that if the baby was a girl, she would name her “Scarlett Faye” after the two most important women in her life — her mother and her recently deceased grandmother. Alyssa tells Independent Journal Review:
“The joy I felt was indescribable. I loved being pregnant. It's all I talked about, thought about, and dreamed about. From the moment I found out that there was life inside of me, I thought that this baby was a blessing sent to us all. She was going to shed light on this terrible year everyone had had.”
The pregnancy progressed better than Alyssa could have hoped. She learned that her baby would be a girl, and that little Scarlett was growing as expected. Then, at 20 weeks, Alyssa started experiencing pain and minor bleeding.
At first, her discomfort was dismissed as normal pregnancy aches. However, when the pain got worse, Alyssa headed to the hospital, praying all the way that everything would be fine.
Once at the hospital, the on-call obstetrician told Alyssa that she had an incompetent cervix. While Alyssa was willing to undergo a procedure to address the issue, the doctor explained that it wouldn't help. The only hope lay in strict bed rest and medication that might stop her from dilating further. Alyssa tells Independent Journal Review:
“After the doctor left the room, Justin laid over the bed rail, grabbed my right hand, and just sobbed. I wrapped my left arm around him and kissed his head, and cried with him. ... We held each other and cried together for what seemed like forever. That night seemed very long. I tossed and turned, prayed and thought. I begged God for everything to be okay. She was our blessing and I couldn't stand think of losing her.”
Sadly, the next day, Alyssa learned that the measures they had tried hadn't worked. Her baby was on its way. The grief she felt was mixed with the feeling that she had failed as a mother:
“I felt like I had failed. I felt like I failed him [her husband] and our daughter. All I could spit out was 'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.' I must have repeated that a dozen times.”
Scarlett Faye was born at 20 weeks gestation, weighing less than a pound. Image Credit: Alyssa Young/Independent Journal Review
Alyssa describes the beauty of her newborn daughter:
“She was perfection. She was very well developed, and the most perfect combination between her father and I. She holds a special place in our hearts. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of her. My little girl yesterday, my angel today, my daughter forever.”
As the nurses gave Alyssa her daughter to hold for the first time, the new mom found that there was so much she wanted to tell her baby. She tells Independent Journal Review:
“I held Scarlett on my chest and cried into hers. I studied her face, so it'd forever be imprinted in my mind. I studied her body, her toes, her ribs. Everything. ... I told her that I was so sorry. I told her I loved her. I told her it was okay to let go. ... Everyone took their turns and held her. Everyone got to love her. That's all she ever experienced was love.”
Alyssa's memories of her daughter are illuminated by love. Image Credit: Alyssa Young/Independent Journal Review
She explains to Independent Journal Review that though her daughter only lived for two hours, every moment of that time was filled with the love of family:
“She felt love. That is it. In the two hours that she was alive, she fought to stay with us. In those two hours, she was cuddled, kissed, hugged, and loved. She went peacefully. Justin and I got to be with her two whole days before we went home. I was able to cuddle her body, change her dirty diapers, bathe her, and love her. While in the hospital, I never left her side.”
Alyssa says she isn't sharing her story to gain sympathy. Rather, she hopes that she can help other women from experiencing the same loss by raising awareness of the problem of incompetent cervix. Image Credit: Alyssa Young/Independent Journal Review
She has set up a Facebook page to help women going through pregnancy loss and tells Independent Journal Review that she wants to make a difference for her daughter, as well as for other babies who were taken too soon:
“Scarlett along with all the other babies, deserves justice. Even those who have lost their littles too soon for other reasons. We need to stand together and fight for our babies.” | 0 |
Donald Trump Tells Veterans He’s ‘Financially Brave’ ‹ › Since 2011, VNN has operated as part of the Veterans Today Network ; a group that operates over 50 plus media, information and service online sites for U.S. Military Veterans. Donald Trump’s Final Rally: Grand Rapids, MI 11/7/16 By VNN on November 7, 2016 Make America Great Again
“Put an End to decades of Clinton corruption…” Mike Pence, said.
“Do you want America to be ruled by the corrupt political class or do you want America to be ruled again by the people?” Trump asked.
“I want the entire corrupt Washington establishment to hear the words we are about to say. When we win on November 8, we are going to drain the swamp” Trump said.
“Tomorrow the American working class will strike back.” Trump said.
Donald J. Trump for President FINAL rally in Grand Rapids, MI at Devo’s Place. Trump’s final pitch – A 2 minute Ad airing in all battleground States: | 0 |
Birleşik Krallık, Suriye’de cihatçıları eğitmeye yeniden başlıyor Voltaire İletişim Ağı | 2 Kasım 2016 français Español Deutsch Português italiano İngiliz Savunma Bakanı Michael Fallon, ülkesinin Özgür Suriye Ordusunu yeniden oluşturacağını duyurdu. Böylece İngiliz Hükümeti, 2014 yılında Başkan Obama tarafından başlatılan « ılımlı » olarak adlandırılan savaşçıların eğitim programını yeniden başlatıyor.
Özgür Suriye Ordusu, 2011 yılında El-Kaide’nin Libyalı önderi Abdülhakim Belhac çevresinde Fransa tarafından oluşturuldu. Söz konusu operasyon, Albay Riyad el-Esat önderliğinde Suriye Ordusundan firar edenlere yapılan bir yardım olarak sunulmuştu. Daha sonra ÖSO üyeleri zamanla El-Kaide’ye katıldı. 2016 yılında, ÖSO etiketi, Türkmen milisleri için bu adı kullanan Türkiye tarafından yeniden canlandırıldı.
ABD’ye gelince, yeni « isyancı savaşçıların » eğitimi için bir buçuk milyar dolar harcamıştı. Öte yandan bu eğitilen insanların tümü bugün El-Kaide’ye katılmış durumdadır.
Dolayısıyla da İngilizlerin yeni programlarının, El-Kaide’ye yönelik yeni bir örtülü yardım olması kuvvetle muhtemel.
Çeviri
Osman Soysal | 0 |
Continuing to treat a victory over Senator Bernie Sanders as a fait accompli, Hillary Clinton on Sunday questioned Donald J. Trump’s business record and assailed his ideas, warning that the coming weeks represented a critical period in which, if left unchallenged, Mr. Trump could “normalize himself” as he seeks to broaden his support. But Mr. Sanders pointed to polls showing Mrs. Clinton with dangerously high percentages of people who have unfavorable views of her and asked whether a choice between her and Mr. Trump in the fall would force voters to pick the “lesser of two evils. ” Even as she contends with Mr. Sanders’s unflagging critique from the left, Mrs. Clinton said it was vital for her to pivot to confront Mr. Trump now, lest he successfully repackage himself for wider consumption, rather than appealing to the Republican primary electorate alone. “I do not want Americans and, you know, Republicans, as well as Democrats and independents, to start to believe that this is a normal candidacy,” Mrs. Clinton said of Mr. Trump’s campaign on NBC’s “Meet the Press. ” “I know he has a plurality of Republicans who have voted for him,” she added. “But I think in the course of this campaign, we are going to demonstrate he has no ideas. There’s no evidence he has any ideas about making America great, as he advertises. He seems to be particularly focused on making himself appear great. And as we go through this campaign, we’re going to be demonstrating the hollowness of his rhetoric. ” Mrs. Clinton also poked at Mr. Trump’s failure to release his tax returns. Told that Mark Cuban, the media executive and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, had expressed interest in being her running mate, Mrs. Clinton said she was “absolutely” open to considering business leaders, not just elected officials. “Businesspeople, especially successful businesspeople, who are really successful — as opposed to pretend successful — I think, have a lot to offer,” said Mrs. Clinton, whose campaign has begun taunting Mr. Trump with a #PoorDonald hashtag on Twitter, suggesting that he is not nearly as wealthy as he claims. Mr. Trump has cited an audit by the Internal Revenue Service as his reason for keeping his tax returns private. “We’ve got to get below the hype,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I think we’re beginning to find out, but I don’t think we know enough, and that’s why he should release his tax returns. ” In choosing a running mate, Mrs. Clinton said she would seek, above all, someone prepared to be president and “someone you can work with — someone you believe will be a good partner. ” Mrs. Clinton’s intense focus on Mr. Trump came as a new ABC Post poll showed the two among registered voters in a general election matchup, after Mrs. Clinton had led by nine percentage points in March. Voters have widely unfavorable opinions of both candidates: 53 percent expressed such a view about Mrs. Clinton and 60 percent about Mr. Trump. Mr. Sanders, however, vowed on Sunday to fight all the way to the Democratic convention in July, pointing to polls that indicated he would fare better against Mr. Trump than Mrs. Clinton would. In several television interviews, he complained that Democratic superdelegates had thrown their support to Mrs. Clinton before he had even entered the race. “I ask those superdelegates to take a look at which candidate is the stronger to defeat Donald Trump,” Mr. Sanders said on ABC’s “This Week. ” “I don’t want to see the American people voting for the lesser of two evils. ” When the host George Stephanopoulos followed up by asking if he saw Mrs. Clinton as “the lesser of two evils,” Mr. Sanders backed away slightly. “Well, if you look at — no, I wouldn’t describe it, but that’s what the American people are saying,” he said, citing her unfavorable ratings. Mr. Sanders and Mrs. Clinton will be campaigning hard in California, which holds its primary on June 7. In Vista, Calif. on Sunday, Mr. Sanders told a cheering crowd that he was the strongest Democratic candidate to defeat Mr. Trump and that he hoped to have 50 percent of the total pledged delegates by the end of voting. He also stressed that his campaign had more “enthusiasm” and “energy” than his rival’s. “Our vision of social justice, of economic justice, of racial justice and of environmental justice — our vision is the future of this country,” Mr. Sanders said. “And I hope the leadership of the Democratic Party understands it must be the vision of the Democratic Party. ” Mrs. Clinton drew criticism from some Democrats and Republicans recently after telling voters she would put her husband, former President Bill Clinton, “in charge of revitalizing the economy” and job creation. On Sunday, she clarified her intentions, saying his role would be advisory, not ministerial. “I am going to ask my husband, who has a great track record in creating jobs, putting people back to work, revitalizing communities, to be in an advisory role working with me, working with our cabinet, to try to figure out what we can do” in particularly areas, Mrs. Clinton said on NBC. “You know, every first lady has taken on special projects. ” | 1 |
