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Recalling that moment four years ago, when Gertrudis Torres learned she had Stage 3 breast cancer, still causes her breathing to become heavy and tears to well up. The unthinkable diagnosis was another blow to Ms. Torres’s family. Two years before, in 2010, her husband, Pedro Ayala, was told that he had throat cancer. Her first thoughts after receiving the news were about her son and daughter. How could they be left alone if their parents died? Who would care for them? “It’s like when you’re playing and somebody grabs ahold of you and you try to move but you can’t,” Ms. Torres, 45, said. “It’s not that you don’t want to. It’s like somebody’s holding you. ” In March 2013, she began chemotherapy at Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center in the Bronx. In May, after years of treatment, her husband died, leaving Ms. Torres to look after their son, Divian, 16, and their daughter, Yeslly, 11. Ms. Torres said she had even more motivation to beat her disease, even as her substantial grief and her weakened physical strength made the challenge seem impossible at times. “I don’t think cancer kills the people,” she said. “It’s how they take it. ” During her treatments, she observed other cancer patients whose faces bore witness to the horrors of the disease. She told herself she would not end up like that. “I know we’re all going to die one day,” Ms. Torres said. “But when they say, ‘You have cancer,’ all people think, ‘You’re going to die now.’ And the cancer takes them. ” Every day before she went to the hospital for treatment, she dressed up with vigor and excitement, as if going to a fancy dinner or a happening nightclub, donning stylish wigs and makeup. “I would try to be strong,” Ms. Torres said. Her cancer has been in remission since 2014, but Ms. Torres stays active to fight off the remaining physical pain. On occasion, she and Divian play basketball at a park in the Bronx. Most mornings, Ms. Torres takes long walks around a running track, a form of meditative exercise. However, tight finances have become an inescapable part of the family’s life. Ms. Torres has been out of work for years. She left a job as a cashier when her husband fell ill, and it was difficult to return to work when she started her own treatment. The family receives $935 in Social Security disability payments every month. There is no room for extra expenses. In January, Yeslly came home from school with a note asking for $200 to pay her graduation dues. She attends Community School 61, a Children’s Aid Society school in the Bronx. The Children’s Aid Society is one of eight organizations supported by The New York Times’s Neediest Cases Fund. Unsure how she could afford the $200, Ms. Torres contacted the school for help. The Children’s Aid Society used $170 in Neediest funds to help. The agency previously assisted the family last December, giving them $300 in gift cards to buy clothing and other necessities. After a caseworker visited the Torreses’ home earlier this year, an additional $900 was used to buy two new beds. Ms. Torres and Yeslly had been sharing a twin bed, while Divian slept on a sofa. The agency also used Neediest funds to buy them a kitchen table. “Thank God we got a table,” Ms. Torres said. “We can go to the table and eat together. Pray first, then eat the food. ” In September, the family moved into a bigger apartment in the Bronx. Ms. Torres said she remained optimistic about her health and the family’s future. She said she hoped her children would attend college. Ms. Torres has career ambitions of her own. She plans to work on getting her high school equivalency diploma, and wants to become a medical assistant, a desire she has had for more than a year. Despite her hardships, and the loss of her husband that still weighs heavily on her and her children, Ms. Torres wakes up each morning thanking God for his blessings. She tells Divian and Yeslly to be grateful for another day of life and that fear has no place in their home. “It’s all about having a positive ” Ms. Torres said. “Whatever you think, that’s what you attract. Negative attracts negative. Positive attracts positive. ” | 1 |
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WASHINGTON — Moving quickly after his first choice for labor secretary withdrew his nomination amid controversy, President Trump made a seemingly safe selection on Thursday in R. Alexander Acosta, a Florida law school dean and former assistant attorney general. In Mr. Acosta, Mr. Trump has chosen a nominee with deep experience in labor relations, law and education. The pick answers concerns about the lack of diversity in the Trump administration, in that Mr. Acosta would be the first Hispanic in the president’s cabinet. And his chances of being confirmed appear relatively high, since Mr. Acosta, currently the dean of Florida International University’s law school, has made it through the Senate process three times for different roles. “Alex is going to be a key part of achieving our goal of revitalizing the American economy, manufacturing and labor force,” Mr. Trump said as he called on the Senate to confirm Mr. Acosta swiftly. A Miami native, Mr. Acosta’s most relevant experience to the job of labor secretary is his time at the National Labor Relations Board, where he was a member from 2002 to 2003, under President George W. Bush. Mr. Bush later tapped Mr. Acosta to be assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil rights division, one of the highest positions at the agency. He went on to become the United States attorney for the Southern District of Florida, where his office prosecuted the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the terrorism suspect Jose Padilla and founders of the Cali cartel. He achieved the conviction of Charles Taylor Jr. the son of Liberia’s former leader, for torture. His official biography said his office also prosecuted several cases and targeted health care fraud. Mr. Acosta’s record and writings will undergo close scrutiny in the weeks before his confirmation hearing. But some of the most outspoken skeptics of the previous labor nominee, the executive Andrew F. Puzder, have already expressed optimism and about Mr. Acosta. “I am thrilled that at long last, we have a Hispanic in this cabinet,” said Javier Palomarez, president of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, who was critical of Mr. Trump during the presidential campaign. Labor groups that assailed Mr. Puzder as being applauded the choice of Mr. Acosta. “Unlike Andy Puzder, Alexander Acosta’s nomination deserves serious consideration,” said Richard L. Trumka, president of the A. F. L. . I. O. trade union. “In one day, we’ve gone from a chain C. E. O. who routinely violates labor law to a public servant with experience enforcing it. ” Mr. Puzder withdrew his name from consideration on Wednesday after Republican senators began turning against him. They were concerned about a slew of accusations that had surfaced recently, ranging from Mr. Puzder’s business record to his employment of an undocumented housekeeper to his 1988 divorce. If confirmed, Mr. Acosta could also help smooth the relationship between Mr. Trump and American Muslims who have accused him of fomenting religious discrimination. Testifying before Congress in 2011 at a hearing about the civil rights of American Muslims, Mr. Acosta made a forceful appeal that they should be viewed as any other American community would. “Now is a good time to remember that no community has a monopoly on any particular type of crime,” he said. Despite the early praise Mr. Acosta has received, it is far from certain that his confirmation will be easy. Progressive groups, such as the Democratic “super PAC” American Bridge, were busy on Thursday digging through his background and looking for stains on his record. One area of potential concern is a 2008 investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general, which looked into whether hiring practices and case assignments at the civil rights division he led were based on political affiliations. A report on the case found that Mr. Acosta had ignored warning signs about such problems. Another pitfall could be a 2004 letter to a federal judge in Ohio that Mr. Acosta sent while he was at the Justice Department, justifying “vote caging” in the presidential election. The practice, in which private citizens in Ohio challenged the eligibility of voters, was widely seen as a Republican strategy to disenfranchise minorities. Both issues came up when Mr. Acosta was interviewing to become dean of the University of Florida’s law school in 2014. Michelle Jacobs, a professor at the school, said that she and her colleagues were uncomfortable with how Mr. Acosta explained the case. She also said Mr. Acosta had described paying lip service to lawmakers when called to testify before Congress. “I feel that he lacked some transparency, and he didn’t show a full appreciation for ethical obligations,” Ms. Jacobs said. “We felt it deeply enough that we eliminated him from the list of candidates. ” But colleagues of Mr. Acosta’s at Florida International University said he was widely liked as a leader of the law school, striking a healthy balance of being without micromanaging. A father of two daughters and a lover of science fiction, Mr. Acosta is known within his department for being humble and genial. “I was actually stunned that Donald Trump would make such a sensible choice,” said José Gabilondo, an F. I. U. law professor who has worked closely with Mr. Acosta. “He’s a very mature person with a sense of decorum, and I think he’ll make a very big contribution to the administration. ” | 1 |
(Before It's News)
This article was written by Michael Snyder and originally published at Economic Collapse blog .
Editor’s Comment: In particular with electronic voting, the opportunity to flip votes and steal elections is almost unstoppable and will be very difficult to hold accountable. Nonetheless, that is exactly what activists in Texas and other key states should focus on. After decades of solid “red state” status, they are now talking openly about Hillary winning the Lone Star State and flipping it blue… despite being perhaps the most despised, unlikable and untrustworthy presidential candidate in modern history.
Take a look at the electoral college, and the shades of ‘blue and red states’ as things have been… if Team Hillary is able to steal Texas, there will be no way for Trump to win 270 electoral college, even if he wins Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and other swing states. Perhaps this has been their secret weapon all along, and the reason that she has been so arrogant throughout the entire campaign:
These are dangerous times, and the establishment – after systematically denying the voice of the people on many fronts – is now making a huge gamble at holding onto power even in the face of obvious fraud. Will there be any legitimacy left in this country? And what happens if/when this election is stolen and everyone knows it?
It Is Happening Again! Voting Machines Are Switching Votes From Donald Trump To Hillary Clinton
by Michael Snyder
Is the 2016 election in the process of being stolen? Just a few weeks ago I issued a major alert warning that this exact sort of thing might happen. Early voting has already begun in many states, and a number of voters in Texas are reporting that the voting machines switched their votes from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton. The odd thing is that none of the other choices were affected when these individuals attempted to vote for a straight Republican ticket. If Hillary Clinton is declared the winner of the state of Texas on election night, a full investigation of these voting machines should be conducted, because there is no way that Donald Trump should lose that state. I have said that it will be the greatest miracle in U.S. political history if Donald Trump wins this election, but without the state of Texas Donald Trump has exactly zero chance of winning. So those living down in Texas need to keep reporting anything unusual that they see or hear when they go to vote.
Most Americans don’t realize this, but the exact same thing was happening during the last presidential election. The state of Ohio was considered to be the key to Mitt Romney’s chances of winning in 2012, and right up to election day the Romney campaign actually believed that they were going to win the state.
Unfortunately for Romney, something funny was going on with the voting machines. In a previous article , I included a Quote: from an Ohio voter that had her vote switched from Mitt Romney to Barack Obama three times …
“I don’t know if it happened to anybody else or not, but this is the first time in all the years that we voted that this has ever happened to me,” said Marion, Ohio, voter Joan Stevens.
Stevens said that when she voted, it took her three tries before the machine accepted her choice to vote for Romney .
“I went to vote and I got right in the middle of Romney’s name,” Stevens told Fox News, saying that she was certain to put her finger directly on her choice for the White House.
She said that the first time she pushed “Romney,” the machine marked “Obama.”
So she pushed Romney again. Obama came up again. Then it happened a third time.
“Maybe you make a mistake once, but not three times,” she told Fox News.
And we did see some very, very strange numbers come out of certain areas of Ohio four years ago.
For example, there were more than 100 precincts in Cuyahoga County in which Barack Obama got at least 99 percent of the vote in 2012.
If that happened in just one precinct that would be odd enough. But the odds of it happening in more than 100 precincts in just one county by random chance are so low that they aren’t even worth mentioning.
And of course this didn’t just happen in Ohio. Similar things were happening all over the country .
The reason why I bring all of this up is to show that there is a pattern. If a fair vote had been conducted, Romney may have indeed won in 2012, and now it appears that voting machines are being rigged again.
In Wichita County, Texas so many people were reporting that their votes were being switched from Trump to Clinton that it made the local newspaper …
Shortly after early voting booths opened Monday in Wichita County, rumors swirled online about possible errors in the process. Several online posts claimed a friend or family member had attempted to vote straight party Republican ticket, but their presidential nomination was switched to the Democratic nominee, Hilary Clinton. None of the local reports were from people who experienced the situation first hand. A Bowie woman posted that a relative who lives in Arlington saw her votes “switched.” The post was shared more than 100,000 times Monday.
And Paul Joseph Watson has written about some specific individuals that are making allegations that their votes for president were switched by the machines. One of the examples that he cited was a Facebook post by Lisa Houlette of Amarillo, Texas …
Gary and I went to early vote today…I voted a straight Republican ticket and as I scrolled to submit my ballot I noticed that the Republican Straight ticket was highlighted, however, the clinton/kaine box was also highlighted! I tried to go back and change and could not get it to work. I asked for help from one of the workers and she couldn’t get it to go back either. It took a second election person to get the machine to where I could correct the vote to a straight ticket. Be careful and double check your selections before you cast your vote! Don’t hesitate to ask for help. I had to have help to get mine changed.
I don’t know about you, but major alarm bells went off in my head when I read that.
A similar incident was reported on Facebook by Shandy Clark of Arlington, Texas …
Hey everyone, just a heads up! I had a family member that voted this morning and she voted straight Republican. She checked before she submitted and the vote had changed to Clinton! She reported it and made sure her vote was changed back. They commented that It had been happening. She is trying to get the word out and asked that we post and share. Just want everyone’s vote to be accurate and count. Check your vote before you submit!
And of course they weren’t the only ones reporting vote switching. It turns out that lots of other Texans have also experienced this phenomenon …
So is there a serious problem with the voting machines?
According to Breitbart , one county in Texas has already removed all electronic voting machines and has made an emergency switch to paper ballots…
Chambers County election officials have executed an emergency protocol to remove all electronic voting machines available during early voting until a software update can be completed to correct problems experienced by straight-ticket voters .
Chambers County Clerk Heather Hawthorne told Breitbart Texas Tuesday morning that all electronic voting was temporarily halted until her office completes a “software update” on ES&S machines that otherwise “omit one race” when a straight ticket option is selected for either major party. The Texas 14 th Court of Appeals race was reported to be the contest in which voters commonly experienced the glitch.
Let’s keep a very close eye on this. If the state of Texas ends up in Trump’s column on election night, perhaps no harm has been done.
But if Trump loses Texas there is no possible way that he will be able to make up those 38 electoral votes somewhere else.
Despite what the mainstream media is saying, the truth is that election fraud is very real. Just the other day, WND published an article that contained a list of documented cases of election fraud in 23 different states . And Devvy Kidd just authored a piece that pointed out that there are 24 million voter registrations in this country that are “no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate“…
In 2012 the highly respected Pew Research Center exposed the sickening state of voter rolls in this country:
Nearly 2 million deceased registered to vote
Close to 3 million registered in multiples states
Approximately 24 million—one of every eight—voter registrations in the United States are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate
More than 1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as voters
Approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state
But despite everything you just read, the mainstream media is trying very hard to prop up faith in the integrity of the process. In fact, just today CNN came out with an article entitled “ Poll: Most see a Hillary Clinton victory and a fair count ahead “…
Almost 7 in 10 voters nationwide say they think Hillary Clinton will win the presidency next month, but most say that if that happens, Donald Trump will not accept the results and concede, according to a new CNN/ORC poll.
Americans overall are more confident that the nation’s votes for president will be cast and counted accurately this year than they were in 2008. Whatever the outcome, however, nearly 8 in 10 say that once all the states have certified their vote counts, the losing candidate has an obligation to accept the results and concede to the winner.
Unfortunately, CNN does not have much credibility left at this point, and it is getting harder and harder to believe the polls that are being put out by the mainstream media.
And the mainstream media would also have us believe that if evidence of election fraud does emerge that it will be because the Russians have made it up …
U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials are warning that hackers with ties to Russia’s intelligence services could try to undermine the credibility of the presidential election by posting documents online purporting to show evidence of voter fraud.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said however, that the U.S. election system is so large, diffuse and antiquated that hackers would not be able to change the outcome of the Nov. 8 election.
But hackers could post documents, some of which might be falsified, that are designed to create public perceptions of widespread voter fraud, the officials said.
Now that is a real “conspiracy theory”, and it would be incredibly funny if all of this wasn’t so serious.
During this election season, if you see or hear anything unusual about voting in your area, please report it.
The American people should be allowed to make a free and fair choice, and anyone that attempts to alter an election is committing a crime against all of us.
And let’s watch the state of Texas very carefully. If it goes blue, you will know that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. | 0 |
Of course, reality intruded. Fabulousness is no barricade against politics. Reacting to President Trump’s executive order banning the entry of citizens from seven nations and refugees from any country, designers who are showing their work during the four days of men’s fashion in New York expressed dissent in gestures that, while mainly small and symbolic, added gravitas to the usual antics and overall frivolity. models in Robert James’s show at the New York Men’s Day event on Monday carried placards with pointed messages: “Made in a Sanctuary City” and “Bridges Not Walls. ” At a Private Policy presentation that afternoon, members of a multiracial cast clad in quilted bomber jackets and hot pants had words like “terrorist” stenciled on foreheads or cheeks. Taking a bow at the end of a show on Tuesday, in which models’ faces were obscured behind neoprene ski masks, the designer Robert Geller wore a sweatshirt that read: “Immigrant. ” And in a spirited introduction to Nick Graham’s collection on Tuesday, presented against a giant projection of Earth seen from space, Bill Nye — the “Science Guy” — addressed deniers with a paean to our fragile atmosphere. You only have to go backstage to see models from nearly every point on the globe — India, Mongolia, China and Sudan were just some of the countries that have been represented here this week — and to understand that fashion is a plurality undertaking. Sure, the panoply of multiethnic faces is a relatively new addition to a business not always known for welcoming diversity. Yet behind the scenes, fashion has always been global, as Fern Mallis, the former executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, said Tuesday afternoon. “You have no idea how many visa forms I filled out in my career,” Ms. Mallis said, referring to her work on behalf of the craftspeople from distant countries whose skills were essential if American designers’ visions were to be realized. The garment industry itself was built by immigrants, Ms. Mallis noted of a business that continues to be one of the city’s top economic drivers. societal anxieties seemed to inject themselves into the proceedings in other ways. Take a Krammer Stoudt presentation frankly inspired by transients, one in which the baggy layers often worn by “crustys,” or gutter punks, were used as a form of armoring. Or look at the N. Hoolywood show inspired by the designer Daisuke Obana’s and the stylist Tsuyoshi Nimora’s observations of homeless people on a recent trip. Wearing dazed expressions that made some look as though they had forgotten to take their meds, an array of models paraded around a Chelsea showroom. The coats they wore were adapted from utility blankets slung over multiple layers. One model wore a denim jacket pulled over a woolen coat squeezed atop a nubby Aran Island fisherman’s sweater that was tucked into a pair of the baggy pants that have been all the rage in Tokyo for a while now and that are slowly making inroads in the West. Still another jacket was knotted at the neck like a scarf. Streets and rail yards are familiar territory in fashion. Few can forget John Galliano’s “homeless chic” 2000 show for Dior, in which purposely raggedy models strutted onto the runway swathed in “newspapers,” clothes with torn linings or labels, frayed tulle glad rags, belts slung with little green empties of JB whiskey. Editorial writers, homeless advocates and moralists in general seized on that show as proof that fashion and its narcissistic practitioners are hopelessly disconnected from the real world. Yet what those who are quick to deride it often forget is that the glass of fashion is mostly a reflective device. Sure, Mr. Galliano may have misjudged his moment, given that the 2000 Dior collection coincided with a series of raids on shelters and arrests of the homeless directed by Rudolph W. Giuliani, the mayor of New York at the time. The N. Hoolywood collection could also be judged insensitive. Yet it served as a reminder of an often invisible population — one that, in light of recent studies showing that in almost no place in the United States can a person working a week at minimum wage afford a apartment at fair market rent, seems destined to increase. Home and homecoming were a theme at Billy Reid’s show Monday evening, held in the Cellar of the Beekman hotel, a chic nestled in the financial district, whose tall structures and windy streets on a cold winter night evoked the “cathedral of Januaries” Frank O’Hara wrote about in “Avenue A. ” The moody, elliptical O’Hara poem was recited at the show by the Tony actor Alex Sharp to a room full of guests eager to welcome Mr. Reid on his return to the New York fashion fold. “It’s good to be here,” the designer said to the crowd, referring to a period when he sat out the show cycle. And if it is good, indeed, to have the genial Southerner around again, that has less to do with the largely generic designs he presented in a collection inspired, he said, by the Beats (though some elements were more reminiscent of the stuff he used to design for the golfer Greg Norman) than because of his steady and grounding presence in a sometimes shaky industry. Also, he gives a good party. For the last eight summers, Mr. Reid has staged a festival of music, food, drinks and fashion in Florence, Ala. and on Monday, he gathered around him friends from many realms, including the musicians Winston Marshall and the Watson Twins. “Conceptually, it’s about people sharing their talents and inspiring each other,” Mr. Reid said. He also brought in the blues musician Cedric Burnside to offer his rendition of “Love Her ’Til I Die,” along with Karen Elson, the luminous British model turned Nashville singer, who took to a microphone with a tune from her new album, “Double Roses,” as models of both sexes ambled through the crowd. Even without the abundant bourbon, Mr. Reid’s show would surely have had the loose, homey quality of a party you hope will keep going. In this case it did. When it ended, the subterranean space at the Beekman became the “Speakeasy,” and those who didn’t have an early call the next morning stayed on, dancing to the music of a jazz band, Billy and the Rock Bottoms, and a D. J. set by Mr. Marshall. It can almost be predicted that unpredictable pairings will pop up during men’s week, which comes to a close Thursday night, and this one was no exception. Mr. Reid was inspired by the Beats, and so, too, somehow, was Steve Aoki, a star D. J. whose Dim Mak line of clothes, new to New York, has in only four seasons become a hit in Japan. “I wanted to embody the roots of what all that came from,” Mr. Aoki said in an interview Monday morning at the Roxy Hotel, referring to the punk music he listened to during his college days at the University of California, Santa Barbara. By Mr. Aoki’s reckoning, the lineage of the punk musicians he worshiped (“I almost fell to my knees when I met Jello Biafra,” he said of the Dead Kennedys singer) began with an “upstart hippie movement” that had its counterculture origins in the Beats. “Music is my breadwinner, but fashion is my creative outlet,” said Mr. Aoki, who, in an attempt to be disruptive (though “not obvious”) used quotes from and images of William S. Burroughs throughout his collection. Happily, Mr. Aoki’s music career is thriving since his debut outing at New York Fashion Week: Men’s was paid for from his own pocket. “It’s terrifying to me to show this to critics,” Mr. Aoki said, “but I accept that there are people that won’t accept me. ” His response to that hurdle, he said, is “to just go for it. ” He needn’t have worried. Not only was the Dim Mak collection of pink hoodies, oversize coats and khakis, and jackets printed with details from paintings by Mr. Aoki’s good friend, the artist (and early Facebook shareholder) David Choe, creditable on a design level, but the presentation itself made for one of the better shows in recent recollection. Having constructed two halfpipes in a large studio at Skylight Clarkson North in Lower Manhattan, the event space for most of the New York Fashion Week: Men’s shows, Mr. Aoki cast 20 local skateboarders to model the collection as they dropped in and did tricks at breakneck speed. With shirttails or coattails flying, skaters like Jazz Leeb, Caleb Yuan, Shane Medanich and Manu Kondo (the sole woman) barreled and spun and rotated across the ramps with, in the background, Mr. Choe and his band, Mangchi, blaring away at volume. Backstage after his turn on the ramp, the skateboarder Jordan Zoscak hooted and Dean Mendez, another athlete. “We nailed it!” Mr. Zoscak said. And it’s true. They did. | 1 |
Can’t make this up: Michael Moore is pissed that his anti-Trump movie might help elect Donald Trump Posted at 7:38 am on October 27, 2016 by Greg P. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter
This is really one of the funnier things we’ve seen this election.
Michael Moore has a new anti-Trump movie out called “TrumpLand,” but it’s a 4-minute clip of the movie where Moore makes the case for why Donald Trump will win that’s being shared right now by pro-Trump forces and that has the portly filmmaker all out of sorts.
For example, Donald Jr. told all of his followers to watch it on Wednesday: Hey everyone – Trump, Jr. & right wing thinks my movie called "TrumpLand" is pro-Trump! Haha. Pls don't tell them otherwise! #satire #irony pic.twitter.com/difR93uzTg
— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) October 26, 2016
Trump comms guy Jason Miller thinks it’s a “must-see”, too: Michael Moore must-see (not a typo) – disagree on many issues, but he speaks with conviction and clarity here: " https://t.co/Z1mU96doRZ "
— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) October 26, 2016
Whoops! | 0 |
Carolyn B. Maloney, a congresswoman from the Upper East Side, was riding in a taxi on Friday when she heard the news: Emails discovered in an investigation into Anthony D. Weiner’s sexting had revived the F. B. I. ’s interest in the case of Hillary Clinton’s private server. “I said: ‘Oh, no, not this, not happening now,’” she said. And then Ms. Maloney’s thoughts turned to Mr. Weiner. “I can’t stand him — even before this,” Ms. Maloney said. On the West Coast, John L. Burton, the chairman of the California Democratic Party, informed of Mr. Weiner’s inadvertent intrusion into the election on Friday evening, let loose an emphatic expletive. “We’re still talking about that guy during a presidential election?” Mr. Burton fumed, using a profane word instead of “guy. ” Weiner — the name became almost a curse word among senior Democrats over the past two days, as the disgraced congressman unexpectedly surfaced in the final stretch of the presidential contest. The news resurrected memories of previous Weiner scandals. “He is like a recurring nightmare,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton. “It’s like one of those ‘Damien’ movies — it’s like every time you think he’s dead, he keeps coming again. ” The fury that many leading Democrats feel toward Mr. Weiner had been building for years. His sexting habits embarrassed them. His attempted political comeback in 2013 disgusted them. But their high regard for his wife, Huma Abedin, always kept them from going public. On Friday that was over. Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers and an influential Clinton supporter, said she had long held her tongue out of “enormous respect and love” for Ms. Abedin. But Ms. Weingarten said Mr. Weiner’s treatment of women demanded forceful censure. “I don’t care who it is, no one should be a sexual predator,” Ms. Weingarten said. “I think we all have to take a stand about that, and I think what’s happening now is that people are. ” Mr. Weiner, who lost his seat in Congress and his mayoral hopes after repeated episodes in which he sent lewd messages to women, is now under federal investigation for allegedly sending sexual messages to a girl in North Carolina. In that inquiry, the F. B. I. this month seized a laptop that contained thousands of messages belonging to Ms. Abedin, a top aide to Mrs. Clinton. The F. B. I. director, James B. Comey, told Congress on Friday that investigators will now review those messages for possible relevance to the Clinton inquiry, news that rattled the Clinton campaign and stung her supporters. For some, the development touched off more worry than anger: former President Bill Clinton, who learned of the news en route to his last event of the day, in Pennsylvania, fretted that it would draw hostile attention to Ms. Abedin, according to a person familiar with his thinking. Around the country, former aides to Mr. Weiner, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, traded emails and texts throughout the weekend, fuming at the “collateral damage” inflicted by their onetime boss. Mr. Weiner did not respond to an email seeking comment. Mrs. Clinton’s campaign has largely ignored Mr. Weiner’s connection so far, and has instructed campaign surrogates to avoid discussing his role. But amid fears that Mr. Weiner’s behavior might undermine the party in a critical election, Democrats — especially in his native New York — said that perhaps they had given Mr. Weiner too many second chances over the years, and given him too much latitude out of deference to Ms. Abedin. Beyond New York, there was a sense of disbelief that one former lawmaker, whose memorable surname and lewd online habits made him a staple of comedy, could disrupt the election of an American president. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in an interview with CNN, blurted out, “Oh, God,” at the mention of Mr. Weiner’s name. He added, “I’m not a big fan. ” But Mr. Weiner has been a figure of consternation in Democratic politics for years, in New York and nationally, regarded simultaneously as a sharp political mind and a man of striking immaturity and ambition. With a gift for combat on cable television, Mr. Weiner repeatedly forced himself to the fore of Democratic politics, despite being seen by many in the party as too clever by half, too boastful about his intelligence — and too hungry for attention from reporters and women. A 2001 story in Vanity Fair captured Mr. Weiner, then unmarried, leering at congressional interns while presenting himself as an salesman. When Mr. Weiner explored a campaign for mayor in 2009, aides to Michael R. Bloomberg, who was seeking a third term, highlighted media coverage of his support for legislation making it easier for foreign models to get approval for visas. “We had a sense of who he was,” said Bradley Tusk, who was campaign manager for Mr. Bloomberg. “He knew exactly who he was. ” Also before the same election, Senator Chuck Schumer, for whom Mr. Weiner once worked, privately expressed frustration that Mr. Weiner was insufficiently interested in substance, telling one aide: “It’s all political ricochet. ” The senator is said to have made his peace with Mr. Weiner’s problems long ago. But Mr. Schumer is in line to lead Senate Democrats next year, and any damage from Mr. Weiner’s latest scandal could impede the party’s quest for a majority. Still, he won the lasting appreciation of Mrs. Clinton during the 2008 election, defending her in fashion during a difficult primary against Barack Obama. And Mr. Weiner’s marriage to Ms. Abedin, in 2010, seemed to install him permanently among party elites — whatever their reservations about his company. So tied into the party’s power brokers was he, by marriage, that when Mr. Weiner sought to resurrect his political career with a bid for mayor in 2013, numerous Democratic donors cut checks to his campaign at Ms. Abedin’s urging. John P. Coale, a wealthy lawyer supportive of Mrs. Clinton, said many donors gave money to Mr. Weiner out of friendship with Ms. Abedin. But Mr. Coale said the 2013 race, which brought new revelations of more sexting, had been exasperating. “It was just too much for everybody,” Mr. Coale said. “And now, it’s out of the park. Come on. ” Bill Hyers, a Democratic strategist who managed Mayor Bill de Blasio’s campaign that year, said the party establishment had erred by allowing Mr. Weiner “a second breath of life. ” “They knew he was a narcissist who was massively flawed,” Mr. Hyers said. “And now we’re all still stuck with him. ” Among Democrats who shunned Mr. Weiner from the start, there was little joy at the apparent vindication of their judgment. Sarah Kovner, a major Democratic donor, said there was less concern that injuries might cost Mrs. Clinton the election, than sheer frustration that a known bad seed had created such endless tumult. “We basically never wanted to have anything to do with him,” Ms. Kovner said of herself and her husband, Victor Kovner. “ too wise for himself, too glib, too full of himself — that’s how we felt about him. ” While predicting Mr. Weiner’s latest scandal would not doom Mrs. Clinton’s presidential hopes, Ms. Kovner sighed: “It is more pain. ” | 1 |
[Graphic: Calais street scene by Harriet Paintin of Bow and Brush .] =By= Harriet Paintin and Hannah Kirmes-Daly Editor's Note The news of the destruction of the Calais refugee camp, known as “The Jungle”, has been pointed to by many as part of the hardening of European hearts to the terrible plight of refugees who have made it to their shores. It is relatively easy to make appropriate noises and go on with one’s life, but add a visual component and what remains is much more haunting. This can be particularly true with an artiti’s hand in the mix for his or her feelings and impressions are carried forward and the painting (or sculpture, or sometimes photograph) places us as a surrogate in that place and time. This clearly happens with this article so read at your own risk … and I hope you will. L ast week saw the brutal destruction of the Calais Jungle, Europe’s largest unregulated refugee camp and home to around 10,000 people who have built communities, collective solidarity and even an autonomous economy. The eviction of the camp yet again calls into question Europe’s asylum policy as refugees who have fled war, persecution and destruction once again witnessed their homes and community spaces razed to the ground, this time as part of a “humanitarian effort”. French authorities declared on Wednesday that the camp was empty, but hundreds of people — including unaccompanied minors — remain in an incredibly precarious position, sleeping rough and at risk of arrest. Unlike most refugee camps in Europe where food and facilities are provided by authorities, the Jungle evolved as a relatively autonomous entity, more like a shanty town than a camp. Restaurants, shops, barber shops and community spaces lined the muddy high street, which served not only as small commercial enterprises, but also as spaces of collective solidarity where people would gather, share information and build their community. Without these networks of support, the experience of being a refugee is infinitely more isolating and confusing. The Day Before the Eviction The day before the eviction a tense, uneasy mood settled among the residents of the Jungle, many of whom decided to leave on their own terms. Rather than giving up their autonomy and freedom for a place on one of the state provided buses to “Healthcare and Advice Clinics” (CAOs) and detention centers across the country, they left before they could be forced to leave, traveling to Paris, Marseille, anywhere they might have friends or hope of finding shelter. In one of the few restaurants which remained open, people attempted to keep a brave face as they spent the last day among friends with whom they had spent the last few months, years even. Some were resigned to whatever might happen the next day, throwing out light hearted comments to disguise their apprehension, “we’re not scared of the police! We’re Afghan, the police should be scared of us!” A young married couple had only just heard the news of the eviction; they were frantically trying to work out how they could avoid the risks of separation, of detention, and of becoming locked into the French asylum system which is already crumbling in its own inadequacy to provide aid, security and safety to the vulnerable. Aged just 18 and 20 years old, they had traveled together from Eritrea, fleeing the horrors of dictatorship and indefinite military conscription, in search of safety and a life worth living. “I just want a safe place for my wife. We want to build a life together; we can’t live in camps anymore, relying on the state for tiny handouts and waiting in line for food,” exclaimed the young man. The only reassurance they received from a British volunteer was that, as Eritreans, they face little chance of deportation as Europe has finally recognized that Eritrea is an unsafe country, unlike Afghanistan. A middle-aged Afghani man who had been listening in on the conversation interjected at this point, “who says Afghanistan is safe?! You ask your governments how Afghanistan can be safe, while drones and bombs fall from the sky, who sent them?! While your soldiers patrol our villages, who sent them?! Who is responsible for Al-Qaeda, for the Taliban?! Tell me!” Afghanis comprise a significant proportion of the Jungle’s residents. In light of a recent EU agreement with Afghanistan which means that European aid money is dependent on the Afghani government agreeing to accept 80,000 deportees, Afghanis stand little chance of being granted asylum in Europe. This man highlighted the painful contradiction felt by so many in the Jungle, that the nations responsible for so much of the violence in their country turn them away when they seek protection. So many have already had their asylum cases denied in various European countries and now expect to be deported. Their long journeys of flight and hope will end right back where they started. The high street, once a buzzing center of activity, was deserted; the closed shops, restaurants and barber shops reduced to empty shells with broken windows lining a muddy street. The police perimeter was already firmly in place, a man cycling past with plastic bags of clothes was pulled over and interrogated. “It’s just clothes! Nothing else,” he insisted as the policeman in full riot gear roughly pulled out the contents of the bags, revealing just clothes, nothing else. Misinformation and Confusion French authorities claimed that 7,500 beds had been made available, that a simple registration procedure would see people onto buses to transport them to three CAOs across the country, or possibly detention centers. Three different lines for single men, families, and minors, marked out by pictograms. This registration would take place on October 24 and 25, with the demolishment of the camp scheduled for the 25th. Women’s protest ( Harriet Paintin ) This information had been made available far too late to be translated and transmitted to the many languages and residents of the Jungle, meaning that Monday morning began with an overwhelming sense of chaos, disorganization and misinformation that would come to characterize the following days. Scarce scraps of information were filtered down through various organizations on the ground and painstakingly analyzed by everyone, volunteers and refugees alike, in an attempt to understand what was happening. As Clouchard states, “misinformation is to democracy what propaganda agencies are to totalitarian states”. In the context of this eviction the lack of information felt like not just an organizational slip-up, but a deliberate attempt to misinform and mislead people. In the confusion that ensued, people were unable to take balanced, well-informed and empowered decision about their futures; instead, they were herded onto buses that they didn’t even know the destination of. At one point, volunteers tried to hand out maps, to enable refugees to decide between the three locations that were supposed to be on offer to them. Officials shouted back, “this is not allowed, people don’t have a choice, don’t give them a map!” The Registration Process Calais police registration lines ( Harriet Paintin ) With a heavy media and police presence the mood was subdued and access was restricted to accredited media (500 people) and a handful of volunteer organizations. Inside, people packed up their homes and belongings in the cold, gray morning light and headed towards the police lines for registration. The long line of unaccompanied minors waited for their futures to be determined by one woman peering into their face for about 30 seconds to decide if they were under 18. Inside the Jungle however, far from the complete chaos which everyone had been expecting, there were pockets of relative normality as those who did not want to take the buses busied themselves with their daily lives, cooking lunch for their children, playing guitar. As for the official demolition, the police cordoned off a tiny section of the camp and invited journalists to watch as they carefully dismantled it. When the real demolition began the following day all access to the high look-out point in the camp was restricted to journalists, where they would have been able to see the bulldozers and cranes destroying houses, and countless fires breaking out across the camp. Jungle house on fire ( Harriet Paintin ) One of the most noticeable homes on fire was a beautifully constructed two-story building complete with a terrace. The inhabitants had set the house on fire themselves as a symbol of protest; they did not want their home and their memories to be destroyed at the hands of the police. As the smoke climbed into the sky, they laughed and reminisced about their past years in the Jungle. Only three people of a community of more than twenty were left, everybody else had already left, to Paris, to flats in Calais; not a single one was planning on taking the bus. In the midst of this dehumanizing chaos there were several moments of resistance like this where people, for a brief moment at least, were able to take control of their situation and express discontent. Faced with extreme police repression and no individual rights, these actions were incredibly powerful. Individuals carried flags of their home nations up and down the line of policemen who stood stoic and expressionless in their riot gear. The women of the camp, so infrequently visible that their presence has even at times been doubted, organized themselves and protested against their treatment, calling out for “safety and dignity for all women! Underage, overage, we’re all the same! In [camps in] Paris we sleep on the streets!” The Fire At about 3am on Wednesday morning a huge fire started, burning all the homes and possessions left behind. A fire which quickly spread out of control throughout the camp and razed it to the ground, leaving the high street looking like a devastated ghost town. Later, the registration area quickly descended into chaos as people were told that the last buses were leaving that afternoon. The line for minors closed early and hundreds were told to come back the next day. In the midst of this chaos and confusion the destruction of the camp continued in full force as the bulldozers and cranes moved in. Calais Jungle burning scene ( Harriet Paintin ) “It’s exactly like the scenes we have run away from, it’s just like watching our homes being burnt by the rebel forces” gasped one young man from Sudan as he gazed upon the desolation and destruction before him. After the last buses departed, the French authorities and some media outlets reported that the camp had been cleared and the eviction was a success, ignoring the hundreds left behind. Having been turned away by the authorities for the third day running, children were ordered back into a Jungle which by this time had become an apocalyptic scene of burning buildings, toxic smoke, exploding gas canisters. They had nowhere else to go but the streets, with no information about what options are open to them, if any. This eviction may have been dressed up as a “humanitarian effort” but the blatant contradictions between the official line of events and the reality on the ground reveals gaping fault-lines in Europe’s refugee policies. With unaccompanied minors left sleeping on the street, then by no stretch of the imagination has this been a successful operation. Rather, this is nothing but a complete failure on behalf of the authorities who are responsible for their protection. If the eviction was planned with the best interests of the Jungle residents in mind, then it would have worked out in a different way. There has been a refugee camp in Calais since the early 1990s, and after each eviction people have returned to rebuild. Long term residents of the Jungle believe that there is nothing that the authorities can do to stop people coming and trying to reach the UK; they are confident that before long, small camps will spring up again, but without the facilities and systems of mutual cooperation and aid that people have built in the Jungle their survival will be even more precarious.
