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Welcome Back to a Bipolar World, Courtesy of a Moscow-Beijing-Tehran Axis
America's 'unipolar moment' is over, but the long-awaited 'multipolar world' isn't quite yet here either Originally appeared at Strategic Culture Foundation
The transition in the international order, from a pre-WWI multipolar world to a post-WWII bipolar world, cost humanity a world war involving millions of deaths. The next stage, distinct from the conflicts between the USSR and the US, ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, but without the tragedy of direct confrontation. This fundamental historical difference has its own intrinsic logic governing the relationship of forces between powers. The USSR was a country in decline, unable to continue its role on the international stage as the premier anti-hegemonic power.
The transition from a bipolar to a unipolar reality could have had nuclear consequences, but an agreement between the powers avoided this danger. The upshot was an unconditional surrender of the USSR, with catastrophic consequences in economic and cultural terms for the superpower to come to terms with, but at least without the explosion of a large-scale conflict.
With the end of the bipolar model, however, began what some historians declared to be the « end of history »: the transition from a multipolar world, to a bipolar world, to end in a unipolar world. From the point of view of Washington, the story ended with only one global power remaining, thereby granting the United States the power to decide matters for the whole world.
The scenario in which we live today, in terms of international law and the balance of forces, is almost unprecedented in history if looked at in the present context. It is true that the current transition from a unipolar to a multipolar reality is something similar to what has been seen in previous decades, with the transition from British hegemony in the late-nineteenth century to a multipolar situation in the period preceding the two world wars. Nevertheless, resorting to this historical analogy is difficult, given the relative absence of international rules compared to a century ago. Therefore it is difficult to use the earlier transition period to make assumptions about future trends.
The causes of change
The attitude of the US over the last 25 years has been focused completely on the achievement of global hegemony. The dream of having control over every event, in every corner of the world, has ironically led to accelerating the end of America’s unipolar moment. Of course the deep meaning of the word "control" can be expanded upon, examining the merits of the cultural, economic and military impositions that result from a constant quest for global domination .
The US has chosen an impassable road that is full of contradictions to justify their rise as a global power. In two decades we have witnessed the dismantling of all the key principles of the balance of power between Russia and the United States, necessitating the change in international relations from unipolar to multipolar. Similarly, the ratio of economic and military power between China and the United States has significantly worsened, culminating in the dangerous dispute over the South China Sea. The abandonment of the Kissinger doctrine governing relations with Beijing, and the failure of the Clinton reset with Moscow, have pushed two global powers, Russia and China, to forge an alliance that allows for a world where there are more powers on the international stage and not just Washington as the central focus of global relations.
The failure of the foreign doctrine of the United States was a direct consequence of the arrogance and the utopia of being able to dominate the planet, seeking to extend indefinitely the unipolar moment and forging a worldwide system culturally and economically based on the will of Washington, reinforced by a power and military posture without precedent.
Consequences
Had Washington thought more carefully about the consequences of their actions, and thereby employed a more considered strategic vision, it would certainly have opted for different choices. As a demonstration of this, we note Washington’s attitude in the Middle East, the deciding ground for prospects of continued US global hegemony.
Much of Washington’s remaining capacity to influence global decisions is attributable to the dollar and the trading of goods such as oil in that currency. With the appearance of a world with more regional or global powers, it is easy to guess that the rise of the Iranian Republic has consequences for the whole of the Middle East region. The odds are evident that Tehran, culturally, economically and militarily, will be the first regional power. Washington has realized this and has decided to reach an agreement with the Islamic Republic in order to remain relevant in the region and not to be cut off from future agreements. Washington also seeks, in doing so, to counterbalance the situation with her most influential regional allies, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
It is a strategy that in the Middle East has had a negative impact in the immediate present for Riyadh, Doha, and in some ways even Ankara, who have all opted for an autonomous and interventionist approach in the region without much consultation with Washington. Nevertheless, the choice to include Iran as a dialogue partner for the Middle East balance has allowed Washington to conserve the illusion that in the future it will maintain an important role in regional decisions. This is a decision that has created many problems with historic allies, but Washington hopes, with a view to the future, to have made an appropriate choice. This also explains why so many of the neoconservatives and liberals (the promoters of a prolonged unipolar doctrine, the cause of so many failures ) are clearly opposed to this agreement.
Washington and its establishment have opted for a cultural and economic confrontation with Moscow, possibly militarily with Beijing in the South China Sea, in the process impelling the emergence of a multipolar world in which more powers have the ability, by joining together, to resist the will of the greater global power. In fact, it is easier to frame the international balance in a multipolar model that is slowly becoming bipolar.
We consider that Russia and China (and to a lesser extent Iran) do not possess the military capability to successfully oppose American power in a conventional conflict on a grand scale. For this reason, it is easy to understand that shaping a multipolar international order perhaps remains quite optimistic at this time. It is similarly optimistic to maintain a unipolar world order that remains anchored in the illusions of the American elite.
Reality rather shows us a bipolar world, where the alternative pole to the US is represented by the union and alliances (cultural, economic and military) of Beijing, Moscow and Tehran. And their partnership has resulted in a change in the pattern of international relations. The cause of this union is to be found in the will of the US elites to prolong their unipolar moment. Instead of opting for an agreement with another global power (probably China) and seal the international stage in a realistic model with two poles, facing no real opposition, Washington has exacerbated the differences by pushing countries like Russia, China, Iran and India closer and closer together, forging what currently might be termed a temporary bipolar model of world order.
The certainty is that the future will turn fully into a multipolar model, and this obliges Washington to struggle in every way possible to remain relevant. To date, apart from nuclear agreements, every choice has been counterproductive and wrong. Will Washington’s elites ever learn, or will they eventually become irrelevant? | 0 |
On Tuesday, President Trump told a group of senators gathered for a White House reception that “we’re doing very well in Iraq” where “our soldiers are fighting like never before. ” He said this assessment was based on a long telephone call with Secretary of Defense James Mattis. [Trump’s comments were interpreted by some critics as a slam against the American troops who fought in the Iraq War — if they are “fighting like never before” now, the argument goes, Trump must think the soldiers deployed to Iraq in the Bush administration were not fighting so hard. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer addressed this criticism on Wednesday, saying President Trump was referring to “progress, particularly in Mosul, the way that they have taken back that city. ” “I think that for a long time, there was a lot of concern about Iran moving in and dominating parts of Iraq,” Spicer continued. “I think with the advice and consent of U. S. military advisers, there’s been tremendous progress at moving Iraq forward to an area of stability, and continuing to see the troops there in Iraq standing on their own. ” Spicer said the president pleased with the action that General Mattis and our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are taking to do that. ” “He was very proud of the work that our soldiers are doing over there in Iraq. There is a lot of work, and a lot of progress that is being made,” said Spicer. “The fight against ISIS is going extremely well, and he’s proud of it. ” Critics of Trump’s fight against ISIS dwell on mounting civilian casualties and confusion in Iraq’s military ranks, but Doyle McManus at the L. A. Times wrote on Wednesday that Trump “may actually win the war against the Islamic State”: Under Obama, who waged a “light footprint” strategy with minimal U. S. troops, Islamic State lost most of the territory it once held in Iraq and almost a third of what it held in Syria. But taking the extremist group’s most important strongholds, Mosul in Iraq and Raqqah in Syria, was taking longer. Enter Trump. The new president, after claiming he had a secret plan to win the war, told his generals to give him one in 30 days. They responded with an outline — a “skeleton plan,” in the words of Defense Secretary James N. Mattis — that could be described as Obama Plus: more bombing, more troops, fewer restrictions on commanders. “The Obama strategy wasn’t failing, but it was slow,” James F. Jeffrey, a former ambassador (and former Army officer) who’s advising the administration, told me. “This is more — not only more troops, but more willingness to use them. It’s a change of maybe 20% but it’s an important 20%. ” McManus notes the task at hand is more complex than Trump’s campaign rhetoric about “bombing the s**t out of them,” blowing up “every single inch” of the Islamic State and then bringing in oil companies to rebuild from the ruins. He gives Defense Secretary Mattis credit for influencing White House policy, which now appears to envision aggressive military victory over ISIS, followed by an extended troop commitment to achieve “stabilization. ” | 1 |
5 King World News
As the monetary madness continues around the globe continues, what is happening is stunning.
Here is a portion of what Peter Boockvar wrote as the world awaits the next round of monetary madness: Coincident with the spike in Treasury yields, bankrate(dot)com said the average 30 yr mortgage rate rose another 11 bps yesterday to 3.88%, up 41 bps over the past week. It’s the highest since early January and here is a chart giving the visual of the rapidity of the move… IMPORTANT… To find out which company is set to become one of the highest grade producing gold mines on the planet CLICK HERE OR BELOW: Sponsored
I look forward to seeing mortgage applications tomorrow to see the initial response. To quantify, at last Monday’s 30 yr rate of 3.47%, a $300k mortgage would have a monthly payment of $1,342.12. At the 3.88% rate, the monthly payment would increase by about $70 to $1,411.57, a 5.2% increase.
The cost of capital is of course going up across the board and while I’m optimistic about growth initiatives to come, we’ve got to get past the move higher in rates because business activity and asset price gains have been built on the foundation of low rates over the past 7 years (as in the prior expansion). The US and the world also have an extraordinary amount of debt that has accumulated which has created the dangerous tinder for this rise in interest rates.
King World News note: Mortgage rates based on the 10-Year Treasury have been headed dramatically higher as bonds plunge (see crashing chart below). 10-Year Treasuries Continue To Plunge As Interest Rates Rise
King World News note: To illustrate how dramatically this has impacted mortgage rates, Wells Fargo’s posted rates for a 30-year conforming loan have risen in the past couple of weeks from 3.5% to 4.25%! That’s 3/4 of a point higher in just a couple of weeks. This will not bode well for the real estate market if the trend in higher interest rates continues.
*** Hi-Yo Silver! | 0 |
Breitbart News has released a new The First 100 Days of Trump, providing a concise yet comprehensive summary of each day’s events at the outset of the 45th presidency. [Written by Breitbart Senior Joel B. Pollak, the offers readers an overview of an historic, and often controversial, administration — from the early slew of executive orders, to the confirmation battle over Neil Gorsuch, to the air strike against Syria, and beyond. the Trump administration’s dramatic start, and have the facts at your disposal as you consider its progress so far and its prospects for the future. Click the following link to download the for free: Breitbart Special Report: The First 100 Days of Trump | 1 |
Susan B. Anthony’s grave site, in Rochester, is a perennial destination for women celebrating their freedom to vote, but on Election Day, Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx would like to remind New Yorkers to share the love. At Woodlawn, the grave sites of four other prominent suffragists could use some “I Voted” stickers, like those dotting Anthony’s grave, David Ison, the cemetery’s executive director, said on Monday. The cemetery will even provide the stickers. The idea for turning the sites into destinations came this year after seeing the popularity of Anthony’s grave site grow on social media, Mr. Ison said. The need for some positive messaging after a bruising election season was also important. “We thought, ‘We’re going to do something that’s not all about Trump and all about Clinton,’” Mr. Ison said. On Election Day, visitors will be encouraged to leave their stickers on cardboard signs next to the grave sites of four suffragists buried in Woodlawn: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anthony’s friend and a of the National Woman Suffrage Association Carrie Chapman Catt, who founded the League of Women Voters and who is buried next to Mary Garrett Hay, who assisted and advised her and Alva Vanderbilt Belmont, a multimillionaire who gave her opinions and her money to the movement. On Monday, as the sun was setting and shadows turned the cemetery chilly, the site of Stanton’s grave was lonely. About 15 “I Voted” stickers were posted near the family monument. A single sticker for Hillary Clinton, the country’s first female presidential nominee from a major party, who has nodded to the suffragists’ legacy throughout her campaign, was also posted. Only one visitor passed by, a man who called out “not yet” to a reporter’s remark that no sticker for Mrs. Clinton’s opponent, Donald J. Trump, had been posted. The graves of the three other suffragists were also deserted. The quiet display is in contrast to reports from the resting place of Susan B. Anthony, where women approach every few minutes with their daughters, friends and mothers. This year, the Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester anticipates so many visitors that it said it would be open extended hours on Election Day to allow voters the opportunity to swing by and leave a sticker. Barbara Selesky, Woodlawn’s director of marketing, said on Tuesday that the cemetery would extend its visiting days, inviting people to leave their “I Voted” stickers until Sunday. For visitors who make the trek to the Bronx, the crew at Woodlawn asks just one thing: Please keep the stickers off the granite. The museum has put up a display next to the tombstone where visitors can leave stickers and other sticky mementos. “Stickers on graves have become a problem,” Susan Olsen, the cemetery’s historian, said. “It’s love and it’s honoring, but it just causes problems. ” At Woodlawn, a cemetery roughly half the size of Central Park, the legacy of four prominent suffragists competes for the limelight with several more famous neighbors, including Miles Davis, Celia Cruz and Herman Melville. When asked to explain the difference in popularity, Mr. Ison and Ms. Olsen both joked in unison, “There’s nothing else to do in Rochester. ” (Also, they said, Anthony was on the $1 coin.) But if the work of the suffragists has taught us anything, it’s that Stanton and Anthony might not have seen this as a competition. In a way, it may be fitting of how they saw their different legacies: Stanton, a married mother of seven who lived in New York, supplied speech material and support as Anthony traveled extensively as a public face of the movement. “They saw their relationship very clearly,” Ms. Olsen, Woodlawn’s historian, said. “She’s in the metropolis, and Anthony goes all over the place. They were brilliant as far as how their partnership worked. ” Neither woman lived to see the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. In Stanton’s obituary, published in The New York Times in 1902, Anthony fondly recalled their dynamic, saying, “She forged the thunderbolts and I fired them. ” | 1 |
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. The Trump administration detailed plans to deport millions of immigrants, a major shift in enforcement policy that is expected to face resistance from many states and dozens of sanctuary cities. The new Homeland Security rules authorize the expulsion of undocumented immigrants who commit even minor offenses, and make it easier to deport people immediately. This is how deportation works, step by step. Immigration will be high on the agenda as Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and the secretary of homeland security, John F. Kelly, visit Mexico this week. _____ 2. President Trump spoke out for the first time about the rise in incidents and threats targeting Jews and Jewish institutions, calling “horrible,” and “painful. ” He said the venue for his comments, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, was “a meaningful reminder of why we have to fight bigotry, intolerance and hatred in all of its very ugly forms. ” A day earlier, his daughter Ivanka Trump, who has converted to Judaism, called for protections as nearly a dozen Jewish community centers across the country received bomb threats by phone. Above, a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis where nearly 200 headstones were toppled over the weekend. _____ 3. Republicans home for the congressional recess have been greeted with an earful at town meetings. Those who scheduled no meetings faced criticism that they were ducking constituents. In Iowa, a pig farmer (and Democrat) furious over the possible repeal of Obamacare gave Senator Charles Grassley a bottle of Tums. “You’re going to need ’em the next few years,” he said, drawing laughs from the crowd. _____ 4. Milo Yiannopoulos, the provocateur who incited a storm of criticism for condoning sex with boys, left Breitbart News. His explanation of the comments, in a video that surfaced over the weekend, as “British sarcasm, provocation and gallows humor” appeared to sway few. He also lost a book deal and a speaking engagement at the Conservative Political Action Conference. _____ 5. A riot in an immigrant neighborhood in Sweden was seized upon by Trump supporters as validation of his claims — based on a Fox News feature — that the European country had experienced a surge in crime and violence linked to refugees. Preliminary statistics do not show a major increase in crime from 2015, when Sweden processed a record 163, 000 asylum applications, to 2016, and Mr. Trump’s assertions baffled Swedes. The country’s interior minister said of the clash that making “suburbs and socially vulnerable areas safer” could “get a little messy. ” _____ 6. Trinidad and Tobago is scrambling to stop young Muslims from going to Syria to take up arms for the Islamic State. Per capita, the Caribbean island nation has the largest number of foreign fighters from the Western Hemisphere who have joined the militant group, according to John L. Estrada, a former U. S. ambassador there. “Trinidadians do very well with ISIL,” he said. “They are high up in the ranks, they are very respected and they are . ISIL have used them for propaganda to spread their message through the Caribbean. ” _____ 7. Political dissent is simmering in the art world. More than 65 writers, artists and actors published an open letter opposing Mr. Trump’s efforts to bar people from seven predominantly Muslim countries. And if history is any guide, at least some of the stars at the Oscars this Sunday will criticize Mr. Trump’s approach to immigration and other issues. Above, Meryl Streep’s impassioned speech at the Golden Globes. _____ 8. Mardi Gras is next Tuesday, and a small family brewery in the bayou country of southern Louisiana is ready. Bayou Teche Brewing, known for some of the most distinctive craft beers in the United States, is preparing a special drink for the old Cajun version of the holiday. Men dress in handmade costumes and traverse town on horseback, begging for ingredients for a communal gumbo. The beer — wheaty, slightly hoppy and high in alcohol — pairs well with the gumbo, and the style is celebratory, for the arrival of spring. _____ 9. Scientists are suddenly questioning how well we know our cosmos. Recent measurements of the distances and velocities of faraway galaxies don’t agree with a “standard model” of the cosmos that has prevailed for the past two decades. One expert said the news, while disruptive, could be “just what the younger generation wants — a chance for big discoveries, new insights and breakthroughs. ” _____ 10. Finally, we’ve been rummaging through our archive of 165 years of Times wedding announcements. To conclude the project, we offer this vision of what we might be printing (O. K. publishing on some kind of futuristic platform) 165 years from now: “At first I was just attracted to how hot he looked in his robokini,” Ms. Bezos said. “I’m looking forward to being together for all the years and software upgrades to come. ” _____ Photographs may appear out of order for some readers. Viewing this version of the briefing should help. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s Friday’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 1 |
TEL AVIV — President Abdel Fatah Sisi’s visit to the United States later this month will be an opportunity to undermine the Muslim Brotherhood’s standing in Washington, a former Egyptian ambassador to the US said. [Abdel Raouf told Egyptian paper Alshorouk that “ relations are entering a new phase, and the degree of their success relies on Egyptian efforts. ” “Presidents Trump and Sisi can break the ice created during the Obama administration,” he said. “Without doing injustice to Obama, he adopted the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. ” He added that during Obama’s presidency, “the Muslim Brotherhood shifted their international center of gravity from London to Washington. In recent years the Muslim Brotherhood penetrated American institutions and think tanks, and disseminated their ideology as an alternative to extremism. ” The Muslim Brotherhood forged ideas and promoted people “that were recruited even by the National Security Council, and from there they disseminated the marketable view that their Islamic model is a moderate one that serves as a counterweight to terror and extremism, and this view found resonance in the United States. ” Conversely, the former ambassador said, “Egypt should distance itself from the concept of an Islamic international, i. e. advocate a democratic modern and that steers clear of extremism, and separates church and state. ” Sisi’s visit will be an “important opportunity to lay out Egypt’s vision for the region, especially after years of cool relations [with the US],” said. “I think Trump is a president with original ideas, and what characterizes him is his ability to champion them bravely and resolutely. ” | 1 |
Posted 11/16/2016 2:11 pm by PatriotRising with 0 comments Students at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst are staging a week-long “shit-in,” occupying restrooms in an administration building to demand more gender-neutral facilities. Gender Liberation UMass, the student group behind the demonstration, announced Tuesday that administrators had “tentatively agreed to progressive ‘benchmarks’ put forth by organizers,” but urges supporters to remain on-call.
Students at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst are staging a week-long “shit-in,” occupying restrooms in an administration building to demand more gender-neutral facilities.
The “ Shit-In at Whitmore ” demonstration began Monday morning at the Whitmore Administration building (which the activists have nicknamed “Queermore”), and organizers intend to have students continue occupying stalls in the building’s male and female restrooms until their demands are met, though the Facebook event specifies a Friday afternoon ending.
“Maybe [administrators] will feel a little bit as anxious as trans students do just trying to pee on campus.” Tweet This
Gender Liberation UMass (GLU), a student group at UMass, is responsible for organizing the event, and provides an online sign-up form for supporters to stake out specific times and locations, giving them the option of stating whether they prefer to be along in a stall or to share one with “other sitters.”
The primary goal of the protest is to convince the administration to convert additional bathrooms on campus into gender-neutral facilities by changing the signage, which the group believes will promote “trans inclusivity and safety on campus,” but GLU has also articulated two additional demands, pledging to continue obstructing toilets until all three are met.
In addition to gender-neutral restrooms, the group is calling for the “advancement of medically and socially competent in-house transgender health services at the University Health Services center,” as well as the “hiring of a professor by the WGSS [Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department] who is an expert in the field of critical transmisogyny from an intersectional perspective.”
Divest UMass, a student environmentalist group, released a statement on its Facebook page expressing solidarity with the GLU protesters
“These demands are elementary, and it is disappointing that UMass has failed to meet the needs of trans and gender non-conforming students to date. The administration must seriously put a plan into action to de-gender its facilities,” the message declares. “In the meantime, maybe they will feel a little bit as anxious as trans students do just trying to pee on the campus they pay tuition to every single day.”
Although the objectives of Divest UMass are not directly related to those being pursued by GLU, but leaders of the Divest group explained their interest in the “shit-in” by asserting that all progressive causes are interrelated, saying, “There can be no climate justice without gender justice. There can no be gender justice without racial justice. There can no be racial justice without economic justice. There can be no economic justice without social justice.”
Within a day of the restroom occupation starting, GLU announced that it had secured a meeting with Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Enku Gelaye on Tuesday morning to discuss its demands, and subsequently reported Tuesday evening that administrators had “tentatively agreed to progressive ‘benchmarks’ put forth by organizers.”
“The administration is definitely listening and the tones of our conversation have changed quite a bit,” one GLU member told Campus Reform , though the group is cautioning its supporters to remain prepared, because “the need for action may arise at any moment.”
“Changing the signage really is not very expensive, and I don’t want to talk bad about the administration here, but that’s one of the things we’ve had to go back and forth about, is this idea of the cost of it,” another GLU member added. “I and other members of GLU think the numbers they have proposed for what it would cost to change the signage are way beyond what it would really be.”
UMass Executive Director of Strategic Communications Ed Blaguszewski, however, told Campus Reform that the university is committed to expanding the availability of gender-neutral restrooms, making no mention of cost concerns while asserting that university officials would continue to meet regularly with transgender students to discuss their concerns.
“Currently, there are more than 200 gender-inclusive, single-user restrooms on campus, and during the coming year more than 50 will be added, either by construction or by converting single-user ‘Men’ or ‘Women’ facilities to ‘Restrooms,’” he explained, adding that “All new construction and major renovations on campus will include gender-inclusive restrooms. | 0 |
FBI Director James Comey told Congress on Friday that the bureau intends to investigate new emails that they were made aware of to determine if there is any classified information in them. In the... | 0 |
This is the Man Militarized Police at Standing Rock are Working For Nov 15, 2016 0 0
The months long Dakota Access Keystone XL pipleine protest at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation by Native Americans and those sympathetic to protection of our water supply has been met with heavy-handed and brutal clamp down by police and national guard. Militarized goons in battle dress have stormed protector camps with LRAD sonic weapons, attack dogs , tear gas, tazers , and even live ammunition ( killing horses ), while politicians and mainstream media do their best to ignore this growing atrocity, hoping to wait it out until the protestors give up.
But, as the saying goes, Water Is Life , and the issue of life and death is at the root of this protection movement, therefore, for people concerned with life, giving up on this is simply unthinkable. The root issue justifying state oppression of the protest is capitalism, and the perception that money is more important than life itself. When the police and national guard attack U.S. citizens on private property to protect corporate interests, who are they really working for?
The corporate dream of the Keystone XL pipeline is to create a profit stream for a small number of people at the expense of the natural world and anyone in the way. At the top of this pyramid of profit is Texas billionaire Kelcy Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, the company responsible for the project.
So who is Kelcy Warren?
A native of East Texas and graduate of the University of Texas at Arlington with a degree in civil engineering, Warren worked in the natural gas industry and became co-chair of Energy Transfer Equity in 2007. With business partner Ray Davis, co-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, Warren built Energy Transfer Equity into one of the nation’s largest pipeline companies, which now owns about 71,000 miles of pipelines carrying natural gas, natural gas liquids, refined products and crude oil. The company’s holdings include Sunoco, Southern Union and Regency Energy Partners.
Forbes estimates the 60-year-old Warren’s personal wealth at $4 billion. Bloomberg described him as “among America’s new shale tycoons” — but rather than building a fortune by drilling he “takes the stuff others pull from underground and moves it from one place to another, chilling, boiling, pressurizing, and processing it until it’s worth more than when it burst from the wellhead.” [ Source ]
Shockingly, in 2015 the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, appointed Warren to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission which is an insult to environmentalists working to protect Big Bend National Park and surrounding sacred tribal lands from another $770 million pipeline project .
“According to the governor’s office, the state parks and wildlife commission “manages and conserves the natural and cultural resources of Texas,” along with ensuring the future of hunting, fishing and outdoor recreation opportunities for Texans.” [ Source ]
This glaring conflict of interest has inspired Environmental Science major at UTSA and former Texas State Park Ambassador Andrew Lucas to begin a drive to have Warren removed from this environmental post. His petition is described here :
Most people may know Kelcy Warren as the man behind the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline. The Dallas-based billionaire and CEO of Energy Transfer Partners has been making headlines for fast-tracking a 1100 mile crude oil pipeline across the Midwest and under the Missouri River, just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. No environmental impact assessment, no respect for cultural sites, and no regard for the local and widespread communities living along the river. A similar story is unfolding out in West Texas, where Warren’s company has split through the pristine Big Bend region with the 200 mile Comanche Trail Pipeline and nearly-complete 143 mile Trans Pecos Pipeline. These Pipelines mark the way for massive natural gas and oil developments in the Trans Pecos region.
With untold damages unfolding for cultural and environmental resources at the hands of Energy Transfer Partners, it would surprise most to know that nearly a year ago, Texas Governor Greg Abbott appointed Kelcy Warren for a 6 year term as 1 of the 10 commissioners who preside over Texas Parks And Wildlife… Why? Probably the $550,000 in campaign contributions Abbott received from Warren.
Footage of militarized police using the Long Range Acoustic Device ( LRAD ) crowd control weapon against protectors at standing rock on October 27th, 2016: Final Thoughts
Warren is listed as number 150 on Forbes list of wealthiest Americans with an estimated net worth of $4.2 billion in September of 2016. He is the head of the Dakota Access Pipeline snake.
If you are scratching your head wondering why militarized police and private security contractors are beating, gassing and attacking peaceful resistors, including women, children and the elderly, the answer is, they are doing it to protect the interests of Kelcy Warren and others invested in this pipeline project.
About the Author
Isaac Davis is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com and OffgridOutpost.com Survival Tips blog. He is an outspoken advocate of liberty and of a voluntary society. He is an avid reader of history and passionate about becoming self-sufficient to break free of the control matrix. Follow him on Facebook, here . This article ( This is the Man Militarized Police at Standing Rock are Working For ) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Isaac Davis and WakingTimes.com . Vote Up | 0 |
SEOUL, South Korea — The chief of North Korea’s powerful secret police, long considered the man for the top leader, Kim has been dismissed on charges of corruption and abuse of power, the South Korean government said on Friday. The firing of the chief, Gen. Kim as minister of state security highlights the turmoil that has engulfed the upper reaches of Mr. Kim’s government. The general is the latest in a series of party and military officials Mr. Kim has fired, demoted or executed as he tried to consolidate his totalitarian power through what South Korean officials and North Korean defectors have called a “reign of terror. ” General Kim was fired in after he was demoted to a general from a one, said Jeong a spokesman for the South’s Unification Ministry. The general’s surprise downfall was the latest indication that even top lieutenants are at risk as Mr. Kim has rival agencies monitor one another to detect and punish any sign of disrespect or disloyalty. Until his dismissal, General Kim had been Mr. Kim’s chief henchman in purging potential enemies. “Kim has been a key aide to Kim and has buttressed his reign of terror,” Mr. Jeong said. “His dismissal could further deepen unrest among officials and add to the instability of the regime by weakening its control on the people. ” Mr. Jeong said General Kim was accused of corruption and held responsible for various human rights violations, including torture, committed at his agency. But other political machinations could be at play behind the dismissal, Mr. Jeong said, citing speculation about a rivalry among different power centers. Mr. Jeong noted that the dismissal resulted from an investigation by another powerful agency, the Organization and Guidance Department of the governing Workers’ Party of North Korea. The department supervises all state agencies and is reportedly directly overseen by Mr. Kim. “The Organization and Guidance Department is conducting an intensive investigation of Kim and the Ministry of State Security, so the level of punishment and the number of people affected could be expanded,” Mr. Jeong said, without disclosing how the South Korean government learned of the reported purge transpiring inside a secretive regime. The Ministry of State Security, which serves as the secret police and intelligence agency in the North, is one of the most feared tools of government there, responsible for arresting dissidents and running a network of prison gulags. When Mr. Kim executed his own uncle and No. 2 official, Jang on charges of factionalism, corruption and plotting to overthrow his government in 2013, it was General Kim’s ministry that arrested and Mr. Jang. Since taking power after the death of his father in 2011, Mr. Kim has frequently reshuffled the party and military elites as he has moved swiftly to establish his monolithic authority in North Korea, which his family has ruled for seven decades. Mr. Kim has executed at least 140 senior officials, usually killing them with machine guns and even flamethrowers, according to the Institute for National Security Strategy, a think tank 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 fled partly because of Mr. Kim’s reign of terror. General Kim, 71, served in various top military positions under Mr. Kim, said Cheong a senior analyst at the Sejong Institute, a South Korea research organization. He had been the top political officer of the North’s People’s Army and chief of its general staff, as well as its minister of armed forces. Purges and executions remain an important feature of political life in the North. In 2015, South Korean officials said that Gen. Hyon the defense minister, was executed with an antiaircraft gun in Pyongyang, the North’s capital, after he dozed off during military events and Mr. Kim’s orders. In August, they said Mr. Kim had found fault with a deputy premier’s “disrespectful posture” during a meeting and had him executed by a firing squad. | 1 |
Information Liberation October 26, 2016
Video out of Florida shows the Clinton machine is busing people to the polls and luring them to vote using taco trucks.
Now we know what the DNC meant when they said they needed more “ taco bowl outreach .”
SEIU, which has endorsed Hillary Clinton, appears to be behind the scam.
WATCH: This article was posted: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 at 6:09 am Share this article | 0 |
WASHINGTON — The continuing fallout from President Trump’s unsubstantiated wiretapping allegation cost him another ally on Thursday, as the embattled Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee announced he would step aside from his panel’s investigation into Russia’s efforts to disrupt last year’s election. The announcement from the committee’s chairman, Representative Devin Nunes of California, came shortly before the House Committee on Ethics said he was under investigation because of public reports that he “may have made unauthorized disclosures of classified information. ” Mr. Nunes’s recusal from the Russia inquiry was a blow to Mr. Trump, who in less than three months in office has seen the imbroglio over Russia’s disruption campaign exact political damage on some of his closest advisers and most vigorous supporters. The furor over the contacts that some of the president’s aides had with Russian officials has already led to the firing of Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, and the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions from overseeing the F. B. I. ’s inquiry into the Russian efforts. Now it has led to the recusal of Mr. Nunes from the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation, and Mr. Trump faces the potential revival of that inquiry. The investigation had descended into a partisan sideshow in the two weeks since Mr. Nunes told reporters that Trump associates had been swept up in surveillance of foreign officials by American spy agencies during the transition, citing intelligence reports that were classified. He then rushed to the White House to brief Mr. Trump, prompting Democrats to argue that Mr. Nunes had proved himself far too close to the president to run an independent investigation. The criticism intensified last week when The New York Times revealed that the classified information about incidental surveillance cited by Mr. Nunes came from White House officials. White House officials had been seeking evidence to bolster a claim that Mr. Trump made March 4 on Twitter that the Obama administration had wiretapped Trump Tower during the presidential campaign. Numerous current and former American officials — including James B. Comey, the F. B. I. director — have debunked the claim. Yet Mr. Nunes resisted demands to step aside until Thursday, when he found himself under investigation by the House ethics committee. The internal House ethics investigation into whether Mr. Nunes disclosed classified information is a striking twist for a chairman who has made the unauthorized disclosure of classified information a focal point of his Russia investigation. At the same time, he has repeatedly dismissed the idea that he was wrong to disclose the existence of “dozens” of classified intelligence reports about incidental surveillance of associates of Mr. Trump. “Any talk of that is nonsense,” Mr. Nunes said in an interview with The Times last month. Mr. Nunes said in a statement that the ethics investigation was “entirely false and politically motivated” and that he would remain the intelligence committee’s chairman. But it was in the intelligence committee’s best interests for him to temporarily step aside from the Russia investigation, he said in the statement, which was issued 26 minutes before the ethics committee announced its inquiry. The statement also put the blame for the investigation on complaints against him made by multiple watchdog groups to the Office of Congressional Ethics, which is entirely separate from the ethics committee. Mr. Nunes dismissed those organizations as “ activist groups,” though it was not clear what role, if any, their complaints played in setting off the inquiry. Mr. Nunes, who served on the president’s transition team, has for weeks offered Mr. Trump fuel to keep his wiretapping claims in the news — and to make more unsubstantiated accusations. In an interview with The Times on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said that the former national security adviser Susan E. Rice might have committed a crime by seeking the identities of the Trump associates who last year were swept up in surveillance of foreign officials by American spy agencies. Ms. Rice has said she did nothing wrong. Mr. Nunes’s recusal on Thursday was welcomed by Democrats, who had questioned whether White House officials had used the congressman essentially to launder the information about incidental surveillance. Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the panel’s top Democrat, praised the chairman’s decision. “It will allow us to have a fresh start moving forward,” he told reporters on Thursday. Representative K. Michael Conaway of Texas, a senior Republican on the committee, will assume control of the investigation. An accountant who formerly served as the chairman of the House ethics committee, Mr. Conaway will be assisted by two other Republicans on the committee, Mr. Nunes said: Representatives Tom Rooney of Florida and Trey Gowdy of South Carolina. Mr. Gowdy led the special investigation into the 2012 attacks on a diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. Mr. Gowdy is also on the ethics committee. Several of the watchdog groups that had complained to the separate Office of Congressional Ethics praised the ethics committee’s decision to investigate Mr. Nunes. Jordan Libowitz, spokesman for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, described the congressman’s disclosure of classified information as “so grave that it needs to be investigated right away. ” The ethics committee comprises 10 House members: five Republicans and five Democrats. It is unclear how long the inquiry could take, but the investigations usually last months or years. The panel has the power to impose a range of penalties, from a letter admonishing a member to a recommendation that the House vote to expel a member. In more serious cases, the panel can choose to refer evidence to law enforcement officials, a move it can make confidentially. The independent Office of Congressional Ethics faced a threat in early January when House Republicans voted to gut it on the eve of the new Congress. Under pressure from Republican leaders and President Trump, they ultimately abandoned the effort. The recusal offered hope to Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, who worried that Mr. Nunes’s behavior had discredited the panel’s investigation and who had increasingly resigned themselves to the idea that they would have to conduct parallel inquiries rather than work with Republicans. “We now have a chance to reclaim our committee’s independence, credibility and ability to make progress,” Representative Eric Swalwell of California said in a statement. As the House investigation has deteriorated into partisan feuding in recent weeks, many have turned to the Senate Intelligence Committee as Congress’s last best hope for an impartial congressional investigation into Russian interference in the election. Since late July, the F. B. I. has been conducting its own counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the election, including an examination of whether Mr. Trump’s associates cooperated with Russian officials to influence the race. | 1 |
Why Is Obama Threatening Russia With World War 3 Right Before The Election? Michael On Television We Are Being Set Up For Higher Interest Rates, A Major Recession And A Giant Stock Market Crash November 20th, 2016
Since Donald Trump’s victory on election night we have seen the worst bond crash in 15 years . Global bond investors have seen trillions of dollars of wealth wiped out since November 8th, and analysts are warning of another tough week ahead. The general consensus in the investing community is that a Trump administration will mean much higher inflation, and as a result investors are already starting to demand higher interest rates. Unfortunately for all of us, history has shown that higher interest rates always cause an economic slowdown. And this makes perfect sense, because economic activity naturally slows down when it becomes more expensive to borrow money. The Obama administration had already set up the next president for a major recession anyway, but now this bond crash threatens to bring it on sooner rather than later.
For those that are not familiar with the bond market, when yields go up bond prices go down. And when bond prices go down, that is bad news for economic growth.
So we generally don’t want yields to go up.
Unfortunately, yields have been absolutely soaring over the past couple of weeks, and the yield on 10 year Treasury notes has now jumped “one full percentage point since July” …
The 10-year Treasury yield jumped to 2.36% in late trading on Friday, the highest since December 2015, up 66 basis point since the election, and up one full percentage point since July!
The 10-year yield is at a critical juncture. In terms of reality, the first thing that might happen is a rate increase by the Fed in December, after a year of flip-flopping. A slew of post-election pronouncements by Fed heads – including Yellen’s “relatively soon” – have pushed the odds of a rate hike to 98%.
As I noted the other day , so many things in our financial system are tied to yields on U.S. Treasury notes. Just look at what is happening to mortgages. As Wolf Richter has noted , the average rate on 30 year mortgages is shooting into the stratosphere…
The carnage in bonds has consequences. The average interest rate of the a conforming 30-year fixed mortgage as of Friday was quoted at 4.125% for top credit scores. That’s up about 0.5 percentage point from just before the election, according to Mortgage News Daily . It put the month “on a short list of 4 worst months in more than a decade.”
If mortgage rates continue to shoot higher, there will be another housing crash.
Rates on auto loans, credit cards and student loans will also be affected. Throughout our economic system it will become much more costly to borrow money, and that will inevitably slow the overall economy down.
Why bond investors are so on edge these days is because of statements such as this one from Steve Bannon …
In a nascent administration that seems, at best, random in its beliefs, Bannon can seem to be not just a focused voice, but almost a messianic one:
“Like [Andrew] Jackson’s populism, we’re going to build an entirely new political movement,” he says. “It’s everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We’re just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement.”
Steve Bannon is going to be one of the most influential voices in the new Trump administration, and he is absolutely determined to get this “trillion dollar infrastructure plan” through Congress.
And that is going to mean a lot more borrowing and a lot more spending for a government that is already on pace to add 2.4 trillion dollars to the national debt this fiscal year.
Sadly, all of this comes at a time when the U.S. economy is already starting to show significant signs of slowing down. It is being projected that we will see a sixth straight decline in year-over-year earnings for the S&P 500, and industrial production has now contracted for 14 months in a row .
The truth is that the economy has been barely treading water for quite some time now, and it isn’t going to take much to push us over the edge. The following comes from Lance Roberts …
With an economy running at below 2%, consumers already heavily indebted, wage growth weak for the bulk of American’s, there is not a lot of wiggle room for policy mistakes.
Combine weak economics with higher interest rates, which negatively impacts consumption, and a stronger dollar, which weighs on exports, and you have a real potential of a recession occurring sooner rather than later.
Yes, the stock market soared immediately following Trump’s election, but it wasn’t because economic conditions actually improved.
If you look at history, a stock market crash almost always follows a major bond crash. So if bond prices keep declining rapidly that is going to be a very ominous sign for stock traders.
And history has also shown us that no bull market can survive a major recession. If the economy suffers a major downturn early in the Trump administration, it is inevitable that stock prices will follow.
The waning days of the Obama administration have set us up perfectly for higher interest rates, a major recession and a giant stock market crash.
Of course any problems that occur after January 20th, 2017 will be blamed on Trump, but the truth is that Obama will be far more responsible for what happens than Trump will be.
Right now so many people have been lulled into a sense of complacency because Donald Trump won the election.
That is an enormous mistake.
A shaking has already begun in the financial world, and this shaking could easily become an avalanche.
Now is not a time to party. Rather, it is time to batten down the hatches and to prepare for very rough seas ahead.
All of the things that so many experts warned were coming may have been delayed slightly, but without a doubt they are still on the way.
So get prepared while you still can, because time is running out. | 0 |
Michele Paccione / Shutterstock.com
Universally, Trump was depicted as an anti-establishment candidate. Washington and Wall Street hated him, and the media were deployed to vilify him endlessly. If they could not discredit Trump enough, surely they would steal the election from him. Some even suggested Trump would be assassinated.
Acting the part, Trump charged repeatedly that the election was rigged, and he was right, of course. During the primaries, Hillary Clinton received debate questions in advance from CNN. More seriously, 30 states used voting machines that could easily be hacked.
A leaked tape of Trump making obscene comments about groping women became further proof that the establishment was out to get him. In spite of all this, Trump managed to win by a landslide, so what happened?
To steal an American election, one only needs to tamper with votes in two or three critical states, and since Hillary didn’t win, we must conclude that she was never the establishment’s chosen puppet. As Trump claimed, the fix was in, all right, except that it was rigged in his favor, as born out by the fact.
While everybody else yelped that Trump would never be allowed to win, I begged to differ. After the Orlando false flag shooting on June 12th, 2016, I wrote:
In 2008, Obama was touted as a political outsider who will hose away all of the rot and bloody criminality of the Bush years. He turned out to be a deft move by our ruling class. Though fools still refuse to see it, Obama is a perfect servant of our military banking complex. Now, Trump is being trumpeted as another political outsider.
A Trump presidency will temporarily appease restless, lower class whites, while serving as a magnet for liberal anger. This will buy our ruling class time as they continue to wage war abroad while impoverishing Americans back home. Like Obama, Trump won’t fulfill any of his election promises, and this, too, will be blamed on bipartisan politics.
On September 24th, I doubled down:
Mind-fucked, most Americans can’t even see that an American president’s only task is to disguise the deep state’s intentions. Chosen by the deep state to explain away its crimes, our president’s pronouncements are nearly always contradicted by the deep state’s actions. While the president talks of peace, democracy, racial harmony, prosperity for Main Street and going after banksters, etc., the deep state wages endless war, stages meaningless elections, stokes racial hatred, bankrupts nearly all Americans and enables massive Wall Street crimes, etc.
Only the infantile will imagine the president as any kind of savior or, even more hilariously, anti-establishment. Since the deep state won’t even tolerate a renegade reporter at, say, the San Jose Mercury News, how can you expect a deep state’s enemy to land in the White House?! It cannot happen.
A presidential candidate will promise to fix all that’s wrong with our government, and this stance, this appearance, is actually very useful for the deep state, for it gives Americans hope. Promising everything, Obama delivered nothing. So who do you think is being primed by the deep state to be our next false savior?
Who benefits from false flag terrorist attacks blamed on Muslims? Who gains when blacks riot? Why is the Democratic Party propping up a deeply-despised and terminally ill war criminal? More personable Bernie Sanders was nixed by the deep state since it had another jester in mind.
The first presidential debate is Monday. Under stress, Hillary’s eyes will dart in separate directions. Coughing nonstop for 90 minutes, her highness will hack up a gazillion unsecured emails. Her head will jerk spasmodically, plop onto the floor and, though decapitated, continue to gush platitudes and lies. “A Very Impressive Performance,” CNBC and CNN will announce. Come November, though, Trump will be installed because his constituency needs to be temporarily pacified. The deep state knows that white people are pissed.
The media were out to get Trump, pundits from across the political spectrum kept repeating, but the truth is that the media made Trump. Long before the election, Trump became a household name, thanks to the media.
Your average American can’t name any other real estate developer, casino owner or even his own senators, but he has known Trump since forever. For more than a decade, Trump was a reality TV star, with two of his children also featured regularly on The Apprentice. Trump’s “You’re fired” and his hair became iconic. Trump appeared on talk shows, had cameo roles in movies and owned the Miss Universe pageant. In 2011, Obama joked that Trump as president would deck out the White House in garish fashion, with his own name huge on the façade. The suave, slick prez roasted Trump again in 2016. Trump has constantly been in the limelight.
It’s true that during the presidential campaign, Trump received mostly negative press, but this only ramped up support among his core constituency. Joe Sixpacks had long seen the media as not just against everything they cherished, but against them as people, so the more the media attacked Trump, the more popular he became among the white working class.
Like politicians, casinos specialize in empty promises. Trump, then, is a master hustler, just like Obama, and with help from the media, this New York billionaire became a darling of the flyover states. Before his sudden transformation, Trump was certainly an insider. He donated $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation, and Bill and Hillary attended his third wedding. Golf buddies, The Donald and Bill were also friends with one Jeffrey Epstein, owner of the infamous Lolita Express and a sex orgy, sex slave island in the Caribbean.
In 2002, New York Magazine published “Jeffrey Epstein: International Money of Mystery.” This asskissing piece begins, “He comes with cash to burn, a fleet of airplanes, and a keen eye for the ladies—to say nothing of a relentless brain that challenges Nobel Prize-winning scientists across the country—and for financial markets around the world.” ORDER IT NOW
Trump is quoted, “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it—Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
Bill Clinton shouts out, “Jeffrey is both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of twenty-first-century science. I especially appreciated his insights and generosity during the recent trip to Africa to work on democratization, empowering the poor, citizen service, and combating HIV/AIDS.”
Epstein gushes back, “If you were a boxer at the downtown gymnasium at 14th Street and Mike Tyson walked in, your face would have the same look as these foreign leaders had when Clinton entered the room. He is the world’s greatest politician.”
Even during a very nasty election campaign, Trump stayed clear of Clinton’s association with Epstein because he himself had been chummy with the convicted pervert. Trump also never brought up the Clintons’ drug running in Mena or the many mysterious deaths of those whose existence inconvenienced their hold on power.
With eight years in the White House, plus stints as a senator then secretary of state, Clinton is considered the ultimate insider. Though a novice politician, Trump is also an insider, and it’s a grand joke of the establishment that they’ve managed to convince Joe Sixpacks everywhere that Trump will save them.
Knowing how angry the working class has become, the deep state could not install Hillary, for that would have been a tiresome rehash of another Clinton presidency. With NAFTA, Bill launched the job offshoring that has wrecked this country, and those most affected by it, working class whites, know damn well who’s responsible. The Clinton brand has become anathema to middle America.
While Clinton says America is already great, Trump promises to make America great again, but the decline of the US will only accelerate. Our manufacturing base is handicapped because American workers will not put up with Chinese wages, insanely long hours or living in cramped factory dormitories. In a global economy, those who can suck it up best get the jobs.