KABUL, Afghanistan — The newly appointed attorney general of Logar Province, just one hour into his job, was among seven people killed on Sunday when two Taliban insurgents attacked as his inauguration ceremony was ending, Afghan government officials said. Salim Saleh, the spokesman for the governor of Logar, said the insurgents attacked the location of the ceremony in the appeals court building in the provincial capital, at 10:30 a. m. killing the new attorney general, Akram Nejat, and four other government employees as well as two civilians. others were wounded. The episode was the third attack in Afghanistan in the past two weeks. The Taliban immediately claimed responsibility for the Logar attack. Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said the attack was revenge for the government’s execution of six Taliban prisoners last month, the first such executions in years. Ahmad Nader Naderi, a senior adviser to President Ashraf Ghani, said that Mr. Nejat was one of more than 100 new judicial officials appointed in an anticorruption drive. The appointments were reviewed personally by Mr. Ghani, who took the news of Mr. Nejat’s assassination hard, Mr. Naderi said. “Tell his family I’m very saddened,” Mr. Naderi quoted the president as saying. Mr. Naderi said that attacks on judicial workers reflected an effort by insurgents to undermine faith in the government’s anticorruption drive. The authorities in Logar said the two attackers had apparently hidden inside the courthouse the night before, and attacked from inside once the ceremony had ended, as officials were exchanging congratulations and meeting . Fighting went on for 90 minutes before the attackers were killed by Afghan police forces, Mr. Saleh said. The authorities had said earlier that three attackers were involved, but revised that number downward when only two bodies were found. Last week, Taliban insurgents, dressed in burqas, attacked a courthouse in Ghazni Province, killing six people, most of them civilians. The Taliban also attacked a minibus carrying court employees in Kabul on May 25, killing 10 officials. In a second attack on Sunday, a prominent member of the Afghan parliament, Sher Wali Wardak, was killed by a bomb planted in the electric meter box on the wall outside his home in Kabul, said Gen. Zaher Zaher, the head of the ministry of interior’s criminal investigation division. The Taliban also claimed responsibility for that killing. | 1 |
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As Election Day approaches, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton knows that she must be able to count on the votes of the black community, a bloc that has been a reliable Democratic constituency for decades.
In light of some of the revelations in the WikiLeaks e-mail dump, the Clinton campaign is worried that they may actually have a fight on their hands on Tuesday for the support of African Americans.
Even President Obama senses the danger.
In an article covering a campaign stop in North Carolina made by the current Oval Office occupant, CBS News reported on November 3 that Obama "worries now the black vote 'is not as solid as it needs to be' for Hillary Clinton."
His fears may be well-founded. Here's the situation as reported by CBS News: An Associated Press analysis of early voting data in North Carolina shows blacks have cast 111,000 fewer ballots than at this point four years ago, when Obama lost the state by about 92,000 votes. Clinton aides note that GOP officials there reduced early voting sites for the initial week of early voting, and they say they can make up the difference by Election Day now that more sites are opening. Black voters’ share of early ballots request is also down a few percentage points in Florida and Ohio, though the Clinton campaign points to strong early turnout in key urban counties with large numbers of blacks and Hispanics.
It's not as if Hillary Clinton is just sitting back, trusting that blacks will show up for her on Election Day. She's attacking her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, calling him a threat to the black community. Again, from CBS News: Her [Hillary Clinton's] campaign is broadcasting an ad on black-audience radio stations hailing the former secretary of state as “fighting for us,” in contrast to Trump “demeaning our community.” A female voice in the ad says, “Listen to how he talks about us.” One audio clip has Trump singling out a black supporter at a rally in California: “Look at my African-American over here,” he said. In another, Trump lambasted Obama as “the most ignorant president in our history.”
There is evidence, however, that some black voters are focused less on what Trump said about President Obama in a stump speech and more on what Clinton said about African Americans when she thought no one was listening.
Black Conservatives Fund (BCF), a non-profit organization dedicated to representing the views of center-right African American voters, just launched a targeted paid media campaign intended to reach minority millennial voters in swing states who are still considering the qualities of the two major party candidates running for the White House.
Their advertising features two spots highlighting Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton’s previous comments expressing contempt for black Americans, calling them “super-predators” and claiming they’d make up her “firewall” against Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the 2016 primary.
The ad, “Hillary Hates,” features the candidate’s 1996 comments where she was caught using racially divisive undertones to champion a bill that ultimately locked up a generation of black men. The ad also uses 2016 footage of her run-ins with Black Lives Matter protesters. “We’re not just the only conservative group going after black voters on television — we’re the only group, period,” Black Conservatives Fund Senior Adviser Ali Akbar said.
With a television buy in Ohio and North Carolina, the ad is supplemented by a sizable digital buy that spans across Facebook, Instagram, and smaller, highly targeted web publications. The cable time has been reserved across BET, CNN, ESPN, HGTV, and USA networks in these states.
The digital ad buy stretches into at least three other states not being targeted on television. In total, the group has planned a six-figure commitment to their advertising campaign for the remainder of the 2016 general election, hoping to move the needle away from a candidate who, when the election isn't days away, uses language to describe black voters that would cause substantial media furor if such statements were made by a Republican presidential hopeful.
“Make no mistake: our aim isn’t to suppress African American votes. Instead, we’re telling black voters to make sure they participate in this election, but they need to remember what Hillary Clinton thinks of them,” Akbar said. “We are confident that our message will have significant reach, since Democrats have neglected advertising to them this cycle.”
Akbar's message might be reaching the right homes, as even the New York Times has reported that early voting among blacks is down in key states and that this electoral anomaly might turn out to be "canary in a coal mine" indicating that black voters aren't as monolithic or as easily duped as the Clinton campaign and the DNC thinks they are. From the Times article published on November 1: African-Americans are failing to vote at the robust levels they did four years ago in several states that could help decide the presidential election, creating a vexing problem for Hillary Clinton as she clings to a deteriorating lead over Donald J. Trump with Election Day just a week away. As tens of millions of Americans cast ballots in what will be the largest-ever mobilization of early voters in a presidential election, the numbers have started to point toward a slump that many Democrats feared might materialize without the nation’s first black president on the ticket.
For its part, the BCF has not been a backer of Trump from the beginning. In fact, during the primary campaign, the group endorsed, contributed to, and made independent expenditures for Dr. Ben Carson and then Senator Ted Cruz.
Subsequently, BCF focused on down-ballot races and driving Hillary Clinton’s negatives higher with black voters. The PAC has been recognized by outlets such as National Review for being one of the most efficient grassroots PACs.
“Once every four years the black community is courted then subsequently abandoned by Hillary Clinton Democrats,” Akbar concluded. “Amid numerous protests by black millennials against Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, the black vote was again taken for granted. No more.”
Despite the valiant efforts of the BCF and other constitutionally minded, liberty-loving black voters, it is almost certain that Hillary Clinton will run away with the black vote by a substantial margin.