Harriet Paintin is a freelance writer and musician, and Hannah Kirmes-Daly is a freelance reportage illustrator. They work together on documenting individual stories through art and music, focusing on refugee stories. Follow them at brushandbow.com.
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Pediatrician Jim Smith is thrilled with his new career as a professional Clown. He specializes in children’s birthday parties but has the skill set to perform at kindergarten graduations as well. “Leaving the hospital was the best thing I’ve ever done. Can I say that again?” said an elated Dr. Jim Smith.
Dr. Jim Smith first became interested in becoming a Clown after suffering from extreme burnout. Catalysts included helicopter Moms, antivax Jenny Mccarthy supporters, and the general stress of saving the world. After dealing with one particularly overbearing soccer mom, he stormed out of the office ranting, “**** this noise; I can’t take this horse**** anymore!” and never returned. Using obscenities for the first time felt nothing short of liberating.
Dr. Jim Smith’s new lifestyle is entirely different from the clinic he used to work at. Previously, he woke up at 6am sharp but now he rolls out of bed in the neighborhood of 11:30am to ensure he is prompt for lunchtime birthday contracts. “I take my responsibilities very seriously,” said Dr. Jim Smith proudly. After a solid hour of challenging work, he practices his Downward Dog poses.
In spite of all the Clown perks, Jim has admittedly taken a rather large pay cut. As a pediatrician, the Doctor made $200,000.00 per year. Now he makes $17,500.00 a year if fully booked and tipped generously. However, Dr. Jim Smith says that eating Ramen noodles with his wife and kids is definitely worth the consistent joy he experiences performing slapstick routines. “Freedom really has no price tag,” said Clown Jim Smith.
Dr. Jim Smith’s favorite part of the job is showcasing his balloon skills. “Even though the kids cry sometimes, they don’t die,” he stated enthusiastically. Creating these balloon animals has proved to be significantly more meaningful than diagnosing heart defects.
Dr. Jim Smith sleeps soundly knowing the nurses aren’t “hunting (him) down like cattle.” Instead, parents and children alike watch him smile and laugh as if he’s the greatest entertainer in the world. He even gets to wear a red nose! And doing mime is endlessly entertaining and unpredictable too.
Dr. Jim Smith’s old colleagues have inquired what degree is needed to become a Clown. They’ve also expressed curiosity as to whether it is a high demand skill.
Dr. Jim Smith’s only regret is that he didn’t become a Clown sooner. 315 Shares | 0 |
WASHINGTON — At her confirmation hearing on Tuesday to be education secretary, Betsy DeVos vigorously defended her work steering taxpayer dollars from traditional public schools, arguing that it was time to move away from a “one size fits all” system and toward newer models for students from preschool to college. The hearing quickly became a heated and partisan debate that reflected the nation’s political divide on how best to spend public money in education. Republicans applauded Ms. DeVos’s work to expand charter schools and school vouchers, which give families public funds to help pay tuition at private schools. Democrats criticized her for wanting to “privatize” public education and pushed her, unsuccessfully, to support making public colleges and universities . Ms. DeVos, a billionaire with a complex web of investments, including in companies that stand to win or lose from federal education policy, was the first nominee of Donald J. Trump to have a Senate hearing without completing an ethics review on how she planned to avoid conflicts of interest. Democrats pointed out that in the past, Republicans had insisted that no hearings be conducted before those reviews were complete. Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee and chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, limited the questioning to one round of five minutes for each senator, prompting howls from Democrats, who noted that previous hearings had included two rounds of questions. “It suggests that this committee is trying to protect this nominee from scrutiny,” said Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut. With time limited, Democrats confronted Ms. DeVos with questions, demanding that she explain her family’s contributions to groups that support conversion therapy for gay people her donations to Republicans and their causes, which she agreed totaled about $200 million over the years her past statements that government “sucks” and that public schools are a “dead end” and the poor performance of charter schools in Detroit, where she resisted legislation that would have blocked chronically failing charter schools from expanding. Under questioning, Ms. DeVos said it would be “premature” to say whether she would continue the Obama administration’s policy requiring uniform reporting standards for sexual assaults on college campuses. She told Mr. Murphy, whose constituents include families whose children were killed in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, that it should be “left to locales” to decide whether guns are allowed in schools, and that she supported Mr. Trump’s call to ban zones around schools. She also denied that she had personally supported conversion therapy. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts pressed Ms. DeVos on how she could oversee the Education Department, the largest provider of student loans, given that she had no experience running a large bureaucracy and that neither she nor her children had ever taken out a student loan. “So you have no personal experience with college financial aid?” Ms. Warren asked. Ms. DeVos, who did not attend public schools or send her children to public schools, argued that vouchers and charter schools were simply a way of offering poor parents the kind of school choice that wealthy parents have long been able to afford. She described a visit she and her husband, an heir to the Amway fortune, made to a Christian school in her hometown, Grand Rapids, Mich. as a turning point in her career as a school choice advocate. “We saw the struggles and sacrifices many of these families faced when trying to choose the best educational option for their children,” she said. “For me, this was not just an issue of public policy but of national injustice. ” But Democrats said research showed that voucher programs had done little to raise achievement among poor students. Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the committee, asked Ms. DeVos, “Can you commit to us that you will not work to privatize public schools or cut a single penny from public education?” Ms. DeVos began to demur, saying that “not all schools are working for the students that are assigned to them” and that she would work to find “common ground” to give parents “options. ” “I take that as not being willing to commit to not privatizing public education,” Ms. Murray said. Mr. Alexander, himself a former education secretary, argued that Ms. DeVos’s support of charter schools and vouchers put her in the “mainstream” of public opinion, and that her critics were outside it. He noted that charter schools, which are publicly funded but typically run independently of local school districts and teachers’ unions, have been supported by Republican and Democratic presidents going back to Bill Clinton. Democrats, however, argued that Ms. DeVos’s support went well beyond charter schools, to include the more contentious policy of sending public money to private and religious schools. “Charter schools are not the issue here,” said Senator Al Franken of Minnesota, where Democrats pushed the nation’s first law allowing charter schools nearly three decades ago. He noted that 37 states prohibit the use of public dollars for religious schools. One Republican, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, expressed concern about Ms. DeVos’s enthusiasm for school choice — a moot point for many of her constituents, given the vastness of her state. “When there is no way to get to an alternative option for your child, the best parent is left relying on a public school system that they demand to be there for their kids,” she said, asking Ms. DeVos to ensure that her commitment to traditional public education was as “strong and robust” as her passion for school choice. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — In an extraordinary denunciation of Donald J. Trump’s temperament and competence, President Obama urged leaders of the Republican Party on Tuesday to withdraw their endorsements of Mr. Trump’s candidacy, flatly calling him “unfit to serve” as the nation’s 45th president. Speaking in the East Room of the White House while Mr. Trump rallied supporters in a nearby Virginia suburb, the president noted the Republican criticism of Mr. Trump for his attacks on the Muslim parents of an American soldier, Capt. Humayun Khan, who died in Iraq. But Mr. Obama said the political recriminations from Republicans “ring hollow” if the party’s leaders continue to support Mr. Trump’s campaign. “The question they have to ask themselves is: If you are repeatedly having to say in very strong terms that what he has said is unacceptable, why are you still endorsing him?” Mr. Obama said. “What does this say about your party that this is your ?” The president’s condemnation of Mr. Trump, and his direct appeal to Republicans to abandon their candidate, were stunning even in a city where politics has become a brutal and personal affair. Mr. Obama seemed eager to go beyond his past interventions in the race, which have included forceful rejections of Mr. Trump’s statements and policy proposals. The last time a sitting president was as openly critical of the other party’s candidate, said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian, was when President Harry S. Truman mocked Dwight D. Eisenhower during the 1952 campaign. And once Eisenhower was elected, Truman said he did not know “any more about politics than a pig knows about Sunday. ” “It’s a reflection of just how radical and dangerous President Obama feels that Trump is,” Mr. Brinkley said. Using the formal backdrop of a joint news conference with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore, Mr. Obama suggested that Mr. Trump would not abide by “norms and rules and common sense” and questioned whether he would “observe basic decency” should he reach the Oval Office. The president said he would have been disappointed to lose in 2008 or 2012, but added that he had never doubted whether his Republican rivals in those races, John McCain and Mitt Romney, could function as president or had the knowledge to make government work. “That’s not the situation here,” Mr. Obama said. As Mr. Obama condemned Mr. Trump, the Republican candidate — apparently unaware of the president’s remarks — repeatedly criticized his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, and the president in an hour of remarks. He called Mrs. Clinton a “liar” and a “thief” and said the country would be “finished” if voters chose four more years of a presidency like Mr. Obama’s. Mr. Trump also accused Mrs. Clinton of repeatedly lying over the weekend when she told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday” that James B. Comey, the F. B. I. director, had said her statements about her private emails were truthful. “I mean, she lied,” Mr. Trump said, prompting cries of “Lock her up!” from his supporters. “She, pure and simple, she only knows to lie. She really does. She only knows to lie. But she lied, and it’s a big story. ” Mr. Comey, testifying last month to Congress, said that “we have no basis to conclude she lied to the F. B. I. ” But he also said he could not say whether Mrs. Clinton’s many public statements on the issue were truthful. Mr. Trump, in a written statement meant to respond directly to the president’s remarks, called Mrs. Clinton “unfit to serve in any government office. ” He also accused Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton of allowing Americans to be slaughtered in Benghazi, Libya letting veterans die waiting for medical care and releasing immigrants into the United States to kill innocent people. “Our nation has been humiliated abroad and compromised by radical Islam brought onto our shores,” Mr. Trump’s statement said. “We need change now. ” The dueling appearances by the president and the Republican candidate seeking to replace him escalated the heated political rhetoric in a race that had already devolved into a series of personal attacks and character assassinations. Mr. Obama cited Mr. Trump’s reaction to Captain Khan’s parents, Khizr and Ghazala Khan, as a principal reason for his extended remarks. Mr. Trump had criticized the Khans after they honored their son at the Democratic National Convention and urged people to vote for Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Obama lamented what he called an attack on a “Gold Star family that had made such extraordinary sacrifices on behalf of our country. ” He said he did not doubt that Republicans were outraged about the statements Mr. Trump and his supporters had made about the Khan family in the last several days. “But there has to come a point at which you say somebody who makes those kinds of statements doesn’t have the judgment, the temperament, the understanding, to occupy the most powerful position in the world,” Mr. Obama said. The president did not limit his criticism to Mr. Trump’s treatment of the Khan family. Mr. Obama said the Republican nominee had repeatedly demonstrated that he was “woefully unprepared to do this job. ” The president said Mr. Trump had proved he lacked knowledge about Europe, the Middle East and other parts of Asia. “This isn’t a situation where you have an episodic gaffe. This is daily,” Mr. Obama added. “There has to be a point at which you say, ‘This is not somebody I can support for president of the United States, even if he purports to be a member of my party.’ The fact that that has not yet happened makes some of these denunciations ring hollow. ” Mr. Trump, who spoke at a boisterous rally at Briar Woods High School in Ashburn, Va. began his remarks there by saying a veteran had given him a Purple Heart medal earlier in the day. “I always wanted to get the Purple Heart,” said Mr. Trump, who received five deferments from the draft during the Vietnam War. “This was much easier. ” Throughout his speech, Mr. Trump argued his case that Mrs. Clinton was “unfit” for the presidency, accusing her of being dishonest, weak on foreign policy and corrupt. He accused the president of doubling the national debt and said the Iraq war exit was a “disaster. ” “Let Obama go to the golf course,” Mr. Trump said. “But you know what? We’d be better off. ” At one point during the rally, a crying baby interrupted Mr. Trump’s speech. “Don’t worry about that baby. I love babies,” Mr. Trump said at first. “I hear that baby crying, I like it. What a baby, what a beautiful baby. Don’t worry, don’t worry. ” A few beats later, he changed his tune. “Actually, I was only kidding,” Mr. Trump said. “You can get that baby out of here. ” Laughs and a few gasps escaped from the crowd. “Don’t worry, I think she really believed me that I love having a baby crying while I’m speaking,” Mr. Trump added. “That’s O. K. People don’t understand. That’s O. K. ” Even as Mr. Obama discussed trade policy and security issues with the Singaporean prime minister, Mr. Trump criticized world leaders. He said he would ask Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany “what went wrong” in her country. And he criticized Mrs. Clinton for what he called “terrible relations” with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. At the White House, Mr. Lee of Singapore responded to a question about Mr. Trump with diplomacy, and said Singapore would look forward to working with whomever Americans chose as president. “Many pressures build up during the election campaign, and after the elections in a calmer, cooler atmosphere, positions are rethought, strategies are nuanced, and a certain balance is kept in the direction of the ship of state. It does not turn completely upside down,” Mr. Lee said. “The Americans take pride in having a system with checks and balances,” he added. “So, it is not so easy to do things, but it is not so easy to completely mess things up. ” | 1 |
Trump’s campaign has been frantic to close the huge gap in donations between Clinton’s and their own. By some estimates, Hillary is outspending Trump 7-to-1 in advertising – a steep hill to climb for a campaign that is already losing badly in nearly every battleground state.
But in his desperation, Trump did something incredibly stupid. He promised his fans that he would “triple match” any donation over $75 that they made on October 1st.
His fans, believing Trump would put his money where his mouth is, gave generously. Instead of make good on the promise, Trump donated squat. In fact, his donations for the entire month were less than he should have donated that very first day. On Oct 1, I got an email from Trump pledging to triple donations for 24 hrs.
Donors gave $165,829 that day.
Trump gave $30,682 all month.
— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) October 28, 2016
Even for Trump’s diehard fans, this looks like the man is just the kind of grifter his critics have always claimed he was. Despite pretending to “self-fund” his campaign, Trump has chipped in hardly anything. He’s run his campaign much like he ran his charity, using other people’s money to promote himself.
This is in stark contrast to Trump’s boasts. Famously, the candidate once said he was willing to spend upwards of one billion dollars on his campaign to be president. With just 11 days to go, Trump hasn’t even come close. Most estimates put his own contribution around $50 million – chump change for an alleged billionaire. Kellyanne Conway: The rest of Trump’s $100 million donation to his campaign is still coming (with 11 days left) pic.twitter.com/7U3UF9a0dM
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) October 28, 2016
And it seems Trump’s campaign knows how badly he screwed this up. His campaign manager Kellyanne Conway scrambled to the nearest media outlet to proclaim that Trump would absolutely be fulfilling a promise he made to donate $100 million by the election. (Note again: He has just 11 days left to do so.)
And then Trump himself reportedly wired $10 million to his campaign on Friday morning in a day late, dollar short desperation maneuver to help pull out of this tailspin. Donald Trump wired $10M of his own money into this presidential campaign this morning – Dow Jones
— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) October 28, 2016
It’s hard to truly be surprised that Trump has been stingy with his own campaign. This is the “billionaire” who managed to pay no taxes in twenty years and donate almost no money to charity in the same period. He makes Scrooge McDuck look generous. And with less than two weeks to go, Trump’s chances of becoming president are looking about as fictional as the cartoon duck.
Go home, Donald.
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On Monday, Jan. 9, less than two weeks before President Trump’s inauguration, the House speaker, Paul Ryan, hosted a dinner at his office in the Capitol with members of Trump’s inner circle. The guests included the ’s chief White House strategist, Stephen K. Bannon his and family consigliere, Jared Kushner his chief of staff, Reince Priebus his economic adviser, Gary Cohn his nominee for Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin his incoming deputy chief of staff, Rick Dearborn and his director, Marc Short. The ostensible purpose of the dinner was to discuss the details of Trump’s legislative agenda — in particular, the prospects for a sweeping measure that Republicans, and especially Ryan, have been coveting for the past decade. It was hoped that the dinner could also establish some sort of common ground between Ryan and Bannon, the two figures who would arguably wield the greatest influence over how Trump’s campaign promises became law — or didn’t. Ryan was a fixture among establishment Republicans even before joining Mitt Romney’s presidential ticket in 2012, his previous labors on the House Budget Committee cementing his reputation as the wizard of fiscal conservatism. Bannon, by contrast, was a renegade autodidact who read Plato and had seemingly materialized from nowhere to become the intellectual architect of Trump’s campaign and, later, administration. Up to this point, Ryan had epitomized to Bannon everything that was wrong with the Republican Party. Discussing the two parties’ shortcomings, Bannon later told me, “What’s that Dostoyevsky line: Happy families are all the same, but unhappy families are unhappy in their own unique ways?” (He meant Tolstoy.) “I think the Democrats are fundamentally afflicted with the inability to discuss and have an adult conversation about economics and jobs, because they’re too consumed by identity politics. And then the Republicans, it’s all this theoretical Cato Institute, Austrian economics, limited government — which just doesn’t have any depth to it. They’re not living in the real world. ” Breitbart News, the media outlet Bannon ran before becoming the chief executive of the Trump campaign in August, had described Ryan, referring to his position on immigration, as “arguably the most G. O. P. lawmaker in Congress” — an apostasy of nearly impeachable proportions from Bannon’s perspective. Worst of all, Ryan all but abandoned Trump during the 2016 campaign. After the leak in October of the damaging “Access Hollywood” tape, Ryan told fellow Republican House members on a conference call, “I am not going to defend Donald Trump — not now, not in the future. ” A Republican lawmaker on the call told Trump what Ryan had said, yet another reason for Bannon to regard himself as Ryan’s worst enemy. But as the dinner progressed, it became clear that Bannon and Ryan actually had some ideas in common. Over memorably bad chicken Parmesan, Ryan described his vision for a “ tax,” which would levy taxes on imports while offering exemptions for exports. His tax package would include “immediate expensing,” he explained, in which capital expenditures would be written off against profits in the first year rather than over time. It also would abolish the alternative minimum tax and the estate tax. These were ideas Ryan had been pushing since 2008. Now they had Bannon’s attention. Taken together with a drastic reduction in corporate taxes, Bannon believed, Ryan’s scheme would spur a renaissance of a export economy, producing labor in keeping with Trump’s populism. “I would actually say,” Bannon remembers observing admiringly, “that this tax reform comes as close to a first step of economic nationalism as there is. ” “I would call it ‘responsible nationalism,’’u2009” Ryan said, according to Bannon. Bannon laughed. “You’re going to have a lot of folks in the Senate say this is breathtakingly radical. ” He meant it as a compliment. To Bannon, the entire world order — from the two political parties to the Wall Street reliance on leveraging to multiculturalism — was undergoing an extraordinary realignment, one made manifest in the 2016 election. According to Bannon’s vision, economic nationalism would reorient priorities to the working class’s benefit. Trade deals, jobs programs, tax incentives, immigration restrictions, environmental deregulation and even foreign policy would ultimately serve to restore the primacy of those Trump called “the forgotten Americans. ” In March, when I spoke to Trump by phone, I asked him what the term “economic nationalism” meant to him. Compared with Bannon’s revolutionary fervor, his reply was surprisingly cautious. “Well, ‘nationalism’ — I define it as people who love the country and want it to do good,” he said. “I don’t see ‘nationalism’ as a bad word. I see it as a very positive word. It doesn’t mean we won’t trade with other countries. ” Trump’s tone was genial but also a touch defensive. His postelection honeymoon had been short, if it existed at all. There were the administrative intrigues and Twitter drama, along with the questions about his campaign’s contacts with Russia, which had already forced the resignation of his national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Still, Trump’s legislative liaisons and their counterparts on Capitol Hill were doggedly negotiating a rollout of the Trump Era, one that would fulfill his most significant campaign promises — those that could not be done with just a stroke of Trump’s own pen but required acts of Congress. First, Obamacare would be repealed and replaced. Next, an austere budget would be passed, with emergency funds allotted for the construction of a wall along the Southern border. Then would come a plan, presumably of the type Ryan and Bannon discussed. And finally, a bipartisan coalition would deliver a infrastructure plan to Trump’s desk. If all this came to pass by the end of 2017, it would lend some credence to Trump’s pledge that this would be “the busiest Congress we’ve had in decades. ” But by March, this timetable was looking like a formidable “if. ” Trump himself seemed prone to distraction as he spoke to me from the Oval Office. Though I was asking about his policy aims, his musings swerved off to other vexations. More than once he denounced as “fake news” reports about his administration’s supposed disharmony. He brought up his speech before the joint session of Congress in February, “which I hope you liked, but I certainly have gotten great reviews — even the people who hate me gave me the highest review. ” During the call, I could hear Priebus nearby, occasionally murmuring encouragement. Trump sounded more clipped and less jaunty on the call than he did during the discursive chats I had with him last year on the campaign trail. The business of governing had little to do with any trade he had previously practiced. In Congress, he was grappling with an arcane and famously inefficient ecosystem over which he had little if any control — and people he incessantly derided on the campaign trail as being “all talk and no action. ” I asked him if he still felt that way. “It’s like any other industry,” he replied, somewhat morosely. “I’ve met some great politicians and some, to be honest, who aren’t so hot. ” Trump wanted to make sure that he was given adequate credit for his achievements, even in his administration’s infancy. “We’ve only been here for a tiny speck of time,” he said, “and what I’ve done with regulations, moving jobs back into the country, what I’ve done with airplane pricing and buying is amazing. We’ve done a lot. I think we’ve done more than anybody for this short period of time. ” Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson would take exception to this claim. And Trump’s significant actions to date have consisted entirely of executive orders. What he has not yet demonstrated is his ability to actually shepherd a bill into law. The only major legislation that congressional committees have even seen thus far is a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, which met with a stunning rebuke from Trump’s own party, forcing Ryan to withdraw the measure on the afternoon of March 24. At this stage of his presidency, Barack Obama had already signed into law his $787 billion package and had moved on to holding White House meetings on health care. It’s conceivable that Trump could hit Day 100 with only minor symbolic legislative achievements to his name. For him to avoid this ignominy, the 45th president will have to develop a rapport with Washington’s 535 federal deal makers, including the ones who “aren’t so hot. ” Whether Trump’s agenda succeeds will also depend in no small measure on the ability of Bannon to expand his game beyond 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. At 63, and with a fortune reported to be in the tens of millions of dollars — partly through his investment in the company that owns the syndication rights to “Seinfeld” — Bannon is regarded by Trump as a peer in the way that, say, the lifelong politico Priebus is not. He is also approvingly seen as a fellow workaholic by the president (whose only known hobbies are golf and CNN). And he is a deft operator who has learned from the successes and failures of other Trump advisers. He has carefully not claimed credit that the president would wish for himself and avoids giving expansive interviews on his own controversial views that might detract from his boss’s celebrity. Like the former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, Bannon understands that power in Trump World derives mainly from close and sustained physical proximity to the boss. Unlike Lewandowski, Bannon immediately grasped the importance of maintaining close relations with Jared Kushner, who factored heavily in Lewandowski’s dismissal from the Trump campaign last summer. But like Kushner, Bannon has never worked in government or at a institute and has no meaningful experience when it comes to getting legislation passed. On the Hill, he has a few random associations — Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Representative John Culberson of Texas among them. Otherwise, he remains a looming but indistinct presence to the lawmakers who will be needed to pass most of Trump’s agenda. Bannon’s interest in this agenda predated his association with Trump. One evening in January 2013, two guests showed up for dinner at the Capitol Hill townhouse that Bannon liked to call the Breitbart Embassy. One was the man Bannon would later describe to me as his “mentor”: Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama. The other was Sessions’s top aide and protégé, a jittery named Stephen Miller. Two months earlier, Obama decisively defeated Mitt Romney in the presidential election, prompting Priebus, then the chairman of the Republican National Committee, to commission an analysis of the state of the party and its future, known colloquially in Washington as the “autopsy,” which would be delivered that spring. The only certainty was that the report would urge Republicans to court the growing Latino electorate — which had voted for Obama by a margin that November — by championing comprehensive immigration reform. The three men at the dinner table that night were among the few Republicans in town who thoroughly rejected that conclusion. Bannon wanted to talk to Sessions and Miller about a different report: an article written by Sean Trende, the senior elections analyst for the website RealClearPolitics, titled “The Case of the Missing White Voters. ” Trende observed that Obama’s victory was less a function of increased minority turnout than of the fact that 6. 6 million white voters who participated in the 2008 election stayed home in 2012. The reason for this drop, Trende argued, was that white voters who did not approve of Obama but were alienated by Romney’s perceived elitism had not voted. These votes were gettable, Bannon believed. As he would later tell me: “The working class, and in particular the lower middle class, understands something that’s so obvious — which is that they’ve basically underwritten the rise of China. Their jobs, their raises, their retirement accounts have all fueled the private equity and venture capital that built China. Because China’s really built on investments and exports, right? People are smart enough to know that they’re getting played by both political parties. The two may be different on social issues, but when it comes to fundamental economics, they’re both the same. That’s why the American working class is interested in trade. It’s linked to their lives. ” Sessions shared Bannon’s belief that the Republican Party needed to emphasize immigration reduction, border security and the preservation of jobs through trade policy rather than courting Latino voters with a bill he regarded as “amnesty. ” As Sessions would write in a memorandum to his Republican colleagues six months later, “This humble and honest populism — in contrast to the administration’s cheap demagoguery — would open the ears of millions who have turned away from our party. ” At some point during the dinner, Bannon recalls blurting out to Sessions, “We have to run you for president. ” Just two years earlier, in 2011, he made a similar pitch to Sarah Palin, after completing a documentary about her called “The Undefeated. ” Palin demurred. She was enjoying her life of celebrity and wealth, she had done little to immerse herself in policy minutiae and she was no doubt unsettled by Bannon’s warning that she stood little chance of defeating Obama. Now he delivered a similar message to Sessions. “Look, you’re not going to win,” he recalls saying. “But you can get the Republican nomination. And once you control the apparatus, you can make fundamental changes. Trade is No. 100 on the party’s list. You can make it No. 1. Immigration is No. 10. We can make it No. 2. ” Acknowledging that the drawling Alabama senator lacked Palin’s charisma, Bannon said, “You’ll be the . ” But Sessions told Bannon he did not see himself running for president. “It was pretty obvious by the end of the night,” Bannon recalled, “that another candidate would have to do it. ” Two months later, on March 15, 2013, Bannon happened to be attending the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington when Trump took the stage. Trump had been a marginal figure at most in politics up to that point, entertaining a Reform Party run in the 2000 election — when he speculated that he would probably take more votes from the Democratic candidate than the Republican one — and leading a conspiratorial crusade in 2011 to force Obama to release his birth certificate. The possibility that he might be a suitable host body for Bannon’s worldview had not occurred to Bannon before Trump spoke. But Trump’s grousing references to China’s economic superiority, to 11 million “illegals” and to the erosion of America’s manufacturing sector were right out of Bannon’s playbook. From his desk in the Russell Senate Office Building, Stephen Miller, too, watched Trump’s speech. By 2014, Miller was sending emails to friends expressing the hope that Trump would run for president. By the time Trump announced his candidacy, in June 2015, Sessions was officially uncommitted but privately of the view that Trump was best suited to tap into the movement that he, Miller and Bannon discussed over dinner more than two years earlier. Bannon’s early support for Trump was manifest in Breitbart’s breathless coverage of his candidacy. In an email he sent on Aug. 30, 2015, to his former filmmaking partner Julia Jones, Bannon explained that while Republican candidates like Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina were “all great,” Trump represented a superior choice, because he “is a nationalist who embraces Senator Sessions’s plan” on immigration. Still, recalls Sam Nunberg, Trump’s first campaign strategist, “Steve kept all of his cards. ” He added: “He was respectful to some of the other ones who were running, like Walker and Cruz and Carson. He didn’t want to be seen as . ” When Trump publicly disparaged John McCain’s credentials, Bannon — himself a Navy veteran — called Nunberg and demanded that Trump issue an apology. (Trump did not.) Bannon was well positioned as a supportive but not sycophantic observer by Aug. 13, 2016, when the Trump donor Rebekah Mercer read with alarm a New York Times account of the Trump campaign’s inability to handle its mercurial candidate. At Mercer’s behest, Bannon (whose website Mercer’s family helped underwrite) and Kellyanne Conway (who at that point was receiving money from both a Mercer family political action committee and the Trump campaign) flew out that day to East Hampton, N. Y. where Trump was attending a dinner at the home of the New York Jets’ owner, Woody Johnson. After the dinner, Bannon and Conway huddled with the candidate. Bannon remembers telling Trump, who at the time was trailing Hillary Clinton by double digits in the polls, “As long as you stick to the message” — by which he meant economic nationalism — “you have a 100 percent probability of winning. ” A week after the election, in an interview with the journalist Michael Wolff, Bannon offered a bold, sweeping sketch of what the vision might mean in policy terms: “Like [Andrew] Jackson’s populism, we’re going to build an entirely new political movement. It’s everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. ” Of course, some of the conservatives Bannon intended to drive crazy possessed the congressional votes Bannon and Trump would need to advance this agenda. Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a leading conservative in the House, told me in March, “I would argue that populism, as long as it’s rooted in conservative principle, is a darn good thing. ” Jordan was smiling as he said it, but the note of warning was hard to mistake. The last time the Republican Party controlled all branches of government in Washington was from 2003 to 2007. During that period, the United States military toppled Saddam Hussein, Congress delivered tax cuts for the wealthy and President George W. Bush appointed the reliably conservative jurist Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court. But in the collective view of conservatives, these years of the Bush presidency were mostly characterized by betrayal and disappointment. Goaded by Bush, congressional Republicans passed into law a new federal entitlement (prescription drugs for senior citizens, also known as Medicare Part D) ran up the deficit, promoted democratic ideals overseas in the feckless manner of Woodrow Wilson, considered a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and confirmed a Supreme Court chief justice, John G. Roberts Jr. whose swing vote would later save Obamacare from judicial evisceration. “My line when I first ran in 2008 was, ‘Republicans had the House, the Senate and the White House — and they blew it,’’u2009” Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told me. “Now we’ve got all three again, and I’m the guy who’s in Congress, not running for it. I don’t want to be in a position where we’re going to blow it one more time. ” Chaffetz and other House conservatives freely acknowledge that Trump is not cut from their cloth, but they say they could not care less as long as he gives them what they want. Selecting Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill the Supreme Court seat once held by Justice Antonin Scalia was “the best thing the president did in his first 50 days,” Chaffetz told me. He and his conservative colleagues have been cheered by Trump’s recruitment of former House colleagues and conservative stalwarts like Vice President Mike Pence Tom Price, the health and human services secretary and Mick Mulvaney, the Office of Management and Budget director. When Chaffetz and I spoke in March, he had met with the president twice so far — access he considered “such a huge sea change” from the stony silence Republicans say they encountered from the Obama White House. Most important, the Trump agenda’s first three projected legislative moves — the Obamacare repeal and replacement, an austere budget and tax reform — were intended to keep conservatives happily in Trump’s camp. In turn, when the agenda moved on to less conservative items like infrastructure and trade agreements, Trump and Bannon would fully expect Republicans, including Ryan, to remember whose message resonated most with voters last year. Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House majority leader, is Trump’s chief point of contact on the Hill. When McCarthy was a college student and budding entrepreneur in Bakersfield, Calif. in the late 1980s, his girlfriend at the time, now his wife, Judy, gave him an autographed copy of Trump’s “The Art of the Deal. ” “I thought it was great,” he told me. In McCarthy’s view, Trump is a master of today’s media, much as Lincoln and Kennedy were in their own times. “He’s mastered instantaneous Twitter,” he said. “It’s like owning newspapers. ” Trump has found a kindred spirit in McCarthy, a coastal extrovert of ambiguous ideological portfolio who (unlike Ryan) would far rather talk about personalities than the tax code. And as the former minority leader in the California Legislature during the governorship of Arnold Schwarzenegger, McCarthy is experienced in the care and feeding of celebrity egos. Since Trump’s nomination, the two have spoken frequently by phone — to date, Trump has never been known to directly email or text anyone — about the cast of 535 characters with whom the president must now deal. But in the end, what Trump needs from the majority leader is not gossip but votes — 216 of them, to be exact, in the House. And McCarthy’s recent track record in obtaining majorities has not been the greatest. In his previous capacity as House whip, he was thwarted by members of his own party when it came to subjects as diverse as reauthorizing a Patriot Act they deemed too intrusive, a farm bill they considered too expensive and a bill they regarded as too lenient. His most reliable obstacles have been the three dozen or so House conservatives known as the Freedom Caucus, a group of fiscal . Early this year, McCarthy predicted to me that the new president would quickly subjugate the Freedom Caucus. “Trump is strong in their districts,” McCarthy told me. “There’s not a place for them to survive in this world. ” When we spoke on the morning of March 7, Trump assured me that he would not bully the bill’s loudest Republican critics, like the Freedom Caucus chairman, Representative Mark Meadows, on Twitter: “No, I don’t think I’ll have to,” he said. “Mark Meadows is a great guy and a friend of mine. I don’t think he’d ever disappoint me, or the party. I think he’s great. No, I would never call him out on Twitter. Some of the others, too. I don’t think we’ll need to. Now, they’re fighting for their turf, but I don’t think they’re going to be obstructionists. I spoke to Mark. He’s got some ideas. I think they’re very positive. ” But on March 21, in a meeting with the Freedom Caucus about the bill, Trump called out Meadows by name, saying, “I’m going to come after you, but I know I won’t have to, because I know you’ll vote ‘yes. ’’u2009” Meadows remained a “no” on the bill, and among conservatives, he was far from alone. One of the Freedom Caucus’s most outspoken members, Representative Raúl Labrador of Idaho, believes that the Trump White House was led astray by Ryan’s confidence that he knew what conservatives wanted when drafting the bill. “The legislation has to go through the body, not the top,” Labrador told me. “And if our leadership thinks now that we’re a unified body, that they can do things while ignoring us, that’s not going to happen. ” Labrador is an affable but decidedly stubborn Mormon and former immigration lawyer who moved as a child with his single mother from Puerto Rico to Las Vegas. He was interviewed by the for the post of interior secretary at Trump Tower last December — though Trump selected Labrador’s House colleague Ryan Zinke for the post a few days later. For now, Labrador and other Freedom Caucus members have been willing to blame House leaders like Ryan and McCarthy for drafting a health care bill that was not to conservatives’ liking. They aspire to remain philosophical whenever Trump’s daughter Ivanka persuades her father to propose initiatives like paid family leave, as he did during his speech. “I didn’t stand up when he said that,” Labrador said. “That’s the only part of the speech where I thought, That’s not even close to what my party stands for. ” To House conservatives like Labrador, the Republican Party stands for limited government. To Trump and Bannon, items like a border wall and infrastructure take priority over shrinking America’s debt. As Chaffetz admitted to me, “On the spending front, things could slip away really quickly. ” Trump’s budget blueprint is regarded by deficit hawks as fundamentally unserious, because it does not touch entitlements. Instead, it ravages perennial (and already ) conservative piñatas like foreign aid, public broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts, in addition to downsizing the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department — cuts that focus on the 27 percent of the federal budget that is not mandatory spending or devoted to defense. And for all the Republicans’ chesty rhetoric on cuts like these over the years, as a top House Republican staff member told me, “even the cabinet secretaries at the E. P. A. and Interior are saying these cuts aren’t going to happen. They’re going to protect their grant programs, their payments to states, their Superfunds. So how do you cut 31 percent of the E. P. A. out of the 5 percent that isn’t protected? And a bill that cuts all money for the N. E. A. will not pass. For Republicans in the West” — states whose vast rural areas benefit disproportionately from N. E. A. grants — “that’s a killer. The campaign commercials write themselves. ” Labrador says he would defend Trump’s cuts but doubts that many of his colleagues would. “What he’s going to learn is that members of Congress are unwilling to take the tough votes,” he told me. “When he learns that, what’s going to be the next step?” In Labrador’s view, Trump’s only sane recourse will be to accept the need for entitlement reform. “At some point, the reality of the budget is going to have to hit him,” he said. “You can have this economic nationalism — Bannon is very smart, he clearly helped him with his messaging, it was so successful — but at some point, that theory is going to hit reality. ” When I spoke with Trump, I ventured that, based on available evidence, it seemed as though conservatives probably shouldn’t hold their breath for the next four years expecting entitlement reform. Trump’s reply was immediate. “I think you’re right,” he said. In fact, Trump seemed much less animated by the subject of budget cuts than the subject of spending increases. “We’re also going to prime the pump,” he said. “You know what I mean by ‘prime the pump’? In order to get this” — the economy — “going, and going big league, and having the jobs coming in and the taxes that will be cut very substantially and the regulations that’ll be going, we’re going to have to prime the pump to some extent. In other words: Spend money to make a lot more money in the future. And that’ll happen. ” A clearer elucidation of Keynesian liberalism could not have been delivered by Obama. The one clear point of agreement between the Trump economic nationalists and the House conservatives is the one Ryan and Bannon identified over dinner in January: tax reform. But in so doing, they will be picking a fight that may prove perilous to Republicans. The proposal that Ryan floated to Bannon has never been able to get past K Street lobbyists and wealthy Republican donors like the Koch brothers. When I asked Trump if he was a fan of the tax, he replied: “I am. I’m the king of that. ” Almost no other country grafts an import tax onto a corporate tax, and it’s possible that enacting a tax might well be in violation of the World Trade Organization’s agreements. Of course, Bannon has openly advocated abandoning the W. T. O. anyway, because of China’s membership in it. Still, the specter of new taxes on American corporations, higher prices for consumers and a jump in the dollar’s value may compel an unusual confederacy against the plan. Labrador predicts that the tax “will have very little political legs” in the conservative House, while Senator Lindsey Graham said in February that even in the Senate, Ryan’s tax plan “won’t get 10 votes. ” Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a North Dakota Democrat who has been outspoken in her willingness to work with Trump in spite of the broader stance of her party, says, “Let me tell you, I represent farmers, and anyone who tells me that farm country benefits from a high dollar needs to have a discussion with me. ” Perhaps the Republican faction most alarmed by Bannon’s economic nationalism is Washington’s military hawks. John McCain is among those not mollified by Trump’s pledge of enacting “one of the largest increases in spending in American history. ” McCain scoffed when I brought this up to him. “Of course that’s simply not true,” he said. “When you look at 1981 and Reagan’s commitment to rebuilding the military, there’s no comparison to this 3 percent increase. It’s a shell game, my friend. ” Despite his obvious differences with Trump, McCain was willing to work with him — but Bannon’s presence seemed to confound such prospects. “It’s kind of interesting,” McCain said, “because I have decades of experience with Kelly, with Mattis, with Dan Coats, McMaster,” referring to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly Defense Secretary James Mattis Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence and H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser. “We discuss issues all the time. I think this is probably the finest team that I’ve ever observed. It’s almost schizophrenic, in that I obviously don’t have conversations with Steve Bannon, but I do with Reince Priebus — he was my Republican chair in Wisconsin in my 2008 presidential campaign. So it’s almost a schizophrenic — that’s not the right word. A very divided kind of relationship. Paradoxical. ” McCain acknowledged to me that economic nationalism was a global movement and therefore not entirely “the making of some members of the Trump entourage. ” He then said: “But it is an articulation that I believe is strongly reminiscent of the 1930s. It certainly has unsettled our allies and friends around the world, there’s no doubt about that. ” Already, the senator asserted, the new administration’s bellicosity toward Mexico has increased the likelihood that its citizens will elect “a very president. ” As for an import tax of the sort favored by Bannon and Ryan, “talk about harkening back to the 1930s,” he said. “It’s unbelievable to me that they somehow think if we start taxing goods coming across the border, that that’s somehow not going to be responded to by the Mexicans. Please. History shows this sort of action gets you into a trade war. ” Listening to McCain’s tirade, I found it evident that the Bannon Effect might well cost the Trump White House at least one Republican Senate vote on a number of central issues — this at a time when Republicans are clinging to a slender majority in the upper chamber. In such cases, Trump could find himself asking for something Obama was never able to count on: votes from the opposition. Early in the afternoon of Feb. 9, several Democratic senators met with Trump in the Roosevelt Room of the White House to discuss the Gorsuch nomination and other matters. Among them were Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana. All four are moderates who are up for in 2018 in states Trump carried in 2016 by titanic margins — the least of which, in Donnelly’s state, was nearly 20 points. If Democrats are to nurture any hopes of retaking the Senate majority, they will need to hold these four seats. But if Donnelly, Heitkamp, Manchin and Tester need to be seen back home as willing to work with Trump, the president needs them as well. Republicans enjoy a precarious advantage in the Senate. On matters like the Supreme Court, Trump can count on all 52. On votes requiring a simple majority, any two of those Republicans could fall away, and Pence could preserve the win with a tiebreaking vote. But a trio of fiscal (like Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Mike Lee) military hawks (John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio) or social moderates (Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Shelley Moore Capito) could deny Trump a majority, unless he could swing at least one Democrat to his side. That February afternoon in the Roosevelt Room, Donnelly thanked Trump for negotiating with Carrier, the manufacturing company based in Indiana that had threatened to move jobs to Mexico before Trump it into keeping many of them in Indiana. But Donnelly urged him not to view that episode as a “ . ” He requested the president’s support for his End Outsourcing Act, which would give preferential treatment in awarding federal contracts to businesses that kept jobs in America. The words were scarcely out of Donnelly’s mouth before Trump said, “I’m 100 percent for that, and I’ll do everything I can to help get it passed. ” He then asked Pence, who was in the room, “What do you think, Mike?” Trump was apparently unaware that Pence, as the governor of Donnelly’s state, had refused to back the senator’s initiative, claiming instead that burdensome federal regulations were to blame for outsourcing. According to Donnelly, Pence gamely replied, “If it’s like what Joe describes, I’ll do everything I can to help. ” Donnelly, a Irish Catholic with a barroom guffaw, had met Trump once before. In January 2011, he was among the Blue Dog Coalition, composed of conservative House Democrats — what remained of them, anyway, after the previous November’s disastrous midterms — who traveled to New York for their annual retreat. At a hotel conference room in Midtown Manhattan, the 20 or so Blue Dogs received a procession of guests, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former President Bill Clinton. Only one of their scheduled appointments required that they go to their guest — and so they did, by bus, to Trump Tower. Trump greeted them in his boardroom, with its commanding view of Central Park. He was charming but also brash. “Remember, at that point he wasn’t really talking about running for office,” recalls one attendee, former Representative Dan Boren of Oklahoma. “But what strikes me was how he talked about the same issues — the wall, China — that became his stump speech years later. ” It was evident to the Blue Dogs that Trump was no Clinton or Bloomberg when it came to the issues. Says former Representative Ben Chandler of Kentucky, who was also in attendance: “The difference in terms of detailed knowledge of policy was stark. Trump just made bald assertions, really. ” Particularly memorable to Chandler was Trump’s insistence “that one of the best things the country could do was slap a massive tariff on the Chinese. ” Chandler continued: “He seemed not to understand that this would probably cause the entire world economy to melt down by causing a huge trade war. What I remember more than anything else was our general reaction afterward. And it was one of disbelief. ” Today Donnelly remains offended by what he calls Trump’s “crazy stuff,” as well as the alternative to Obamacare that Trump supported. But he does not begrudge Trump his showmanship. “He came to the Carrier plant,” Donnelly said. “I’ve been working on that issue since Day 1. I was begging people in the Obama administration to come out and talk to our workers. Donald Trump came out there. And Donald Trump talked to our workers. You can tell people you care. But it matters if you show up. ” The Senate Democrat who, to outward appearances, seems closest to Trump is Joe Manchin, who met face to face with the in Trump Tower in December. Before the meeting, Bannon took the West Virginia senator aside. “The thing you need to know about Trump,” Bannon said, “is he doesn’t care about the Republican Party and he doesn’t care about the Democratic Party. He just wants to put some wins on the board for the country. ” In the meeting, Trump asked Manchin what could be done for coal miners. Manchin replied that he should support his Miners Protection Act, which would secure health benefits and pension funds for retired miners. According to Manchin, Trump replied that he would thoroughly support such a measure. Later that month, Manchin went on “Morning Joe” — the one show on MSNBC that Trump has been known to watch — to discuss, on the occasion of the fourth anniversary of the Newtown school massacre, the need to expand background checks on gun purchases. Within an hour after Manchin was offscreen, his cellphone rang. It was Trump. Manchin was not completely forthcoming about the conversation, but he did tell me that he envisioned “a complete opportunity” for new legislation. Unlike with Obama, he said, “no one thinks President Trump would do anything that would take away your gun rights. ” In his conversations with Manchin and Donnelly, Trump was essentially throwing his support behind a Democratic initiative without first checking with the Republican Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, to ask what he thought of those proposals. Had he done so, the answer in each case would have been: not much. (Though on the coal miners’ legislation, Manchin said: “We’re seeing Mitch McConnell go from a ‘No, no and hell no’ to now dropping his own bill. Which is fine, so long as we get it. ”) Still, Trump may have little choice but to indulge Democrats on some of their pet issues, given that he will need their votes on two of the most critical pieces of his agenda: infrastructure and trade deals. Until now, Trump has divulged few details about this infrastructure venture. On the campaign trail, he frequently cited America’s crumbling roads and bridges. He bemoaned the potholes defiling the runways at La Guardia Airport, where he parked his two planes. During Donnelly’s visit with Trump in the Roosevelt Room, the president “talked about the Tunnel with the tiles falling off, which he would see on his way to La Guardia,” Donnelly recalled. (The Metropolitan Transportation Authority denies that tiles are falling off the tunnel.) When I asked Trump for more specifics, he gingerly offered a few morsels: “This is something that’s going to be a real infrastructure bill, where real work is going to be done on bridges and roads and airports and things that we’re supposed to be doing. So it’s not just a political piece of paper. We’re going to do infrastructure, and it’s going to be a very big thing. ” Trump’s description struck me as uncharacteristically modest. Bannon had evoked a more gleaming vision when he told me: “Look, economic nationalism is predicated on a infrastructure for the country, right? Broadband as good as Korea. Airports as good as China. Roads as good as Germany. A rail system as good as France. If you’re going to be a power, you’ve got to have a infrastructure. ” When I asked the president if his initiative might include such features, he replied: “Yes. It could, it could. You look at Japan and China, where they have the fast trains, and we don’t have any. You look at other countries where we used to be the leader, and now we’re the laggard. It’s not going to happen anymore. ” What also may not happen is House Republicans’ supporting a bill that is at least somewhat reminiscent of the stimulus bill they unanimously opposed eight years ago. It’s also possible that even moderate Democrats in swing states may face pressure not to come to Trump’s rescue. After all, the president remains intensely unpopular among Democrats, who continue to nurture hopes that Trump is one Russia connection away from impeachment. As a senior White House official told me of Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court: “The comment we often get from Democrats is, ‘That’s a great nominee.’ Oh, so you’re voting for him? ‘I can’t.’ Why not? ‘My base would go crazy, and I’d be primaried.’ That environment has to change before we can have any of these conversations. ” On the morning of Feb. 2, two Democratic leaders on trade issues, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Representative Richard Neal of Massachusetts — the ranking members of the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committees — met with Trump, along with a few of his advisers and Republican lawmakers. Trump had already greeted the day by threatening to yank federal funding from the University of California at Berkeley after acts of violence had forced the cancellation of the Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos’s speech on campus, and by taunting Arnold Schwarzenegger’s poor ratings on “The Apprentice” during the National Prayer Breakfast. Disquiet lingered from Trump’s travel ban on refugees and his surly phone conversation with the Australian prime minister the previous week. Amid this chaos — entirely to Bannon’s liking and grating to nearly everyone else in Washington — actual legislative activity was slowly unfolding. Trump began the meeting by condemning the trade deals negotiated by his predecessors. The press pool was then ushered out before the Democrats could say anything in front of the cameras. When Neal was given a chance to speak, he informed Trump, Pence, Bannon, Kushner and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross that America had in fact prospered as a result of past trade deals. Neal emphasized the crucial role that the Panama Canal played in the economic vitality of the Eastern Seaboard. Other than Ross, no one on Trump’s team seemed aware of this. “They were a bit surprised,” Neal later told me. He was also struck by the White House’s abhorrence of multilateral pacts, which seemed to him to be naïve. “The idea that you’re going to negotiate 148 bilateral agreements with W. T. O. members does not seem realistic,” Neal said. “The idea that we’re all of a sudden going to have a agreement with Great Britain, that’s going to take years to do. ” Later, Neal said, Ross privately assured him that the Trump administration “would not give up on multilateral deals. ” Neal’s lecture signified the start of what is likely to be a long and at times contentious reckoning on the part of Trump and Bannon with the limits of their nationalist rhetoric. Of all the legislative lifts, none will be heavier than renegotiating trade agreements, which require a simple majority approval by both the Senate and the House. Scrounging up 15 Democratic senators who are willing to vote along with 52 Republicans would be a formidable enough task on any issue. But just as Democrats like Neal in the Northeast would fight for a trade deal that benefits their region, so will Republican lawmakers along the Southern border rebel at an effort to repeal Nafta. As McCain told me, “If you negated Nafta, it would send my state into a severe recession. ” He assured me that Trump’s nationalist posture would not provoke only regional opposition. He conjured up another Republican era — not Reagan’s, not Bush’s, but instead that of Herbert Hoover, when two Republican lawmakers joined with a Republican president to design a protectionist initiative that ultimately caused American exports to plummet during the Great Depression. “Somewhere,” McCain said with a dark chuckle, “Mr. Smoot and Mr. Hawley are smiling. ” On Thursday, March 23, Trump hosted a morning meeting of Freedom Caucus holdouts in the Cabinet Room. Jeff Duncan, a congressman from South Carolina who was present, told me that Trump told them: “I need you guys. We need to put up a win. It’s not just about needing to repeal Obamacare — though we do. It’s also that a win here sets up a win for tax reform and gives us momentum going into infrastructure. And if the bill fails, it could derail all of that. ” With customary bravado, Trump told the conservative members that he didn’t want to squeak by with just a victory. “I want all 237 of you,” he said, according to Duncan, referring to the entire House Republican conference. That included the more moderate members, who had told Trump they felt that the White House wasn’t paying sufficient attention to their concerns. Later in the day, Trump hosted another meeting with the moderates, where Representative Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania informed Trump that he remained a “no. ” According to an attendee, Trump angrily informed Dent that he was “destroying the Republican Party” and “was going to take down tax reform — and I’m going to blame you. ” Until that day, Duncan had been an unyielding “no” on the bill. The previous week, he delivered an impassioned speech to the vice president and other Republicans, insisting that this vote constituted “our generation’s rendezvous with destiny — a real chance to roll back the size and scope of the federal government, returning some liberty back to the people through our actions to repeal Obamacare. ” In a text to me, Duncan pointed to history: “39 men in a hot room in 1787 had the courage to break from the norm and empower a nation. ” But now the congressman was, for the first time in his life, sitting across the table from a president who was personally appealing for his support. The White House was offering concessions and agreeing to them in writing. Duncan left the meeting and spent a few hours pondering, as he would later put it, “the greater opportunity we as Republicans have. ” By that evening, Trump had won Jeff Duncan’s vote. It wasn’t enough. The next afternoon, Ryan pulled the House health care bill, conceding that neither he nor the White House could muster enough votes. “You get about nine months to do the big things,” Kevin McCarthy, the House majority leader, told me at the beginning of the year. Nine months seemed like a long time then, the calendar spacious and the legislative possibilities plentiful. But more than two of those months are gone already — and the path to future wins, as Trump foresaw in his meeting with the Freedom Caucus, is now more complicated. When he took office, Trump relished the prospect of becoming a new kind of deal maker in the White House. By the time I spoke with him in early March, however, he already seemed to be taking stock of the limits to his powers. He still saw himself as the closer in chief — but then that was “typical, I would think, of a president,” he mused. “Some more than others. ” | 1 |
One of the “ ” groups behind last week’s riot in Berkeley, Refuse Fascism, received $50, 000 from a group backed by socialist billionaire George Soros, according to the Daily Caller. [The Alliance for Global Justice, which is funded by the George Tides Foundation, reportedly donated $50, 000 to fund Refuse Fascism, which openly brags about using violence to shut down conservative and libertarian speech. “While it is unclear whether those who carried out the violence were paid to do so, the benefactors of the Alliance for Global Justice — and Refuse Fascism — are listed online,” reported the Daily Caller. “According to its most recent 990 tax form, Alliance for Global Justice (AfGJ) received $2. 2 million in funding for the fiscal year ending in March 2016. One of the group’s biggest donors is the Tides Foundation, a funded by billionaire progressive philanthropist George Soros. Tides gave AfGJ $50, 000. ” “Other notable donors include the city of Tucson and the United Steel Workers labor union. The former gave $10, 000 to AfGJ while the latter contributed $5, 000,” they continued. “Charities associated with several major corporations also donated. Patagonia. org, the outdoor apparel and equipment company, gave $40, 000. The Ben Jerry Foundation, the charity associated with the ice cream maker, gave $20, 000. And Lush Cosmetic gave $43, 950. Another bit of irony is seen in the $5, 000 contribution from the Peace Development Fund, a group that claims to support organizations that fight for human rights and social justice. ” The group defended the violent riot at Berkeley on Facebook, which left numerous Trump supporters and fans of MILO injured and bloody, before deleting their post. “Dismantling police fences is not violent,” they claimed, according to the Daily Caller, ignoring the rest of the violence that occured. “And to compare preventing someone like that from speaking to the violence that they perpetuate everyday is ludicrous. ” Refuse Fascism also branded the riot as “righteous,” and encouraged more violence to shut down conservatives in a post on their website. “Last night, thousands of students, professors and others protested the appearance and organizing rally of Milo Yiannopoulos, a major fascist operative, shutting it down. This was righteous and much more like this is needed,” the group proclaimed. “Lets be clear: Milo Yiannopoulos is not engaging in ‘free speech.’ He is consciously spearheading the Nazification of the American University. ” The riot started at UC Berkeley on Wednesday after protesters against Breitbart Senior Editor MILO became increasingly violent outside of his show. “ ” started several fires, smashed windows and ATMs, looted downtown stores, attacked cars, and assaulted dozens of MILO fans, male and female, who they falsely accused of being “Nazis. ” Despite the large amount of violence, numerous reports indicate that police officers refused to intervene, and only one suspect was arrested. UFC veteran and professional MMA fighter Jake Shields was even forced to rescue a man who was being assaulted by rioters after police allegedly refused to intervene. “Like fifteen people were trying to attack him and others were cheering them on,” explained Shields, who managed to successfully rescue the man, in an interview with Breitbart News. “No one helped, no one had the balls to step in, so my reaction was to run in and start picking people off. ” “More chaos started happening, so I went up to the police and tried bringing them back, but they were just like ‘we’re not really going over there. You should just stay away. ’” he continued. “I don’t know if they were taking orders from someone or if they were just being lazy. I don’t know what the situation was, but it was pathetic to watch. Our police, who are supposed to defend the citizens of Berkeley. It’s a sad scene that they would allow that. ” The national for the Alliance for Global Justice, Chuck Kaufman, claimed he wasn’t aware that Refuse Fascism were involved in the riots, but defended their involvement citing the fact that numerous groups joined in. “I wasn’t aware that Refuse Fascism was involved, but probably they were one of a whole lot of groups calling to shut down Milo Yiannopoulos’ hate speech,” said Kaufman to The Daily Caller. “AfGJ acts as fiscal sponsor for Refuse Fascism which means we process donations for them. As long as their use of the money falls into areas permitted for 501( c)(3) organizations, we don’t involve ourselves one way or the other in their program work. ” Several celebrities and news outlets expressed support for the riot, including Hollywood director Judd Apatow, who deleted his tweet shortly after, and Fusion, who smeared MILO as a “Nazi,” before praising rioters. The day after, MILO’s tour bus was tracked down by “ ” and vandalized, forcing both him and his team to evacuate the premises after his location was leaked online. Four were also arrested last week after they became violent during a protest against libertarian commentator and VICE Gavin McInnes, who was speaking at New York University. DANGEROUS is available to now via Amazon, in hardcover and Kindle editions. And yes, MILO is reading the audiobook version himself! Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 1 |
posted by Eddie The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has always been at the frontier of science and technology. Since 1958, NASA has done its best to allow humankind to know more about life and the universe. Thanks to this space agency, people have been able to walk on the moon. In the near future, we might even have people walking on Mars. NASA will be moving farther into the unknown areas of the Universe. I know that many of us are hoping to find life beyond the earth. But what if NASA is already aware of alien life ? Well, one hacker claims to have found NASA’s secret photos for all the world to see. Read on! 1. Is that a massive wheel from an extinct civilization? This could have possibly been a part of a huge machine. 2. The side of this cliff has been charred. This shouldn’t look like this if this portion was a representation of what occurred thousands of years ago. Is this because of extraterrestrial activity? 3. This metal vault was hidden in ice for so long. I want to know what’s inside this mysterious container! 4. Is this place from another planet? If you look closely, the area beyond shows a structure that doesn’t look like anything on the earth. 5. These golden bricks hide an unknown language. Sadly, no one has been able to decipher what these writings mean. 6. What were all those military ships doing there? Either they were observing a supernatural phenomenon, or they were trying a new military weapon. 7. Did NASA hide this asteroid impact from the public? If they did, they must have good reason to keep it away from everyone else. Did they witness extraterrestrial life? 8. Those holes don’t look natural at all. The circles are almost the same, and the placement is strange. It looks like a place where machines are hidden and deployed. 9. Using night vision, NASA supposedly captured an unknown structure. It looks like a pyramid, but it is not visible using normal cameras. 10. Was this huge skeleton a part of the Anunnaki? The Anunnaki was known in Mesopotamia as a group of Gods. 11. Large human beings probably existed at some point. However, why can’t scientists find something like this today? This creature might have been an alien that looks like a human. 12. I found this image incredibly terrifying! If this is true, then NASA has evidence of extraterrestrial life. That obviously looks like a spaceship. 13. A temple was found underneath the ocean. Source: | 0 |
While in the NV dessert 2 fake nuclear bombs were tested, wait, were they fake or were they real, how would we know, then the water giving many of us cancer, how will we connect the dots. | 0 |
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The Standing Rock Sioux’s camp, set up to physically stop construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, just got solar power thanks to Mark Ruffalo.
The actor and director delivered trailers full of solar panels alongside Wahleah Johns, founder of Native Renewables, to the Standing Rock camp. As cold weather begins to set in for the indigenous tribes facing off with oil companies in North Dakota, the solar panels will help generate electricity to provide the camp with life-sustaining heat and medical treatment.
EcoWatch reported that Ruffalo and Johns touted the necessity of switching to renewable energy in the wake of drastic climate change. Ruffalo also emphasized the right of Native Americans to protect their land from predatory fossil fuel companies.
“Around the world, more than 80 percent of the forests and lands with protected waterways and rich biodiversity are held by indigenous tribes. This is no coincidence,” Ruffalo said. “As so many of us suffer from polluted water, air and land in our rural and urban communities, the water defenders at Standing Rock are showing us another way.”
However, Ruffalo was quick to note that he was merely “trying to be of service” in using his platform to bring awareness to the Dakota Access Pipeline protest.
“It was really Wahleah Johns responsible for the delivery. I was there to draw the spotlight,” Ruffalo told US Uncut in an email.
Johns, whose company’s goal is to provide low-cost, renewable energy sources and green energy jobs for indigenous communities, praised the Standing Rock Sioux’s fight against Energy Transfer Partners’ pipeline, calling it necessary for the sake of the planet’s survival.
“Water is life,” said Johns , who is a leader in the Navajo nation. “By leading a transition to energy that is powered by the sun, the wind, and water, we ensure a better future for all of our people and for future generations.”
The Dakota Access Pipeline, if constructed, would carry highly toxic tar sands oil through North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois , where it would then be transported by train to ports on the Gulf of Mexico. Sacred land belonging to indigenous communities in North Dakota was destroyed for the pipeline route, with Native American leaders saying they were never consulted about the pipeline before construction began. The Standing Rock Sioux, who call themselves “water protectors,” say the pipeline would endanger drinking water for millions of people along the pipeline route.
Tom Cahill is a writer for US Uncut based in the Pacific Northwest. He specializes in coverage of political, economic, and environmental news. You can contact him via email at [email protected] | 0 |
in: General Health (image: shutterstock) Few experts question the influence a mother’s diet can have on her children’s long term physical health. Yet, many believe this effect is mostly sociological, limited to positive or negative role modeling, and the development of general dietary habits later in life. However, research suggests that the foods moms eat could impact the health of their children much more directly. Scientists at Tufts University’s USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (USDA HNRCA), near Boston, have published findings of a study which shows a strong connection between the quantity of B vitamins pregnant mice consume and the likelihood of their offspring developing colorectal cancer as adults [ 1 ] . Breaking Down The Study Three test groups of pregnant and nursing mice, which were genetically engineered to be predisposed to develop colorectal cancer, were fed diets with either higher than normal, adequate, or slightly deficient amounts of folate and vitamins B2, B6, and B12. Once fully weened, all newborn mice were fed identical, nutritionally balanced diets through adulthood. The occurrence of tumor development appeared similar between both the adequate and B vitamin deficient groups, with about 60 percent of the mice in each of these two groups eventually developing colon cancer . In comparison, less than 20 percent of the mice in the group that was given larger than normal servings of B vitamins were found to have malignant growths. While these figures are impressive, the researchers caution that the study itself is only a preliminary investigation, and additional studies will be needed to further assess the correlation between maternal vitamin B consumption and reduced risk of cancer in humans.
Dr. Jimmy Crott, PhD, lead author of the HNRCA study:
“We saw, by far, the fewest intestinal tumors in the offspring of mothers consuming the supplemented diet. Although the tumor incidence was similar between offspring of deficient and adequate mothers, 54% of tumors in the deficient offspring were advanced and had invaded surrounding tissue while only 18% of tumors in the offspring of adequate mothers displayed these aggressive properties.” Most healthcare providers already recommend higher than normal intake of folate and other essential B vitamins during pregnancy and while nursing as part of routine prenatal care. And accordingly, most popular brands of prenatal vitamins> contain significantly larger than normal serving of all four B vitamins as compared to regular multivitamins. The standard reasons for this, however, have nothing to do with with the prevention of colon cancer. In addition to their potential for the risk of colorectal cancer, Vitamin B – folate, more specifically – has long been known to play an important role in the prevention of spina bifida and related defects of the neural tube (a sort of embryonic forerunner of the central nervous system) during fetal gestation. It’s also believed to have a strong influence on proper neurological development in very young children. References: | 0 |
LONDON — Britain’s prime minister and Scotland’s leader met on Monday to discuss the most consequential of questions: Will Britain’s departure from the European Union cause Scotland — joined with England since 1707 — to leave the United Kingdom? But for The Daily Mail, one of Britain’s most popular newspapers, the question that mattered was: Which leader had better legs? “Never mind Brexit, who won !” its cover on Tuesday blared. Many readers were appalled that the encounter between Theresa May, the prime minister, and Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland, had been reduced to a comparison of their bodies. By Tuesday afternoon, at least one complaint had been filed with Britain’s press regulator. “This is 2017,” Chuka Umunna, a Labour lawmaker, wrote on Twitter. “Sexist does not begin to describe this front page. ” Others, perhaps more jaded, were unsurprised, given how The Daily Mail has represented women in its pages in the past. “The Daily Mail do this regularly,” said Roy Greenslade, a professor of journalism at City University in London and a columnist for the liberal newspaper The Guardian. “And this is a particularly venal example, but if you look at it day on day, there are plenty of similar examples. ” Professor Greenslade said the blatant sexism was done unapologetically, “with a sense of confidence on the understanding that they can’t see what the fuss is all about. ” Mrs. May and Ms. Sturgeon met at a hotel in Glasgow on Monday, two days before the British government was set to invoke Article 50, formally notifying the European Union of Britain’s intention to leave the bloc. The leaders stopped for a photograph, sitting next to each other in armchairs. “But what stands out here are the legs — and the vast expanse on show,” Sarah Vine, the author of the Daily Mail article, wrote. Ms. Vine is married to Michael Gove, the British politician who helped lead the campaign to leave the European Union. The article went on to describe each woman’s stance. “Knees tightly together,” Mrs. May opted for “a studied pose that reminds us that for all her confidence, she is ever the vicar’s daughter,” the article said. Ms. Sturgeon’s legs, described as “undeniably more shapely shanks,” were “more flirty, tantalizingly crossed. ” The writer then called the Scottish leader’s posture “a direct attempt at seduction: Her stiletto is not quite dangling off her foot, but it could be. ” The Daily Mail has a readership of about 3. 4 million. It has often portrayed what it calls “career women” through the lens of their appearance, rather than through their accomplishments. “Even though they are great champions of Theresa May — and were champions of Mrs. Thatcher — they still basically see women in a 1950s role, as an adornment,” Professor Greenslade said, referring to former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. “That’s why so much of their editorial is about how women look. ” In 2014, for example, The Daily Mail compiled photographs of female lawmakers entering or leaving 10 Downing Street, the prime minister’s office and residence, during meetings about a cabinet reshuffle by David Cameron, Mrs. May’s predecessor. The article, with the headline “Esther, the Queen of the Downing Street Catwalk,” referring to one of the lawmakers, Esther McVey, also caused an uproar. To the latest criticism, The Daily Mail issued the response “For goodness sake, get a life!” Its statement called the article “a sidebar alongside a serious political story” that appeared “in an paper packed with important news and analysis. ” The statement added that the newspaper had backed Mrs. May when she ran to succeed Mr. Cameron as leader of the governing Conservative Party. The newspaper added that it had often commented on the appearance of politicians, including “Mr. Cameron’s waistline” the hair of the former chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne and the attire of Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour Party. If the statement reflected a certain sensitivity to the negative coverage, so did later versions of the front page. Observers noted that it was tweaked in print, for a later edition, to add the words: “Sarah Vine’s lighthearted verdict on the big showdown. ” Some critics said that the adjustment was itself sexist, as it appeared to shift attention to the writer. “I think people maybe have had a slight sense of humor failure,” said Ms. Vine, speaking on the BBC radio show “World at One. ” “What we’re doing is creating a more approachable version of the story,” she added. Ms. Vine also defended the cover change, saying she stood by what she had written. Professor Greenslade saw the late change in the cover language as a belated attempt to a controversy. “It is a pretty pathetic excuse,” he said. “When you see that front page, it’s quite clear what they meant: Don’t worry about the politics, just look at the legs. ” | 1 |
Former FBI director James Comey began his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday by suggesting that the question of whether President Donald Trump had committed obstruction of justice was one for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to investigate. [But under questioning by Sen. James Risch ( ) Comey all but destroyed any hope Democrats had for bringing a case of obstruction of justice against President Donald Trump. Their exchange was as follows: Risch: I want to drill right down, as my time is limited, to the most recent regarding, allegations that the President of the United States obstructed justice. And, boy, you nailed this down on page page five, paragraph three, you put this in quotes. Words matter, you wrote down the words so we can all have the words in front of us now. There’s 28 words that are in quotes, and it says, quote: “I hope” — this is the president speaking — “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go. ” Now, those are his exact words is that correct? Comey: Correct. Risch: And you wrote them here and you put them in quotes. Comey: Correct. Risch: Thank you for that. He did not direct you to let it go. Comey: Not in his words, no. Risch: He did not order you to let it go. Comey: Again, those words are not in order. Risch: No. He said, “I hope. ” Now, like me, you probably did hundreds of cases, maybe thousands of cases, charging people with criminal offenses. And of course you have knowledge of the thousands of cases out there where people have been charged. Do you know of any case where a person has been charged for obstruction of justice or for that matter any other criminal offense where they said or thought they hoped for an outcome? Comey: I don’t know well enough to answer. And the reason I keep saying his words is, I took it as a direction. Risch: Right. Comey: I mean, it’s the President of the United States with me alone, saying, “I hope this. ” I took it as this is what he wants me to do. I didn’t obey that, but that’s the way I took it. Risch: You may have taken it as a direction, but that’s not what he said. Comey: Correct. Risch: He said, “I hope. ” Comey: Those are exact words, correct. Risch: You don’t know of anyone that’s been charged for hoping something? Comey: I don’t, as I sit here. Risch: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Democrats have hinged their hopes for impeachment — and reversing the 2016 elections — on the idea that Trump committed obstruction of justice. That case has now been smashed beyond repair. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. | 1 |
0 19 2 0 A majority of likely US voters are concerned about the potential for violence during the upcoming presidential election on November 8, a USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll revealed on Wednesday.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The 2016 election will be the first held without the full protections afforded by the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which the US Supreme Court invalidated in 2013. The decision limited the federal government's power to supervise areas of the country historically prone to voter intimidation. © AP Photo/ Don Ryan Black Lives Matter Activist Endorses Clinton for US President in Opinion Article "A 51 percent majority of likely voters express at least some concern about the possibility of violence on Election Day; one in five are ‘very concerned’," the poll stated.
Additionally, only 40 percent of the 1,000 respondents said they were very confident the country would have a peaceful transition of power from President Barack Obama to his successor. © REUTERS/ Nick Oxford/File Photo Coalition of US Rights Groups Urges States to Prevent Voter Discrimination
Republican nominee Donald Trump has claimed the election is rigged and called for his supporters, including police and sheriffs, to independently patrol polling places for voter fraud, sparking at least some concerns that minority voters could be subject to intimidation.
Trump, but also numerous other critics , have warned of mass voter fraud in light of the fact that no mechanism exists to verify individuals are legally entitled to vote or keep people from voting more than once. Moreover, critics have raised the issue of names of dead people being included on voter lists as well as voting machines being highly vulnerable to manipulation and hacking.
On October 19, detectives in the US state of Indiana found evidence of mass voter registration fraud after conducting an investigation into tampering of personal voter data. ... | 0 |
Chris Black November 21, 2016 5 DIY Survival Tools To Make From Scratch
Let’s begin today’s article with a question: do you know what homo sapiens means? Well, I bet you do. But then again, how about homo faber? What’s the relation between homo sapiens and homo faber?
Translated literally, homo faber means “man, the maker.”
To put it simply, let’s assume that dolphins are very intelligent creatures since that’s what I hear constantly on National Geo and the Discovery Channel.
But that intelligence doesn’t help them much; they’re just the same as they were 500,000 years ago. Cute, intelligent creatures that constantly get caught in our fishing nets (by mistake) and they can’t get out. They often end up in tuna cans (that’s why I never eat tuna, but I’m digressing).