On the foreign front, America’s belligerence will not ease up under a Trump presidency, for without a hyper kinetic military to browbeat and bomb, the world will stop lending us money. The US doesn’t just wage wars to fatten the military banking complex, but to prop up the US Dollar and prevent our economy from collapsing. The empire yields tangible benefits for even the lowliest Americans.
With his livelihood vaporized, the poor man does not care for LGBT rights, the glass ceiling or climate change. Supplementing his wretched income with frequent treks to the church pantry, if not blood bank, he needs immediate relief. It’s a shame he’s staking his hopes on an imposter.
The deep state ushered in Trump because he’s clearly their most useful decoy. As the country hopes in vain, the crooked men behind the curtain will go on with business as usual. Trump is simply an Obama for a different demographic. Nothing will change for the better.
Linh Dinh is the author of two books of stories, five of poems, and a novel, Love Like Hate . He’s tracking our deteriorating socialscape through his frequently updated photo blog, Postcards from the End of America . | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Republicans in Congress plan to move almost immediately next month to repeal the Affordable Care Act, as Donald J. Trump promised. But they also are likely to delay the effective date so that they have several years to phase out President Obama’s signature achievement. This emerging “repeal and delay” strategy, which Speaker Paul D. Ryan discussed this week with Vice Mike Pence, underscores a growing recognition that replacing the health care law will be technically complicated and could be politically explosive. Since the law was signed by Mr. Obama in March 2010, 20 million uninsured people have gained coverage, and the law has become deeply embedded in the nation’s health care system, accepted with varying degrees of enthusiasm by consumers, doctors, hospitals, insurance companies and state and local governments. Unwinding it could be as difficult for Republicans as it was for Democrats to pass it in the first place and could lead Republicans into a dangerous where the existing law is in shambles but no replacement can pass the narrowly divided Senate. Democrats would face political pressure in that case as well. It is not sheer coincidence that at least one idea envisions putting the effective date well beyond the midterm congressional elections in 2018. “We are not going to rip health care away from Americans,” said Representative Kevin Brady, Republican of Texas and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, which shares jurisdiction over health care. “We will have a transition period so Congress can develop the right policies and the American people can have time to look for better health care options. ” Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee and chairman of the Senate health committee, said: “I imagine this will take several years to completely make that sort of transition — to make sure we do no harm, create a good health care system that everyone has access to, and that we repeal the parts of Obamacare that need to be repealed. ” But health policy experts suggest “repeal and delay” would be extremely damaging to a health care system already on edge. “The idea that you can repeal the Affordable Care Act with a or transition period and not create market chaos is a total fantasy,” said Sabrina Corlette, a professor at the Health Policy Institute of Georgetown University. “Insurers need to know the rules of the road in order to develop plans and set premiums. ” Details of the strategy are in flux, and there are disagreements among Republicans about how to proceed. In the House, the emerging plan, tightly coordinated between Mr. Ryan and Mr. Pence, is meant to give Mr. Trump’s supporters the repeal of the health law that he repeatedly promised at rallies. It would also give Republicans time to try to assure consumers and the health industry that they will not instantly upend the health insurance market, and to pressure some Democrats to support a Republican alternative. “I don’t think you have to wait,” Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the majority leader, told reporters this week. “I would move through and repeal and then go to work on replacing. I think once it’s repealed, you will have hopefully fewer people playing politics, and everybody coming to the table to find the best policy. ” Under the plan discussed this week, Republicans said, repeal will be on a fast track. They hope to move forward in January or February with a budget blueprint using reconciliation instructions, which would allow parts of the health care law to be dismembered with a simple majority vote, denying Senate Democrats the chance to filibuster. They would follow up with legislation similar to a bill vetoed in January, which would have repealed the tax penalties for people who go without insurance and the penalties for larger employers who fail to offer coverage. That bill would also have eliminated federal insurance subsidies, ended federal spending for the expansion of Medicaid, and barred federal payments to Planned Parenthood clinics. But in the Senate, Republicans would need support from some Democrats if they are to replace the Affordable Care Act. The budget reconciliation rules that would allow Republicans to dismantle the Affordable Care Act have strict limits. The rules are primarily intended to protect legislation that affects spending or revenues. The health law includes insurance market standards and other policies that do not directly affect the budget, and Senate Republicans would, in many cases, need 60 votes to change such provisions. Repealing the funding mechanisms but leaving in place the regulations risks a meltdown of the individual insurance market. Insurers could not deny coverage, but they would not get as many healthy new customers as they were expecting. Hospitals would again face many uninsured patients in their emergency rooms, without the extra Medicaid money they have been expecting. Even a delay of two to three years could be damaging. Health policy experts said the uncertainty could destabilize markets, unnerving insurers that have already lost hundreds of millions of dollars on policies sold in insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act. “Insurers would like clarity on the shape of the replacement plan to continue participating on exchanges if Obamacare is repealed,” Ana Gupte, an analyst at Leerink Partners who follows the insurance industry, said Friday. Republicans are hoping that Mr. Trump will be able to use his bully pulpit to lean on vulnerable Democrats up for in states Mr. Trump won, such as Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana. “When that date came and you did nothing, if you want to play politics, I think the blame would go to people who didn’t want to do anything,” Mr. McCarthy said. But Democrats may not be so quick to break. “If they are looking at fixing what’s there, I’ve been wanting to work with Republicans for years now,” said Mr. Tester, whose state cast just 36 percent of its vote for Hillary Clinton. “But if they are going to take away provisions like conditions, lifetime caps, I think they are barking up the wrong tree. ” And some moderate Republicans see peril in repealing first and replacing later, favoring instead a simultaneous replacement to ensure a smooth transition. “We are firing live rounds this time,” Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania, said. “If we repeal under reconciliation, we have to replace it under normal processes, and does anyone believe that the Senate Democrats, with their gentle tender mercies will help us?” Republicans said they would work with the Trump administration on replacement legislation that would draw on comprehensive plans drafted by Mr. Ryan and Representative Tom Price, the Georgia Republican picked by Mr. Trump to be his secretary of health and human services. Any legislation is likely to include elements on which Republicans generally agree: tax credits for health insurance new incentives for health savings accounts subsidies for state pools, to help people who could not otherwise obtain insurance authority for sales of insurance across state lines and some protection for people with conditions who have maintained continuous coverage. Republicans said they hoped that the certainty of repeal would increase pressure on Democrats to sign on to some of these ideas. Democratic leaders, for now, feel no such pressure. Republicans “are going to have an awfully hard time” if they try to repeal the health law without proposing a replacement, said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the next Democratic leader. “There would be consequences for so many millions of people. ” | 1 |
We Are Change
Issues surrounding Hillary Clinton’s health and ability to take on the demanding position of President have pervaded this presidential race. But several recent WikiLeaks emails from John Podesta, chairman of Hillary’s campaign, have revealed that Hillary Clinton’s health problems cannot possibly be branded as “conspiracy theories” any longer.
Before Hillary Clinton announced her run for president, an email sent on March 14th, 2014, by campaign manager Robert Mook to Clinton campaign chairman Podesta asks whether Podesta has discussed Hillary’s “taxes and health.” The email states that he acknowledges they’re both “hyper sensitive” issues, wondering whether “both are better dealt with very early so we control them–rather than responding to calls for transparency.”
In this thread, Mook stated “Yes. We need to kill that baby in the cradle.” (Which perfectly articulates how sadistic the Clinton campaign and agenda is within a single metaphor.)
A later email thread from July 31, 2015 , shows Dan Schwerin, Clinton’s director of speech writing, aiming to roll out Hillary’s tax records along with a letter from her physician stating that she is “in excellent health,” and that following this “We expect the stories that pop at 2 pm to have headlines such as “CLINTON IN ‘EXCELLENT HEALTH,’ MEDICAL RECORDS SAY” … “CLINTON RELEASES HEALTH REPORT” … “CLINTON CAMP AIMS TO ONE-UP BUSH IN DISCLOSING FINANCES”
The emails expose the Clinton campaign’s attempts to suppress any further inquiry into these health problems and control the narrative, and provide them with “the best possible, ‘fighting’ chance of promoting the most helpful story lines.”
Also stating that “the first stories on health won’t pop until 2. 1 pm is just when we will quietly approach the reporters, ” the Clinton camp is exposed in the way in which the mainstream media has held complete bias in favor of a Clinton presidency. This has also been revealed through all the recent Podesta email Wikileaks releases. Just one example being an email sent April 30, 2015, by Politico reporter Glenn Thrush, who even called himself a “hack” when asking Hillary’s top campaign aide, John Podesta, to check over sections of his report regarding the Democratic presidential candidate before publication.
Startlingly, an email exchange between Hillary’s campaign leaders, Tanden and Podesta, even questions if she is aware that we are living on planet Earth. Telling an audience in Ohio that she was “moderate and center” after previously stating just a few days prior that she was “progressive”, Tanden asks, “Why did she call herself a moderate?”
Podesta replied “ I pushed her on this on Sunday night. She claims she didn’t remember saying it. Not sure I believe her.”
In response, Tanden stated, “I mean it makes my life more difficult after telling every reporter I know she’s actually progressive but that is really the smallest of issues. It worries me more that she doesn’t seem to know what planet we are all living in at the moment. ”
It can be speculated as to what this statement is referring to, but it is evident that this proves Hillary’s lack of awareness and mental stability. Perhaps regarding her inability to hold a firm political position, or even more worryingly, her inability to retain even the most basic and fundamental information, due to a medical condition that she is suffering from. Giving credibility to the latter possibility, Hillary’s top aide Huma Abedin admits that the former Secretary of State is “still not perfect in her head,” in a newly revealed Wikileaks email on Tuesday.
Countless incidents capturing Hillary’s poor health and unstable mental state have been brought to light, despite the Clinton campaign and mainstream media’s attempted censoring of this content in the hope that portraying a false narrative regarding these episodes will stray attention away from this issue. For example, after Hillary’s recent fall at a 9/11 memorial event filmed by a bystander, the Clinton campaign tried to cover up by claiming this was due to “pneumonia and dehydration” even though Clinton does not appear limp, as though she has fainted. In contrast, she appears ridged and shaky throughout this episode, as Secret Service agents lift her into the vehicle. However, Hillary’s constant tumbles do not surprise me, as the gravitational force pulling this Democratic nominee towards underworld must be so incredibly strong.
This along with many other recently recorded accounts of Hillary’s severe coughing fits , dangerous falls, recurring eye problems , and the spitting up of a vile yellow substance, have undoubtedly shown that this presidential candidate is scarcely physically fit to perform duties as president. Hillary’s mental state is also a major point of concern, which top aides, Podesta and Abedin, have confirmed through the Wikileaks emails stated in this article.
If Hillary blatantly appears unable to function healthily during her time running for president, we can only expect these issues to increase in severity if she were to take on the stressful position of president.
The post WikiLeaks Podesta Emails Confirm Hillary’s Health Issues appeared first on We Are Change .
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Rigging the Election – Video IV: Democrat Operatives Willfully Accepting Illegal Foreign Donations
Lee Rogers Daily Stormer October 26, 2016
Project Veritas has released a new video, part IV of their “Rigging the Election” series, which shows footage of Democrat operatives willfully accepting what was presented as a $20,000 donation from a foreign source. This is more documented evidence of criminal activity by these characters. It is against the law to accept foreign donations in this capacity.
The foreign source was actually working under cover with Project Veritas. They ended up wiring $20,000 from a Belize bank that the Democrats happily accepted. Once they received the money they started having discussions with the undercover man about granting special access, etc.
What makes the whole thing interesting is that they only returned the $20,000 after they realized that their operations had been infiltrated. It shows that under normal circumstances, they have no issue with accepting foreign donations even though it is against the law.
So far, Project Veritas has released video evidence documenting Democrat conspiracies to commit vote fraud, conspiracies to agitate violence and a willingness to accept illegal political contributions from foreigners. Then you have all the Wikileaks stuff that has been dumped. This entire operation surrounding Hillary Clinton is about as corrupt as you can get.
It looks as if Project Veritas is slowly working their way up the Democrat food chain in these videos. While this might be wishful thinking, I hope they have damning footage of Hillary Clinton that they’ll dump at a time to cause maximum political damage. I guess we’ll see. | 0 |
U-M’s New ‘Chief Diversity Officer’ Will Collect $385,000 per Year Derek Draplin, Michigan Capitol Confidential, October 28, 2016
The University of Michigan’s new chief diversity officer will collect $385,000 a year under his various job titles, including a new one created by a recently revealed $85 million, five-year U-M diversity plan .
Robert Sellers’ appointment to a new position called “vice provost for equity and inclusion and chief diversity officer” (VPEI-CDO) was approved Oct. 20 by the university’s governing board. Sellers previously served as “vice provost for equity and inclusion,” and is also listed as a professor of both psychology and education. In 2014-15 Sellers was paid $347,295 in his capacity as vice provost, a position created in 2014.
President Mark Schlissel nominated Sellers for the job several weeks ago. The new full-time administrative position “will serve as a leadership voice on diversity, equity and inclusion for the entire university.”
The diversity plan Sellers will oversee will spend $17 million a year over the next five years. It seeks to “recruit, retain and develop a diverse university community” and “support innovation and inclusive scholarship and teaching” through a number of new and expanded programs.
The $85 million plan is in addition to the $40 million a year the university already spends promoting diversity.
{snip} | 0 |
Jazmyn Benjamin walked onto the hardwood floor at Madison Square Garden to a symphony of squeaking soles. She made her way through a maze of tall men in tailored sweatsuits rehearsing beneath a basket, to a spot that signified a turning point in her life. “I was standing right here back in 2009 when I interviewed Estelle,” she said, referring to the British singer and songwriter, shortly before the start of a New York Knicks basketball game last week. “I was so nervous that day because she was such a big celebrity, and I was just a kid in the program. ” Ms. Benjamin — now a senior at Brooklyn College majoring in film production who hopes, she said, “to become the next influential film director” — was referring to her days as a student in the MSG Classroom program, which teaches children about jobs in television, including announcing, producing, directing and creating graphics. In 2009, Ms. Benjamin was living with her mother and two younger siblings in a homeless shelter. Things began to brighten when she was one of 10 children from neighborhoods selected to participate in the Hope Leadership Academy. The academy is run by the Children’s Aid Society, one of the eight agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. The Children’s Aid Society also provided $300 to Ms. Benjamin to buy clothes to wear during interview assignments and college visits. The academy worked with the Garden of Dreams Foundation, a nonprofit that helps children facing obstacles, to form the MSG Classroom program, which allows students to use Madison Square Garden as a laboratory of sorts. Program members are free to interview MSG employees and officials players with the Knicks, the New York Rangers and the New York Liberty and celebrity guests booked by MSG Entertainment. “That experience is what motivated me to want to become the next Martin Scorsese, the next Quentin Tarantino, the next Spike Lee,” Ms. Benjamin said. “There aren’t nearly as many female directors out there, so I would love to break through and contribute my own artistic vision to the industry. And if that means directing a drama or a horror flick or a cheesy romantic comedy, it really doesn’t matter. I just want the opportunity to put my own creative stamp on something. ” Having long recognized Ms. Benjamin’s desire to become a director, program officials gave her the chance to meet Mr. Lee, an avid Knicks fan. His directorial skills, Ms. Benjamin said, “changed the film game in a lot of ways. ” The meeting took place during halftime at the Knicks game against the Oklahoma City Thunder last Monday, when Ms. Benjamin was escorted to a section of courtside seats where she found Mr. Lee chatting with the comedian Chris Rock. Mr. Lee immediately invited Ms. Benjamin over, and wasted no time offering her valuable advice. “The easiest way to break into this business is to be a with a hyphen,” he said. “How are your writing skills? Do you keep a journal? Do you write down your story ideas every single day? Just keep writing. ” Mr. Lee became animated when Ms. Benjamin said to him, “When you came along, you did a lot of things that were new at the time, and now it sometimes feels as if everything has already been done. ” “That’s not true,” he said. “There’s a whole new world of cinema yet to be discovered, and we need more female directors like yourself out there trying to find it. So keep believing in yourself and do not let anyone discourage you from telling a story you want to tell. That’s just noise that you don’t want to hear. ” Mr. Lee offered one more directorial tip. “Always remember that a good director needs to be surrounded by very good actors, because the best actors might bring something extra or new to a role that you never expected,” he said. “You’ll find that out one day when you’re directing Denzel. ” When their conversation ended, Mr. Lee invited Ms. Benjamin to spend a day on the set of his coming Netflix show, “She’s Gotta Have It,” named for Mr. Lee’s first movie, released in 1986. The series is being filmed in Brooklyn. “Oh my goodness,” Ms. Benjamin said, her smile widening. “That would be amazing. ” Andrea Greenberg, president and chief executive of the television company MSG Networks, which runs the program, and a board member of the Garden of Dreams Foundation, said that Ms. Benjamin was “just one example of the impact and effect the foundation has on our kids, which is something we pride ourselves on — and we are very proud of Jazmyn. ” So is Ms. Benjamin’s mother, Monica, who watched as Mr. Lee held court with her daughter. “What an amazing night,” said the elder Ms. Benjamin, who now lives with her three children in an apartment of their own in West Harlem. “Jazmyn is a very artistic person who has impressed me with a few film projects she has directed at school,” she said. “She’s always looking for that different camera angle, always trying new and creative things, and in that regard, she’s a lot like Spike. ” | 1 |
You are here: Home / *Articles of the Bound* / #TrumpProtest: Communists Mobilize To Disrupt President-Elect Trump’s Inauguration #TrumpProtest: Communists Mobilize To Disrupt President-Elect Trump’s Inauguration November 11, 2016, 6:35 am by Guest Author Leave a Comment 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Party for Socialism and Liberation, a “revolutionary Marxist organization” burns President-Elect Trump in effigy on November 9, 2016 outside L.A. City Hall. “Progressive people from all over the country will be descending on Washington, D.C. on January 20, 2017 to stage a massive demonstration along Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day.” – ANSWER Coalition The Party for Socialism and Liberation , along with many other Marxist groups, is aggressively organizing to disrupt President-Elect Donald Trump’s inauguration through mass mailings and social media. The ANSWER Coalition is a front group for the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a revolutionary Marxist organization in the United States that was formed in 2006 after splitting with the Workers World Party . The Party for Socialism and Liberation favors the revolutionary beliefs of Mao and Trotsky. They are Pro North Korea, pro-Cuba and pro-Iran. This author is old enough to remember a rodeo clown who wore an Obama mask getting nation-wide attention for being “racist” and being banned for life from the Missouri State Fair in 2012. Ponder that while considering the complete lack of mainstream media attention for this: “There will be casualties on both sides. People have to die to make a change in this world.”
The poor girl has no idea that she is a pawn to be used by communist thugs.
Or this:
— Marcus Yam (@yamphoto) November 10, 2016 Party of Socialism and Liberation via Yahoo
In a mass mailing (also on their website ), the Marxist group divulges their support for Communist Bernie Sanders and explains in part: This country needs a real political revolution. Millions of people feel entirely disenfranchised by a political system that delivered the least favorable and trusted candidates in U.S. history. Many hoped that the Bernie Sanders campaign would represent a new direction and opportunity to take on entrenched power and extreme inequality, for a higher minimum wage, to defend Social Security, rebuild the labor movement, provide universal health care and free tuition. That campaign was largely suppressed, but its end does not change the desires and aspirations of tens of millions of people, workers and youth in particular, who are demanding real change. On Inauguration Day, thousands will be in the streets to give voice to the millions of people in this country who are demanding systemic change.
Their presidential candidate was Gloria Estela La Riva , wants to “build a movement against capitalism !” #voteSocialist2016 ! Protest on Inauguration Day Jan 20th Against War, Racism & Inequality @GloriaLaRiva @pslweb https://t.co/Mkq7oddlvK
— La Riva 4 President (@VotePSL) November 8, 2016
Many other socialist organizations have been out protesting, such as the Socialist Alternative , a Trotskyist group that claims Seattle council woman Kshama Sawant as a member. Socialist #Seattle councilmember calls for massive protest, nationwide shutdown on Inauguration Day
— Ashli Blow (@AshliKIRO7) November 9, 2016 Paper on the ground at the #TrumpProtest in D.C. mentions another protest on Inauguration Day. pic.twitter.com/CISDo7bvXt
— Natalie DiBlasio (@ndiblasio) November 10, 2016 Already 10K people joining the #NotMyPresident protest on Inauguration day at the Capitol. Set up for a crazy scene | 0 |
MUMBAI, India — Indians’ ingenuity is being mightily tested as they rush to save their “black money,” stashes of hundreds of thousands, even millions, of rupees they have accumulated without paying taxes. For decades, Indians have stuffed their mattresses with and notes, the most widely circulated bills, worth the equivalent of a few dollars. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi wanted to tax that money. His strategy was to force Indians to reveal what they had been hoarding. How? He banned the bills and told people that they had to exchange them for new ones. The ban, which was announced on Nov. 8, has thrown the economy into chaos and sent Indians on a desperate search for some way, any way, to launder their accumulated money and avoid a financially disastrous loss. People can exchange the banned notes through the end of the year for smaller denominations or new bills that are being created. Because more affluent Indians are allowed to deposit only 250, 000 rupees, or about $3, 700, without proof that they paid taxes, some are handing wads of cash to poor people, paying them a fee to hold the money in their accounts and return it later. Others are thronging jewelry stores and designer boutiques, carrying suitcases of banned currency notes, begging to buy something with backdated receipts. “People felt, rather than turn my money into toilet paper, let me have a beautiful outfit,” Tina Tahiliani Parikh, the executive director of the Ensemble group of Indian fashion stores, said in an interview. Some have thrown in the towel, rather than risking an investigation into their taxes, filling pillowcases and paper bags with the old currency and dumping them in the trash. Notes of 1, 000 rupees, the equivalent of about $15, have been spotted floating down the Ganges River. About a third of all business in India is carried out using black money. Whole industries, like real estate, trading, luxury retailing and wedding services, have been fueled by black money for decades. They have slumped. Indians line up for hours in a quest for the notes that they are allowed to receive in exchange at banks and the 2, 500 rupees that they can withdraw from A. T. M.s each day to pay for necessities. They often wait hours only to find that the bank or A. T. M. has run out of notes, which are scarce because the new ones are still being printed. The Supreme Court of India on Friday refused to block cases being brought in lower courts challenging Mr. Modi’s currency ban. The court said that people were frantic, and that the cases were a sign of a serious problem. The chairman of the Indian Banks’ Association said on Friday that all of the nation’s banks would limit the exchange of banned notes to older citizens and their own customers on Saturday so the staff could focus on normal banking. To a certain extent, analysts say, the Indian economy is so dependent on black money that economic dislocation was unavoidable if India was to seriously attack the problem. “In an emerging market economy like India, where corruption was deep rooted and long lasting, there is no way to put in place reform without significant disruption in the short run,” said Eswar S. Prasad, a professor of economics at Cornell University. A Mumbai novelist, Namita Devidayal, in a Times of India column last week, described the efforts by many of India’s wealthy women to salvage “those happy little bundles which she would whip out of her cupboard safe. ” Some were trying to pay their maids a year’s salary upfront, using the old notes, which the maids could ostensibly convert to new currency at the bank because the total was under the $3, 700 limit. Others were paying for a year’s hairdressing services in the old notes. Still others were pressing personal trainers, yoga teachers and children’s tutors to take cash upfront for months of services. Ms. Devidayal argued in an interview that the wealthy were “always trying to find some bargain by saving on taxes” and were by far the biggest exploiters of the system. “I know wealthy women so used to handling cash they can tell how much money there is by the weight of a bundle,” she said. Ms. Parikh said some customers had shown up with suitcases of cash, beseeching her staff to pretend that the purchases were made days earlier, which the staff refused to do. Some other luxury goods stores not only obliged customers but solicited them, sensing an opportunity, Ms. Parikh said. “Everyone has tricks up their sleeves, backdating bills,” she said. Real estate has been particularly hard hit by the ban on black money, since sale documents filed with the government typically reflect only the portion of the sale price paid by check. As a result, the sellers have no way of explaining to the tax authorities how they received the cash, which can account for as much as 60 percent of the deal. People who had just sold property were particularly out of luck, since they have not had a chance to spend or invest the cash they received. One man who had just received 3. 5 million rupees, or about $51, 000, in a real estate sale said he was hiring 14 people to deposit the 250, 000 rupees in old notes that they are allowed to put into their accounts without raising questions. Such tactics, called bundling, are illegal in the United States. Whether these schemes are successful will depend on the scrutiny of bank officials and the tax authorities. The Modi administration has said it will exercise extreme vigilance to prevent them, but the Indian government’s record in the area of corruption is not strong. Nevertheless, the pledge to crack down has ignited such fear of future income tax investigations that some people have been dumping cash. Several garbage pickers in Mumbai have found pillow cases and sacks filled with cash in recent days, said Saumya Roy, the chief executive of the nonprofit Vandana Foundation, which makes loans to the garbage pickers, among other residents in Mumbai and elsewhere. In a country where government oversight is weak, it has been easy to transact business in cash and to avoid taxes. Paying cash was also a way of avoiding the scrutiny of tax authorities who might question where a family, particularly that of a politician or wealthy business owner, had amassed the resources to spend enormous amounts of money on real estate or a wedding. “India is so crazy and complicated,” Ms. Devidayal said. “The option of not having black money is very much there, but because it’s so habitual and easy, and you can just say, ‘I had to do it,’ many people did. ” Cash had become so ingrained in the real estate industry that it was difficult to make a deal without paying some portion under the table. When Ramanan Laxminarayan, a Princeton University senior research scholar, tried to buy an apartment in the New Delhi area, he was told that he would have to provide 60 percent of the purchase price, about $420, 000, in cash to close the deal. Unable to raise such sums, he gave up trying to buy. “I said, ‘Is it legal?’ They said, ‘Of course not,’” Mr. Laxminarayan said. India’s lavish weddings have taken a big hit. Families that had stashed large amounts of black money to spend in the coming wedding season, which starts in December, are scrambling to make contingency plans. “This whole business is largely in cash,” from the caterer and musicians to the jeweler and ornate saris, said Satish Arora, a caterer and decorator in Faridabad, a city near Delhi. Several marriages planned for hotels have been downscaled, he said. Now, the best many can manage is “a simple joint reception. ” The luxury goods market also has been flattened. Business at some of Ms. Parikh’s Ensemble shops has dropped 60 percent since Mr. Modi announced his ban, she said. “We don’t know what will be normal in the future,” she said. | 1 |
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Health insurance giant Aetna said it will exit all Obamacare exchanges in 2018, citing significant losses. [The health insurance company announced it will withdraw from its two remaining exchanges in Delaware and Nebraska next year. TJ Crawford, an Aetna spokesman, said, “Our individual commercial products lost nearly $700 million between 2014 and 2016, and are projected to lose more than $200 million in 2017 despite a significant reduction in membership. ” Crawford said that Obamacare’s structural issues “have led to failures and carrier exits, and subsequent deterioration. ” Aetna announced earlier that would it would pull out its Iowa and Virginia exchanges as well. Insurers, including Aetna, lost money on the Obamacare exchanges because not enough young people signed up for insurance on the public exchanges to offset the cost of older and sicker individuals. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said in a statement on Wednesday that Aetna’s move “adds to the mountain of evidence that Obamacare has failed the American people. Repealing and replacing it with solutions that stabilize the marketplace to bring down costs and increase choices is the only solution. ” The Obamacare exchanges are facing lower engagement. Humana announced it will be dropping out of the exchanges in 2018. Other major insurers such as Anthem and Cigna will soon decide their future participation in the Obamacare exchanges. Aetna chief executive Mark Bertolini said that Obamacare is on a “death spiral. ” Molina Healthcare suffered a significant loss on the federal exchanges and will be evaluating its future participation in the exchanges on a state by state basis for 2018. Aetna will exit the Obamacare exchanges amidst an uncertain future for health care. The House passed a revised version of the American Health Care Act (AHCA) and now the Senate will take up health care reform. House Freedom Caucus chair Mark Meadows, who successfully brokered a deal with moderate Republicans on the House bill, will now work with Senate colleagues on a “grand compromise” for health care. Republicans seek to use the news of Aetna’s withdrawal as a reason for repealing large sections of Obamacare, whereas Democrats argued that Republicans’ repeal efforts create uncertainty in the health insurance market, forcing insurers to exit the exchanges. President Donald Trump, citing Aetna’s withdrawal from the Virginia exchanges, also says that Obamacare is in a “death spiral. ” Death spiral! ’Aetna will exit Obamacare markets in VA in 2018, citing expected losses on INDV plans this year’https: . — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 4, 2017, Why is it that the Fake News rarely reports Ocare is on its last legs and that insurance companies are fleeing for their lives? It’s dead! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 5, 2017, | 1 |
In the first installment of this series, we explored the past fight over Obamacare and the coming fight over Trumpcare. Of course, it will be a while before we know exactly what Trumpcare will look like the details are still being worked out. [Second in a series … And yet even now, we can make a general prediction: When all is said and done, the Trumpcare that replaces Obamacare will reflect the interests of Trump voters, and the middle class. It will thus be different from past efforts, coming from both sides of the aisle, to devise a workable form of health insurance. 1. The New Republican Party So now let’s start by taking a look at the Trump vote and, more broadly, the middle class. As President Donald Trump likes to say, he’s the messenger of a movement, and here are some key facts about that movement — specifically, about the 62, 980, 160 Americans who voted for Trump. The most obvious point is that the GOP is no longer — if it ever was — the “party of the rich. ” Even Democrats, if they are honest, have to admit that much. Indeed, there’s been something of a inversion in our national politics. So Republican officeholders might do well to look closely at their voters, including the many new GOP voters. In 2016, of the 10 states (including the District of Columbia) with the highest median income, nine voted for Hillary Clinton. Conversely, of the 10 states with the lowest median income, nine voted for Trump. We can pause to note that Trump voters themselves are typically not impoverished, and yet, many of them live in relatively poor states, where they find themselves sandwiched in the middle. According to the nationwide 2016 exit poll, Clinton won the poor, as well as the rich, while Trump won those in between. And it’s this Middle America, of course, that feels most besieged. As Trump said in his January 20 inaugural address, it’s because of globalization that “the wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world. ” Indeed, the effects of globalization, which have favored the few and hurt the many, are stark: According to a study by the liberal Brookings Institution, the 472 counties that Clinton carried last year accounted for 64 percent of the nation’s wealth, while the 2584 counties that Trump carried accounted for the remaining 36 percent. And the people in those “blue dots” know who’s been good to them. Thus it was, for instance, that Clinton got 84 percent of the vote in the rich globalist citadel of San Francisco and 87 percent of the vote in the equally affluent Manhattan. Meanwhile, in the same election, Trump won 118 of 120 counties in Kentucky, which ranks 47th in the country in terms of median family income. Indeed, in the Bluegrass State’s iconic Harlan County, scene of so much tragedy and strife over the last — only now to find itself, along with the rest of coal country, in the crosshairs of the affluent global greens — Trump won with almost 85 percent. Moreover, if we drill down in another gritty state, Michigan, we can see even more evidence of how the political deck has been shuffled. As we all know, Trump won the predominant areas of the Wolverine State, thereby becoming the first Republican presidential candidate to win there since 1988. Notably, Trump won Macomb County, just outside of Detroit, home to a population of more than 850, 000. Macomb was long a stronghold of the United Auto Workers, and then, in the 1980s, it became notable as a new fortress of “Reagan Democrats. ” Then many of those Reagan Democrats reverted back to Bill Clinton and his party in the 90s Macomb even went for Barack Obama in 2012, preferring him over Mitt Romney. And yet, in 2016, Trump carried the county by nearly a dozen points. And this is, to put it mildly, an historic shift. In recent decades, other Republican presidential candidates, such as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, have carried Michigan, but their coattails were insufficient to win many House seats. And yet today, in the 115th Congress, Republicans now control nine of the state’s 14 Congressional districts. So this is the new Republican Party. As Trump said of the GOP in May, “Five, 10 years from now — different party. You’re going to have a worker’s party. ” In fact, we didn’t have to wait even that long, as the 2016 results show. In the words of Trump campaign adviser Steve Moore, “Just as Reagan converted the GOP into a conservative party, Trump has converted the GOP into a populist party. ” Thus we can now look at a election map and see: There are rich blue dots (and also, poor blue dots) amidst a broad swathe of red. 2. Goodbye Obamacare Hello, Trumpcare Okay, so now to healthcare — or, more precisely, health insurance. As I have argued here recently, health itself is sometimes far different from health insurance. Yet in the meantime, Trump campaigned on getting rid of Obamacare, as did Republicans in Congress. So it’s a near certainty that the Affordable Care Act of 2010 will cease to exist. And yet what will replace it? Stipulating that the new plan is still unannounced, here’s an overall thesis statement for your consideration: In the long run, policy follows politics. That is, people vote their policy interests, as they see them, and politicians had better be respectful of those interests. And if they aren’t, then the voters will catch on quickly enough and throw them out of office. And so it is, too, with healthcare. So now we can add a further point: How you see healthcare depends in large part on where you stand economically. This is not an argument about class this author is hardly a class warrior. Instead, it’s a simple observation: People at different income levels have different experiences with the health system. For the rich, health insurance is no problem they can afford all the healthcare they need or want, with or without health insurance. And for the poor, health insurance is also not an issue they get it from the government, mostly through Medicaid, but also by simply coming into a hospital emergency room. (Under a federal law in place since 1986, the ER has to take of anyone, regardless of ability to pay, or of citizenship status.) Stuck in between, of course, is the middle class. Especially these days, when companies are shedding their benefit packages, families have to scramble to buy adequate health insurance, dodging all the bureaucrats, both public and private. In fact, just the other day here at Breitbart, Ann Coulter wrote about all the vexations she experienced in trying to buy private health insurance. Moreover, not all healthcare is equal. In fact, health and longevity vary strikingly by income. Not surprisingly, those at the top do the best according to a 2015 report from the federal National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, a man in the upper income quintile, or category, can expect to live another 38 years those in the quintile can expect to live another 37 years. Meanwhile, those in the exact middle can look forward to another 33 years. Those in the have another 28 years, while those at the bottom have another 26 years. So we can see the wide disparity — a gap of longevity between the top and the middle, and a gap between the top and the very bottom. (Statistics for women show the same although women typically live a couple of years longer than men.) So what’s causing this lifespan gap? Yes, the rich can afford all the bells and whistles of “concierge medicine” and Number hospitals, and yet as Atul Gawande wrote recently, the biggest single variable in health outcomes is a regular visit to a general practitioner it’s the family doctor, knowing the patient, and his or her medical history, who can usually spot, for example, the difference between a heart attack and an allergic reaction. As Gawande explains: States with higher ratios of physicians have lower rates of general mortality, infant mortality, and mortality from specific conditions such as heart disease and stroke. Other studies found that people with a physician as their usual source of care had lower subsequent mortality rates than others, regardless of their initial health. All right, so how might all this be reflected in a health plan? We can start by recalling the Republican critique of Obamacare and, before that, of Clintoncare — that being the failed effort by Hillary in the 1990s. Republicans always said, “Don’t let a bureaucrat get between you and your doctor,” and they had a point — a lifesaving point. Such blunt wisdom is sure to inform the Trump administration’s health plan. Indeed, the middle class can take comfort in the background of many key Trump advisers. The origins of Stephen K. Bannon, son of a Richmond, VA, telephone lineman and splicer, are well known. Yet less is the life story of another top White House aide, Anthony Scaramucci he is the son of a Long Island construction worker who went on to earn a fortune as an investor. Recently, Scaramucci recalled what it was like to be on the campaign trail with Trump, mingling with the crowds of supporters: Indeed, Trump is the only to have been inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame he has long been friends with the wrestling entrepreneurs Vince and Linda McMahon, and, in fact, has named Linda McMahon to head up the Small Business Administration. So it’s no wonder that Trump used the old union word, “solidarity,” in his inaugural address — a first for a president. Continuing in that solidaristic theme, he added, referring to the American people: And yet at the same time, most Americans do like the idea of helping young people get health insurance, and of preventing insurance companies from denying coverage to those with conditions. The polls show that ordinary people embrace those provisions by ratios of 2:1 or more. Indeed, no less than Trump himself declared on January 15 that in his forthcoming plan, he wants to see “insurance for everybody. ” In that spirit, Sen. Lamar Alexander ( .) the chairman of the mighty Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has been vocal on one salient point: The repeal of Obamacare must be accompanied by the replacement of Obamacare that is, by a better Trumpcare. As Alexander said on January 18, while he and his panel heard the testimony of Tom Price, slated to be Trump’s new Secretary of Health and Human Services: Obamacare should be finally repealed only when there are concrete practical reforms in place to give Americans access to truly affordable health care. Alexander added, “It’s not about developing a quick fix. ” That is, it’s about getting the new policy right. Repeal and replace. And on January 26, Alexander reiterated his prudential approach, saying: Step by step, we will build better systems that give Americans access to truly affordable health care. We will do this by moving health care decisions out of Washington, D. C. and back to states and patients. We can observe that Alexander is closely reflecting the views of the folks back home in Tennessee: Yes, they voted for Trump, and their elected officials almost unanimously opposed Obamacare. And yet at the same time, Tennesseans, overall, are not rich — they rank 45th in the nation, just two places above neighboring Kentucky. Indeed, median income in the Volunteer State is more than 15 percent below the national median. We can thus observe: People of modest means tend not to be libertarians they are usually willing to work hard, but life has taught them that they occasionally need protection to keep the wolf away from the door. To put that point another way, they don’t wish to take a leap into the dark when it comes to their health and the health of loved ones. Yes, the people of Tennessee like their freedom and independence, but they also know that their freedom, as well as health, can be jeopardized, too, by arrogant and unfeeling private health insurers. The idea that careful provision needs to be made for all Americans is not a controversial position among leading Republicans. Yes, sometimes there’s “noise” over precise such as “access” vs. “coverage” — and, of course, the Main Stream Media is always looking for ways to wedge Republicans apart — but to the the underlying unity of most GOPers is . For example, on January 18, Mike Pence said on Fox News, “[Trump] has made it clear in the last few weeks that he wants to do ‘repeal and replace’ concurrently. ” On January 22, House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy ( ) echoed that point, saying, “We are going to repeal Obamacare and replace it”: We will assure everybody we are replacing it, just as we’ve always said and just like we’ve had the ideas out there that will allow people to actually have a better relationship with their doctor, not have “one size fits all,” bring more choice into the process . . . and bring the premiums down . . . People are going to like what they see. In addition, as the country waits to see what Trumpcare will look like, other Republicans in the Senate have taken steps toward outlining alternatives to the existing program. We might observe that they are doing so in a manner that’s in keeping with the GOP’s emphasis on federalism — that is, pushing maximum down from the federal level to the state level. To that end, four Republicans — Sens. Shelley Moore Capito, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, and Johnny Isakson — have introduced the Patient Freedom Act of 2017, which would allow individual states to decide for themselves whether or not to keep, gulp, Obamacare. Some might ask: Is the proposal of those four senators too much of a concession to the status quo for most Republicans to swallow? Will some ideological activists accuse the senatorial quartet of being RINOs? Perhaps they will. And yet those four lawmakers were duly elected to represent their respective states we can further note that all of them — Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, and West Virginia — have incomes below the national median. That is, folks there may need help, even support, in navigating the market — and their elected officials know it. Indeed, another Republican senator, Steve Daines of Montana, has said that he wants to see Medicaid protected as well. About 236, 000 people — a quarter of the population — in his state are on Medicaid. And that figure, we might note, has increased about 60 percent in the last four years, mostly because of Obamacare. And so if Obamacare were to be repealed and not replaced, it’s likely that most, if not all, of those new enrollees would lose their benefits. So we can ask: Would Daines, eyeing be happy about that prospect? Would he vote to cut so many of his own constituents? Evidently, his answer is “no. ” Not everyone will be happy with Daines’ position, but that’s the hard reality of representative politics. Perhaps the issue can be finessed somehow, as with of Medicaid, but it will be a struggle — one of many. As they say, politics is that the slow boring of hard boards. And yes, in case you’re wondering, Montana, too, is below the national median income. On the other hand, if the reader is curious as to which states are above the median, here’s the full list — most of them are represented by Democrats. And so again we see the reality of the new partisan inversion. In any case, since Republicans control the Senate by just a slim 52:48 margin, Trump and Senate Majority Leader McConnell (as we have seen, Kentucky is relatively poor as well) will have to use caution as they seek to shepherd the Trumpcare replacement model through Congress. And when that legislation is shepherded, hopefully to a successful completion, here’s a prediction: It will be Trumpian. That is, it will be cast in the new model of Donald Trump. Yes, if done right, Trumpcare will be the sort of legislation that voters — including the newest Republican voters — will feel good about. And hopefully, other Americans, too, will see its basic intelligence and decency, even if they might still choose to oppose it. It’s with that inclusive spirit that the new Republican majority has been made, and it’s in that spirit that it will be maintained. | 1 |
Filmmaker Spike Lee unleashed a flurry of personal insults at President Donald Trump and revealed why Hillary Clinton was wrong to think she was “entitled” to the presidency in an interview this week. [In a brief conversation with Hollywood Reporter at the Cannes Film Festival, the Do The Right Thing director didn’t mince words about the : “He’s not my president. I call him Agent Orange. ” “There was some clip I saw yesterday of him dancing with the Saudis that was just ludicrous,” Lee said about Trump recent foreign trip to Saudi Arabia. “Not only is he not a good president, he can’t dance either,” Lee said while laughing. “He could be impeached on his rhythm. He’s the clown with the nuclear codes. ” Lee endorsed Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for president in a radio ad last February and blasted the Democrat party’s “rigged” primary system. When asked if he ever came around to supporting Clinton, Lee unloaded on the former frontrunner. “Have you read the book Shattered? Great book,” Lee said of the new Clinton campaign Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign, which offers a blistering look at how Hillary Clinton lost the election. “Hillary comes with entitlement. They thought they were entitled to this and despite what you might think, you gotta work,” Lee explained. “If you’re chilling at Martha’s Vineyard, and think ‘It’s a done deal.’ But it wasn’t. There’s one thing you can learn from sports. To quote Yogi Bear: “It ain’t over ’til it’s over. ” They thought it was theirs. Shit don’t work like that. ” The director also said he wouldn’t support actor and former professional wrestler Dwayne Johnson as a presidential candidate without first knowing his politics. Johnson’s name has been floated as a possible Democratic contender to take on Trump in 2020. “No. Well, I’d need to know how he stood on issues. ” Lee said, adding that Johnson’s presidential ambitions, real or not, comes off as unauthentic, given Trump’s jump from reality TV host to 45th president. “The thing is, everyone thinks they can be president. Like, “Look, that guy did it. ” Lee is attending the Cannes Film Festival in France this week. The filmmaker moderated a QA with singer Elton John on Monday. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @jeromeehudson | 1 |
Donald J. Trump and his daughter Ivanka met with former Vice President Al Gore on Monday to discuss climate change. And a believer finds the truth at a pizza parlor. Al Gore thought he would be bending the ear of the adviser Mr. Trump trusts most, his daughter Ivanka. Instead, the man bearing “The Inconvenient Truth” went straight to the source: the himself. “I had a lengthy and very productive session with the ” Mr. Gore, the former vice president, told reporters at Trump Tower. “It was a sincere search for areas of common ground. I had a meeting beforehand with Ivanka Trump. The bulk of the time was with the Donald Trump. I found it an extremely interesting conversation, and to be continued. ” Hundreds of scientists are also telling Mr. Trump in a new letter that climate change is real and needs to be addressed: “We urge you to decide if you want your presidency to be defined by denial and disaster, or acceptance and action,” says the new letter, which will be sent on Tuesday and has already been signed by 700 scientists and academics from related disciplines. The letter lists six steps the can take to help protect the nation’s “economy, national security, and public health and safety. ” Getting Mr. Trump, who has called climate change a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, to turn around on the issue might not be as unlikely as his public statements would make it seem. It may come down to who has his ear last. It must have felt familiar to Mr. Gore, confronting a who had just lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College. In point of fact, Mr. Gore’s loss to George W. Bush pales in comparison with Hillary Clinton’s. If you’re still counting, Mrs. Clinton’s popular vote lead over Mr. Trump climbed to 2, 597, 156 over the weekend, five times Mr. Gore’s final lead over Mr. Bush. And at 2 percentage points, Mrs. Clinton’s lead has equaled Jimmy Carter’s victory spread over Gerald Ford in 1976. On Tuesday, House Democrats will convene a forum on the “Electoral College and the Future of American Democracy. ” No word on whether they will be picking up the tab to move Californians to Florida and Ohio. The electoral recriminations keep rolling in. A former Breitbart News reporter claimed last night on Facebook that he planted Clinton hecklers at her rallies, and has since deleted the post. The gunman who stormed a Washington pizzeria on Sunday confirmed that he was motivated by online articles that convinced him that the restaurant, Comet Ping Pong, “was harboring sex slaves” and that he was “armed to help rescue them,” according to documents released at his arraignment. After the suspect, Edgar M. Welch, “found no evidence that underage children were being harbored in the restaurant,” he surrendered peacefully, the documents said. The truth now known, perhaps Mr. Welch could tell the son of the ’s pick for national security adviser, who said on Twitter: Also, if he had kept his assault rifle stashed, the gunman could have enjoyed a pizza and a beer, but we Washingtonians understand the wait for a table can be pretty long. The House majority leader said a Congress would not support the ’s vow to hit companies that move overseas with a hefty tariff on goods sent back to the United States. And House Speaker Paul D. Ryan hinted strongly that he wouldn’t go along either. “I don’t want to get into some kind of trade war,” Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the majority leader, said in response to vehement threats by Mr. Trump over the weekend. Mr. Ryan echoed Mr. McCarthy’s view that an overhaul of the corporate tax code would better keep jobs in the United States than a punitive tariff on companies that send work abroad. “I think we can get at the goal here, which is keep American businesses American, build things in America and sell them overseas. That can be properly addressed in comprehensive tax reform,” the speaker told a Wisconsin reporter. In a storm of Twitter posts over the weekend, the had been uncompromising on the proposal. An umbrella organization of Jewish groups is holding a Hanukkah party at the new Trump International Hotel in Washington, and one of its member groups is not too happy about it. “In the years to come, Jews in America are going to be regularly tested to make the right choices, and this is clearly not one of them,” wrote Peter Pepper and Ann Toback, the president and executive director of the Workmen’s Circle, in a letter to Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. In a telephone interview, Mr. Hoenlein said that the venue choice had been made by the partner for the party, the Azerbaijani Embassy, and that it was one of the few places that would hold a kosher reception on short notice. “There’s no other significance to it,” Mr. Hoenlein said, adding that Mr. Trump is not yet president, “so there’s no conflict. ” Of course, that partner, Azerbaijan, isn’t terribly popular either. Mr. Trump has a message to the news media: Cover him the way he wants or he’ll just have to keep tweeting — regardless of the consequences. The ’s victory tour started with a bang in Cincinnati when he took a shot at Gov. John Kasich of Ohio and prompted the crowd into another round of “Lock her up” by saying how much he enjoyed beating up on Mrs. Clinton. The next dates are out: ■ Crown Coliseum in Fayetteville, N. C. at 7 p. m. Tuesday ■ Hall in Des Moines at 7 p. m. Central time Thursday. ■ DeltaPlex Arena in Grand Rapids, Mich. at 7 p. m. Friday Retired Marine Corps Gen. James N. Mattis may have led the 1st Marine Division during the invasion of Iraq and later oversaw the campaign for Falluja, but he now thinks the Iraq War was a mistake. “Ladies and gentlemen,” the ’s choice to be secretary of defense told a conference in California, according to an audio tape obtained by The Intercept, “we will probably look back on the invasion of Iraq as a mistake — as a strategic mistake. ” Perhaps not coincidentally, Mr. Trump — his boss, should he be confirmed by the Senate — had a similar change of views on the war, though the has famously insisted he always opposed the invasion. Several groups who favor limiting immigration are voicing their opposition to Representative Michael McCaul as a potential secretary of homeland security, saying the Texas Republican has been weak on border security. Mr. McCaul, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has been a frequent critic of what he says is the Obama administration’s failure to adequately combat the Islamic State. But groups like the Center for Immigration Studies say Mr. McCaul’s efforts on border security and immigration have been weak and counterproductive. “He’s been the chairman of this critical committee and never tried to push through legislation that adequately addresses border security, immigration and homeland security,” said Jessica M. Vaughan, the director of policy studies at the center. The real aim may be less about opposing Mr. McCaul than opening a lane for the group’s homeland security chief of choice: Mr. Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state. The Federation for American Immigration Reform did not directly oppose Mr. McCaul but said the next secretary of the Department of Homeland Security needed to be someone who would implement real border and immigration security. “If Representative McCaul is chosen to head D. H. S. he will need to take a much more expansive view of border and immigration enforcement than he has in the past,” said Dan Stein, the president of the federation. | 1 |
Processed red meat found to sort you out 14-11-16 EATING large amounts of fried and processed red meat sorts you out, it has been confirmed. Researchers at the Institute for Studies found that sausages, bacon and even those microwave burgers can halt the ‘rough’ feeling that typically follows a drinking session but that you also sometimes get for no reason. Professor Henry Brubaker said: “We don’t know how processed red meat works to sort you out. It may be the high salt content, its greasiness or simply something to do with absorbing the life force of the animal. “It’s probably something like the animated map at the start of Dad’s Army , except the German army arrows are the feelings of roughness and the British arrows are sausages, bravely fending it off.” The discovery follows tests in which hungover ‘group A’ was given array of processed meat products including bacon and that pink oblong thing they sometimes sell at Lidl, while ‘group B’ had a grapefruit and some cereal which did not sort them out at all. Brubaker added: “It’s unclear if you can eat too much processed red meat, but probably not because your body can just store it as fat to be used when required.”