That isn't the issue, though. The issue is that we may be witnessing the early days of a generational shift by the African American community away from being a Democratic Party "fire wall" — as Clinton dismissively declared them — and toward being a voting bloc that doesn't turn a blind eye to the disrespectful and dismissive way it has been treated by a Democratic Party that does little to improve the quality of life of this important and politically powerful minority. | 0 |
The Food and Drug Administration on Friday took steps to safeguard the nation’s blood supply from the Zika virus, calling for all blood banks to screen donations for the infection even in states where the virus is not circulating. The recommendations are an acknowledgment that sexual transmission may facilitate the spread of Zika even in areas where mosquitoes carrying the virus are not present. Officials also want to prepare for the possibility that clusters of local infection will continue to pop up in parts of the United States for years to come. “There could be multiple outbreaks of Zika happening outside the known current ones in South Florida, but because we are not actively looking they could be happening silently,” said Dr. Peter J. Hotez, the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, who applauded the F. D. A. ’s move. Without federal funds, it is generally not possible for local health departments to conduct active surveillance for Zika virus in the blood or urine of patients with fever or rash, he added. “In some ways the inaction from Congress has forced the F. D. A. to adopt this position,” Dr. Hotez added. “They have no other choice. ” The agency urged blood centers to use one of two experimental tests intended to detect active infections, called nucleic acid tests, before releasing donated blood for use in transfusions. As an alternative, banks may decontaminate plasma and platelets with pathogen reduction technology. But the recommendations are likely to pose a significant challenge for some blood banks and for the labs that perform much of the blood screening nationwide, some experts said. Eleven states must put the new safeguards into place within four weeks. They include Alabama, Arizona, California, Georgia, Louisiana, New York and Texas, which have many residents who travel to countries or are near an area that already has locally acquired cases. Other states have 12 weeks to carry out the recommendations. “This is a bombshell, because this is extremely rapid introduction of a new test nationwide that’s almost unprecedented,” said Dr. Jeffrey McCullough, emeritus professor of laboratory medicine and pathology at the University of Minnesota Medical School. “To try to implement this, in four weeks, is really, really difficult. ” Yet the new safeguards also are necessary, Dr. McCullough said. Under current guidelines, it is too difficult to identify infected donors by “trying to sort out risky donors by history of where they’ve been or what they’ve exposed to. ” Nationwide, nearly 14 million units of whole blood and red blood cells are collected each year from about seven million donors. Every day, as many as 36, 000 units of red blood cells are given to patients, along with 7, 000 platelet units and 10, 000 units of plasma. Consistent screening of the blood supply is an enormous task. There are more than 11, 500 confirmed cases of Zika virus in states and territories, according to the C. D. C. Nearly 2, 500 of them are people in the continental United States who traveled abroad where mosquitoes are circulating. More than 30 cases were acquired in Florida. Puerto Rico has been screening all blood donations since March. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in June found that a surprisingly high percentage of donors had signs of active infection with the Zika virus. The F. D. A. provisionally approved two screening tests for Zika in blood donations on an investigational basis in March and June respectively. The first is made by Roche Molecular Systems, and the second by a collaboration between Hologic Inc. and Grifols. Neither test is fully F. D. A approved yet, and the facilities using them are enrolled in a continuing study. As part of Roche’s investigation, four centralized testing labs that screen blood for multiple banks in the South have been “collecting and testing blood for weeks now,” said Tony Hardiman, who leads the blood screening operations at Roche. For the 11 states that need to be ready in a month, he said, “we are pretty much locked and loaded. ” “Our focus now is what do we do for the rest of the country to bring them up in 12 weeks,” he added. Officials at Blood Systems, which operates blood banks in 24 states, said they will be able to test blood donations in California and some Southern states like Mississippi in a month. The company will then work on getting sites in the Rocky Mountain States operational, said Dr. Ralph R. Vassallo Jr. the chief medical and scientific officer. Creative Testing Solutions, a large blood donor testing lab, already is using both experimental Zika screening tests. In Tampa, the company has relied on Roche’s test since the Zika outbreaks began in County. In its Dallas and Phoenix outposts, C. T. S. has installed two Panther machines to be able to screen tubes of blood with the test, in case mosquitoes arrive along the Gulf Coast. In light of Friday’s F. D. A. recommendations, officials said they will have to train more employees to use new tests and significantly scale up. “We test 35 percent of the blood supply, so in order to be able to do that in all states in 12 weeks, we are going to need additional pieces of equipment,” said Marc Pearce, a spokesman for C. T. S. — 12 more Panthers and one more machine that runs the Roche test. Asked on a conference call with reporters about funding the new safeguards, Dr. Peter Marks, the director of the F. D. A. ’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said, “I can’t speak to the cost of implementation at this time. ” Hospitals may wind up paying more for each unit of blood because of additional screening costs, some experts said. “When hospitals hear this, they will be concerned that they could see a cost increase of up to $8 more per unit,” Dr. Vassallo said, which is roughly how much it costs to screen each unit for the Zika contamination. This month, after the first cases of local transmission in Miami were discovered, some blood banks near Zika hot zones in Florida began screening blood donations. According to Dr. Marks, one donation contaminated with the virus had been found in recent weeks in the state. The bag of contaminated blood was discarded. “The system worked correctly,” Dr. Marks said. | 1 |
(Associated Press) The Obama administration is ending the “wet foot, dry foot” policy that granted residency to Cubans who arrived in the United States without visas. [That’s according to a senior administration official, who said the policy change was effective immediately. The official said the U. S. and Cuba have spent several months negotiating the change, including an agreement from Cuba to allow those turned away from the U. S. to return. The move comes about a week before President Barack Obama leaves office and is likely the last major change he will make to his overhaul of the U. S. relationship with Cuba. The official insisted on anonymity in order to detail the policy ahead of an official announcement. | 1 |
Excerpted from War Is A Lie by David Swanson.
W ars are not fought against flags or ideas, nations or demonized dictators. They are fought against people, 98 percent of whom are resistant to killing, and most of whom had little or nothing to do with bringing on the war. One way to dehumanize those people is to replace all of them with an image of a single monstrous individual.
Marlin Fitzwater, White House press secretary for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, said that war is “easier for people to understand if there’s a face to the enemy.” He gave examples: “Hitler, Ho Chi Minh, Saddam Hussein, Milosevic.” Fitzwater might well have included the name Manuel Antonio Noriega. When the first President Bush sought, among other things, to prove he was no “wimp” by attacking Panama in 1989, the most prominent justification was that Panama’s leader was a mean, drug-crazed, weirdo with a pockmarked face who liked to commit adultery. An important article in the very serious New York Times on December 26, 1989, began “The United States military headquarters here, which has portrayed General Manuel Antonio Noriega as an erratic, cocaine-snorting dictator who prays to voodoo gods, announced today that the deposed leader wore red underwear and availed himself of prostitutes.” Never mind that Noriega had worked for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), including at the time he’d stolen the 1984 election in Panama. (U.S. outrage at interference in elections is extremely new.) Never mind that his real offense was refusing to back U.S. war making against Nicaragua. Never mind that the United States had known about Noriega’s drug trafficking for years and continued working with him. This man snorted cocaine in red underwear with women not his wife. “That is aggression as surely as Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Poland 50 years ago was aggression,” declared Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger of Noriega’s drug trafficking. The invading U.S. liberators even claimed to find a big stash of cocaine in one of Noriega’s homes, although it turned out to be tamales wrapped in banana leaves. And what if the tamales really had been cocaine? Would that, like the discovery of actual “weapons of mass destruction” in Baghdad in 2003 have justified war?
Fitzwater’s reference to “Milosevic” was, of course, to Slobodan Milosevic, then president of Serbia, whom David Nyhan of the Boston Globe in January 1999 called “the closest thing to Hitler Europe has confronted in the last half century.” Except, you know, for all the other ones. By 2010, the practice in U.S. domestic politics of comparing anyone you disagreed with to Hitler had become almost comical, but it is a practice that has helped launch many wars and may still launch more. However, it takes two to tango: in 1999, Serbs were calling the president of the United States “Bill Hitler.”
In the spring of 1914, in a movie theater in Tours, France, an image of Wilhelm II, the Emperor of Germany, came on the screen for a moment. All hell broke loose.
“Everybody yelled and whistled, men, women, and children, as if they had been personally insulted. The good natured people of Tours, who knew no more about the world and politics than what they had read in their newspapers, had gone mad for an instant,” according to Stefan Zweig. But the French would not be fighting Kaiser Wilhelm II. They would be fighting ordinary people who happened to be born a little ways away from themselves in Germany.
Increasingly, over the years, we’ve been told that wars are not against people, but purely against bad governments and their evil leaders. Time after time we fall for tired rhetoric about new generations of “precision” weapons that our leaders pretend can target oppressive regimes without harming the people we think we’re liberating. And we fight wars for “regime change.” If the wars don’t end when the regime has been changed, that’s because we have a responsibility to take care of the “unfit” creatures, the little children, whose regimes we’ve changed. Yet, there’s no established record of this doing any good. The United States and its allies did relatively well by Germany and Japan following World War II, but could have done so for Germany following World War I and skipped the sequel. Germany and Japan were reduced to rubble, and U.S. troops have yet to leave. That’s hardly a useful model for new wars.
With wars or warlike actions the United States has overthrown governments in Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Nicaragua, Honduras, Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, Chile, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq, not to mention the Congo (1960); Ecuador (1961 & 1963); Brazil (1961 & 1964); the Dominican Republic (1961 & 1963); Greece (1965 & 1967); Bolivia (1964 & 1971); El Salvador (1961); Guyana (1964); Indonesia (1965); Ghana (1966); and of course Haiti (1991 & 2004). We’ve replaced democracy with dictatorship, dictatorship with chaos, and local rule with U.S. domination and occupation.