Are you starting to get the picture?
Homo faber is a peculiar creature, and I mean us, the people, the only “animals” on the planet which are able to control their environment through the use of – you guessed it – tools. Okay, tools and a juicy brain-to-body ratio. Some say that we control our fate too with those same tools , but I have my doubts about that.
Regardless of what you’re thinking about your fate or the lack thereof, tools are pretty cool to have, especially in a survival situation . But then again, tools aren’t necessarily defined by what you can buy for $3.99 in your local hardware store.
Actually, some while ago, I saw an octopus on TV that was using a small rock to break a clam’s shell. By most accounts, octopuses are pretty stupid compared to humans.
The idea is that when confronted with an outdoors survival scenario, you can improvise tools from scratch, thus living to fight another day. If an octopus can do it, so can you, right?
So, if early humans were able to manufacture tools using first animal bones, then stones, then metal and then via 3D printing, what’s there to stop you from learning from your ancestors?
Now that you have the general idea, let’s see about a few primitive-technology ideas which may very well save your life someday, or at least improve the quality of life for you and your family in a survival scenario, which is the next best thing.
1. How to build a fresh water prawn trap from scratch
The idea is very simple and straightforward: one must eat in order to stay alive. So, with the prawn trap you can catch prawns and eat them. The trap is very easy to build using lawyer cane, vine, and sticks. Prawn/fish traps are very easy DIY traps which can successfully be used to catch aquatic life thanks to their peculiar shape.
Basically, you’ll have to build a simple basket with an entrance designed in a funnel-like fashion so that the prawn will get funneled in, but it will not be able to get out. Here’s the detailed video tutorial about the DIY-ing job itself. Video first seen on Primitive Technology .
The trap must be placed under some tree roots or something similar in the water and it doesn’t require bait, as curiosity kills the cat … err, prawns. You’ll require a little bit of basketry practice but if you’re into outdoor survival, learning this skill may prove very useful some day for many different tasks.
2. How to make a survival spear from scratch
Spears were among the first hunting/ self defense weapons used by mankind and this video tutorial will teach you how to make your own survival spear from (almost) scratch. Video first seen on Animal Man Survivor .
All that’s required is a cutting tool, which may very well be a knife or a stone with a sharp edge. and a piece of wood of the desired length. Watching the video will also teach you how to make a fire using what’s available in the woods, i.e. almost nothing.
Oh, I almost forgot – here’s how to make a rock knife if you don’t carry a survival blade on your person 24/7 (not good). Video first seen on Captain Quinn .
3. How to build a grass hut from scratch
You do remember the holy trinity of survival, right? Food, water and shelter. I know that a grass hut made from scratch is not a tool per se, but it’s a shelter by any definition and it can be built basically anywhere on Earth, provided there’s grass available. Which means, almost anywhere.
This project is easy to build, with a simple yet effective design and you’ll only require a sharp stone (or a knife) and a digging tool (stick, shovel, whatever). Here’s the video tutorial. Video first seen on Primitive Technology .
4. How to DIY a Bow and Arrow from scratch
While hunting with a spear requires some mad skills, bows and arrows are the ideal hunting tools for long-term wilderness survival.
This video tutorial will teach you how to DIY a bow and arrow outdoors, using primitive “technology” – natural materials and tools made from scratch, i.e. a stone chisel, a stone hatchet, fire sticks and various stone blades. Video first seen on Primitive Technology .
5. How to DIY a cord drill from scratch
Check out this video tutorial and you’ll learn how to make a cord drill from scratch. This baby consists of a fly wheel, a shaft, and a piece of cord and it can be used for making a fire without getting blisters on your (soft) hands or for drilling holes. Video first seen on Primitive Technology .
Now, with the “survival stuff” taken care of, let’s see about a few life-hacks, i.e. some “more benign” tools made from recycled materials.
Next time you destroy a tape measure, you can improvise a depth gauge using a piece from the broken tape-measure by cutting out a twelve inch section using a pair of tin snips. To get an usable zero to twelve inch scale, start cutting at the beginning of a one footmarker and then use the ultra-thin, elastic material for measuring stuff in small/confined places
You can use scrap wood from the shop for improvising a table saw push stick for keeping your hands and fingers on the safe side when feeding wood to the saw at a consistent rate. Video first seen on Adam Gabbert .
Here’s how to make a scratch stock cutter from an old hand saw which can be used for scraping/scratching a decorative profile into a piece of wood, a method used by furniture manufacturers on historic pieces for creating a hand-made appearance. Video first seen on Wood By Wright .
You can improvise an adjustable marking gauge by driving a dry-wall screw into a piece of wood. Video first seen on Paul Sellers .
You can use an empty bottle as a glue dispenser, thus saving money by buying glue in bulk. You’ll require an empty bottle that features an extendable cap, which allows you to distribute a consistent amount of adhesive for, let’s say edge-gluing boards.
When closing the cap, you’ll prevent the glue from drying out. The best bottles to use are bottles with sports caps, such as water bottles,, Gatorade bottles, or dish soap bottles. An expired credit card is excellent as a glue spreader.
If you want to drill perfectly perpendicular deep holes without a drill-press, just use an old piece of mirror and position it against the drill bit.
You’ll have to fine-tune the position of the drill until the reflection and the bit are combined in such a way that they look perfectly aligned. That’s all!
Or you can make your own smart saw at home. Click the banner below to find out how to transform your ideas into real projects.
Chris Black for Survivopedia. 363 total views, 363 views today | 0 |
Following an online report showing photographs of Democrat Minority Leader Chuck Schumer ( . Y.) meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in New York City in 2003, President Donald Trump tweeted: “We should start an immediate investigation into @SenSchumer and his ties to Russia and Putin. A total hypocrite! ”[We should start an immediate investigation into @SenSchumer and his ties to Russia and Putin. A total hypocrite! pic. twitter. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 3, 2017, On Thursday, the Gateway Pundit published two photos of Putin and Schumer in New York City. The caption under the Associated Press photo said: “Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, enjoys a Krispy Kreme doughnut and coffee with Senator Charles Schumer from New York as Putin visits the first New York gas station of the Russian company Lukoil [on] Friday. ” “The hysteria over Trump administration officials talking — or not talking — with Russia needs to end,” the Gateway Pundit’s post said. “It’s getting in the way of putting America back on track. ” A spokesperson for Schumer replied to a Breitbart News inquiry sent to his office by email on Friday: During their careers, Senator Schumer and Sessions both met with Russian officials — that’s where the similarities end. Senator Schumer’s meeting was a press conference, in full view of the press and public in 2003. Senator Sessions met with the Russian Ambassador and then went on to mislead Congress about those meetings, while being put in charge of an investigation into ties between Russia and the President’s campaign. That’s why he should resign, and why he had to recuse himself from the investigation. | 1 |
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A new video purportedly released by the Islamic State shows 2 young ISIS boys executing two “spies.”
The film, titled “Repent and you have safety from us,” is directed at Russians and Putin, threatening violence at the Syrian government ally. The nearly 14-minute video was released on ISIS terrorist channels on November 9 and comes from “Wilayat al-Jazirah,” northern Iraq.
Vulnerable cities in the ISIS-occupied region include “Tal ‘Afar, Al-Ba’aj, Al-‘Ayadiyyah, Al-Mahlabiyyah, Sinjar, Wardiyyah, Sanuni, Khana Sor, Ibrat al-Saghira, Al-Badi, [and] Al-Qanat.”
Prisoners can be seen kneeling on the ground in an unknown location in northern Iraq, while so-called 'cubs of the caliphate', dressed in military outfits, stand behind them wielding hand guns.
In one scene a child rants to the camera about Putin's intervention in Syria before he and a second youngster shoot their captives - who were accused of being spies - in the back of the head.
MORE... Saudis Foil ISIS Terror Attacks on Packed Stadium U.S. Commander John Nicholson: ISIS Attempting to Establish Khorasan Caliphate in Afghanistan ISIL executes Iraqi citizens listening to gov't radio Iraqi forces burn 16k m² ISIS poppy fields to curtail heroin and opium revenue The child soldiers threaten attacks on Russia and call Putin a 'dog', according to Terror Monitor.
One of the Russian children says: 'O Russian disbelievers... We will kill you and nothing will save you from that dog Putin.'
The video emerged on the same day that a senior UN official said the operation to liberate the city of Mosul marks the beginning of the end of the ISIS caliphate in Iraq.
Jan Kubis, the UN envoy for the country told the Security Council, said efforts by the Iraqi Security Forces, the Peshmerga and other allies are making steady progress in liberating the city, while seeking to minimise civilian casualties.
'This liberation operation marks the beginning of the end of the so-called `Da'esh caliphate' in Iraq,' Kubis said, using an Arabic acronym to refer to the group.
Early on Agugust ISIS released a video urging his memebers to stage attacks in Russia. | 0 |
(Adult Language Warning) Liberal comedian Samantha Bee roasted the news media, past presidents, and President Donald Trump during a taped mock White House Correspondent’s Dinner Saturday afternoon in Washington, D. C. From the Hollywood Reporter: “As much as I might love poking fun at the media and as much as you kind of deserve it sometimes, your job has never been harder,” she said. “You’re basically get paid to stand in a cage while a geriatric orangutan screams at you. … You expose injustice against the weak and you continue to the president as if he might someday get embarrassed! Tonight is for you. ” … The special’s commercial breaks were led with taped sketches of Bee roasting a handful of previous presidents like Woodrow Wilson and Bill Clinton, complete with garb. “This story has more wrinkles than the president’s nutsack,” she said of Ronald Reagan and the affair, while Richard Nixon “achieved John F. Kennedy’s two goals: landing a man on the moon and getting f — ed by a deep throat. ” The final sketch of this series had Bee roasting Mike Pence, who became president after Trump died after “getting his head stuck in a jar of honey. ” She was shown wearing a chastity belt and a turtleneck: “I attempted to cover my pillows but the slut shines through. ” … One segment skewered Jeff Zucker and CNN. “Zucker’s greatest success besides The Apprentice — which, by the way, thanks for that — is filling airtime between car crashes with a reality show loosely based on the news where hacks make us measurably dumber by spewing mendacious nonsense while a hologram of Anderson Cooper stand by,” said Bee, pleading for the network to “free” its journalists. “Anderson is a smart reporter! Give him his black back and put him in front of a natural disaster!” She added, “CNN gives you news like your shitty boyfriend gives you orgasms: in the end, you wind up lying in the wet spot and he’s snoring. ” For the rest of the article, click here. The TBS program Full Frontal with Samantha Bee’s Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is set to air Saturday at 10 p. m. eastern. | 1 |
Departing occupants of the White House rarely hand off an improving economy to a successor from the opposing party. When Barack Obama was waiting in the wings after the 2008 presidential election, for example, the economy was in a severe downward spiral: Employers reported cutting 533, 000 jobs that November, the biggest monthly loss in a generation. But according to the government’s report on Friday, Donald J. Trump can expect to inherit an economy that has added private sector jobs for 80 months, put another 178, 000 people on payrolls last month and pushed the unemployment rate down to 4. 6 percent today from 4. 9 percent the previous month. Wage growth, though slower, is still running ahead of inflation, and consumers are expressing the highest levels of confidence in nearly a decade. The Federal Reserve is confident enough about the economy’s underlying strength that it is now set to raise the benchmark interest rate when it meets later this month. The jobless rate for November, the lowest since August 2007, “is a testimony to how strong employment growth has been,” said Jim O’Sullivan, chief United States economist at High Frequency Economics. Jason Furman, now chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, remembers the transition eight years ago, when he was crammed into his office with a circle of key officials as the latest jobs numbers from the Labor Department landed. “It was an utterly terrifying time, the likes of which none of us had ever seen in our lifetimes,” Mr. Furman recalled. Fearing that “the economy was following the same trajectory that it did at the beginning of the Great Depression,” everyone was focused on how to “rapidly slow the bleeding and figure out how to get the economy growing again. ” By contrast, Mr. Furman said, “the economy today is healthy and it’s improving. ” For all the improvements, tens of millions of Americans understandably feel that the recovery has passed them by. Those without skills are relegated to positions without steady schedules, security and benefits. Breadwinners who once held manufacturing jobs are angry about being forced to settle for service jobs — or no jobs at all. Profound anxiety, particularly among the white working class, about the ability to reach or comfortably remain in the middle class is one of the factors that helped propel Mr. Trump to the White House. Pockets of weakness also surfaced in the latest jobs report, which showed that more people dropped out of the labor force last month than joined it. Manufacturing jobs declined further, and there are still plenty of workers who would rather be full time. And while the official jobless rate for high school graduates fell to 4. 9 percent, it is more than twice the rate for college graduates. “There is a bifurcation of the work force,” Jonas Prising, chairman and chief executive of the ManpowerGroup, one of the largest recruiters in the United States. People who are able to take advantage of advances in technology, globalization and other shifts that favor those with the right skills for the nation’s advanced services are thriving. For others, the prospects do not look good. “There used to be part of the work force that had jobs that were low or unskilled,” Mr. Prising said. “Those kinds of jobs are very difficult to find today. ” The deal that Mr. Trump made with the heating and cooling company Carrier this week to keep 1, 000 manufacturing jobs from moving to Mexico from Indiana is emblematic of the kind of actions he said he would take as president to help workers. But there are limits to the power of persuasion. Betsey Stevenson, an economist at the University of Michigan and a former economic adviser to Mr. Obama, said that manufacturing, while still a driving force in the economy, employed fewer and fewer people. More than 80 percent of jobs are now in the service industry, Ms. Stevenson said, and Mr. Trump should be thinking more about how to match workers with those jobs. “The economy is in a great place, and his biggest challenge is continuing that,” she said. Some economists worry that the Federal Reserve is too focused on fears of future inflation and that it should hold off on any increase in rates until conditions have improved further. “There’s no reason to slow the economy down, given that we’re starting from less than full employment,” said Elise Gould, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “Right now, the priority should be keeping the economy on track and moving it forward. ” Such pleas are unlikely to win the day. At last month’s meeting of the Federal Reserve, members concluded that the case for an increase in the benchmark rate had been “strengthened,” and that they would be ready to move “so long as incoming data provided some further evidence of continued progress. ” Many employers are having a harder time finding and retaining workers. “Recruiting is a tough issue right now in skilled and semiskilled industries,” said Robert A. Funk, chairman and chief executive of Express Employment Professionals, a staffing agency based in Oklahoma City. He mentioned a particular need for workers in accounting, information technology, call centers, warehousing and office and professional services. Mr. Funk said employers often complained about being unable to find employees with a strong work ethic who met the minimum requirements. “Drug screening is a real challenge in many parts of the country,” he said. “Only 30 percent can pass a drug screen in the state of Washington,” where marijuana is legal. At the same time, employers have been reluctant to raise wages to a level that might lure back sidelined workers. The result has been that the country has 5. 5 million job openings, a level, but still relatively anemic labor force participation rates. “The challenge out there now is finding workers and keeping the workers you have,” said Steve Rick, chief economist at CUNA Mutual Group. Those shortages, whatever the cause, are likely to push wages higher next year, he said. “People are feeling good not only about their current income but their future income,” Mr. Rick said. Whatever the economy’s current failings, Mark J. Rozell, a political scientist at George Mason University in Virginia, said it was nonetheless better than the ones most incoming presidents have faced in the last . “Trump can be thankful that his predecessor is handing him a fairly strong situation,” Mr. Rozell said, “especially when compared to many past party transfers of power. ” | 1 |
A leading US senator: US Supporting War in Syria
A leading US senator said the war in Syria would have been over by now if the US had put an end to its intervention when Russia entered the war-ravaged country.
“If the United States had just stayed out of it at that point, the war would be over by now; people would be rebuilding, refugees would be returning back to Syria, but the United States rushed anti-Tank missiles, and we used these so-called moderate rebels as a conduit to supply al-Nusra Front (also known as Fatah al-Sham Front), which is al-Qaeda in Syria,” republican member of the Virginia State in US Senate, Richard Hayden Black said in an exclusive interview with Press TV.
“If we were not supporting the war in Syria, I believe that the Syrians, combined with their allied forces from Iran, Lebanon and Russia… would move very steadily and restore the borders of Syria.”
The senate member, who visited Syria in April, refused to distinguish between militants and terrorists fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad, saying, the two are “thoroughly integrated.”
“They really are one and the same, they’re part of the same army,” he said, citing a US defense intelligence agency’s investigation in 2013, which showed Washington’s ties with the terror group.
The outspoken state senator referred to plans by the CIA to transfer arms from Libya to Turkey and from there to Syria to supply the militants, noting that the move “evolved into an indiscriminate program of supplying all militant groups, including specifically ISIL and al-Qaeda.”
“We do it indirectly because it’s unlawful to do it directly,” he said, adding that the US keeps “extremely violent organizations… off the terrorist watch list because these are the agents that take our weapons and then distribute them to ISIL and al-Qaeda.”
In response to a question on why Iran and Russia are portrayed as the “bad guys,” while they are the ones really fighting terrorism there, as put recently by GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, Black said the Republican candidate has a “clear understanding of what’s happening over there.”
“Sometimes, his rhetoric has to match the political mood of the moment… but I know a number of his advisers and they believe that our determination to topple the government in Syria is suicidal, that it threatens not only the entire Middle East but literally the entire world.”
He further warned that the US itself could be “threatened,” arguing that, “if Syria falls, it will be dominated by some al-Qaeda-related organization; Lebanon will fall; Jordan will fall and the entire area will be destabilized.”
The Vietnam war veteran also elaborated on his personal definition of the Middle East “axis of evil,” naming Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and “particularly” Turkey over their support for terrorism.
“Probably, three quarters of the rebels are not Syrian at all, they are mercenaries recruited by Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia,” he asserted, describing the three countries as “the primary force behind the terrorist movement.”
“Turkey has invaded Iraq and Syria with heavy military forces. Turkey has really become a rogue nation,” he added, referring to a 1923 treaty that set the border between Turkey and Greece, saying that was even being questioned by President Rececp Tayyip Erdogan.
“And now you see this emerging threat against Western Europe by Turkey,” he noted, further adding that Erdogan “has made it clear that he looks to resurrection of the Ottoman Empire.”
“He has become more and more aggressive; he’s crushed the military, the free press; every powerful institution of the Turkish government has come under his iron fist and he’s now a total dictator. He’s a man who has said that he wants the constitution amended so that he will have power similar to those of Adolf Hilter… This is our great ally; we’re allied with a man who would be Hitler.”
He also blasted Washington’s alliance with Saudi Arabia, “where women are not allowed to walk out in the front yard to pick up the newspaper without a man’s permission; they can’t drive a car!”
“Somehow, this is part of the liberalization that we seek to impose on the Middle East,” he said ironically, calling it “bizarre.”
He also praised the resistance against the Saudi aggression by the people of Yemen, saying, “God bless them! The Yemenis are giving the Saudis a bloody nose,” despite being a “tiny little, poor nation.”
“I think the world recognizes that Saudi Arabia has just embarked in massive war crimes in Yemen,” he said, voicing regret over the US support for the monarchy.
“We don’t pay too much attention to them while engaged in war crimes because they’re our good allies,” he said, concluding that Washington is on a “suicidal course of action.”
“Saudi money pays the very top politicians in many Western nations. And they really have co-opted the American military into acting as mercenaries for Wahhabism.”Black referred to the Western media’s portrayal of Iran as a supporter of terrorism, saying, “The fact of the matter is that if you really look at global terrorism, it all emanates from Saudi Arabia.”
He exemplified various terrorists attack, including the 9/11, the Boston bombing, and the Brussels attacks, noting that they are all a “reflection of the Wahhabi philosophy.” | 0 |
The at the Democratic National Committee after an embarrassing breach of its email system continued on Tuesday with the departure of three senior officials. Amy Dacey, the committee’s chief executive Luis Miranda, its communications director and Brad Marshall, its chief financial officer, will leave amid a reshuffling of leadership positions, said Donna Brazile, the interim chairwoman. The departures came more than a week after WikiLeaks posted almost 20, 000 of the committee’s emails, a number of which revealed officials showing favoritism toward Hillary Clinton in her primary campaign against Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The messages confirmed the concerns expressed by Mr. Sanders throughout the campaign, cast a cloud over the start of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last week and led to the resignation of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida as the committee’s chairwoman. Ms. Brazile praised the outgoing staff members and made no mention of the controversy. “Thanks in part to the hard work of Amy, Luis, and Brad, the Democratic Party has adopted the most progressive platform in history, has put itself in financial position to win in November, and has begun the important work of investing in state party partnerships,” she said in a statement. “I’m so grateful for their commitment to this cause, and I wish them continued success in the next chapter of their career. ” American intelligence officials believe that the Russian government was behind the breach of the committee’s emails and documents, possibly as part of an effort to damage Mrs. Clinton and sow discord in the Democratic Party. An email from Mr. Marshall to Mark Paustenbach, a communications official, and Ms. Dacey suggesting that the committee promote questions about Mr. Sanders’s faith drew particular scorn from the senator and his supporters. “It might may no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief. Does he believe in a God,” Mr. Marshall wrote, referring to Kentucky and West Virginia. “He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. ” In May, Mr. Paustenbach wrote to Mr. Miranda about encouraging reporters to write that Mr. Sanders’s campaign was “a mess” after a glitch on the committee’s servers gave the Sanders campaign access to the Clinton campaign’s voter database. “Wondering if there’s a good Bernie narrative for a story, which is that Bernie never ever had his act together, that his campaign was a mess,” Mr. Paustenbach wrote. Mr. Miranda wrote back: “True, but the Chair has been advised to not engage. So we’ll have to leave it alone. ” The committee has since apologized to the Sanders campaign. To help fill the void, the committee announced, it is bringing on Tom McMahon, a former executive director of the committee, to lead a transition team. | 1 |
Today, in the light of the morning, what do we have in America today?
We have watched a tidal wave come ashore in Washington DC. We saw the impossible, according to the pundits.
But let’s have a bit of sobriety to go along with the wry smile, ok?
We still have policy acts that need to be addressed. In specific order of priority:
Health care monopolies must be broken up and those in the industry who resist must be jailed under existing anti-trust law. This has to happen right up front, especially if we are going to do “tax reform” (and we should) or the result will be deficits that explode so fast, and so ruinously that they will force interest rates up to near or even beyond those of the early 1980s, bankrupting everyone at once that has any debt at all. Simply put you have to take close to a trillion dollars out of the Federal Budget and $2 trillion out of the economy as a whole in terms of spending in this sector or our nation does not fiscally survive. This was true yesterday and it still is. The problem is illustrated here and one potential set of solutions is here , along with my 2012 article here .. “Repeal and replace” will not do it ; you need to attack the problem, not remove the band-aids that were put over a sucking chest wound. President Trump can do the largest part of this without Congress since it requires only enforcing existing anti-trust law, and the responsibility to enforce the law rests solely with the Executive. The swamp must be drained. Candidate Trump repeatedly called for it. President Trump has to do it. Again, this is a function of existing law and therefore requires exactly zero Congressional buy-in. While cabinet-level positions require Senate approval the rank and file cop on the street positions in the US Government do not. There are an utterly insane number of crimes that have been committed over the last two terms and while the Statute of Limitations has run on some of them it has not run on all. Those for which prosecution is still possible must be prosecuted. This is not only important in the medical realm (see above) but also in the financial realm. We can start with Wells Fargo and their recently-exposed outrageous and blatant robbery of their customers but it must not end with “trophy” prosecutions. It is especially important for the stability of our markets and returning some resemblance of trust to them that all persons or organizations that have engaged in various forms of market manipulation which is illegal, I remind you, be held to account. Whether it be “spoofing”, placing orders you cannot clear (because you don’t have the margin to do so) or simply placing orders you never intend to execute (which is illegal and has been since the 1930s ) these crimes must be prosecuted as far back as the Statute of Limitations permits and aggressive prosecution on a forward basis must continue. Most of the rest of what President Trump has promised to do in his Contract with Voters does need Congressional approval. Yes, he can cancel executive orders that were outrageously improper — and he should. But when it comes to tax and trade policy for the most part those issues do require Congressional approval, and here’s the rub for any Republicans who think they can play “ Never Trump ” post this election: With both Houses of Congress there is only party to blame for any sort of obstructionism. If the Republicans wish to lose both houses of Congress in a couple of years all they have to do is keep larding up the debt and refuse to take the issues that must be addressed by both Congress and the Executive on, and it’ll happen.
Originally posted at Market Ticker .
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By now, even most of us over 35 — old age, by Snapchat standards — are aware of the photo sharing and messaging app sweeping teenage and millennial America. Even if you have no interest in sending nude photos of yourself that or in video lenses that enable you to vomit a rainbow, turn your head into a taco or make your eyes into glittering hearts, you may be wondering how such groundbreaking technology could be worth $34 billion. That was the value of Snapchat’s parent company, Snap Inc. after its first day of trading on Thursday. Its closing price of $24. 48 was 44 percent above the $17 offering price set late Wednesday. It’s the biggest initial public offering since Alibaba’s in 2014. At that price, Snap makes its much bigger rival Facebook — not to mention such internet stalwarts as Google, Amazon and even Netflix — look like “value” stocks. Snap “looks tremendously overvalued to me,” said Brian Hamilton, a of Sageworks, a financial analysis and valuation firm. Michael Nathanson, senior research analyst at MoffettNathanson, described Snap as a “field of dreams. ” Even with rosy growth forecasts, “at $22 billion, we’re looking at a stock trading at five to eight times estimated revenues in 2020,” he said before the valuation rose even higher. “The only companies in that domain are Facebook and Alibaba, and they have massive scale. And both of them are profitable. ” There’s no point in comparing Snap’s profits to any of those companies, since Snap doesn’t have any. The company lost $514. 6 million in 2016 and $372. 9 million the year before, according to the prospectus it filed in February. It has lost money every year since it began commercial operation in 2011 and has warned it may never earn a profit. The only comparable social media company that continues to lose money is Twitter, and no one at Snap wants anyone to compare it to Twitter. Twitter has struggled to add users and generate advertising revenue, even though it claims a user base of 319 million. It went public in 2013 at $26 a share. This week it was trading below $16 a share. So let’s be generous and ignore profit. How about revenue? Snap said it generated $404 million in sales in 2016. A valuation of $34 billion is about 84 times revenue. That’s six times as high as Facebook’s ratio, which is 14. It’s 14 times as high as Google’s parent, Alphabet, which trades at just over six times revenue. Amazon trades at a mere three times. Even Netflix trades at seven times. Compared with Snap, however, those are mature companies, whose growth rates have slowed somewhat as they’ve aged. As Mr. Nathanson and his fellow research analyst Perry Gold put it in a recent note to clients: “There is something brilliant about going public after only a few years of generating any revenue at all. The sky’s the limit and history is not a guide. ” To justify a valuation of even $25 billion, “you have to make some very lofty assumptions,” Mr. Hamilton said. “They would need to grow for the next 10 years at more than 50 percent every year with a profit margin of 25 percent, which is extremely high given that they are now losing money rapidly. ” He noted that very few companies had achieved such growth rates in the history of American business. But let’s ignore revenue, too. This is social media, after all, where “daily active users” and “engagement” are the coins of the realm. By the end of 2016, Snapchat had 158 million daily active users. By comparison, Instagram, probably the closest comparison and a formidable competitor to Snapchat, had about 30 million users when Facebook bought it in 2012 for what was then considered an price of $1 billion. (Facebook had earlier tried to buy Snapchat for $3 billion, which its founders rejected — wisely, it now appears.) And $1 billion now looks like a bargain compared to what investors are paying for Snap. At $34 billion, each of Snap’s daily active users is worth $215, six and a half times per user what Facebook paid for Instagram. As of January, Instagram reported 300 million daily active users. At $215 each, the Instagram app alone would be valued today at $64. 5 billion. These are static numbers, and what Snap is selling investors is growth. According to Snap’s prospectus, Snapchat user growth was 48 percent in 2016, about the same as the year before. If it can pull that off again next year, it would reach an impressive 234 million users, though still short of Instagram. The Snapchat story “is all about growth,” Mr. Nathanson said. “It’s not about economics. ” But Snapchat’s growth slowed sharply in last year’s fourth quarter — just about the time Instagram started its own version of Stories, a popular Snapchat feature where users post a sequence of photos or videos. It added just five million new users after adding an average of 15 million in the first three quarters. By comparison, 150 million Instagram users are now using its Stories feature. That’s already nearly as many as Snapchat’s entire user base. How much more can Snapchat grow? Unless it can break out of its youthful demographic, it may already be reaching an upper limit. The Kaiser Foundation estimates that adults age 19 to 34 made up 22 percent of the United States population in 2015. That’s a little over 70 million. Snapchat already has nearly that many users in the United States. Maybe Snap can squeeze more revenue per user, even if its user base doesn’t grow all that much. It’s currently generating an average of $5. 83 a year per user in the United States compared with Facebook’s North American average of $12. 81, the MoffettNathanson analysis notes, suggesting plenty of room to grow. But even doubling revenue doesn’t get Snap close to a Facebook valuation. There are, of course, superhigh revenue and assumptions that put Snap in the ballpark of successful and more established social media companies in valuation. Still, very few analysts have publicly said they believe Snap is undervalued at these levels (and I looked for some). The most bullish report I came across estimated that Snap could be worth as much as $30 billion. But that’s based on an extremely aggressive revenue estimate of $3. 8 billion in 2018. Mr. Gold said some investors were buying into the I. P. O. but not to hold Snap for the long term. “People are saying they’ll wait for a valuation that’s truly astronomical, and then take the other side of the bet,” he said. “They feel Snap will be richly valued out of the gate but possibly run into trouble over the next few quarters. ” Despite many of its somewhat juvenile features, at a more profound level Snapchat is changing the way young people communicate, substituting images for language. “Snapchat has built a better mousetrap,” Mr. Nathanson said. “It’s engaging, and it’s fun, especially for young people. ” That’s a story that obviously appealed to investors starving for the next hot social media company. Whether they’ll want to cash in quickly or hold their shares for the long term remains to be seen. “This looks and smells like Twitter to me,” Mr. Hamilton said. “I’m concerned that investors will have to wait a very long time, if ever, before they see any meaningful appreciation. ” About the best Mr. Nathanson and Mr. Gold could come up with: Snap’s valuation isn’t “patently crazy. ” | 1 |
Donald J. Trump tried out several lines of attack against Hillary Clinton, at one point calling her “unfit to be president,” as he delivered an otherwise noticeably restrained speech to an audience of evangelical activists here Friday. Appearing before the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference, Mr. Trump promised to “uphold the sanctity and dignity of life” and to “restore respect for people of faith. ” But he also used the opportunity to press his case against Mrs. Clinton, portraying her as arrogant, attacking her economic policies and willingness to admit Syrian refugees into the country and questioning her judgment as secretary of state. “She’ll appoint radical judges who will legislate from the bench, overriding Congress, and I’ll tell you, the will of the people will mean nothing — nothing,” Mr. Trump said. “She will undermine the wages of working people with uncontrolled immigration, creating poverty and income insecurity. Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street agenda will crush working families. She’ll put bureaucrats, not parents, in charge of our lives, and our children’s education. ” Referring to Mrs. Clinton’s call for Mr. Obama to take in 65, 000 Syrian refugees, Mr. Trump also challenged her to instead “replace her support for increased refugee admissions” with “a new jobs program for our inner cities. ” “We have to temporarily stop this whole thing with what’s going on with refugees where we don’t know where they come from,” he said, adding: “We have to take a timeout. We have to use the money to take care of our poorest Americans and work with them so they can come out of this horrible situation that they’re in. ” Mrs. Clinton has been calling Mr. Trump temperamentally unsuited for the White House, and he tried to turn the tables. Mrs. Clinton “refuses to even say the words radical Islam — refuses to say it,” Mr. Trump said. “This alone makes her unfit to be president. ” He has vowed to deliver a major speech Monday attacking both Mrs. Clinton and her husband as personally corrupt, and on Friday Mr. Trump asserted that the email scandal that has overshadowed Mrs. Clinton’s campaign for months had its origins in such venality. “Hillary Clinton has jeopardized — totally jeopardized — national security by putting her emails on a private server, all to hide her corrupt dealings,” he said. The claim appeared to refer to concerns that the private server Mrs. Clinton used as secretary of state may have been more vulnerable to being hacked by foreign adversaries than the State Department’s email system. (Although the emails were supposed to contain only unclassified information, the department has retroactively withheld some of their contents as classified when reviewing them for release in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.) But Mr. Trump offered no backup for his claim that the private server was used to hide “corrupt dealings. ” Noting that President Obama had officially endorsed Mrs. Clinton on Thursday, Mr. Trump added, “First time ever, by the way, a president of the United States endorsed somebody under criminal investigation. ” But that assertion also goes beyond the known facts. The FBI is investigating Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private server, but agents have not yet interviewed her and it is not clear if she herself is a target of a criminal inquiry. A few young protesters interrupted Mr. Trump’s remarks, shouting “Dump Trump” and other slogans. After they were muscled out by security guards, Mr. Trump called them “professional agitators” who were “sent in by the other party — believe me. ” Mr. Trump’s speech Friday came as he is battling to regain his footing after weeks of missteps, none more damaging than his questioning whether a federal judge could preside fairly over a case against Trump University because the judge is of Mexican heritage. With party leaders expressing outrage and voicing doubts that he can unify Republicans and defeat Mrs. Clinton in November, Mr. Trump noticeably curbed his impulsiveness Tuesday night, promising in a prepared speech not to let his supporters down. Still, in a Bloomberg Politics podcast published Friday morning, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell raised the possibility of rescinding his endorsement if Mr. Trump did not “change directions. ” Alluding to what he called Mr. Trump’s “obvious shortcomings,” Mr. McConnell said, “It’s pretty obvious he doesn’t know a lot about the issues. ” Before the Faith and Freedom Coalition Friday afternoon, Mr. Trump again stuck mainly to a script, reading from teleprompter screens. But he still in his characteristically clipped syntax. “We want to uphold the sanctity and dignity of life, marriage and family as the building block of happiness and success,” he said. “And by the way, I know many, many very successful people. The happiest people are the people that have had great religious feel and that — incredible marriage, children. It’s more important than the money, folks. Believe me. ” Mr. Trump — who has been married three times — does not hew to traditional conservative orthodoxy. He previously supported abortion rights, and he said earlier this year that Planned Parenthood has done “some very good work” for millions of women. And in response to North Carolina’s controversial new bathroom law, Mr. Trump said that transgender people should be able to use whatever bathroom where they feel most comfortable. But he nonetheless won the early endorsement of leaders like Jerry Falwell Jr. president of Liberty University, and successfully wooed evangelical voters during the primary, exit polls showed. Hogan Gidley, a former aide to Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, said that while evangelicals “would love to have a true evangelical in the White House,” they understood that Republicans required a broader coalition to win in November. “Republicans cannot win without getting evangelicals, and they can’t win only getting evangelicals,” Mr. Gidley said. “They have to expand the voter universe and so far, Trump has done an amazing job with that. ” | 1 |
Monday on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” in responding to the ongoing story that started at Sunday’s Golden Globes awards ceremony with remarks by actress Meryl Streep criticizing Donald Trump and continued with tweets from Trump calling Streep “overrated” and a “flunky” for former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, actress and singer Barbra Streisand weighed in by wondering how we could take “four years of this. ” Streisand said, “I thought she said what she said beautifully. And It’s easy enough to see the video online of Trump mocking — you just showed it — I completely agree with Meryl. It was heartbreaking moment and so beneath the dignity of the presidency, let alone any respectful person. What we need more is kindness and common decency. And what he did, how he reacted and how he needs — he has the need to talk back and insult anybody who doesn’t agree with him, and that’s pretty disgraceful. ” She continued, “What’s the signal to little children who watch television and see this behavior of the soon to be president of the United States? Little girls were heartbroken when Hillary Clinton didn’t get to to be president. So I think it’s what they see. Children will listen, I sang that in a song once, and you know they will see and they will learn. And you know I’m in the middle of having my teeth cleaned. You caught me at a disadvantage. ” She added, “That is why you cant trust anything he says because if you get on his wrong side, he will blast you negatively … He had a New Year’s Eve party, but he wasn’t generous to give that to his followers as a president. He had to charge for it and put that money into this club. Don’t you think that’s a little strange?” She concluded, “I was very proud of her. She’s a wonderful actress and that he had to denigrate her talent because she spoke out. Why is he not sitting through briefings rather then tweeting this nonsense and rating wars with Arnold Schwarzenegger? I don’t know how we’re going to take four years of this. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
The unraveling of Hillary's corrupt sphere of influence. November 4, 2016 Michael Cutler
The 2016 elections are in the final stretch and were shaken to the core by the latest revelations from FBI Director James Comey on Friday, October 28, 2016 as reported by NBC News on October 30 th , “ FBI Obtains Warrant for Newly Discovered Emails in Clinton Probe — as Reid Accuses Comey of Hatch Act Violation .” Once again the Clinton scandal is creating turmoil in a presidential election that has gone way beyond “unconventional.” Indeed, Tom Clancy could not have scripted this year's presidential election and intrigues.