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This interview produced some of the best election analysis that is on the airwaves. Among the many points discussed centered around the possibility of Clinton being indicted after winning the election but before the the Inauguration. We would have an old-fashioned Constitutional crisis.
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NATO pushes military buildup plans near Russia Wed Oct 26, 2016 6:7AM EU NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during a news conference at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, October 25, 2016. (Photo by Reuters)
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is pushing for its biggest military buildup near Russian borders, as the Western military alliance continues to harbor perceptions of a Russian “threat” since the days of the Cold War.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg will discuss the plan for military deployments to the Baltic states and eastern Poland at a two-day meeting of NATO ministers in Brussels on Wednesday.
The military alliance aims to send “battle groups” to the Baltic states and Poland early next year. The groups will consist of 40,000 forces. It will be the biggest military buildup near Russia since the Second World War. More forces would also be deployed if necessary.
“This is credible deterrence. Not to provoke a conflict, but to prevent conflict,” Stoltenberg claimed contradictorily on Tuesday, referring to the planned deployments near Russia. “Concrete proof that NATO can and will deploy thousands of forces to support our allies. And a clear demonstration of our transatlantic bond.”
The United States, Germany, Britain, and Canada have already agreed to contribute forces to the “battle groups,” which are to be deployed to Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. Norwegian and Italian fighter jets patrol over the Baltics during a NATO air policing mission from an airbase in Lithuania, May 20, 2015. (Photo by Reuters)
France, Denmark, Italy and other NATO members are expected to contribute forces of their own but have been reluctant so far.
Anti-Russia by default
Russia had previously warned that it would take unspecified measures to respond to the increased activities by the Western military bloc.
It also moved nuclear-capable missiles to its westernmost region of Kaliningrad, near its border with the Baltic countries and NATO member states earlier this month. The Iskander-M cruise missiles are capable of hitting targets across Poland and the Baltics.
NATO was formed during the Cold War as a means of countering the former Soviet Union.
The military alliance suspended all ties with Moscow in April 2014, after the then-Ukrainian Crimea Peninsula voted in a referendum to join Russian territory.
Shortly afterwards, an armed conflict broke out in eastern Ukraine, areas inhabited by an ethnically-Russian population. The Ukrainian government, which militarized the originally peaceful unrest in the regions — known as the Donbass — has ever since been accusing Russia of having a hand in the conflict there. Moscow denies the claim.
The conflict has so far claimed the lives of more than 9,200 people and left over 21,000 others injured. Loading ... | 0 |
DAKAR, Senegal — The YouTube video shows a grim scene from Ivory Coast: An unarmed man lies on a street with his arms up. A police officer fires a shot that appears to strike him. The man, a theft suspect, squirms on the road as the officer kicks and hovers over him, firing his weapon several times near his head, bullets hitting the ground just inches away. The officer then aims directly at the man’s forehead and pulls the trigger, killing him. The video, recorded by an onlooker using a cellphone camera, spread widely across social media this summer, attracting comments like “What is this horror. ” “Isn’t this what’s happening in the USA right now?” writes one viewer. “We’re killing innocent people. ” Inspired by the videos that have captured police killings and defined the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, West Africans are increasingly deploying social media in nations where corruption and abuse by security forces sometimes occur with few repercussions. In America, videos of white police officers shooting unarmed black men have caused a social uprising, exposing what many people see as a deadly national bias in law enforcement. Here in West Africa, where cellphone and internet use has exploded in recent years and social media websites are hugely popular, race is rarely a factor in the videos being shared online. But wealth and power are. So, just as in the United States and other places where social media has enabled protest, citizens who feel marginalized are using the videos to seek justice when law enforcement officers abuse their authority. “There is a general sense that law officials can do pretty much whatever they want,” said Vincent Foucher, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, who has worked extensively in West Africa. “Images are a very powerful way to bring up these issues. ” In Nigeria, capturing law enforcement abuse is so popular that people send in videos and photos taken from scenes of military brutality, bribery by public officials and other misconduct to one of the nation’s biggest television stations, which shows them in a segment called “Eye Reports” during its main news program. “They are now part of the reporting of the good, the bad and the ugly of the country’s social life,” says Lanre Arogundade, the coordinator of the International Press Center in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital. Human rights workers say that the practice of sharing videos in West Africa is a natural extension of longstanding frustrations with abuse of power in the region. But even with today’s ability to capture and broadcast evidence immediately, the videos have not always produced tangible results. Often the clips are hard to verify, and few prosecutions have followed, experts say. Scenes of police officers seeking checkpoint bribes or beating civilians sometimes amount to no more than a handful of Facebook comments expressing indignation. But little by little, many of the videos shared on social media are chipping away at impunity and in some cases drawing widespread attention to problems that the authorities are finding hard to ignore. “These have led to, if not prosecutions, at least more awareness and discussion of violations, and that is really important,” said Sabrina Mahtani, West Africa researcher for Amnesty International. In areas where law and order is scant, videos are sometimes shared online by supporters of the police — as a cautionary tale of what happens to wrongdoers who are rightly, if violently, punished for doing bad things. But once they make their way across social media, they are sometimes cited as evidence of abuse by security forces, evoking outrage and injustice. In the video of the officer shooting the man in Ivory Coast, for instance, one onlooker can be heard saying, “Again, do it again!” after the officer shoots the man the first time. Others in the crowd appear to egg on the officer, and at the end of the clip, another person off camera can be heard saying, “Don’t film him, don’t film him,” adding, “You are going to get that police officer in trouble. ” But as the video made its way across the internet, it prompted an uproar in Abidjan, the nation’s economic capital, where the officer was arrested and an official investigation was opened. In a statement widely reported by the local news media, the chief of the Ivorian national police force said it “will not tolerate behavior from its officers that is contrary to the ethics of human rights. ” In July, Sheriff Shittu, who is not a law enforcement officer, was stuck on a highway in Lagos watching a scene he felt deserved the collective outrage of the internet. A soldier was beating a bus conductor, waving a gun and threatening to shoot the man. Other soldiers joined in, shouting, “We’re going to kill him. ” “That was when I took out my phone and started recording,” said Mr. Shittu, who posted the video on YouTube. “It’s a deterrent to abuse and power. This guy didn’t do anything wrong. ” Mr. Shittu said he was inspired by the success of American videos in drawing attention to violence by law enforcement officers and had seen videos of similar episodes shared online that resulted in soldiers being disciplined in Nigeria. “In the past nothing would happen,” he said. “That’s changing now. ” In Conakry, Guinea, a video that was circulated on the internet several months ago showed an armed robbery suspect with his hands and feet tied to an iron bar. Uniformed national police officers paraded him around, suspending him from the bar like an animal carcass, in an attempt to get a confession. “You’re breaking my hands!” the suspect shouts. One of the officers at the scene that day posted the video on his Facebook page, apparently for bragging rights. But it was shared across social media, prompting denunciations from Guinean human rights organizations. The Guinean government, which passed measures in 2011 aimed at cracking down on forced confessions, suspended 13 officers over the episode and opened an investigation into using torture to extract confessions. citizens certainly have not put a halt to abuses of authority. In Nigeria, the military has been accused of killing countless civilians in recent years. And in some nations, government opposition forces and protesters have been threatened, beaten, jailed or sometimes killed without consequence, even when the abuse was captured on video. But police abuse is not the only issue the videos help address. This spring in Cameroon, onlookers captured a horrific scene outside a hospital, leading to a national outcry about the state of the health care system. Monique Koumate, who was pregnant with twins, arrived at a hospital in distress and died before she entered. En route to the morgue, her relatives noticed that the fetuses, apparently still alive, were moving inside Ms. Koumate’s body. They rushed back to the hospital but were unable to summon help. Desperate to save the babies, one relative placed Ms. Koumate’s corpse on the sidewalk and sliced open her stomach, pulling out the babies and resting them on her stomach. It was too late. They were dead. The gruesome scene went viral online. A Twitter hashtag #MoniqueKoumate was created, and accusations were aired that the hospital had turned away Ms. Koumate because she could not pay for care. The public outrage prompted the hospital to investigate and led to a report by the National Order of Doctors of Cameroon citing deficiencies and calling for better maternal health care. But police abuse is still the focus of many people, with numerous Facebook and WhatsApp groups in the region dedicated to sharing videos on the topic. In Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, were already recording when Yasmine Bilkis Ibrahim pulled out her phone to film an officer screaming and waving his gun at a terrified unarmed man after an apparent traffic altercation. “I will kill you,” the officer yelled at the man. “And nothing will come of it. ” Ms. Ibrahim, 24, made an immediate link to what is happening in the United States. “If people can use such videos in America to demand justice, I believe we can also demand justice using the same method,” she said. Brima Kamara, a spokesman for the Sierra Leone police, said he belongs to a WhatsApp group, called “Talk With the Police,” made up of police officers, politicians and regular citizens. People often submit video clips to the group, alleging police misbehavior. One recent submission showed two officers fighting. The men were suspended and sent back to the police academy for more training, Mr. Kamara said. He said the videos help improve the police force in a nation still recovering from a brutal civil war that ended 14 years ago. “We often advise officers to be careful of their actions in public because at this age they can’t get away with crimes or actions,” Mr. Kamara said. “Now with the involvement of social media and the smartphones, everything goes public in just a minute. ” | 1 |
Wall Street regulators began an exodus from Washington on Monday as Mary Jo White, the chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, announced plans to leave the agency. The decision makes Ms. White, a former federal prosecutor who has served more than two decades in the federal government, the first major Obama administration appointee to step down after Donald J. Trump’s upset victory last week. Other financial regulators are expected to follow suit in the coming weeks. The election of Mr. Trump is a for the S. E. C. — and for that matter, all financial agencies. Ms. White was expected to leave no matter the outcome of the election. But many Democrats had hoped that if Hillary Clinton won, she would choose a strong proponent of regulation to succeed Ms. White, whose policies often reflected a political middle ground. Now, the agency is almost certain to be pushed to the right. Mr. Trump has vowed to dismantle the financial regulatory overhaul Congress passed in response to the 2008 financial crisis. And although will more likely be watered down than repealed, his appointments will no doubt shift the tone and priorities across financial regulatory agencies. The ’s biggest move on Wall Street could be his choice for Treasury secretary. Mr. Trump’s short list is said to include Steven Mnuchin, an investment manager and former Goldman Sachs partner who was Mr. Trump’s campaign finance chairman, and Representative Jeb Hensarling, Republican of Texas and chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Mr. Hensarling is still being considered, in part because of pressure from Congress, but Mr. Mnuchin is the favorite of Mr. Trump’s Wall Street backers, according to someone with direct knowledge but who was not authorized to speak publicly. A decision is expected within 10 days. Either way, the Trump Treasury Department might rein in the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a collection of regulators who examine financial risks and designate companies as systemically important. The Treasury secretary is chairman of the council and could effectively defang it, according to Ian Katz, a policy analyst at Capital Alpha who predicted that the council might essentially become “a quarterly kaffeeklatsch. ” Mr. Trump was elected at a pivotal time for the S. E. C. an agency that had already turned a corner under Ms. White. Unlike Mary L. Schapiro, who inherited a S. E. C. after the financial crisis, Ms. White needed not to save the agency, but to modernize it, a task that the next administration also will face. Ms. White’s departure, which will take effect at the end of the Obama administration in January, will set off speculation about whom Mr. Trump will select to succeed her. Though such talks have barely begun, the field of potential contenders could include Michael S. Piwowar, a Republican commissioner at the agency. Paul S. Atkins, a former S. E. C. Republican commissioner who has advocated deregulatory policies, is leading Mr. Trump’s effort to select a new chair for the agency and could be a candidate. Anthony Scaramucci, a hedge fund manager who supported Mr. Trump’s candidacy, is also advising the transition team. “As the head of the S. E. C. you’ve got to get back into reffing the game properly and end the demonization of Wall Street,” Mr. Scaramucci said in an interview last week before his appointment to Mr. Trump’s transition team. As other of President Obama’s financial regulators step down, the firewall around his Wall Street legacy will start to crumble. Timothy Massad, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, is expected to leave by early 2017, though he could briefly stay at the agency as a Democratic commissioner. An even bigger change could occur at the banking regulators — the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — which became a thorn in the side of Wall Street under President Obama. Martin J. Gruenberg and Thomas Curry, the leaders of the F. D. I. C. and O. C. C. will probably leave office next year when their terms expire, or possibly even sooner. Daniel Tarullo, the Federal Reserve governor who oversees many of the central bank’s regulatory efforts, is not expected to serve out his term through early 2022. He could leave early next year, which would deliver a blow to proponents of Wall Street regulation. With turnover at the S. E. C. Ms. White’s legacy could be in jeopardy as well. She oversaw a record number of enforcement actions and directed a rapid pace of based not only on but on regulations of her own making. Those initiatives were aimed at improving money market fund regulation and the broader asset management industry. “I think what we’ve done so far has been quite transformative and really modernized that core responsibility,” Ms. White said in a recent interview. Yet Ms. White has not completed more than a dozen rules, nor has she formalized a plan to require that financial advisers act in their clients’ best interests. Now that these initiatives will fall into the hands of a Republican chairman, they may come off the agenda. As it was, Ms. White, a political independent, drew criticism from liberal lawmakers who view her as the quintessential moderate. Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who channels the populist outrage over Wall Street excess, even called on President Obama to designate a new S. E. C. leader because the agency had not required companies to disclose political contributions. In her first public remarks on the subject, Ms. White said in an interview that the criticism “really does come with the territory. ” “I think I’m a very constructive recipient of constructive criticism,” she said, adding: “It’s not like you like people to beat on your head, whoever they are, however baseless it is. ” Before the S. E. C. Ms. White was the first woman to become United States attorney in Manhattan, one of the most apolitical jobs in government. Earning a reputation as a tenacious prosecutor with an independent streak, Ms. White embraced the joke that her office was the United States attorney for the “sovereign,” rather than Southern, district of New York. “She’s not motivated by any special interest,” said Preet Bharara, a prosecutor under Ms. White who is now the United States attorney in Manhattan. “People may disagree from time to time, and, in fact, in any environment, it would be unnatural if there weren’t disagreement from special interests and adversaries. But she’s hyper smart and makes a decision immune from any political wind or political criticism, and I think that’s a good way to be. ” Ms. White’s prosecutorial experience — she supervised the original investigation into Osama bin Laden — raised expectations for her enforcement agenda at the S. E. C. And in its last fiscal year, the agency brought a record 548 enforcement actions. In conjunction with Andrew J. Ceresney, the agency’s enforcement director, Ms. White reversed the S. E. C. ’s longstanding yet unofficial policy of allowing companies to neither admit nor deny wrongdoing. such admissions have been made since. Other “firsts” occurred under Ms. White and Mr. Ceresney: the first action against a major ratings firm, Standard Poor’s, and the first action against a company, KBR Inc. for inserting overly restrictive confidentiality agreements that could stifle . Some of the agency’s most novel cases came against private equity firms that failed to disclose fees and conflicts of interest. Ms. White is known for keeping a workaholic’s schedule. Colleagues said it was common for her to hold a 9 p. m. Sunday conference call, before dispatching night emails and placing a 5:30 a. m. call to senior staff. But she also promoted staff morale by holding coffee and doughnut sessions. Every holiday season, she would give a party for her staff at Rosa Mexicano restaurant, where she would hand out gifts to each of her aide’s children. Ms. White, a partial Yankees season ticket holder whose favorite moment as S. E. C. chairwoman came when throwing out the first pitch at a Washington Nationals game, said her dream job would be the first female baseball commissioner. “I really don’t think about what I’m doing next until I’m done,” she said, except, “If you have baseball commissioner to offer me, then I can tell you what my plans are. ” | 1 |
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Tweet Widget by Yohannes Woldemariam
The minority ethnic regime in Ethiopia now faces multiple rebellions. The regime’s foreign friends are part of the problem. “Faced with increased intrusion into their lands by so-called international investors, by displacement and by the breakdown of their social fabric, Ethiopians are mobilizing to resist.” The once formidable government coalition “is beginning to unravel.” The Deteriorating Situation in Ethiopia by Yohannes Woldemariam
This article previously appeared in Pambazuka News .
“ The revolts are widespread and they appear beyond the power of the state to control and put down.”
The revolts in Ethiopia have the potential for creating radical, beneficial changes in the political order or instigating complete chaos that crosses its borders and destabilizes the entire fragile Horn of Africa region, for the outcomes of such uprisings have varied considerably from country to country. These protests can be the catalyst for building a new and democratic Ethiopia or end up in tears and disillusionment, as in Libya, South Sudan and many other places in the world. Countries emerging from dictatorships are particularly vulnerable and Ethiopia is certainly under a vicious dictatorship.
The events in Ethiopia are being described as “Intifada,” “Ethiopian Spring” or as something akin to the Color Revolutions in the Ukraine and Georgia and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in China. During the uprising in 2005 protesting the rigged election, the late chief of the Tigrean Peoples’ Liberation Front (TPLF) and Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, did say that there would not be any more Color Revolutions in Ethiopia. That uprising was put down with hundreds dead and thousands in concentration camps.
This time, however, the revolts are widespread and they appear beyond the power of the state to control and put down. Apparently, Mr. Zenawi spoke prematurely. Technological innovation is a very important part of this current political mass mobilization, which is why the government has moved with cutting Ethiopia off from the internet and dismantling satellite dishes from the homes of ordinary citizens. Drawing on satellite television, mobile phones and the Internet, the revolts are spreading. Within seconds, activists send their messages against the tyranny. Unsurprisingly, the TPLF oligarchy is extremely fearful of social media websites like Facebook, Twitter and the diaspora media.
In this piece, I want to reflect on three points:
1. The celebrity factor: Feyisa Lilesa versus Prime Minister Halemariam Desalegn
2. Mr. Abay Tsehaye’s reference to Rwanda
3. The newly declared State of Emergency
The celebrity factor: Feyisa Lilesa versus Prime Minister Halemariam Desalegn
In the wake of the Rio Olympics, the profile of the Ethiopian uprising got a boost from Feyisa Lilesa , with his heroic act of crossing his arms on winning the silver medal for marathon, a signature symbol of solidarity of the oppressed Oromo nation to which Feyisa belongs. The influence of the celebrity athlete for social change is formidable, and Feyisa has emerged as a powerful voice for the struggle of his Oromo people, causing nervous shivers in the beleaguered regime. What the death and imprisonment of thousands of Oromos couldn’t accomplish in Ethiopia was achieved by his symbolic act at the finish line. Now the whole world is clued into the terrible conditions in Ethiopia and beginning to learn about the plight of the Oromo people.
Other Ethiopian athletes have since used their successes to follow suit. Ebsa Ejigu, Tamiru Demissie and Hirut Guangul have used their international successes to publicize the plight of their country’s men and women to an international audience. This trend is likely to continue now as other athletes and celebrities are losing their fear of retaliation and becoming more and more willing to participate in what has become a growing national movement. Yes, these athletes will pay a price. Lilesa is now separated from his wife and children and beckoning an unknown fate. Life in exile will not be easy even for famous athletes. But compared to those losing lives and limbs to bullets in Ethiopia, it is a small price to pay. They are heroes, and their names are already inscribed in history books.
“These athletes will pay a price.”
The TPLF reaction to Lilesa’s heroic act can be gleaned from statements given by PM Hailemariam Desalegn. Although the PM is from the Wolayta ethnic group, which was traditionally relegated to the periphery of the Ethiopian mainstream, he has become a willing accomplice and spokesman for the TPLF. Most people regard him as an accidental PM who happened to be in the right place and at the right time when his powerful boss, PM Meles Zenawi, passed away in the summer of 2012. He was handpicked as Zenawi’s deputy because he wasn’t a threat and, as a non-Tigrean, served as a convenient cover and a token representing “diversity” for the TPLF. He is so loyal to the late PM, he still refers to the Meles “vision” in his public pronouncements. Most Ethiopians know that he is just a figurehead with no real power. Yet, in an interview conducted with the online Foreign Policy.com, he is quoted as saying:
“It’s me who sent [Lilesa] to Rio for the Olympics, and we expected him to come back after winning the medal. . . . [T]his is not the capacity of the man himself. It’s something which has been orchestrated by someone else from outside.”
It is remarkable that the PM has the audacity to say he sent Feyisa Lilesa to the Olympics, as if Feyisa needed his charitable permission. It is crystal clear that Feyisa earned his place in the Olympics.
One can readily concede that he may have acquiesced to nepotism by sending to the Olympics the unqualified son of the head of the sports federation, Robel Kiros Habte , who made Ethiopia a laughing stock with his hopeless performance in a swimming race. But no one can doubt that Feyisa went to the Olympics because he was Ethiopia’s best hope for the marathon. And he delivered in no unmistakable terms by winning a silver medal competing with the best and the elites in the world. It is hard to believe that Desalegn referring to Feyisa actually said: “This is not the capacity of the man himself” – thus exposing his own pomposity, shallowness and contempt for the Oromo hero. Clearly, Desalegn has sold his soul to the TPLF devil. To suggest that Feyisa cannot think for himself and act on his own is inexcusably ignorant and arrogant and unbecoming of a prime minster.
“Desalegn is a sellout with little dignity, reading and parroting whatever script is given to him by the TPLF.”
Feyisa is not only a fine athlete; he is also a dignified, proud, principled and articulate Oromo and Ethiopian, as he amply demonstrated during the press conference in the Washington D.C. rally where Congressman Chris Smith also spoke. Also, in a direct reply to the PM’s insult, Feyisa quipped:
“I was not surprised by his comments because individuals who are always controlled by others tend to assume everyone is that way as well. . . . Unlike the prime minister, I make my own decisions and speak for myself.”
Indeed, Desalegn is a sellout with little dignity, reading and parroting whatever script is given to him by the TPLF. The pretentious PM has replaced the real world with a make-believe virtual world. It is for this reason that he is unable to see realities on the ground; he is temporarily sheltered behind a wall whose mortar is sychophantic servitude and a wicked willingness to say and do anything to appease his TPLF benefactors.
It is beyond regrettable that Desalegn is unable to see the rapid downside toward further chaos and civil war in Ethiopia that is due to the abject misery and oppression suffered by the people who are subjected to the policies of those he is serving and to whom he has sold his soul. He calls himself a born-again Christian with a straight face. How would Jesus himself, who stood up to the hypocritical Pharisees and threw the money-changers out of the temple in Jerusalem, have regarded a man like Desalegn, who is in bed with the TPLF elites who are the modern day equivalent of the Pharisees in Ethiopia and whose words and actions rarely match? The human suffering that is the result of the violent and continuous repression cannot be seen from inside their ideological castles resting on the thin air of empty rhetoric and shameless self-promotion.
Desalegn would be well advised to keep his mouth closed to spare himself more disgrace. He has already sunk into the deep end of an abyss. It is depressing to see a human being selling out his people and becoming a slave of oppressors.
Invoking the specter of Rwanda
The TPLF ideologue and one of the real powers behind the throne, Mr. Abay Tsehaye, in an interview with the pro-government Radio Fana, compared the situation of Rwanda in the early 90s to the current situation in Ethiopia. He correctly stated that Rwanda was comprised of only two ethnic groups (the Hutu and the Tutsi), really not much of a country, and was on the verge of disintegration. He went on to say that reconciliation occurred and the country recovered. In Ethiopia with over eighty ethnic groups, if the situation goes “out of control,” he concluded, Ethiopia will cease to exist as a country. Every thoughtful person worries about this. However, one can reasonably surmise from his analysis that Ethiopia under the control of his Tigray-dominated government, who make up only six percent of the Ethiopian population, is his guarantee for holding the country together. Mr. Tsehaye fails to recognize the draconian hegemonic policies of his regime as the very reasons for the grim state of affairs in the country. As the Ethiopian uprising makes clear, the various ethnicities are no longer buying TPLF shenanigans and see the TPLF itself as the main cause of Ethiopia’s predicament, as the country descends into possible civil war.
For anyone willing to see the truth, Ethiopia is in a state of turmoil due to the exploitation of the long-suffering people of Oromia, Ogaden, Gambella and other ethnic groups by the TPLF elite in partnership with international enablers such as China and the United States, the principal rivals in Africa and the Horn region. The TPLF exploitation, in which valuable resources and political roles are dominated by a minority elite that has transformed itself into an oligarchy, has created highly rebellious resentment by the victims while reinforcing a sense of ethnic identity and consciousness. Faced with increased intrusion into their lands by so-called international investors, by the displacement and stunted developments they experience and by the breakdown of their social fabric, Ethiopians are mobilizing to resist.
“The various see the TPLF itself as the main cause of Ethiopia’s predicament, as the country descends into possible civil war.”
The government’s state-driven development projects financed by international investors and partners bypass the rural peasants and pastoralists, alienating the people and reinforcing the politics of deep ethnic hierarchy. Recent events have made it clear that TPLF’s “constitutional federalism” has more to do with its divide-and-rule strategy and its elitist allocation of national resources, comparable to actions of the former Soviet Communist Party, which retained tight control over its regions through local parties. The TPLF set up People’s Democratic Organizations, local versions of the ruling party, which squeezed out traditional authority.
The co-opted ethnic leaders from these regions have either completely lost credibility, are sitting on the fence, or are jumping ship to support the resistance. Key former government figures like Junedin Sado are breaking their silence and speaking out with scathing attacks on the regime. He has apologized to the Ethiopian people for the time that he served under the regime. The so- called coalition that the TPLF built is beginning to unravel. Some Amhara and some Oromo are coming together against the TPLF, overcoming but not necessarily forgetting, the legacy of the historic oppression by Amhara elites which began with Menelik II.
Abay Tsehaye and TPLF leaders will need to face reality — if they have it in them to be truly concerned about Ethiopian unity. Oromo historical grievances are not myths, as some revisionist history asserts. Oromo land is the most fertile and lush in Ethiopia, in contrast to the northern Ethiopian highlands with its rugged mountains and thin soils contributing relatively little to national economic production, but the Oromo have been alienated from control over their land throughout the 20th century first by the Amhara and now by the new TPLF overlords.
Acutely divided societies in which no single faction can impose its view might find an ability to arrive at political compromises in a constitutional form. But in Ethiopia, the hegemonic Amhara and now the Tigreans have excluded others from real power-sharing making true constitutionalism elusive. The leaders see the state as a prize to be won, a basis for private accumulation and patronage. But there is not enough patronage to go around, and those excluded from it mobilize their co-religionists and ethnic groups in an increasingly unmanageable opposition.
The State of Emergency
In response, the TPLF is relying on intensified repression by security forces, ethnic loyalists and the army. And for the first time in twenty-five years, the regime has declared a State of Emergency , clearly showing how rattled it is by the rebellion in the country. The Prime Minster announced :
“The cause of this (state of emergency) is that anti-peace forces in collaboration with foreign enemies of the country are making organized attempts to destabilize our country, to disrupt its peace and also to undermine the existence and security of its peoples.”
This response undoubtedly means more sticks and further erosion of civil liberties in the country but is unlikely to quell the unrest. One of the targets of the State of Emergency is the Internet and Social Media. PM Desalegn did make it a point to rant against diaspora media and the Internet during his appearance in September at the United Nations General Assembly:
“In fact, we are seeing how misinformation could easily go viral via social media and mislead many people, especially the youth…Social media has certainly empowered populists and other extremists to exploit people’s genuine concerns and spread their message of hate and bigotry without any inhibition...it is critical to underline one matter which is usually given short shrift, both by the media and others. It is simply hypocritical to deny that some of our countries have been targets for destabilization activities carried out with no accountability by people and groups who have been given shelters by States with whom we have absolutely no problems.”
The regime that Desalegn serves is responsible for suffocating the Ethiopian people by denying them any alternative media. The Ethiopian government is one of the top jailers and harassers of anyone daring to publish or practice independent journalism within the country. Now, Desalegn is shedding his crocodile tears about his inability to control and suppress social media and broadcasting emanating from the diaspora. While he has a point about the inherent potential for the abuse of social media, the regime is responsible for bringing criticisms on itself. In the absence of media freedom in the country, social media and broadcasting from the diaspora acquired enormous significance for Ethiopians hungry for information. It is clear that Ethiopians no longer trust the regime and have little confidence in official government news, which in reality is mostly propaganda.
“The Ethiopian government is one of the top jailers and harassers of anyone daring to publish or practice independent journalism.”
Authoritarian regimes adopt various forms of censorship to depoliticize the population and prevent the questioning of their legitimacy. By definition, authoritarian regimes demand strict submission by the media to their political authority. They do so by publishing or broadcasting deceptions in order to maintain their power structures. For example, the regime’s media censored Feyisa’s symbolic gesture in Rio while proclaiming that Feyisa is a national hero and welcome to return home, without any consequences.
The advent of the Internet has somewhat leveled the playing field by empowering regular Internet users to become content producers by utilizing decentralized and distributed networks such as social media. These uses of media pose a great danger to dictatorial regimes, which are moving to subvert, block social media and limit internet use, as in Ethiopia today.
China is the leading culprit in creating the technology to enable censorship, which it is sharing with the Ethiopian government. This suppression of the media will not succeed. Freedom-loving people find ways to circumvent these barriers and make determined efforts to stay informed – and, in turn, to inform the whole world. Yohannes Woldemariam is an educator and author. This article previously appeared on the Huffington Post’s Contributor platform. [2] | 0 |
. She Drank a Gallon of Water/Day for a Month and Now She Looks 10 Years Younger Sufficient daily water intake is vital for virtually every function within our bodies yet fewer than... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/she-drank-gallon-of-waterday-for-month.html Sufficient daily water intake is vital for virtually every function within our bodies yet fewer than one in five of us drinks enough. Read on to see the results of this experiment. Sarah Smith is a 42 year old mother of two young kids in the UK. She, like many others, openly admitted to not drinking the recommended 2 to 3 liters of water daily. She suffered from poor and sluggish indigestion and regular headaches. Following consultations with medical professionals for both issues she decided to take heed of the advice given – in both cases she had been told that she needed to up her intake of water . She decided to document and photograph what happened in a self imposed experiment whereby she would drink 3 liters, just over 5 pints, of water per day, every day for an entire month and see if she could feel any benefits.At the outset Sarah took a long hard look at her face noting that: “I am 42, but have to admit I look more like 52 in this picture, which is shocking. There are dark shadows under and around my eyes, which make me look exhausted, a profusion of wrinkles and strange reddish blotches, and my skin lacks any lustre. It looks dead… even my lips look shrivelled.” She spread the water out during the day aiming to drink a big jug of water in the morning, another in the afternoon with a third in the evening.At the end of the FIRST WEEK she had already noticed that her bowel function was improved and her urine was virtually clear as the water was flushing out her previously dehydrated poorly functioning kidneys. She noticed sudden skin breakouts, which were a result of the toxins being eliminated from throughout her body. However, her headaches were already gone and her previous joint stiffness first thing in the morning was vastly improved. Water is vital for lubricating the joints. WEEK TWO saw an improvement in her skin tone and general complexion although she noted that her eyes were still wrinkled but said “they look less crepey and shadowy than before”. She also had a visibly flatter stomach and her smart husband paid her the ultimate compliment by noting that her cellulite had vanished! Significantly she had another week headache free.On to WEEK THREE when Sarah was happy to find that her eye wrinkles and dark circles had all but disappeared and her skin was plumper and healthier looking.She noted that she was actually eating less by this stage as she had fallen into the common trap of reading signals from her stomach as being hunger pangs whereas they were actually thirst pangs. Research has shown that 37 per cent of people actually mistake thirst signals for hunger signals. The plentiful water had now stopped her from continually falling into that unhealthy trap.So what about the end of WEEK FOUR ? Sarah said: “I genuinely can’t believe the difference in my face. I look like a different woman. The dark shadows around my eyes have all but disappeared and the blotches have gone. My skin is almost as dewy as it was when I was a child. The transformation is nothing short of remarkable.” She was leaner, fitter and nobody can deny the astonishing change to her appearance. She changed nothing else in her daily routine apart from the water intake. To those already of you already converted to drinking enough water these results will merely confirm what you already know, but to anyone who is guilty of not doing so, will this persuade you to try this for yourself? Alexander : Since we have addressed the miraculous rejuvenating power of water, here is one more mind-blowing fact. According to Gregg Prescott of In5D.com , he was able to restore his hair's original color after only six months of drinking distilled water . In his own words: "In August of 2010, I was 2 months away from turning 50 and my hair was predominantly gray, with pronounced lines around my eyes. This is when I began to be conscientious about my eating habits and started eating more organic food, although I was still eating processed food as well. I began drinking distilled water in February 2012. By August of 2012, my hair had turned from gray back to its original color and the facial lines were not as pronounced." And the results are fantastic! Here's a before and after comparison: You can buy a good quality water distiller from Amazon for about $200, which is not that much considering the benefits. Source and references: worldtruth.tv ; dailymail.co.uk ; humansarefree.com | 0 |
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There is very little truth in politics today. We all, for different reasons, pull for a letter or party rather than for character and ability. We will spin for our candidate because of the party we root for so that others will blindly follow the party line.
If my guys are running the country, we think, then things will be better. Even though these guys support and do things that are contrary to our definition of "better." So, when a person comes out and speaks truth about “their” candidate, it can be refreshing.
This is why I am so excited by what I read recently
The Washington Times reports :
Lesbian feminist author and professor Camille Paglia has delivered a scathing rebuke of Hillary Clinton , saying the sole reason for the Democratic presidential nominee’s success is because she is a woman.
“It’s an outrage how she’s played the gender card,” Ms. Paglia told The Spectator magazine in an interview published Friday. “She is a woman without accomplishment. ‘I sponsored or co-sponsored 400 bills.’ Oh really? These were bills to rename bridges and so forth. And the things she has accomplished have been like the destabilization of North Africa, causing refugees to flood into Italy … The woman is a disaster!”
Paglia is well-known for her attacks on modern feminism. And she has boldly stated the truth about this anti-feminist woman, Hillary Clinton . Hillary is a woman who is only well-known because of her womanizing sex-offending husband.
As I have shown before, there actually may be a shift in power, as those the Democrats have used to gain said power are finally noticing that they are receiving almost nothing in return for their vote.
Paglia says as much.
The Times continue:
“If Hillary wins, nothing will change,” she continued. “She knows the bureaucracy, all the offices of government and that’s what she likes to do, sit behind the scenes and manipulate the levers of power. But people want change and they’re sick of the establishment.”
She even went as far as giving a point to Trump:
Ms. Paglia said it’s very unlikely that a Donald Trump presidency would threaten Western civilization, as so many pundits and politicians have predicted.
Things they are changing.
Article reposted with permission from Constitution.com Don't forget to Like Freedom Outpost on Facebook , Google Plus , & Twitter . You can also get Freedom Outpost delivered to your Amazon Kindle device here . | 0 |
AMMAN, Jordan — The last surviving animals in the Montazah Zoo in the Iraqi city of Mosul — Lula, a bear, and Simba, a lion — reached safety at a wildlife shelter in Amman, the Jordanian capital, on Monday night. Their home at the zoo was severely damaged as battles for control of the city, Iraq’s second largest, have raged for months between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants. A people are thought to be unable to escape the city. The Islamic State has used civilians as human shields, and American airstrikes, supporting Iraqi counterterrorism forces, have leveled parts of Mosul. A strike in one neighborhood last month was thought to have killed as many as 200 civilians. About 40 animals had died at the zoo in recent months. Some starved and some were killed by bombs, according to Four Paws International, an animal welfare organization based in Vienna that carried out the rescue. Workers said that the animals’ cages were filthy and that Simba and Lula urgently needed veterinary care. Amir Khalil, a veterinarian with Four Paws who led the rescue mission, called it an “authentic odyssey. ” The animals, he said, will now have proper food and medical care, “without living in constant danger of a nearby war zone and noise of bomb blasts in the background. ” Mr. Khalil visited the Mosul zoo in February to check on the animals and organize regular feedings for them. His group’s previous attempt to rescue the two animals failed when workers carrying them were stopped at a checkpoint. The aid workers were asked to leave Mosul. Lula and Simba were sent back to the zoo. “We never got to know the exact details why we were not allowed to pass, but, of course, transporting large wild animals in an area with such a complex political situation is not easy,” Mr. Khalil said Wednesday in a telephone interview. Mr. Khalil said Islamic State militants had been at the zoo and had painted over a sign with the animals’ faces. He said he had heard criticism about his attention to the animals at a time when so many people were suffering. “I like this kind of criticism,” he said, “because in my opinion humanity cannot be divided. ” He said Simba and Lula were a symbol of that humanity. “War rages on but all those fighting cannot ignore animals, put them in a cage, starve them to death, deprive them of water,” he said. Simba and Lula’s new home will be the New Hope Center, the biggest wildlife shelter in the Middle East. | 1 |
LOS ANGELES — The St. Francis Dam was a proud symbol of California’s engineering might and elaborate water system — until just before midnight on March 12, 1928, when it collapsed, killing more than 400 people in a devastating wall of water. Ever since, the state has had a reputation of diligent inspections as it has built the largest network of major public dams in the nation. But the threat of catastrophic flooding from the damaged Oroville Dam in Northern California this week — forcing the evacuation of nearly 200, 000 people because of what environmental groups had asserted in 2005 was a design flaw — presented a warning sign for California, where a network of dams and waterways is suffering from age and stress. It also demonstrated that older dams may not be designed to deal with the severe weather patterns California has experienced because of global warming. The Oroville Dam was completed in 1968, toward the end of the golden era of dam building. The culprit at Oroville was a faulty emergency spillway, used for the first time since the dam was opened after days of drenching storms, driven by what are known as atmospheric rivers, that filled the reservoir to capacity. But engineers and environmentalists said similar problems could occur at many of the roughly 1, 500 dams that dot this state. “We are not maintaining the water infrastructure adequately,” said Peter H. Gleick, a founder of the Pacific Institute, a think tank dedicated to water issues. “We are not maintaining it in Flint, Mich. and we are not maintaining it at our big dams in California. We need to spend more money and time on maintaining these. ” Of the 1, 585 dams in California, 17 are listed in poor condition and 97 in fair condition, according to the National Inventory of Dams, which is kept by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. There are about 90, 000 dams across the nation, many of which are privately owned. Part of the problem, officials said, is that as a rule, the government is more inclined to invest money in building new projects, celebrated with elaborate ceremonies overseen by elected officials, than in the less visible (and less glamorous) task of maintenance. “That is a national concern for us,” said Lori Spragens, the executive director of the Association of State Dam Safety Officials. “Most dams are almost 50 years old. Many of them are very behind in their rehabilitation and they need to be upgraded to current standards. It’s the lack of money. The whole concern with infrastructure is just not there, as we know. ” Climate change adds to the challenges. Scientists have said for years that a warming atmosphere should lead to more intense and frequent storms in many regions. In California, where precipitation in the Sierra Nevada is the source of much of the state’s water, warming also means that more of the moisture in a given storm falls as water and less as snow, adding to the immediate burden on downstream reservoirs. This has been the rainiest year in California’s history, a turn after a drought of historic proportions had transformed some reservoirs into brown fields of cracked, dry earth. The wet winter season does not end until April more storms are expected this week across California. And as the state’s vast Sierra Nevada snowpack gradually melts, it will keep feeding reservoirs into the late spring. California has the additional complication of being laced with earthquake faults, which has always been a major challenge to engineers designing dams. Among the dams now considered to be at risk are two that are close to earthquake faults and are undergoing improvements to better withstand seismic shocks: The Anderson Dam and the Calaveras Dam, both near San Jose. But California’s most troubled large dam is at Lake Isabella, built in the 1950s on what was thought to be a dormant earthquake fault by the Army Corps of Engineers on the Kern River above Bakersfield. The fault has since been shown to be active, and out of concerns that the dam could fail, the authorities restricted the level of the lake behind it. This week, officials assured nearby residents that despite heavy rains, the lake levels, and the dam itself, remained safe. But the dam will have to be rebuilt, with a new emergency spillway, at a cost expected to be about half a billion dollars. Construction is expected to start this year and to take at least five years. Isabella is an example of how dam spillways designed more than a ago are now often inadequate, said Blake P. Tullis, a professor of civil engineering at Utah State University who has worked on the design of the new spillway. Climate change is part of the problem, he said, but other factors, like land use changes — more parking lots, for example, mean more runoff into rivers — and better weather data have also played a role. “Now, as you do your statistical analysis, the biggest flood you could predict actually happening is much bigger,” Dr. Tullis said. “People are scrambling a bit, asking how we maintain dam safety. ” The problems in Oroville, a community 70 miles north of Sacramento, are particularly unsettling because California has been in the business for a long time. And no one forgets the lessons of the collapse of St. Francis, whose design was overseen by William Mulholland, a Los Angeles engineer whose career was destroyed by the tragedy. “I would say California is the No. 1 best,” said Joseph D. Countryman, who worked for 20 years as the head of reservoir operations for the Army Corps of Engineers. Still, he added, no matter how much experience or money a might have, something can always go wrong, especially in a state like this that can go from five years of severe drought to oceans of water falling from the sky. “When you build a dam, you are playing God,” he said. “And it’s tough to be God. ” In the case of Oroville, environmental groups in 2005 opposed the relicensing of the dam by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, saying the emergency spillway should be lined with concrete to ensure its durability if regulators needed to release water to relieve pressure on the dam. The federal agency, backed by the state authority that owns the reservoir, said it was unnecessary. “The management of the dam — the management of water — is risk management,” said Nancy Vogel, a spokeswoman for the California Natural Resources Agency. “You have to weigh risks and you have to calculate what is a good expenditure and what isn’t. ” Several engineers said it seemed likely that this episode would show the need for something that elected officials have rarely rallied around: spending money on maintenance, rather than new building. The scare came as President Trump has said he will propose some kind of infrastructure program. California has submitted $100 billion worth of projects it would like funded it includes work on the state’s water system, but it is for new work, including raising the Folsom Dam northeast of Sacramento. On Tuesday, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said at a news conference that the administration was watching the events in California and that the crisis “was a textbook example of why we need to pursue a major infrastructure package in Congress. ” The events in Oroville are a reminder that everything about a dam — from building it to maintaining it — is challenging, in no small part because the stakes of a mistake are so high. “Of course it shouldn’t happen,” Mr. Countryman said. “It doesn’t mean it could have been stopped from happening. ” “We went from drought to flood disaster overnight,” he added. “Don’t we get a little break from fearing one thing to fearing another thing?” | 1 |
The House of Representatives on Thursday passed legislation to and replace many of the financial regulations enacted during the Obama administration in reaction to the 2008 financial crisis. [The House passed the Financial Choice Act by a vote of 233 to 186, with Republican lawmakers in support and Democrats opposed. The Choice Act is an ambitious piece of legislation that would replace many of the complex rules created by the Act of 2010 with a new paradigm of regulation. The bill would allow banks that fund their operations with capital beyond a certain threshold to step into a system of regulation in which the amount of supervisory oversight would be greatly reduced. Although it is supported by the Trump White House, the bill is unlikely to pass the Senate. Democrats have signaled their ongoing support for and view the Choice Act as letting banks “off the hook” for the financial crisis. | 1 |
Inside ‘Bill Clinton Inc.’: Hacked Memo Shows Intersection of Clinton Profits and Charity Posted on Oct 28, 2016
A 2011 memo from top Bill Clinton aide Douglas Band, published by WikiLeaks, details “a circle of enrichment in which [Band] raised money for the Clinton Foundation from top-tier corporations such as Dow Chemical and Coca-Cola that were clients of his firm, Teneo, while pressing many of those same donors to provide personal income to the former president,” reports The Washington Post.