In no case has a U.S. war clearly reduced evil. In most cases, including Iran and Iraq, U.S. invasions and U.S.-backed coups have led to severe repression, disappearances, extra-judicial executions, torture, corruption, and prolonged setbacks for the democratic aspirations of ordinary people.
The focus on rulers in wars is not motivated by humanitarianism so much as propaganda. People enjoy fantasizing that a war is a duel between great leaders. This requires demonizing one and glorifying another.
This article was originally published at DavidSwanson.org . Share: | 0 |
Social media erupted after Avengers director Joss Whedon attacked President Donald Trump’s Jared Kushner and compared his wife, Ivanka Trump, to a dog. [“Hey, keep your eyes on this fu*king prize too. He’s a Voldemort in training,” Whedon wrote on Twitter Tuesday, sharing a photo of Jared Kushner standing next to Trump in the Oval Office. “Unlike the Pekingese he married under, can play the long game,” Whedon wrote, comparing Ivanka to the dog breed. Hey, keep your eyes on this fucking prize too. He’s a Voldemort in training, unlike the Pekingese he married under, can play the long game pic. twitter. — Joss Whedon (@joss) January 24, 2017, Social media users didn’t hesitate to call the director out for his attacks on President Trump’s children. @joss Just so we’re on the same page here. You just called Ivanka a dog because you don’t agree with Trump. Classy. — Ryan (@rylandes) January 24, 2017, @joss The left used to be better than this. You used to be better than this. — Actually Three Guns (@NotThreeGuns) January 24, 2017, Some users pointed out what they called Whedon’s hypocrisy in attacking Ivanka Trump the director is a feminist. @joss Maybe next time just come out and say ”bitch”. You ain’t fooling anyone with ”Pekingese”. Is this how you fight for women’s rights? — Priest Of Gamers 🕹 (@AndyFrogman) January 24, 2017, @rylandes @GolightlyGrl427 @joss And he supposedly supports women … I guess just the ones who wear fake vaginas on their faces, — Ster (@Ster24080753) January 24, 2017, @joss wow calling his wife a dog? I guess it’s OK to demean women as long as you don’t like them or their husbands, eh? — Dick Gazinya (@JaDingo) January 24, 2017, Shortly after Trump’s victory in November, Whedon said Trump cannot “cannot be allowed a term in office. ” “It’s not about 2018. It’s about RIGHT NOW,” he wrote. The has also used social media to attack other members of the Republican party. Earlier this month, Whedon wrote on Twitter that he hoped House Speak Paul Ryan would be killed in a gruesome way. “Violence solves nothing. I want a rhino to fuck @SpeakerRyan to death with its horn because it’s FUNNY, not because he’s a #GOPmurderbro,” he wrote. Whedon also posted a meme mocking Nicole Kidman as being a “puppet for Trump” after the actress said Americans need to rally around Trump. During the campaign, the director launched the Save the Day PAC, which supported Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential bid. In September, he gathered together cast members of his Avengers films, including Robert Downey Jr. Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo and Don Cheadle, for an political PSA. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson | 1 |
German police are said to have uncovered evidence of a plot to carry out chemical attacks in British seaside towns while raiding a huge migrant camp. [The authorities were searching the camp for Christmas market killer Anis Amri, but the Tunisian migrant easily evaded his pursuers by taking advantage of the European Union’s borderless Schengen Area, travelling through several countries before being discovered by two Italian police officers in a random . He shot and injured one of them in the ensuing gunfight, before being killed by rookie cop Luca Scatà. What the German police did find, according to the Sunday Express, were partially burned documents describing toxic agents and two undisclosed towns on the English seaside, believed to belong to a Syrian chemical weapons scientist. The scientist is thought to be at large in Europe after crossing its external frontier posing as an asylum seeker. Frontex, the EU Border Agency, has previously admitted that there are “no thorough checks or penalties in place for [migrants] making false declarations” allowing individuals who represent a security threat to infiltrate the continent. The scientist was trained by the Assad government but may have transferred his allegiance to Islamist groups working to overthrow the president, and was already subject to a manhunt by American security services. Islamic State has used mustard gas and chlorine gas in Iraq and Syria, but it is feared that this individual may be capable of deploying far more sophisticated toxic agents. Previous reports by Breitbart London have highlighted how easy it for migrants to penetrate Britain’s “porous” borders, and there is a real danger that the fugitive is already in the UK. The revelations follow an admission from the Minister of State for Security, Ben Wallace, that Britain faces the prospect of a “mass casualty” chemical attack at the hands of Islamic State in the near future, with Muslims as well as migrants posing a threat. “There are traitors,” Wallace told The Sunday Times. “The insider threat … is real and can be exploited, and there are people trying to do that as we speak. If it’s hard to get in the front door, then what you try and do is get someone on the inside. ” | 1 |
Cache Valley Prepper November 18, 2016 Cosmic Weather Executive Order: What Does It Mean?
Does the government know something that we don’t about what is going to happen to our power grid?
The latest executive order on cosmic weather certainly has some folks in the survival community scratching their heads. Do you know why? Because it doesn’t help you much, but leaves you survive on your own.
President Obama says he recognizes that naturally occurring EMP’s “ could disable large portions of the electrical power grid, resulting in cascading failures that would affect key services such as water supply, healthcare, and transportation. ”
First off, understand that the type of EMP caused by cosmic weather would only affect equipment connected to the power grid, land lines or other very long conductors, so it would not affect your car … until you need to buy gasoline or you phone … until you need to connect to the internet or a cell tower.
What we are most concerned about with this type of EMP is damage to the infrastructure that we all depend on, specifically the large transformers in the power grid which are custom built (mostly overseas) and have lead times measured in years.
Why only address naturally-occurring EMP and not nuclear high-altitude EMP?
I think the answer to that is simply that existing executive orders, COG (Continuity of Government) and NIPP (National Infrastructure Protection Plan) already cover protection of key infrastructure in the event of acts of war or terror attacks, so that train has already left the station – no power or budget to grab or rights to infringe upon there.
Why is important, other than that your internet will be down and credit and bank cards won’t work, is that a severe space weather event could knock out the US power grid and reshape the balance of power in the world.
Russia claims its grid is hardened against EMP and China runs major EMP-response exercises. Every former superpower is making preparations in case of EMP attack and virtually all substantial enemies of the US either are in the process of developing or already have EMP weapons.
The US has EMP weapons programs and we have upgraded a few key segments of our communications infrastructure, so it is clear that our leadership is aware of the threat EMP poses, but we haven’t funded any significant national preparation.
Scientists have been beating politicians over the heads with EMP scenarios for decades now, but they don’t seem to care much about it.
Why hasn’t the US already made preparations in case of EMP?
According to Dr. Peter Pry, a member of the congressional EMP Commission and executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, the power industry is afraid of over-regulation.
That is why it is using its considerable power to lobby against any EMP preparation and crank out junk science a la “lead is good for you because it occurs naturally,”“smoking is not harmful to your health,” and “we would starve without GMO foods and high fructose corn syrup” only this time it’s “EMP only affects the power grid in movies.”
Don’t let the fact that the rest of the world is united on the matter that the EMP is a threat fool you. Here in the USA, we reserve the right to be ignorant and listen to K Street lobbyists and the best scientists they can buy instead of our best scientific minds.
Warning have yielded both grassroots and congressional efforts, such as the Shield Act, which have been blocked at every turn by the power lobby for well over a decade now. This opened the door for Barrack Obama, who claims not to need congress because he has a phone and a pen, to step in an issue the executive order.
In October of last year, the White House published the 2015 National Space Weather Plan, which sets two goals: to improve our detection capabilities (warn us a few hours before the EMP), and to strengthen our capability to respond to the needs of the people after an EMP has damaged the grid.
Why not a comprehensive EMP plan to harden the grid against both types of EMP?
Because existing executive orders already cover EMP of the nuclear high-altitude variety under war and terrorism, so there wasn’t any additional power or funding to grab.
At a glance, the plan seems like perhaps a step in the right direction, but dig deeper and its more social programs and less privacy, thinly disguised as a preparedness plan. About the only thing that could make this plan worse is if it was truly this president’s best effort to protect the nation from EMP.
Why am I not excited about the government finally creating a plan to deal with EMP, even if it is only naturally-occurring EMP? The Obama regime used this as pretext to violate privacy rights by making GPS constellation data publicly available. Obama’s plans for EMP preparedness don’t mean boo unless they are funded and they will not be funded without congress. Simply passing an executive order does not change that. Most of page 2 of the White House plan is basically a disclaimer that the plan is not a budget document and that funds to carry out the plan would granted through the budget process. An effective POTUS does not simply throw out an idea and then blame congress for not approving funds that don’t exist to implement a plan when there was already another, better plan on the table. Instead of the one-time investment of $2 billion to fix the problem and harden the US electrical again against BOTH kinds of EMP that the Shield Act asks for, it would invest in capability to warn us a few hours ahead of an EMP and then attempt to put Humpty Dumpty back together again after our large transformers have melted . This is a reactive, “social aspirin and Band-aid” patch job that invests in social programs instead of a proactive permanent fix for the chronic problem. No funding for joint DOD – FEMA Training Exercises. Instead he directs the heads of agencies to work together “consistent with their ongoing activities” referring to the 2015 National Space Weather Action Plan.