While Comey's recent remarks regarding the Clinton investigation have been extremely vague, the issue to focus on is how Hillary's use of a private computer server, private e-mail account and non-secure digital devices to store, send and receive classified materials may have drawn others into her tangled web of deception.
The current focus of the Clinton quagmire is on whether or not the laptop computer shared by Weiner and his estranged wife contains sensitive information. If that laptop had been hacked both Weiner and Abedin could have been vulnerable to blackmail. This was an issue raised by Congressman Louie Gohmert, Texan Republican and former judge in a Fox News Business interview on October 31, 2016 in a segment that was posted under the title, “ Rep. Gohmert: Clinton is a potential victim of blackmail .”
Additional individuals may also have been drawn into this web of deception through these e-mails as well. A chain is as strong as its weakest link. The weak links begin with Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin and may now include Anthony Weiner and perhaps others. Meanwhile, there is no way to yet determine how many other weak links are “out there” petrified that WikiLeaks or perhaps, a hacker may yet disclose their improper dealings with the Clintons or their foundation.
Could not these additional individuals be subject to blackmail as well?
Let's take a moment to understand how all of this began.
Just months earlier Hillary Clinton had been let off the hook by an FBI Director who, in his official statement on July 5, 2016 , included this excerpt: To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.
By Comey's own words, anyone else might have had their security clearance lifted permanently. This raises the issue about such an individual demonstrating fitness for duty as president and raises the question as to why Comey did not see fit to take comparable action with Ms Clinton.
Comey's ultimate decision to not present the case to a Grand Jury was frustrating to those who have had security clearances and fully understand just how profound an impact these transgressions might have on national security.
However, perhaps Comey's hard to comprehend decision can be traced to a meeting between Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch less than one week before the FBI Director conducted that press conference. On June 29, 2015 ABC News-15 reported, “ US Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Bill Clinton meet privately in Phoenix before Benghazi report .”
That article served as a predication for my article, “ Loretta Lynch's Private Meeting With Bill Clinton Prior to Release of Benghazi Report : Why would the Attorney General, who sets the tone for law enforcement, do this?”
As Attorney General, Lynch is FBI Director Comey's boss.
At the time of this meeting the Justice Department was not only investigating Hillary's illegal use of a private e-mail server, non-secure personal digital devices but was also, conducting an investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
In fact, on October 30, 2016 Breitbart reported, “ Clinton Foundation FBI Investigation Confirmed By Former Assistant FBI Director .” Therefore Bill Clinton, was likely the target of an ongoing criminal investigation yet he had a totally inappropriate private meeting with the Attorney General to supposedly discuss golfing and grandchildren.
However, just days after that meeting, news organizations reported that Hillary was contemplating keeping Lynch on as Attorney General if she won the election.
On July 4, 2016 Newsmax reported, “ NY Times: Clinton Weighs Keeping Lynch as Attorney General if She Wins .” Hillary's statement that she might keep Lynch on as Attorney General could have provided the incentive for Lynch to “Go along to get along.”
Indeed, Lynch did precisely that during her confirmation hearing as I described in my commentary, “ Loretta Lynch: Same as the Old Boss : The Attorney General nominee's disturbing views on U.S. immigration law.”
My article included an excerpt from a Yahoo/AP news report, "Attorney General nominee defends Obama immigration changes." Here is the exchange in which Lynch discussed the administration's immigration's policies: Lynch said she had no involvement in drafting the measures but called them "a reasonable way to marshal limited resources to deal with the problem" of illegal immigration. She said the Homeland Security Department was focusing on removals of "the most dangerous of the undocumented immigrants among us." Pressed by Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a leading immigration hard-liner, she said citizenship was not a right for people in the country illegally but rather a privilege that must be earned. However, when Sessions asked whether individuals in the country legally or those who are here unlawfully have more of a right to a job, Lynch replied, "The right and the obligation to work is one that's shared by everyone in this country regardless of how they came here." Sessions quickly issued a news release to highlight that response. Under later questioning by Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, Lynch clarified it, stating there is no right to work for an immigrant who has no lawful status.
This was disturbing and telling, clearly Ms Lynch's views on immigration and likely, therefore on other issues are malleable and subject to revision if modifying her position is consistent with her personal goals.
As Attorney General Lynch directs the operations of the entire Justice Department and all those who work for that department. Ms. Lynch must understand true democracy can only exist when justice is blind and totally objective.
However, Lynch and the others who have fallen under Hillary Clinton's corrupt sphere of influence are trapped in Hillary's web of deception, having fallen victim to the Hillary Virus. Throughout Clinton's many decades in American politics, this highly contagious and virulent malady has proven to be virtually ineradicable. It is not likely to change no matter the outcome of the next election. | 0 |
CNN host Don Lemon said Wednesday evening the broadcasted torture of a bound and gagged victim in Chicago was not “evil,” adding that the suspects had “bad home training. ”[News broke nationally Wednesday after a Facebook Live video showed the victim beaten, slashed, held at knifepoint, and more in a Chicago apartment while assailants are heard saying “fuck white people” and “fuck Trump. ” Chicago police held a press conference the same day to announce an investigation is underway and four adults are in police custody. The suspects held the “traumatized” victim for as many as 48 hours, police said. “The fact that this was a vulnerable person that was probably duped into going along with them. It appears it is someone who is mentally disabled, I think makes it even more sickening,” said guest Matt Lewis. “But at the end of the day, you just try to wrap your head around evil. That’s what this is, it’s evil. It’s brutality. It’s man’s inhumanity to man. ” “I don’t think it’s evil,” Lemon replied. “I don’t think it’s evil. I think these are young people and I think they have bad home training. I say, who is raising these young people? I have no idea who’s raising these young people. Because no one I know on Earth who is 17 years old or 70 years old would ever think of treating another person like that. It is inhumane. And you wonder, at 18 years old, where is your parent? Where’s your guardian?” During the same discussion, Democrat strategist and former press secretary for Bernie Sanders Symone Sanders said the attack was “not a hate crime” if the suspects were motivated by “hate of Donald Trump. ” : Mediaite | 1 |
There is a simple math problem at the heart of the college football season: five power conferences, four playoff spots. That is, at least one of the major football conferences, having played a full season and produced an impressive champion, will fail to land a team in the College Football Playoff for the national championship. Two years ago, the snubbed conference was the Big 12, whose Baylor and Texas Christian, ended up fifth and sixth in the selection committee’s final rankings. Last year, it was the whose champion, Stanford, though an obviously impressive squad with a Heisman Trophy in running back Christian McCaffrey, had committed the cardinal sin of losing two games when every other conference champion had lost one at most. Trying in September to predict who will play for the national championship in January is a fool’s errand. There are so many teams. There is so much roster turnover. The oldest players are barely . And the argument is never really settled, nor can it be. “This is all fun to talk about — it kind of makes college football really go, that there is opinion involved, and that’s what differentiates it from the N. F. L. ,” the CBS college football analyst Gary Danielson said. “But this also leads to frustration. ” He added, “The difficult part of this is even a committee that has the task of deciding the final four goes about it in unusual ways. ” But that’s just it: During the past two seasons, we have come to know the committee — its idiosyncratic preferences, its quirky biases. At this early date, we may not be able to forecast which team will win it all. But we can hazard informed guesses about the following question: Which of the five major conferences will fail to place a member in the final four team bracket? For now, it is in the teams’ hands. But on the last several Tuesdays of the season, the selection committee will rank its top 25, based on a host of factors, including strength of schedule and advanced metrics. It will issue its final rankings on Sunday, Dec. 4, after the conference championship games. This year, the national semifinals will take place on Dec. 31 at the Peach Bowl in Atlanta and the Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Ariz. The winners will meet Jan. 9 at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla. Eight teams have made the playoff during its first two years (Alabama has done so twice) and all entered as conference champions. This is one of the committee’s stated metrics, and while the Big 12’s lack of a conference championship game kept its members out in 2014, last season’s Big 12 champion, Oklahoma ( ) sneaked in ahead of Stanford ( ) of the . As with the Bowl Championship Series algorithm that preceded the playoff, the committee values winning percentage, perhaps over strength of schedule: Witness its placing last year of not only Oklahoma but Iowa ( ) which lost its conference championship game after a relatively soft schedule, over Stanford, which thrashed Southern California after a more difficult slate. One more pattern: Both of the snubbed conferences in previous years, the Big 12 and were, at the time, the only two to play conference schedules. And each year, conference rivals took turns handing others defeats the committee member Condoleezza Rice memorably called it “fratricide. ” Conference depth — producing multiple tough matchups against familiar foes, sometimes at distinctly unfriendly stadiums, and fewer doormats — is the ultimate playoff obstacle. So which conference provides the clearest path to an undefeated or conference champion? The one with an schedule and the least depth: the Atlantic Coast Conference. Despite the presence of feisty No. 19 Louisville, it is a decent bet that either Florida State or Clemson — which is coming off a national title game appearance and is led by the Heisman Trophy contender Deshaun Watson at quarterback — will cruise to (or perhaps ). It is even more likely that the winner of the annual game between the two (Oct. 29, in Tallahassee, Fla.) will eventually claim the conference title and earn a playoff spot. The Big Ten’s top playoff contenders are all in the East Division — No. 6 Ohio State, No. 7 Michigan and No. 12 Michigan State — creating a potential of defeats. The Buckeyes are among college football’s youngest teams, while the Wolverines face a punishing road schedule (at No. 17 Iowa, at Michigan State, at Ohio State). That could allow the Spartans, winners of two of the past three conference titles, to emerge in the best shape. “Whenever I do an interview, it’s always about Ohio State and Michigan,” the ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit said. “It’s almost like Michigan State’s not playing. ” The Big 12 appears with No. 3 Oklahoma and No. 13 T. C. U. The Southeastern Conference is unlikely to be snubbed, though that would certainly produce amusing talk radio. The conference most likely to be left out, then, is again the . Not because its teams are not good enough. Mostly because too many of them are. “I don’t see one or two teams that just stand out,” Herbstreit said. “I think it’s going to be one of those years where you have a team coming out of there. ” Consider: No. 8 Stanford has to travel to No. 14 Washington, which has to travel to No. 24 Oregon, which has to travel to No. 20 U. S. C. And the winner of that North Division must still beat the winner of the South in the conference championship game. Danielson summed up the paradox, saying, “I would say the is the conference, but has the toughest road to the final four. ” “Which,” he added, “is a problem. ” There are other potential problems. Two conferences could be snubbed if one league lands two teams in the playoff or if Notre Dame, an independent ranked 10th, qualifies or if a Group of 5 conference champion elbows its way in. The last situation might be most likely: If No. 15 Houston beats Oklahoma on Saturday, then beats Louisville later in the season and goes unbeaten through its American Athletic Conference slate, there may be a race to see whether the Cougars get an invitation to the playoff or to the Big 12 first. Finally, with resurgent Tennessee ranked ninth, running back Leonard Fournette probably entering his final season with No. 5 Louisiana State, and Alabama ranked No. 1, fratricide in the SEC remains a possibility, too. But if the SEC finds itself without a team in the playoff, it would do well to stage its own, with its best four teams. The competition would be about as good. | 1 |
Email
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arranged a $12 million donation from Moroccan King Mohammed VI to her family’s charity in 2014 in return for the Clinton Global Initiative hosting its international meeting in the North African Muslim nation, according to an email made public Thursday by Wikileaks.
The Moroccan monarch’s funds went to the Clinton Foundation’s endowment and to CGI. The Jan. 18, 2015, email was included in Wikileaks’ latest batch of communications to and from Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta.
The email from Huma Abedin, Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff at the State Department, was addressed to Podesta and campaign manager Robby Mook. Hillary Clinton was a director of the foundation at the time.
Singapore and Hong Kong officials reportedly were also vying to convene the CGI meeting in their countries, but the North African nation ultimately hosted it in a five-star hotel in Marrakesh, Morocco, in 2015. Abedin told Podesta and Mook that Morocco was not CGI’s “first choice.”
The actual meeting was paid for by OCP, the Moroccan-government-owned mining company that has been accused of serious human rights violations. Clinton vigorously supported the Moroccan King when she was Secretary of State and the U.S.-financed Export-Import Bank gave OCP a $92 million loan guarantee during her tenure as Secretary of State.
The mining company also contributed between $5 million to $10 million to the Clinton Foundation, according to the charity’s web site.Abedin described the arrangement in the email as having been organized by her boss. Hillary Clinton “created this mess and she knows it,” she told Podesta and Mook.She said the Moroccan deal was entirely dreamed up by her boss. “This was HRC’s idea, our office approached the Moroccans and they 100 percent believe they are doing this at her request. The King has personally committed approx. $12 million both for the endowment and to support the meeting.” HRC stands for Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Abedin said Clinton’s attendance at the CGI event was a condition of the $12 million contribution. “Just to give you some context, the condition upon which the Moroccans agreed to host the meeting was her participation. If hrc was not part if it, meeting was a non-starter,” Abedin said.
Politico in 2015 reported that Clinton “was seen by Rabat as among its most ardent supporters in the Obama administration.” Rabat is the capital of Morocco.
The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice charged OCP with “serious human rights violations,” including exploitation of workers by not “adequately compensating the impoverished people who live there.”
Mohamed Yeslem Beisat, the Washington envoy for the Polisaro Front, as reported by AL-Monitor, a Middle East news site in 2015 that “OCP is the first beneficiary of the war and the first beneficiary of the occupation — it is the one that is cashing in on the misery of thousands of refugees and hundreds of political detainees for the past 40 years.”
Polisaro claims to lead a Moroccan government-in-exile based in Tindouf, Algeria.
“They’re doing this because they know Hillary has some chances of being president of the United States. And they want her to support their brutal occupation of Western Sahara,” Beisat charged.
The Moroccan firm mines phosphates. Human rights critics have called OCP’s mining product “blood phosphates,” appropriating the term “blood diamonds” for gems mined in operations that kill and injure local workers
OCP is not the only mining company linked to human rights violations that has donated to the Clinton Foundation. The foundation accepted a $100 million pledge from Lukas Lundin, who owns mining and oil drilling operations in North Africa and in the Congo. (RELATED: Clinton Foundation Got $100M From ‘Blood Minerals’ Firm)
OCP retained the law firm of Covington & Burling, one of Washington’s lobbying giants, paying the firm $1.4 million in fees from 2012 to 2015.
Stuart Eizenstat, a former White House domestic policy chief under President Carter and an influential Democratic Party insider, was the main lobbyist for the mining firm. He was also President Bill Clinton’s ambassador to the European Union, a Deputy Secretary of the Treasury and Under Secretary at the Department of Commerce.
Eizenstat specialized in foreign trade issues at Commerce where he worked in the International Trade Administration.
Hillary Clinton officially visited Morocco twice, in November 2009 and in February 2012, meeting with the King on both occasions. The two also met in New York in December 2013 where it was believed the two discussed Morocco’s bid to host the CGI meeting and the King’s $12 million donation.
The Moroccan World News described the meeting as showing “renewed friendship between the royal family and the Clinton family, as well as Hillary Clinton’s esteem for Morocco and its people.”
Abedin warned both campaign executives that if CGI decided to renege on the agreement, it would hurt Clinton’s relationship with the King. “It will break a lot of china to back out now,” she wrote.
Ultimately, Clinton did not attend the meeting because it was close to the launch of her presidential campaign, but the former president and daughter Chelsea were present and during the conference were guests at one of the Moroccan King’s palaces. | 0 |
Nina Falcone has given up on cash. Whenever and wherever possible, even at the vending machines in her building in Chicago, the marketer uses her Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards card to collect points she says she uses for plane tickets to visit her family in California. Ms. Falcone carefully follows the advice from consumer advocates and does not carry a balance from month to month or pay humongous interest charges. But she admits there are probably some downsides to the ease of purchasing. Time magazines piled up around her apartment and gathered dust after she bought a subscription simply because it came with an offer for extra points. And she has increased the amount of time she spends shopping on the Internet because merchants offer incentives online for cardholders that are not available in stores. “I haven’t paid for a trip on Southwest in years,” says Ms. Falcone, which may be technically true, but a host of economic and social science research suggests that consumers tend to spend more using plastic than they ever would with actual cash. Incentives like miles or rewards points only amplify a temptation that banks and financial services companies have been profiting from for decades. “When you vary the payment method, people are willing to pay more,” said Duncan Simester, a professor of marketing at M. I. T. who published a landmark paper on the subject in 2001. “You’re not forking over a dollar bill, so there is less sensation of loss. ” With M. B. A. students as the subjects, Mr. Simester and a colleague, Drazen Prelec, held an auction of tickets to basketball and baseball games featuring two local teams, the Boston Celtics and the Boston Red Sox. Some participants were told they would have to pay by credit card, others were informed that only cash would be accepted. When credit cards were an option, the M. B. A. students offered to pay roughly twice as much as they were willing to hand over in cash for the same tickets. “The most surprising thing was the size of the effect,” said Mr. Simester, who titled the resulting paper ‘Always Leave Home Without It: A Further Investigation of the Effect on Willingness to Pay.’ ” He added that while it was not unusual to see spending patterns shift by 5 or 10 percent in experiments, “you don’t see too many examples where people offer double what they would have otherwise. ” But the ease of buying with plastic, or what marketers call “ spending,” is only half the story. Social scientists have also found that consumers have been conditioned by even the sight of credit card logos to want to spend more. Unlike Mr. Simester, who created an experiment from scratch, Richard Feinberg of Purdue University persuaded restaurants near campus in West Lafayette, Ind. to let him study actual patrons’ spending habits. Mr. Feinberg placed credit card logos and symbols on some tables and left others without them, as normal. The sight of images associated with credit cards prompted diners to spend more and leave bigger tips. A similar exercise in a faculty member’s office produced larger donations to the United Way, Mr. Feinberg added, while credit card images bolstered sales at a Fannie May candy store. “People spend more when these stimuli are present,” he said. “Just as Pavlov found that dogs would salivate when they heard tones that were associated with food, people have been conditioned to associate credit cards with spending. ” Although tools like Apple Pay and other mobile payment methods are too new to have generated much academic research, or allowed the kind of conditioning that half a century of credit card use has produced, Mr. Feinberg suggests a similar dynamic could be at work. “The less friction there is, the easier it becomes to spend,” he said. “Just stand at Starbucks and watch how many people there use their smartphones to buy a latte. ” Speaking of lattes, credit cards also encourage people to pay more for everyday items than they might otherwise, according to Scott Bilker, founder of debtsmart. com and the author of “Talk Your Way Out of Credit Card Debt. ” “Paying $5 for a coffee might seem like a lot if you only have $10 in your wallet,” he said. “But if your credit card has a $10, 000 limit on it, it doesn’t seem like much. ” The key, said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate. com, a personal finance website, is to try to exercise the same discipline with plastic that you would with cash, despite the urge to splurge. If you can’t help yourself, or occasionally do have to carry a balance, avoid incentive cards at all costs. “They only work for consumers who pay their balances in full,” he said, as Ms. Falcone does scrupulously each month. For the 60 percent of consumers who can’t pay off what they owe each month, a much smarter bet would be to seek out the card with the lowest possible interest rate. Of course, even the best card rates are still high — the typical consumer today has $2, 200 in credit card debt, with an average annual interest rate of nearly 16 percent, according to Bankrate. com. Does that mean consumers should cut their cards up, stick to cash the way our had to and embrace the supposedly traditional value of thrift? It’s not that simple today, nor was there really ever a golden age when Americans bought only what they could truly afford, said Lendol Calder, a professor of history at Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill. “The river of red ink has run through American history from the beginning,” said Mr. Calder. “The Pilgrims took out loans from London investors and many of them died without ever having paid off their debts. As far back as you go, people were in over their heads. ” That said, Mr. Calder says he believes credit cards do offer advantages, despite the inevitable temptation to spend more. “Credit cards are useful because people want to be thrifty with time,” Mr. Calder explained. “In the 20th century, time became scarce and credit cards and credit in general helps with that. It’s one thing to save and save and buy an engagement ring for someone you love, but not if you wait and she runs off with someone else. ” | 1 |
CNN is featuring a running clock on its politics Twitter account tracking the last time President Trump “attacked someone on Twitter. ”[The Twitter post links to a short story explaining why CNN has decided to feature a clock on the CNN Politics Twitter account that reaches 1. 67 million followers. “He hasn’t knocked, tweaked or attacked anyone on Twitter since Sunday afternoon, when he claimed, ‘Russia talk is FAKE NEWS put out by the Dems, and played up by the media, in order to mask the big election defeat and the illegal leaks! ’” the story reads. “We’ll see how long it lasts — literally,” the story ends, before featuring a running clock marking the last time Trump attacked someone on Twitter. The count is currently at 4 days and 2 hours. A recent poll showed that CNN’s brand has continued to go in a downward spiral, falling behind its cable news competitors, MSNBC and Fox News, in brand perception. Trump has consistently called CNN “fake news” for its reputation for making several mistakes when reporting on his administration. | 1 |
Thursday, 27 October 2016 Biden and Trump to Duel
Seeking to duplicate, if not surpass, the famous duel between Vice President Aaron Burr and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, Republican candidate for president, Donald Trump, and Vice President Joe Biden, agreed to fight a pistol duel. Although details of the duel have yet to be finalized, Amiko Aventurista, reports the duel will likely take place on the eve of the election.
Three independent sources confirmed negotiations over broadcast rights are extremely tense. Trump demands the duel be the inaugural show of his new venture, Trump TV. "It was my idea. I was the one who said I could shot someone on Fifth Avenue and my supporters would be with me. Other than Hilary, Obama, Rubio, Cruz, Jeb Bush, and a ton of others, I can think of no one better to shot than hair plug Joe. I'm the greatest shooter ever. A real sniper."
Biden insist MSNBC must be the broadcaster because its liberal and minority audience wants to see Trump with several gun shots. In a response to Trump, Biden said, "There is no way I can miss. His hair glows bright orange. All I have to do is point toward the glow".
Megan Kelly of Fox says Fox must host the show because she wants to see "blood" coming everywhere out of Trump just like he said blood was coming out of her. CNN's Wolf Blitzer decline to comment. Even ESPN is making a play for the event, pointing out it regularly shows non-traditional sporting events, such as bull riding, cross bow, and bowling.
Both sides agree Lin Manuel Mirada, producer of the hit Broadway show, Alexander Hamilton, should direct the event. Manuel Mirada said, "I would be honored to produce the event. I know my smash Broadway hit, Hamilton, is only a show about a duel not a real duet but I think that experience qualifies me to produce a show about a real duel. After all, the only difference is the guns are real."
The National Rifle Association (NRA) has agreed to fully pay for and sponsor the event. NRA President Wayne LaPierre release the following statement, "Finally we have bi-partisan agreement. I should have thought of this first". Make Amiko Aventurista's | 0 |
Since it started 11 years ago, The Huffington Post has been synonymous with the personality and the interests of its Arianna Huffington. The pioneering web publication, known for its aggressive use of aggregation and an unapologetically liberal worldview, would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize and expand globally during a challenging time for all media organizations. But over the last year, The Huffington Post has found itself an increasingly small part of an increasingly large media and tech conglomerate. When Verizon, which announced it had purchased The Huffington Post’s parent company, AOL, in May 2015, bought Yahoo’s internet business last month, Ms. Huffington’s perch at the company seemed increasingly precarious. With her abrupt announcement on Thursday that she was stepping down as editor in chief of The Huffington Post and leaving the company to focus on her new venture, a health and wellness called Thrive Global, she leaves the publication in an unfamiliar position. For the first time since its founding in 2005, The Huffington Post will be without Ms. Huffington. No successor was named. In an interview, Ms. Huffington, 66, said she had originally intended to run The Huffington Post while working to start Thrive Global. But that plan soon reached its limits. “The original idea was that I could do both,” she said. “But it very quickly turned out to be an illusion. ” Along with her success, Ms. Huffington has been a polarizing figure in the media world, and her presence in the newsroom has not always been constant. But since Verizon bought AOL, her interests seemed to increasingly move beyond running The Huffington Post. After the sale, there was speculation that she would leave the company, concerns allayed when she signed a contract in June 2015. Other moves have generated misgivings in the newsroom. The publication’s decision last summer to put articles about Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign in its entertainment section and a later decision to add an editor’s note calling Mr. Trump a “serial liar” and a “racist” to any article about him raised questions about whether Ms. Huffington was unduly influencing coverage to suit her political agenda. In April, the announcement that she was joining Uber’s board rankled employees who feared inherent conflicts of interest in coverage. (She said she would recuse herself from being involved with any coverage of the company.) The publication has also been criticized for what some see as excessive coverage of sleep and wellness, topics on which Ms. Huffington has written books. At the same time, staff attrition, evidenced by a flurry of goodbye emails over the last year, has taken a toll on morale. In that context, Ms. Huffington’s decision to leave surprised an already anxious newsroom. At a staff meeting Thursday morning in The Huffington Post’s Manhattan headquarters, Ms. Huffington stressed her confidence in the organization. “Great companies always succeed beyond their founder,” she said, according to an article by Michael Calderone, the publication’s media reporter. “Even though HuffPost bears my name, it is absolutely about all of you and about this amazing team we’ve been for over 11 years. ” Tim Armstrong, the chief executive of AOL, was not present. But in a statement, he called Ms. Huffington a “visionary who built The Huffington Post into a truly transformative news platform. ” “Today, The Huffington Post is a firmly established and celebrated news source, and AOL and Verizon are committed to continuing its growth and the groundbreaking work Arianna pioneered,” he added. When The Huffington Post was founded, there was no Twitter, and Facebook was still a relatively fledgling online platform primarily used by college students. Initially, the idea was to create an aggregation site that would be a liberal counterpart to the Drudge Report. Ms. Huffington, who had recently run for governor of California, said at the time that she had signed up more than 250 of “the most creative minds” in the country, including Walter Cronkite, Nora Ephron and Norman Mailer, to write a group blog on topics including politics and entertainment. The Huffington Post did not just take the internet seriously it ruthlessly embraced as opportunities trends that established media companies perceived as threats. The company demonstrated early and continued mastery over Google, capturing audiences through search with carefully engineered headlines and fast aggregation. The publication consistently outranked its competitors in search, often with blog posts based on its competitors’ work. But while the strategy proved successful, the site’s ability to package articles from other publications also prompted criticism, and many in the media world accused it of aggregation excesses that bordered on intellectual theft. Over the years, however, it has pushed aggressively to produce more original content. The site also published articles by who often contributed without being paid. AOL purchased the publication for $315 million in 2011 and Ms. Huffington assumed control of AOL’s editorial content. The Huffington Post won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for a series on wounded veterans. Ms. Huffington’s relationship with Mr. Armstrong was rocky almost from the start, several current and former employees said, and some said her outside interests kept her out of the newsroom for extended periods. When AOL sold itself to Verizon for $4. 4 billion, there was speculation that Ms. Huffington might leave. She had become an increasingly powerful force in her own right: She has published several books on health and wellness, including “Thrive” and “The Sleep Revolution,” and she has become a champion of the benefits of a good night’s sleep. Though Ms. Huffington’s departure came as a shock, it was in some ways inevitable, particularly after she announced the formation of Thrive Global in June. In the interview, Ms. Huffington said she had thought about leaving The Huffington Post for “a while,” and the closing of a funding round for Thrive Global last week ultimately drove her move. “It was my decision” to leave, she said, adding that the contract she signed last year had a clause that allowed her to start a new venture. Ms. Huffington said she would stay on at the publication until early September. “I’m going to be very much around for the rest of the month, helping in every way I can, including having Greek sweets in my office,” she said, a nod to her home country and her distinctive accent. Mr. Armstrong said in a note to staff that the company had formed an interim editorial committee that would act in Ms. Huffington’s place. The committee will also be involved in what Mr. Armstrong described as “an ongoing search” for a new editor in chief. In a separate note to employees, Jared Grusd, the chief executive of The Huffington Post, called Thursday a “day of change. ” “Today,” he wrote, “is the first day of the next chapter in HuffPost’s history. ” | 1 |
Trump VP’s plane slides off runway at New York airport Trump VP’s plane slides off runway at New York airport By 0 84
US Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence’s plane slides off runway at LaGuardia Airport in New York in heavy rain.
The plane carrying Pence ended up on the grass next to the runway in the incident which took place on Thursday night.
None of the 37 passengers on board were injured.
The airport has been closed until further notice.
(To be updated…) | 0 |
The April 2 episode of HBO’s Girls finds Hannah Horvath — played by actress Lena Dunham — hearing from her gay friend Elijah that the baby she is carrying is a “parasite” growing inside of her. [The episode, titled “What Will We Do This Time About Adam?” shows Hannah, well along in her pregnancy, reevaluating her decision to be a single mother. “Oh, God. Hannah, this is gonna be a real mindf**k for me if you wanna get an abortion right now,” Elijah tells her. “I mean … I’ll do it. I think there’s about two doctors in America that do it at this stage in your pregnancy, but I’ll find them. ” Writing at Newsbusters, Dawn Slusher observes some of the “fake” information about abortion that Girls serves up in this episode — first and foremost being Elijah’s reference to the difficulty in finding an abortionist to perform one: “There are not just ‘two doctors in America’ who will ‘do it at this stage.’ There are actually 162 abortion clinics that perform abortions after 20 weeks. Secondly, most don’t realize just how easy getting a abortion is legally, given the loose definition of “health” that was buried in Roe v. Wade’s companion case, Doe v. Bolton: ‘ … all factors — physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age — relevant to the wellbeing of the patient. All these factors may relate to health.’ All Hannah needs to say is that she has a headache, is too young, too tired, or is having anxiety about having a baby and she can legally get an abortion at any point in her pregnancy. ” At the federal level, abortion is still legal in the United States up until the time of birth, although more states are enacting laws that restrict the procedure. The abortion industry has fought against any attempts by states to restrict abortion or to mandate health and safety standards in abortion clinics. Its allies in the liberal media portray abortion as a safe procedure that is welcomed by women. In its recent report titled “Unsafe: The Public Health Crisis in America’s Abortion Clinics Endangers Women,” Americans United for Life (AUL) demonstrates in its analysis the many state officials who look the other way when it comes to inspections of abortion clinics. The organization asserts: “Importantly, even limiting the scope of our investigation to the last eight years, efforts to discern the true state of abortion practices was stymied by a dearth of protective laws in a number of states, a lack of reporting in others, and limited public availability of information on abortion providers in still more states. ” “We can easily deduce, therefore, that the epidemic of substandard abortion practice is worse than even these pages show,” AUL states. | 1 |
The world is on pace to set another high temperature benchmark, with 2016 becoming the third year in a row of record heat. NASA scientists announced on Tuesday that global temperatures so far this year were much higher than in the first half of 2015. Gavin Schmidt, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, said that while the first six months of 2015 made it the hottest ever recorded, “2016 really has blown that out of the water. ” He said calculations showed there was a 99 percent probability that the full year would be hotter than 2015. Dr. Schmidt said the world was now “dancing” with the temperature targets set last year in the Paris climate treaty for nations to limit climate change. He attributed part of the rise in temperatures this year to El Niño, in which warming waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean pump a lot of heat into the atmosphere. El Niño is now ending, and water temperatures in the Pacific are dropping, which should lead in 2017 to lower but still historically high temperatures. Average temperatures for the first six months of this year were about 1. 3 degrees Celsius, or 2. 3 degrees Fahrenheit, above the average in 1880, when global began, and “quite close” to 1. 5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, Dr. Schmidt said in a conference call with other NASA scientists. The warming in the first half of this year extended across all parts of the planet except for most of Antarctica, Dr. Schmidt said. Warming was especially strong in the Arctic, where it had an effect on sea ice coverage. Walt Meier, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said that the geographical extent of the Arctic ice so far this year was the lowest for any since satellite began in 1979, largely because warm temperatures caused melting to begin as much as two months earlier than usual. “It’s been an extreme beginning to the year for sea ice,” he said. It is not yet clear if this year will exceed the record for the lowest extent, set in 2012, because most of the melting takes place later in the summer. Warming of 1. 5 degrees Celsius has special significance because at the Paris climate treaty in December, the world agreed to aim to limit the increase in average global temperatures to that amount above preindustrial levels. Dr. Schmidt said that the Paris target referred to sustained temperatures over the long term. “I certainly would not say that we have now gotten to that initial Paris number and are going to stay there,” he said. “But I think it’s fair to say that we are dancing with that lower target. ” Dr. Schmidt said that although NASA did not usually offer midyear updates to its global surface temperature analysis, it had decided to do so now “because average temperatures for the first half of this year are so in excess of any first part of a year we’ve seen. ” January 2016 was the hottest January since 1880, and that distinction continued for each month through June, NASA said. Dr. Schmidt said that although El Niño contributed to some of the increase in temperatures from last year, almost all of the increase since the 1960s was because of emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Forecasters now expect that later this year, temperatures in the Pacific will become lower than normal, a condition called La Niña. That should result in somewhat lower global temperatures next year, he said. The NASA announcement reflects trends in a climate affected by rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. That is distinct from weather trends like the heat waves that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued warnings about this week for much of the eastern half of the United States. NOAA’s National Weather Service has issued heat warnings and advisories for much of the Plains, the Mississippi Valley and Midwestern and Southern states, saying temperatures could be well above 100 degrees through the weekend. | 1 |
The brain looks like a featureless expanse of folds and bulges, but it’s actually carved up into invisible territories. Each is specialized: Some groups of neurons become active when we recognize faces, others when we read, others when we raise our hands. On Wednesday, in what many experts are calling a milestone in neuroscience, researchers published a spectacular new map of the brain, detailing nearly 100 previously unknown regions — an unprecedented glimpse into the machinery of the human mind. Scientists will rely on this guide as they attempt to understand virtually every aspect of the brain, from how it develops in children and ages over decades, to how it can be corrupted by diseases like Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia. “It’s a step towards understanding why we’re we,” said David Kleinfeld, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the research. Scientists created the map with advanced scanners and computers running artificial intelligence programs that “learned” to identify the brain’s hidden regions from vast amounts of data collected from hundreds of test subjects, a far more sophisticated and broader effort than had been previously attempted. While an important advance, the new atlas is hardly the final word on the brain’s workings. It may take decades for scientists to figure out what each region is doing, and more will be discovered in coming decades. “This map you should think of as version 1. 0,” said Matthew F. Glasser, a neuroscientist at Washington University School of Medicine and lead author of the new research. “There may be a version 2. 0 as the data get better and more eyes look at the data. We hope the map can evolve as the science progresses. ” The first hints of the brain’s hidden geography emerged more than 150 years ago. In the 1860s, the physician Pierre Paul Broca was intrigued by two of his patients who were unable to speak. After they died, Broca examined their brains. On the outer layer, called the cortex, he found that both had suffered damage to the same patch of tissue. That region came to be known as Broca’s area. In recent decades, scientists have found that it becomes active when people speak and when they try to understand the speech of other people. In the late 1800s, a group of German researchers identified other regions of the cortex, each having distinct types of cells packed together in unique ways. In 1907, Korbinian Brodmann published a catalog of 52 brain regions. Neuroscientists have relied on his map ever since, adding a modest number of new regions with their own research. “This is the standard for where you are in the brain,” said Dr. Glasser. Three years ago, Dr. Glasser and his colleagues set out to create a new standard. They drew on data collected by the Human Connectome Project, in which 1, 200 volunteers were studied with powerful new scanners. The project team recorded images of each participant’s brain, and then recorded its activity during hours of tests on memory, language and other kinds of thought. In previous attempts to map the cortex, scientists typically had looked only at one kind of evidence at a time — say, the arrangements of cells. The Human Connectome Project has made it possible to study the brain in much greater detail. In addition to looking at the activity of the brain, the scientists also looked at its anatomy. They measured the amount of myelin, for example, a fatty substance that insulated neurons. They found sharp contrasts in myelin levels from one region of the cortex to the next. “We have 112 different types of information we can tap into,” said David C. Van Essen, a principal investigator with the Human Connectome Project at Washington University Medical School. Using these variables, the scientists trained a computer with data from 210 brains to recognize discrete regions of the cortex. Once the computer profiled the distinctive combinations of myelin, activity and other characteristics, they tested it on 210 other brains. The computer pinpointed the regions in the new brains 96. 6 percent of the time. The scientists found that only a small number of features were required to map the brain. That means that researchers will be able to use their method to map an individual’s brain in a little over an hour of scanning. The map produced by the computer includes 83 familiar regions, such as Broca’s area, but includes 97 that were unknown — or just forgotten. In the 1950s, for example, German researchers noticed a patch on the side of the brain in which neurons had little myelin, compared with neighboring regions. But the finding was soon neglected. “People tended to ignore it, and it was lost in the literature,” said Dr. Van Essen. The computer rediscovered the odd territory, and Dr. Van Essen and his colleagues found that it becomes unusually active when people listen to stories. That finding suggests the region, which they call 55b, is part of a language network in the brain, along with Broca’s area. In other parts of the cortex, the scientists were able to partition previously identified regions into smaller ones. For example, they discovered that a large region near the front of the brain, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, actually is made up of a dozen smaller zones. The region becomes active during many different kinds of thought, ranging from to deception. It’s possible that each of the newly identified smaller parts is important for one of those tasks. The computer program developed by the scientists became so adept at mapping the cortex that it could identify hidden regions even when they took on unusual shapes. Twelve of the research subjects, for example, have a 55b region that’s split into two isolated patches. (The researchers don’t know whether this affects how the subjects use language.) Other neuroscientists hope that the new map will sharpen their experiments, allowing them to discover how the brain’s cogs mesh. “The next big step is seeing what this can do for us in terms of buying more power,” said Emily S. Finn, a graduate student at Yale University who has used Human Connectome Project data to find links between brain activity and intelligence. Dr. Kleinfeld predicted that other researchers will find ways to verify the new map’s accuracy. Genetic testing, for example: If 180 regions of the cortex really are distinct, then the neurons in each should share a distinct combination of active genes. “You can imagine going to these 180 regions, taking a punch of tissue, and seeing if you can really genetically differentiate them,” said Dr. Kleinfeld. Many experts believe that the brain, on closer inspection, will turn out to be an even greater collective of regions that somehow cooperate for the common good. “It’s very clear that many of those regions are likely to be composed of smaller pieces,” said Danielle S. Bassett, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Van Essen said that he and other scientists will be using the map to track the development of young brains and to look for changes caused by disorders like Alzheimer’s disease. “We shouldn’t expect miracles and easy answers,” he said, “but we’re positioned to accelerate progress. ” | 1 |
The main Christian diocese in Egypt has announced that it will not hold Easter celebrations this year, in mourning for the 46 Coptic Christians killed in the Palm Sunday massacre brought about by twin jihadist bombings. [The Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Minya, located in southern Egypt, said Tuesday that commemorations of the Resurrection of Jesus will be limited to the liturgical prayers “without any festive manifestations” out of respect for the faithful who were slain by suicide bombers of the Islamic State. The Minya province has the highest Coptic Christian population in the country and Christians there traditionally hold Easter Vigil services on Saturday evening and then spend Easter Sunday on large meals and family visits. Christians in Minya have lived in constant fear of attacks from the area’s large Salafi Muslim population. In certain local villages, the faithful celebrate Mass before a cross drawn on a wall, making it easy to erase quickly in order to avoid attacks. Police sources said that 28 people have been arrested for their possible ties to the planning and financing of Sunday’s attacks. Using DNA testing, authorities have also identified the two perpetrators of the slaughter as Egyptians who had traveled to Syria yet managed to return to Egypt, bypassing border controls. The two jihadis carried out separate suicide bombings in the churches of Saint George in Tanta and Saint Mark in Alexandria while Palm Sunday services were being conducted. The attacks took the lives of 46 people, and left more than a hundred wounded. One of the terrorists was identified with the nom de guerre of Abu Ishaaq al Masri, and was reportedly born in 1990 in the province of Sharqiya, located in the Nile delta north of Cairo. He is thought to have entered Syria in January of 2017 before authorities lost track of his whereabouts. The bombing in Alexandria was reportedly the work of Abu who blew himself up near the doors of the church just as he passed through the metal detector. According to the man’s relatives, he had made several trips to neighboring Libya, where he would stay for three months at a time. On Tuesday, the Egyptian Parliament unanimously ratified the state of emergency that had been declared the prior evening by the cabinet of ministers of President Abdel Fattah . The state of alert will be in force for the next three months, at which time it may be renewed if need be. The state of emergency gives the president wide and exceptional powers to establish special courts, intercept communications, impose censorship, or even decree a curfew. Human rights activists have expressed fears that the state of emergency will add even more repression to a country where public freedoms have been crushed in the last four years under the pretext of fighting increasingly widespread terrorism. The Pew Research Center reported Tuesday that Egypt is now the country with the highest level of government restrictions of religion in the entire world. Meanwhile, the Islamic State has become more and more active in Egypt, especially in the region of North Sinai, and recently vowed to step up its attacks against Egypt’s Christians. Along with the Palm Sunday attack, ISIS had claimed responsibility for the December 2016 bombing of a church next to St. Mark’s Cathedral in Cairo, an important religious site for Egyptian Copts. That explosion killed 30 Christians and injured dozens more. Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome | 1 |
Disgraced Hedge Fund Manager Focuses on Aiding
BY PAUL SULLIVAN Sitting at the circular table in his office, near an elliptical machine, treadmill and massage table, Steven A. Cohen struggled to find words to describe what motivates his new philanthropic effort. “You know what I think it is, I was looking for something unique, special, something that I could own,” said Mr. Cohen, the billionaire investor, in an interview at his family office, Point72 Asset Management. It is in the same building as his former hedge fund, SAC Capital Advisors, which in 2013 paid $1.8 billion in fines to federal prosecutors and securities regulators. “I wanted to do something big,” he added. “I wanted to do something that was all mine.” That something is a two-pronged initiative to help veterans who return from combat with post-traumatic stress or traumatic brain injuries and a separate nonprofit organization to do research into diagnostic tools and treatments for those conditions.