The Post continues:
The system has drawn scrutiny from Republicans [and progressives], who say it allowed corporations and other wealthy supporters to pay for entree to a popular former president and a onetime secretary of state who is now the Democratic presidential nominee. …
The memo, made public Wednesday by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, lays out the aggressive strategy behind lining up the consulting contracts and paid speaking engagements for Bill Clinton that added tens of millions of dollars to the family’s fortune, including during the years that Hillary Clinton led the State Department. It describes how Band helped run what he called “Bill Clinton Inc.,” obtaining “in-kind services for the President and his family — for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like.”
Band grew close to Clinton during the ’90s as his personal aide in the White House and became “the architect of his post-presidential activities,” the Post reports. In the memo, Band argues that his work and the work of his firm benefited the former president and his family’s foundation:
“We have dedicated ourselves to helping the President secure and engage in for-profit activities,” Band wrote. He added that he had “sought to leverage my activities, including my partner role at Teneo, to support and to raise funds for the foundation.”
The Post continues:
Band’s memo provided data showing how much money each of Teneo’s 20 clients at the time had given to the Clinton Foundation, how much they had paid Bill Clinton and, in some cases, how he or Kelly had personally forged the relationships that resulted in the payments.
Band wrote that Teneo partners had raised in excess of $8 million for the foundation and $3 million in paid speaking fees for Bill Clinton. He said he had secured contracts for the former president that would pay out $66 million over the subsequent nine years if the deals remained in place.
For instance, Band wrote that Kelly arranged for the former president to meet the chief executive of Coca-Cola in January 2009 at the Clintons’ home in Washington. In all, according to Band’s memo, Coke had contributed $4.33 million to the foundation between 2004 and 2010. …
Band also described how Kelly helped expand a fruitful relationship with UBS Global Wealth Management, introducing Bill Clinton to a top executive at a 2009 charity dinner. In the ensuing years, UBS upped its giving to the foundation, signed on as a Teneo client and agreed to pay Bill Clinton for speeches, Band wrote.
Records show UBS paid Clinton about $2 million in speaking fees between 2011 and 2015 for a series of appearances, generally alongside former president George W. Bush. The company also paid Hillary Clinton $225,000 for a 2013 speech. …
Another achievement cited by Band: Laureate International Universities, a chain of for-profit international colleges, which donated to the foundation and agreed to pay Bill Clinton $3.5 million a year to serve as honorary chancellor.
Companies aligned with the Clinton Foundation paid several million dollars to Teneo for consulting services. The Post reports that a spike in payments from Dow “raised red flags for an internal company fraud investigator, who expressed alarm that it may be linked to Bill Clinton’s work with a charity founded by Liveris—a charge the company denied.” The investigator wrote: “It appears Dow is paying Teneo for connections with Clinton.” | 0 |
Next Swipe left/right This picture of three dads feeding their babies is more funny than cute Redditor kekembas17 has shared this touching picture of four generations of the same family, with each dad feeding his offspring. And Reddit user bwsmith201 has noticed something else about the family: “I find it humorous that the great granddad has no hair, the granddad has some hair, and the dad has a TON of hair. Talk about glimpsing your future.” | 0 |
NBC News made a “fundamental mistake” when its network executives thought Megyn Kelly was a “super star,” according to a television executive CNN interviewed. Kelly, the former Fox News talent, has come under fire for her interview with Alex Jones, which is set to air on this Sunday on her Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly show. “They’ve made a fundamental mistake about Megyn which is they think she’s a super star,” the television executive reportedly told CNN. “What she is is a cable star, and that is a very different solar system. ” While promoting her show, Kelly told numerous outlets that she felt like she was born to be a mainstream media star. In a leaked recording that was released this week, Kelly even tells Alex Jones, “I’m a combination of Mike Wallace, Oprah Winfrey and Larry the Cable Guy. ” Kelly was resoundingly mocked after Jones released the audio. Mainstream media reporters and the families of the Sandy Hook victims also lambasted Kelly for telling Jones in the leaked audio, “It’s not gonna be some gotcha hit piece, I promise you that. ” CNN boss Jeff Zucker said that Kelly’s interview will only work if she is “holding up a picture of the dead kids at Sandy Hook and saying, ‘How dare you? ’” But as the New York Times observed, “NBC has not released a transcript of Ms. Kelly’s interview, leading some to speculate that her interrogation of Mr. Jones over his more contentious views — for instance, that Sandy Hook was a hoax and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were carried out by the United States government — was less than ferocious. ” As CNN pointed out, the first month of Kelly’s show has shown that wanting to be [Barbara] Walters, [Diane] Sawyer or [Oprah] Winfrey does not necessarily make it so. Establishing that reputation takes years. And in Kelly’s case, it requires a transformation from her former role as a cable news host in the center of the political fray into someone more trusted by the general public. ” “Had a trusted broadcast talent like Diane Sawyer or Lester Holt interviewed Jones, audiences may have given them greater benefit of the doubt,” CNN noted. “Critics of Kelly’s interview might have waited to see a Sawyer or Holt interview air before casting judgment based on a brief promo. ” After her supposedly “ ” interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kelly did not receive stellar reviews even from her new mainstream media peers. Her interview with Erin Andrews for her second show did not draw rave reviews either. And despite NBC ginning up the hype machine in overdrive, Kelly’s ratings have tanked. Her debut show could not even beat out a rerun of 60 Minutes. Her second show lost to another rerun of 60 Minutes and could not even beat out a rerun of America’s Funniest Home Videos. According to reports, NBC executives are realizing already that “people are not tuning in to watch Megyn. ” NBC executives are reportedly “freaking out” over the “ratings disaster” that Kelly has turned out to be, questioning the network’s $15 million investment in Kelly. | 1 |
How to make your home feel welcoming It’s the little touches that can give your home some warmth and character. | 0 |
MEXICO CITY — Trailing badly in the polls, and with elections just around the corner, Roxana Luna reached for transcendental salvation. In a ceremony outside the government headquarters of Mexico’s Puebla State, Ms. Luna, a candidate for governor, unleashed a troupe of Aztec dancers across the colonial building’s cobblestone forecourt. They hopped around wearing leather skirts and spectacular feather headdresses. One drew designs in the air with smoke from burning tree resin. Another blew a conch shell. Ms. Luna explained to bemused onlookers that the event last week was a purification ritual intended to flush out “the curse” of bad government, along with fear, coercion, vote buying, apathy and violence. “People who feel desperate turn to ritualistic cleansings,” she said. “We’ve been cursed. ” It is election time in Mexico again, with voters going to the polls on Sunday for municipal and regional elections, including the governorships in 12 of Mexico’s 32 states. While some might quibble with Ms. Luna’s technique, few would argue against her appeal to clean up Mexico’s electoral politics. Mexican political campaigns have never been for the faint of heart, and this year has been no different, with contests that have made a certain presidential contest north of the border look almost quaint in comparison. The official campaign period in Mexico, which by law lasted only two months and ended on Wednesday, was marked by “a dirty war,” to use the favored term of the Mexican news media and political class. Candidates all over the country have hurled accusations of corruption at one another, including charges of graft and financing by drug traffickers. In the governor’s race in Veracruz, one candidate even accused his main competitor of being a pedophile. Some contests also featured violence and intimidation, including the firebombing of a party leader’s office in Veracruz. Dozens of local and regional candidates withdrew from races, reportedly because of threats from drug traffickers. A lot is at stake. More than 1, 300 seats are up for grabs, with the governorships the most important. The outcome of Sunday’s vote could also serve as a prologue for the 2018 presidential election. President Enrique Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party holds nine of the 12 contested governorships, but he is polling lower than any president in the past two decades, and his plummeting popularity could hurt his party’s chances on Sunday. Luis Carlos Ugalde, the director of Integralia Consultores, a political consultancy in Mexico City, said the level of invective and the prevalence of corruption allegations had increased in recent electoral cycles. This year’s tone was “the most negative” he had seen, he said. The rancor of the current campaigns is likely to influence the tenor of the presidential election, said Mr. Ugalde, who served as president of Mexico’s election commission in the 2000s. “This could cause a very troubled atmosphere in 2018,” he predicted. Arguably, the most contentious race this year has been for governor in Veracruz, a state wracked by corruption and violence. The are two cousins who, despite their family ties, have lobbed accusations and insults at each other. Héctor Yunes Landa, the candidate for the incumbent Institutional Revolutionary Party, has accused his opponent, Miguel Ángel Yunes Linares, the candidate of a coalition between the Democratic Revolution Party and the National Action Party, of being a pedophile, warning voters to “take care of the safety of your children,” according to local news media. Mr. Yunes Linares, who is trying to break the rival party’s hold on the state’s governorship, has denied the charges. Officials in Mr. Yunes Linares’s campaign have accused his cousin of vote buying and of underreporting his wealth in a public declaration of his assets. Mr. Yunes Linares’s chances may have improved in light of a recent investigation by the news site Animal Político, which found that the state’s current administration funneled about $35 million to ghost companies. The governor, Javier Duarte, has denied any wrongdoing. In the northern border state of Tamaulipas, the leading candidates for governor and their parties have been accused of having links to drug cartels. The Institutional Revolutionary Party’s candidate for governor, Baltazar Hinojosa Ochoa, has been accused of receiving money from the Gulf Cartel during a mayoral run in 2002 in the municipality of Matamoros. He has denied the allegations. Mr. Hinojosa Ochoa’s party has accused his main rival, Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca, the candidate for the National Action Party, of having his own links to organized crime. To support its accusations, the Institutional Revolutionary Party submitted a photo to government investigators showing gunmen riding around in a truck decorated with the symbol of the rival party. A Revolutionary Party official later admitted that the photograph had been taken in another state and, in any case, had been doctored. Candidates for governor in several other states — including Chihuahua, Oaxaca, Quintana Roo and Sinaloa — have also had to parry accusations of corruption and links to organized crime. The war of words has been punctuated by violent threats and attacks. On Tuesday, a group of armed attackers firebombed the offices of the Veracruz state leader for the National Action Party. “These are the costs of challenging a corrupt, unscrupulous system,” the party leader, José de Jesús Mancha, said in a statement after the bombing. In Puebla, an official from the Institutional Revolutionary Party was wounded in a shooting while he was driving. A party leader, Jorge Estefan Chidiac, blamed the state administration, led by the National Action Party, for the attack, saying it “was part of a strategy of the state government to destabilize, intimidate and threaten the people of Puebla. ” National Action Party officials denied responsibility. In Sinaloa, a candidate for the state legislature said his house had been shot at, and an office linked to the campaign of a mayoral candidate was ransacked by burglars, according to local news media accounts. In Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa, someone spray painted death threats against a candidate for governor on the walls of a university. During a radio interview on Thursday, Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, Mexico’s interior secretary, called the campaign period “the most ruthless of any electoral processes. ” “I don’t understand this kind of democracy,” he said. “I believe in competition, and when there’s an accusation and there are problems, you have to say something. But it went too far. ” | 1 |
A Mississippi fast food worker has turned herself in to police after she allegedly put menstrual blood on a customer’s cheeseburger. [Sky Juliett Samuel, 18, turned herself in Monday morning to the Columbus Police Department and was released after she posted $5, 000 bond, the Columbus Dispatch reported. The Columbus Police Department issued a warrant for her arrest Friday. Samuel was working at Jack’s Restaurant January 7 when she allegedly put menstrual blood and saliva on a cheeseburger she served to a customer between 10:00 and 10:30 p. m. The victim, who is unidentified, reported the incident to police. A told her mother what transpired, the details of which started to gain traction once her mother posted about it on Facebook, WJTV reported. Samuel is no longer employed by the restaurant, and if convicted, she faces up to five years in prison on a felony charge of “knowingly selling unwholesome food and drink,” according to Mississippi Code of 2013. Jack’s Family Restaurant is cooperating with the authorities and is conducting its own internal investigation. The Mississippi Department of Health is also conducting an investigation. | 1 |
United States immigration policies helped grow India’s economy, a new, academic study claims. [In a new study by the University of California, San Diego and the University of Michigan, states that the visa has led to an Indian economic boom. Every year, more than 100, 000 foreign workers are brought to the U. S. on the visa. Most recently, that number has ballooned to potentially hundreds of thousands each year, as universities and are exempt from the cap. With more entering the U. S. through the visa, Americans are often replaced. As the Center for Immigration Studies noted, the vast majority of visas allotted every year are given to foreign nationals from India who primarily enter the IT sector. In the academic study, researchers found that current policy aided India’s tech boom so much, that the country eventually surpassed the U. S. in IT exports. “Those who could not join the US workforce, due to the cap, remained in India, enabling the growth of an Indian IT sector,” the researchers wrote. “Those who returned with acquired human capital and technology after the expiration of their also contributed to the growing in India. The increase in IT sector productivity allowed India to eventually surpass the US in IT exports. ” Researcher Gaurav Khanna told Quartz that without the U. S. immigration policies of the last four decades, where more than one million legal immigrants enter every year, India would have never been able to beat the U. S. in software exports. “If US immigration had been restricted in the 1990s, it would not have allowed the Indian IT sector to develop,” Khanna said. John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 1 |
Posted on October 28, 2016 by Mac Slavo
This election remains more heated than any other in modern history – and for many, it has become a call to arms, even if only metaphorically.
Despite the fact that DNC operatives have been exposed as the ones inciting violence at rallies – Robert Creamer and Scott Foval for example – and working overtime to bus in illegal voters and rig the vote – the media is going out of its way to paint Trump supporters and grassroots Americans as the ones plotting violence.
Most recently, they are latching onto comments made by former congressman Joe Walsh, now a conservative radio host, who suggested he would ‘pick up a musket’ if Trump loses the election. On November 8th, I'm voting for Trump.
On November 9th, if Trump loses, I'm grabbing my musket.
You in?
— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) October 26, 2016
Did Walsh mean to imply violence? That is certainly how the media is portraying it, as his comments spark controversy and fuel fire to the debate over the nearing election.
The irony that his commentary drew from the imagery of founding-era patriots who stood up to tyranny was deeply lost on the left, who see opponents to Hillary in black and white terms – racist, xenophobic, utterly deplorable and inherently violent.
CNN followed up, asking Walsh what he meant by statement.
via CNN :
Former Rep. Joe Walsh appeared to call for armed revolution Wednesday if Donald Trump is not elected president.
[…]
Walsh … did respond to CNN’s Jake Tapper via Twitter when he asked: “What exactly does that mean?”
“It means protesting. Participating in acts of civil disobedience. Doing what it takes to get our country back,” he responded to Tapper. @jaketapper It means protesting. Participating in acts of civil disobedience. Doing what it takes to get our country back.
— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) October 26, 2016
After a firestorm on social media, Walsh doubled down, stating on Twitter: I'm serious. I don't think a musket would do much good these days, but it's time for civil disobedience on the right. https://t.co/ThJPEbALWZ
— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) October 26, 2016
His heated rhetoric is a response to the endless episodes of fraud , dirty tricks and foul play by the Hillary campaign, as it seems that she will stop at nothing to become the first female POTUS – just the sort of abuse of power that the founders warned about.
1775-76 erupted in response to a long train of abuses – acts of oppression and hostility listed in the Declaration of Independence that is being largely repeated in modern day America.
Could Hillary’s reported election victory – or Donald Trump’s defeat – signal civil unrest and a new wave of resistance, particularly if the results are widely viewed as fraudulent or “rigged”? Trump, for one, has certainly been talking up the possibility of a stolen election.
The scenario is plausible enough that the Pentagon and Homeland Security have been carrying out secret drills in the lead up to the election to prepare for the possibility of a martial law response to violence or civil unrest.
As SHTF detailed in an exclusive report, a whistleblower has come forward on the ominous contingency plan to keep and/or restore order if the populace revolt against the establishment’s “selection” for president:
If there is any truth to it, the 2016 election could be a kick-off for total tyranny.
According to an unnamed source – who has provided accurate intel in the past – an unannounced military drill is scheduled to take place during a period leading up to the election and throughout the month after.
Date: October 30th – 30 days after the election Suspected Region: Northeast, specifically New York
1st Phase: NROL (No Rule of Law) – drill involving combat arms in metro areas (active and reserve). Source says active duty and reserve service members are being vaccinated as if they are being deployed in theatre.
2nd Phase: LROL (Limited Rule of Law) – Military/FEMA consolidating resources, controlling water supply, handing out to public as needed.
3rd Phase: AROL (Authoritarian Rule of Law) – Possible new acronym or term for “Martial Law”. Curfew, restricted movements, basically martial law scenario.
Source said exercise involves FEMA/DHS/Military
At this point, no one can say for certain what will happen in the aftermath of November 8, but it is clear that millions and millions of Americans are dissatisfied with the status quo, troubled about the economic realities perpetuated by the Fed and angry that Hillary may be put in the Oval Office rather than a jail cell, despite a trail of corruption with virtually no end.
How far will things go?
And will things ever be reset without a new American Revolution?
Courtesy of SHTFplan.com Don't forget to follow the D.C. Clothesline on Facebook and Twitter. PLEASE help spread the word by sharing our articles on your favorite social networks. Share this: | 0 |
Aleppo fighters demand $300 for exit via humanitarian corridors 02.11.2016 In Aleppo fighters distribute leaflets, where they demand civilians to pay 150,000 Syrian pounds or 300 dollars for exit from the city through humanitarian corridors. As they stated, 'Our leadership realizes the level of suffering endured by the city's peaceful civilians because of the bombardments and the blockade of Aleppo neighborhoods by the Syrian army. After consultation with our brothers, we will let the residents aged under 14 and older than 55 out of the city if each of them pays 150,000 Syrian pounds for an opportunity to leave in order to support our brothers fighting on the fronts'. The demands are signed by the 'Supreme Military Council of Jaish al-Fateh'. As Pravda.Ru reported, the Russian and Syrian military created eight humanitarian corridors, peaceful civilians and surrendered fighters may use, to leave surrounded regions in the eastern Aleppo. However, terrorists hamper evacuation and continue shelling humanitarian corridors. Pravda.Ru | 0 |
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In an exciting new development, a startup company called Zero Mass Water has created solar panels that passively and efficiently pull water from the sky, purify it, and transport it to the tap for drinking and cooking purposes. These solar panels are seriously changing the game for both tap water and clean energy.
Via TrueActivist SPONSORED LINKS
Though the primary motivation for creating these panels was to help people living without access to clean drinking water, it can also help a variety of people from all walks of life while conserving traditional energy that is bad for the environment . Scroll Down For Video Below
The founder and CEO of the startup, Cody Friesen, said he was inspired when he was setting up another one of his technologies in Indonesia and thought about the abundance of rain, but lack of clean water in the region. He decided to focus his efforts on improving the global water supply. Friesen told Fastco Exist:
“Everybody’s heard about the latest nanofilter this…or whatever the latest pump technology is. None of those end up being sort of the leapfrog technology that addresses the fact that drinking water is a fundamental human right, and yet we have one person dying every 10 seconds from waterborne illness on the planet.”
Though these are the first solar panels of their kind, the idea and technology behind the water conversion and supply is simple. Zero Mass Water created a material that absorbs water from the air at an extremely accelerated rate, then it draws the water back out to evaporate it and draw out pollutants. After this purification process, the distilled water is run through a mineral block to add calcium and magnesium and to improve the taste.
Since waterborne illnesses are so prevalent, this water can save millions of lives and slowly eliminate diseases, as it becomes more widely-used by countries suffering the most as a result of contaminated drinking water . Having an in-home water supply would also save girls and women worldwide approximately 200 million hours annually , as that’s how much time they spend retrieving water. They could use this time to go to school, perform more tasks around the house, or work.
The solar panels are currently being tested in Ecuador, Jordan, and Mexico to test their viability and effectiveness. Though they’re starting out in areas rampant with poverty , the panels can also make a difference in the lives of the citizens whose water supplies are tainted with lead. There are roughly 5,300 such water systems, and this could be a safe alternative to drinking that lethal tap water and buying bottled water.
A single panel can provide enough clean drinking and cooking water for a family of 4, and additional panels can be used on larger buildings, such as hospitals.
Zero Mass Water hopes that this concept won’t remain novel for too long; despite the success they’re likely to have for being the only sellers of this panel, their goal is to make the technology common throughout all solar panels installed in people’s homes.
“When you think about solar today, what do you think about? Electricity,” Friesen said. “Everybody thinks that way. I think that in a few years when people think about solar, they’ll also think about water abundance.” | 0 |
VATICAN CITY (AP) — God’s love may be free, but the Vatican says it has a copyright on the pope. [Unnerved by the proliferation of snow globes and tea towels around the world, the Vatican has warned it intends to “protect” the image of Pope Francis and “stop situations of illegality that may be discovered. ” It also wants to protect the crossed keys emblem of the Holy See. “The secretary of state will undertake systematic surveillance aimed at monitoring the way in which the image of the Holy Father and the emblems of the Holy See are used, intervening with opportune measures when necessary,” the Vatican said in a statement. To back up this declaration, the Vatican has hired the global law firm Baker McKenzie to protect its intellectual property rights, the Italian daily Corriere della Sera reported. without citing the source of the information. Baker McKenzie declined to comment. The threat of enforcement marks a sea change for a church that for some 2, 000 years has seen popes venerated on all manner of flags, banners and medals. But the popularity of Francis and the ease with which his image can be copied in the internet age has spawned a flood of papal trinkets, causing the Holy See to worry that they are losing control of his image. “The pope’s image rights are no different from those of any other famous celebrity and so it’s not surprising that the Vatican is giving notice that it will protect its (intellectual property) rights as necessary,” said Nick Kounoupias, the founder of an intellectual property consultancy in London. “What will be interesting to see, however, is how vigorously these rights are pursued, given who the IP owner is. ” Francis’ many travels have taken him to countries like the Philippines and Sri Lanka, where factories can quickly churn out pope hats, and towels. Vatican officials have grown fearful the faithful will think that the church is making money off the merchandise, experts say. Worse still, they see the conditions in which some of the items are made and worry about being associated with labor abuses. The decision reflects an evolution in the last decade as the Vatican adapted to modern markets. While in the past the Holy See might get word of improper use of the pope’s image through local church organizations around the globe, the approach was random. “It’s not new that people were selling of the pope, but (previously) those were probably little local vendors,” said Mark McKenna, an intellectual property expert at the Notre Dame Law School in Indiana. What’s changed is the magnitude of what can be produced and how quickly it can be distributed through online platforms. “In a world of Etsy, you are able to do it on a bigger scale,” he said. Although the Vatican did not elaborate on how it would crack down, the warning seemed a move to explain why the Vatican is going after the unauthorized commercial uses of the pope’s image. There was no immediate indication that souvenir buyers would risk fines or legal action. It’s not as if the church refrains from selling its own material. On the Vatican website, one can buy Francis medals, icons and rosary boxes. The Vatican museum boutiques offer silk ties and scarves and watches showing scenes from Michelangelo’s frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. And that may be part of the Vatican’s motivation in safeguarding Francis’ face — and warning that they will challenge the copycats. “It’s probably also the case that there is some genuine commercial motivation,” McKenna said. “They want to be sure they’re the only ones selling this stuff. ” | 1 |
The Clinton email scandal has taken an unexpected twist Friday as Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey notified key members of Congress that the agency will be reopening their investigation against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
In a letter to Congress, Comey wrote that the FBI has recently “ learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation” regarding Clinton’s use of a private server during her tenure at the State Department.
While Comey did not elaborate on what those emails contain, the director that the emails were discovered “in connection with an unrelated case.”
Via FoxNews
He told lawmakers the investigative team briefed him on the information a day earlier, “and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.”
He said the FBI could not yet assess whether the new material is significant and he could not predict how long it will take to complete “this additional work.”
Trump, speaking to cheering supporters Friday afternoon in Manchester, N.H., praised the FBI for having the “courage” to “right the horrible mistake that they made” – saying he hopes that is “corrected.”
“Hillary Clinton’s corruption is on a scale we have never seen before,” Trump said. “We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office.”
In a nod to the significance of the FBI’s announcement, Trump quipped: “The rest of my speech is going to be so boring.”
We will continue to update as new details surface.
| 0 |
CAIRO — A piece of luggage adrift in the Mediterranean Sea. Floating nearby, a passenger seat from a plane. Scraps of metal, scattered personal belongings and, finally, the grim discovery of human remains. As the investigation continued Friday into what caused an EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo to suddenly and violently plunge from the sky, the discovery of the debris allowed search crews to home in on the location of the crash — an area about 180 miles north of Alexandria, Egypt — even as its cause remained a mystery and the subject of intense speculation. Data that was transmitted from the aircraft to operators on the ground, published Friday by a respected aviation journal, revealed a rapid loss of control, with alarms and failures in the seconds before the plane was lost from radar. The transmissions are evidence of a catastrophic failure, but do not answer the crucial question: What caused it? Why would a plane with a good safety record and experienced pilots fall from the sky on a clear spring night? No bulk wreckage has been found, and the parts of the aircraft most likely to provide clues for investigators — including the voice and data recorders — are also the ones most likely to quickly sink to the seafloor. An Egyptian official has said that investigators consider terrorism to be one possible cause of the disaster, but no terrorist group has claimed responsibility. Officials cautioned that there was no direct evidence to suggest a bomb aboard the plane, or any other deliberate act of sabotage. The plane, a Airbus A320 jet, went down Thursday while flying through a cloudless night sky en route to Cairo from Paris. The Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority provided what a spokesman called a definitive timeline on the disaster. The agency reported that the flight was proceeding normally at 1:48 a. m. Cairo time on Thursday, when Greek traffic controllers last spoke with the pilot, who seemed in good spirits. At 2:27 a. m. when the plane was passing from Greek to airspace, the controllers in Athens tried and failed repeatedly to reach the pilots by radio. Even attempts on an emergency frequency failed. At the same time, technical data was being transmitted from the plane automatically through its Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or Acars, which modern jetliners use to provide status updates to maintenance and operational centers on the ground. Representatives of Airbus and the Federal Aviation Administration said they could not confirm the authenticity of the technical signals. Dina a spokeswoman for EgyptAir, declined to comment on the apparently leaked data. “We cannot say anything, because we have already launched a committee to investigate the crash,” she said. “It hasn’t told us anything until now. ” The data, first reported on AVHerald. com, is written tersely in abbreviations and codes. Robert W. Mann, a former airline executive and an industry analyst, said the jargon in the messages told a compelling, although incomplete, story. At 2:26 a. m. a message indicated that the right cockpit window had been opened. This could have been done to vent smoke, Mr. Mann said, or something else could have caused the breach. Over the next two minutes, there were two smoke indications, one in a bathroom and another in the avionics bay, the part of the plane where much of its electronic equipment is housed. Mr. Mann cautioned that these messages did not necessarily mean that there was a fire. The messages could also have been prompted by rapid decompression of the aircraft, which can produce condensation that the plane’s sensors could mistake for smoke. Finally at 2:29, there were two more alerts having to do with the plane’s flight control computer systems. “The last two are troubling,” Mr. Mann said. “You are starting to really see things rapidly degrade. ” First, there was a problem with the autoflight control computer. The jet would have been flying near its maximum speed and elevation at that time. That is the most efficient way for jetliners to fly, and it is safe, but pilots prefer to rely on autopilot systems in those conditions because if they were to ever lose control of the plane, it could be hard to regain, Mr. Mann said. That is why pilots sometimes call those conditions the “coffin corner. ” The last message had to do with the spoiler elevator controller, which essentially controls the flaps responsible for pitch and roll control. The computer controlling these failed as well. “It looks to me like you have a progressive flight control system failure,” Mr. Mann said. It is over the course of two minutes, which might have seemed like an eternity on that plane, but is relatively fast. This is also the moment that the plane left Greek airspace, and at 2:29:40 a. m. Greek controllers lost the aircraft’s trace, just inside Egyptian airspace, about halfway between Crete and Egypt. Around this time, the plane made a turn to the left and then a full circle to the right, dropping precipitously to 15, 000 feet from 37, 000 and then plunging again to 9, 000 feet before it disappeared from radar. The crew never gave any indication of a technical problem or other difficulties on board, even during the final, fatal minutes when the plane itself was transmitting data indicating a catastrophic failure. One former crash investigator said that radar evidence pointing to a series of sharp maneuvers in the moments before radar contact was lost suggested that the plane was almost certainly not under the control of the pilots. Whatever upset the Airbus was so sudden and violent that it could not be compensated for by the plane’s automated safety systems. “In my mind, this basically opens two axes of possibility: either a sudden technical problem or some kind of illicit or terrorist act,” said the expert, Alain Bouillard, a former chief investigator for the French Bureau of Investigations and Analyses. Given the limited amount of evidence available so far, experts said it was difficult to say with any certainty what kind of technical failure could have brought the plane down. One possibility, Mr. Bouillard said, might be a malfunction in the plane’s cabin pressurization systems that could have caused the fuselage to rupture. At high altitude, such a rupture could be potentially catastrophic if the crew was unable to initiate a controlled descent to a lower altitude and make an emergency landing. If the inquiry fails to uncover strong evidence of a technical problem, experts said the possibility of a more sinister chain of events would most likely take prominence. But given the circumstances of this accident, particularly in the absence of a claim of responsibility by a terrorist group or intelligence pointing to a perpetrator, it could take months to prove with any certainty that it was a terrorist act. An initial review of the passengers aboard against American terrorist watch lists have found no matches, according to Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who has received several briefings on the investigation. The Islamic State, considered the most likely group behind the attack, is normally quick to announce its role, as it did last fall after the crash of a Russian flight over Egypt’s Sinai Desert. “It’s important to note that attribution in the theater of terrorism is crucial,” said Michael S. Smith II, a managing partner of Kronos Advisory, a firm specializing in terrorism research. What may be most valuable to investigators — and perhaps far more difficult to recover — is material that would have quickly sunk to the seafloor. If that debris is scattered over a wide area, and the pieces are relatively small, it would suggest that the plane broke up in the air — supporting the theory of an onboard explosion. However, if the debris field is concentrated in a relatively small area, that would indicate that the aircraft hit the surface of the water largely intact. The plane’s two data recorders, or “black boxes,” if they can be recovered, would also provide important clues. The shock wave of an onboard explosion, for example, may have been captured by the microphones of the cockpit voice recorder, experts said such a blast would also instantly disable the flight data recorder. In the event of a technical failure, Mr. Bouillard said, the data recorder — which tracks information including the plane’s position, speed, altitude and direction — would normally continue to function until the moment of impact. Officials could also not rule out that one of the pilots intentionally brought down the plane. The flight track of the Airbus on Thursday indicated that it crashed halfway between Crete and Egypt, which could mean it landed on what scientists refer to as the Mediterranean Ridge. The ridge has been pushed upward by the African plate of the earth’s crust sliding under the Aegean Sea, deforming and crumbling the seafloor, said William B. F. Ryan, a scientist at the Earth Observatory at Columbia University who has studied the Mediterranean seafloor. The water there is about 1. 5 miles deep, and picking out wreckage at the bottom from among the bumps, which are perhaps 50 to 100 feet in size, could be complex, he said. If the plane crashed farther to the south, the wreckage would lie on a smoother plain at a depth between 1. 7 and 2 miles, Dr. Ryan said. In that case, the search would go faster — and the answer to what caused the crash could come quicker. | 1 |
WATCH: Insane School Teachers Push Girls Into Snake Pit to Teach “Character Lesson”
Their injuries were perceived as so severe by theme park staff and paramedics that Gavin Fuller of Queensland Ambulance described it as “incompatible with living.”
The mother of Kate Godchild and Luke Dorsett, two of the victims, said that their family was “absolutely devastated” by the tragic and gruesome loss of their loved ones.
“I have three children and have lost two of them today — my whole family has been wiped out,” the traumatized mother said.
Dorsett’s partner, Roozi Araghi, was also killed in the incident, as well as a 42-year-old woman who has not yet been publicly identified.
Authorities have been reviewing video footage of the attraction to see what exactly caused the deadly malfunction, but others who visited the attraction that day have noted that the ride’s seat belt situation was questionable.
Jesse Lovett, a park-goer who was on the water attraction with his 2-year-old daughter an hour before the fatal accident, was concerned that the flimsy hook-and-loop strap wasn’t doing enough to keep them inside the raft.
“It’s so rough and you had to hold it really tight … the strap did nothing and easily came undone because it was wet,” he explained. | 0 |
In “Natasha, Pierre the Great Comet of 1812,” a rock opera on Broadway adapted from a section of Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” Amber Gray and Lucas Steele play Hélène and Anatole Kuragin, a pair of aristocratic siblings who are impervious to consequence and impossibly chic in their punk romantic . In other words, they were perfect casting for New York Fashion Week — presuming they could get seats to a show. A reporter’s initial plan was to take them to Raf Simons’s debut at Calvin Klein, but with just 400 seats in the house and no Calvin Klein available for them to wear, the request was declined. They almost didn’t get into Tory Burch either, until Ms. Burch and her team agreed to dress Ms. Gray and seat her with Mr. Steele in the front row at her show Tuesday morning, which took place at the Whitney Museum in Lower Manhattan. (The company doesn’t have a men’s line and therefore couldn’t outfit Mr. Steele). Had so few people in the fashion industry read the rapturous reviews in The New York Times, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter? Or could it be the source material? If it was the latter, Ms. Gray could hardly blame them. She hadn’t read the classic novel when she and Mr. Steele debuted as the scheming siblings in in its first Off Broadway production in 2012. “When I first picked the book up, I cheated and just read the section the show is based on,” Ms. Gray said, upon arriving at the Whitney in a burgundy leather jacket from AllSaints, along with a smart looking Tory Burch guipure lace Carolina dress and ’ ankle boots from Ms. Burch. Mr. Steele wore his own vintage black leather jacket, with a borrowed burgundy and black shirt, borrowed black slacks and borrowed black and red loafers from AllSaints. Behind them was a stylist named Michael Fusco. “He’s here to make sure we don’t look like morons,” Mr. Steele said with a glance, as Mr. Fusco adjusted his jacket collar. On their way into the museum, they ran into the veteran magazine editor and critic Hal Rubenstein, whom Mr. Steele had met over the summer at a charity gala. “I was at your benefit,” Mr. Steele said. “I saw your show,” Mr. Rubenstein said. “It was a wonderful evening. ” A few minutes later, a nervous Mr. Steele and Ms. Gray were introduced to Anna Wintour, who had seen it, too. “I saw it! I loved it,” Ms. Wintour said, going on to marvel at how gloriously “awful” their characters managed to be. In their seats, the duo chatted about what it has been like to take part in a show that started small before settling at the Imperial Theater in Times Square. Both actors said they struggled for years before being cast in an early production of “The Great Comet” in 2012. Ms. Gray, who is 35 and lives in Brooklyn, with her boyfriend and young son, worked over the years for the jewelry company Dinosaur Designs. Mr. Steele, who lives in Harlem and is unmarried, did everything from being a nanny to manning sample sales. (Although he is in his 30s, he asked that his age not be printed). Given the quirky format of the show, neither saw its ultimate commercial viability as . The 2012 production took place in a faux supper club, broke the fourth wall and featured dance numbers and progressive casting choices, which is how Ms. Gray (who is black) and Mr. Steele (who is white) ended up playing biological siblings. The audience often got inebriated and unruly, Ms. Gray said. ”There was a little groping of the ladies,” she said. “And there was the famous incident when someone threw a cellphone,” Mr. Steele said, referring to the time in 2013 when Kevin Williamson, a writer from National Review, earned plaudits among the cast for taking the device of a texting seatmate and hurling it into the distance. Yet here they were five years later, being photographed by the fashion paparazzi, still not exactly famous but not anonymous either. Around 9:30 a. m. the muslin came up and the models began their march. Roxy Music blared and Ms. Gray joked with Mr. Steele, who noted the similarities to the opulence of the models and their characters in “The Great Comet. ” “They’re all Kuragins,” she said. Like all fashion shows, it was considerably shorter than a Russian novel. Ten minutes later, the pair headed over to meet Ms. Burch, who was holding court in a corner with a gaggle of editors. “Thank you so much for coming,” Ms. Burch said, before apologizing for not having yet been to see them on Broadway. The three posed for pictures, and then Ms. Gray and Mr. Steele exited onto the street and walked over to the nearby Standard Hotel for avocado toast. “There’s no dairy in it, right?” Mr. Steele asked the waiter. Although “The Great Comet” has been on Broadway just two months, Ms. Gray and Mr. Steele have each performed it more than 400 times in its various incarnations. Both said that next fall might be a good time for them to leave. Mr. Steele has had surgery and extensive physical therapy that he attributes to all the he does in the show. It also gets exhausting, he said, playing one of those people who “peaked in high school. ” Ms. Gray seemed more upbeat. Before departing the restaurant shortly before 11 a. m. she recalled some advice she got early in her career: “If you stand in line long enough, you will get served. ” | 1 |
Former United States Department of State official Dr. Steve Pieczenik is a psychiatrist who has over 20 years experience in resolving international crises for four U.S. administrations.
Pieczenik was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, and James Baker. His expertise includes foreign policy, international crisis management, and psychological warfare. He served the presidential administrations of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in the capacity of deputy assistant secretary.
He has come forward with a series of videos that expose the Clintons, explains that they co-opted many central facets of our government including the White House, the judiciary, the CIA, and the FBI. and claims that the corrupt couple belongs to a high-level pedophile ring.
Pieczenik explains that it was not the Russians who provided information to WikiLeaks – US intelligence offered the data to Julian Assange. This counter-coup is working against Hillary Clinton and her campaign.
Here, Pieczenik discusses the Clintons’ connections to Anthony Weiner , Jeffrey Esptein’s Lolita Express, and more.
In this video, Pieczenik reveals the details regarding Democratic Party ‘Fixer,” Jeff Rovin.
Dr. Pieczenik tells us “the second American revolution” is happening.
I hope he’s correct, because we certainly need it. Delivered by The Daily Sheeple
We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses, breaking news and videos ( Click for details ).
Contributed by Lily Dane of The Daily Sheeple .
Lily Dane is a staff writer for The Daily Sheeple. Her goal is to help people to “Wake the Flock Up!” | 0 |
Фото: © Пресс-служба МЧС по Рязанской области
Об этом сообщила официальный представитель регионального управления СК РФ Анжелика Евдокимова, передают РИА Новости.
"На месте происшествия обнаружены и изъяты фрагменты газового оборудования, которые находились в квартире, являющейся эпицентром взрыва. Результаты осмотра фрагментов газового оборудования показали, что была отвернута гайка на выходе газового счетчика", - сказала собеседница агентства.
Евдокимова отметила, что это, по версии следствия, может быть предварительной причиной взрыва.
Следствием назначены взрыво-техническая, судебно-медицинские, строительно-технические судебные экспертизы, устанавливаются обстоятельства произошедшего и виновники ЧП. По информации СК, осмотр места происшествия и фрагментов газового оборудования предварительно подтвердил версию следствия о том, что ЧП произошло "в результате действий лица, проживающего в квартире, где произошел взрыв газа".
Напомним, как сообщала Правда.Ру, ранним утром воскресенья, 23 октября на верхних этажах 10-этажного дома в 1-м Осеннем переулке произошел взрыв , в результате которого были разрушены семь квартир, а перекрытия между двумя верхними этажами повреждены.
Как сообщали в региональном управлении МЧС, Всего для ликвидации последствий происшествия было задействовано 279 человек и 61 единица техники, из них от МЧС России - 162 человека и 31 единица техники. В целях авиаразведки применялся беспилотный летательный аппарат.
Было проведено обследование здания аппаратно-программным диагностическим комплексом «Стрела-П», предназначенным для оперативной оценки технического состояния зданий и сооружений, опасности их обрушения и возможного риска для людей, находящихся внутри и поблизости объектов. Использование "Струны" позволяет ускоренно обрабатывать данные, получаемые при динамических испытаниях на устойчивость зданий и сооружений.
Следственные органы возбудили уголовное дело по статье "производство, хранение, перевозка либо сбыт товаров и продукции, выполнение работ или оказание услуг, не отвечающих требованиям безопасности, повлекшие по неосторожности смерть двух или более лиц". Наказание, предусмотренное этой статьей - до десяти лет лишения свободы.
Читайте последние новости Pravda. Ru на сегодня | 0 |
With the things heating up just days before what is arguably the craziest Presidential election in American history, Joe Joseph weighs in on the latest leaks, the potential for post-election unrest, and looming crisis.
They’re so worried about… ‘maybe at the end of the day I might not be able to sit in my Barca lounger at the end of the night’ or ‘I might not be able to watch that football game on Sunday’ … Let me tell you… If things go the way that The Powers That Shouldn’t Be want them, there will be no Barca lounges and there will be no NFL.
So it’s either we do things now while we have the chance… because there will come a time when it’s too late.. and you will be begging to have your old life back.
And the answer’s going to be, ‘you had the opportunity and now it’s gone.’
There’s a lot of things here in the United States, in the western world and in society that we used to have and used to enjoy… quality of life… the ability to earn a liveable wage… fast evoparting… those used to be a lot more present… people used to be a lot more comfortable..
And it’s just not the case anymore… And it’s only going to get worse…
Unless we the people draw the line in the sand and we stick with it.