Somebody needs to tell the White House that it won’t matter if people have health insurance if they are going to be without electricity for up to 4 years. Maybe that is a length of time they can get their heads around.
The US has been operating in an utter leadership vacuum for nearly two terms now, arguably much, much longer. We could permanently fix the EMP threat to our grid for about what we spend on climate change research in a year.
The US could have long ago joined the growing list of nations making earnest preparations against EMP, but is not course our benevolent leader has chosen.
The FEMA – DOD turf war is going to cost untold millions of lives in a severely damaging EMP
Hurricane Katrina was a minor event when compared to losing the US electrical grid for years, but it serves as an example of the consequences of the FEMA – DOD turf war. The states tried to handle the disaster themselves to capture Federal funding and everyone had to sit on their hands until they asked for help.
But by then, they had trouble even contacting the Federal Government to ask for help, so precious time was lost, which translated to lives lost. Then the Federal government sends in FEMA, who sealed off the disaster area and takes its shot at the prize budget money.
The military still couldn’t do anything until they were asked. FEMA ended up running around like a chicken with its head cut off because it was also outclassed by the scope of the event, losing more time and lives until FEMA finally asks for DOD.
Why did the DOD need to be involved in Katrina and will they inevitably need to be involved in a large-scale EMP?
Because FEMA has thousands of employees where DOD has millions. FEMA can call subcontractors and pay them to deliver trailers or loads of supplies. DOD can coordinate colossal airlifts and entire fleets of ships. We cannot handle an emergency of this magnitude without the DOD, so FEMA needs to get let that sink in now, BEFORE an EMP.
The FEMA budget is not going to matter. FEMA is going to go down in history as crewing the Titanic in this scenario and the post-EMP agency that replaces FEMA will not resemble the pre-EMP FEMA, that is, if the USA even still exists as such after China lays down the terms for the replacement of our large transformers.
What would a competent leader would have done Fund NASA and the National Foundation of Sciences Studies that would debunk the junk science funded by the power industry lobby. Educate the public about the threat. Pass the Shield Act and harden the grid against space weather and nuclear EMP alike instead of an unfunded plan followed by an executive order. Get the DOD and FEMA working and training together before the catastrophe and give them funding to do it instead of just telling the directors to work together “consistent with their ongoing activities.”
So what does Obama’s executive order on cosmic weather mean for you?
It means that, as usual, you are largely on your own. The only preparations that you can count on are ones you have made yourself and with those you trust in your local community. This may actually be better for you than being lied to that your government has everything under control.
You are better off preparing independently as opposed to believing that Uncle Sam, or someone else, is going to bail you out.
Be prepared! Get your power generator. Click the banner below to grab this offer and pay in installments for the right power generator for your EMP survival!
This article has been written by Cache Valley Prepper for Survivopedia.
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Как пишет Коммерсант, система под названием "Пит-стоп" позволяет инспекторам ДПС оперативно задерживать злостных нарушителей скоростного режима, используя данные с автоматических камер, и направлять материалы в суды.
По данным издания, максимальное наказание, которое применяла ГИБДД за это нарушение с использованием автоматических комплексов ранее составляло 5 тысяч рублей. Теперь же нарушителям грозит лишение прав.
Таким образом, в распоряжении сотрудников ДПС теперь 50 нетбуков с доступом к данным о всех нарушениях, зафиксированных автоматическими камерами (всего по городу их 934). Инспектор оперативно получает данные о водителях, злостно нарушающих скоростной режим в зоне патрулирования экипажа ДПС - речь идет о превышении скорости на 60 километров в час и выше.
Решение о преследовании и задержании нарушителя принимается по расчетному маршруту его движения, построенному системой. Если нарушителя удается задержать - составляется протокол, материалы направляются в суд. Если нет - собственнику автомобиля придет штраф.
26 октября в результате столкновения в Подмосковье микроавтобуса с двумя грузовиками погибли семь человек, еще шестеро получили тяжелые травмы.
Согласно сообщениям пресс-службы областной полиции. микроавтобус двигался со скоростью не менее 100 километров в час и ехал в опасной близости с грузовиком, который столкнулся на 36-м километре дороги "Дон" с большегрузом.
По уточненным данным, в микроавтобусе Volkswagen находились 12 пассажиров и водитель. Сообщается, что об аварии на 36-м километре трассы М4 «Дон» первые сведения поступили около 06:00. Столкновение произошло на платном участке дороги в районе города Домодедово.
На месте ЧП прибыли сотрудники ДПС. В ликвидации последствий ДТП принимают участие 25 человек и 8 единиц техники, отметили в областном управлении МЧС .
В Иваново двое пьяных инкассаторов перевернулись на бронированном служебном автомобиле , не сумев поставить его в гараж.
Как сообщает "РГ" со ссылкой на региональное УГИБДД, ЧП в произошло вечером 14 сентября.
25-летний водитель, управляя инкассаторским автомобилем "Практик-2964", не справился с управлением и опрокинул машину на проезжую часть.
В результате ДТП пассажир инкассаторского автомобиля, 29-летний мужчина, получил ушиб левой лопаточной области спины.
По данным ГИБДД, водитель и пассажир являются сотрудниками одной из инкассаторских фирм. После смены инкассаторы распивали спиртное, а затем в нетрезвом состоянии поехали ставить бронированный автомобиль в гараж. Однако, не справившись с управлением, собутыльники перевернулись на дороге, так и не доехав до места назначения. В крови водителя обнаружили 0,53 промилле алкоголя.
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- < National Data | October Jobs— Immigrant Working-Age Population Grows 9 Times Faster Than Native-Born, Blacks Hardest Hit (Seriously) November 7, 2016, 9:29 am
Immigrant displacement of American workers close to a record high, black unemployment jumps and a new immigration surge is underway—right in time for the election.
The government, in its last pre-election snapshot of the economy, reported that employers added 161,000 workers in October. The official unemployment rate dropped to 4.9 percent, from 5 percent. And average hourly earnings rose 2.8 percent year over year, a level not reached since 2008.
The MSM saw as presaging a healthy outlook for the months ahead. “It was pretty positive across the board,” said David Berson, chief economist at Nationwide Insurance.[ Last Economic Snapshot Before The Election Shows Healthy Job Growth, By Patricia Cohen, NYT, November 4, 2016,
Apparently Mr. Berson does not scrutinize the part of Household Employment Survey where data are reported by race and nativity. There he would have seen that seasonally-adjusted unemployment among Black men 20 years and older rose in October (to 8.6% from 8.3% the prior month) while Hispanic men in that age bracket enjoyed a decline (to 5.0% from 5.4% in September). Seasonally adjusted unemployment among white men held steady at 4.1% in September and October.
This pattern is consistent with the displacement of black workers by low wage, primarily Hispanic, immigrants.[ After Immigration Raid, Locals Line Up For Jobs, NPR, August 28, 2008]
Even the macro picture of continued job growth is belied by the latest Household Survey results.
In October: Total Household Survey employment fell by 43,000, down by 0.03% Native-born American employment rose by 206,000 up by 0.16% Foreign-born immigrant employment fell by 249,000, down by 0.96%
But October was unusual in that native-born American workers gained jobs and immigrants lost them. Overall, native-born American workers have lost ground to their foreign-born competitors throughout the Obama years and this trend has accelerated significantly in 2016. Last month was one of the occasional anomalies. This is brought out in our New VDARE.com American Worker Displacement Index (NVDAWDI) graphic: OBAMA'S LEGACY: IMMIGRANT VS. AMERICAN EMPLOYMENT GROWTH January 2009 though October 2016 (Monthly employment index: Jan. 2009=100) *VDARE.COM AMERICAN WORKER DISPLACEMENT INDEX Source: BLS Household Employment Survey; VDARE.com
Native-born American employment growth is represented by the black line, immigrant employment growth is in pink, and NVAWDI—the ratio of immigrant to native-born job growth—is in yellow. The index starts at 100.0 in January 2009 for both immigrants and native-born Americans, and tracks their employment growth since then.
From January 2009 through October 2016: Immigrant employment rose by 4.248 million, or by 19.6%. The immigrant employment index rose from 100.0 to 119.6. Native-born American employment rose by 5.456 million, up by 4.6%. The native-born American employment index rose from 100.0 to 104.5. NVDAWDI (the ratio of the immigrant to native-born employment growth indexes) rose from 100.0 to 114.4. (100X (119.6/104.5))
During the Obama years, immigrant employment has risen 4.3 times faster than native-born employment–19.6% versus 4.6%. In many unskilled occupations, the gap is larger, owing to a disproportionate share of foreign-born workers.