www.nytimes.com | 0 |
The Mexican soccer star Javier Hernández, known as Chicharito, has condemned it in a public service announcement. Hashtags have spread to raise awareness of its offensiveness and to try to put an end to it. And after the massacre in an Orlando nightclub popular with gay Latinos, commentators have urged fans to abandon it once and for all. But still, as is customary when the Mexican national team is playing in an international tournament, it could be heard: the roar of “Eeeh … puto!” by Mexican fans trying to distract the opposing goalkeeper punting the ball upfield. “Puto,” roughly translated as “male prostitute,” is a slur often hurled at gay men in Mexico, but fans who chant it say they use it out of the more generalized meaning of “coward” (or, in the adjective form, simply an unpleasant thing). On Monday, two days after a gunman killed 49 people in Orlando, Fla. including at least four Mexican nationals, the chant could be heard during Mexico’s match against Venezuela in Houston during the Copa América regional tournament, being held in the United States for the first time. Some people even believe they heard it chanted with a little more gusto, as if in defiance over the criticism of the term. Mexico’s national team was fined $20, 700 in January by FIFA, the world soccer body, over fans’ use of the chant in a World Cup qualifying game against El Salvador in November. In theory, FIFA could move to take away points in the World Cup standings, which could derail the team’s advancement to the 2018 finals. On Thursday, without mentioning Mexico, Concacaf, the governing body for soccer in North and Central America and the Caribbean, issued a statement denouncing “chants or actions that are derogatory or offensive” and said that “they must be stopped. ” It did not mention what action, if any, it would take. Mexico next plays on Saturday night in a Copa América quarterfinal match against Chile at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. In Mexico, the chant is largely seen as much ado about nothing, and penalizing the team over it a sign of political correctness. Luis Fernando Lara, the editor of the Diccionario del español de Mexico (Dictionary of Mexican Spanish) said in an interview that the word derives from a Latin root that means “child. ” In its feminine form, it came to mean “prostitute,” and its male form took that meaning as well, particularly in the gay community. It evolved to mean “coward” or “ . ” In soccer matches, he said, it is intended simply to insult the goalkeeper, not to call him gay. “It seems to me that FIFA is wrong in judging the shout as an insult to homosexuals,” he said. “It is indeed an insult, but it is not aimed at the gay community. I think unfortunately they are making a cause out of the shout all through a politically incorrect mistake. ” Many gay advocates consider such reasoning nonsense. “The whole point is that the choice of this word is absolutely linked to a negative, homophobic meaning,” said Enrique Torre Molina, a Mexican who is campaign manager at All Out, an international gay rights organization. “‘Puto’ is the word many gay men have been called in school or even by family members to mock us or put us down. ‘Puto’ is the word many gay men hear as they’re being beaten, sometimes to death, in the daily homophobic crimes committed in Latin America. ”’ ”He added: “What is kind of infuriating, especially after tragedies like the Orlando shooting and any other homophobic crime that happens, is to read and hear people refusing to let it go after having so many gay men literally asking for them to drop it. If you have a group of people saying, ’Hey, when you use this word, it hurts,’ why not drop it? ”” ’Some fans are trying to do just that. Sergio Tristan, a and the founder of Pancho Villa’s Army, an Austin, Tex. fan club for the Mexican team, said the group had tried to persuade the “vocal minority” backing the chant to drop it. Tristan said that he had once chanted it too but that he had eventually acknowledged that it was offensive and not worth the penalties that have been or could be imposed on the team. He said the vitriol directed by American fans offended by the chat could actually backfire. “They actually are making it worse,” he said, pointing to the perceived louder volume of the chant at recent matches. “It’s a Mexican problem that should be solved by Mexican fans. ” He added: “Whether or not it is offensive, it really is a matter of perspective. We want to stop it because we are at the juncture where our team could suffer fines or lose points in our World Cup spot. ” | 1 |
Kaboom! Meteor Turns Night Into Day in Arizona (VIDEO) The National Weather Service did not report any calls regarding the matter, but based on videos provided to them by ABC15 they stated that the lights appeared to be “very far away and flying at a high altitude.”
Nearby Luke Air Force Base stated that they did not have any aircraft flying after 5:30 PM, and that they were not the source.
Witnesses tweeted videos at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who stated that "it is not known what may have caused them to occur."
In June, a massive asteroid zoomed over Arizona skies, and entered the Earth’s atmosphere east of the Arizona town of Payson. "There are no reports of any damage or injuries — just a lot of light and few sonic booms," Bill Cooke, the head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center said in a statement at the time. "If Doppler radar is any indication, there are almost certainly meteorites scattered on the ground north of Tucson."
That meteor was estimated to be approximately 10 feet in diameter and travelling at roughly 42,000 mph. ... | 0 |
A new video captures a Texas Democrat encouraging protest disruptions from the floor of the State House of Representatives last week. The video was taken moments before the confrontation between Republican Rep. Matt Rinaldi ( ) and Hispanic Democrat legislators. [The cell phone video taken from the floor of the Texas House by State Representative Mark Keough ( Woodlands) shows Democrat State Representative Ramon Ramero ( Worth) chanting “Hey, Hey. Ho, Ho. SB4 has got to go!” House rules and order prohibit such behavior by representatives. “This is such an embarrassment for the legislature,” Rep. Keough told Breitbart Texas in an exclusive interview. “The people in the gallery were holding up signs saying they are in the country illegally, and Democrat state reps are cheering them on. ” “We all took the same oath to uphold and defend the Constitutions of Texas and the United States at the beginning of the session,” the Republican representative continued. “And here they were, encouraging lawless behavior. ” Keough told Breitbart Texas that House rules expressly prohibit this type of conduct. “Unfortunately, the House and other security personnel were upstairs in the gallery dealing with the disruptive crowd,” he explained. “When the Speaker calls for order, you are supposed to settle down, but they just continued encouraging the crowd. I couldn’t believe it. ” The chants from protesters came after the House Speaker had ordered Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) troopers to clear the House Gallery of protesters who were attempting to disrupt the final day of the legislative session. Romero and other Democrat state representatives were seen by their Republican colleagues as egging on the protesters while law enforcement officers tried to maintain peace and order. State Representative Jonathan Stickland ( ) told Breitbart Texas that at this point when the video by Keough was filmed, several DPS troopers had been assaulted and pushed down the steps in the gallery by the crowd. “These troopers were trying to restore order, and Democrats were egging them on from the floor,” Stickland said. “I have never seen anything like this in the House. ” Rinaldi would later accuse Romero of physically assaulting him after he told Democrat reps he had called ICE on the protesters claiming to be illegal aliens. “When I told the Democrats I called ICE, Representative Ramon Romero physically assaulted me, and other Democrats were held back by colleagues,” Rinaldi posted on Facebook. This session has seen the passage of historic, but emotional legislation relating to prohibiting sanctuary cities in Texas. Senate Bill 4, authored by Senator Charles Perry ( ) is now the law of the state. The law which prohibits sheriff’s and police chiefs from ignoring immigration detainers and having policies forbidding officers from asking about immigration status becomes effective on September 1, 2017. The bill provides civil fines and even criminal penalties to law enforcement officials choosing to ignore immigration authorities. This new law was the focus of protesters on the final day of the session. The emotional debate over the bill left emotional scars on relationships between representatives with opposing viewpoints. In a few weeks, the legislature will reconvene in a special session called by Governor Greg Abbott on July 18. Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook. | 1 |
De e-mails van Hillary Clinton en de Moslimbroederschap door Thierry Meyssan De FBI enquête betreffende de privé e-mails van Hillary Clinton gaat niet over een nalatigheid ten opzichte van de veiligheidsregels, maar over een complot met het doel elk spoor af te leiden van haar correspondenties die gearchiveerd hadden moeten zijn op de servers van de Federale Staat. Deze kunnen de uitwisselingen omvatten over illegale financieringen of corruptie, andere over de banden tussen de eega’s Clinton en de Moslimbroederschap en de jihadisten.
Voltaire Netwerk | Damascus (Syrië) | 6 november 2016 ελληνικά English Español français Türkçe русский Deutsch Português italiano norsk عربي Hillary Clinton en haar kabinetschef Huma Abedin. De heractivering van de FBI enquête in de privé e-mails van Hillary Clinton betreffen niet meer de veiligheidsregels, maar de manipulaties die kunnen gaan tot hoogverraad.
Technisch, in plaats de beveiligde server van de Federale Staat te gebruiken, had de Staatssecretaresse in haar woning een privé server laten installeren, om op die manier het internet te kunnen gebruiken zonder sporen op een machine van de Federale Staat achter te laten. De privé technicus van Mevr Clinton had haar server uitgewist vòòr de aankomst van de FBI, zodat het onmogelijk was te weten waarom zij dit dispositief had ingericht.
In het begin heeft de FBI geobserveerd dat de server niet de beveiliging van het State Department had. Mevr Clinton had dus slechts een veiligheidsfout begaan. Later heeft de FBI de computer van het vroegere congreslid Anthony Weiner in beslag genomen. Deze is de vroegere echtgenoot van Huma Abedin, kabinetschef van Hillary. Daarin zijn E-mails afkomstig van de Staatssecretaresse teruggevonden.
Anthony Weiner is een Joods politicus, heel intiem bevriend met de Clintons, die ambieerde burgemeester van New York te worden. Hij moest ontslag nemen als gevolg van een zeer puriteinse schandaal: hij had per SMS erotische berichten naar een andere jonge vrouw dan zijn echtgenote gestuurd. Huma Abedin scheidde officieel van hem tijdens deze agitatie, maar verliet hem in werkelijkheid niet.
Huma Abedin is een Amerikaanse opgevoed in Saoedi-Arabië. Haar vader dirigeert een academische revue —waar ze gedurende jaren redactiesecretaresse van was— die regelmatig de mening van de Moslimbroederschap reproduceert. Haar moeder presideert de Saoedische vereniging van de vrouwelijke leden van de Moslimbroederschap en werkte samen met de vrouw van de Egyptische president Mohamed Morsi. Haar broer Hassan werkt voor de sjeik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, prediker van de Broederschap en geestelijke adviseur van Al-Jazeera.
Ter gelegenheid van een officiële reis naar Saoedi-Arabië bezoekt de Staatssecretaresse het college Dar al-Hekma in het bijzijn van Salehan Abedin (moeder van haar kabinetschef), presidente van de vereniging van de Zusters leden van de Broederschap. Huma Abedin is heden een centraal personage van Clinton’s verkiezingscampagne, naast John Podesta, vroegere secretaris-generaal van het Witte-Huis tijdens het presidentschap van Bill Clinton. Daarnaast is Podesta de vaste lobbyist van het Saoedische koninkrijk in het Amerikaanse Congres voor de bescheiden som van 200.000 dollar maandelijks. Op 12 juni 2016 had Petra, het officiële persbureau van Jordanië, een interview gepubliceerd van de Arabische prins Ben Salmane, die pochte over de moderniteit van zijn familie die illegaal 20% van de presidentscampagne van Hillary Clinton had gefinancierd, hoewel dat een vrouw is. De dag na de publicatie annuleerde het agentschap dit bericht, verzekerend dat zijn site gepirateerd was.
Volgens het officiële Jordaanse persbureau Petra van 12 juni 2016 heeft de Saoedische koninklijke familie illegaal 20% van de verkiezingscampagne van Hillary Clinton gefinancierd. Mevr Abedin is niet het enige lid van de Obama administratie die aan de Broederschap verbonden is. De half-broer van de president, Abon’go Malik Obama, is de schatmeester van het Missiewerk van de Broeders in Soedan en president van de Stichting Barack H. Obama. Hij staat rechtstreeks onder bevel van de Soedanese president Omar el-Béchir. Een Moslimbroeder is lid van de Nationale Veiligheidsraad —de hoogste uitvoerende instantie van de Verenigde Staten—. Van 2009 tot 2012 was dit het geval van Mehdi K. Alhassani. Men weet niet wie hem heeft opgevolgd maar het Witte-Huis ontkende dat een Broeder lid was van de Raad tot er een bewijs van opdook. Het is ook een Broeder die ambassadeur van de Verenigde Staten is bij de Islamitische conferentie, Rashad Hussain. De andere geïdentificeerde Broeders bezetten minder belangrijke posten. HLouay M. Safi moet echter worden genoemd, huidig lid van de Nationale Syrische Coalitie en vorig adviseur van het Pentagon.
President Obama en zijn half-broer Abon’go Malik Obama in het Ovaal Bureau. Abon’go Malik is de schatmeester van het Missiewerk van de Moslimbroeders in Soedan. In April 2009, twee maanden voor zijn redevoering in Caïro, had president Obama in het geheim een delegatie van de Broederschap ontvangen in het Ovaal Bureau. Hij had, voor zijn inhuldiging Ingrid Mattson, presidente van de vereniging van de Moslim Broeders en Zusters in de Verenigde Staten, al uitgenodigd.
Van zijn kant heeft de Stichting Clinton voor zijn project « klimaat » als verantwoordelijke Gehad el-Haddadin in dienst genomen, één van de wereldleiders van de Broederschap, die tot dan toe verantwoordelijke was van een televisie uitzending over de Koran. Zijn vader was één van de mede-oprichters van de Broederschap, in 1951; tijdens de her-oprichting door de CIA en de MI6 heeft Gehad de Stichting in 2012 verlaten, op welke datum hij in Caïro de woordvoerder van kandidaat Mohammed Morsi is geworden, en vervolgens die van de Moslimbroeders, op mondiaal niveau.
Er van uitgaande dat de totaliteit van de jihadisten-leiders in de wereld voortkomen uit hetzij de Broederschap, hetzij uit de orde van de Soefi’s van de Naqshbandîs —de twee componenten van de Islamitische liga, de Arabisch-Saoedische anti-nationalistische organisatie— zou men wel meer willen weten over de relaties tussen Mevr Clinton en Saoedi-Arabië en de Broeders.
Het is trouwens zo dat in het team van haar tegenstander Donald Trump zich generaal T. Flynn bevindt, die poogde zich tegen de creatie van het Kalifaat door het Witte-Huis te verzetten en ontslag nam van de directie van de Defense Intelligence Agency (Militaire Inlichtingendienst) om zijn afwijzing te markeren. Hij gaat hier om met Frank Gaffney, een vroegere « Koude oorlog strijder »,voortaan bestempeld als een « complottist » voor de aanwezigheid van Broeders in de Verenigde Staten te hebben aangeklaagd.
Het spreekt vanzelf dat, vanuit het standpunt van de FBI steun aan jihadistische organisaties een misdaad is, wat ook de politiek van de CIA mag zijn. In 1991 had de politie —en senator Kelly— het failliet van de Pakistaanse (hoewel in de Caymaneilanden geregistreerde) bank BCCI geprovoceerd, welke de CIA voor allerlei geheime operaties met zowel de Moslimbroeders als met de latino-amerikaanse drugskartels gebruikte.
Thierry Meyssan Vertaling
Bart Ero | 0 |
OTTAWA — Gunmen opened fire in a mosque in the city of Quebec on Sunday night, killing six people and wounding eight others in what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called a “terrorist attack on Muslims. ” Étienne Doyon, a spokesman for the Quebec police, told reporters at the scene that the attack on the mosque, the Islamic Cultural Center of Quebec, had occurred around 8 p. m. At a news conference early Monday the police confirmed the six fatalities and said that two suspects had been arrested. The attack shook Canada, a country where mass shootings are uncommon, and came as the country has become known as a beacon for refugees fleeing warfare and terrorism in nations. Mr. Trudeau assailed what he called “this terrorist attack on Muslims in a center of worship and refuge. ” “It is to see such senseless violence,” he said in a statement early Monday. “Diversity is our strength, and religious tolerance is a value that we, as Canadians, hold dear. ” Christine Colombe, a spokeswoman for the Quebec Provincial Police, said the victims ranged in age from 35 to 70 and said that 39 people who were in the mosque were not hurt. The police had not yet identified a motive in the shootings, saying the investigation was just beginning. Ms. Colombe said that one of the two suspects was arrested at the scene of the shooting, while another was apprehended nearby on Île d’Orleans. The police said that some of those wounded in the shooting were seriously hurt. On Twitter, Martin Coiteux, the provincial minister of public safety, said that “the police systems for dealing with terrorist acts have been activated” in the wake of the shooting. “Ensuring the safety of the population is our priority,” he wrote. the service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, said the area surrounding the mosque had been sealed off by the police after the attack. Last June, a pig’s head was left at the door of the mosque in the middle of Ramadan. Practicing Muslims regard pork as unclean and do not eat it. The president of the mosque, Mohamed Yangui, was interviewed on Ici RDI, a French Canadian broadcaster. He was not at the mosque during the shooting but said that people who were present had told him that one gunman was able to reload his weapon several times. He said he had been told by witnesses that the gunmen had entered on the ground floor and had gone to the second floor where women pray, but he did not know whether any women were in the mosque at the time. The attack came after Mr. Trudeau said that Canada stood ready to continue welcoming refugees from terrorism and war and as President Trump’s executive order on immigration stranded people around the world and provoked condemnation that it was directed at Muslims. In the wake of the Quebec shooting, the New York City police stepped up protection of mosques, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Twitter. About 765, 000 people live in the city of Quebec, and 6, 760 of them identified themselves as Muslims during the last national census. Mr. Trudeau posted a message on Twitter on Saturday welcoming refugees to Canada and included a photograph of himself with a child under the hashtag #WelcomeToCanada. Since Mr. Trudeau took office in late 2015 the country has admitted nearly 40, 000 refugees, many of them fleeing the war in Syria. Canada’s warm embrace of Syrian refugees has won the country accolades at home and abroad, but is not without its domestic opponents. A survey in Ontario last summer found that while there was widespread support for accepting the refugees, only a third of respondents had a positive impression of Islam, and more than half felt its mainstream doctrines promoted violence. incidents have been on the rise in Canada, with several minor incidents reported in Quebec during the past year. A Montreal mosque and a Muslim community center were slightly damaged in separate arson attempts in December, and the head of the Association of Muslims and Arabs for a Secular Quebec received online death threats the month before. The increasing tension led a member of Parliament, Iqra Khalid, to put forward a motion in the national House of Commons in December calling on the government to condemn Islamophobia and request a study on how the government could combat the trend. The motion will probably be voted on when the House returns to session this week. In the wake of Sunday night’s attack, the premier of the province of Quebec, Philippe Couillard, said that solidarity rallies were planned on Monday for people to express their concern about the shootings. “We are with you. You are at home,” he said, in words directed at the province’s Muslim residents. | 1 |
The dead man waited on a gurney. His corpulent frame, after days of decomposing, had turned the mottled green of a ripe watermelon. He had been found alone in bed in his Manhattan apartment, surrounded by an avalanche of discarded bottles and trash. Now Dr. Jacqueline Nunez was by his side. As a medical examiner training in New York City, she had the job of finding out what had happened to him. It would not be quick or easy, not like television crime shows in which deaths are neatly wrapped up in under an hour. The job requires examiners to break apart bodies: hard physical work. too. Dr. Nunez would be on her feet for hours, splattered by blood and other body fluids, at times breathing an unimaginable stench. She could spend weeks, or even months, piecing together clues that might never add up. Standing on top of a metal stool, Dr. Nunez cut into the torso. A thick greenish fluid oozed out. She grabbed an ladle to scoop out more of it. Then she stuck both hands into the body to feel around for the liver. She came up empty, her gloves dripping. “Oh, what a mess,” she said. “I’m not sure what’s going on. This is the worst I’ve ever seen. ” It got messier. Dr. Nunez cracked open the chest with clippers to remove the heart and the lungs. She cut out the intestines. Then, as a whirring electric saw was used to open the skull, Dr. Nunez reached in to lift out the brain. When she was finished, she cleaned up. Then she started on her next patient. DR. NUNEZ is part of a New York City fellowship program that has become one of the country’s most renowned training grounds for medical examiners. The Forensic Pathology Fellows Program has helped resurrect a agency, the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner, which as recently as the 1980s was widely accused of incompetent management and bias toward the police. The estimated 500 forensic pathologists working nationwide are roughly half the number needed, according to the National Association of Medical Examiners. “Everyone who passes the medical examiner’s boards is sought after,” said Dr. David Fowler, the association’s president, who attributed the shortage to limited training opportunities and relatively low compensation compared with the pay that pathologists receive at hospitals or in private practice. Since 1990, the New York fellowship program has trained 100 medical examiners. The program has bolstered the agency’s status as a national model for medical examiner’s offices and has been the source of a new generation of forensic experts, producing the current or former chief medical examiners in more than 20 jurisdictions, including Washington, San Francisco, Honolulu and the States of Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont. Since the program is based in New York, the city is somewhat insulated from the shortage elsewhere in the country. Dr. Nunez, 34, is one of five doctors who have spent the past year preparing to become medical examiners. A cheerful woman who favors large gold hoop earrings, she is often mistaken for a schoolteacher. She grew up in Amityville, on Long Island, the older of two children of a landscape worker and a homemaker, and she went to medical school in the Dominican Republic. Instead of a black doctor’s bag, she carries a Craftsman toolbox packed with knives, scalpels, forceps and scissors. She does not mind working on bodies, not even one that is decomposing, known as a “decomp,” which is often the least favorite case for medical examiners. “A lot of people — especially other physicians and other pathologists — used to tell me, ‘I would have loved to have done forensics, but I can’t deal with the decomp,’” she said. “I actually have no problem doing them, and one of the reasons is because I feel like I’m the last person that is going to be providing some kind of care, bridging their death and their life. I’m the last person. ” NEW YORK CITY’S Office of Chief Medical Examiner is based in a squat, building, at 520 First Avenue, with letters missing from its name. Inside, a Latin inscription behind the reception desk translates to: “This is the place where the dead help the living. ” The medical examiners are the conduit for the two, providing answers, consoling grieving relatives and, if needed, informing police detectives. They fill a crucial but often overlooked role in a city where 5, 000 autopsies a year are performed for deaths that are deemed sudden or suspicious or are a result of crimes, accidents or suicides. It was medical examiners who sifted through the remains of more than 2, 700 victims after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. When there were no intact bodies, the pathologists had to improvise. They measured fingers to help identify people, using metal ring sizers that were donated in Tiffany’s little blue bags. That was also the year when Flight 587 crashed in Queens with 260 people aboard, and the year when envelopes laced with anthrax became a new terror threat. “When things get bad here, they get very bad,” said Dr. Barbara Sampson, who was appointed the city’s chief medical examiner in 2014. The agency’s staff of 600 includes 24 senior medical examiners, 20 of whom graduated from the fellowship program. The agency runs offices in every borough, three mortuaries and the country’s largest public DNA lab, along with other labs for toxicology, molecular genetics and histology, the microscopic examination of tissue. The agency’s $75 million annual budget is the equivalent of $8. 82 per city resident for the laboratories, investigations and other activities, far more than the national average of $3. 36 per resident, according to the National Association of Medical Examiners. Dr. Sampson, herself a 1998 fellow, says she looks for future medical examiners who can communicate and work well with others. The fellows, who have already graduated from medical school and completed a residency program in pathology, are selected after a unpaid tryout. They receive a salary of $131, 566 for the academic year, which runs from July 1 through June. At the end, the fellows sit for a nationally administered board exam nearly everyone passes. Some will be offered permanent positions as senior medical examiners with annual salaries starting at $159, 741, or invited to continue as fellows for a second year to specialize in the pathology of the brain and the heart. In contrast, general pathologists at hospitals and in private practice typically earn $200, 000 or more. In total, there have been 58 women and 42 men in the program. About are black, Hispanic or Asian. Many have foreign backgrounds. This year’s fellows include doctors who grew up in Croatia, Russia and Mexico. For some it is a calling. Dr. Stephen Melito, 32, went to medical school just so he could become a medical examiner. As a teenager in Farmingdale, on Long Island, he used to volunteer as an underage buyer of cigarettes in undercover police operations. For a high school class, he researched how to tell the time of death at a crime scene. Dr. Kanayo Tatsumi relocated to New York from Vermont less than a year after she was married. Her husband, a surgical resident, stayed behind to finish his training. Dr. Tatsumi, 33, was still in college when she interned at an Illinois coroner’s office. The first autopsy she observed was of a young woman killed in a car accident. She could not stop thinking about her. Had she been wearing a seatbelt? Had her airbag deployed? “It could have been me it could have been any of my friends,” Dr. Tatsumi recalled. “I started realizing that we could do a lot to prevent injuries, even though we’re getting that data, if you will, from death. ” THE MEDICAL EXAMINERS in training have desks side by side in Room 335 — known as the fellows’ room — where a bulletin board is crammed with photos of fellows in hazmat suits, at parties and holding babies. They alternate between “A” days for autopsies and “P” days for paperwork, while squeezing in lectures on topics like firearm injuries, trauma and pediatric deaths. They go to crime scenes, rotate through the labs and learn to handle infectious diseases like Ebola and respond to terror threats. The A days begin with an 8 a. m. triage meeting. Dr. Nunez stood behind a lectern, presenting case histories to senior medical examiners, forensic anthropologists, police detectives and medical students. There were 11 cases that day, not unusual in number or scope: An older man died after falling at home a younger man with a cocaine habit was found dead by his brother. Afterward, Dr. Nunez headed down to the mortuary. She checked the body bags in the hallway. “This is one of mine,” she called out to a technician. “This is another one. I’ve got one more. ” Her next stop was the autopsy room, which has eight stations, each equipped with a metal table and a scale. By 9:30 a. m. Dr. Nunez was at one of the stations, engrossed in her first case. A thin black man lay on the table. She removed his pancreas. It had dark spots where blood had pooled, a possible sign that he had spent a lot of time out in the cold before he died. Just before 11 a. m. she was ready for her next case. Dr. Nunez does not take breaks or stop for lunch. “Once I get going, I just keep up the pace,” she said. “You build endurance, you pick up stamina and you get used to it. That’s what this year is for. ” Her scrubs were stained with blood and fluids. “I’m not squeamish about it at all anymore,” she said. At 3 p. m. Dr. Nunez was still working on her third autopsy when the other medical examiners reconvened to review their findings. She did not have much to report yet. “It happens,” she said. “I’d rather we look at everything and not rush through anything. ’’ Afterward, Dr. Nunez retreated to the fellows’ room to draft a report for each autopsy. She would order lab tests, interview relatives and consider other evidence before closing each case. Dr. Sampson reads every report. The fellowship program is the legacy of Dr. Charles S. Hirsch, the city’s chief medical examiner from 1989 to 2013, who was known to focus not only on technical skills but also on scientific integrity, common sense and compassion. “I still quote Dr. Hirsch two or three times a day,” said Dr. Susan Ely, a 1997 fellow who is now the program’s director. “His presence is still very much felt here. ” Dr. Hirsch, a former chief medical examiner for Suffolk County, was appointed in 1989 by Mayor Edward I. Koch, to lead an agency battered by conflict and mistrust. The mayor had fired the previous chief medical examiner, Dr. Elliot M. Gross, citing poor leadership and management. In 1985, Dr. Gross was accused by defense lawyers and forensic specialists of producing misleading or inaccurate autopsy findings in cases of people who died in police custody. A mayoral commission cleared him of wrongdoing but faulted a longstanding agency practice in which deaths in police custody were routinely left as undetermined. Though the medical examiner’s office is now considered professionally run and independent, it has not entirely escaped controversy. The agency has been challenged for using a highly sensitive technique to analyze trace samples of DNA — known as low copy number DNA testing — that has been criticized as unreliable. In February, a former toxicology lab director sued the city, claiming that she was forced out in part for raising questions about its use of the technique. EACH FELLOW is expected to complete about 250 autopsies, a goal based on national standards for training medical examiners. The sheer diversity of cases in a big city ensures that they see just about every kind of injury imaginable. Dr. Judy Melinek, who chronicled her fellowship experience in a 2014 memoir, “Working Stiff,” recalled that she was told to go to New York by a former fellow who noted, “All kinds of great ways to die there, and the teaching is brilliant. ” Dr. Rafael Garcia, 36, had barely started the fellowship program in July when he was assigned not only his first homicide but a double homicide. He spent seven hours working on just one of the victims, a man who had been stabbed 20 times. As it happened, he had attended a lecture on stab wounds the day before. Almost a year later, Dr. Garcia has completed 250 autopsies, of which about have not been resolved. “It’s funny to see a TV show and how they do everything in the same day,” he said. “That’s not reality. ” Dr. Garcia, a father of two who grew up in Mexico and trained to be an ophthalmologist, said he had no regrets about switching to forensic pathology. “Money is important,” he said, “but I’d rather feel happy with what I’m doing than just being frustrated by an entire life doing something that I don’t enjoy as much. ” The fellows keep track of their autopsies in Excel spreadsheets that list the names of the dead, brief histories and findings. The most common deaths are accidental or natural the least common are undetermined in cause or manner of death, or both. At one point in February, when Dr. Nunez surpassed 150 autopsies, her fiancé, an accountant, figured that she needed to complete about 25 autopsies per month in the time left. In May, she surpassed 215 autopsies. By Tuesday, she was at 242. Though she tries to stay positive, Dr. Nunez said the cases can take an emotional toll. She tries to decompress by going out to dinner with her fiancé and spending time with their extended families. Still, she loses sleep. “I feel like I want to give them more than I can, and I know I can’t,” she said of the victims’ families. “Something the senior medical examiners tell me all the time is, ‘You’ve done a full, competent exam.’ There are limitations. You have to learn to become comfortable with limitations. ” The other fellows have ways of coping, too. Dr. Melito said he did not check the news at home in New Jersey, where he lives with his wife, Mary, a teacher, and their two young children. On hard days, he gets extra hugs. Dr. Tatsumi said she found herself crying a lot. In an autopsy, she will discover that someone did not die right away and probably felt pain or fear in the final moments. “That just destroys me,” she said. “I’m not very good at hiding things, and so I wear it on my sleeve I wear it on my face. ” The five medical examiners in training have been invited to stay on. All have accepted except for Dr. Melito, who is taking a job closer to home. In Dr. Sampson’s office, there are framed photos of every class of fellows on graduation day — the counterpart of the informal collage upstairs in the fellows’ room. Nearly all of these smiling group shots are arranged in neat columns running down one wall. “This side is all Dr. Hirsch,” Dr. Sampson said. She pointed across the room, where there are just two photos of the last two fellows’ classes. “And that’s my wall,” she said. “Hopefully, it will be long someday. ” A photo of Dr. Nunez’s class will soon be added. Even in medical school, Dr. Nunez said, she was interested in the cause of a disease more than the treatment. A doctor would be poring over a patient’s lab work while “all I’m thinking is, I really wish I could take a piece of this woman’s lung to see what’s happening. ” Dr. Nunez said that she still wanted those answers, but that now her desire was to serve the families left behind. “I think that’s definitely what drew me the most,” she said. “It’s being able to be useful, and bring closure to families, and give them answers that they otherwise weren’t going to have. ” | 1 |
Club Soda for Stomach Pain and Constipation VN:F [1.9.22_1171] Close Transcript Transcript: Club Soda for Stomach Pain and Constipation
Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.