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The U. S. Supreme Court has declined to hear Texas’ appeal from an adverse ruling in the Texas voter ID case. [The Texas Attorney General said after the U. S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear the case, “While we are disappointed that the U. S. Supreme Court did not immediately take our case, Chief Justice Roberts made it very clear that the case will be an even stronger posture for Supreme Court review after further proceedings in lower courts. Texas enacted a common sense voter ID law to safeguard the integrity of our elections, and we will continue to fight for the law in the district court, the Fifth Circuit, and if necessary, the Supreme Court again. ” Breitbart Texas reported the day before the U. S. Supreme Court’s order denying review of the case that a federal magistrate delayed the next hearing in the Texas voter ID case so that the Trump Administration would have time to discuss the case with the government’s lawyers. Federal lawyers filed a motion for continuance on Friday, January 20, asking the court to continue a hearing that had originally been set for January 24. In an effort to temporarily address the “discriminatory effects” of the law as originally written, the trial court enforced a remedy shortly before the 2016 Election that allowed voters without proper ID to sign affidavits attesting to the reason why they could not obtain one before casting a regular ballot. Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart, who runs Texas’ largest voting jurisdiction, told Breitbart on Sunday, “The flawed solution pushed by the DOJ that we were forced to use last November allowed hundreds of illegal votes to be cast in Harris County. ” The latest Supreme Court ruling sets the stage for the lawsuit to continue down a track that could take many more months to resolve. The State of Texas is not without other options outside of the courtroom, however. Public Interest Legal Foundation President J. Christian Adams told Breitbart Texas that legislators can take the job of fixing the law into their own hands. “The Texas Legislature is also free to offer reforms that could serve to fix the ‘discriminatory effects’ of the law. A fix would be easy,” Adams noted. In July 2016, the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found that Texas’ voter ID law had a discriminatory effect under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act but said the district court erred in finding discriminatory intent, as reported by Breitbart Texas. The en banc ruling held that the law did not constitute a poll tax, either. The appellate court remanded the case to the district court to determine if the voter ID provisions were written to be intentionally discriminatory. The dissents to the opinion encompassed 100 pages. Judge Edith Jones, a Reagan nominated judge, wrote a dissent which was joined by four others. She wrote, “Requiring a voter to verify her identity with a photo ID at the polling place is a reasonable requirement widely supported by Texans of all races and members of the public belonging to both political parties. ” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said immediately after the appellate court decision, “The 5th Circuit rightly reversed the lower court’s finding of discriminatory purpose, but wrongly concluded the law had a discriminatory effect. Voter fraud is real, and it undermines the integrity of the election process. ” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton responded to the Fifth Circuit’s ruling at the time, “It is imperative that the State government safeguards our elections and ensures the integrity of our democratic process. Preventing voter fraud is essential to accurately reflecting the will of Texas voters during elections, and it is unfortunate that this law, providing protections against fraud, was not upheld in its entirety. ” The seven acceptable forms of photo ID under the law include the following: a Texas driver’s license free Texas election identification card (EIC) Texas personal identification card Texas license to carry a concealed handgun U. S. military identification card U. S. citizenship certificate and a U. S. passport. Lana Shadwick is a contributing writer and legal analyst for Breitbart Texas. She has served as a prosecutor and associate judge in Texas. Follow her on Twitter @LanaShadwick2. This article has been updated to reflect additional information. | 1 |
You might think the phrase “you only live once,” is a modern sentiment, but it was actually also the personal motto of one of the true unsung heroes of the American Revolution — Jack Steward. A tall, handsome, charismatic Maryland officer known for his sizable ego, Steward fought fearlessly in battle for a cause he ardently believed in — the United States. [In late August of 1776, the British Army landed more than twenty thousand troops on Long Island, where they planned to annihilate the Patriot forces. British General William Howe ordered a third of his Redcoats and Hessians to attack Washington’s troops head on, while the remainder circled around behind to trap the Americans. The battle evolved exactly according to Howe’s plan, and within hours, he had trapped Washington and his men on the Heights of Gowanus in Brooklyn. The end seemed near for the young American army. To give hundreds of men in Washington’s army time to escape, the Marylanders mounted a series of suicidal bayonet charges against an old stone house occupied by British General Lord Cornwallis and his Redcoats. Flanked by thousands of British and Hessian troops, a few hundred men fought desperately and somehow bought enough time for the bulk of Washington’s men to withdraw. Washington, watching the action unfold through his spyglass, cried out “Good God! What brave fellows I must this day lose!” Many of the Marylanders involved in the charge sacrificed their lives. Most lie in a mass grave somewhere near the epic stand in Brooklyn. The exact whereabouts of the mass grave remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the Revolution. But a handful of Marylanders survived. To stay alive, they would have to swim eighty yards across Gowanus Creek while under a hail of fire. Witnessing his brothers in danger, Lt. Steward jumped into action. He provided covering fire as the Marylanders swam for their lives. His valiant actions saved many of his Maryland brothers, who would eventually form the core of the regiment that Washington would call upon time and again in the inflection points of some of the greatest battles of the American Revolution. The story of Steward and the other Marylanders is captured in the book Washington’s Immortals, recently released in paperback. This unique book is the first Band of Brothers treatment of the American Revolution, detailing the most important elements of nearly every significant battle of The War of Independence. Steward’s next bold stand arose at the Battle of Staten Island in August 1777, when the Americans mounted a raid against a British outpost. At first, the Patriots caught the British by surprise and quickly captured dozens of prisoners and large quantities of supplies. But the Redcoats regrouped and drove the Continental troops back to their boats. Steward led a desperate rear guard, holding off hundreds of British troops long enough for most of the raiding party to escape. When all the boats retreated from the island, the enemy surrounded Steward, forcing him to surrender. They placed him on one of the prison ships docked in New York Harbor. Often called “hell ships,” these vessels served as floating concentration camps where prisoners (as many as 15, 000 Americans) slowly starved or perished from disease in the cramped, quarters. However, knowing he would “only live once,” the indomitable Steward miraculously escaped via a rowboat he purloined and rejoined Washington’s Army. By July 1779, the War of Independence had tediously dragged on for more than three years, and the Americans had survived a brutal winter at Valley Forge. After vigilantly gathering actionable intelligence on the British outpost at Stony Point, Washington ordered a raid to assault the fort and remove the threat the British fortification posed to American defenses in the Hudson Valley. Rather than deploy his entire army, which could have played into a British counterattack, Washington unleashed more than 1, 000 men from his light infantry, a corps “composed of the best, most hardy and active marksmen. ” The volunteer force, unencumbered by baggage and heavy artillery, earned renown for their daring, alertness, and efficiency. Jack Steward commanded a unit within the light infantry. Steward, now a major, first rode out with the commander of the raid Brigadier General “Mad Anthony” Wayne to spy out the lay of the land and take a closer look at the Stony Point’s defenses. Wayne realized that to have any chance of success he would need a “forlorn hope,” in today’s parlance, a suicide squad. Their mission was to cut through the thick abatis while under fire from the heavily defended fort. The sharpened logs — the eighteenth century equivalent of barbed wire — and multiple cannon made the fort nearly impregnable. Steward volunteered to lead the forlorn hope and the advance guard, the first to pierce the Point’s defenses. He encouraged men to join him, saying, “I want no men but the best, those that are willing to face death for their country. ” Steward’s advance guard consisted entirely of volunteers, “desperadoes led by officers of distinguished merit. ” The most fervent Patriots volunteered to be part of the forlorn hope, which they considered an immensely honorable post. Steward garnered so many volunteers that the men had to draw lots to determine who would join. Under the cover of darkness, Steward and his forlorn hope stealthily approached the fort. To preserve the element of surprise, General “Mad Anthony” Wayne ordered, “Should there be any soldier so lost to every feeling of honor, as to attempt to retreat one single foot or skulk in the face of danger, the officer next to him is immediately to put him to death. ” The same fate would befall any man who spoke or discharged his musket. The officers carried spontoons — long, menacing, iron pikes on the end of wooden poles — which would be used without hesitation to fulfill General Wayne’s order should the need arise (Wayne didn’t provision “safe spaces” for the light infantry). And the need did arise — at least one man who attempted to flee was run through by an American officer. Once on the abatis, Steward’s men began hacking away. Within seconds, a British sentry sounded the alarm, and drummers beat the call to arms. As the axes cut a small opening in the British defenses, musket balls and grape shot from cannon tore into Steward’s men. However, the forlorn hope persisted, eventually cutting a hole wide enough for the rest of the American light infantry to infiltrate. But the forlorn hope was not finished. Steward’s men had to penetrate the second abatis, with the British now fully alert and firing their cannons and muskets. Men fell, cut down by the deadly fire, but the axes finally succeeded in breaching the defenses. Steward and his advance guard poured through the opening, leading the assault on the fort. The Americans won the day, achieving a crucial victory that boosted morale among the Patriots. General Wayne reported the victory to Washington, noting, “Our officers and men behaved like men who are determined to be free. ” For his daring actions at Stony Point, Jack Steward received a Congressional Silver Medal, a precursor to the Medal of Honor — one of only about a dozen medals awarded during the Revolution. Steward, promoted to colonel, would go on to fight in many more critical battles of the Revolution in the South. for his day, he petitioned to lead a regiment of African Americans, but the idea never got off the ground. The Man of Forlorn Hope survived countless battles and witnessed the Yorktown surrender of Cornwallis — the very general that killed so many of his Maryland brothers at the stone house in Brooklyn. The war nearly over, Steward was riding on the outskirts of Charleston, to George Washington’s nephew, William Washington’s wedding party when his horse fell. “And the Colonel pitching on his head in a ditch, dislocated his neck. He lived till Sunday morning about seven o’clock and then died. ” Maryland’s indestructible man, who had survived the Battle of Brooklyn, escaped a prison ship, led the forlorn hope at Stony Point, and fought in many battles in South, including Yorktown, died 234 years ago this week. The officers of the Maryland Line, Steward’s friends, gathered to mourn. The next day, they interred Steward with every military honor. “This gentlemen, whose untimely death is much to be lamented, had served with great reputation during the war, and was much beloved by the army. ” He only lived once, but made the most of that life, dedicating it to the cause of American freedom. Patrick K. O’Donnell is a bestselling, critically acclaimed military historian and an expert on elite units. He is the author of ten books. Washington’s Immortals is his newest, which has just been released as a soft cover and has been named one of the 100 Best American Revolution Books of All Time by the Journal of the American Revolution. O’Donnell served as a combat historian in a Marine rifle platoon during the Battle of Fallujah and speaks often on espionage, special operations, and counterinsurgency. He has provided historical consulting for DreamWorks’ miniseries Band of Brothers and for documentaries produced by the BBC, the History Channel, and Discovery. PatrickkODonnell. com @combathistorian | 1 |
Carter Reveals Upgrades To US Long Range Rocket 11/02/2016
SPUTNIK NEWS
On Tuesday US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced that the Army’s tactical missile system (ATACMS) will be upgraded to strike both land and sea targets. Such technology will go a long way to defending allies against the Chinese menace and battling Moscow’s “aggression” in the Baltics.
The missile system is sponsored by an office created by Carter in 2012, the Strategic Capabilities Office, which is currently being lead by Will Roper, a protege’ of the Secretary’s. During a panel at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on Friday Roper told an audience, “How you offset the adversaries trying to offset your offset? It’s very simple to do that, you just don’t talk about your best capabilities…We are keeping our best ideas behind the door and probably always will,” according to Breaking Defense.
After the panel, he continued, “We thought it was important to come out (in public) with ATACMS for the Army because there’s been a lot of writing, a lot of speeches, on the need for the Army to go cross-domain.” High ranking officials in the US military have been calling for the ATACMS to extend its capabilities seaward for some time, and Roper responded to these concerns saying, “it’s time for us to show it isn’t just a theoretical idea, it’s something we can potentially get to quickly with something that we already have.”
During a morning session at CSIS Carter spoke of the new innovative features of the ATACMS, and how the SCO tries to maximize the potential of existing systems.
“A prominent theme of SCO’s work is spearheading creative and unexpected new ways to use our existing missiles and advanced munitions, and across varied domains”, he said, adding, “… By integrating an existing seeker onto the front of the missile, they’re enabling it to hit moving targets, both at sea as well as on land. With this capability, what was previously an Army surface-to-surface missile system can project power from coastal locations up to 300 kilometers into the maritime domain.”
Carter detailed the SCO’s plans to utilize seeker technology that the Defense Department has already developed so the missile system can hit targets both on sea and land.
Lockheed Martin was awarded the $174 million contract for the long range artillery rocket system in May 2015. Ken Musculus, vice president of tactical missiles at the defense contractor said at the time that ATACMS is “reliable and proven in combat, which is why it continues to be our customers’ choice for long-range strike requirements.” | 0 |
Mosul will not be taken, ISIS will not be destroyed 27.10.2016 In June of 2014, the world was amazed to see the Iraq army - armed and trained by the Americans - losing ground to the Islamic State. Fallujah, Ramadi and Iraq's second largest city, Mosul , fell within a month. The operation to liberate Mosul was launched on October 16. Will the city be liberated from ISIS terrorists?In 2014, the whole world started talking about the emergence of new terrorists . The world could not destroy them as the Americans wanted to use the new terrorists to their advantage to struggle against geopolitical rivals - Iran and Russia. Now we can see the Americans trying to take Mosul. The Western press is full of rosy expectations about the imminent collapse of the Islamic State" (a terrorist organization banned in Russia). Fallujah and Ramadi have been liberated - one only has to take the two-million-strong Mosul, and the trick is done. Yet, the trick does not seem to be that simple. Firstly, Mosul is a city with a Sunni population in the Shiite-ruled country. This is the first resistance factor. Secondly, Mosul is the actual capital of the Islamic State - this is a city, the status of which determines the status of the Islamists. Therefore, there will be fierce battles, a humanitarian catastrophe and up to one million refugees. This is where Russia will be able to draw a parallel with Aleppo - something the Americans will not like. In pictures: The storm of Mosul, Iraq Nevertheless, if we do not see all that, and 9,000 ISIS fighters will leave Mosul, it will mean that they have been affiliated with Turkey and the United States. It is not hard to guess where the Turks and the Americans will send them to - to Syria: Deir ez-Zor, Palmyra, Damascus. Will there be US flag draped coffins coming from Iraq? The city is being stormed by motley and, one might even say, hostile forces . No one knows how they may fight for power during the operation. An Iraqi anonymous observer in Baghdad said that "the offensive on Mosul looks hopeless, but one pins all their hopes on the support from the US, The Independent wrote. At least 12 US generals and 5,000 American troops are in Iraq, and they will play a crucial role in the fight. Five thousand is a lot, but what if the Americans start suffering losses? "The Iraqis say that Mosul is their center. The Kurds say that the city is their center," Semyon Bagdasarov, an expert on Central Asia and the Middle East at the Center for Analytical Research told Pravda.Ru. Peshmerga (the Kurdish militia - ed.) is the core strength: five thousand Kurds are attacking Mosul, and what they will take will be their territory. The Kurdistan Workers' Party is also involved, and they are not going to share with anyone. All these are hostile parties, including the Turkish army and the Sunni militia. In general, it is total chaos." According to Colonel Tim Collins, a former officer in the British Army, who fought in Iraq in 2003, currently the chief of the security service at New Century, the conflict may exacerbate further against the background of the conflict between the Turks and the Kurds. The Iranians would like to see this problem by increasing their influence on Iraq. The Syrians want to punish the Sunnis, the Iraqi army wants to restore its reputation, the colonel said in an interview with CNN. General Qasem Soleimani of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards could be one of the winners, Collins believes. Whoever becomes the victor in Mosul, the Islamic State will not be defeated , even if ISIS loses Mosul. The organization will recover in Libya, Afghanistan, Indonesia, the Philippines and elsewhere - whenever Washington needs those terrorists. They will not stop recruiting new members across the globe, because the Americans continue spreading their ideology to the Islamic world. Will Europe rebel against Washington, or will it continue to suffer from refugees and Jihadists? Lyuba Lulko Read article on the Russian version of Pravda.Ru Russia to save Iraq from ISIS | 0 |
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I walked out of Tokyo Station, the big commuter hub in the city’s Chiyoda district, and turned to look up at its gorgeous brick facade. I was lost. I couldn’t find the Tokyo Station Hotel — a luxury property that was renovated in 2012. My mistake, it turned out, was leaving the train station at all. The hotel and the train station coexist in one long, outstretched building, which was completed in 1914 and offers a refreshing prewar architectural counterpoint to the glittering skyscrapers Tokyo is now known for. I looped back in and found the hotel’s lobby, as well as its chief concierge, Marie Antoinette Mori, who greeted me at her desk. Originally from the Philippines, Ms. Mori became fascinated with Japan during its big 1980s economic boom. She studied international tourism in Japan, married a Japanese man and began working in the hospitality industry, where her career took off. “I became one of the favorites of Mr. Stringer” — the former Sony chairman Howard Stringer. “I was the only one who wasn’t afraid of him,” she said with a laugh. Ms. Mori had prepared an itinerary for a fictitious guest, spending $1, 000 (about 110, 000 yen) over the course of a day in this city. My goal was to remake the itinerary on a budget of $100 — necessarily cutting a few corners, but hoping to retain the spirit of the original. HIGH Ms. Mori escorted me to the top floor of her hotel, into a huge room where sunlight flooded in through large skylights. Guests grazed on a large, comprehensive morning buffet. Ms. Mori recommended the Tokyo Station Hotel breakfast (3, 800 yen) where they could enjoy standard Western fare (eggs made to order, coffee, pastries) or regional Japanese staples, where the Tokyo Station really excels: (hot pot from the northern Hokkaido region) traditional rice porridge, soybean milk skin, and boiled rape blossoms. Ms. Mori said many luxury hotels in the area had comparable buffets. The she said, specializes in pastries. “Over there they have a, uh … what do you call it?” she asked. “A Cronut. ” LOW From one buffet in a huge train station to another, I went to the considerably cheaper Bar Marche Kodama in the Shinagawa train station in the Minato ward. It’s also a little tricky to find: Don’t exit the station once you get off at the Shinagawa stop. Go into the Ecute department store and you’ll find the small restaurant in the back corner. Once there, I feasted on an eclectic, mostly buffet of prosciutto, green salad, fresh corn, pasta Bolognese, crispy fried rice and, for dessert, Italian wedding cookies. The inclusion of the salad was particularly nice — Japanese cuisine is healthy, but not necessarily heavy on raw, leafy greens. Total cost: 620 yen. HIGH Ms. Mori quoted a price of roughly 15, 000 yen to have a private sedan with a driver for three hours to ferry our faux around the city. The Tokyo Station Hotel goes so far as to meet guests at train platforms and escort them to the hotel — a service that comes only with staying at the hotel, of course, which can run over $1, 000 per night. LOW Logistics are tricky for those unfamiliar with the city. Get to know and love the train, because you’ll be spending quite a bit of time with it. Tokyo’s system is expansive and can be, in a word, daunting. There are over 100 different railway lines in Tokyo, and most of them are privately held by competing companies. The two big ones you’ll need to know are JR East, the largest railway system in Japan, and the Tokyo Metro, the city’s busiest subway system. If you’re planning to use only the subway or JR lines, there are passes for that. A combination ticket, though (which can be purchased in JR stations) is the better way to go. For 1, 590 yen, you’ll be able to use several lines for one day, including all of Tokyo’s JR lines and the Tokyo Metro. Another option is to buy a Suica or Pasmo card (available at ticket vending machines in major train stations) reusable cards on which you load money you touch them to the turnstile each time you ride. There is a deposit to pick up one of those cards, but it’s worth it — you won’t have to deal with individual tickets, you’ll get a small discount on rides and you can even use it to make purchases in some stores and at the city’s ubiquitous vending machines. Related pro tip Get a SIM card for your phone — data only. You won’t want to be without a maps app when you’re walking around. Cards in the $15 to $20 range are widely available. (Make sure you get the right size: the iPhones, for example, use nano SIM cards, not micro SIM.) HIGH The Asakusa neighborhood is known for its Sensoji Buddhist temple, Tokyo’s oldest. Ms. Mori recommended a rickshaw tour of the neighborhood, passing along Sumida Park, one of the many places in Tokyo to see sakura, or cherry blossoms, in the early spring. A tour costs 16, 250 yen. LOW I set out to do some exploring on my own, and see some sakura in the process. A follower of the Frugal Traveler Twitter account recommended the Nezu Museum in the Minato district. While the Nezu’s collection of Buddhist art and Chinese bronzes was interesting, I was most impressed with the lush garden out back. The garden — about four acres — is shockingly big in a place where space is so precious. It truly feels like an escape from the city. Admission was 1, 000 yen. From there, I hopped a couple of trains over to the Korakuen station and walked up to the University of Tokyo’s Koishikawa Botanical Gardens. After paying admission (400 yen) I headed from the southeast entrance to a huge open expanse in the center of the garden. I found families picnicking, children playing and people lining up for coffee and tea from the ramshackle snack bar called Coffee Time (a coffee is 300 yen). All were enjoying the budding cherry blossoms and cool spring weather. HIGH Ms. Mori recommended the omakase tasting menu at — where else? — Sukiyabashi Jiro. The sushi master Jiro Ono’s already formidable status was made outright legendary with the release of the 2012 documentary “Jiro Dreams of Sushi. ” The restaurant is difficult to get into, but Ms. Mori can make the arrangements. “We can get you into Jiro,” she said, “but then you have to go. You have to. We can’t have at Jiro. ” The price for lunch (or dinner) is 30, 000 yen. LOW Jiro received three Michelin stars Tsuta received one. It was the first Japanese ramen shop ever to receive such an honor. The small, unassuming space, close to the Sugamo station on the JR Yamanote line, is difficult to get into for different reasons: They take no reservations and operate on a ticket system. I went early one morning, around 7:30 a. m. and waited outside the restaurant with a handful of other people. Eventually the door slid open and a man came out with a handful of small, laminated tickets. He handed me one: “Come back,” he said. “Between 12 and 1 p. m. ” He took a bill as a deposit, then went back inside and closed the door. When I returned at noon, I was treated to the best bowl of shoyu (soy ) ramen I’d ever eaten. The broth was deep, intense and slightly sweet. The accompaniments — egg, bamboo shoots and pork slices — were done perfectly. The basic ramen bowl at Tsuta is 950 yen — I paid a total of 1, 250 for three extra slices of pork. HIGH Who doesn’t like a little costume play built into their vacations? Ms. Mori recommended something called a “kimono experience and photo shoot,” wherein the patron pays for elaborate kimono dress (in one of several styles: oiran, maiko or geisha) as well as hair and makeup. A photo shoot follows. Men, don’t think you’re getting out of this: There’s a samurai option for you. The oiran set with two kimonos costs 27, 000 yen. LOW I found a different way to incorporate both ceremonial clothing (of sorts) and culture into my visit: taking in a Japanese baseball game. I bought my ticket at one of the many in Japan. ( is owned by a Japanese company.) It was a complicated process, one that involved a helpful clerk trying to spell my name in the Japanese alphabet — buying at the stadium probably would have been easier. It also involved deciding what “cheering section” I wanted to sit in. I decided on an outfield ticket on the side of the home team, the Tokyo Yakult Swallows. The game was positively raucous — at one point, everyone in my section produced tiny umbrellas and began thrusting them up and down and chanting (a chant, I assumed) while a small brass band backed them up. The stadium grub selection was great, too — a big bowl of ramen could be had for 750 yen, yakitori for 100 yen, and a whiskey and melon soda for 600 yen. My ticket cost a reasonable 1, 800 yen. HIGH Seiji Yamamoto is the chef at Nihonryori RyuGin, a modern kaiseki restaurant that was awarded three Michelin stars. Mr. Yamamoto is known for incorporating modern culinary techniques with the refined, traditional kaiseki dinner. The descriptions of RyuGin’s courses are wonderfully abstract: Dishes have names like “Coolness Warmth Playfulness Nostalgia and Temptation” and “A Message From the Coast of Japan. ” Dinner costs 27, 000 yen. LOW I was also in search of a taste of the coast of Japan, in the form of a sushi dinner. I met up with my friend Mayumi, a Tokyo native, and presented her with my annoyingly specific parameters: something good but not that good cheap but definitely not poor quality. She took me to a small place near the Kyodo train station in her neighborhood, about a ride from Shinjuku: Midori Sushi, an unpretentious restaurant next to a KFC. The chef Ken Hosono’s omakase menu featured an exceptionally squid, along with barracuda, fatty tuna, uni and a wonderfully buttery scallop, among other pieces. The cost was 3, 000 yen per person. Not only was it one of best sushi dinners I’ve had in recent memory, but it was among the cheapest — a sweet spot that every frugal traveler seeks out. | 1 |
It has been 25 years since a record turnout of people watched the World Series on television. Nobody saw this win coming, and it was 108 years in the making. However, dreams came true on Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2016, when the Chicago Cubs, crowned the Lords of Windy City, won the World Series.
The city of Chicago experienced an epic moment in sports history. A moment, so grand that it would topple the elections for a split second. After the game, crowds went ballistic. Things were just getting warmed up as two million fans relished in the Cubs victory lap around the city. The triumphant tour ended with a rally in Grant Park. However, the lap may have concluded but the Chicago Cubs long awaited success story has yet to be told.
The Road to Victory
Success did not come overnight. In fact, it started years ago. Before they were the Lords of Windy City, the Cubs played in 11 World Series, overall. Moreover, before they were the Chicago Cubs, they were the Chicago White Stockings, in 1876. West Side Grounds was where the White Stockings did their damage, with multiple victories. Eventually, establishing themselves as one of the new league’s highest-regarded teams.
By 1890, they had converted to the Chicago Colts. Nevertheless, they would not remain the Colts for long. Despite the fact, the franchise had ushered in a new dynasty, a name change was underway for the final time. In 1902, they became the Chicago Cubs.
The Cubs won four emblems. in a five-year span. from 1905 to 1912. During that time, they won two World Series titles. The Cubs recorded a record 116 victories and the best-winning percentage (.763) in Major League history. However, it would all fall apart due to the alleged Billy Goat curse.
Curse of the Billy Goat
In 1945, a man named William Sianis, owner of Billy Goat Tavern, supposedly placed “The Curse of the Billy Goat” on the Chicago Cubs. This sports-related curse lasted from 1945 to 2016. The legend began over the odor of his pet goat, Murphy. The myth states that Murphy’s scent was annoying fans. During game four, he was asked to leave Wrigley Field, the 1945 World Series. Livid, Sianis apparently professed, “They ain’t gonna win no more, those Cubs,” which has been understood as an indication the Cubs would not win another World Series or the National League (NL) pennant.
Sianis stormed out of the stadium with his goat, and the Cubs lost the 1945 World Series to the Detroit Tigers. Never again, would they see a win, until the 2016 World Series Championship.
The Chicago Cubs Drought
Before their historic win, the Cubs had to endure almost a century of losses. In 1908, the Chicago Cubs won their last World Series, for the second successive year, against the Detroit Tigers. Even though the Cubs went on to play in seven World Series afterward, they went home with nothing. Instead of wins, there was only the agony of defeat. Nevertheless, this torment turned into the thrill of victory after winning the 2016 World Series, and the 2016 National League Championship Series.
The night of Nov. 2, concluded the 108-year World Series championship drought, plus a 71-year National League pennant drought that plagued the Chicago Cubs for over a century. This time period of losses would go down in history as one of the longest by any major American sports team.
The Victorious Night
All it took was an 8-7, 10-inning triumph over the Cleveland Indians, in an electrifying Game 7, that started Wednesday evening (Nov. 2) and finished promptly, on Thursday before noon (Nov. 3). It was a night to be remembered; every seat at Wrigley Field filled. The stadium, recognized for its ivy-coated brick outfield wall, unusual wind patterns from Lake Michigan, and the iconic red pavilion was the center of the universe that night.
Stars like John Travolta and Amy Schumer were at the event. Homeland Security, 1,000 Chicago police officers, and FBI agents swarmed the place. It was more than a big deal. The Chicago Cubs went out with a bang, ending the season with a 103–58 (.640) record. It would be their first 100-win season since 1935 (100–54, .649) and their best since 1910 (104–50, .675). Additionally, it is the sixth 100-victory season in franchise history.
When it was all over, the Cubs won the World Series for the first time since 1908, terminating the infamous 108-year win deficiency and the “curse,” thus, being crowned the Lords of Windy City.
By Jomo Merritt
Edited by Jeanette Smith
Sources:
Fox 32: Cubs World Series celebration ranks as 7th largest gathering in human history
ESPN: Chicago parties with the Cubs
Chicago Tribune: Cubs roster breakdown: Players expected to return, depart for 2017 season
Image Courtesy of Arturo Pardavila III’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License
Image Courtesy of Erik Drost’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License 2016 World Series , chicago cubs , Cleveland Indians , spot | 0 |
WASHINGTON — The number of women infected with the Zika virus during their pregnancies in the continental United States has risen to 234, health officials said on Thursday. Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declined to say how many of the women had given birth, citing confidentiality concerns for the women and their families. But they did cite six cases with abnormalities — three babies with birth defects and another three who died before birth with evidence of defects. The numbers raised more questions than answers. Without knowing the total number of births, officials cannot know if the babies with birth defects represent a tiny fraction of the total, or a large part. The agency said some of the defects were related to microcephaly, a condition linked to Zika that causes brain damage and abnormally small heads. Others, like eye problems, were but not caused by microcephaly. Dr. Denise J. Jamieson, one of the leaders of the pregnancy and birth defects team, which is part of the C. D. C. ’s Zika response effort, said the release of the numbers was the first in what will be weekly updates on birth outcomes in Zika pregnancies. As the number of births rises, she said, the agency will be able to release more detailed information. “We’re sort of in a hard place,” Dr. Jamieson said. “We can’t provide a lot of information about where these women are in their pregnancy. We don’t want to inadvertently disclose information about difficult decisions these women are making about their pregnancies. ” She said the numbers included the nine pregnant women the C. D. C. had reported on in February. Of the babies in those cases, at least one was born with microcephaly. The C. D. C. also reported on Thursday that the total number of pregnant women who had been infected with Zika in United States territories, including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, was 189. But the agency did not report birth outcomes for that group. “Microcephalic babies are beginning to be born,” Dr. Jamieson said. “The disease seems to be very similar no matter where it is. ” Dr. Jamieson said some of the microcephalic births they were seeing were among women who had no symptoms of Zika, a troubling pattern. Roughly 80 percent of people who contract the virus never display symptoms. She estimated that the approximate risk of having a baby with birth defects — based on findings from Brazil, Colombia and other countries, including the United States — was between 1 percent and 15 percent. A study published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine found no cases of microcephaly among infants born to women in Colombia who were infected in the third trimester of pregnancy. “The pattern we are seeing in other places is the same as in U. S. travelers — that Zika is causing birth defects is real,” she said. “It’s not confined to one location or one time period. ” | 1 |
By Lambert Strether of Corrente .
TTP, TTIP, TISA
CETA: “The provisional application of CETA refers to the fact that some things—like the tariff reductions—will come into operation immediately, assuming the European Parliament agrees. But other areas, notably the ISDS/ICS, must wait for full ratification of the deal. That requires all of the EU’s 28 member states to go through national ratification processes, which will probably take several years” [ Ars Technica ]. “And despite what the commission would have you think, it is by no means certain that all the national parliaments will approve CETA.” More:
For example, a tweet by Katharina Nocun pointed out that left-wing and green parties could block its passage in Germany. At various times, there have been hints that other countries’ parliaments may not agree to the deal, but it’s not yet clear what the current situation is around the EU…..
Another serious threat to CETA’s coming into force are legal challenges. As part of the deal to obtain Wallonia’s permission to sign CETA, the EU agreed that the ICS framework would be examined by the EU’s highest court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). If the CJEU finds that the approach is incompatible with the EU’s fundamental principles, it will either have to be dropped from CETA (and TTIP ), or CETA itself will fall (as will TTIP).
In addition, there are two constitutional challenges to CETA, one in Canada , and one in Germany.
Good wrap-up of the state of play.
TTIP: ” A much-debated trade deal between the European Union and the United States is not dead and negotiations will continue with the new U.S. administration after November’s elections, EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said on Saturday” [ Reuters ]. TTIP dresses up for Halloween. As a zombie!
TPP: “[new Zealand] Prime Minister John Key believes the TPP still has a 50-50 chance of being passed in the lame-duck Congressional period after the November 8 presidential election” [ Otago Daily Times ].
TPP: “TPP Is Exciting. Let’s Make the Case for It” [Tyler Cown, Bloomberg ]. “So what then is the exciting, big-picture case for TPP? I say it’s to keep North America, and especially the U.S., the world’s leading economic cluster for the foreseeable future.” It’s a cluster, alright.
TPP: “Only 38 per cent of Japanese want to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, according to a survey published by the newspaper Nikkei, showing a growing public distrust of free trade agreements” [ The Advertiser ]. “The government of Japan under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has proposed to ratify the TPP before the end of the current parliamentary session, on November 30, in order to ensure that Japan is the first country to give its assent to the agreement.”
2016
Days until: 6. That’s less than a week!
Corruption
“If there is any lesson to be learned from the ghosts of Watergate, it is that the big-money support of a leader who has lost the ability to deliver the goods crumbles very quickly as the endgame unfolds” [ Of Two Minds ].
Downballot
“Democrats are poised to gain seats in the House of Representatives this year, but with well over a dozen competitive races still viewed as tossups just one week before Election Day, the extent of that gain — and whether Republicans can stem the bleeding and keep a strong grip on their majority — remains uncertain” [ RealClearPolitics ]. “GOP insiders say their polling in swing districts has stabilized, and they feel energized by the news Friday that the FBI is looking into emails that could be related to its previously close investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private server.”
“Hillary Clinton’s campaign has nearly taken up residence in North Carolina, strategically eyeing what it calls the “Checkmate State” as a way to soundly block Donald Trump’s path to the presidency” [ RealClearPolitics ]. As we wrote yesterday .
The Trail
I expected the Clinton campaign to have pulled up its dump truck and unloaded some serious oppo Monday or today; but so far as I can tell, all we have are damp squibs (1) and (2). Clearing the way for Wikileaks on Wednesday?
(1) “Why Trump’s Russian server connection is less suspicious than it sounds” [ Engadget ]; Franklin Foer’s original piece of crap piece here, in the Jeff Bezos Shopper’s lifestyle insert (I’m not dignifying it with square brackets because the reaction by tech twitter is universally derisive).
(2) “Donald Trump Used Legally Dubious Method to Avoid Paying Taxes” [ New York Times ]. “Tax experts who reviewed the newly obtained documents for The New York Times said Mr. Trump’s tax avoidance maneuver, conjured from ambiguous provisions of highly technical tax court rulings, clearly pushed the edge of the envelope of what tax laws permitted at the time.” I’ve helpfully underlined the weasel phrase.
Democrat Email Hairball
“Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, last year signed a $7,000-a-month contract with the foundation of a major Clinton donor who made a fortune selling a type of mortgage that some critics say contributed to the housing collapse, hacked emails show” [ Politico ]. How cozy!
” Forget the FBI cache; the Podesta emails show how America is run” [Thomas Frank, Guardian ].
[T]he emails that really matter are the ones being slowly released by WikiLeaks from the hacked account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta. They are last week’s scandal in a year running over with scandals, but in truth their significance goes far beyond mere scandal: they are a window into the soul of the Democratic party and into the dreams and thoughts of the class to whom the party answers.
The class to which I refer is not rising in angry protest; they are by and large pretty satisfied, pretty contented. Nobody takes road trips to exotic West Virginia to see what the members of this class looks like or how they live; on the contrary, they are the ones for whom such stories are written. This bunch doesn’t have to make do with a comb-over TV mountebank for a leader; for this class, the choices are always pretty good, and this year they happen to be excellent.
They are the comfortable and well-educated mainstay of our modern Democratic party. They are also the grandees of our national media; the architects of our software; the designers of our streets; the high officials of our banking system; the authors of just about every plan to fix social security or fine-tune the Middle East with precision droning. They are, they think, not a class at all but rather the enlightened ones, the people who must be answered to but who need never explain themselves.
The good people.
Stats Watch
Purchasing Managers’ Manufacturing Index, October 2016: “A marked upturn in new orders leads a very positive manufacturing PMI” [ Econoday ]. “The increase in orders is centered in domestic demand though export orders also improved. Backlogs are another plus, rising to the best level in three months…. Based on this report, the manufacturing sector, after a flat year, is now accelerating into year end.” But: “There is nothing in the ISM or Markit reports that would leave one to think manufacturing is on the mend” [ Econintersect ].
Institute For Supply Management Manufacturing Index, October 2016: “ISM’s manufacturing sample reported no better than moderate conditions [below consensus]. But new orders are a disappointment, still showing monthly growth but at a much slower rate” [ Econoday ]. “The construction sector, despite unusually low mortgage rates, has been struggling this year with the softness in single-family housing posing continued challenges for what is otherwise a strong new home market.” And: ” ISM employment index is not useful in understanding manufacturing jobs growth. The ISM employment index appears useful in predicting turning points which can lead the BLS data up to one year” [ Econintersect ].
New Normal: “Another factor, too, is the productive capacity that was built up to support a consumption engine that is no longer running at full tilt. Companies have more equipment and infrastructure than they are currently using, and with unused capacity, there is little reason to invest in new equipment or technologies. This helps explain the weak rate of capital spending in GDP – and may also help answer the vexing question of why productivity gains are so anemic. After all, productivity might be enhanced by innovation, which requires research and investment” [ Econintersect ].
Construction Spending, September 2016: “Construction spending remains weak but indications on housing do show limited improvement” [ Econoday ]. And: “well below the consensus forecast” [ Econintersect ]. But: “Overall, however – construction is now contracting after spending nearly 5 years expanding year-over-year. Still note that the rolling averages did improve” [ Econintersect ]. “But the confusion is that construction spending does not correlate to construction employment – casting doubt on the validity of one or both data sets.”
Housing: “Nearly half of the homes purchased in major cities in Florida are all cash buyers. Cleveland is also seeing nearly half of all home purchases being made with all cash” [ Doctor Housing Bubble ]. The “All Cash Buyer Percentage” in Miami is 54% (!), and in Los Angeles 20%. Cleveland, 45% and Pittsburgh, 42%.
Coops: “Today, National Cooperative Bank, known for providing banking solutions tailored to meet the needs of cooperatives nationwide, released its annual NCB Co-op 100®, listing the nation’s top 100 revenue-earning cooperative businesses. In 2015, these businesses posted revenue totaling approximately $223.8 billion. The NCB Co-op 100® remains the only annual report of its kind to track the profits and successes of cooperative businesses in the United States” [ Market Wired (DB)]. See also this list of coop-oriented podcasts .
Shipping: “Study shows e-commerce consumers are loyal to UPS, USPS, and FedEx… in that order” [ DC Velocity ]. Non-union trails…
Shipping: “Developers are having a harder time finding space for new warehouses in increasingly crowded and expensive U.S. cities. Their answer: build upward” [ Wall Street Journal , “Prologis to Build First Multistory Warehouse in the U.S.”]. “[M]ultistory warehouses are already common in countries like Japan and Singapore, as well as elsewhere in Asia and Europe, where vacant land is harder to find. ” Like New England mills…
Shipping: “None of the world’s biggest container-shipping companies is likely to post a profit this year, a top executive of French shipping giant CMA CGM said Monday” [ Wall Street Journal , “Grim Year Forecast for Big Shipping Firms”].
Shipping: “A mainstay of the U.S. domestic shipping business is struggling to stay afloat. Lawyers who put International Shipholding Corp. into bankruptcy in July say they have a deal to bring the vessel owner’s troubled operations under the umbrella of a larger Florida-based maritime services firm. International Shipholding’s survival battle hasn’t gotten the attention of bigger turmoil in the global shipping business, but the 69-year-old company’s collapse highlights the impact that the downturn in demand is having across the entire shipping supply chain” [ Wall Street Journal ]. Wow.
Shipping: “The cascading of increasingly larger containerships from the Asia-Europe trade to smaller trades is set for a second, “potentially more destructive”, phase, with a new generation of ultra large container vessels moving into north-south lanes” [ Lloyd’s List ].
Shipping: “A giant fire engulfed a beached tanker today killing at least ten workers at the Gadani shipbreaking area in Pakistan injuring another 50” [ Splash 247 ]. “A welding error led to a blast on the ship, which rapidly spread into a blaze with images and videos seen by Splash showing dark, vast plumes above the beached vessel.”
Shipping: “Over 90 percent of world trade moves by sea, but once cargo is on a ship, it enters a zone with little information about the path ships are taking or the stops they are making. Only in recent years have the largest ships begun regularly transmitting location data, and even now, a ship may stop its transmission and ‘go dark’ at any time” [ MIT Technology Review ].
Honey for the Bears: “Economic Planning Associates Inc.’s (EPA) latest freight rail-car forecast for total deliveries in 2016 has edged up to 61,800 units from 60,300 units. But, weakness in the market for certain cars has prompted the firm to lower its estimate for 2017” [ Progressive Railroading ]. Another straw in the wind for 2017. “‘Strength in box cars, hi-cube covered hoppers and mid-sized hoppers prompted EPA to increase this year’s total delivery estimate. However, weaknesses in tank cars, coal cars, flat cars and mill gons will serve to lower 2017 assemblies to 41,000,’ stated EPA’s report, which was released yesterday. ‘After a further easing to 40,000 car deliveries in 2018, demand for rail cars will rebound on an annual basis, reaching 51,500 cars in 2021.'”
Fodder for the Bulls: “But as the year has progressed, worries about the state of the world’s second-largest economy have abated as economic data have firmed. There’s a bevy of evidence from domestic figures and other metrics sensitive to the state of the Chinese economy now showing that the nation isn’t in the midst of a disruptive downturn” [ Bloomberg ].
Apparel: “In an industry famous for shrouding the connection between what it costs to manufacture garments and accessories, and the price that consumers pay for those items, Everlane seemingly fills a void; hence, its success. Price transparency aside, on the heels an array of garment manufacturing-related tragedies in recent years and amongst a larger call – particularly from millennials – for more ethically sound garments, Everlane founder and CEO, Michael Preysman, a former Investment Associate, saw a business opportunity in ethically made clothing” [ The Fashion Law ]. “In accordance with Everlane’s motto, we ask: Why would a brand based on transparency not list its factories?… Making vague and unsubstantiated claims in lieu of providing cold hard facts is a common trend that runs through the Everlane model.”
Commodities: “BHP Billiton Ltd., the world’s biggest miner, is hot for electric vehicles” [ Bloomberg ]. “”As you see more renewables and EVs, we also will see an impact on copper demand,” Fiona Wild, BHP’s vice president, sustainability and climate change, said Tuesday at a conference in Shanghai hosted by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. ‘EVs at the moment have about 80 kilograms of copper in them. As they become more efficient, you see a greater amount of copper in those vehicles, so there’s always upside for copper.'” NOTE: “Bloomberg New Energy Finance” is listed on the cover of the McKinsey report on self-driving cars (PDF), whose infamous footnote 17 is analyzed here . They seem to have provided much of the data, including data for Exhibit 10. Talking their book?
Commodities: “A slump in demand for iron ore and coal in Europe has resulted in a marked decrease in dry bulk throughput at the Port of Rotterdam. In the first nine months of the year, it handled 60.3m tonnes of dry bulk, or 7.8% lower than the same period last year, the port said” [ Lloyd’s List ].
The Bezzle: “Racial and Gender Discrimination in Transportation Network Companies” [ National Bureau of Economic Research ]. “Passengers have faced a history of discrimination in transportation systems. Peer transportation companies such as Uber and Lyft present the opportunity to rectify long-standing discrimination or worsen it. We sent passengers in Seattle, WA and Boston, MA to hail nearly 1,500 rides on controlled routes and recorded key performance metrics. Results indicated a pattern of discrimination, which we observed in Seattle through longer waiting times for African American passengers—as much as a 35 percent increase. In Boston, we observed discrimination by Uber drivers via more frequent cancellations against passengers when they used African American-sounding names. Across all trips, the cancellation rate for African American sounding names was more than twice as frequent compared to white sounding names.”
Political Risk: “Variations in the market’s performance under Democratic and Republican administrations, measured by the average of yearly returns over more than 160 years, are so small as to be negligible, said Vanguard senior investment strategist Jonathan Lemco, a former professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University” [ Bloomberg ]. “A recent survey did show that the election ;is causing U.S. voters high anxiety . ;But according to readings of the CBOE Volatility Index, or VIX, the level of market anxiety is pretty normal, said Lemco. Volatility “hasn’t exceeded normal levels for a presidential election year, and there is no indication that it will deviate from typical patterns after the election,” he wrote in a recent report .”
“Issues about morality, the market, and the constitutional order should have been central to the policy debate about macroeconomics. They weren’t. The standard policy frame eliminated them from discussion, causing a chasm in the policy debate in which the common framework shared by Keynes and Hayek disappeared” [ Evonomics ]. “Market fundamentalists incorrectly were portrayed as heartless and uncaring about the poor by followers of Keynes. Keynesians were incorrectly portrayed as unthinking supporters of big government by followers of Hayek.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 22 Fear (previous close: 30, Fear) [ CNN ]. One week ago: 48 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Nov 1 at 12:30pm. Nobody standing between Mr. Market and the pitchforks?
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
“How Despots Use Twitter to Hunt Dissidents” [ Bloomberg ]. For years, Twitter has offered access to its “Firehose”—the global deluge of tweets, half a billion a day—to a number of companies that monitor social media. Some of those companies resell the information—mostly to marketers, but also to governments and law enforcement agencies around the world. Some of these authorities use the data to track dissidents, as Bloomberg Businessweek has learned through dozens of interviews with industry insiders and more than 100 requests for public records from law enforcement agencies in the U.S. There’s nothing illegal about selling Twitter data, but it’s uncomfortable for a company that promotes itself as a medium for free speech and protest.” One more reason Twitter should be a coop?
Standing Rock and #NoDAPL
“Did #DAPL Security Worker Wielding an AR-15 Rifle Try to Infiltrate Native Water Protectors?” [ Democracy Now!] ” More details are emerging from Thursday, including video footage of a man who appears to be a Dakota Access security contractor holding a rifle, with his face covered by a bandana, apparently attempting to infiltrate a group of water protectors. A Standing Rock Sioux tribal member says he saw the man driving down Highway 1806 toward the main resistance camp with an AR-15 rifle on the passenger side of his truck. Protectors chased down his truck and then pursued him on foot in efforts to disarm him. In the video, the man can be seen pointing the rifle at the protectors as he attempts to flee into the water. He was ultimately arrested by Bureau of Indian Affairs police. Protectors say inside the man’s truck they found a DAPL security ID card and insurance papers listing his vehicle as insured by DAPL. ”
Winter supplies for the protesters: Firewood is #1 [ Sacred Stone Camp ]. So if you’ve got a truck and a couple of cords…
“How to Talk About #NoDAPL: A Native Perspective” [ Truthout ]. “In discussing #NoDAPL, too few people have started from a place of naming that we, as Indigenous people, have a right to defend our water and our lives, simply because we have a natural right to defend ourselves and our communities. When ‘climate justice,’ in a very broad sense, becomes the center of conversation, our fronts of struggle are often reduced to a staging ground for the messaging of NGOs.”
“Dakota Access pipeline protests: UN group investigates human rights abuses” [ Guardian ]. “‘When you look at what the international standards are for the treatment of people, and you are in a place like the United States, it’s really astounding to hear some of this testimony,’ said Roberto Borrero, a representative of the International Indian Treaty Council.”
“At least 1.3 million people had ‘checked in’ to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation on Facebook as a show of support for activists trying to block the pipeline, after one user claimed that authorities were tracking protesters on social media. The Sheriff’s Department said Monday that the claim was ‘absolutely false'” [ Los Angeles Times ]. So can I take that as a confirmation? Anyhow, “ strength of weak ties” with Facebook, but at least the logic is “I am Spartacus!”
Black Injustice Tipping Point
“Like Abusive Policing, Denial of Access to Mortgage Credit for Black Americans is a Growing Crisis” [ Institute for New Economic Thinking ]. “In a report commissioned by the National Association of Real Estate Brokers, Carr and co-author Michela Zonta report that homeownership for black people right now is shockingly low — less than the national rate during the Great Depression, which stood around 43-44 percent.”
Class Warfare
“Opioid overdoses among kids, teens have nearly tripled in recent years” [ New York Times (DK)].
“[C]ollectively, mergers at [the scale of the proposed $85 billion combination of AT&T and Time Warner] are reconfiguring the American economy in ways that seem to be tilting the scales toward the interests of ever-larger corporations, to the broad detriment of labor” [Eduardo Porter, New York Times ]. “As Senator John Sherman, the principal author of the nation’s core antimonopoly law, put it more than a century ago, a monopoly ‘commands the price of labor without fear of strikes, for in its field it allows no competitors.'”
News of the Wired
Exhaustive compilation of reaction to the Apple MacBook Pro event [ Milen.me ]. “From where I’m standing, Apple are redefining (shrinking) their target audience for the Mac platform. If you feel left out by the latest updates and the neglect on the desktop, it’s simple as Apple deciding not to serve your segment’s needs. I know that it can feel quite personal to Mac devotees, like me, but it’s simply business and strategy.” In other words, the rollout wasn’t a debacle; Apple has decided it doesn’t want to serve the professional market any more (including, one would have thought critically, the market in content creation). Since the Mac accounts for 10% of Apple’s revenues, that may be a rational business decision. But if Cook really thinks “the iPad Pro is a replacement for a notebook or a desktop” he’s delusional, and I don’t care if he paid for a marketing study. I own both and I know. The ultimate strength of the Mac was always the Human Interface Guidelines — gradually being crapified as iOS idioms infest OS X — which imposed a similar “look and feel” across all applications that ran on the Mac platform. It would be nice if Ubuntu, say, could achieve the same thing. Sadly, that doesn’t seem likely, for reasons both technical and cultural. My first Mac was a 512KE. It was a good run.
* * *
Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here . And here’s today’s plant (Rex):
Rex wrote:
Attached is a folder of some of the bees and wasps that frequent a patch of mint in my front yard. The mint is in a half wine barrel and wired to keep the goats from eating all of it. These wasps are only a few of the many different species I see, every morning the thing is abuzz with dozens of types of pollinators. Wasps, hornets, bees, flies…
As a WASP, I appreciate this!