The foreign-born share of total U.S. employment has risen steadily, albeit erratically, during the Obama years: IMMIGRANT SHARE OF U.S. EMPLOYMENT January 2009 through October 2016 Source: BLS Household Employment Survey; VDARE.com
In Barak Obama’s first full month in office (February 2009) 14.97% of all persons working in the U.S. were foreign-born. The foreign-born share in October was 17.05%, the fifth highest among the 94 months of Mr. Obama’s administration. The Obama era high, 17.216%, was set in September 2016.
Seven of the 10 worst months for native-born workers in the Obama years (measured by the share of jobs held by immigrants) have occurred in 2016.
The foreign-born share of total employment in September was 2.23 percentage points above the level recorded in February 2009. With total employment now at 152.0 million, this implies that Obama-era immigration may have pushed as many as 3.39 million native-born Americans onto the unemployment rolls since then.
A detailed snapshot of American worker displacement over the past year is seen in the Employment Status of the Civilian Population by nativity table published in the monthly BLS Report. [ PDF]
Employment Status by Nativity, Oct. 2015-Oct. 2016 (numbers in 1000s; not seasonally adjusted) | 0 |
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The elite Shadowmasters need a scapegoat for the world catastrophe they have been planning for a long time . . . and Trump will be the man to blame when the house of cards comes crashing down. THE COMING STORM Economic Armageddon is on its way ! While many of us in the alternative media and especially those researchers of Clinton crimes are breathing a big fat sigh of relief that anybody but Hillary is headed to the White House in 2017, Brandon Smith of Alt Market is warning us all not to get too comfortable… and with history on his side here, we should listen to him.
Despite what looked like a rigged, fraudulent Hillary win orchestrated from the top down with the entire establishment machine behind her, Trump won the election. In an election year that would have otherwise seen record low voter turnout, the specter of Hillary that led to Trump’s victory has now given the people a reason to believe their vote actually matters again, an extra boon to further relegitimize the corrupt system running things in this country.
But Brandon Smith reminds us that if Trump is walking into the Oval Office in January, it is only because the elites decided to put him there in advance — and for a reason.
First it should be noted that Smith accurately predicted that Brexit would pass , even when the majority of the alt media was reporting that there was no way it possibly could. Was it another victory for the people?
No, it was predetermined well in advance: “The mainstream media has been consistently comparing Trump supporters to Brexit supporters, and Trump himself has hitched his political wagon to the Brexit. This fits perfectly with the globalist narrative that populists and conservatives are killing the global economy and placing everyone at risk. “
Then he accurately predicted a Trump win … but not because voting actually matters: “U.S. elections are indeed controlled, and have been for decades, primarily through the false left/right paradigm. However, as I have been pointing out since I correctly predicted the success of the Brexit referendum, I don’t think that Clinton is the choice of the elites.” “To be clear, my position is that Trump is slated to take the White House and that this is by design. This has been my position since before Trump won the Republican Primaries, it was my position when the election cycle began, it has never changed, nor have my views on the reasons for this outcome ever changed…”
Smith says regardless of whether or not Trump is a legitimate anti-establishment candidate, his win means the global economic collapse the system has been holding off on will finally come to pass — as planned — under Trump’s watch: “…Even if Trump is a legitimate anti-establishment conservative, his entry into the Oval Office will seal the deal on the economic collapse, and will serve the globalists well. The international banks need only pull the plug on any remaining life support to the existing market system and allow it to fully implode, all while blaming Trump and his conservative supporters…”
He will be the perfect scapegoat for something the alternative media have known is coming for a long, long time.
Now Smith is spelling it out : The bottom line is, Trump is on the way to the White House because the elites WANT HIM THERE. Now, many liberty proponents, currently in a state of elation, will either ignore or dismiss the primary reason why I was able to predict the Brexit and a Trump win. These will probably be some of the same people that were arguing with me only weeks ago that the elites would NEVER allow Trump in office. So, to clarify: Trump may or may not be aware that he and his conservative followers have been positioned into a a trap. We will have to wait and see how he behaves in office (and he WILL be in office, despite the claims of some that the elites will try to “stop him” before January). My primary point is THAT IT DOES NOT MATTER, at least not at this stage. The elites will initiate a final collapse of the global economy under Trump’s watch (this will probably escalate over the course of the next six months), and they WILL blame him and conservatives in general. This IS going to happen. The elites play the long game, and so must we.
And there you have it.
It’s not much of a secret that the economy is being artificially propped up. The Fed’s QE stimulus programs are no longer working. We know it can’t remain this way forever.
And even though everyone just feels so much relief that we’ve all been spared the nightmare of Hillary Clinton climbing into yet another seat of even more power, we can’t just assume we’re all going to skip off into happy magical fairy sprinkle land unscathed.
Sure, the people have spoken, but it’s only the illusion of power that we’re seeing play out now. The Powers That Shouldn’t Be running this insanity circus always have a plan… how else have they gotten away with controlling the globe for at least the past century?
While millions of Americans are celebrating Trump’s win today, I will remain even more vigilant. The party is just getting started, folks. Don’t get too comfortable. Sadly, we can’t ignore decades of New World Order history here just because we’re relieved a psychopath like Hillary lost the election.
2017 is going to be a bumpy ride . DISCLAIMER. All articles published on this website reflect the views of their original authors; publication here in no way implies automatic agreement or approval of its contents. “If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.” — Shakespeare, Julius Caesar | 0 |
Posted on November 10, 2016 by DavidSwanson
John Feffer argued on Wednesday that Demagogue Donald, whose very existence will lead me to pretend I’m not from the U.S. the next time I’m in Europe, is part of a wider trend that’s already hit Europe hard:
“The ugliness has been percolating in Europe for some time now. It wasn’t just Brexit, Britain’s unexpected rejection of the European Union. It was the election of militant populists throughout Eastern Europe — Viktor Orban in Hungary, Robert Fico in Slovakia, the party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Poland. It was the electoral surge of the National Front in France and the Alternative fur Deutschland in Germany. It was the backlash against immigrants, social welfare programs, and ‘lazy Mediterraneans’ — but also against bankers and Brussels bureaucrats.”
I think the trend is even wider and deeper if the trend we’re talking about is that of making everything worse, of increasing inequality, of increasing militarism, of destroying the environment, of pushing profit over people. If that’s the trend, the bankers are its vanguard, not its victims, and it has saturated the international establishment almost as thoroughly as it has the rightwing sectarians.
But the trend Feffer seems to have in mind is one of nationalism or ethnic identity or racism in opposition to global humanitarianism. Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Splinterlands , tells a future of shattered nations and international institutions, replaced with ever smaller and more disastrous warring city states. It’s a vision that should disturb us deeply, a vision of what this world could actually become if it gains nothing in wisdom, miraculously survives its nuclear weapons, and plows right ahead into climate chaos and total capitalist consumption.
Feffer’s utopia seems to be a globe unified in peace. But his dystopia is not unlike that of an author like Ian Morris whose utopia is a globe unified by imperial war. The great threat on the horizon for both is balkanization or splintering. Feffer sees this brought on by bigotry, militarism, and environmental destruction. Morris sees the threat as, basically, un-Americanism. But where does barbaric tribalism stop and the promotion of more direct local democracy begin? Is bigger always better and smaller always worse?
Feffer may not think so, because, in fact, a small utopia hidden in one corner of a sinking Titanic of an earth shows up in Splinterlands — something of a Luddite communal organic farm of a sort that essentially exists right now, a creation that cannot save us all or even itself unless expanded to a radically larger scale or duplicated innumerable times. The trick, then, may be to duplicate sustainable and just local living within a global system of nonviolent dispute resolution, cooperation, and fairness.
Feffer says he thought a Trump figure wouldn’t arrive for four more years — though it’s interesting that a big role in his fictionalized future dismantling of the world is played by a hurricane named Donald. My question is whether Trump’s disastrous arrival might not in some ways be put to good use toward human survival. I’m thinking of a particular good use to which Hillary Clinton’s disastrous arrival would not have leant itself. That is to say, can we not now appeal to other nations to recognize that the presence of U.S. military troops on their soil represents their subservience to the odious Donald Trump, a figure hardly to be imagined as the mythical Barack Obama, man of peace?
Can we encourage nonviolent resistance to U.S. militarism without encouraging a dive into a dystopian Splinterlands? Can the world refuse to participate in U.S. wars and U.S. weapons dealing while increasing its participation in cooperative non-military endeavors with the United States and the globe? Can U.S.-led war making, and the war making of other nations, come to be understood as the enemy of good globalism, not as the embodiment of UN humanitarian intervention in the affairs of those deemed less developed?