“Natural bubbling or sparkling mineral waters have been popular for thousands of years.” Manufactured sparkling water has been around ever since a clergyman “suspended water over a vat of fermenting beer.”“For centuries, carbonated water has been considered capable of relieving gastrointestinal symptoms,” including tummy aches, but we didn’t have good data until this study was published.
“Twenty-one folks with dyspepsia [an upset stomach] and constipation were randomized into two groups in a double-blind fashion” to drink one-and-a-half quarts of carbonated water versus tap water, every day for two weeks. Dyspepsia was defined as “pain or discomfort located in the upper abdomen,” including “bloating and nausea.”
And, carbonated water improved dyspepsia, compared to still water (tap water), and improved constipation. “Drink more water” is a common recommendation for constipation, but they didn’t observe a clear benefit of the added tap water. Seems you need to increase fiber and water, rather than just water alone. But, sparkling water seemed to help. Now they were using sparkling mineral water. And so, whether these effects are due to the bubbles or minerals, we can’t tell from this study.
There’s been a concern that carbonated beverages may increase heartburn, GERD (acid reflux disease). But that was based on studies like this, that compared water to Pepsi. Soda can put the Pepsi in dyspepsia, and contribute to heartburn. But, so may tea and coffee, in people that suffer from heartburn. That may be partly from the cream and sugar, though, since milk is a common contributor to heartburn, as well. Carbonated water alone, though, shouldn’t be a problem.
Similarly, while flavored sparkling drinks can erode our enamel, it’s not the carbonation, but the added juices and acids. Sparkling water alone appears a hundred times less erosive than citrus or soda. So, a sparkling mineral water may successfully treat stomachache and constipation without adverse effects—unless you’re a teenage boy opening a bottle of sparkling wine with your teeth, especially on a hot day after you shake it up, placing one at risk for a “pneumatic rupture of the esophagus.” Please consider volunteering to help out on the site. Close Sources Video Sources water Doctor's Note
Whoa, what was that?! My little cameo was me playing around with a green screen. I’m trying to find ways for the videos to be more engaging than just showing study after study, but there may be a fine line between engaging and dorky :-). The goal is to widen the appeal to reach more people, without distracting from the scientific rigor. What do you think? Should I do more little bits like this with me on screen, or do you think that detracts from the professionalism? Please let me know in the comments section below.
For more on combating acid reflux, see Diet and GERD Acid Reflux Heartburn and Diet and Hiatal Hernia .
Other videos on healthy beverages include: How Many Glasses of Water Should We Drink a Day?
If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here . To post comments or questions into our discussion board, first log into Disqus with your NutritionFacts.org account or with one of the accepted social media logins. Click on Login to choose a login method. Click here for help. Comment Etiquette stephaniehope
Are the “rock” minerals in these mineral waters absorbable by humans? It is my understanding that the minerals in water are, basically, little pieces of rock, and our body can not utilize them. Maybe they even cause harm? A lot of debate on this one, but proponents of water low in TDS (total dissolved solids) often claim that the minerals in food are of absorbable nature, yet with the mineral it water it is just picking up pieces of rock and residue from the streams, lakes, etc. Makes me wonder about possible bogus benefits of consuming minerals through pure sea salts. Wegan
Apparently they are absorbed.“On its website, the National Osteoporosis Foundation (NOF) states that there is no connection between the carbonation in soft drinks and bone loss and that certain carbonated mineral waters (the ones rich in calcium and those that are more alkaline) have actually been shown to improve bone health.”Feb 18, 2013 stephaniehope
It would be weird because we are an heterotroph specy like animals… Lisa
I like to see your face, and I think it personalises the whole thing. I like any info – articles are good, too, and they give you time to digest the content. (No pun intended.) Yes, changing things up from time to time is good, as long as the content is easy to understand and the links are visible – or placed under the video. And thank you a thousand times for your service to people. Julie
I’d like to see him at the end–maybe sending us off with a witty joke. Ellie Lee-wasson
I have been consuming at least a tablespoon of flax a day and following Dr. Gregor’s daily dozen recommendations, yet am still constipated and am having difficulty losing weight, which is a secondary goal of mine. Can anyone offer additional suggestions? EquaYona
So you are on a plant based diet and constipated? How long have you been plant based? Do you still consume dairy? Ellie Lee-wasson
I have been vegan for 4 years, have been eating whole food plant based for about 3 months, previously consuming larger amounts of processed vegan foods. I only “go” at most every couple days. EquaYona
Can you increase your water consumption? Exercise is also an important factor for regularity. Are you following the exercise recommendations in the daily dozen? If you are getting plenty of fluids and exercise, you might try adding a little more fat(nuts, avocado) and try a bran cereal for breakfast or snack. It is startling that you have such a problem on a vegan, whole food diet. I generally have two BMs a day. Ellie Lee-wasson
I try to drink about 64 ounces of water or tea a day, but, I also work in aviation. I walk about 10000 steps a day, and try to get additional cardiovascular as my job allows. But, yes, I agree it is startling, unfortunately, my current situation is a vast improvement from when I was not eating vegan. susan
hi Ellie, I can’t add much to the excellent suggestions of EquaYona, other than to mention two things that helped me. I use 1 tbsp ground flax in my oatmeal in the mornings, but, if having issues, 1 tbsp in 1/4 cup water last thing at night before bed works wonders. The other thing is to avoid gluten free bread products if you use them at all.. I find one slice of this ‘bread’ at lunch with salad very effective. Best of luck
http://www.mannaorganicbakery.com/item/organic-sprouted-bread-banana-walnut-hemp.html maggie
Hi Ellie, I can suggest brown rice, beans and steamed broccoli or kale. These are hi fiber foods, sweet potatoes especially the Japanese purple potato are great has well. Bean soups are great as well. I suspect you are not getting hi fiber foods during the day. I’m pretty regular with 2 BM a day Cheryl esben andersen
I would disagree with you . I do not think it is a lack of fiber since the person is already on a whole foods diet . It is a lack of peristalsis of the digestive tract , the contraction and relaxation of the digestive tract which moves the food or more correctly the waste products along . 2 or 3 glasses of water at body temperature first thing in the morning has helped a lot of people according to our naturepathic doctor we go too. For still sluggish movement sauerkraut juice or sauerkraut has helped the most stubborn cases . Darla Eaves
Black coffee esben andersen
Took me a while to go from creamer in my coffee to black , oh yeah a lot of people I know swear by their coffee. Ellie Lee-wasson
I only drink black coffee :) susan
yes esben I agree with the peristalsis idea.. I was given buscopan for gall bladder pain, nausea etc, but then later with continuing issues I was given Domperidone to speed up the digestive process. I then felt a lot better. The coffee is definitly necessary though. I will give the sauerkraut a try too. thank you! Jean
I have a sluggish digestive tract caused in part by injuries to nerves and muscles; also migraine can slow down and sometimes even stop gut activity. When it doesn’t want to work properly nothing makes a difference. WFPB has made it less of a problem but there still are spells. Rebecca Cody
Your problem is much more extreme than mine, but this works for me: I put 1 tablespoon of chia seeds in about a cup of water every morning, stir and then leave it sitting on the counter for about 10 minutes. Then, not before, add a rounded teaspoon of magnesium citrate powder. I use one called Natural Calm, which is available in health food stores. Stir it up well, add a bit of stevia if you wish, and drink it down. I used to do the same thing an hour or so after dinner at night, but it was definitely overkill, so I dropped the evening dose. Andrea Reiman
Consider having your thyroid tested. Also, try Whole Husk Psyllium: http://www.healthline.com/health/psyllium-health-benefits#Overview1 Foroogh – NF Moderator
Hi, Ellie Lee-Wesson, I noticed there are lots of helpful advice regarding your issue with constipation even though you are on PBWF. You mentioned you are in aviation, does your job entails traveling on plane and being on high altitude? Because that could be the issue since going on high altitute causes dehydration a lot. Hydrating 20 minutes before meal and one hour after meal.The suggestions of chia seeds, flax seed, psyllum and magnisum and dissolving in warm water are very good. Also pineapple juice, prune juice also 1 table spoon good extra virgin olive oil and coffee tend to help with the bowel movement. Also having fruit one hour before meal or two hours after meal can be helpful. Ellie Lee-wasson
Yes, I am on planes 12-14 hours a day most days. I do drink a lot of water, both still and sparkling (as mentioned in the video). I do also drink a lot of black coffee. Do you have any suggestions for fruit that packs well for travel that I could bring with me on the plane? Or other good fibre rich foods that I could pack and can be eaten raw or in a microwave? Foroogh – NF Moderator
I would suggest dried organic figs and prunes and raisins in a little bag. Also what I usually do when I travel make my own bag of raw whole nut mixtures. I would also try organic herbal tea cleanse before flights and after your flights to cleanse your colon. I hope these suggestion are useful and wish you safe flights. esben andersen
Why would you think its startling. Everybody I know who has tried whole foods diet has had problems with constipation . I now have known 4 people who went whole foods. 2 tablespoons whole flax in a cup of water in the morning, plus 2 cups warm water , will normally get some movement .Also half a cup sauerkraut twice a day has solved the problem for people even ones that have had a life long problem with constipation. EquaYona
It is startling because whole PLANT foods(I assume that is what you meant) usually means a great increase in both fiber and fluids. Although I have rarely ever had constipation in my life, my vegan diet has increased my bowel movements to 2-3 times a day. I have never heard of anyone on a plant based diet having persistent problems with constipation. Until now. ;) Blair Rollin
I agree. I can hardly believe it would be possible. Jack Hall
Insufficient fat on my very low-fat whole foods plant based diet nearly killed my guts. Also, I did not adjust my fluid intake to accomodate for all of the additional fibre I began consuming, which added to the problem. I was hurting so bad that I couldn’t sit without severe pain and I looked as if I had swallowed a beach-ball for days at a time regardless of how many veggies or fibrous foods I ate.
Anyway, I hope it was the fat. My only overt fat was coming from oats and two tablespoons of flax a day. I was coming in at under 30grams fat per day. Now I have added about 1 ounce of nuts which seems to have helped. EquaYona
Glad to hear you are feeling better. I have always consumed a lot of fluids and peanut butter and whole peanuts have been important in my diet since I was in my teens. Lucky preferences, I reckon. Darla Eaves
Ah yes. Sauerkraut! lisa c
Magnesium is magic. And calming. I’ve taken it in tablet and powder form, adjusting dose as needed. Rex Ashbaugh
Ellie, I would suggest getting more ‘resistant starch’ foods in your diet. To feed the microbiome. The bulk of the stool is mostly composed of bacteria. That bacteria needs to be fed.
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/gut-dysbiosis-starving-microbial-self/ v
Are you being consistent in your efforts to follow Dr. Gregor’s Daily Dozen? I ask because he recommends 1.5 cups of beans per day, plus a serving of cruciferous vegetables (kale or broccoli or cabbage), plus a cup of cooked greens (more kale, or collards, romaine, etc.). Add to that some fruit and a serving of berries, plus more vegetables. When I manage to eat that way (I try to do it every day, but fall short of complying 100% most days) it makes a big difference. It’s a ton of fresh food, water, and fiber. Ellie Lee-wasson
I try, but, as I previously mentioned, I work in aviation so hitting all of the checkmarks in the app is difficult, but I consistently hit 20 of the 24 v
I find whole wheat pasta + cannellini beans + greens (broccoli raab or swiss chard or kale) in a garlicky vegetable broth to work very well in this department.
I think it’s because it has the fiber + liquid all together. Maybe give it a try? It’s delicious. Hope this helps! Ellie Lee-wasson
How do you prepare the broth? bradf
I work in aviation as well, I travel with a thermal bag and several days of vegan food, rice/quinoa based grain salads travel well, you can call hotels ahead and check for a fridge, use happy cow to find vegan food on layovers. I use freezer packs, but this bag lets you throw in loose ice and doesn’t leak Ellie Lee-wasson
Do you work for a mainline or a regional? I also bring my food, but, don’t often have time to eat until the evening. During the day, I try to eat fruit, beans and greens etc. At night. bradf
mainline, typical flight is 2 hours or more so there is time to eat enroute. If you’re at a regional I could see that eating during your workday could be a problem. Ellie Lee-wasson
Yeah, I work for a regional Gatherer
This comment has little scientific evidence behind it. It is just a suggestion.
With your current diet you probably eat at least the minimum recommended amount of fiber, but even that is about a third of our ancestral fiber consumption. Thus additional fiber in your diet isn’t going to hurt you. Further, if you drink some fiber before eating food you should feel full earlier during your meal.
Accordingly, I suggest that before lunch and dinner you disperse a tablespoon (15 ml) of psyllium husks into 10 oz (300 ml) of water and drink it. The fiber should help with the constipation by providing bulk, and may slightly reduce the amount of food you eat which will, over time, help with weight loss.
For weight loss without counting calories or feeling hungry, try the Dr McDougall maximum weight loss advice. https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2005nl/050100pupushing.htm Panchito
Not everybody has the same body. There could be non dietary factors to constipation like genetic (asymmetry and development) or nervous (enteric nervous system) Jenny Barnes
Hi Ellie, have you looked at your stress levels? A few years back I was only ‘going’ once a week, despite plenty of veggies, water and exercise. My doctor recommended looking at the stress in my life, and making sure I took time out to relax made a huge difference. Jenny Barnes
Also, if you’re struggling to lose weight that can be due to stress – high cortisol levels make your body hold onto fat. I believe the idea is that historically if we were in a high stress situation this would make sense because this would often be accompanied by famine. EquaYona
I like the little Dr Greger, it was a cute way to interject your joke. Foroogh – NF Moderator
Yes, I like the section that he appeared in the video! I like his sense of humor. OrToltecTal
The little mini me popping up was hilarious and refreshing. I loved it! Robin Lewis Kane
definitely detracts and distracted me from what you were saying Rachel
Yes, it distracted me, too. I prefer the straightforward, scientific Dr. Greger, with the occasional dry joke. Ishay
I’m afraid I’ll have to agree. If I were a new visitor on this website, I’d probably think the information presented can’t be very serious.
Luckily I know otherwise! Susan Guthrie
These videos have changed my life! You do a great job keeping the data moving around so that it is easy to engage and stay focused. And your voice is unique with nice modulation and expression. Kourtnie
I enjoyed seeing your smiling face, the only thing I didn’t like was it looked like you were walking. You looked to be bouncing around a lot vs standing still and speaking. Not bad for a first attempt. Plantstrongdoc M.D. | 0 |
By Cassius Kamarampi (Era of Wisdom) DOW Chemical is the largest chemical corporation in the US, second behind BASF in the world. They produce toxic Bisphenol A (BPA), several plastics, pesticides,... | 0 |
Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “The First 100 Days,” in reacting to the 9th Circuit Court ruling upholding the blocking of President Donald Trump‘s executive order banning immigrants from seven countries from entering the United States, White House aide Kellyanne Conway said the administration was “fully confident” it will eventually prevail in court. Conway said, “This ruling does not affect the merits at all. It is an interim ruling, and we are fully confident that now that we will get our day in court and have an opportunity to argue this on the merits that we will prevail. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
It is interesting that Duterte got something like 3 billion from China, and now he is getting money from Japan. He seems to be getting a lot of money for his country. I just hope he does not sell out the Philippine resources, minerals, water way rights etc. Duterte really should not blame America for all the problems in the Philippines. What caused the Philippines a lot of problems was the corruption and bribery that took hold of his country. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — As F. B. I. lawyers weighed whether to recommend criminal charges over Hillary Clinton’s private email server, one recent controversy loomed large over their decision: the plea deal reached last year by David H. Petraeus, the retired general and C. I. A. director, for giving highly classified information to a woman with whom he had an affair. James B. Comey, the F. B. I. director, said Tuesday that in assessing the Clinton case and looking at past cases on the handling of classified information, “we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. ” He did not mention Mr. Petraeus by name, but Mr. Comey and other F. B. I. officials were known to be deeply upset by the Justice Department’s willingness to let Mr. Petraeus plead to a misdemeanor charge in the case. That decision complicated the Clinton investigation enormously for the F. B. I. because the case against Mrs. Clinton appeared much weaker to them than the case against Mr. Petraeus. In the Petraeus case, the retired general acknowledged in a taped interview that he knew that some of the “black book” journals he gave to his mistress, Paula Broadwell, for a book she was writing were “highly classified,” according to court documents. He then lied to F. B. I. investigators, denying that he gave her any classified information. In contrast, Mr. Comey said in the Clinton case that “we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information. ” Mr. Comey and the F. B. I. had pushed for felony charges against Mr. Petraeus for mishandling classified information and then lying about it. But Eric H. Holder Jr. then the attorney general, overruled Mr. Comey and reduced the charge to a misdemeanor, sparing Mr. Petraeus any jail time. While one case does not serve as binding precedent for the next, prosecutors and F. B. I. agents said that Mr. Petraeus’s sentence made it harder to argue that Ms. Clinton should face charges, barring some new revelation. | 1 |
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To be white and from money is to live a life of largely unrecognized privilege, bequeathed as it is from one’s first wet, howling breath. In the affluent socio-economically partitioned town of Saratoga Springs, NY where I’m from there was actually a railroad track serving as the demarcation line between affluent whites residing on one side and the other side of which nothing was known because you just didn’t go there, ever. It was literally the “wrong side of the tracks”.
Raised in that remarkable state of incurious joy and suffering within narrow undiluted lines of stratified suburban sameness, I could not know or question the things kept from sight. Thus racial determinism was assumed passively, an acquired naivete fueled with the aspirational angst of middle class parenting that served as an omniscient narcotic fog, like carbon monoxide – not enough to be lethal, but just enough to render the critical faculties permanently dull until finally the things kept from sight could no longer be seen even upon close observation.
To be white is to watch but not see while being seen but never watched. It is to know that for whatever law enforcement is or is not, they are something that will never have anything to do with me. It is to know that on those rare occasions I am pulled over, it really is about a busted tail light.
To be white is to know that when a retail clerk approaches me, it’s about customer service and not the smothering sea of smiles… | 0 |
by Brian Shilhavy Editor, Health Impact News
15 years ago, I was the first one to import a high quality saturated fat called “Virgin Coconut Oil” from the Philippines and market it in the U.S. market. Coconut oil is a traditional fat that has been consumed for thousand of years in tropical climates, where historically western diseases like heart disease, diabetes, obesity and others were not common, in spite of their high saturated fat diet.
During World War II when the Japanese cut of the supply of the high saturated fat edible oils like coconut oil and palm oil with their occupation of the Philippines and other Southeastern nations, industry in the U.S. developed the “expeller-pressed” method of extracting oil from seeds that had not previously been a source of dietary oil, mainly the U.S. cash crops of soybeans and corn. These polyunsaturated oils were not shelf-stable edible oils, so the industrial process of “homogenization” was developed to make them more shelf stable, and behave more like shelf-stable saturated fats.
Politics, not science, influenced government agencies like the USDA to promote these new polyunsaturated oils as more healthy than saturated fats. A new dietary dogma of “low-fat” was developed, and history now shows that America’s health greatly suffered as a result. Until even today, we have seen very high numbers of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease plaguing Americans.
So it was with much opposition 15 years ago that I presented the real science behind coconut oil and saturated fats, but many now are waking up to the terrible consequences of following the government-sponsored low-fat diet dogma for so many years.
One can truly turn their health around by simply making a dietary choice as to the types of fats one consumes, and increase the consumption of healthy fats, particularly when those fats in the diet replace harmful processed carbohydrates. The Science of Fats: Information that Could Change Your Life
From November 7 – 14 Dr. Mark Hyman , Dr. Carrie Diulus, and over 30 of the world’s top experts on fats will participate in an online FREE summit dispeling the biggest MYTHS about fat, and revealing the latest research about how to eat, move and supplement your diet for improved health and longevity. Join these world-renowned experts, such as Aseem Malhotra, MD (one of Britain’s top cardiologists), Amy Myers, MD , Gary Taubes (famous science author that challenged mainstream media’s dogma on fats), Sayer Ji (Founder of GreenMedInfo.com), best-selling author Nina Teicholz , Peter Attia, MD , and dozens of others!
There’s so much confusion and misinformation out there about FAT…both the fat on our bodies, and the fats we eat. You’ve been told that eating fat makes you fat — and increases your risk for heart disease and other chronic illnesses — but fat is NOT the enemy. The truth is: eating MORE FAT can help shut down cravings, accelerate weight loss and potentially prevent or reverse disease.
Register today for FREE to watch this online summit! Published on November 2, 2016 | 0 |
Brexiters set up demented ‘people’s courts’ 07-11-16 BREXIT supporters have set up a network of ‘people’s courts’ where justice is based on popular opinion. Anti-EU Britons’ dissatisfaction with the legal system has led to the creation of makeshift courts dealing with everything from witchcraft to disputes over borrowed garden tools. Accountant and people’s judge Roy Hobbs said: “The court convenes in my living room, with the legal cases argued by our ‘barristers’ Sandra the local florist and Degsy, an unemployed decorator who’s seen A Few Good Men five times. “Our biggest case so far has been the legality of Brexit. The court came to the unanimous decision that it is totally brilliant and anyone who disagrees deserves a toe up their arse. “You can accuse anyone of anything. Last week we dealt with 48 cases of people being shortchanged at the local Sainsbury’s, a French spy and an old lady who put a curse on a horse than made it go lame. “Punishments range from the stocks for not wearing a poppy to hanging for more serious crimes, such as men having long hair. “Tomorrow I’ve got the case of a man who’s guilty of liking Nicola Sturgeon. He won’t be spouting his lies when he’s being hit in the forehead by turnips.”
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FMs of Iran, Syria, Russia meet in Moscow Fri Oct 28, 2016 9:48AM Politics Foreign Ministers from Iran, Russia, and Syria, from left, Mohammad Javad Zarif, Sergey Lavrov, and Walid al-Moallem attend their meeting in Moscow, Russia, on October 28, 2016. (Photo by AP)
Foreign ministers of Iran, Russia and Syria have started trilateral talks on a political solution to the Syria crisis besides a serious fight against the Takfiri terror groups operating in the Arab country.
On Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his Russian and Syrian counterparts, Sergei Lavrov and Walid Muallem, gathered in Moscow for a three-way meeting.
Ahead of the meeting, Lavrov said the three nations are acting as a united front against terrorism, saying their talks are mainly focused on ways of seriously tackling terrorism, particularly in Syria.
The three sides, Lavrov added, will exchange views on humanitarian operations as well as efforts to stop the flow of weapons and military equipment to the foreign-backed militants operating against the Damascus government.
Prior to the three-way discussions, Zarif held a bilateral meeting with Lavrov to discuss regional issues and the further enhancement of bilateral Tehran-Moscow ties. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (R) welcomes his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif during a meeting in Moscow on October 28, 2016. (Photo by AFP)
Upon his arrival at Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow on Friday morning, Zarif said a political solution besides a serious fight against terrorism is the only way out of the crisis gripping Syria.
“Unfortunately, some countries have always pursued war and a military solution in Syria. This is while the solution to this crisis is of a political nature and also [entails] battles against Takfiri groups,” said Zarif.
He added, “We have always emphasized the need for the establishment of an all-out ceasefire, humanitarian operations and efforts to find a political solution to the Syrian issue.”
Following the trilateral talks, the three ministers attended a joint press conference.
During the presser, Muallem slammed the US-led coalition purportedly fighting Daesh, saying the alliance has never been fighting terrorism despite its claims.
He said the Washington-led campaign was in fact encouraging Daesh terrorists to move from Iraq’s Mosul to Syria’s Raqqah.
Mosul and Raqqah have served as the main Daesh bases in the Middle East over the past years. Iraqi and Syrian armed forces are engaged in large-scale military offensive to drive the terror group from the two cities.
The Syrian foreign minister further said his country would continue cooperation with Iran and Russia in efforts to eradicate terrorism.
Muallem described the atmosphere of the talks in Russia as “positive” and “very comfortable.”
“We in Syria have become convinced of the sincerity of the Russian and Iranian efforts in helping us rout terrorism,” he added. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (C), Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem (R) and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif attend a news conference in Moscow, Russia, October 28, 2016. (Photo by Reuters)
Zarif, in turn, described the talks in Moscow as “very productive,” saying Iran and Russia have developed “very close” relations in different areas.
Commenting on the situation in Syria, the top Iranian diplomat said Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must be protected, adding that it is up to the Syrian nation to determine its own destiny and that the voice of the Syrians must be recognized.
He further highlighted the need for a political settlement of the crisis, adding that Tehran backs the resumption of peace talks between the Syrian government and opposition.
The Iranian minister called for a ceasefire in Syria, joint battles against terror groups as well as efforts to facilitate aid delivery to Syrian civilians in besieged areas.
He said the global community must unite in the battle against terrorism, which poses a threat not only to Syria, but the entire world.
Zarif added that supporting terrorism would serve the interest of no one, warning that the terror groups would eventually “bite the hands that feed them.”
For his part, the Russian foreign minister also touched on the Mosul battle in Iraq, saying that Iraqi city’s liberation from Daesh would have a significant impact on the balance of power in neighboring Syria.
Lavrov said the political settlement in Syria should be achieved through dialogue according to the Security Council resolutions, welcoming Syria’s readiness to resume the stalled talks with the opposition.
Referring to the situation in Aleppo, Lavrov said terrorists blocked the exit routes opened as part of a Syrian humanitarian pause and prevented the civilians from leaving the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo City.
The senior Russian official also criticized the international organizations for failing to fulfill their duties towards the locals of eastern Aleppo.
Lavrov emphasized that the fight against terrorism in Syria will continue, adding that “future common steps” in this regard during the Moscow talks. Loading ... | 0 |
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Sometimes racial profiling doesn’t work in your favor. That’s what an MSNBC reporter found out when he tried to interview a group of three black citizens in line for early voting in South Carolina.
The reporter deliberately tried to bait the black voters into saying something negative about Trump, and was shocked to find out that they were actually supporters of the Republican nominee.
“We’ve heard a lot of criticism of Trump’s inner city policy, but what do you make of that criticism? I’m sure you’ve heard it…” questioned the reporter.
“Well, I think that Trump’s reaching out to all citizens, including African-Americans. I think he’s trying to address a problem,” responded one of the women.
“It shouldn’t be a problem if you address that there’s something’s wrong and that you’ve got a plan to want to help people. That what a president should do for us, he should reach out and try to help people and address problems that are going on in our country.”
Not yet deterred, the reporter tried to bait them again, asking, “Some of the criticism has been because he’ll often say, ‘What do you have to lose?’ Being specifically African-American, what do you think about that criticism?”
“My word to all black Americans, one thing I would like to say,” answered another woman. “Let’s not be deceived. Look at the record. Look at the promises that have been made over the past from the Democratic Party. We’re not voting for a party, we’re voting for a man who has been standing by…”
“He loves America! That’s what I love about him – he loves America. We need somebody that loves America. And he also loves all people. All people! And there’s that deception out there that he has no black supporters. WRONG! He does!”
Well, all that was just way too much Republican support for MSNBC to handle and the reporter immediately ended the interview.
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David Brooks: Whites are “voting their gene pool” after being “ruined” by globalization, immigration, and feminism November 7, 2016 at 1:09 am By Dr. Patrick Slattery
On the PBS News Hour on Friday, David Brooks said white people are “voting their gene pool.” Wow. Just wow. This is the same David Brooks who wrote in his New York Times column about a Jewish woman who came up to him after a speech, and knowing that he was Jewish too told him that his speech was a description of how Jews had taken over America, which he acknowledged in the column was indeed the case.One of my Jewish professors once boasted that “Jews earn like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans.” In other words, they voted their gene pool. Of course, they eventually bought out the Republican party as well, which gave their gene pool’s vote a choice.
Blacks famously vote their gene pool. Hispanics are expected to vote their gene pool. But when whites and whites alone consider their ethnic interests in voting, it is something that Brooks and the rest of the Zio elite and their Goyish lackey find “deplorable.”
Basically, less educated or high school-educated whites are going to Trump. It doesn’t matter what the guy does. And college-educated going to Clinton.
Sometimes, you get the sense that the campaign barely matters. People are just going with their gene pool and whatever it is. And that is one of the more depressing aspects of this race for me.
But what Brooks said about the reasons for whites (besides the college-indoctrinated whites) voting their gene pool was even more interesting.
We had a lot of good things over the years that were really good for America. I think globalization has been really good for America. I think the influx of immigrants has been really good for America. Feminism has been really good for America.”
But there are a lot of people who used to be up in society, because of those three good things, are now down, a lot of high school-educated white guys. And they have been displaced.
When David Brooks was growing up, whites make up close to 90% of the American population. So it doesn’t really make sense to say that the displacement of the bulk of the American population is good for America.
Of course, he did specify “high school-educated white guys.” Well, were blacks helped by globalization, immigration, and feminism? What did that do for their employment rates, crime rates, illegitimacy rates, etc.?
And white women? Well, maybe all they ever wanted in the first place was to have blue hair, nose rings, tattoos, and raise cats instead of babies. I guess we never asked them.
And college educated white guys? Well, they used to go to Harvard and Yale. Now, with affirmative action for blacks and Hispanics, competition from Asians, and massive Jewish nepotism, a white guy is lucky to get into a second-tier state school.
Brooks conclusion was even more breath taking:
And shame on us for not paying attention to that and helping them out. And, therefore, as a result, what happened was, they were alienated, they got super cynical, because they really were being shafted. And so they react in an angry way.
Well, that’s not a shock, given the last 30 or 50 years of American history. And so, for us going forward, it’s to not reverse the dynamism of American society and the diversity. It’s to pay attention to the people who are being ruined by it, and so this doesn’t happen again.
Here he admits that whites got shafted. That we are being ruined by diversity. But the weird thing is that line about “so this doesn’t happen again.” What? Is he concerned that Hispanics might be Jewed out of the America they inherit from whites?
The rest of his appearance was just a poetic rant against Donald Trump. With any luck, on Tuesday Trump will be elected president, and we can make begin the process of making America America again. | 0 |
Man at dinner party may be leader of the Liberal Democrats 28-10-16
A SMARTLY-DRESSED man at a posh dinner party may well be Tim Farron, fellow guests have realised.
Suspicions began to grow that the man, who is in his mid-40s and of average height and weight, was the leader of a minority political party between the main and pudding courses.
Julian Cook of Devizes said: “He’s a Tim, but that doesn’t mean anything by itself. There are lots of Tims.
“But when I asked what he did for a living, he replied ‘Aside from the obvious?’ and told me actually it’s a very demanding position despite what happened last year, which left me no nearer.
“He does know Nick Clegg. Still, I suppose so do lots of people.”
Susan Traherne, who hosted the party, admitted she has known Tim since university but has never really been sure of his occupation.
She said: “He was planning to go into politics but I never heard anything else about it so assumed he’d given up on the idea. But the orange tie, the general hopelessness, I should’ve figured it out.
“I’ve a dreadful feeling I was slagging off the Lib Dems in the kitchen earlier in the evening. I hope he didn’t hear.”
Tim Farron said: “Oh for God’s sake. This is like the ninth time I’ve told them.”
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Singer and TV personality Nick Cannon doubled down on his criticism of Planned Parenthood, saying the abortion provider was designed to “exterminate” black people. [“When you talked about Margaret Sanger, all the people who follow eugenics. It was all about cleansing,” the America’s Got Talent host said of Planned Parenthood’s founder in a recent interview with DJ Vlad. “Margaret Sanger said that she wanted to exterminate the negro race, and that she was going to use her organization as she founded to do so,” Cannon continued. “It was more about the sterilization and where it comes to actual ethnic cleansing — where they actually said we want to get rid of a class of people a group of people. “ percent of them are all in the hood. ” “They like to label ‘ ’ or ‘’ that’s what they used in public. In private, they were talking about the black community,” Cannon said. The says the issue of abortion is more personal than political. “I’m because my mother did go to an abortion clinic to abort me,” he said. “I don’t feel like the government should have the right. I don’t feel like any organization that makes money should have the right to tell a woman what she can or cannot do with her body. ” Cannon says while Planned Parenthood — like the government — does some good things, it should be held accountable for “all the negative things. ” Last month, Cannon accused Planned Parenthood of committing “real genocide” on black Americans. “Hillary was sneaking and cheating,” Cannon said in an interview with “The Breakfast Club” radio show. “Think about all the stuff they did with Planned Parenthood and all that type of stuff. That type of stuff is to take our community — and forget gentrification, it’s real genocide, and it’s been like that for years. ” Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson | 1 |
Comic book artist Ardian Syaf’s contract with Marvel has been terminated after he hid and references within the first issue of Gold. [Breitbart previously reported on Syaf and the Koran verses referenced within the first issue of Marvel’s new series Gold. Syaf, an Indonesian artist, inserted political and religious references relating to the recent Indonesian election into the comic. The issue reportedly featured a reference to a verse in the Koran which urges Muslims not to take Christians and Jews as allies. The verse roughly translates, “O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are, in fact, allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you — then indeed, he is one of them. Indeed, Allah guides not the wrongdoing people. ” The issue also contained a reference to a protest movement against the Christian governor of Jakarta over allegations of blasphemy against Islam. Marvel initially stated in response: “These implied references do not reflect the views of the writer, editors or anyone else at Marvel and are in direct opposition of the inclusiveness of Marvel Comics and what the have stood for since their creation. This artwork will be removed from subsequent printings, digital versions, and trade paperbacks and disciplinary action is being taken. ” That disciplinary action has now been confirmed as Syaf being fired from the comic series by Marvel. In a statement to CBR Marvel stated that the artist would no longer be working on the series and announced the replacement artists for later issues: Marvel has terminated Ardian Syaf’s contract effective immediately. ‘ Gold’ #2 and #3 featuring his work have already been sent to the printer and will continue to ship . Issues #4, #5, and #6 will be drawn by R. B. Silva and issues #7, #8, and #9 will be drawn by Ken Lashley. A permanent replacement artist will be assigned to ‘ Gold’ in the coming weeks. In response to this, Syaf took to his Facebook page where he wrote a lengthy post: My career is over now. It’s the consequence what I did, and I take it. Please no more mockery, debat, no more hate. I hope all in peace. In this last chance, I want to tell you the true meaning of the numbers, 212 and QS 5:51. It is number of JUSTICE. It is number of LOVE. My love to Holy Qur’an … my love to the last prophet, the Messenger … my love to ALLAH, The One God. My apologize for all the noise. Good bye, May God bless you all. I love all of you. 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 |
While rolling back onerous environmental and business regulations, President Donald Trump has also been quietly dropping gun controls which were either put in place or at least prolonged by the Obama administration. [On February 28 Breitbart News reported that Trump signed the repeal of Obama’s Social Security gun ban a ban which empowered the Social Security administration to strip away the Second Amendment rights of Social Security beneficiaries without due process. Days later, Trump’s Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke squashed Obama’s lead ammunition ban for federal lands and waters. According to McClatchy, Trump’s administration has been quietly working to do away with other firearm regulations as well. For example, “agencies narrowed the definition of ‘fugitive’” which, in turn, limits the number of people barred from gun possession because they are included in a fugitive database. Additionally, Trump “officials have also signaled that they may no longer defend the Army Corps of Engineers’ ban on carrying loaded firearms and ammunition on federal lands. ” | 1 |
Crooked Hillary Risks Having ‘Blue Dress Moment’ By Aggressively Attacking FBI And James Comey Since Crooked Hillary has no idea what the FBI actually found, her gambit is every bit as bold, and reckless, as was her husband's decades earlier. She has now painted herself into the proverbial corner, and any evidence that the FBI produces will be amplified in light of her vigorous denials. 30, 2016 Interestingly, in 2016 at the height of the race for president, Hillary decides to adopt Bill’s bold denial strategy
Way back when in 1998 , as the Bill Clinton sex scandal with intern Monica Lewinsky was coming to light, Slick Willy decided on a very risky strategy. Knowing full well that he was 100% guilty as charged, he decided to look right into the unblinking eye of the camera and issue a full-throated denial of any involvement of any kind. Watch and see it for yourself: Bill Clinton denies having an inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky:
Now what Bill Clinton did not know was that Monica had saved a semen-stained blue dress with Bill Clinton’s semen on it, which she promptly presented as evidence to prove that she was not lying. By this time she was being trashed by Clinton operatives desperate to save Bill’s presidency, chief of whom was Crooked Hillary who had lots of nasty things to say about her husband’s victims. That led to this moment as seen here: Bill Clinton admits to having an inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky: Interestingly, in 2016 at the height of the race for president, Hillary decides to adopt Bill’s bold denial strategy
Hillary Clinton’s campaign hopes, as reported by Bloomberg today , its unusually swift response to revelations about a fresh FBI investigation into messages in connection with a past probe of her private e-mail server will blunt the political damage amid concern about close Senate races as well as the presidential election.