Readers, Water Cooler is a standalone entity, not supported by the very successful Naked Capitalism fundraiser just past. Now, I understand you may feel tapped out, but when and if you are able, please use the dropdown to choose your contribution, and then click the hat! Your tip will be welcome today, and indeed any day. Water Cooler will not exist without your continued help. Donate 0 0 0 0 0 0 This entry was posted in Water Cooler on by Lambert Strether . About Lambert Strether
Lambert Strether has been blogging, managing online communities, and doing system administration 24/7 since 2003, in Drupal and WordPress. Besides political economy and the political scene, he blogs about rhetoric, software engineering, permaculture, history, literature, local politics, international travel, food, and fixing stuff around the house. The nom de plume “Lambert Strether” comes from Henry James’s The Ambassadors: “Live all you can. It’s a mistake not to.” You can follow him on Twitter at @lambertstrether. http://www.correntewire.com | 0 |
Twitter has introduced an account limiting penalty for users that violate the platform’s terms of service. [Users across Twitter are reporting that their accounts are being “limited” as a punishment for the violation of Twitter’s rules. One user posted a screenshot of the notice they received: “Creating a safe environment for people to freely express themselves is critical to the Twitter community, so if behavior that may violate the Twitter rules is detected, certain account features become limited. ” The notice further explains that due to actions on the user’s account, anyone that wasn’t following their account would be unable to see their tweets for the next 12 hours. Twitter is now your digital daddy. According to @faggotfriday, it’s put him on the naughty step for 12 hours. pic. twitter. — Harmful Opinions (@HarmfulOpinions) February 15, 2017, Another Twitter user also claimed that his account was limited by Twitter for language he used on the platform: >automatically get limited cause I said retard, I’m just considering leaving Twitter, fuck them pic. twitter. — 🇺🇸 Drybones ム🗽Ὀ (@Drybones5) February 14, 2017, This new feature seems to be part of Twitter’s recent attempts to curb “abuse” on the platform. The changes include extra measures to stop suspended users from creating new accounts, “safer search results,” and the collapsing of “potentially abusive or Tweets. ” Twitter was forced to reverse one of their most recent features that removed notifications that alerted users when they were added to Twitter lists. “Being added to a list and knowing what list you were added to was literally the last useful thing about Twitter,” one user explained. Twitter’s stock crashed following the release of the company’s fourth quarter earnings report, and analysts have made grave predictions for the future of the social media company. Of course, Breitbart Senior Editor MILO predicted this last year. Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart. com | 1 |
BEIRUT, Lebanon — A humanitarian aid convoy was attacked in Syria on Monday after the Syrian military declared that a partial was over and immediately began intensive bombardments in areas of Aleppo, the divided city that has come to symbolize the ravages of the war. The convoy attack, military declaration and bombings were the strongest signs yet of the gradual unraveling of a broader agreement between Russia and the United States aimed at restarting peace talks to end the conflict in Syria, which has killed an estimated 500, 000 people and displaced millions. Minutes after the Syrian military declared the over around sunset, aerial attacks began pummeling neighborhoods of Aleppo, residents reported. The few remaining hospitals were back to overflowing, and rescuers struggled to find people in the dark, with the electricity out. By midnight, 34 people were reported killed. United Nations officials were dumbfounded by the attack on the convoy of 31 trucks, which was escorted by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and was carrying food, medicine and supplies bound for areas of western Aleppo Province. The convoy was among the first to try to deliver humanitarian aid to these areas, a relief plan permitted under the agreement. “Our outrage at this attack is enormous,” said Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations special representative on Syria. “The convoy was the outcome of a long process of permission and preparations to assist isolated civilians. ” At least 18 of the trucks were hit, United Nations officials said. Jan Egeland, a United Nations aid adviser to the Syria peace effort, said in a Twitter post: “Many killed and injured. ” Members of the Red Crescent and local activists said at least 12 people were killed, including the local head of the organization, Omar Barakat. Witnesses and rescuers said the convoy appeared to have been hit by multiple airstrikes, first destroying trucks and then two more hitting rescue workers as they helped the wounded. The tactic, known as a “ ” strike, has been used by Syrian and Russian warplanes. The rebels have no aircraft. The attack appeared to be the first airstrike to hit an aid convoy since the conflict began in 2011. The United Nations also reported the disruption of a second convoy that had finally received travel permits but was stopped in Homs Province by government forces that removed its medical supplies. Secretary of State John Kerry challenged the Syrian military’s declaration that the was over, suggesting that the United States would hold Russia responsible for seeing that President Bashar of Syria, one of its principal allies, implemented it. “The Syrians didn’t make the deal the Russians made the agreement,” Mr. Kerry said during meetings in New York before the annual United Nations General Assembly session. “The important thing is the Russians need to control Assad who evidently is indiscriminately bombing, including of humanitarian convoys. ” Mr. Kerry planned to meet with his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, before the International Syria Support Group, the multinational body that has designed the plans for a reduction in violence and a political solution for Syria, assembles in New York on Tuesday morning. Still, a senior Obama administration official said Monday evening that it was unclear if the agreement could be salvaged. He also noted that the United States did not know if Syrian or Russian aircraft had carried out the attack In any case, a second administration official said, the attack cast doubt on the viability of the American goals. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic discussions. The Russians, however, defended the Syrian military. A senior Defense Ministry official in Moscow said it was “senseless” for the Syrian government to respect a that he said had been repeatedly violated by Mr. Assad’s enemies. The Russian official, Lt. Gen. Sergei F. Rudskoi, accused Syrian rebel groups of joining forces with extremists who have been denounced as terrorists by both Moscow and Washington. In a statement published in state news media, the Syrian Army’s general command placed blame on insurgents, saying they had violated the and that the foreign powers backing them were supporting terrorism. After the Syrian military statement, residents in sections of Aleppo reported intense aerial attacks, shattering the relative calm that the partial had provided for the past week. Medical workers and residents reported at least 25 barrel bombs falling in less than an hour. Two were described as larger than usual, similar to garbage Dumpsters packed with shrapnel, and another attack was described as a ballistic missile strike. It had already become clear that the was in trouble. It was not close to achieving the ambitious goals — notably the renewal of moribund talks about a political transition — that the United States and Russia set out when they declared the truce without clear endorsements from the combatants in Syria. What was meant to be a measure, between Russia and the United States as much as between the groups in Syria, instead became a new source of acrimony. The new developments cast doubt on a plan by Russia and the United States to jointly attack groups in Syria that both countries consider terrorist threats. The situation worsened on Saturday night when airstrikes killed more than 60 people that Russia and Syria said were Syrian soldiers. The United States called the episode a mistake, but the Syrian government called it proof that Washington was siding with terrorists. “Terrorist groups did not adhere to any of the points of the agreement,” the Syrian Army said in a statement. It added that the military, which refers to all armed opponents as terrorists, had shown great restraint in the face of what it said were 300 truce violations by insurgents. The opposition said the government had committed 250 violations. The government’s resumption of aerial attacks included strikes on Idlib, Daraa, the Damascus suburbs and other locations, with reports of multiple casualties, including children. Russia has repeatedly accused the United States of failing to draw a clear line between the more moderate rebel groups it supports and extremist groups like the Islamic State and the Nusra Front, now known as the Levant Conquest Front, which are also fighting against the Syrian government. In recent days, Moscow has escalated the tone of its assertions, saying that Washington was supporting terrorists. In Washington, the Pentagon said it was investigating the exact makeup of the Syrian troops who were killed on Saturday. A Defense Department official said that the strikes occurred at a Syrian military encampment where certain Syrian soldiers who had fallen out of favor with the military, and who were not wearing uniforms, were being detained. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still underway, said no conclusions had yet been reached. | 1 |
Keywords: Alzhemier's disease , anxiety , dementia , depression , food , health , IBD , IBS , immune system , mental health , nutrition , weight loss Fermented Foods: 5 Reasons to Consume this food Group Every Day
I’m sure you have heard about fermented foods and are wondering if this is just a fad. Here are some reasons why fermented foods should not be just a fad but a food group to keep in your diet daily. What are Fermented Foods?
Bacteria and yeast are used as part of the fermentation process that gives these foods a nutritional boost. The bacteria convert sugars and starches into lactic acid through a process called lacto-fermentation. The yeast undergoes a process called ethanol fermentation.
These yeasts and bacteria that undergo the fermentation process boosts the nutritional content of the food. What it does to the food Provides beneficial bacteria that promote gut health Provides beneficial enzymes Increases the amount of B vitamins, biotin, and folate. Increases the bioavailability of minerals. Provides short chain fatty acids (which helps to improve your immune function) Provides you with GABA, your calming neurotransmitter How can eating fermented foods help me? Optimize your Gut Health
Why this may not seem like a big deal, it is. Your immune system is in your gut and much of your serotonin is made in your gut. Your gut may be in bad shape from NSAIDS, antibiotics, unknown food allergies, the standard American diet and more.
Ideally you want more “good” bacteria populating your gut as opposed to “bad” bacteria. Fermented foods can help shift the balance since most people who consume the Standard American “crap food” diet have a disrupted microbiome.
So, you can take all the supplements in the world, but if your gut is in bad shape, are you even absorbing and benefiting from these supplements or are you just wasting your money?
A healthy gut can help to balance and support your endocrine system, immune system, digestive system, and nervous system. So, as you can see, a healthy gut is critical to your well-being. Support your Immune System
The more beneficial bacteria you have, the stronger your immune system is to fight off colds, flu, allergies and more. Almost 80% of your immune system is found in your gut, thus, it stands to reason that to maintain a strong immune system, one needs to support their gut health.
Asthma and autoimmune conditions, among numerous other health issues, are all linked to having fewer good bacteria in your gut. The less diverse your microbiota is, the greater association with many chronic health issues.
Adding in probiotic rich fermented foods can also shorten the duration of a cold or upper respiratory infection. Aid in weight loss
Studies show that those with certain healthy bacteria in their gut can maintain a healthy weight while those with more negative strains have a greater incidence of gaining weight/difficulty losing weight. Obese people have different gut bacteria than lean individuals.
In a 2011 study, it was found that kimchee had a significant impact on weight and body fat of those who are overweight and obese in the study. In a 2010 study, obese people were assigned to drink fermented milk for 12 weeks. Those that drank the fermented milk had significant fat loss as compared to the control group. Digestive/Bowel Issue Improvement
Those with IBS or IBD may have reduced symptoms of diarrhea and constipation when fermented foods are added into the daily diet. Dr. David Williams states that to eliminate digestive issues, you need to improve the balance in the gut microbiome and one of the most effective ways of doing so is by adding in fermented foods. Kefir in studies, has shown to improve symptoms of IBS and IBD. Research has shown that anywhere from 50 to 75% of those who make this change (Adding in fermented foods) will notice a significant difference in their IBS symptoms. Improved mental health, mood control and behavior.
The gut is considered your second brain. A healthy gut therefore can mean a healthy brain. Several probiotic strains have been shown to reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety in short term studies. For this reason, to get more variety of probiotic strains, it is best to not stick with the same fermented food to eat over and over. Mix it up; for instance, have kefir one day, kombucha the next, fermented vegetables the next day and so forth.
Many of you know that GABA is your calming neurotransmitter. But did you know that fermented foods can supply you with GABA too? Oral administration of fermented rice bran and other traditional fermented foods have been shown to increase GABA content significantly! Whereas GABA in the oral form may have limited benefits due to absorption issues.
Another study looking at 700 college students found that those who ate a variety of fermented foods has less negative emotions than before such as anxiety, fear, moodiness, worry, envy, frustration, and loneliness.
It is possible that the fermented foods not only healed leaky gut but also provided some needed GABA. Even in psychiatry they are starting to recognize the benefits of fermented foods for mood disorders. Reduce the risk of brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
Some scientists have recently begun to consider the possibility that Alzheimer’s Disease is in fact an autoimmune disease. And as many of you may know, having one autoimmune condition puts you at risk for more autoimmune conditions down the road. For any autoimmune disease, the immune system must be supported. So, it would make sense that gut health needs to be addressed for AD. If you want to support your brain than I suggest that you add in fermented foods.
Along with the benefits above, fermented foods can also benefit those with Autism and help prevent H-Pylori. You don’t need a whole lot of fermented foods daily. Start with small amounts until you know how your body will react and slowly build your way up to say 3 tablespoons of fermented vegetables or a cup of kefir per day. What to add in
Look for the product to say raw and fermented. These foods should be in the refrigerator section of the store. Sauerkraut or other fermented vegetables : eat these cold, don’t heat them up. Bubbies pickles is a great way to get introduced to fermented foods. Kimchee : this is a Korean version of fermented cabbage, carrots, onions and garlic. Kefir: usually made from cow’s milk but is also made from goat milk or coconut milk. It has more of a drinkable texture than yogurt. I buy goat milk kefir and find that it is relatively thick and mix in some of my paleo granola and have this for breakfast. If you suspect any issues with milk it is best to opt for the coconut kefir or the goat milk kefir. If you have asthma or chronic sinus congestion, avoid the kefir until issues resolve. Opt for the other fermented choices instead. Tempeh: Indonesian type of “cake” with a nutty taste and chewy texture. A good vegan source of protein too. Kombucha : a fizzy fermented tea. Most stores carry a variety of flavors now. Don’t go overboard on the kombucha however. Some people who drink kombucha in excess amounts (i.e.: several bottles per day) report symptoms of gas and bloating. Miso: a fermented soybean paste which can be used in soups and sauces. A miso broth soup is a great way to start a meal and very easy to make.
Notice I did not sat yogurt. While some yogurts may contain some probiotics, many others are sugary processed foods in disguise. Yogurt is also not going to pack as powerful of a punch as the above-mentioned foods.
Sources | 0 |
LOCKHART, Tex. — A balloon carrying 16 people caught fire and crashed in Central Texas on Saturday, officials said, and the local authorities said no one had survived. The balloon crashed in a pasture near Lockhart, a town about 30 miles south of Austin, said Lynn Lunsford, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration. Initial reports from officials said the balloon had plummeted after catching fire in the air, but at least one witness said it might have struck power lines before hitting the ground and bursting into flames. The accident occurred shortly after 7:40 a. m. Mr. Lunsford said. In a brief telephone interview, Mr. Lunsford said that officials were on their way to the site and that the National Transportation Safety Board had been notified. The agency will be in charge of the investigation. Mr. Lunsford said he did not know what had led to the crash or whether there had been a distress call. The Caldwell County sheriff, Daniel Law, said in a statement, “It does not appear at this time that there were any survivors. ” By late afternoon, investigators had yet to publicly identify any of the victims or their relations to one another. But local news reports, quoting unnamed sources, identified the pilot of the balloon as Alfred Nichols, known as Skip. He was listed as an owner and the chief pilot of Heart of Texas Hot Air Balloon Rides. Mr. Nichols’s Facebook page reflected two passions: balloons and dogs. In the past two weeks, he had posted a YouTube video about a Russian balloonist who set a speed record for traveling around the world in a balloon (11 days) and an alert about dog adoption days at the Austin Animal Center. On July 21, he posted aerial photos of a brilliant sunrise. “Another great flight in Houston,” he wrote. He had two dogs, named Elmo and Joplin, and on Thursday evening, less than two days before the crash, he posted a photo of one of them resting on him. “Goodnight to you too Elmo must you use me as your pillow?” he wrote. By Saturday afternoon, the comment sections for that photo and the Facebook page of the balloon company were filled with condolences and remembrances. “Skip, I shall for years to come be reminiscing about all of the awesome times we enjoyed at your Springdale Ln. Des Peres Missouri house and my Kirkwood Missouri house and tearing it up at all of the clubs my friend,” Mark Grundmann wrote. “You will be missed. ” Amid the outpouring were urgent requests for people who lived near Mr. Nichols to check on Elmo and Joplin. At 3:52 p. m. a woman, Wendy Bartch, posted on the company’s page that the dogs were “being cared for. ” Ms. Bartch, Mr. Grundmann and others who posted on Facebook and Twitter did not respond to private messages. Voice mail messages left late Saturday afternoon at two phone numbers listed for the balloon company were not returned. Margaret Wylie, 66, who lives a from the crash site, said she had seen the balloon explode into a fireball after it struck the ground on a neighbor’s property. She said she had been on her back porch when her dog “really started raising the roof. ” “When I looked over toward my neighbor’s property,” Ms. Wylie said, “that’s about the time I saw flames shooting out sideways, and then just a fireball. At 66, that’s not something I want to see again. ” The crash occurred in a rural area less than an hour from Austin, in a large field scorched from the summer heat. Several big power lines atop towers ran east and west at the field’s southern end. A few farmhouses were visible in the distance. Throngs of journalists arrived by late morning, but investigators had sealed off the perimeter and kept them from the spot where the balloon had fallen. Ms. Wylie said that based on what she had heard, she believed “the balloon hit the wires, and it caused the deflation of the balloon, and then it hit the ground. ” She initially heard a pop, she said, and then another that sounded like gunfire. “I figured that was the balloon hitting the power line,” she said. “By the time I looked that direction, it was on the ground, and I heard a whooshing sound and an explosion. ” Ms. Wylie said the balloon was so engulfed in flames that she did not see any passengers. She immediately called 911, she said. The red, white, blue and yellow balloon apparently separated from the basket and was stretched along the ground about a mile from the crash site. The power lines near the site belong to the Lower Colorado River Authority Transmission Services Corporation, The Austin reported. A spokeswoman for the utility told the newspaper that two circuits were down after the crash, although no customers were without power. But neither she nor investigators could confirm whether the power lines had been involved in the crash. Erik Grosof, an official with the National Transportation Safety Board, said the crash had been classified as a major accident because of the “significant loss of life. ” A full investigative team from the safety board was to arrive later Saturday, he said, and the F. B. I. had been asked to help look at the evidence, a normal request after major accidents. Asked to confirm reports that 16 people had been killed, Mr. Grosof said, “Right now, we have a number of fatalities. ” Sixteen deaths would make the accident one of the worst balloon crashes in history, surpassed only by a crash in Luxor, Egypt, that killed 19 people in February 2013. In that crash, the balloon was sailing over archaeological sites at dawn when a fire caused an explosion in a gas canister and the balloon plummeted more than 1, 000 feet to the ground. Two people survived — the pilot and a passenger, who jumped from the basket from about 30 feet. Nineteen tourists died, including the wife of the surviving passenger. Before Saturday, the worst balloon accident in the United States occurred in August 1993 in Woody Creek, Colo. near Aspen, when a wind gust blew a balloon into a power line complex. The basket was severed and fell more than 100 feet, killing all six people aboard. Replying to a question at a news conference, Mr. Grosof said it was his “understanding” that the balloon tour was run by Heart of Texas Hot Air Balloon Rides, based in New Braunfels. A person reached at its reservation service said the company offered flights in the Austin area coinciding with the sunrise. It also operates near San Antonio and in other areas. She declined to speak about the accident. The sheriff’s statement said that a call had come in to the local law enforcement authorities after 7:40 a. m. reporting a possible vehicle accident. When emergency responders arrived, “it was apparent that the reported fire was the basket portion of a balloon,” the statement said. Chris O’Neil, a National Transportation Safety Board spokesman, said investigators were expected to remain on the scene for a few days. Seven to 10 days after the field work is completed, he said, they will release a preliminary report. Gov. Greg Abbott issued a statement extending his condolences, calling the accident a “heartbreaking tragedy. ” “Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families, as well as the Lockhart community,” he said. “The investigation into the cause of this tragic accident will continue, and I ask all of Texas to join us in praying for those lost. ” | 1 |
Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. Many of his recent articles appear on the renowned Canadian-based news website Globalresearch . He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism. He specializes in Middle East and East Africa issues and has also given several American radio interviews as well as TV interviews on Press TV and Russia Today. His interests include capitalism, imperialism and war, socialism, justice and peace, agriculture and trade policy, ecological impact, science and technology, and human rights. He is also a musician and songwriter. Previously, he was based in Bahrain and witnessed the political upheavals in the Persian Gulf kingdom during 2011 as well as the subsequent Saudi-led brutal crackdown against pro-democracy protests. The author and media commentator was expelled from Bahrain in June 2011 for his critical journalism in which he highlighted many human rights violations by the Western-backed regime. For many years, he worked as an editor and writer in the mainstream media, including ,The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Originally from Belfast, Ireland, he is now based in East Africa where he is writing a book on Bahrain and the Arab Spring. World Heaves Sigh of Relief after Trump’s Victory By Finian Cunningham on November 9, 2016 A reflection of how disconnected the Western political class are from their own people.
by Finian Cunningham
SPUTNIK
The election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the US certainly sent shockwaves around the world. But perhaps the uppermost sense is one of huge relief that Hillary Clinton was kept out of the White House.
For most ordinary citizens around the world, Clinton, her multi-billion-dollar election campaign and the fawning corporate media coverage represented everything that is perceived as fundamentally wrong in Western politics.
Her cronyism goes so far that she would not hesitate to start a world war with Russia, or whoever, in order to appease her corporate sponsors and indulge her deluded notion of “exceptional liberalism”.
Trump’s stunning victory is a victory for common people and common sense. Despite the Western media’s systematic shielding of Clinton from criticism, a good number of ordinary Americans and other nationals around the world could clearly see her irredeemable flaws.
She is a self-enriching puppet for Big Finance and the military-industrial complex. And, as her email scandal shows, a consummate liar on top. Donald Trump is a billionaire property tycoon with a big mouth and uncouth manner. He has never held an elected office before. It is unprecedented that he should become the president of the US.
Donald Trump is a billionaire property tycoon with a big mouth and uncouth manner. He has never held an elected office before. It is unprecedented that he should become the president of the US.
Will he really “make America great again”? Will he really deliver on massive infrastructure investments to regenerate impoverished working-class communities across America? We don’t know if he just an opportunist conman, or if he really does have a humble heart to reach out to all the “forgotten people” that he speaks about. One can hope.
But one thing is for sure. Trump is no warmonger. And he doesn’t seem to be a puppet that can be pushed around.
“We will deal fairly with everyone”
In one of the live TV debates with Clinton during the campaign, Trump surprised many viewers when he said, apparently sincerely, that he would never commit a first-strike nuclear attack against any nation. It took a lot of guts and moral integrity to say that. Clinton didn’t answer the question, but her past record as Secretary of State shows that she has no hesitation about launching illegal wars and murdering foreign heads of state.
Trump has also spoken several times about restoring friendly relations with America’s biggest nuclear rival Russia. He took a lot of heat for that from the Clinton campaign and the biased US media, who accused him of being a “stooge” for Russian President Vladimir Putin. To his credit, Trump did not cave in to the anachronistic “Russian baiting”, which has been a staple of American politics for decades. During his acceptance speech as President-elect, Trump repeated his oft-mentioned desire for the US to base its foreign relations on “partnership” instead of “hostility and conflict”.
Notably, Russia’s Vladimir Putin was one of the first world leaders to congratulate Trump on winning the White House. Reciprocating goodwill, Putin said he hoped to work with Trump so that Russia and the US can “restore relations from their current critical condition”.
Surely, this is the point. To replace outmoded ideological stereotypes and animosity with a pragmatic mutual respect to cooperate. Russia and its leader are not the enemy of the US, Europe nor the rest of the world – unless you are a terrorist network seeking illicit regime change. Architects of Endless “Regime Change” wars
Russia and its leader are not the enemy of the US, Europe nor the rest of the world – unless you are a terrorist network seeking illicit regime change.
The people who have demonized Russia are ideologues in Washington and their surrogates among European governments and the Western corporate media. That negative image of Russia does not match reality as ordinary people perceive it, including many ordinary Americans. Russia did not destabilize Ukraine. It did not annex Crimea. Russia was not involved in shooting down a civilian airliner. It is not massacring civilians in Syria. In Syria, it is helping a sovereign state defeat terrorist mercenaries in a US-sponsored covert war for regime change. Russia is not a sports-drug pariah. It is not hacking computer systems nor subverting foreign democracies. These are all just false ideological constructs manufactured by the Western establishment and its subservient media.
Ordinary citizens around the world, especially those in the US, know that. Their real-world concerns are dealing with poverty, unemployment and crumbling societies. This stuff about “Putin being the new Hitler” and “threatening the free world” is just so much baloney.
Maybe because Trump is not a career politician or a Washington insider he knows all that too. And he knows that ordinary Americans are not being listened to by the establishment. That’s why Trump’s victory comes as such a shock.
The political class have been so wrong on almost every issue, whether it was the Brexit and discontent with the European Union, or foreign relations with Russia, or Trump’s chances of winning the presidency.
The Western political class have gotten it so wrong on so many issues because it is divorced from the reality as it affects most people. Aloof, elitist, out of touch and undemocratic.
Yet this Western ruling class, as embodied by Hillary Clinton, would be prepared to start even more wars around the world than they already have, based on their own twisted self-serving logic.
Consider these figures just released by the Pentagon. Under President Obama – who advocated for Clinton – US military exports to Saudi Arabia and other Mideast despots are double the amount under George W Bush. This weapons supply has gone towards arming jihadi terror groups. Clinton approved of this arms bazaar for terrorists when she was in office as part of Washington’s regime-change schemes. Fooling the masses – Defeated
Yet these people like Obama and Clinton spout all sorts of “humanitarian” and “moralistic” mumbo-jumbo. They are liars. And they are the most cynical of corrupt politicians. The very breed of politician-puppets that ordinary decent people around the world have come to despise.
Trump, for all his personal flaws, is in a different category. He is astute enough to know that the pain of ordinary citizens stems from a badly broken economic system. Can an arch capitalist like Trump fix chronic capitalism? It’s doubtful, unless he radically shifts to a new form of socialist policy.
But the main good thing about Trump is that he is a pragmatist who at least appears to be on the side of ordinary people and on the side of restoring peaceful relations with other nations, Russia in particular.
The prominent people dejected about Trump are the political class both in the US and Europe and their media echo chambers. It is notable that Germany’s Merkel and France’s Hollande both affected an air of disapproval over Trump’s victory – unlike Putin who magnanimously congratulated. Hollande said he would be “vigilant” in his future dealings with Trump. What is he talking about?
That’s why Merkel and Hollande will be next to get kicked out of office in forthcoming elections. Like Obama, Clinton and the American establishment, the pro-US European ruling parties are so out of touch with reality.
The demonization of Russia is a reflection of how disconnected the Western political class are from their own people. Ordinary people around the world want jobs, prosperity and peace. They know they can’t afford futile hostilities with Russia as have been foisted on them by their rulers, while such urgent social needs go neglected. Crazy as it may seem, Trump’s win may be a chance for the US to redeem. And for the world to heave a huge sigh of relief.
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Yahoo News Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine said in an interview published Monday that, if elected, Hillary Clinton would quickly ask Congress for fresh legal authority to make war on the so-called Islamic State and other terrorist groups around the world. “Hillary has said that that’s something she wants to do very early in her administration,” the Virginia senator said. He made his remarks in an interview with “ The Axe Files ,” hosted by David Axelrod, a former top adviser to President Obama. Kaine said the former secretary of state will press lawmakers to rewrite the Sept. 14, 2001, Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that set the stage for the invasion of Afghanistan and has underpinned the entire war on terrorism. Obama has invoked the measure to argue that his undeclared but escalating war on ISIS is legal, a position Kaine had previously dismissed as an “ Alice in Wonderland ” strategy. Clinton believes that “it’s time for us to take that now-outdated authorization, and really think about what we are confronting, and work together to reach some legislative-executive accord about what it is we’re doing,” Kaine told Axelrod. “It’s time for Congress to get back in the game and refine and revise that authorization.” Seventy percent of the current Congress wasn’t in office when lawmakers approved the 2001 AUMF, and America’s terrorist enemies have “morphed and changed,” the senator argued. Obama called in a May 2013 speech for revising and repealing the 2001 AUMF, saying it was time to get America off “a perpetual wartime footing.” His top aides have since admitted that the job will fall to the next president . No lawmaker has worked harder than Kaine to get Congress to debate and vote on an AUMF that specifically covers the Islamic State. “We have allowed President Obama to wage an executive war of his own choosing without any congressional permission for nearly two years,” Kaine told Virginia Military Institute cadets at their graduation in mid-May. “It’s not hard to imagine that a future president will use this example to also justify initiating war without the permission of Congress.” Clinton had sent mixed messages about whether she would seek a new AUMF, but lined up earlier this year squarely behind her running mate’s view. A spokesman for her campaign, Jesse Lehrich, told Yahoo News in July that the former secretary of state “agrees with Senator Kaine that if we are serious about confronting ISIS, Congress ought to express its resolve to stand behind our military and win this fight by passing a new AUMF.” After stalling at the request of vulnerable Democratic lawmakers facing the 2014 midterm elections, Obama finally submitted an ISIS-specific AUMF to Congress in February 2015, but it’s essentially dead . The legislation reflected his national security aides’ desire that it not tie his hands. The document authorized airstrikes in Iraq and Syria in the following three years. It forbade the use of American ground troops in “ enduring offensive ground combat operations ” — a term the White House described as deliberately vague. It also allowed strikes against “individuals and organizations fighting for, on behalf of, or alongside ISIL” anywhere in the world. Democrats have balked at supporting such a sweeping measure. Republicans have pointed to the three-year limit and the ground-combat language to argue that the AUMF improperly binds the hands of Obama’s successor. The truth of the matter is that both sides see political peril in the president’s proposal. Democrats recall how voting in favor of the Iraq War helped to doom Clinton’s 2008 presidential ambitions. And Republicans, who could vote to remove the language they describe as objectionable, prefer to criticize Obama’s handling of the conflict without taking any steps that might make them co-owners of the strategy. | 0 |
Hillary Clinton’s lead in general election polls has faded over the last few weeks. One reason might be that a growing number of Republicans are coalescing around Donald Trump’s candidacy. Another part of the explanation? Fewer telephone polls. So far this year, telephone surveys have tended to show Mrs. Clinton leading by a slightly larger margin than those conducted online. There hasn’t been a telephone survey since Mr. Trump beat back all his rivals early this month. So Mrs. Clinton’s seeming lead has seemed to shrink particularly fast. Why does Mr. Trump do better in online polls? And are the online polls right? The prevailing theory of Mr. Trump’s edge in online surveys is “social desirability bias” — the idea that poll respondents might be less likely to divulge a socially undesirable opinion, like support for a controversial candidate like Mr. Trump, to a live interviewer than in an online questionnaire. This is not an entirely new phenomenon for Mr. Trump. He fared better in online surveys during the Republican primaries than he did in telephone surveys, a tendency first identified by Jonathan Robinson at Catalist, a data firm associated with the Democratic Party. The pattern lasted all the way through the end of the primary season. The online pollster Morning Consult conducted a study indicating that social desirability bias drove his edge. Thomas Edsall, writing in the The New York Times, raised the possibility that the same phenomenon explains Mr. Trump’s strength in the online polls right now, suggesting that Mr. Trump could outperform traditional surveys showing a wide lead for Mrs. Clinton. Social desirability bias might well be helping Mr. Trump in online polls. But it’s a lot less clear now than it was during the primary season. And even if that is what’s going on, there’s no reason to assume the online polls are right. With the primary season effectively over, I think we can say, with some qualifications, that the surveys were probably more accurate than the online surveys. Why? The actual results just weren’t as good for Mr. Trump as the balance of online surveys predicted they would be. Mr. Trump has now won 41 percent of the popular vote — including the string of recent contests where he clearly broke through and outperformed his prior vote tallies. On Super Tuesday, he won just 34 percent of the vote — and he won about 39 percent between then and the New York primary. But the online surveys showed Mr. Trump at 38 percent as early as the new year, broke 40 percent around Super Tuesday, and were in the by March 15. His actual vote tallies consistently trailed the online surveys. They look a lot more like what the surveys showed at the time. The Upshot published a series of demographic models throughout the primary season that estimated how Mr. Trump might have fared if the country had voted on that date. At the time, our estimates showed Mr. Trump did not approach 40 percent of the vote until March 15. With the benefit of hindsight, we can do even better: Take all of the results so far, and estimate how Mr. Trump would do in a national primary held at any given stage of the race. These estimates, based on the actual results, consistently match more closely with the live interview surveys than the online ones. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the social desirability bias theory is wrong. It’s possible that other differences between online and polls — likely voter models or sampling procedures — accounted for Mr. Trump’s additional strength. All told, it’s not enough evidence to make me think that the online polls are more accurate about Mr. Trump than the surveys. Mr. Trump’s advantage in online polls is a lot less clear in the general election than it was in the primary. It does seem to exist. Mrs. Clinton generally leads Mr. Trump by less in online surveys. On balance, though, Mr. Trump has about 2. 5 more points in polls. He’s actually earning a smaller share of the vote in online surveys than in the polls — the exact opposite of what one might expect if he were being hurt by social desirability bias in polls. So what’s going on? The main difference between the online and polls is there are vastly more undecided voters in the online surveys. In the surveys, there are correspondingly more supporters of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump, with Mrs. Clinton apparently gaining slightly more ground. Why are there so many undecided voters? It’s a methodological quirk, relating to the way that online pollsters have to ask questions. Consider, for instance, how the typical NBC Street Journal poll, a survey, asked the horse race question in March: “And, if the election for president were held today, and Donald Trump were the Republican candidate and Hillary Clinton were the Democratic candidate, for whom would you vote?” Notice that “undecided” or “other” or “don’t know” isn’t a stated option? Live interview pollsters can do that, since the respondent is free to say “other” or “I don’t know,” and the interviewer can record it as such. In the poll, 9 percent volunteered “other” or “neither,” and 2 percent weren’t sure. But this is a lot more challenging for an online pollster. If you put “don’t know” or “other” as an option, a lot of people are going to take it. But if you don’t include it, you have a problem: What will the truly undecided voters do? They could provide an unreliable answer or leave the survey. If you provide them the option to “skip,” they might skip through the whole questionnaire. In the end, many of the online pollsters give voters the option to choose undecided. Voters are taking it in huge numbers. You can see the effect in another type of NBC News survey: those conducted online by SurveyMonkey. At the beginning of May, the first NBC general election poll included an explicit “don’t know” option. Mrs. Clinton led, 43 to 37, with 19 percent selecting “don’t know. ” But in their second survey, conducted after Mr. Trump emerged triumphant, “undecided” was no longer an option. Respondents could go out of their way to skip the question and leave it blank, but they couldn’t simply say “undecided. ” The result? Mrs. Clinton led, 49 to 44 percent, with just 7 percent electing to skip the question. This doesn’t mean there isn’t a social desirability bias against Mr. Trump. One could imagine, for instance, that Mr. Trump would receive notably more support in the online surveys if they had as few undecided voters as the surveys. But it does make it harder to compare the results of the online and surveys, since there’s no way to be sure whether Mr. Trump would still be doing better if there were fewer undecided voters. You could imagine, for instance, that a bunch of Bernie Sanders’s supporters will take the “don’t know” option, simply to spare themselves from having to support Mrs. Clinton. In the most recent YouGov online survey, 30 percent of Mr. Sanders’s supporters were selecting either “someone else,” “not sure” or “wouldn’t vote. ” But in the recent New York News survey, just 9 percent wound up in those categories. Mrs. Clinton was the beneficiary: She held 82 percent of Mr. Sanders’s supporters, but just 55 percent in the YouGov poll. (Mr. Trump did fare better among Mr. Sanders’s supporters in the YouGov poll, earning 15 percent of the vote, than in The New York News poll, where he won 10 percent.) My guess is that Mr. Trump would still fare slightly better in the online surveys than in the polls, even if the number of undecided voters was equal. Mrs. Clinton tends to lead by a hair more among decided voters, even after removing the “undecided” voters. But it’s not clear that it’s a social desirability effect, or that it’s more accurate. | 1 |
Five soldiers were killed and four were missing after a truck overturned Thursday during a routine training mission at the Fort Hood military post in Texas, the Army said. Three other soldiers were rescued from water near the vehicle and were listed in stable condition. They were taken to a medical center on the post, according to a statement. Chris Haug, a spokesman for Fort Hood, said that floodwaters from recent rains were believed to have overturned the truck, a Light Medium Tactical Vehicle, while the soldiers were using a low water crossing, but that the episode would be investigated. Mr. Haug said the soldiers were on a mission that “they do every day,” and driving on “a normal dirt road” that was not known to be a problem. The area has been inundated with heavy rain over the past week. Around the time of the accident, concerns about flooding had caused emergency personnel to close a paved road that runs parallel to the dirt road the soldiers were traveling on. “All the low water crossings are potentially dangerous when we’ve had this much rain,” said Tyler Broadway, another Fort Hood spokesman. The accident, which took place about 12 miles north of the base’s main area, was reported shortly after 11 a. m. on Thursday. Search parties were sent immediately. Rescue teams were searching for the missing soldiers by air, land and water, the statement said. The bodies of the dead soldiers were recovered downstream from where the truck overturned. Their names will not be released until their families are notified. The National Weather Service issued a flash flood watch for all of northern and central Texas on Thursday afternoon, with rainstorms expected to continue through Friday afternoon. May brought a amount of rain to the state, resulting in the deaths of at least six other people. Gov. Greg Abbott issued a statement, saying, “Texas stands ready to provide any assistance to Fort Hood as they deal with this tragedy. ” This is not the first fatal episode in recent months during a training exercise at Fort Hood. In November, a Black Hawk helicopter crashed during an exercise at the post, killing four crew members. | 1 |
God Has Hidden This For 2,000 Years. Right now those who are truly Christs Body are hidden. Hidden from others knowing they are "REAL" believers and hidden even from themselves.This is true, because Jesus said "Many will say Lord, Lord....and Jesus will say...Depart from me for I don't know you".They thought they knew Jesus, they proclaimed to Jesus "Look at our works"... But Jesus said "I do not know you".The world has only seen this true church once, 2000 years ago.We read about them in the book of Acts. The local church, and the universal church together, for the first time.Now we wait. The whole creation waits, mankind waits, for this "REAL" church to be revealed...Even God waits, for this real church being exposed to the physical churches, and to mankind. Because this will allow a separation, and later a judgment by God.Will this real church {man-child) be seen soon? I think so, for in September of 2017 the "sign of Rev CH 12 occurs in the heavens...This means "The Woman" is pregnant right now.The man-child is not Israel or Jesus...Why because ALL the events in the book of Revelation were prophetic, it is a book of prophecy (meaning future), it says so in CH 1... It was after the birth and resurrection of Jesus. So it's talking about the future.Being that a woman is pregnant for 9 months, and the birth takes place in September 2017 what will we see.Surly this child born will be mature, it won't have to grow for 33 yrs, that is why it is called the man-child...It is also the body of Christ, but plural, meaning MANY.It is not singular, as when Jesus came the first time, and that one singular body died on the cross. Page 1 | 0 |
Africa once represented a lucrative new market for a giant New York hedge fund. More than a decade later, the hedge fund, Capital Management, and its founder, Daniel Och, are paying the price for what the United States government has charged were more than $100 million in bribes paid to government officials in Libya, Chad, Niger, Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo to secure natural resources deals and other investments. OZ Africa Management, a unit of pleaded guilty in Federal District Court in Brooklyn on Thursday to one count of conspiracy — an unusual violation for a hedge fund of a federal law aimed at preventing bribery of foreign officials. Mr. Och, who is also chief executive of agreed to pay $2. 2 million to settle a violation with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Joel M. Frank, ’s chief financial officer, also agreed to settle charges that executives ignored red flags. And itself will pay a $413 million fine as part of a agreement to settle both the criminal and civil charges. The settlement is one of the biggest criminal penalties levied on a United States hedge fund firm, dealing a blow to as it works to stem withdrawals from its investors, which include state pension funds, endowments and foundations. The court filings by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn and securities regulators lay out a complex and elaborate tale of clandestine meetings and dealings with officials in the regimes of Muammar in Libya and President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. In one instance, knowingly invested in a Libyan development project in which some members of the Qaddafi family had a financial interest. “Senior executives cannot turn a blind eye to the acts of their employees or agents when they became aware of suspicious transactions with partners in foreign countries,” said Andrew Ceresney, director of the S. E. C. ’s division of enforcement. The settlement caps a nearly investigation by the Justice Department, the S. E. C. and overseas financial regulators that last month ensnared the son of a former prime minister of Gabon. But it still leaves the door open for action against others who once worked for prosecutors said. Michael L. Cohen, who led ’s investments in Africa, is referred to in court filings without his name being used. Mr. Cohen left the firm in 2013. He was also an officer in Africa Management Ltd. a joint venture set up by to secure African resource contracts. Mr. Cohen worked closely at with a former associate, Vanja Baros, who is also referred to in court filings from prosecutors but is not named. A representative for Mr. Baros declined to comment on Thursday. Ronald G. White, Mr. Cohen’s lawyer, said his client had “an unblemished reputation built over the course of a career spent creating value for ’s investors,” adding that he had “done nothing wrong. ” Mr. Frank also declined to comment. The settlement focuses attention on one of the biggest and hedge funds and one of the few publicly traded firms in the opaque $3 trillion hedge fund universe. “This has been a deeply disappointing episode,” Mr. Och said in an emailed statement, adding: “This conduct is inconsistent with our core values and not representative of our hundreds of employees worldwide, who are dedicated to serving our clients with the utmost integrity. We have learned from this experience and taken significant steps to strengthen . ” Between 2007 and 2011, pushed ahead with deals even though some within the firm raised questions about whom it was dealing with in Africa, according to the government. The S. E. C. for instance, said in its administrative order that Mr. Och and Mr. Frank “were aware of corruption accusations” against one partner it was working with in Congo. But the S. E. C. added that neither Mr. Och nor Mr. Frank knew that bribes would be paid. In another instance, an unidentified employee at emailed Mr. Och to describe an important meeting with Libyan officials, including one of Qaddafi’s sons, in Vienna in 2007. “Meetings are amazing,” the employee wrote. “They have 77 billion, half in cash and no idea who to give it to,” referring to the Libyan Investment Authority, the country’s sovereign wealth fund. When Mr. Och later inquired about progress, the employee replied: “I thought you were against it so I haven’t pursued it,” adding that ’s Libyan fixer wanted to follow up. “You O. K. with that?” the employee asked. Mr. Och replied, “I will be O. K. Will call you. ” first disclosed the Justice Department’s investigation in 2014. Earlier this year, the firm said it was nearing a settlement with the government, setting aside $200 million for a penalty. In August, federal investigators arrested Samuel Mebiame, a Gabonese consultant and son of a former prime minister, on charges that he routinely paid bribes to officials to secure mineral concessions in Niger, Guinea and Chad on behalf of and its partners in a joint venture called Africa Management Ltd. The joint venture was seen as a new source of returns for . A global commodities boom was just starting to fade when the venture was created in 2008, but Africa Management Ltd. had big ambitions to acquire assets like exploratory mining and energy concessions. In a statement at the time, Mr. Och said, “We look forward to working together to grow our combined venture and create the leading investment management business in the region. ” One week before Mr. Mebiame’s arrest, said it was setting aside another $200 million as a provision for a penalty. On Thursday, executives — including Mr. Och — committed to put $400 million toward the penalty. The firm faces more challenges ahead. Investors have pulled more than $5. 5 billion out of the hedge fund this year. “It hurts ’s reputation,” said Erik Gordon, a professor at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. “The legal separation of a parent and its subsidiaries might be important in court, but for reputation it is the brand name that counts, and the brand name is in the headlines. ” As part of the settlement, will hire an independent monitor. The criminal charges will be dismissed if the firm complies with the terms of the agreement and does not violate any other laws over the next three years. For the Mr. Och, the deal with the S. E. C. is an admission of a lack of control and oversight at his firm. Like many titans in the hedge fund industry, Mr. Och began his career at Goldman Sachs before going on to found his own firm in 1994 with a $100 million investment from the Ziff brothers, heirs to a magazine empire. For years a top earner in the hedge fund industry, his net worth is estimated to be $2. 7 billion, according to Forbes. He is part of a small group of financial elite who mingle at Manhattan society events, contribute to the same charities and gather at the exclusive World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland. And once loomed large in the industry. Just over a decade after Mr. Och founded the firm, it became one of the first hedge fund firms to go public, in 2007. With more than $26 billion in assets under management at the time of its public listing, quickly grew to manage as much as $48 billion last year. According to the firm’s revolving credit facility — terms under which the firm can draw from loans — if its assets under management drop below $22 billion for more than two consecutive quarters, could be declared in default. was charged with four counts of bribery, but the charges will ultimately be dismissed if the firm complies with the terms of the agreement. The penalty that faces is not the biggest faced by a hedge for breaking the law. Other hedge funds that have faced criminal charges, like Steven A. Cohen’s SAC Capital, have been forced to wind down their hedge funds. Mr. Cohen’s SAC paid $1. 2 billion to federal prosecutors as part of an insider trading guilty plea. Prosecutors and the S. E. C. filed hundreds of pages of documents. At a hearing Thursday afternoon, Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, noted the extensive nature of the investigation, saying: “I would have you read the charges, but I have dinner plans at 8 p. m. ” | 1 |
WASHINGTON — The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned on Tuesday that federal funds to fight the Zika virus were nearly exhausted, and that if Congress did not replenish them soon, there would be no money to fight a new outbreak. As of Friday, the C. D. C. had spent $194 million of the $222 million it was allocated to fight the virus, said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the director of the agency. Congress left for its summer recess without approving additional funding. Now that the virus is actively circulating in Florida, Dr. Frieden is pressing his case for funding with new urgency. On Tuesday, Florida officials announced three new Zika cases in County. One was in Miami Beach, where the virus is already circulating. The state is trying to determine where the other two infections occurred. The agency has sent about $35 million to Florida, much of which has already been spent, largely on killing mosquitoes. But if Florida has another cluster of Zika cases, or if one surfaced in another state, the agency would not be able to send emergency funds, Dr. Frieden said. “The cupboard is bare, there’s no way to provide that,” Dr. Frieden said at a briefing with health reporters in Washington. Don Stewart, deputy chief of staff to the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, said Republicans in the Senate have scheduled a vote on a $1. 1 billion Zika package next Tuesday, when Congress comes back into session. But Democrats have been blocking consideration of the Republican package because it would exclude Planned Parenthood from the list of providers that get new funding for contraception to combat spread of the virus, which can be sexually transmitted. The issue of funding is urgent, public health experts say, because the Gulf Coast, where the Zika mosquito mostly lives, is only about halfway through peak mosquito season (it will not start to taper off until October) and the chances that the virus could start circulating in Houston or New Orleans are relatively high. The Zika virus causes only a mild illness in most people, but it can be devastating to the developing fetuses of pregnant women who are infected — causing brains to stop developing and infants’ skulls to collapse. There have been 16 infants born in the continental United States with what appears to be the condition called microcephaly, Dr. Frieden said, and those numbers are likely to grow. As of Aug. 11, the C. D. C. was tracking 1, 200 pregnant women who have had Zika infections. That was up from 750 cases on July 11. The shortfall of funding comes as officials are reporting surprising success with mosquito control in Florida. Aerial spraying over the Miami neighborhood with the locally transmitted cases in the continental United States has been highly effective, Dr. Frieden said. The success seems to have come from combining sprays that kill adult mosquitoes with sprays that kill larvae. (Adult sprays on their own were not as effective.) The outcome goes against conventional wisdom that aerial spraying does not work against the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the type that carries Zika. “What we’ve seen is very dramatic reduction in mosquito populations there,” Dr. Frieden said. He said the area was about halfway through the period after which it will be cleared of the virus if no new cases emerge. Should funding not materialize, critical programs could be cut, Dr. Frieden said. For example, Puerto Rico, a territory with the largest number of Zika cases in the United States — more than 8, 700 at last count — has no mosquito control agency, and the C. D. C. had requested funding to start building one. Some funds were included in the $222 million the agency received, but not nearly enough. “We are not able to get a good running start on it,” Dr. Frieden said. Congress has been feuding over Zika funding since February, when President Obama made a $1. 9 billion request for emergency spending to fight the virus. Republicans balked, and eventually put forth their $1. 1 billion plan. With funding dwindling, the Obama administration recently shifted $81 million away from biomedical research and antipoverty and health care programs, to keep the lights on in the development of a Zika vaccine. One option could be for lawmakers to include money for Zika in the larger stopgap funding measure to keep the government running that Congress must begin working on next week. It is an open question whether Republicans and Democrats could agree on a compromise amount, but the growing number of Zika cases in Florida lends a new urgency to the matter. “If they don’t have money left in their grants, we don’t have money left, either,” Dr. Frieden said of states and their funds. | 1 |
Get short URL 0 0 0 0 Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Stephane Dion will highlight Ottawa’s recommitment to international peacekeeping efforts when he co-chairs a ministerial peacekeeping conference in Paris on October 27, Global Affairs Canada said in a press release.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Representatives from the International Organization of La Francophonie, the United Nations and the European Union will attend the conference, which aims to advance peace in francophone regions, the release said. © REUTERS/ Stephane Mahe Economic Realities May Force Russia to Rethink Climate Change Priorities - US Envoy "Minister Dion will deliver remarks at the plenary session during which he will highlight Canada’s re-engagement in UN peacekeeping operations," the release stated on Wednesday.