The alternative to the world figuring out how to resist U.S. wars would seem to be the people of the United States shutting down its war machine from within, without the assistance of the other 96%. But how does that seem to be working out? This entry was posted in General . Bookmark the permalink . | 0 |
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. MMR Vaccines Cause 340% Increased Risk of Autism in African American Infants Vaccines do cause autism, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been lyi... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/mmr-vaccines-cause-340-increased-risk.html Vaccines do cause autism, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been lying about this fact for years, according to newly uncovered information. As it turns out, the CDC fudged some numbers in a 2003 study it conducted on the MMR vaccine that, if honestly reported, would have revealed of autism among male African American infants.But the CDC instead shrunk down the sample size of this study to conceal any possible correlation between MMR and autism, in the end publishing what amounts to fraudulent data that has repeatedly be used as "evidence" that vaccines do not cause autism. To the contrary, there are major effects of the MMR vaccine that at least three CDC officials who supported the bogus study are now culpable for withholding from the public, possibly resulting in untold thousands of cases of autism .The Focus Autism Foundation (FAF), a nonprofit group committed to raising awareness about autism, broke the news after speaking with a CDC whistleblower who at first came forward in anonymity but has now been revealed as epidemiologist Dr. William Thompson. Dr. Thompson helped lead several studies, including the one in question, that were used by the CDC to conceal autism.In an interview with the FAF's Dr. Brian Hooker, the father of a child with vaccine-induced autism, Dr. Thompson broke down the history of deception within the CDC dating back to the days of the Tuskegee experiment, which involved government officials withholding treatments from African American men with syphilis as part of a medical experiment.According to Dr. Thompson, a 2003 CDC paper on autism, which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Pediatrics the following year, intentionally obscured data showing that MMR significantly increases a child's risk of autism, particularly when administered before the age of three. And African American boys, he says, have the highest overall risk. "It's the lowest point in my career, that I went along with that paper," confessed Dr. Thompson. "I went along with this; we didn't report significant findings." CDC has known since at least 2001 that age when MMR is given affects autism risk Dr. Thompson's bold confession is rocking the health world, a significant portion of which bought into the CDC lie that vaccines do not cause autism: case closed. In truth, the CDC has engaged in a massive fraud against the American people, and really the entire world, by falsely claiming that scientific data debunks the vaccine-autism connection, when it actually shows the exact opposite.It is what famed gastroenterologist Dr. Andrew Wakefield tried to tell the CDC and other government officials more than a decade ago, only to be slandered and falsely accused of fraud himself. But as he explains in a new film, top CDC officials had actually vindicated his original findings, only to eventually succumb to political pressures seeking to bury all evidence of a connection "Over a decade ago, Dr. Scott Montgomery and I put forward a hypothesis for MMR vaccine and autism," explains Dr. Wakefield in the film. "The age that you receive the vaccine influences the risk. This makes sense. For some infections like measles, the age of infection changes the outcome. We shared this hypothesis with vaccine officials.... "A group of senior vaccine safety people at the CDC studied it. It panned out. We were right." "By November 9, 2001, nearly 13 years ago, senior CDC scientists knew that younger age of exposure to MMR was associated with an increased risk of autism. In 2004 they published, but they hid the results." Be sure to watch Dr. Wakefield's film here . By Jonathan Benson | 0 |
The Chinese government has published its human rights report on the United States, condemning America for a variety of alleged “human rights violations” which include widespread gun ownership, “angry” voters in the 2016 elections, and “gunshots lingering in people’s ears behind the Statue of Liberty. ”[Multiple Chinese state media outlets, from the more measured Xinhua news service to the belligerent Global Times, published the report titled, “The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2016. ” The report repeats many of the concerns of leftist agitators in the United States, emphasizing concerns about race relations and law enforcement while claiming widespread sexism and discrimination against Muslims. The report does not compare America’s human rights record to that of China, a Communist country which forces women to have abortions as late as eight months into a pregnancy, conducts widespread espionage against its Muslim ethnic minorities (and has banned wearing burqas publicly in Western China) and regularly shuts down media outlets it does not directly control. Instead, the report — prepared by China’s Information Office of the State Council — condemns the United States for standing up for human rights internationally. “Wielding ‘the baton of human rights,’ it pointed fingers and cast blame on the human rights situation in many countries while paying no attention to its own terrible human rights problems,” the report reads. “With the gunshots lingering in people’s ears behind the Statue of Liberty, worsening racial discrimination and the election farce dominated by money politics, the human rights defender has exposed its human rights ‘myth’ with its own deeds,” the report declares. The report blames “colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality” for the supposedly deteriorating relationship between black and white people in America, while claiming that American “women frequently fell victims to sexual harassment and assault. ” “Muslims suffer increasingly serious discrimination,” the report continues. In accusing America of discriminating against its Muslim population, the Chinese expose themselves post to accusations of hypocrisy. The Uighur population of western China are majority Muslim and greatly inhibited in practicing their religion due to fears on the other side of the country that they are insufficiently loyal to Beijing. Most recently, China mandated that all cars in Xinjiang, its westernmost and most province, install GPS tracking devices to allow the government full knowledge of where every car in the region is at any given time. China has previously forced Muslim shops to sell alcohol and cigarettes in the region as a way of diluting Islam in Xinjiang and forced Muslim Communist Party officials in the region to forego the Ramadan fast. Uighur Chinese nationals abroad have reported incidents of spying and coercion to prevent them from taking advantage of their freedom of expression in other countries to expose abuses against Muslim Uighurs in China. Nonetheless, the Chinese human rights report concluded America’s population was suffering oppression worth addressing more than their own nationals. The United States “exercised no effective control over guns, law enforcement departments abused their power, and crimes were not effectively contained,” Chinese officials claim, without mentioning that the right to bear arms is ensconced in the nation’s chief governing charter. The Chinese report also condemns the United States’ recent presidential election cycle, without noting that China is a Communist autocracy that does not allow for popular election of its leaders. “In 2016, money politics and deals had controlled the presidential election, which was full of lies and farces,” the report reads. It goes on to claim the fact that voters were “angry” as a human rights abuse and condemn American media, who “published a lot of biased reports and commentaries during the 2016 election, fully demonstrating their failure in staying objective or impartial. ” The Information Office of the State Council concludes that America is “undergoing a ‘human rights crisis. ’” Beijing periodically releases human rights reports of this nature, weaponizing its critiques of the United States in an attempt to diminish Washington’s influence on international human rights norms. In 2014, the Chinese government went so far as to condemn the United States for broadcasting Jimmy Kimmel Live! a program the Chinese accused of “promoting racial hatred. ” Following the publication of the 2014 report, Chinese media released a report claiming “every aspect of society” in America was racially divided, citing riots in the city of Ferguson, Missouri. | 1 |
no doubt. for their plans to work they need to get rid of the deplorables and such...at ALL costs. Unfortunately most of them will be signed up to fight in a war they will die in. | 0 |
Current polls show a potential victory for Emmanuel Macron, but a new opinion poll shows his approval rating would be less than 50 per cent even if he wins Sunday. [The news opinion poll conducted by KANTAR reveals that only 41 per cent of the French people have confidence in the globalist candidate. Even more revealing is that he is not even the most popular as he lags behind former presidential candidate Mélenchon who polls at 44 per cent approval, Le Figaro reports. Macron’s numbers have stagnated at the 41 per cent mark whilst his rival, migration candidate Marine Le Pen, stands at 29 per cent, but is on the rise. The figures also differ depending on which age group and income bracket are looked at. For retirees and wealthy business elites, Macron is more popular. For the unemployed and working class voters, Ms. Le Pen is much more popular. Last week, the contrast between the two candidates on the issue of the working class vote was made clear when both visited a Whirlpool factory in Macron’s hometown of Amiens which faces closure. Le Pen made a surprise visit to the factory where workers cheered her. When Macron arrived hours later, he was heckled and booed as he tried to explain how globalisation, which was taking their jobs to Poland, was an “opportunity” for them. In cities like Calais in the north of France, Le Pen also has resounding support amongst working class men and women who have found traditional industries gutted by globalisation and French labour laws. The actual support for Macron and his policies could be far lower than 41 per cent according to a survey by Steria. The polling firms say that a large section of the voters who support Macron are only doing so because they want to oppose Ms. Le Pen rather than believe in the message of the globalist candidate. According to the survey, his true support amongst the French people is only around 20 per cent. Macron is currently projected to win the election on Sunday 60 per cent to 40 per cent. The 20 per cent figure is a significantly low level of confidence in a potential future president of France, though still above the historically low approval ratings of current President François Hollande who polls in the single digits. Le Pen has called Macron the “heir” to Hollande due to his lack of tough policies in dealing with terrorism and his globalist economic position. If Macron’s polling numbers continue to slide, he could be the heir to Hollande’s unpopular polling numbers, as well. Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson@breitbart. com | 1 |
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October 26, 2016 Serbian president: EU’s membership conditions ‘humiliating’
Serbia’s president has accused the European Union of setting “humiliating” conditions for the Balkan country’s membership.
Tomislav Nikolic told visiting Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar that Serbia would move to adopt the EU’s fundamental principles and values even though the 28-nation bloc is in crisis.