In August, Canadian Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan announced Canada would commit 600 troops and $450 million to UN peacekeeping operations.
Seven of the 16 UN peacekeeping missions are in French-speaking regions, accounting for 55 percent of the peacekeeping operations budget. ... | 0 |
This article was written by Melissa Dykes and originally published at The Daily Sheeple .
Editor’s Comment: Time and again, we have seen those in power planning to use an EMP or massive solar flare as a pretext for total unrest, a collapse of the electric grid and the institution of martial law.
With so much at stake in the election, and more uncertainty than ever, are we about to witness the grandest wild card factor ever to enter U.S. politics? Is is possible that election results could be suspended as a result of a total meltdown of the electric grid, and the likely destruction/unreliability of electronic voting machines in every state?
There’s no way to predict what may actually occur, but there is no way to look away from this potentially deadly scenario either. Just why did Obama prepare for this exact scenario? Though this one is kind of “out there,” it doesn’t change the real possibility that the feds may just be poised to take more power than ever before in history. This is truly eerie…
Just Weeks After Obama’s Executive Order on Catastrophic Space Weather Events, a Coronal Mass Ejection Is Set to Hit on Election Day
by Melissa Dykes
This has already been the craziest election in the history of the country, with the most overt corruption and fraud the American people have likely ever seen.
Now, on top of everything else that’s scheduled to go down tomorrow, it is being projected that a powerful coronal mass ejection (CME) is set to hit Earth tomorrow, and not just hit earth but a direct hit is in our forecast.
According to Space Weather Live , “A coronal mass ejection (or CME) is a giant cloud of solar plasma drenched with magnetic field lines that are blown away from the Sun during strong, long-duration solar flares and filament eruptions.”
What this means is the very real potential for strong geomagnetic storms here on Earth. Potential storms from CMEs like this have been known to cause everything from lost satellite control to radio and television interference to power grid disruption and failure.
For example, in March 1989 , a powerful CME caused strong variations in the Earth’s magnetic field which tripped circuit breakers in Québec’s power grid, causing a massive blackout.
What makes this timing even more unsettling is the fact that just weeks ago, Obama signed a brand new executive order on October 13, 2016 specifically regarding Department of Energy, Department of Defense, and Homeland Security coordination in handling “space weather events” as reported by Mac Slavo over at SHTFplan.com :
Via WhiteHouse.Gov
Executive Order — Coordinating Efforts to Prepare the Nation for Space Weather Events
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and to prepare the Nation for space weather events , it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Policy. Space weather events, in the form of solar flares, solar energetic particles, and geomagnetic disturbances, occur regularly, some with measurable effects on critical infrastructure systems and technologies, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), satellite operations and communication, aviation, and the electrical power grid. Extreme space weather events — those that could significantly degrade critical infrastructure — 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 . Space weather has the potential to simultaneously affect and disrupt health and safety across entire continents. Successfully preparing for space weather events is an all-of-nation endeavor that requires partnerships across governments, emergency managers, academia, the media, the insurance industry, non-profits, and the private sector.
What are the odds???
It’s not like CMEs and solar flares are anything new… so why all of a sudden are they saying we need to, “speed the creation of a space-weather-ready Nation” right before it comes out that just a geomagnetic disturbance might happen on election day?
Add to that the fact that recently Homeland Security was also talking about taking over the elections as a matter of national security…
Do they know something we don’t here? Either way, considering that most of our data on these things comes from government agencies, the timing definitely makes you wonder what shenanigans are going to get pulled tomorrow with our easily hacked electronic voting machines …
Can’t you just see the “confusion” that could be caused by intermittent power outages on election day, all blamed on the sun?
And no matter what, it’s always good to be prepared .
This article was written by Melissa Dykes and originally published at The Daily Sheeple .
Melissa Dykes is a writer, researcher, and analyst for The Daily Sheeple and a co-creator of Truthstream Media with Aaron Dykes, a site that offers teleprompter-free, unscripted analysis of The Matrix we find ourselves living in. Melissa and Aaron also recently launched Revolution of the Method and Informed Dissent . Wake the flock up!
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Protesters campaigning against Sharia Law were met with a number of on Saturday, as rallies took place in 28 cities across America. [The rallies, which were organized by the national security organization ACT! for America, attracted strong support in cities such as Phoenix, Chicago, Austin, Atlanta, New York, Boston, and Seattle. Sharia is the law of Islam, which governs how Muslims pray, eat, establish families, and all aspects of a Muslim’s life. The rules of sharia come from Quranic commandments and the hadiths, a collection of sayings of Muhammad. Sharia significantly restricts the freedom of women and allows for extreme punishments for violations such as adultery, blasphemy, and apostasy. Sharia is the basis of laws in Islamic countries, both Sunni and Shia. A press release from the ACT! for America website reads: This is a march against Sharia law and for human rights. Our nation is built on the freedom of religion — a pillar of our democracy — which we must always respect, protect, and honor. However many aspects of Sharia law run contrary to basic human rights and are completely incompatible with our laws and our democratic values. However, many marches were disrupted by who accused participants of “Islamaphobia” and stoking hatred against Muslims. #MuslimsAreWelcomedHere being chanted pic. twitter. — Dan Renzetti (@DanRenzetti) June 10, 2017, In Seattle, protesters could be heard singing: “No hate, no fear, Muslims are welcome here,” as footage showed the two groups involved in a physical altercation. ANTIFA JUST BEATDOWN A TRUMP SUPPORTER. HUGE WILD BRAWL. BATTLE IN SEATTLE! !!! pic. twitter. — Mike Bivins (@itsmikebivins) June 10, 2017, In New York, protesters attempted to drown out the chanting of the march by sounding air horns and banging pots and pans. Video footage from the event showed protesters launch urine towards Canadian conservative journalist Lauren Southern. Here’s the moment #antifa threw pee at Lauren Southern as I was trying to interview her pic. twitter. — Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) June 10, 2017, “Out of nowhere liquid was splashed onto my face from one of the masked individuals in the crowd. It got all in my eyes and over my face and totally reeked. The first two seconds were a little horrifying because I wasn’t sure if it was an acid attack,” Southern told Breitbart News. Several people were arrested after fights broke out at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul, although nobody was injured, according to local reports. Fights break out during ”anti sharia” march, counterprotest at Minnesota State Capitol https: . Photos: @floresliz12 pic. twitter. — Star Tribune (@StarTribune) June 10, 2017, According to Reuters, there was a heavy police presence at the Pennsylvania state capitol in Harrisburg, as barricades and police mounted on horses separated two groups of approximately 60 protesters. were reportedly “dressed in black masks and hoods” and could be heard chanting, “No Trump, no KKK, no Fascist USA. ’” On Friday, 129 national and local organizations signed a letter urging city mayors to condemn the marches, emphasizing the fact they take place during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com, This article has been edited since publication. | 1 |
And the niggers and libtards thought that putting body cameras on LEOs were going to uncover a treasure trove of evidence in order to convict every cop in the US on racist brutality charges. The exact opposite has happened as the niggers' obsessively aggressive behavior is now on full display on JewTube and elsewhere for all the world to witness. Also, the cops are nearly always shown using kit glove tactic in order to wrangle these beasts. This video is a perfect example of why females should not be allowed in law enforcement as at a minimum a taser should have been used on this ape the second it stepped towards her with a bat. | 0 |
At New Year’s Eve celebrations in Dortmund a mob of more than 1, 000 men chanted ‘Allahu Akhbar’ launched fireworks at police, and set fire to a historic church. [Already by 7 pm a man was hospitalised with burns to his face and hands after fireworks were hurled at a group of homeless people outside the city’s main train station. More than two dozen people were injured at festivities in Dortmund, some seriously. The events of the night were described as “quiet” by police in a statement, and as “normal” by a spokesman for the city government. But at 11:30pm police announced they were adding to their already much larger than usual presence in the city centre for New Year, sending in further reinforcements of officers. This came after the force reported there being a “large number of young men from North Africa” in town, with federal police officer Volker Stall noting there was an “aggressive mood” towards the public and police. At midnight, the situation threatened to escalate. A livewire published by the Ruhr Nachrichten reported that a crowd of “at least 1, 000 young men” began throwing fireworks into crowds of visitors, which also included families with children. Asked by officers to stop, the mob turned to pelt fireworks at police instead. Despite the prohibition of lighting pyrotechnics near churches, firemen had to intervene after fireworks were launched at St Reinolds, Germany’s oldest church, setting the roof alight. Also reported by the Ruhr Nachrichten was that “a group of Syrians sang in celebration of the ceasefire in Syria. ” However, a video posted to Twitter by one of the newspaper’s reporters, paired with the caption “Syrians celebrate the truce in their country” shows a group of men chanting ‘Allahu Akhbar’ around the flag of and Islamic State collaborators, the ‘Free Syrian Army’. #Silvester in #Dortmund: Syrer feiern den Waffenstillstand in ihrem Land. pic. twitter. — Peter Bandermann (@RN_Bandermann) December 31, 2016, There was uproar in Germany last month when St Reinold’s Church was occupied by identitarians in protest against the Islamisation of Germany. The demonstration was denounced as a “clear provocation by ” by Dortmund pastor Friedrich Stiller. Dortmund’s ‘Special Commissioner for Tolerance and Democracy’ demanded more taxpayers’ money be put towards “Comeback” the city’s ‘ deradicalisation programme’ in the wake of the protest. “The money the city gives, 50, 000 euros per year, is no longer enough,” Hartmut said. UPDATE: Since publication this article has not been edited, but Breitbart London has endured an attack from the German political establishment as well as the legacy media, alleging that substantive facts in this piece are to be considered “fake news”. Our has responded to these false claims here. Correction: This article states St. Reinold’s Church is the oldest in Germany. We are happy to clarify that accolade belongs to the Trier Cathedral. Breitbart News stands by all other substantive facts in this article. | 1 |
Architecture means many things to many people: It’s a form of creative expression, a tool for meticulous construction, a craft, a profession. In short, it’s much more than just perfectly placing bricks to form a building.
In this Ted Talk , Michael Murphy discusses how his father’s brush with death ultimately opened the doors to his own life path of architecture, but not just as a profession, and not just as a creative expression.
When designing, Murphy and his team go beyond the blueprint, considering things like how like airflow and light can produce both a healthy community and gorgeous structures.
He shows us his projects in countries like Rwanda and Haiti, and covers his plan for creating The Memorial to Peace and Justice, which mainly aims to heal hearts in the American South.
“ Why was it that the best architects, the greatest architecture — a ll beautiful and visionary and innovative — is also so rare, and seems to serve so very few? And more to the point: With all of this creative talent, what more could we do?” Murphy poses in his talk.
He broke into the very soul of his work when he came to the realization that buildings are actually making people sicker.
“ In this hospital in South Africa, patients that came in with, say, a broken leg, to wait in this unventilated hallway, walked out with a multidrug-resistant strand of tuberculosis. Simple designs for infection control had not been thought about, and people had died because of it.”
With the revelation that hospitals are making patients sicker, he thought of designing one that flips the hallways on the outside, allowing people to walk in the exterior. “ If mechanical systems rarely work, what if we could design a hospital that could breathe through natural ventilation, and meanwhile reduce its environmental footprint?” he said.
He then discussed the incredible community aspect of following through with his healing niche in the architecture world.
“ We worked with Bruce Nizeye, a brilliant engineer, and he thought about construction differently than I had been taught in school. When we had to excavate this enormous hilltop and a bulldozer was expensive and hard to get to site, Bruce suggested doing it by hand, using a method in Rwanda called “Ubudehe,” which means “community works for the community.” Hundreds of people came with shovels and hoes, and we excavated that hill in half the time and half the cost of that bulldozer. Instead of importing furniture, Bruce started a guild, and he brought in master carpenters to train others in how to make furniture by hand. And on this job site, 15 years after the Rwandan genocide, Bruce insisted that we bring on labor from all backgrounds, and that half of them be women. “
Ultimately, the healing journey became twofold, as it was both the process of building to heal as well as allowing an entire community to heal.
“We call this the locally fabricated way of building, or ‘lo-fab,’ and it has four pillars: hire locally, source regionally, train where you can and most importantly, think about every design decision as an opportunity to invest in the dignity of the places where you serve. Think of it like the local food movement, but for architecture. And we’re convinced that this way of building can be replicated across the world, and change the way we talk about and evaluate architecture,” he explained.
In his talk, Murphy reveals how he learned that architecture is more than what it seems. It “can be a transformative engine for change.”
Watch the full talk below. Perhaps it will show you how your work can be more than what it seems, too.
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Home / Badge Abuse / “This is My Second One”— Virginia Cop Caught Bragging About Killing Two Unarmed People “This is My Second One”— Virginia Cop Caught Bragging About Killing Two Unarmed People Claire Bernish July 27, 2016 7 Comments
A former Virginia police officer and U.S. Navy veteran, whose trial for murder begins this week, told a witness, “this is my second one,” after killing an unarmed 18-year-old black man in April 2015.
While unclear whether or not the jarring statement amounted to a boast, the camera on ex-Portsmouth Officer Stephen Rankin’s Taser recorded him saying this to a Walmart employee mere seconds after he fatally shot unarmed teen and alleged shoplifter William Chapman in the store’s parking lot in April 2015.
Rankin had, indeed, killed another unarmed man, Kirill Denyakin — under circumstances similarly and sufficiently questionable to earn three years’ administrative leave — just four years prior to the shooting for which he now stands accused of first-degree murder.
During the final pretrial hearing on Tuesday, the Guardian reported , Rankin’s lead defense attorney, James Broccoletti, argued the former officer’s “statement is not probative of anything,” in an unsuccessful attempt to have it suppressed.
Prosecutors countered to Judge Johnny E. Morrison they should not have to “sanitize the evidence” surrounding the fatal shooting.
“The defendant made the comment, not just in the presence and earshot of a witness, but to the witness,” argued Commonwealth’s Attorney Stephanie N. Morales , who heads the case against Rankin.
Although Morrison had previously disallowed direct statements to jurors concerning Rankin’s fatal shooting of Denyakin, as the Guardian noted , it now appears the officer’s prior use of deadly force will play an albeit limited role in the prosecution’s case.
Troubling details about the killing of unarmed 26-year-old Kazakhstani cook, Kirill Denyakin, on April 23, 2011, would seem to suggest a glib tone in the officer’s later statement to the Walmart employee.
Rankin responded to a call about Denyakin drunkenly pounding on the door of a residence where he had been staying with friends. Alleging the cook reached for his waistband and then charged toward him, Rankin shot Denyakin 11 times in the chest and limbs, as The Free Thought Project reported . No weapons were recovered on Denyakin’s body or at the scene — but when the man’s family filed a $22 million civil suit against the officer, the situation took a dark turn.
Defending his use of deadly force, Rankin — who had chosen a photograph of a dead Serb who had been lynched by the Nazis in 1943 as his Facebook profile picture — took to a local newspaper’s website, posting roughly 250 comments derisively attacking Denyakin’s character and insulting his family’s attempt to seek compensation, writing :
“22 mil won’t buy your boy back … let alone a habitual drunk working as a hotel cook.”
Weeks prior to that deadly interaction, one of the officer’s supervisors cautioned senior commanders Rankin was “dangerous” and likely to harm someone. Further revelations included Facebook posts in which the cop referred to his firearms case as “Rankin’s box of vengeance.”
A grand jury refused to indict Rankin for the Denyakin’s killing — and though the department placed him on administrative leave for nearly three years, it took just over a year after his return to active duty for Rankin to fatally shoot Chapman under circumstances suspicious enough to now stand accused of murder.
On the morning of April 22, 2015, Portsmouth Walmart employees summoned police to report a shoplifter. Rankin responded and confronted 18-year-old Chapman in the store’s parking lot. Several witnesses reported seeing Rankin attempting to handcuff the teen, but their observations of what happened next differ to some degree.
Two construction workers said Chapman broke free from the officer, knocking his Taser to the ground; but, in speaking to separate reporters afterward, one described the man “ whaling on ” the officer, the other noted the pair’s subsequent interaction was a “ tussle ” in which the teen had not been close enough to physically strike Rankin.
In a report , pathologists noted Rankin would have been at least 30 inches away from Chapman when he was shot, and the medical examiner did not find gunpowder burns or residue suggestive of a point-blank or near point-blank shooting. No stolen items were listed among the victim’s personal effects.
Further, body cam footage recorded Rankin holding his Taser, but abruptly and perhaps conveniently, if not outright suspiciously, stopped for the 15 seconds surrounding the shooting — only to pick up after the deadly interaction, with the Taser on the ground.
Chapman’s family’s attorney, Jon Babineau, recounting what he was told for Pilot Online , said in December, “The video was operational up until just before the shooting, and then it was not operational for about 15 seconds,” though an unnamed source told him the gap had been caused by a “power source issue” and did not necessarily believe the tape had been edited.
In September 2015, a grand jury indicted Rankin for murder and the illegal use of a firearm.
Rankin has since been terminated from the Portsmouth force and continues to maintain his innocence.
Jury selection for the murder trial is slated to begin this morning. Share Google + Fred Ziffel
Anytime the calculated death of a human being is forced by another knowing these actions are not ABSOLUTELY necessary and there was no other immediate threat to life, the act of taking or ending said life becomes murder. Who the perpetrator is, or what his/her occupational profession is, is totally irrelevant. Murder is not justifiable.
I hope they prosecute this vigorously and relentlessly. Bill Allyn
Justice System Reform List America has a serious, institutionalized, systemic law enforcement problem. Over the last 4 decades, our law enforcement has become increasingly militarized, putting every citizen at risk of being shot and killed for nothing more than reaching for their wallet, as instructed, or less. This may increase safety for police officers (debatable, in the long run), but at the expense of making American citizens far less safe, which is the exact opposite of the goals of law enforcement. We need to create systems that bring back accountability within every level of the justice system. Nationally, we need to: 1. Create citizen oversight committees with powers of subpoena and prosecutorial discretion for every law enforcement agency in the country. A special independent prosecutor must be assigned immediately for officer-involved shootings. Committee members should be randomly selected and replaced often, like grand jurors, to avoid corruption. 2. Require law enforcement officers to be personally insured to protect taxpayers from lawsuits. Too risky for insurance? No insurance, no badge. Insurance could be partially publicly subsidized. 3. Require every law enforcement officer to wear a camera. No camera, no gun. Also, implement GPS tracking on all police cars and cameras. 4. Require yearly psyche tests to screen out potentially abusive officers. 5. Require random drug and steroid tests. 6. All police agencies must keep a database of every officer-caused civilian injury, shooting or killing, and that data must be periodically transmitted to a third-party, non-biased national database. 7. Any officer involved in a shooting must be alcohol and drug tested immediately. 8. Officers should be made aware of studies on abuse of power, such as the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures. Ensure there are clear policies on use of force. 9. More training to deal with mentally ill, or a mental illness crisis unit. More training and encouragement to use peacemaking, conflict resolution, and de-escalation skills. Increase educational requirements, focusing on psychology, sociology, and social work. 10. Create a special number (third party, independent of police) to report police brutality. Victims of police brutality and the families of police shootings should immediately be appointed an attorney to represent their position/case. 11. Create national database of abusive officers, so they don’t just get hired elsewhere. 12. Reverse militarization of police forces. Take away military weapons, APC’s, uniforms, and especially the attitude. Police officers are civilians, not a branch of the military. Require at least 5 years between active duty military and civilian police employment. Keep SWAT/military weapons and equipment under lock and key only to be used in genuine emergencies. Quit viewing the community you police as a “war zone”. 13. Prohibit television shows that glorify bad, illegal, or unconstitutional policing, such as “Cops”. Glorifying these behaviors creates a dangerous situation for American citizens and should not be tolerated. 14. Increase community outreach. Hire officers from the community. Officers need to be more in touch with the people they are sworn to protect. 15. End no-knock raids. It is perfectly legal for a home owner to respond to a break in with gun in hand, which gets them killed when the police are the intruders. This makes it unreasonably dangerous on citizens, especially when cops often go to the wrong address. 16. Reform forfeiture laws to protect citizens’ property rights and due process. No forfeiture proceedings until after conviction. All forfeiture proceeds go directly to the victims of police brutality and the families of police shootings. 17. End drug prohibition/war on drugs. Use harm reduction strategies. 18. End private prison industry. 19. Create a national organization dedicated to these ideals. Jamieson
This list is brilliant! Great post. Ibcamn
cops are just criminals with a badge. Occams
Sad that there will be lots of tax-dollars spent just to simply let him walk away, but then, that will satisfy the sheep, as did Hillary’s ‘exoneration’….. As Bill’s ‘Limited Hangout Op’– $650m spent on a blowjob – to hide selling missile secrets to the Chinese.
Treason runs deep in the White, these last 30 years.
The US military is in Syria, helping ISIS, and US planes recently bombed and murdered over 100 civilians. Treason and murder.
Why should the public see any better when it allows all this? Brian King
Another psychopath kkkop that needs to get locked up Social Trending | 0 |
If ISIS is such a mortal threat to the United States, why has US military action in Iraq and Syria been proceeding at such a leisurely pace? Is it possible that ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria are being used — or even supported — by the US and its allies as a “regime change” weapon against Syria’s Assad government? The US pursued this policy before, when it used Saudi-trained radicals to fight a Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan. Those radicals became al-Qaeda…
Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity .
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This season is a mess. The spring 2017 men’s wear shows are almost over, for goodness sake, and women’s wear is still in the middle of cruise . “Cruise?” you ask. “Huh?” Exactly. Cruise — a. k. a. prespring, a. k. a. resort — are the clothes that arrive in November and stay on shelves through March and sometimes even April. The shows began May 3 with Chanel, an extravaganza in Havana that included 86 looks, some tourism and some controversy, and they extend through next month — yes, into the couture fall season. There is no cohesion to the cruise collections. They include clothes as well as fur (Chanel, Vuitton, Dior, Gucci) as well as small presentations some brands (Chanel, among others) that want to publicize and some (Proenza Schouler, Céline) that don’t, at least until it hits stores. So I gave up trying to make sense of it. Instead, I thought I’d take you along for what is necessarily a somewhat arbitrary ride. After all, in the end we each pack our own bags. May 11 which I watched via livestream (the concept of traveling to an exotic destination for a single show being the kind of seduction that best serves clients, not critics) the emails are starting to pile up, listing presentations in corners of New York. I feel like Tippi Hedren being swarmed by the birds. May 19 Today is Oscar de la Renta day. The label does a series of minishows in its showroom with the creative director Peter Copping, in front of 20 to 30 people at a time. This season, there were 33 looks, which Mr. Copping says were inspired by the idea of “patchwork,” translated through a very luxe lens. Think of baby florals and tweeds and jacquards lace and feathers. That contrast, between a casual idea and an elaborate expression, pretty much summed up the mood of the collection: classic (and classy) de la Rentaisms with the stuffing taken out. May 23 Trying to keep track of who is doing what, I email Burberry, which has had small presentations in the past. The company says it is not doing anything this year because it is jettisoning the idea of seasons altogether and has rejiggered its schedule to show men’s wear and women’s wear together in September and sell the clothes immediately after it shows them. Stella McCartney, who used to be famous for her cruise has decided to show the collection in November in London, before it goes on sale. Mary Katrantzou is taking her collection on the road to New York, but they are not allowing me to tell you about the clothes before they are in stores on pain of Great Brand Excommunication. (Spoiler: they are cheerful.) Diane von Furstenberg’s office calls to tell me that because it just hired Jonathan Saunders as its first chief creative officer, it isn’t having a resort presentation, because he won’t have had a chance to put his stamp on the collection. May 28 This is the week of the . Today, Louis Vuitton is in Rio Zika and political unrest be damned! The brand rules the social media waves. On May 31 and June 2, Dior and Gucci hold their shows in Britain (in Blenheim Palace and Westminster Abbey, respectively). I watch them all on my computer and try to run the numbers on what it costs to bring an entire fashion show to an exotic locale. I am boggled. The brands say it is worth it. June 6 Back in New York, Narciso Rodriguez is at 9:30 a. m.: Lexington and 16th Street. He is interested in “splicing” — i. e. cutting in ever more deceptively simple, but actually highly complicated, ways. See, for example, a gown in heavy silk satin with the weft running in two different directions, so some of the fabric looks glossy and other bits matte. If Veronica Lake had a Modernist moment, she’d be in heaven. Or this dress. Across town on 11th Avenue, some Brits have touched down: Christopher Kane ( pansies, including big lace mitochondrial petal “blobs” inset randomly on iridescent pleated skirts) and Peter Pilotto (haute peasant, with technical taffeta and Peruvian rug embroidery). June 7 “Calling this ‘cruise’ is an error. It should be called ‘destination. ’” Michael Kors is doing his version of — the cruise collection explanation monologue. The destinations he has in mind? “Gstaad, Mustique, Palm Beach, Palm Springs or destination ‘God forbid it’s snowing and I need a new wool coat. ’” Some more of his morsels: “A fox wellie is the kind of basic boot every girl needs. ” “We don’t sell bathing suits people swim in. These are bathing suits people wear in party situations. It’s the new cocktail dress. ” He is feeling graphics, especially polka dots and grommets. “How do you cut through the winter doldrums? Graphic is the way to go. ” Marc Jacobs, fresh from his CFDA women’s wear designer of the year award, thinks 1980s MTV is the way to go, in 54 superbright, looks. (Can this be a coincidence? 54 looks? Studio 54?) The show was supposed to start at 9 a. m. sharp, but during the awards ceremony the night before, we kept getting emailed updates: maybe 9:30, actually 10. Guess you can do that when you win one for the sixth time. At Suno, Erin Beatty and Max Osterweis went on a trip around Africa with a nod to Edwardiana via plaid linen and eyelet, denim and shirting overembroidered with florals, big ruffles paired with generous trousers and full skirts. At Coach, Stuart Vevers was feeling Felix the Cat (the brand made a deal with DreamWorks to use the image) adding him to the rest of the label’s building blocks: prairie dresses, motorcycle jackets, shearling and dinosaurs, used this time instead of Izod alligators on cardigans. What’s up with that? “It’s actually not that ” Mr. Vevers said. “I like that it’s kind of random. ” That’s the thing about cruise: Ask most designers what it is about and they say: “Clothes you wear. ” That sounds absurd, since all clothes are theoretically clothes you wear. But what they actually mean is: not clothes you pose in, clothes you depend on. Think of it that way. Public School is not actually doing cruise: It is combining men’s and women’s wear, and spring and respectively. It is making a statement about the fashion system and the political system. “We need leaders” is on a wall at the end of the show. The wall is apparently supposed to represent “false monuments. ” The show is presumably supposed to represent the future, or the clothes of the rebelling masses. Mostly it feels confused, though the pieces themselves were pretty simple: dystopian tailoring and designer anoraks, accessorized with slashes and asymmetry, accented with yellow and a melting flower photo print. June 9: “It’s good not to always do something new,” says Joseph Altuzarra, in his studio during his . “Sometimes you want to speak a language that you’ve already established. ” His vernacular has to do with pencil skirts, plaid shirtdresses, trompe l’oeil lingerie knits, pastel lace and ribbed stretch cardigans laced with faux leather. “It’s easier to clean that way,” he says. June 13: It’s the Monday after the Friday before, which is to say: after the Moschino show in Los Angeles, which was a combined ’s wear show (with tickets sold to the public for up to $400, list price) along with models (Miranda Kerr, Chanel Iman) celebrities (Katy Perry, Caitlyn Jenner) and 1960s cartoon psychedelia (miniskirts, mirror mosaics, flower power and animal print). Now Valentino is in the former Warhol Factory on Union Square. Like Chanel, it is having a Cuba moment, though its Cuba is a Cuba of the mind. The designers Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli were thinking about the way Cuba is frozen in the imagination, which led them to their own past, which led them to red, a nod to the favorite color of the label’s founder, but in washed brocade and silk to give the clothes the soft focus of age, plus Tropicana bomber jackets and skirts and dresses encrusted in wooden and, well, a lot more. The Factory is jammed with jersey and lace and camouflage and khaki. The work is eye boggling. Designers spend a lot of time complaining these days about their lack of time, but these two seem exhilarated by it. Rag Bone is in its studio in the meatpacking district. Marcus Wainwright, the is there, waxing laconic on the stripy knits, tuxedo track pants, airy and shearlings that are the label’s signatures. David Neville, the executive, is not there. This doesn’t seem odd, since Marcus is in charge of the design studio. But when they announce two days later that Mr. Neville is leaving the company, it suddenly seems full of portent. June 16 Carolina Herrera, in her 35th year in business, is living the fairy tale. Her resort collection is an enchanting confection of sparkling tulle cocktail and evening gowns in shades from nude to graphic — plus a few denim numbers for day and a terrific pair of wide peach taffeta trousers to wear with a white cashmere sweater striped in sequins. Coincidentally, or probably not, Mrs. Herrera has a new design team — Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim of Monse — and they did even trousers in their own collection, as well as khaki coat dresses and bandanna frocks twisted, pulled and otherwise chopped up in unexpected angles. In any case, Mrs. Herrera isn’t around to discuss her role as resort’s fairy godmother because she’s at a spa in Austria with her husband. Too bad. I could have used a magic wand to transport me to different shores: On June 29, Creatures of the Wind, based in New York, is having a resort show at Spencer House in London. July 3 I know we haven’t actually gotten here yet in real time, but it’s already on my calendar: Miu Miu is unveiling its cruise line in Paris with a event. Later this week, Céline will be showing its line. I can see it, though no pictures will be released until it goes into stores in November. Ditto Proenza Schouler and Chloé. But at that point I’ll be cycling back in fashion time (though forward in real time) to fall 2016, with couture. Enough is enough. I know this is a time of unpredictable weather patterns, but it seems to me that when a new season begins, it’s time for the old one to end. | 1 |
0 - items Only Geniuses & Schizophrenics Can Pass This 3 Question Quiz!
Many neuroscientists estimate that as much as 98% of all brain activity is unconscious. Just think about that for a second – 98%.
All that unconscious activity is influenced heavily by the world around its subconscious cues. To demonstrate that, we’re going to call on a super cool quiz. The premise is simple; only geniuses and schizophrenics can answer the following three questions. Which one are you? Continue to find out!
There are no hints! You either know it or you don’t!
The test you’ve just done relies on what researchers call the ‘contraposition method.’ This method tests the extent of a person’s awareness and brain processing power. It’s a super complicated method with tons of ‘moving parts,’ so to speak, but here’s what you need to know for the purpose of this article: There are objects which one can reasonably say are unrelated. Most people would assume, for example, that a race car and a hurricane have very little connection. A genius who thinks outside of the box, however, would deduce some sort of connection. A schizophrenic patient would also deduce a connection because of the way the illness makes people see non-existent connections in just about everything. In other words, if the quiz in this article left you scratching your head, you’re normal. If not, one of two things is true – you’re brilliant, or you have schizophrenia.
Don’t worry, I won’t leave you guessing. Here are some facts that will help you figure out which one you are: Geniuses will have taken their time to think before blurting a response. Did you get the answers right? What do you think – are you a schizophrenic or a genius? As far as the schizophrenia angle goes, this post is not a diagnostic tool. It can get you thinking about schizophrenia and, if you have concerns, you can see a psychiatrist for a proper evaluation.
Sources: | 0 |
As was predicted by opponents from the start, ObamaCare has begun to implode, owing to high costs brought on by government planners. Questions remain: Why, and what next?
On Monday, October 3, former President Bill Clinton, in a series of unexpected and perhaps unscripted comments while stumping on behalf of his wife’s presidential campaign in Flint, Michigan, took the political world by surprise when he singled out ObamaCare for scathing criticism. “You’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden, 25 million more people have health care, and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half and it’s the craziest thing in the world,” Clinton told a crowd of supporters.
He added that “the current system works fine if you’re eligible for Medicaid, if you’re a lower-income working person, if you’re already on Medicare or if you get enough subsidies on a modest income that you can afford your health care.”
But overall, Clinton concluded, ObamaCare is hurting the very people it was intended to help, pointing out that “the people getting killed in this deal are the small-business people and individuals who make just a little bit too much to get any of these subsidies.”
During Bill Clinton’s own presidency a generation ago, Hillary Clinton was put in charge of creating a system of socialized medicine (so-called Hillarycare), an effort that met with political failure. The Clintons have long been ardent public supporters of socialized medicine (and socialism in general). What would prompt Bill Clinton to attack ObamaCare during a heated presidential campaign? Have the failings of Obama’s disastrous experiment in socialized medicine become so obvious that even Democrats now want to distance themselves from it?
In a word, yes. Since its full phase-in earlier in 2016, the Affordable Care Act has — as its many detractors have been predicting for years — inflicted critical damage on an already creaky healthcare system and ruined healthcare coverage for tens of millions of Americans. As Clinton noted correctly, the middle class, students, and small-business owners and their employees have borne the brunt of the damage, although no one but the few who can afford to pay out of pocket for healthcare have been unaffected by ObamaCare. Premiums have skyrocketed alongside deductibles and copays, while President Obama’s most quotable promise — that Americans who liked their pre-ObamaCare health coverage could keep it — has been discarded, as millions promptly lost their coverage or endured deep cuts in benefits and soaring costs with their existing coverage. In a word, ObamaCare has been a scourge on the already troubled American economy, a monumental political and economic mistake that has been a major contributor to our continuing economic malaise, more than eight years after the onset of the Great Recession.
Sticker Shock
One of the concerns that ObamaCare was supposed to address was rising healthcare premiums, which had outpaced wage increases for years. During the five-year period from 2004 to 2009, for example, healthcare premiums rose an average of 30 percent, while wages increased by only 12.2 percent. Figures such as these buoyed President Obama and other supporters of socialized medicine, and were a crucial factor leading to the passage of ObamaCare in 2010. Yet in the first year after ObamaCare’s enactment, premium costs soared by an additional 9.4 percent, and by 2014, the increase over five years was a whopping additional 28 percent, while wages only grew by 7.8 percent during that same period. While some of the depressed wages were (and are) certainly attributable to the Great Recession and its seemingly never-ending aftermath, it has become embarrassingly clear that ObamaCare has done nothing to halt the rise in healthcare premium costs.
With open enrollment in ObamaCare slated to begin in November, another, politically far more damaging consequence has dominated the news in recent days: the soaring cost of ObamaCare premiums in many states. During the last week in October, the election season was roiled by news that the price of ObamaCare premiums will rise on average 25 percent in 2017, with many areas experiencing significantly greater price hikes. Arizona, which will be among the hardest-hit states, will experience a whopping 116 percent increase in its second-cheapest “silver plan,” for which a hypothetical 27-year-old paying $196 per month in 2016 will be paying $422 in 2017. The Obama administration has tried to downplay this latest round of healthcare sticker shock, with glib assurances that eight out of 10 ObamaCare beneficiaries will qualify for subsidies under the terms of the now-ironically named Affordable Care Act. Aviva Aron-Dine of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rushed to assure ObamaCare customers that the government will cover the difference for most of them: Issuers were pricing for a completely new market, one where they could no longer exclude those with the most serious health needs; many set prices that turned out to be too low.... Not only do tax credits bring down the cost of coverage, they adjust dollar for dollar with the cost of the benchmark plan in your area. So even if the cost of benchmark coverage goes up, most consumers will not have to pay more.
In other words, the market got pricing wrong at the outset, but now the government, in its omniscience, will fix everything. HHS has indicated that our hypothetical young Arizonan in a silver plan will qualify for government subsidies of about $280 per month — if his annual income is $25,000 or so. If he makes more than $30,000, the subsidy will be much less. Left unsaid in all the posturing and spin is how the government is going to pay for all the new healthcare subsidies that the disastrous rise in premium costs has made necessary. The answer, of course, will ultimately be higher taxes, fees, and public debt, coupled with further contractions of benefits.
Another development unanticipated by the Obama administration has been the veritable stampede of healthcare providers and insurers out of ObamaCare. As early as 2013, insurance company Aetna announced that it was opting out of ObamaCare in a number of states, including Connecticut (where the corporation is headquartered), California, Georgia, and Maryland. Other major insurers, such as Blue Cross and United Health Group, have also pulled out of healthcare exchanges in California and elsewhere as the health insurance market continues to contract under centralized control. Meanwhile, many of the nation’s top hospitals and clinics are either opting out of ObamaCare or being very selective in the policies for which they will accept coverage. With the beginning of open enrollment in November, many markets, such as Philadelphia, will be left with only one or two insurance providers participating in ObamaCare, leaving consumers little or no choice. On average, the number of options available to customers will decline by about a third, with competition declining in all but four states that participate in Healthcare.gov’s exchange. Hard-beset Arizona is a fairly typical example of the dizzying decline of healthcare options: In the Grand Canyon State, the number of options available will fall from 65 in 2016 to just four in 2017. Overall, about 21 percent of customers seeking healthcare plans at Healthcare.gov will encounter only one option in 2017 — up from two percent in 2016.
Meanwhile, health insurance plans nationwide are plagued by ballooning deductibles — the amount the insured must pay out of pocket for healthcare before insurance benefits kick in. Once a nominal amount, the post-ObamaCare deductible has rapidly morphed into a severe financial threat in and of itself. The average deductible for a typical “Bronze” plan under ObamaCare is now $5,629, while the average deductible for a “Silver” plan is $2,994. The lowest deductibles belong to the “Gold” plans, which average only $1,105 — but feature premiums too expensive for most Americans to pay. As Nathan Nascimento recently pointed out in the National Review : Paying $3,000 or $5,600 before their insurance kicks in simply isn’t an option for most families in times of emergency. A December 2015 survey by Bankrate.com found that 63 percent of Americans don’t have enough savings to cover an unexpected emergency-room visit costing $1,000. A recent report from the New York Times put it bluntly: Rising out-of-pocket costs have rendered many exchange plans “all but useless” for those already struggling to make ends meet.
And participation in America’s Brave New World of healthcare isn’t optional; ObamaCare also levies hefty tax penalties on Americans without health insurance, and has anointed the IRS its collection and enforcement arm. The federal government has — so far — been tentative in enforcing the tax penalties for the uninsured. As Joseph Thorndike, a tax policy analyst, told the New York Times , “It is highly unusual for the federal government to use tax penalties to encourage affirmative behavior. That’s a hard sell.” Even so, tax penalties assessed by the IRS have been rising steadily, in an attempt to browbeat Americans into the system. Many Americans, however, have done the math and prefer, even four years into the ObamaCare abyss, to pay the annual penalty. One Atlanta business consultant in his early fifties told the Times that he was seriously considering dropping his ObamaCare premium, which is costing him $1,400 a month this year to cover his family of four. Next year, his premiums will go up by 60 percent, whereas the IRS penalty will only amount to two months’ worth of premiums. And his story is far from unique. Millions of Americans are prepared to take the risk of a major medical setback and pay a tax penalty of hundreds or even thousands of dollars rather than be saddled with enormously expensive monthly premiums that pay for policies with deductibles so high that only a catastrophic event would be covered at all. Some consumers who buy insurance on the exchanges still feel vulnerable. “Deductibles are so high,” observes the Times , “that the insurance seems useless. So some think that whether they send hundreds of dollars to the I.R.S. or thousands to an insurance company, they are essentially paying something for nothing.”
For ObamaCare to even appear to work, it must be able to attract large numbers of healthy, young, low-risk subscribers — yet that is the opposite of what has taken place so far. A large percentage of ObamaCare subscribers are older and/or in poor health, precisely the customer base that would be most attracted to policies that, though expensive, are still preferable to the alternative of paying tens or hundreds of thousands annually for chronic illnesses and long-term disabilities.
For those already insured via employer-based plans, rising premiums and deductibles alongside contracting benefits have become a fact of life. Healthcare providers and insurers, hard beset by ObamaCare’s many mandates, are trying to save money any way they can, which includes scaling back benefits for all payers.
In a word, Americans now find themselves in a healthcare morass from which there appears to be no deliverance. If current projections are anywhere near the mark, Americans will soon be paying as much or more for government-run healthcare plans than they would have paid by choice before ObamaCare — except with the inefficiencies inherent to any government-run enterprise added on. Moreover, there is every indication that, sooner rather than later, in large swaths of America no insurance provider will participate in ObamaCare at all.
Private to Public
It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. In reassuring voters of the need for his reforms, President Obama famously promised tens of millions of Americans already satisfied with their healthcare coverage that they would be able to keep their plans if they liked them. We were also assured by a mob of Democrats and their media mouthpieces that ObamaCare could be done cheaply and efficiently, and that it would solve chronic problems with portability, rising costs, and lack of access to quality healthcare for millions of Americans.
Yet not everybody was convinced. All the way back in 1993, when Bill Clinton was attempting to pass sweeping healthcare reforms, humorist P. J. O’Rourke famously quipped to a gathering at the Cato Institute: “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.” As events turned out then, Hillary Clinton and her team of high-paid experts were unable to ram socialized medicine down America’s collective throat. But President Obama was able to enact the long-standing goal of government-run healthcare, and the results have been precisely what O’Rourke and many others on the Right had warned us to expect. Perhaps the only surprise has been the speed of the implosion, but few sober observers doubt that ObamaCare is in a death spiral, courtesy of the implacable laws of economics.
The federal government’s meddling in the healthcare system began during the Second World War, an indirect consequence of wage controls imposed by the federal government. Companies were unable to offer competitive wages thanks to FDR’s wartime socialist measures, but when the War Labor Board exempted fringe benefits from the wage controls, companies began offering competitive healthcare insurance benefits instead. When the war ended, the wage controls were lifted, but the expectation of employer-provided healthcare remained. President Truman tried to pass a voluntary government healthcare program, but the politics of the day did not allow him to make any progress. Labor unions, which in general favored programs such as socialist medicine, opted instead to support measures requiring big companies to offer health benefits packages. By 1960, most large public and private employers offered health insurance, whose benefits typically extended to routine care. And not surprisingly, once average Americans were offered government and union-backed benefits packages that incentivized frequent trips to the doctor for checkups, minor colds and injuries, and a range of other elective procedures, prices began to rise with increasing demand.
The ObamaCare crisis is but the latest installment in the slow-motion deterioration of the American healthcare system, a trend that began in the mid-’60s after the passage of Lyndon Johnson’s Social Security Amendments of 1965 (a major component of President Johnson’s “Great Society” initiative), which created Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare and Medicaid were the first major interventions in the healthcare sector by the federal government, and were the outcome of decades of pressure by the Left to emulate countries such as Great Britain in instituting socialized medicine. With the passage of these two massive new federal programs, healthcare costs began to rise precipitously, and have been rising ever since, with each new government healthcare “fix” introducing new distortions and disincentives into the healthcare markets. From 1960 to 2013, healthcare spending rose from $147 per person to $9,255 per person, with an average annual increase of 8.1 percent. Per capita income over the same period grew by an average of only 5.7 percent. More tellingly, during this same period there was a massive shift in responsibility for coverage of healthcare costs. In 1960, 77 percent of healthcare costs were covered by private sponsors such as households and businesses, with the other 23 percent covered by government (a surprisingly high percentage pre-Great Society, but these figures include all levels of government). By 2013, private sponsors covered only 57 percent, and government the remaining 43 percent. More specifically, the federal government’s share of healthcare spending rose from 11 percent to 26 percent.
The figures tell an interesting story. Over the last 50 years, healthcare has morphed from a mostly private to a mostly government enterprise, in terms of where and how the money is being spent, and the history of healthcare legislation since 1965 is a litany of greater and greater federal government involvement in the healthcare sector.
In 1973, Congress passed the Health Maintenance Organization Act, which mandated that companies with 25 or more employees offer federally certified HMO coverage. HMOs were envisaged as a way to streamline and contain already rising healthcare costs, by incentivizing preventive care and healthy lifestyle choices, among other things. But while they were billed as private organizations, their economics were always driven by the federal government, which from the beginning has exercised oversight of HMOs via the use of mandates requiring them to produce particular products. But healthcare costs continued to soar, averaging annual increases well above 10 percent throughout the ’70s. And the barrage of new federal regulations continued.
The year 1986 saw the passage of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, whereby the federal government forced hospitals that accept Medicare payments to treat any individual seeking medical treatment, regardless of citizenship status or ability to pay. However, the government does not reimburse hospitals for this service, leaving the Emergency Medical Treatment requirements an unfunded mandate that hospitals must pay for by increasing costs elsewhere.
In 1996, Congress passed the massive Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which protected health insurance for families and individuals who change jobs or become unemployed. By the late ’90s, such legislation was deemed necessary because healthcare costs had risen so high that one major medical procedure not covered by insurance — let alone treatment for chronic, pre-existing conditions that traditional insurance would not cover — would spell financial ruin for most. But those conditions — a healthcare sector in which those outside the system of employer-provided benefits risked a lifetime of debt for injuries sustained in a car accident, for example — were wholly a creation of government interference in the healthcare sector in the first place, by first incentivizing higher consumer demand than the free market once warranted, and then by systematically mandating a broader range of services, at lower cost, than healthcare providers could possibly provide without taxpayer subsidies or much higher prices for other services.
In 2003, Congress passed the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act (shortened to MMA), the largest overhaul of Medicare since its inception. And MMA did not streamline Medicare or defund any part of its provisions. Instead, it massively expanded Medicare coverage to include prescription drugs — paid for, of course, by government subsidies. The cost of new prescription drugs had been shooting up, due mostly to more and more stringent FDA controls and government red tape hindering pharmaceutical R&D. But as it routinely does, government was only too happy to provide a solution (government-subsidized prescription drug coverage) for a government-created problem (exorbitant prices for newer prescription drugs). And the consequences have been predictable: Prescription drug prices continued to soar, driving Medicare costs to Icarian altitudes.
Undeterred, the federal government continued its campaign to solve healthcare costs by creative legislation. The Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act followed in 2005, and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act in 2009, before President Obama’s mammoth Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) ushered in a new era of truly socialized medicine in the United States in 2010.
“Single Payer”
But even the Affordable Care Act is not what left-wing radicals have been seeking for almost a century. The real goal is an innocuously named “single payer” system — in essence, a system in which the government pays for everybody’s healthcare, such as healthcare systems in Canada, Great Britain, and many other wealthy countries. Such a system converts healthcare into a wholly public enterprise — and gives the state total authority over matters of life and death, including abortion and euthanasia. Fully socialized medicine has always been near the top of every socialist’s wish list, because it gives the state full control over the health of its citizens.
It has been suggested, with some plausibility, that ObamaCare was a ruse, programmed to fail so that Americans would more readily accept single-payer healthcare as a solution. Whether or not the spectacular failures of ObamaCare were anticipated by its creators, the Left is already touting a single-payer system as the solution. Robert Reich, ultra-liberal Harvard professor and secretary of labor under President Clinton, is strongly supportive of a single-payer system. In an August article entitled “Why a Single-Payer Health Care System Is Inevitable,” Reich caricatured the insurance industry, insisting that “the problem isn’t Obamacare per se. It lies in the structure of the private markets for health insurance — which creates powerful incentives to avoid sick people and attract healthy ones.” This, of course, is the only rational way that the health insurance industry can work. Insurance companies, like all businesses, need to turn a profit, which means attracting more people who will pay more into the insurance pool than the sick and injured will withdraw from it. But then Reich, and liberals in general, are viscerally opposed to profit-taking (which they usually style “profiteering”). They have no moral qualms, on the other hand, with using the power of the state to extract ever more taxpayer money to fund Utopian projects such as single-payer healthcare systems that, over time, drain treasuries and degrade the quality of the healthcare they are supposed to improve.
ObamaCare’s chief architect, MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, has argued at various times that, whether the Affordable Care Act succeeds or fails, a single-payer system is the final goal. In a candid discussion aired on CSPAN, Gruber indicated that if the ACA “doesn’t work, then we’ll have to revisit single payer. This bill is the last, best hope for private insurance.” But at a forum at Harvard University, Gruber disingenuously tried to explode the “fallacy” that “if Obamacare fails, then next we’ll go to single payer.” Instead, he suggested, the eventuality of a single-payer system depends on the success of ObamaCare, stating emphatically that “if you like single payer, then Obamacare has to succeed.” In other words, heads we win, tails you lose; no matter what happens with ObamaCare, America will have a single-payer system.
One big surprise for the promoters of a single-payer system has been the speed with which ObamaCare has unraveled. Another surprise has been the election of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has promised to repeal ObamaCare, and the defeat of Hillary Clinton, who was expected to continue and build upon ObamaCare. Instead of having a decade or so to plan a smooth transition into fully centralized government-run healthcare, President Obama and his liberal backers in Washington not only face ferocious opposition to ObamaCare, but the Republicans — having retained majority control of both houses of Congress as well as capturing the White House — are now well positioned to scuttle ObamaCare, if that is what they truly intend to do.
But will Trump as well as congressional Republicans who promised to get rid of ObamaCare actually do so? And will they work to replace it with free-market healthcare as opposed to a GOP variant of socialized medicine — ObamaCare-lite, perhaps? Of course, there is no doubt that proponents of single-payer healthcare are not going to give up, even if they are forced to take a temporary step back before advancing their agenda once again. They want full-blown socialized medicine in the United States, and they will eventually get it, unless principled opposition, coupled with a fuller understanding among the voting public of the folly of socialized medicine under any label , forces them into a complete rout.
(A version of this article, written prior to the November 8 elections, appeared in the print edition of The New American .) Please review our Comment Policy before posting a comment
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WASHINGTON — Russian military officials have vociferously denied that their airstrikes have killed civilians in Syria, going so far as to say that eyewitness accounts that a major hospital was bombed last year in the brutal fight to retake Aleppo were mere fabrications. But a new analysis that draws on satellite images, security camera videos, social media and even footage from the Russian television network has challenged Moscow’s claims that its airstrikes on behalf of the Syrian military were an exercise in prudent restraint. The analysis shows that the hospital, contrary to claims by a Russian general, was bombed multiple times. It indicates that Russian aircraft used incendiary munitions and cluster bombs, despite the Kremlin’s denials, and concludes that Syrian forces used chlorine gas on a far greater scale than is commonly believed. The analysis is presented in a report, “Breaking Aleppo,” which is to be made public on Monday by the Atlantic Council, a policy research center. The report comes as President Trump has signaled an interest in forging better connections with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, which could include working more closely with the Russian military in Syria. “Throughout the entire length of the battle for Aleppo, there have been multiple claims of violations of human rights and multiple denials,” said Eliot Higgins, a senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council. “What we have been able to present now is a wealth of evidence confirming the targeting of civilian structures, namely hospitals, which in certain cases has been denied by the Russian Ministry of Defense,” he added. “We have been able to confirm the use in civilian areas of a variety of indiscriminate weapons. ” Syrian forces, backed by Hezbollah fighters, Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force and Russian air power, took Aleppo in late December. The capture of the city was an important milestone that gave the government of President Bashar control over all of Syria’s major cities and strengthened Moscow’s hand in discussions over the country’s future. But while the Atlantic Council report acknowledges that his victory in Aleppo has solidified Mr. Assad’s hold on power, at least for now, it argues that the ruthless strategy and tactics used by the Syrian and Russian governments would make the Syrian president “a poor if not harmful partner” in efforts to defeat the Islamic State and other extremist groups. Experts at the Atlantic Council have long urged the United States to do more to protect civilians in Syria and support the moderate opposition. In the report, the group employs hard evidence, including satellite images from DigitalGlobe, a commercial satellite company, fresh accounts from Syrian activists on the ground and photography published by Russia’s Defense Ministry. Much of the analysis of the photos and social media was done by Mr. Higgins, a researcher who founded the investigative website bellingcat. com. A reconstruction of one key episode — the July 16 bombing of another hospital, known as M2, in the Maadi district — was carried out by Forensic Architecture, a research organization at Goldsmiths, University of London, which was asked to take an independent look at the video and photographic evidence of the bombing. Aleppo was divided in July 2012 between and areas. With the support of Russia, the Assad government began a major offensive in September of last year to take the city. Fragile and temporary were used by the Syrians and their allies to prepare fresh offensives, which, despite Russian and Syrian denials, often targeted civilian areas. One claim that the Atlantic Council report challenges was issued by Lt. Gen. Sergei F. Rudskoi, the head of the operations directorate of the Russian general staff, who insisted in October that no damage had been done to the hospital in a Russian bombing raid. To buttress his case, General Rudskoi displayed satellite photos that he said had been taken between Sept. 24 and Oct. 11. Eyewitness accounts to the contrary, he added, were “mere fakes. ” But a comparison of DigitalGlobe satellite photos taken on Sept. 25 and Oct. 13, the Atlantic Council report notes, shows the emergence of a large bomb crater near the hospital, also known as M10, and damage to the hospital building. Security camera videos from inside the hospital offer corroborating evidence of an Oct. 3 attack, as does a photo from the street by a local resident. The report concludes that there were several reasons to think the attacks on the medical centers were deliberate, including the large number of strikes, the Assad government’s knowledge of the terrain, and the Syrian government’s practice of confiscating medical supplies from humanitarian aid convoys. The M2 hospital was damaged by air and artillery strikes at least a dozen times between June and December. Other photographic evidence points to the use of incendiary munitions and cluster bombs. The television channel, Russia Today, provided some of the evidence in video footage it showed in June that had been taken at a Russian air base near Latakia, Syria. (The version of the report that was later uploaded to YouTube deleted the images of the weapons being mounted on a Russian warplane.) When a Russian team later entered eastern Aleppo to clear away unexploded ordnance, a photograph published by the Russian Defense Ministry showed the remains of cluster bombs, the Atlantic Council report notes. A variety of reports from victims and video on YouTube indicate that Syrian government attacks with chlorine gas increased in the final phase of the battle for Aleppo. One video “showed a chlorine gas cylinder with its labels intact,” the report said. The use of chlorine bombs by the Syrian government, Mr. Higgins said, continued even after reports confirming their use were made by the United Nations and an international watchdog organization in The Hague that enforces the ban on the use of chemical agents in war. | 1 |
Sheena Wagstaff, chairwoman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s modern and contemporary art department, was relatively new on the job in 2013 when Pamela J. Joyner, a prolific art collector and supporter of artists of African descent, invited her on a trip to Washington to visit the studio of the Color Field painter Sam Gilliam. They looked at Mr. Gilliam’s pieces, a series of striking works with a thin stream of paint poured on board. Ms. Wagstaff knew the Met owned a Gilliam work, “Leah’s Renoir” (1979) somewhere in its collection, and the visit “prompted me to take a second look at it. ” Later, Ms. Joyner donated money to buy another Gilliam, “Whirlirama” (1970) and next year there are plans to exhibit both when the Met reinstalls its modern collection. “Pamela is such an informed champion of her artists,” Ms. Wagstaff said. That trip to Washington was one of the many ways that Ms. Joyner, 58, exerts her power as an influence behind the scenes. She has relinquished a successful business career to become what she calls a “ ” collector of a very specific niche: Abstract art by and members of the global African diaspora. Now she leverages her relationships with the Met in New York, the Tate in London, the Art Institute in Chicago and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to help these artists gain traction in the wider world. “It’s no less ambitious than an effort to reframe art history,” said Ms. Joyner, who sees herself as righting a wrong. “First, to include more broadly those who have been overlooked — and, for those with visibility, to steward and contextualize those careers. ” When art collectors publish a book on their treasures, they often include a glamour shot of themselves surrounded by myriad works. But in “Four Generations: The Collection of Abstract Art,” edited by Courtney J. Martin and published last month by Gregory R. Miller, there is no picture of Ms. Joyner anywhere. Instead, there are academic essays by curators and writers, with only a short “question and answer” segment with Ms. Joyner and her husband, Alfred J. Giuffrida. “That’s very deliberate,” Ms. Joyner said recently over coffee in Chelsea. “The focus is on the artists. ” Ms. Joyner, who is based in San Francisco but keeps an apartment in New York, founded and ran a private equity marketing company called Avid Partners. She started the collection 20 years ago and now adds to it with Mr. Giuffrida, an investment executive whom she married in 2004. Her trove, more than 300 works, begins in the 1940s and goes up to “yesterday,” Ms. Joyner said, encompassing four generations. Her definition of “African descent” has broadened to include William Kentridge, the white South African artist whose work has been in Ms. Joyner’s sights for some time. She just acquired her first Kentridge piece the other week in London. As an woman in the corridors of establishment power — an education at Dartmouth and Harvard, and then an entrepreneurial career — she said she knew the feeling of being an outlier. “I’ve operated in environments where some people would construe me to be unusual,” she said. “And I am stitched together in a way that I find myself doing things that aren’t necessarily expected. So I relate to that journey. ” The book’s most telling photograph is from 1950, when Abstract Expressionists gathered in New York to discuss their work. Some were famous — Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell — but the black painter Norman Lewis ( ) whose work Ms. Joyner collects, was also there. “He’s literally at the table, but he gets written out of that history,” Ms. Joyner said. “His first monograph was only published last year. ” She explained some of the factors that kept black artists from gaining a foothold, especially in the 1960s and ’70s. “For a long time, the art world wanted black artists to do black subject matter,” she said. “Art was a political tool. People were viewed as not part of the struggle if they were doing abstraction. ” About 100 artists are in her collection, and Ms. Joyner referred to Lewis and the Washington Color School painter Alma Thomas ( ) as the “Adam and Eve” of the group, stylistically begetting the later generations. (Thomas is the subject of an exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem through Oct. 30.) Ms. Joyner’s largest holding, more than a dozen works, is of works by Mr. Gilliam, who is 82. She also owns pieces by successful midcareer artists like Kara Walker, Glenn Ligon and Mark Bradford, and is scouting out new talents. The artists she is tracking include the Conceptual sculptor Kevin Beasley Hugo McCloud, who uses nontraditional materials in his paintings and Samuel Levi Jones, best known for his works on canvas. The Los Angeles artist Charles Gaines, whose Abstract and Conceptual work is in her collection, said that “Four Generations” crystallized his longtime thinking about the context of his work as part of a continuum. “Pamela’s book is the first legitimate academic effort to theorize some of this material,” Mr. Gaines, 72, said. “It’s a pioneering effort. ” About 60 works from the collection will tour in a museum show, “Solidary and Solitary,” beginning next fall at the Ogden Museum in New Orleans. Ms. Joyner buys about 30 works a year and has never sold one, she said, although she has donated them to museums. “Collecting is a job for Pamela,” said James Rondeau, director and president of the Art Institute of Chicago, in Ms. Joyner’s hometown, where she is a trustee. Over the years, Ms. Joyner has watched prices rise for many artists she has championed. “One curator said that I’m my own worst enemy,” she said with a wry smile. Lorna Simpson, an artist Ms. Joyner has collected and now befriended, noted that Ms. Joyner was no longer alone in her interest in the field. “The market was already starting to move around those pictures when she began,” Ms. Simpson said. “But she was ahead of it. ” Ms. Joyner is the daughter of two teachers, and she used to visit Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” at the Art Institute after attending ballet class. She noted that her mother moved from Mississippi to Chicago, where she attended her first integrated school. “There was a keen sense in my household that you had to be prepared for whatever was going to happen,” Ms. Joyner said. “You needed these literacies, and cultural literacy was one of them. ” Ms. Simpson, who also has family roots in Chicago, said she noted a “black Chicago thing” about Ms. Joyner’s outlook, which she defined as a forthright sense of humor, “a way of seeing the world. ” Ms. Joyner does take breaks from collecting. “I have slumber parties with my girlfriends, and that has included Lorna,” she said. So far, she said she was pleased by the reception to “Four Generations,” and had only one fear: that it might be misunderstood. “The danger of these projects is if people think it’s a politically laden, exercise,” she said, in explaining that race is not the only lens through which to view art. “Those elements are there, but they are not the drivers. Good art is the driver. ” | 1 |
Imagine if scientists discovered that an asteroid was hurtling toward Los Angeles. The possibility has existed on the pages of Hollywood scripts. But in what may be a case of life imitating art, NASA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other government agencies engaged last month in a planetary protection exercise to consider the potentially devastating consequences of a asteroid hitting the Earth. The simulation projected a blast wave by an asteroid strike in 2020 that could level structures across 30 miles, require a mass evacuation of the Los Angeles area and cause tens of thousands of casualties. In 1998, the movie “Armageddon” dramatized an even greater fictional threat. In that blockbuster, a ragtag crew was sent on a mission to drill into an asteroid and set off a nuclear bomb to avert a global catastrophe. As the character Harry Stamper, portrayed by Bruce Willis, summed up to his crewmates: “The United States government just asked us to save the world. ” Don’t expect the need for such Hollywood heroics in real life, however. An asteroid that could cause such damage has no significant chance of striking Earth within the next century, Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s Center for Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. said in an email. The center relies on several telescopes, such as the Catalina Sky Survey at the University of Arizona, to track potentially hazardous asteroids and comets. These objects, which are leftover matter from the formation of planets, can come dangerously close to Earth or cross its trajectory. The center lists 659 asteroids that have some probability of striking the planet, “but none pose a significant threat over the next century, either because the probabilities are extraordinarily small, or the asteroids themselves are extremely small,” Mr. Chodas said. “Nevertheless, we must continue searching for asteroids in case there is one that is heading our way,” he added. That’s where the planetary protection exercise, conducted on Oct. 25 in El Segundo, Calif. comes in. The simulation that projected a strike in 2020 involved representatives from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Department of Energy’s National Laboratories, the Air Force and the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. While a warning of four years may seem like a lot of time, it would probably not be enough to deflect an asteroid of the size and orbit outlined in the simulation, Mr. Chodas said. “Engineers think the simplest way to deflect an asteroid is to build a large spacecraft and simply ram it into the asteroid” years before it is predicted to hit Earth, he said. It could take up to two years to build such a “kinetic impactor” spacecraft and another year or more to reach the asteroid, so in the case of this simulation, an evacuation, not a “deflection mission,” was necessary. For the organizers of Asteroid Day, a global movement that seeks to protect the world from dangerous asteroids, such planning is not out of this world. The group, which maintains that one million asteroids have the potential to strike Earth but that only 1 percent of them have been discovered, was set on Monday to release a letter signed by planetary scientists supporting missions to increase knowledge of asteroids. The group promotes the “100x Declaration,” which calls for increasing the rate of asteroid discoveries to 100, 000 per year in the next 10 years. “The more we learn about asteroid impacts, the clearer it became that the human race has been living on borrowed time,” Brian May, an astrophysicist and a founder and lead guitarist for the rock group Queen, said on the group’s website. Asteroid Day is observed each year on June 30, the anniversary of what is believed to be the largest explosion in human history: an asteroid strike in Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908. An asteroid, believed to be less than 100 feet in diameter, exploded at the altitude of an airliner and flattened tens of millions of trees across 800 square miles. Researchers estimated the explosion was as powerful as a hydrogen bomb and several hundred times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. While there were no official reports of human casualties, hundreds of reindeer were reduced to charred carcasses in the explosion, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported. In more recent times, an asteroid exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013, shattering windows for miles and injuring more than 1, 000 people. Scientists have suggested that the Earth is vulnerable to many more space rocks. In research published in 2013 by the journal Nature, they estimated that such strikes could occur as often as every decade or two instead of an average of once every 100 to 200 years as previously thought. Predictions of a catastrophic crash by a celestial object surface with some regularity. In September 2015, the last eclipse of the year fueled imaginative speculation on the internet that a giant asteroid would hit Earth. In a statement debunking the idea, NASA noted that similar forecasts were made in January and March of that year that two asteroids were on dangerous paths toward Earth. The agency noted that the asteroids flew by Earth “without incident — just as NASA said they would. ” | 1 |
BERLIN (AP) — A threatened attack against a mall in the western city of Essen is linked to the Islamic State extremist group, Germany’s interior minister said Sunday. [Thomas de Maiziere told public broadcaster ARD that Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, had received “tips of an attack and passed them on” to local security authorities in Essen. “The case was evaluated several times … and it couldn’t be eliminated that there could have been a concrete attack at this mall. This was prevented,” de Maiziere said. Daily papers Bild, Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and public broadcaster WDR had reported earlier, citing anonymous security sources, that a German fighter with the IS in Syria had contacted via online messenger a group of fighters — based in Germany and abroad — and tried to motivate them to attack the mall Saturday. De Maiziere also confirmed a connection between “somebody who had traveled there from Germany and indications and assignments from that region. ” The mall in Essen, one of the biggest in Germany, didn’t open Saturday. About 100 heavily armed police officers positioned themselves around the compound to prevent anyone from entering. The apartments of two men were later searched in nearby Oberhausen and they were detained and interrogated. One was released Saturday, police said, with no details. The mall in downtown Essen will open again on Monday because there is no longer an increased threat of an attack, the German news agency dpa reported. Germany has been on the edge following a series of attacks in public places over the past year. When a man went on a rampage with an axe on Friday night at Duesseldorf’s main station and injured 10 people, hundreds of police officers were deployed to the scene, even though it later turned out that he had no links to extremists, but was suffering from psychological problems. | 1 |
WASHINGTON (AP) — National Public Radio commentator Frank Deford has bid listeners goodbye after 37 years of discussing sports on the network. [Deford gave his 1, 656th and final commentary on NPR’s “Morning Edition” Wednesday, ending a run of what he calls “little homilies” that began in 1980. He thanked NPR for allowing him to choose his topics and allowing him “to treat sports seriously, as another branch on the tree of culture. ” The remains a contributing writer at Sports Illustrated, where he got his start in 1962. Deford has also served as a correspondent on HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” since 1995. Deford received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama in 2013 for “transforming how we think about sports. ” | 1 |
For almost a decade, the combination of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert made Comedy Central destination viewing for fans of comedy and barbed political commentary. But over the last 12 months, the and era has not been as easy for the network. On Monday, Comedy Central announced that it was canceling “The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore” because of falling ratings and a distinct lack of buzz. The final episode of Mr. Wilmore’s 11:30 p. m. show — the slot formerly occupied by Mr. Colbert before he left for CBS — will be Thursday. Kent Alterman, Comedy Central’s president, said he informed Mr. Wilmore of the news late last week. The move, Mr. Alterman said in an interview, was made for a simple reason: The show “hasn’t resonated. ” “Even though we’ve given it a year and a half, we’ve been hoping against hope that it would start to click with our audience, but it hasn’t happened, and we haven’t seen evidence of it happening,” Mr. Alterman said. The awkward timing of the cancellation, just 12 weeks before the presidential election, ultimately came down to a contract, Mr. Alterman said. Mr. Wilmore’s deal, along with those of several of the show’s other staff members, was set to expire in a few weeks and the network had to decide now whether to renew or cancel. For the time being, Comedy Central’s 12 a. m. show, “@midnight,” will replace “The Nightly Show” at 11:30 p. m. “The Daily Show” with Trevor Noah remains at 11 p. m. Mr. Alterman said he hoped to name a replacement for “The Nightly Show” sometime next year. The cancellation makes Mr. Wilmore, 54, an early casualty of a television comedy slate that has been vastly reordered over the last two years. With the retirement of David Letterman, Jay Leno and Mr. Stewart, and Mr. Colbert’s move to CBS, a series of new hosts have stepped into the spotlight, including James Corden, Samantha Bee, John Oliver and Mr. Noah. Jimmy Fallon, the host of “The Tonight Show,” has most formidably filled the power vacuum left by his predecessors, earning the highest ratings of any show. While Mr. Stewart was the host of “The Daily Show,” Mr. Wilmore became a fixture as the program’s “senior black correspondent,” offering wry observations on racial issues. In May 2014, Mr. Stewart tapped Mr. Wilmore to get his own show, and Mr. Wilmore formally became Mr. Colbert’s successor when “The Nightly Show” premiered in January 2015. “The Nightly Show” has been known for a signature segment, “Keep It 100,” (slang for telling the truth, no matter the consequences) and for Mr. Wilmore’s often stinging commentary on race and this year’s election. (He called the election to find Barack Obama’s successor “The Unblackening. ”) Though the genre remains heavy on easygoing laughter, any one episode of “The Nightly Show” could occasionally go for prolonged stretches without a single joke, something that intrigued some critics but failed to attract a broader audience. “I’m really grateful to Comedy Central, Jon Stewart and our fans to have had this opportunity,” Mr. Wilmore said in a statement. “But I’m also saddened and surprised we won’t be covering this crazy election or ‘The Unblackening’ as we’ve coined it. And keeping it 100, I guess I hadn’t counted on ‘The Unblackening’ happening to my time slot as well. ” The move by Comedy Central is also the first concession that the transition from Mr. Stewart and Mr. Colbert — both pioneers of a certain kind of political comedy as media criticism and social commentary — to Mr. Noah and Mr. Wilmore has not gone as smoothly as the network had hoped. Though Mr. Alterman strongly defended Mr. Noah’s iteration of “The Daily Show” — next month will be his first anniversary as host — both Mr. Noah and Mr. Wilmore have failed to capture the critical praise that rivals like Ms. Bee, Mr. Corden and Mr. Oliver have enjoyed. This year, for the first time in 16 years, “The Daily Show” was not nominated for an Emmy in the best variety show category. Mr. Noah and Mr. Wilmore have also lost a good portion of the audience that used to tune in to Comedy Central between 11 p. m. and midnight. “The Daily Show” had an average of 2. 1 million viewers a night in Mr. Stewart’s final year as host, while Mr. Noah’s audience has averaged 1. 3 million, according to data from Nielsen. And Mr. Wilmore has lost more than half the audience that he inherited. In Mr. Colbert’s final year as host of “The Colbert Report,” he had an average audience of 1. 7 million viewers, but in Mr. Wilmore’s first year, that viewership fell to an average of 922, 000 viewers, according to Nielsen. This year, the total has fallen to 776, 000 viewers a night. Likewise, in the demographic most important to Comedy Central — young men — he has not made a dent. In recent months, Mr. Wilmore has even started losing to the show that is on after his, “@midnight. ” Mr. Wilmore’s most visible role in the last year may have been his turn as host of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. But reviews for his act were decidedly mixed, and the exposure did not result in a ratings bounce. Mr. Alterman said that he had hoped that there would be a ratings surge — particularly around the political conventions — and that the decision to cancel “The Nightly Show” was a recent one. “We were hoping that we would get a turnaround along the way including the wild, wild two weeks of the conventions,” he said. “We just haven’t seen it on any level from the general conversation to ratings to any sort of traction on social media platforms. ” That stands in contrast, he said, to what the network has seen regarding Mr. Noah. Calling the perception that Mr. Noah is struggling “a myth,” Mr. Alterman pointed to the show’s strong performance on Hulu — though he is not allowed to disclose figures, he said. Mr. Noah’s show is the No. 2 show among young adults ages 18 to 34, Mr. Alterman said, and his ratings have grown among to men. Mr. Alterman said he “couldn’t be happier” with Mr. Noah’s performance. “In the last couple of weeks — leading up to the conventions and especially the conventions — we feel like Trevor got to a whole new level in terms of having a strong voice and point of view,” he said. “It’s been no surprise to us. We expected him to take time to find his rhythm and find his way. ” It’s unclear whether Mr. Wilmore will stay on with Comedy Central — “We haven’t even addressed that,” Mr. Alterman said — but he is involved in other projects. In addition to developing ABC’s comedy “” he is an executive producer for HBO’s coming comedy “Insecure. ” | 1 |
The Anatomy of Crisis and the Decline of US Empire Submitted by Danny Haiphong on Tue, 11/08/2016 - 12:18 Tweet Widget by Danny Haiphong
There are multiple dimensions to the crisis that afflicts U.S. imperialism. The latest election is evidence of a crisis of legitimacy for the ruling parties. Americans are estranged from a government that spies on every one its citizens – and on the rest of the world, too. “Unemployment, poverty, racist state repression, and war are all the system has to offer.” Unable to escape a 40-year economic slump, the U.S. instead plots the destruction of its rivals. The Anatomy of Crisis and the Decline of US Empire by Danny Haiphong
“ The vast majority of oppressed communities, particularly Black workers, have seen their labor become disposable in a post-industrial society.”
Whether one analyzes the economic, military, or political spheres of US imperialism, one thing is abundantly clear. The very fabric of the United States is in deep crisis. The crisis is largely misunderstood by the vast majority of working and oppressed people living under it. But a specter haunts the US and it isn't anything like Hollywood's scary movies. That specter is the possibility that the people will become a conscious force of opposition to the crisis and seek to dismantle the system of capitalist empire that governs it.
Crises are genuinely thought of in economic terms. The economic base of capitalism is indeed suffering from protracted economic crisis. The US capitalist economy, and thus the world capitalist economy pegged to its hip, entered a period of stagnation in the mid to late 1970s. What followed was a slowdown in production facilitated by the increased monopolization, financialization, and increased technological capacity of the system. Capitalism's source of profit, labor, was now being exploited by an apparatus too big to expand the profits of the system without intensified exploitation. The aftermath of capitalism's periodic collapses from overproduction and under consumption have been characterized ever since by a complete and total assault on all workers.
“Wages have declined or remained stagnant for nearly four decades.”
The conditions of the crisis speak for themselves. Workers in the US, and the entire Western world for that matter, have seen conditions rapidly deteriorate as the capitalist system has sought to maximize profits in the face of productive slowdown. Free trade agreements such as NAFTA have given corporations the freedom to eliminate production domestically in order to seek a better deal internationally. Wages have declined or remained stagnant for nearly four decades . Unemployment has become a permanent fixture of life for millions and nearly one of two people in the US are considered poor or "near poor."
At this time, the US is a low-wage capitalist economy dominated by service oriented, precarious employment. Racism has played a large part in the disparity inherent under these conditions. The wealth gap between Black America and White America is larger than it was in the Civil rights era. Not only has Black America been the target of racist housing policies from predatory lenders leading up to the 2008 crisis, but the burden of privatization and austerity has been directly aimed at Black families. Hedge funds, for example, have used working class Black communities as the guinea pig to test the effectiveness of massive school closures and teacher layoffs as well as the expansion of charter schools. Thousands of Black teachers have lost their jobs as a result to the mostly white demographic of Teach for America corps members.
“ The wealth gap between Black America and White America is larger than it was in the Civil rights era.”
However, it is not enough to understand the crisis of capitalism through an economic lens. The crisis possesses many forms. Repressive state activity has become more pronounced, especially in the aftermath of the War on Terror. Racist repression in particular has intensified as the vast majority of oppressed communities, particularly Black workers, have seen their labor become disposable in a post-industrial society. Nearly 1100 Black Americans are killed every year by law enforcement all over the country. The war on Black and indigenous peoples that laid the foundation of the United States has only become more severe, as evidenced by the fact that one of every eight prisoners in the world is a Black American. The Dakota Access Pipeline struggle has shown that not even the concentration camps forced upon indigenous people are safe from the profit-seeking tentacles of the crisis-ridden system.
And every American can guarantee that civil liberties are a thing of the past. The NSA, FBI, and the rest of the intelligence community possess access to the entire population's mail and phone devices. A massive surveillance dragnet accountable to no one but the ruling class allows the US state to keep tabs on whoever resists the conditions of the crisis. War at home is ultimately a reflection of the broader war being waged around the world. The US capitalist system is a global system with the largest military state in human history. War has thus played a critical role in the response to system crisis.
The US military acts as the enforcement arm of neo-colonialism and capitalist exploitation around the world. It has expanded into nearly every African state through the US African Command (AFRICOM). The US military state continues to support fascism in Ukraine and fundamentalist Islam in places like Saudi Arabia and Qatar. It has destabilized a number of nations in the last decade alone, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. The US has collaborated with NATO, Israel, and Turkey to militarily encircle Russia and China militarily and sponsor terror groups responsible for the massacres in Syria.
“The US imperialist system is predicated on the expansion of global capital by any means at its disposal, including the use military force to clear the way for corporate plunder.
But the US military is in crisis too. It is plagued by a disillusioned rank and file and the inevitability of a global confrontation with Russia and China if it continues on the current course. The demands of a stagnating global capitalist economy and the ever-increasing exploitation of masses of working people offer no potential for a reversal of fortune. The US imperialist system is predicated on the expansion of global capital by any means at its disposal, including the use military force to clear the way for corporate plunder. The US military state has grown both in size and in violence in order to prevent the global shift of power currently underway.
Russia and China have become the number one challengers to US global hegemony. China's economy will soon surpass that of the US and Russia's recovery from post-Soviet collapse has propelled the Putin-led nation back onto the global scene as a major factor in world affairs. These two powers are becoming increasingly close both economically and militarily. This has made the US ruling class increasingly nervous in the midst of economic decline. To maintain hegemony, the US military state set the world ablaze through endless war in every region of the world that dares to seek ties with Russia and China.
At this point, the US imperialist system cannot peacefully compete in any way with its so-called rivals to the East. The contradictions of the system have become unmanageable. Unemployment, poverty, racist state repression, and war are all the system has to offer. Another economic collapse is on the horizon. Crisis is built into the global capitalist system's constant drive to accumulate profit in the face of global misery. The decline of US imperialism and empire will not change regardless of the election. What is sure to change is the mass reaction to the decline as life becomes more and more unbearable under the grip of empire. Danny Haiphong is an Asian activist and political analyst in the Boston area. He can be reached at [email protected] | 0 |
Ellicott City, Md. a historic town west of Baltimore, was devastated by flooding on Saturday night after more than six inches of rain fell in just two hours, sending a current down its Main Street and leaving at least two people dead. Officials and witnesses said the floodwaters rushed through the downtown area after torrential rain fell between 7 and 9 p. m. It ripped up sidewalks, gutted many of the town’s quaint shops and carried off vehicles, depositing some of them blocks away. The body of a woman was recovered from the nearby Patapsco River early on Sunday, and the body of a man was also found, said Mark Miller, a spokesman for Howard County, where Ellicott City is the county seat. “This was a different type of flooding than you would normally get when just the Patapsco rises — far more devastating,” Mr. Miller said. “It’s like the water was a piston. The water came through with such force. ” Gov. Larry Hogan and Representative Elijah E. Cummings visited the destruction early on Sunday. Mr. Hogan signed an executive order declaring a state of emergency for Howard County. Mr. Cummings, who has an office on Main Street, said in a statement that the flooding had “devastated countless businesses and residents in Ellicott City. ” “Recovering from this disaster will be long and difficult,” he said. The downtown area has been evacuated and closed off while emergency crews assess the safety of the buildings there. County officials asked residents to be patient during what some anticipated would be a monthslong rebuilding process. Founded in 1772 as a mill town, Ellicott City has for the past several decades catered to tourists with its historic charm and antique shops, said Shawn Gladden, the executive director of the Howard County Historical Society. The town’s location in the Patapsco River Valley has made it susceptible to flooding. On Sunday, some of its roughly 65, 000 residents were already drawing comparisons to the two biggest floods in its recorded history, the flood of 1868 and flooding caused by Hurricane Agnes in 1972. “They call them the floods,” Mr. Gladden said. “And this one may rival that. ” The National Weather Service had issued warnings about potential floods on Saturday, and at one point sent a sharply worded bulletin: “This is a particularly dangerous situation. Seek higher ground now!” Despite the warnings, the ferocity of the waters came as a surprise to many workers and residents in downtown Ellicott City, trapping them where they were. Inside Bean Hollow, the water rose swiftly to about three feet. With no time to flee, the coffee shop’s workers scrambled to an apartment on the second floor. “This was a true flash flood,” said Jim Bolton, who has owned Bean Hollow with his wife for about 14 years. “By the time people realized there was a potential hazard, it was far too late for anyone to do anything. ” Mr. Bolton said he expected the rebuilding of Ellicott City to be a long road. “It’s decimated right now,” he said. “But it’s certainly had its share of floods and fires and all sorts of madness over the years. It will rise again. ” | 1 |
‘McCarthyism’ Rides Again. And It's Again Poisoning the Foundations of a Free Society in the US
Smears and intimidation vs. free debate, civil liberties and peace Originally appeared at Anti War
I’m often taken to task by some of my readers for characterizing the current anti-Russian hysteria as “McCarthyism.” After all, they say, Sen. Joseph McCarthy was right – there were, indeed, high-ranking individuals in the US government covertly sympathetic to the Soviet regime. And, yes, we now know that many of these were working directly for Soviet intelligence.
This was the predictable result of our wartime alliance with Russia: combined with the left-wing proclivities of the Roosevelt administration, and the “Popular Front” politics of the Communist Party USA during this period, it’s surprising that Soviet penetration of US government circles wasn’t more extensive than it turned out to be.
In any case, what we are seeing today with the revival of the cold war mindset is in many ways the complete opposite of the “old” McCarthyism: the target may be the same – Russia as the bogeyman de jour – but the methods and sources of the neo-McCarthyites are quite different.
To begin with, the “old” McCarthyism was a movement generated from below, and aimed at the elites: the “new” McCarthyism is a media construct, generated from above and created by the elites.
The average American, while hardly a Putin groupie, is not lying awake at night worrying about the “Russian threat.” The fate of Ukraine, not to mention Crimea, is so far from his concerns that the distance can only be measured in light-years. And when some new scandal breaks as a result of WikiLeaks releasing the emails of Hillary Clinton’s inner circle, Joe Sixpack doesn’t think “Oh, that just proves Julian Assange is a Kremlin toady!” WikiLeaks is merely confirming what Joe already knew: that Washington is a cornucopia of corruption.
The Acela corridor elite, on the other hand, does lie awake at night wondering how they can pull off a regime change operation that will eliminate the “threat” represented by Putin once and for all. Ever since the Russian leader started mocking Washington’s hegemonic pretensions, criticizing the US invasion of Iraq, and pointing out how US-funded Syrian “rebels” are merely jihadists in “moderate” clothing, Putin has been in their crosshairs – and the propaganda war has been relentless.
This barrage has gone into overdrive with the launching of the Clinton campaign’s effort to smear Donald Trump as a Kremlin “puppet. ” You have to go all the way back to the earliest days of our Republic, when pro-British supporters of Alexander Hamilton were sliming the Jeffersonian Democrats with accusations that they were agents of the French revolutionaries, to come up with the historical equivalent of Hillary’s “you’re a puppet” charges directed at Trump. And the media, being an auxiliary of the Clinton campaign, has been filled with even more virulent screeds purporting to “prove” Trump is the Manchurian candidate .
One way in which the new McCarthyism is very much like the old is that it threatens to poison the intellectual atmosphere in this country, endangering the very foundations of our free society and academic standards of free inquiry and debate. Emblematic of this trend is a tweet authored by Dan Drezner , professor of international relations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and a foreign affairs columnist at theWashington Post, in which he commented on a talk he heard at the Valdai conference, a regular event held in Russia focusing on Russo-American relations:
“At Valdai, John Mearsheimer says the Chinese and Russians love his realism. ‘I’m much more comfortable in Moscow than Washington!’"
Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of political science at the University of Chicago, the author of six books, and the leading theoretician of the school of international relations known as “offensive realism.” He is, in short a scholar of some renown – and yet Drezner, considerably lower on the academic totem pole, feels empowered to slime him as somehow disloyal. How did we come to this sad state of affairs?
The poisoning of a society with propaganda used to take some time: today, the process is much faster, due to technological innovation, and especially the rise of the Internet and the growth of social media. In the old days, the McCarthyites had to rely on print media and radio to smear those “pinko college professors” and drive them out of academia. Today, someone like Drezner can sign in to their Twitter account and snark about how John Mearsheimer is more at home in Moscow and Beijing than in the good ol’ US of A, and his thousands of Twitter followers get the idea – that Mearsheimer is somehow anti-American – in an instant (and in only twenty words!).
The “old” McCarthyism was dangerous because, in some cases, people were targeted unfairly: anybody with dissident views was suspect, and especially anyone with vaguely left-wing opinions. And McCarthyism, which in its original form saw the main danger to America to be internal, soon morphed into something else entirely: a movement that sought a military confrontation with the Soviet Union. Indeed, it was McCarthyism that was the bridge that allowed neoconservative interventionists to invade the conservative movement and displace the “isolationism” of the Old Right.
The new McCarthyism poses new dangers that are, perhaps, more virulent than the old version and will have more immediate consequences. The above-mentioned smear of Prof. Mearsheimer encapsulates what the dangers are to academia: in the 1950s, left-wing professors had at least some protection from populist McCarthyites in that academics tended to jealously guard their turf and protect their own from outside incursions. Today, with the elites pushing Russophobia, those protections fall by the wayside.
Furthermore, the political class, where the new McCarthyism is rampant, has power – that is, it can translate its prejudices into policy more readily than any mass movement such as the one led by “Tail-gunner Joe.” If Hillary Clinton and her advisors really believe that Putin is out to defeat her and elect her opponent, then what can we expect will happen to US-Russian relations if and when she’s elected?
And while the American people aren’t exactly up in arms over the prospect of a “Red Dawn” scenario unfolding in the streets of America’s cities, the “mainstream” media’s longstanding anti-Russian crusade is clearly having an effect. A Pew poll shows that anti-Russian sentiment in the United States rose “from 43% to 72% from 2013 to 2014.” The “trickle down” effects of war propaganda work just as effectively as the “trickle-up” model, if not more so.
The real world consequences of a conflict with Russia, a nuclear-armed state, are fearsome to even contemplate: the political class in this country is playing a dangerous game of chicken, and they’re playing it with our lives and the lives of every person on earth.
Aside from the prospect of World War III, the effects of the new McCarthyism will be to distort our politics, infect our culture, and threaten our constitutional rights as Americans. It is entirely possible that a new witch-hunt will be launched by the Russia-haters in our midst, with a revived “Un-American Activities Committee” replete with congressional hearings, as well as “investigations” by law enforcement of “pro-Russian”“subversive” activities. With the media acting as a cheerleading section for these official and unofficial arbiters of political correctness, our future as a free society will be increasingly in doubt.
Finally, the new McCarthyism underscores the cynicism, opportunism, and downright viciousness of our political class, and especially the media, which has done nothing to question and everything to bolster the Russophobic propaganda put out there by self-serving lobbyists and politicians. It truly is a sickening sight, made all the more so by the self-professed “liberalism” of those who are in the vanguard of this revolting trend.
What these folks should remember is that the “old” McCarthyism was in large part a reaction to the “ Brown scare ” of the Roosevelt era, when “isolationist” conservatives were smeared as “agents of Hitler,” driven out of their jobs, and in some instances charged with “sedition.” This bout of war hysteria was driven, first of all, by the Communist Party and its media contingent, which had become more-patriotic-than-thou when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union and the Communist line on the war changed overnight. However, when the world situation changed again, and the Soviets were in Washington’s sights, the tables were abruptly turned – and Sen. McCarthy’s crusade took off.
The same thing can happen again. If the consequences of the new McCarthyism come to fruition in an armed conflict with Russia, or even a nuclear exchange, as Americans emerge from the radioactive wreckage they’ll be looking for someone to blame – and scapegoats won’t be that hard to find. | 0 |
November 25, 2016 - Fort Russ News -
- Christelle NEAN in DONiPRESS, translated by Tom Winter -
СПАСИБО! Thank you!
Donetsk 25 Nov 2016 The program of the third day of visit of the French group was totally turned around by the always moving news of the Donbass. That was the day of the funeral commemoration of Commander Motorola, murdered three days earlier during a bomb attack in the elevator of his building.
Our visitors took part in this moving ceremony, placing flowers near his coffin, and joining the people gathered in the center of Donetsk to bid farewell to one of the most emblematic and well-known commanders of the People's Republic of Donetsk (RPD).
They saw with their own eyes the incredible number of ordinary citizens who came to pay homage to this hero of the republic. The first approximate figures of 30,000 people were adjusted later to at least 50,000 people who were there to bid farewell and show their attachment to this commander who had come to help the people of Donbass to defend their freedom.
Billboards were installed in the city center with the photo of Commander Motorola and the phrase "Heroes do not die." It was only proper that we go immediately after the funeral to the high place of commemoration of the heroes fallen for the defense of freedom: the hill of Saur Mogila. What better place than this height, twice the subject of intense fighting, and twice retaken at great cost by soldiers defending freedom, to ponder on all those who have, like Commander Motorola, sacrificed their lives for this ideal?
The memorial is no more than a field of ruins, yet several times a year people come here by thousands to celebrate, for example, the Liberation of the Donbass in 1943 or the Victory Ceremonies of 1945. The tombs both at the foot and at top of the hill are there to remind that during the present war, again, the defenders of the Donbass have paid a heavy price for this freedom that they cherish so much.
"It's here in the Donbass that they are fighting for freedom, and in the West they're called terrorists," Roxane said.
The people of Donbass, like the people of Russia, cultivate and maintain their memory and their history, so that the errors of the past can no longer be repeated. Follow us for the interview of Antoine and Roxane at the end of this day full of emotions, with their comments on the soul of the Donbass, who are the real terrorists in this war, the support of the Donbass population towards their army, and what their journey has already brought them at the end of these three days:
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BNI Store Oct 31 2016 “He is a pig,” says morbidly obese and tattooed “model” while wearing a ‘Dump Trump’ T-shirt in Times Square Tess Holliday is using her platform as a jumbo-sized so-called “model” to speak out against Donald Trump’s treatment of women. The 31-year-old took to Instagram to share a photo of herself posed with her hands on her mega hips wearing the ‘Respect Women #Dump Trump’ shirt. ( Hey, why wasn’t she arrested for causing visual pollution in Times Square? ) UK Daily Mail ‘Respect Women,’ she captioned the image. ‘Our bodies are not for you to stare at or touch without our consent. Women are not just sexual objects, women are not here for your consumption. (One problem you don’t have, cupcake) The 31-year-old took to Instagram over the weekend to share an ad of herself posing in New York City’s Times Square while modeling a New Look Fashion T-shirt that reads: ‘Respect Women #Dump Trump.’ So many of us have a sexual assault story, myself included,’ she continued. (Gee, were you 100 pounds lighter then?) ‘To endorse someone who not just condones this behavior but actively engages in it would be an awful step backwards for women not just in the US but across the world. ‘Also might I add I’m NOT telling you who to vote for. Trump is a pig & that’s a fact.’ (But obviously, you are supporting a pig – Hillary Clinton – who has verbally abused all the women who were sexually assaulted/raped by her husband) Last week Tess made an appearance (above left) alongside model Iskra Lawrence and Orange is the New Black star Danielle Brooks at Refinery29’s Every Beautiful Body Symposium in New York City, wearing a figure-hugging dress. In celebration of Halloween, Tess also posted a throwback photo of her and Nick dressed as Miss Argentina and Beetlejuice from the 1988 film. ‘But how do I top last year?’ she wrote. We pulled these costumes off in two days, and I’m pretty darn proud.’ There was also a fierce debate about whether or not Tess’ post could be seen as an endorsement for the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and some people who disagreed with her statement attacked the size 22 model for her weight. ‘There is some super hateful stuff on here,’ one woman wrote. ‘And targeting her weight because you disagree? Really? People are crazy, keep up your positive messages Tess! Whatever your political views are, I still love what you represent!’ | 0 |
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