Nikolic did not say which EU conditions he finds humiliating, but may have been referring to demands from some members for Serbia to recognize the breakaway former province of Kosovo as an independent country.
Serbia, a traditional ally of Russia, wants to join the EU, but has been under intense pressure from the Kremlin to reconsider.
Moscow has backed Serbia in its dispute with the West over Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008. Belgrade has refused to accept Kosovo’s as a separate republic. | 0 |
The scenes blend like images from a kaleidoscope. A woman, blond, jubilant in a white dress, shown magnified on a convention center screen in San Francisco. It is Geraldine A. Ferraro in 1984 accepting the Democratic nomination that made her the first woman in the nation to be tapped by a major party to run for vice president. Turn the lens. A woman, blond, in a white tunic, smiling, arms thrown wide at a rally in Brooklyn this past week. It is Hillary Clinton claiming the Democratic nomination, the first woman to become the presidential for a major party. There are those who now say that a woman running for president was inevitable, that the 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling that Mrs. Clinton talks about are just time moving on. There are the sighs that Mrs. Clinton is the wrong woman, the unexciting woman, the compromising woman. And there are those who say they could never vote for a Democrat, particularly this one. But it took 32 years to get from one scene to the other, so a look back to the Ferraro campaign can tell a lot about how the country has changed, and how it has not, through these decades of cultural ferment over the roles of the sexes. It may be hard to remember how few women there were in public life when Ms. Ferraro told cheering Democrats, “If we can do this, we can do anything. ” The Democrats had no female senators. (The Republicans had two.) There was only one female governor — Martha Layne Collins of Kentucky, a Democrat. Dianne Feinstein was still the mayor of San Francisco, yet to start her long Senate career. Representative Shirley Chisholm of New York, who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination in 1972, had already retired. Women have since become the majority in college, and women in both parties have made a steady march forward in politics. Some are senators and governors and three have been secretary of state, all making the idea of a woman at the helm of the nation seem far less revolutionary. Ms. Ferraro was quizzed relentlessly about arms control and about whether she could even be credible as the commander in chief should she have to step up and be president. Could a woman be trusted with the nuclear button? But with her background as secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton is not questioned about her toughness. Instead, the left asks whether she might be too quick to seek military intervention and the right critiques her judgment. She is the one now asking whether Donald J. Trump’s finger should be anywhere near the nuclear button. In other ways, things have changed less. As Mrs. Clinton, Sarah Palin and Carly Fiorina can attest, female candidates are still examined not only for competence, character and policy priorities, but for the way they look, the tone of their voice and the state of their marriages. For Ms. Ferraro it was the tangled financial dealings of her husband, John Zaccaro, his subsidy of her first congressional campaign, and her back and forth on whether she would release his tax returns, which she tried to brush off with the damaging quip, “You people who are married to Italian men, you know what it’s like. ” Now Mr. Trump promises to keep the Clinton marriage, and the former president’s infamous infidelities, in the spotlight. Mrs. Clinton time and again had to help save her husband’s candidacy and presidency, tarnishing her feminist credentials for some. (“I’m not sitting here — some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette,” she said way back in 1992, when his run for president nearly foundered. “I’m sitting here because I love him, and I respect him, and I honor what he’s been through and what we’ve been through together. ”) And then there is the press corps. Politico recently wrote of the current crop of Clinton reporters, “No one can remember a political press corps this heavily female. ” I can. It was the Ferraro press corps, and I was part of it. I was dispatched to the campaign — like women from most major networks and publications — because editors sought women to capture the history of one of their own at a time when we were breaking into the ranks of the campaign press. Perhaps, we occasionally suspected, some of them also thought it would be beneath a man to ride that campaign plane. As a reporter for Newsday, I watched the euphoric, rapturous crowds, mostly women and girls who showed up with “To Gerry with Love” signs, even in the campaign’s last days, when it was going down to a decisive defeat to President Reagan and George Bush. Some campaign bands could make you wince, playing “Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue” or “Hello, Dolly!” There were the strange male missteps: the mayor of Los Angeles saying he wanted “a vice president I can hug,” the Mississippi official who called Ms. Ferraro “young lady” and asked whether she could bake a blueberry muffin. The grim drumbeat about her husband’s finances, his real estate dealings and his tax returns. There was the constant watch for weakness — would the woman cry? It is easy to forget those moments these days, when women in power don’t seem so unusual. If you have a long memory you have watched other women on the national stage, too. Representative Patricia Schroeder explored a Democratic race in 1987, after Gary Hart stood down. Senator Elizabeth Dole dropped out of the Republican presidential race in October 1999 before any of the primaries. Former Senator Carol Moseley Braun ran in the Democratic primaries in 2004. Governor Palin of Alaska became the first Republican woman nominated for the vice presidency in 2008 — 24 years after Ms. Ferraro. And we have been watching Mrs. Clinton for so long, through so many iterations, that it can feel like we know everything about her. But in the 1980s the quest to put a woman in the White House started as a cause without a candidate. It was driven by women’s groups and by the numbers. The notion of a gender gap was being talked about by both parties. Suddenly it was significant that more women than men registered to vote and that women seemed more likely to vote. The Equal Rights Amendment had collapsed, failing to win the required ratification of of the states. Politically active women in the feminist movement, including Bella Abzug and Gloria Steinem, wrote a manifesto to the Democratic candidates for president in 1983 warning them to agree on an agenda for issues affecting women or face the possibility of women staying home on Election Day: “We will not hold still to be treated as an afterthought, a side issue, or a powerless constituency that can be betrayed without consequences. ” By 1984, they were fighting to get a woman on the ticket. When Walter F. Mondale selected Ms. Ferraro as his running mate, she was a congresswoman from Queens. She came from New York, which had unexpectedly swung to Ronald Reagan in his 1980 landslide. Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. was a mentor and proponent. She was pretty, married, 48 years old and traditional enough that party leaders thought she could excite women but might not alienate male voters. “What is different,” says Ann Lewis, a longtime Democratic activist, “is that Hillary Clinton in the last years has achieved national stature in ways that too few women have. Gerry Ferraro is nominated in 1984 and she is almost unknown. It isn’t until 1986 that Barbara Mikulski becomes the first Democratic woman who makes it to the Senate in her own right. ” The mood at that convention was electric. But the choreography around this first woman could also be tortured. How should Mr. Mondale and Ms. Ferraro share the stage? Could they touch? They shouldn’t hug. Who should hold her pocketbook when she spoke? “It sounds so strange now, but everything was being done for the first time,” Ms. Lewis said. “We had until then lots of images of women and men on stage together, but they were married. All the stage craft we had taken for granted had to be looked at very carefully. ” Madeleine K. Albright was Ms. Ferraro’s issues adviser, briefing the candidate on foreign policy and preparing her for her race against Mr. Bush, years before Ms. Albright became the nation’s first female secretary of state in the Clinton administration. She remembers some of the jarring juxtapositions of that candidacy. “There was the business about what she had on and what her hair looked like,” she recalls. “On the other side was her being asked questions about throw weights and nuclear capabilities that they weren’t asking Bush. ” On “Meet the Press,” Ms. Ferraro was once asked, “Do you think that in any way the Soviets might be tempted to try to take advantage of you simply because you are a woman?” By November, the disclosures about Ms. Ferraro’s husband’s businesses had damaged a campaign that was already an uphill battle. Though women and girls showed up at her rallies to the end, TV network polls showed that she may have cost the Democratic ticket more than she gained for it. Looking back, was the scrutiny of Ms. Ferraro, who died in 2011, fair game or driven by discomfort with the idea of a woman as vice president? Ms. Ferraro’s campaign manager, John Sasso, calls it some of both. “Experience matters,” he said, noting that because Mrs. Clinton has the deep résumé that Ms. Ferraro lacked, she will run and face a very different campaign. This time, of course, the first woman is at the top of the ticket, calling all the shots. “She’s been on the front lines of this process for a very long time,” said Lissa Muscatine, a friend and former speechwriter to Mrs. Clinton. “She’s been the vessel for lots of women’s hopes on the one hand, but also has had to take the brunt from people who aren’t ready for it. ” Mrs. Clinton’s detractors look dimly on appeals to support her as a pathbreaker. “I’m not a huge fan of identity politics and this is sort of the apotheosis of identity politics,” said Danielle Pletka, senior vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “Basically, to me Hillary Clinton is saying: ‘I wasn’t good enough to get here on my own. Forget that people voted for me on the merits, they voted for me because I was a woman.’ How demeaning is that?” On Friday, Ms. Fiorina, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination this year, told a crowd, “Hillary Clinton, news flash. I’m a feminist and I’m not voting for you. ” Maybe Hillary Clinton is right — that she has become our national Rorschach test. Do you admire her perseverance? Dislike her compromises? Seek more passion? Question her honesty? Ponder her marriage? Love her policies? Hate her policies? Debate whether she is a feminist? Debate whether it matters? For one night last week, it was hard to deny her words that “tonight caps an amazing journey — a long, long journey. ” | 1 |
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