With nine days to go until the election , Clinton and her aides went on the attack, intensifying criticism of James Comey as word emerged that the FBI director defied U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch by informing lawmakers of newly discovered e-mails that may relate to its investigation of the Democratic presidential nominee. Hillary Clinton addresses FBI email investigation:
Clinton’s aggressive strategy contrasts with her bunker mentality in previous episodes of the controversy over her e-mail practices at the State Department. Her campaign is taking a calculated risk in publicly criticizing Comey and pressing him to quickly release more detail. Should new information contradict past statements or call into question the judgment of Clinton or any of her advisers who migrated from the Obama administration to her campaign, it could be damaging.
Her rival Donald Trump told an audience in Phoenix the “only reason” Comey must have felt the need to tell lawmakers of the newly discovered e-mails is that “very, very serious things must be happening and must have been found. Very, very serious. Very, very serious.”
Since Crooked Hillary has no idea what the FBI actually found, her gambit is every bit as bold, and reckless, as was her husband’s decades earlier. She has now painted herself into the proverbial corner, and any evidence that the FBI produces will be amplified in light of her vigorous denials. The WikiLeaks emails showed us that even John Podesta said she “lacks judgment” and discernment , and this is certain proof of that.
But such is life when you’re a Clinton. Look right into the camera and commence lying. This is how they roll.
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While there was plenty to celebrate artistically this season at the Metropolitan Opera — with several acclaimed new productions and memorable star turns — the company’s worrying slump continued. The Met was on track to take in only 66 percent of its potential revenue through the end of the season on Saturday, company officials said, down slightly from the previous season. (Since some seats are discounted, attendance is projected to be 72 percent.) Some weakness stemmed from factors beyond the Met’s control: Jonas Kaufmann, one of the last bankable stars in opera, withdrew from all his appearances this season, citing illness, and other opera companies are facing struggles of their own. But it is becoming a pattern. It is a daunting house to fill. With 3, 800 seats and 200 places, the Met is far bigger than most European houses, and it gave 225 opera performances this season, more than almost all of its peers. It sold an average of 2, 869 seats per performance — more than enough to fill the 2, 256 seats of the Royal Opera House in London or the Vienna State Opera, which can hold 2, 284. What to do? Channeling their inner impresarios, critics and reporters for The New York Times engaged in a little operatic spitballing, throwing out ideas — including some that the Met is experimenting with and others it might find off the wall — that could help fill the house again. MICHAEL COOPER Court the young, even more. Give operagoers in their teens and twenties not just the best seats at cheap prices but also steep discounts at the intermission bar. Create a club that offers exclusive access to rehearsals, meetings with directors and singers, and trips to performances elsewhere. Give them perks you don’t give your biggest donors. CORINNA da Granted, this Met season has been unusually narrow: In 71 percent of performances have been of operas by Puccini, Verdi, Donizetti or Rossini. Heavier doses of Gounod, Massenet, Wagner and Strauss make appear somewhat better balanced, but not enough. While unusual repertory can be a tough sell, offerings are essential to a sustainable future. The Met should start by edging more often into Eastern Europe: Janacek should appear every year, and Mussorgsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich deserve more than occasional outings. Then there’s the matter of time. The cavernous theater is a hindrance, admittedly, but Gluck and Handel ought to be mainstays, not rarities. And occasional forays into John Adams, alongside some Muhly and Adès commissions, aren’t nearly enough contemporary work. DAVID ALLEN A few years ago, the president of an opera club at Columbia Law School asked if I would join members for one of their regular lunchtime meetings. When I showed up, to my amazement, there were some 150 students in attendance and an enormous stack of pizzas. The Met should actively assist and encourage clubs for opera lovers with shared interests. The Met could arrange discounted tickets for designated performances and even host receptions for the clubs with special guests, like singers from the young artists program who might perform a couple of arias. ANTHONY TOMMASINI One seemingly simple way to draw bigger crowds: perform when it’s convenient for audiences. While other major opera houses, ballet companies and Broadway shows find that Sunday performances are among their most popular, the Met retains a longstanding schedule that dates back to the days of strict blue laws. Many operagoers find weeknight performances difficult, especially for operas that last three hours or longer. An 8 p. m. start can be too late for older patrons and suburbanites who face long commutes after the final curtain. But earlier starts are tough for the many people who typically work much later than 5 p. m. — especially if they want to be able to eat dinner. Sunday matinees would be simpler for people in both groups and could appeal to operagoers from further afield. Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, has suggested adding some Sunday performances, but he will need to win the agreement of the Met’s unions, whose workers often have punishing schedules and who agreed to concessions in their last contracts. And going dark on a weekday would cut into the Met’s rehearsal schedules. MICHAEL COOPER Every orchestra, it seems, has an artist in residence: In fact, the New York Philharmonic’s this season has been the Eric Owens. Why not the Met? Planning is tough, of course, but with enough lead time, why couldn’t a singer participate in three (or four, or five) productions over a season, as well as concerts, recitals, lectures? The more audiences know (and love) a performer, the more eager they’ll be to buy tickets to see her. ZACHARY WOOLFE There’s much to be said for the stagione system in use in many European opera houses, in which only one production runs at a time. This makes it easier to instill a sense of urgency in the public: Your chance to see a show is now or never. As a magnet for cultural tourists, some of whom travel to New York to see multiple operas over a few days, the Met is understandably reluctant to do this, and the house is set up to run several productions at once. But it would still make sense to link thematically related works into that encourage like a “Lulu” “Lucia” showdown of madwomen. CORINNA da One “festival” is already offered by the Met, although it’s a summer of HD screenings on Lincoln Center Plaza. And, admittedly, festivals can be used as tools for both progress and reaction: The New York Philharmonic has its biennial, but also its Dvorak and Rachmaninoff celebrations. Even so, a festival during the main season — done properly — would let the Met draw attention to new productions while trotting out old ones, help it build excitement for unusual repertoire and give it an opportunity for collaboration with other, institutions. Imagine a series looking at the Orpheus myth over time, from Monteverdi to Birtwistle. Or treatments of Shakespeare, balancing Verdi with Barber, Reimann and Adès. Think what could be done for the forgotten Romantics, like Korngold and Schreker. One could even contemplate a pageant of American operas. DAVID ALLEN The holiday presentations of operas — shorter, and in English — should be expanded across the season. Consider marketing the occasional matinee of a opera to families, too, with rules and affordable snacks at intermission. While you’re at it, take a hint from the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, which has players hang out at the front of the stage during intermission to take questions from audience members. Send choristers in costume out to the lobbies to pose for selfies. CORINNA da New Yorkers like to dress up: Get in on the game. The Met should mark the dates of Fashion Week and throw open its doors with gala performances that enforce a strict dress code. Invite a runway star to dress the entire cast of one production, with apologies to the regular costume designer, then auction off the clothes. Don’t let the other Met and its Costume Institute steal all the paparazzi attention. CORINNA da Why is it that audiences linger after performances at, say, the Park Avenue Armory, while they rush out of the Met? It’s because there’s no comfortable, exciting space at the opera house to sit down, chat, have unexpected . My idea? Throw out the overpriced, mediocre Grand Tier Restaurant and replace it with something like the Smith, across Broadway: Moderately priced, a little rambunctious and open (including after the opera) for food (that includes both filet mignon and burgers) drinks (that includes both Champagne and beer) and good coffee. ZACHARY WOOLFE The company might select a couple of offerings each season and turn them into citywide cultural collaborations. It’s moving a bit in this direction next season for the company premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s “L’Amour de Loin. ” The Philharmonic will tie performances of Saariaho works at the Park Avenue Armory to the Met run. But couldn’t the two Mets (opera and museum) have worked on an exhibition on Christian troubadours from Aquitaine and religious art from Tripoli, the two locales this story shifts between? How about asking early music ensembles to perform troubadour songs? How about Verdi’s “Otello,” which returned this spring in time for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death? Imagine high school English teachers in the city, with the support of the Met, using this run as a chance to compare Shakespeare’s tragedy with Verdi’s opera and then taking students to the free dress rehearsal. ANTHONY TOMMASINI Even in the higher altitudes of the opera house, tickets are still quite expensive — especially when it comes to enticing new generations who may be iffy on the whole idea of giving opera a try. On many nights this season, the house seemed to sell out from the top down, with the least expensive tickets disappearing first. Prices currently range from $25 to $480, but the average is $158. 50. The company does have more discounted options than ever — there are $25 rush tickets, student ticket offers, “Fridays Under 40” discounts — but many of them place the onus on operagoers to figure them out, and some, like rush tickets, require a degree of flexibility that is hard for people who need to, say, engage babysitters or plan ahead. And costly tickets make it harder for opera fanatics — people who not only want to see many different operas each year but also often want to see the same opera more than once, to revel in a favorite singer or compare alternate casts. What to do? Ticket revenues account for an increasingly small percentage of the cost of actually mounting operas. In a perfect world, perhaps a very donor could be enticed to make a transformational gift that would allow the Met to cut its prices across the board. That would allow fanatics to go more often. More realistically, the Met could use the information available in most ticket purchases — perhaps the credit card numbers and email addresses people use when they buy tickets online — to offer operagoers the chance to purchase, say, tickets anywhere in the house. That could help groom future fanatics. MICHAEL COOPER Create a loyalty app that allows users to check in every time they visit. Add in a quiz element that rewards close attention — to a detail of a character’s costume, a witty translation in the Met titles or a line in the program notes. Award bonus points for arcane trivia, frequent visits and thorny or new works. Make participation the entry requirement for lotteries that offer lavish prizes, like a parterre box for a night, a private dress fitting in the costume department or a chance to shadow a director for a day. CORINNA da One option that would offend many opera fans but might entice more newcomers: a little judicious cutting of operas, to make things flow a bit faster onstage and make it easier for audiences with too few hours in the day to find time for opera. Shakespeare’s plays are rarely performed uncut. But in opera, the trend in recent decades has been toward fewer cuts and treating scores as sacrosanct. To get people out at a reasonable hour, many opera companies, including the Met, now have fewer intermissions. Another option would be to cut the operas. The Met sometimes does this for its shortened, holiday presentations aimed at families, which whittle down works like Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” and Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” to two hours or less. While some gorgeous music gets left on the floor, the shortened operas are often among the most popular offerings of the year — and draw quite a few adults who are unaccompanied by children. MICHAEL COOPER After years of illness and cancellations, James Levine, the Met’s longtime music director, has finally retired. Now, the company has a chance to nab a vibrant replacement who has technical chops, intriguing ideas about repertory, a taste for the new and a connection to the city and its cultural life. I’m thinking of the kind of leader you might see on a night off at National Sawdust or even Terminal 5. ZACHARY WOOLFE | 1 |
PALERMO, Italy — The investigators for Italy’s antidrug unit were used to measuring the flow of hashish from Moroccan fields to European shores one speedboat or Jet Ski at a time. So when the phone rang with a tip that an enormous freighter loaded with hashish was plying international waters south of Sicily — bound for Libya, hundreds of miles to the east of the usual quick drug route to Spain — Francesco Amico, a senior investigator, immediately knew something odd was going on. Not just odd, but huge: When two Italian Navy warships eventually stopped the freighter, the Adam, off the Libyan coast on April 12, 2013, agents found a terrified Syrian crew and 15 metric tons of hashish — a stash many multiples larger than Italian officials had ever seen. “There was so much of the drug that we didn’t know where to put it,” said Mr. Amico, who waited in the Sicilian port of Trapani for the escorted ship to arrive. “We had to go out and rent a warehouse. ” The Italian officials had stumbled on a lucrative new trafficking route that stretched far to the east along the coast of Northern Africa — and always led to Libya, in an area fought over by competing armed groups that included the Islamic State. The Adam was the first of 20 ships that would be intercepted over the route over the following 32 months, officials say. Their collective cargo amounted to more than 280 tons of hashish valued at 2. 8 billion euros, or about $3. 2 billion — roughly half of what was seized in all of continental Europe last year, according to the European Union’s Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction. Then the tips dried up, and the busts stopped. The Italian investigation, which had expanded to include other European countries and the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, has not seized any ships on the route in 2016, though officials say they believe the traffic continues. Instead, as they have sought to understand what happens to the enormous shipments, they are struggling with a mystery that has prompted intriguing questions but offered few answers. One thing they know is that the drugs were not ending up in Libya. The Moroccan drug producers consistently use individualized branding logos, like a scorpion or a dollar sign. That helped investigators pick up the drug shipments’ trail again after they left Libya, traveling along an overland route through Egypt and then on to Europe through the Balkans. But the investigators are still not sure what happened as the drugs passed through. From interrogations and surveillance, they know the route crossed territory that until a few weeks ago was claimed by the Islamic State — which has taxed shipments of drugs and other goods in Syria and Iraq. That, in particular, led the Italian drug investigators to start asking questions they never expected to confront: Could the Islamic State or some other group be profiting from the drug route by taxing it? Was the chaos in Libya providing an opportunity by drug traffickers to pick a route the authorities wouldn’t suspect, or were the groups more directly involved? The investigation continues. “Once it reaches Libya, we lose track of it,” said Lt. Col. Giuseppe Campobasso, who heads the antidrug unit in Sicily of the Guardia di Finanza, the Italian financial police force that led the search for the ships. For years, the Italian investigators had tracked small shipments of Moroccan hashish, around 100 kilograms at a time, coming to Spain in boats that crossed the Strait of Gibraltar — a narrow passage that ferries cross in under 35 minutes. In 2007, Spain began installing cameras up and down its southern coastline, but at least at first, the hashish traffic continued in the usual way. With Europe’s eyes trained on traffic coming from the south, at first no one noticed the cargo ships that were taking a big dogleg to the east. Giacomo Catania, an inspector with the Guardia di Finanza who was in charge of storing the incoming drugs, explained another oddity: The enormous cargo ships they seized — some as long as a soccer field and designed to carry fleets of automobiles or cargo containers — were empty except for the drugs. “These are ships that have a capacity to carry thousands of tons, and the cargo in most cases was around 20 tons. Only a minuscule portion of it was used,” Mr. Catania said. That the smugglers were willing to operate so inefficiently — Mr. Catania compared it to using an to transport a single pack of cigarettes — is testament to the value of the cargo. Considering that hashish sells for €10, 000, about $11, 200, per kilogram once it reaches Europe’s streets, the Adam’s cargo alone was worth at least €150 million. And shipments seized later were even bigger — including a load of hashish aboard the freighter Aberdeen, boarded in the summer of 2014, that was estimated to be worth €420 million — or about $472 million. After seizing the Adam, investigators in Italy interrogated its crew members, who insisted that they did not know that hashish was in the 591 plastic bags investigators had found on the ship’s deck. The ship’s captain testified that he believed he was transporting humanitarian aid, brought to the ship by the crew of a speedboat that approached them off the coast of Morocco and insisted that they take the bags, according to a transcript of his statement to investigators. To learn more, the investigators — who have decades of experience dealing with the Sicilian Mafia — decided to bug the cells where the six crew members were imprisoned. Over months of surveillance, Mr. Amico began to discern the outlines of the trafficking route, and the mystery of the militant stronghold in coastal Libya it passed through. Since the ouster of the Libyan leader Muammar in 2011, stretches of Libya along the coastline in the eastern region of Cyrenaica had become a battleground for competing militant groups. By 2014, that included the Islamic State’s branch in Libya, which at various times had footholds in the cities of Benghazi, Derna and especially Surt, which has partly fallen to forces. Italian officials believe that those cities were all destinations for some of the drug ships, although the navigation units of other seized vessels indicate that they were headed to the Libyan port of Tobruk, which is controlled by a rebel group fighting the Islamic State. Investigators say they believe that at least in some cases, the terrorist group would have been able to exact a tax in return for the drugs’ passage. That matches the Islamic State’s business practice in its stronghold in Syria and Iraq, where according to one study by IHS Country Risk, 7 percent of the group’s revenue last year was from the production, taxation and trafficking of drugs. But officials concede that they cannot be certain what role, if any, the Islamic State might play in the hashish shipments. “No one has eyes on the ground to say that they know for a fact,” said Masood Karimipour, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s regional representative for the Middle East and North Africa. “What we can offer, or make a reasonable inferences from, is that where the terrorists are holding terrain they are controlling everything that goes through it, including the trafficking of whatever — whether it’s weapons or drugs. ” Poring over the surveillance tapes of the jailed crew of the freighter Adam, Mr. Amico and the rest of his investigative team started to wonder whether the drugs were part of a bigger scheme, perhaps involving weapons. They learned that the Adam had begun its Mediterranean voyage in Cyprus, where it picked up four containers of “furniture,” destined for Benghazi. After dropping off the cargo, the vessel continued to Morocco, picking up 15 tons of hashish and returning to Libya. From other comments by the crew, Mr. Amico and his team came to believe that the “furniture” was a shipment of weapons, he said, an idea supported by two of the prosecutors involved in the case. “Libya is not a land where people consume hashish,” said Deputy Prosecutor Maurizio Agnello. “So that cargo of drugs is definitely a method of payment, a kind of coin. ” In recent months, however, the Italian investigation has stalled. Most of the tips were coming from French officials, who in recent months were scrambling to deal with a wave of terrorist attacks at home, and when the tips ended, so did the busts. No ships have been intercepted along the route in 2016, though investigators say they believe the path is still being used. They expressed unease about the lack of certainty regarding the players controlling the new route. “If this was controlled by the Mafia, we would know how to deal with it, because we know the Mafia well,” said Mr. Agnello, whose office is in a stately building in Palermo, a stronghold of the Sicilian Mafia, which for years controlled the hashish arriving from Morocco via Spain. When it comes to the possible involvement of terrorist groups, he said, “It frightens us because they don’t have limits. They do stuff that would be unthinkable for a Mafioso. ” | 1 |
.@SenSanders: ”The way the democratic party has been run for decades has not worked” #CNNSOTU https: . Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sen. Bernie Sanders ( ) said ” the way the Democratic Party has been run for decades has not worked. Partial transcript as follows: TAPPER: So, let’s start with yesterday’s big vote at the DNC. You obviously strongly backed Congressman Ellison. He lost the race to former Labor Secretary Tom Perez. You issued a statement saying — quote — “At a time when Republicans control the White House, the U. S. House, U. S. Senate and of all statehouses, it is imperative that Tom Perez understands that the is not working. ” So, Senator, did the win? SANDERS: Well, look, Keith ran a great campaign. He took on, in essence, Democratic insiders, and yet he came close to winning. That was a very impressive effort, when you realize that he was playing inside the establishment’s house. But, right now, I think, Tom Perez, who was a very, very good secretary of labor, has a real opportunity in his hands. And I hope he seizes it. And that is to understand that, in fact, the way the Democratic Party has been run for decades has not worked. We need a total transformation. We have got to open up the party to working people, to young people, and make it crystal clear that the Democratic Party is going to take on Wall Street, it’s going to take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry, it’s going to take on corporate America that is shutting down plants in this country and moving our jobs abroad. The idea that Trump thinks that the Republican Party is going to be the party of working people, when he has appointed people to his administration who want to cut Social Security, want to cut Medicare, want to cut Medicaid, or who want to provide a budget which will give huge tax breaks to billionaires like Trump, and then cut back on education and health care for the American people, if that’s a party that stands for working people, God help us all. Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 1 |
Hyperbole is odious.
This is not a bad article for the most part, but the title, "Will America Survive the Next 4 Years?" , and the words in the last paragraph, "it seems entirely doubtful that the country will make it through four years of Donald Trump" , are clickbait silly.
If America could survive Slick Willie Clinton, Bush Jr., and Obama/Hillary (even though millions of foreign people did not survive their regimes), then it will survive Mr. Trump.
There is even a fair chance that Trump will not be worse than his predecessors. | 0 |
I have a confession: before writing this column, I had never used Airbnb. My first experience with this San marketplace, which was founded in 2008 and dropped a proverbial bomb on the hotel industry, came when I visited Milwaukee in April. Before then, I had been hesitant to use the service: What if something went wrong? What if the place was grossly misrepresented? What if the owner tried to unfairly pin a broken dish or a rip in the sofa on me? The possibilities for something going wrong, it seemed, were endless. Eventually, though, I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb. Or, at the very least, embrace it from time to time, depending on what I was looking for during my travels. That, I learned, is the key to using Airbnb: By knowing what you want in your lodgings, you can make the service work for you. [Update Sept. 8:] Airbnb has released a lengthy report and made changes to its platform in response to complaints about hosts discriminating against potential renters. Among other things, the company will be making hosts agree to a more detailed policy, increasing the availability of Instant Book listings, and experimenting with “reducing the prominence” of user photos. users who do not want to go through the typical vetting process of a standard Airbnb experience can use the Instant Book feature — hosts can still cancel, however, if they have “concerns about the reservation. ” Simply refusing to include a picture of yourself in your profile is another option. Regardless, if you feel you’ve been the victim of discrimination, don’t stay quiet: Write to Airbnb immediately. Here are a few tips for users. DECIDE THE KIND OF EXPERIENCE YOU WANT Don’t feel like leaving your comfort zone? Want to get in and get out of a city quickly, with minimal hassle? A traditional hotel may be for you. The process is predictable, there are creature comforts like housekeeping, and you can expect a certain minimal level of service. If you’re feeling a bit more adventurous, though, you could explore Airbnb. There, you would find opportunities for a more local experience than you could ever hope to have by staying in a traditional hotel. In Moscow, I stayed in the gorgeous artist’s studio of a local sculptor and got to know him and his wife. He shared his likenesses of Lenin and Yuri Gagarin, and she spent an afternoon showing me around the city. It was a unique experience I’ll never forget. BE REALISTIC One aspect that draws travelers to Airbnb is that it is frequently cheaper than hotels. Therefore, it’s important to temper your expectations. The bed may not be perfect, the faucet may leak, and the may be spotty. Oh, and the “breakfast” part of “ ”? Best to take that with a grain of salt it hasn’t existed in any of the Airbnbs that I’ve booked. The greater informality can have its advantages, too. It lends itself to more flexibility as far as what time you can check in, for example, as well as what to do when you check out. In at least two places I’ve booked, “Just leave the keys under the mat” was the only instruction I received. KNOW WHAT YOU’RE GETTING You don’t want to show up at your booking with your significant other and awkwardly encounter another person — or worse, another couple — staying in the same place. The headings in the Airbnb listings search are: “Entire ”: You’re booking an entire apartment or house and should not expect to share the space “Private room”: You are booking a private room within someone else’s home (bathroom privileges may vary) and “Shared room”: You’re in a bunk situation (this is generally the cheapest rental). Pay attention to your search parameters so that there are no rude surprises. Chances are, if you’re getting an insanely good deal on that beachfront villa, you’re probably not going to be there alone. MESSAGE YOUR HOST BEFOREHAND There’s a natural vetting process with Airbnb. You have to message your hosts when you request to stay at their home, and they vet your message, and you, before they approve the stay. This allows the hosts to pick and choose their guests (and unfortunately has also led to cases of racial discrimination). There is also an Instant Book option, denoted by a small lightning bolt, that allows you to make a booking without sending a message or request. Generally, though, the more you communicate ahead of time with your host, the better. You can exchange information, coordinate schedules and figure out the best time to hand off keys. A quick to get to know the person whose home you’re renting (and vice versa) makes for a more comfortable and pleasant experience. REALIZE THAT FILTERS ARE YOUR FRIEND After the initial landing page, when you’ve entered the basic parameters of your stay, you’ll see a map with your lodging options. On the left side, above the first listing, is a button labeled “Filters. ” Click on it, and you can whittle down your options by the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, as well as the neighborhood. Scroll down to “Amenities. ” Initially you’ll see a few choices. But on the right side, you’ll see a small black arrow. Click on it to reveal many more options. Do you absolutely have to bring your dog along? Check off the “Pets Allowed” option. You can be very granular with your parameters if you want the host to provide shampoo, or if you require a lock on the bedroom door, you can search for that, too. KNOW THE CANCELLATION POLICY Before you book, know your host’s cancellation policy. Cancellation policies can vary from “Flexible,” meaning you’re allowed a refund provided you cancel within 24 hours of arrival, to “Strict,” which will afford you only a 50 percent refund — provided you canceled at least a week ahead of time. Either way, say goodbye to Airbnb’s nonrefundable fee, the exact calculus of which is maddeningly unspecific — it is “typically % but can be higher or lower,” according to the website. WHEN IN DOUBT, TAKE PICTURES There are far more horror stories of guests damaging the homes of Airbnb hosts than of nightmare hosts, but it’s always good to be safe. When you arrive, do a quick inspection for any damage to the walls or furniture, and snap a few quick pictures — if you have a smartphone, a couple of panorama shots would do nicely. If you do notice something problematic, mention it right away to your host. Do this by communicating through the Airbnb website — not by sending personal emails back and forth. When you leave, take a couple of quick shots, as well. In the unlikely event of a dispute, photos would help you prove you left your rental in good condition. LEAVE FEEDBACK The Airbnb ecosystem lives and dies by honest feedback. Reading reviews is the best way to learn about the quality of a rental and the best way to weed out the bad eggs who misrepresent their properties, or worse. So it behooves you, after your stay, to leave honest feedback and to rate various aspects of the property on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. But don’t think this goes only one way — hosts can also leave reviews of their guests. STILL UNSURE? RENT FROM A ‘SUPERHOST’ If you are wary about staying in a stranger’s home, you have the option of renting from a Superhost — someone who has consistently received positive reviews, denoted with a small gold medal by the profile. Eighty percent of Superhosts’ reviews have been awarded five stars, and Superhosts are held to high standards of responsiveness and following through with their bookings (i. e. not canceling at the last minute). Using Airbnb for the first time can be both an exciting and slightly anxious experience — I felt that way myself. If you have reservations but want to test the waters, a Superhost’s home may be a good first stay. | 1 |
NYU Prof Who Spoke Out Against "Safe Spaces" and "Trigger Warnings" Gets Pushed Out Source: Zero Hedge
An NYU professor who launched a twitter war against the growing trend of universities coddling students with "safe spaces" and "trigger warnings" has been pushed out of his own classroom for his " incivility ." According to a report from the New York Post , Liberal Studies professor Michael Rectenwald was forced to go on paid leave for the rest of the semester after his undercover twitter account, "Deplorable NYU Prof", was linked back to him.
Liberal studies prof Michael Rectenwald, 57, said he was forced Wednesday to go on paid leave for the rest of the semester .
“They are actually pushing me out the door for having a different perspective,” the academic told The Post.
Rectenwald launched an undercover Twitter account called Deplorable NYU Prof on Sept. 12 to argue against campus trends like “safe spaces,”“trigger warnings” and other aspects of academia’s growing PC culture.
He chose to be anonymous, he explained in one of his first tweets, because he was afraid “the PC Gestapo would ruin me” if he put his name behind his conservative ideas on the famously liberal campus.
“I remember once on my Facebook I posted a story about a kid who changed his pronoun to ‘His Majesty’ because I thought it was funny,” he told The Post. “Then I got viciously attacked by 400 people. This whole milieu is nauseating. I grew tired of it, so I made the account.”
Below is a small sample of Rectenwald's tweets: The identity politics left: they need a safe space that is at once a hall of mirrors and a rubber room.
— Deplorable NYU Prof (@antipcnyuprof) October 11, 2016 What if Trump triggers a few hundred thousand liberal totalitarians to jump out of their dorm windows? one can only hope. #TriggerWarning
— Deplorable NYU Prof (@antipcnyuprof) September 27, 2016 OK, academia has officially gone completely ape shit. This is merely mental illness posing as "politics": https://t.co/1K1l7wSvom
— Deplorable NYU Prof (@antipcnyuprof) September 27, 2016 I'm a NYU prof who's seen academe become a sham bc of identity pol & liberal totalitarianism. I'll tell all soon. https://t.co/7Tyulse0a7
— Deplorable NYU Prof (@antipcnyuprof) September 16, 2016 I'm a real full-time NYU prof who has inside stories that will blow yr mind. When I reach 500 followers the flood gates open. Pls help. Thx.
— Deplorable NYU Prof (@antipcnyuprof) September 15, 2016 . @kercard @TrumpetingTrump Yes, there are 1.5 administrators for every professor at NYU -gotta' monitor everyone for possible 'bias' issues!
— Deplorable NYU Prof (@antipcnyuprof) September 13, 2016
It wasn't long before Rectenwald's tweet storm drew the attention of NYU's student newspaper, the Washington Square Times, which reached out to him over twitter for an interview. Unfortunately, that interview, which was published last week , proved to be his undoing. Within 2 days of his identity being revealed publicly, NYU's " Liberal Studies Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Working Group " had published a letter in the same newspaper finding Rectenwald "guilty of illogic and incivility." Later in that same day Rectenwald was forced to go on paid leave by administrators who claimed that "a couple people had expressed concern about his mental health."
But Rectenwald says he began getting “dirty looks” in his department and on Wednesday figured out why: A 12-person committee calling itself the Liberal Studies Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Working Group , including two deans, published a letter to the editor in the same paper.
“As long as he airs his views with so little appeal to evidence and civility, we must find him guilty of illogic and incivility in a community that predicates its work in great part on rational thought and the civil exchange of ideas,” they wrote.
“We seek to create a dynamic community that values full participation. Such efforts are not the ‘destruction of academic integrity’ Professor Rectenwald suggests, but rather what make possible our program’s approach to global studies,” they argued.
Rectenwald likened the attack to “a Salem witch trial. They took my views personally. I never even mentioned them and I never even said NYU liberal studies program. I was talking about academia at large.”
The same day that letter was published, Rectenwald was summoned to a meeting with his department dean and an HR representative, he says.
“They claimed they were worried about me and a couple people had expressed concern about my mental health,” Rectenwald told The Post.
The leave has “absolutely zero to do with his Twitter account or his opinions on issues of the day,” said NYU spokesman Matt Nagel, refusing to elaborate on the reason.
“I’m afraid my academic career is over,” he said. “Academic freedom: It’s great, as long as you don’t use it.”
Is it any wonder that the liberal elite continues to run amok at our establishments of higher learning... anyone who dares express a non-conforming opinion is promptly found "guilty of illogic and incivility" and declared mentally incompetent. Share This Article... | 0 |
October 28, 2016
Let’s talk about Wikileaks.
First of all, the organization was founded by Julian Assange back in 2006. Their website explains what they are all about:
“WikiLeaks specializes in the analysis and publication of large datasets of censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving war, spying, and corruption. It has so far published more than 10 million documents and associated analyses.”
In the 11 years that they’ve been publishing documents, they have not been disproven a single time. Their record for authentication is perfect. (Learn more here and here .)
So this means that a person would be pretty silly to disregard anything in the reams of information about Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party, the Clinton Foundation, and the political shenanigans that would put the Machiavellis to shame.
Here are 21 of the most important things that have come out about Hillary Clinton, that unfortunately, no one is reporting on in the mainstream. In the interest of brevity, each topic has a link to an article that goes deeper into the leak. (In no particular order.) John Podesta, the chairman of the Clinton campaign had a nice cozy dinner with Peter Kadzik, one of the top officials in the Department of Justice…the day after the Benghazi hearing . Kadzik’s son also asked for a job on the Clinton campaign, and, the icing on the corruption cupcake? Kadzik led the effort to nominate Loretta Lynch, who famously met with Bill Clinton on her private plane right before Hillary’s interrogation about Emailgate. ( source ) We all knew that the Clinton Foundation was just a way for the Clinton family to launder money, and now there’s proof. Zero Hedge writes, “…today’s Wikileaks dump included that memo which reveals, for the first time, the precise financial flows between the Clinton Foundation, Band’s firm Teneo Consulting, and the Clinton family’s private business endeavors.” A pundit called this leak “The Rosetta Stone of the Clinton Foundation,” meaning that with this document, all of their shady financial dealings could be unraveled and translated. ( source ) Clinton is unable to speak for very long without a podium to lean on . Numerous leaked emails reference how certain interviews have to be kept short because she’d be without one. And this article references a very interesting reason why this may be the case – surprisingly it isn’t related to her health. ( source ) The leaks also show that Clinton intends to do her best to restrict the Second Amendment. Brian Fallon, the national press secretary for the Clinton campaign, wrote, “ Circling back around on guns as a follow up to the Friday morning discussion: the Today show has indicated they definitely plan to ask bout guns, and so to have the discussion be more of a news event than her previous times discussing guns, we are going to background reporters tonight on a few of the specific proposals she would support as President – universal background checks of course, but also closing the gun show loophole by executive order and imposing manufacturer liability .” According to an analysis on The Daily Sheeple, “Imposing manufacturer liability means that after Sandy Hook, Bushmaster and Remington Arms would have been prosecuted for having a hand in the murder of children and school staff members for firearms that were legally sold.” ( source ) The campaign was concerned that the sexual escapades of Bill Clinton could be likened to those of another disgraced celebrity, Bill Cosby . Political operative Ron Klain sent an urgent email saying that Hillary should anticipate the following questions, ” How is what Bill Clinton did different from what Bill Cosby did? Is his conduct relevant to your campaign? You said every woman should be believed. Why not the women who accused him? Will you apologize to the women who were wrongly smeared by your husband and his allies?” ( source ) Clinton’s campaign deliberately leaked an embarrassing photo of a swimsuit-clad Bernie Sanders to the press, ironically insinuating that it was proof he was bought off by Wall Street. Perez Hilton wrote, “ Bernie Sanders lounges at elite Martha’s Vineyard pool, summer 2015 after helping raise money from Wall Street lobbyists .” ( source ) Clinton admitted she is out of touch with the middle class in a speech to Goldman-Black Rock in 2014. “And I am not taking a position on any policy, but I do think there is a growing sense of anxiety and even anger in the country over the feeling that the game is rigged. And I never had that feeling when I was growing up. Never. I mean, were there really rich people, of course there were. My father loved to complain about big business and big government, but we had a solid middle class upbringing. We had good public schools. We had accessible health care. We had our little, you know, one-family house that, you know, he saved up his money, didn’t believe in mortgages. So I lived that. And now, obviously, I’m kind of far removed because the life I’ve lived and the economic, you know, fortunes that my husband and I now enjoy , but I haven’t forgotten it.” ( source ) She made this rather NWO remark at a 2013 paid speech to Brazilian bank Banco Itau: “ My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders , some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.” ( source ) In a leak of yet another paid speech, this time to the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago in 2013, Clinton said that Jordan and Turkey “ can’t possibly vet all those refugees so they don’t know if, you know, jihadists are coming in along with legitimate refugees.” Meanwhile, if Clinton has her way , we will be warmly welcoming 65,000 refugees a year, which makes Obama’s 10,000 a year look like small potatoes. ( source ) Clinton blackmailed the Chinese by telling them that the US would base missiles in the region if they didn’t exert some control over North Korean aggression. “ So China, come on. You either control them or we’re going to have to defend against them ,” she purportedly told the audience at a Goldman Sachs conference in June 2013. ( source ) In May 2015, Clinton was no longer Secretary of State but was ready to announce she was running for President when she was invited to attend a summit in Morrocco. The implication from the leaked emails was that a $12 million “donation” from the king of Morocco was dependent on Clinton attending the summit. Human Abedin, usually loyal to her boss, had concerns . “ If HRC was not part of it, meeting was a non-starter. She created this mess and she knows it. Her presence was a condition for the Moroccans to proceed so there is no going back on this,” Abedin wrote to Robbie Mook in a November 2014 email. Incidentally, Clinton didn’t attend. Bill and Chelsea went instead and the $12 million donation was not forthcoming. (source ) Podesta attacked Clinton’s primary election rival Bernie Sanders for criticizing the Paris climate change agreement. “ Can you believe that doofus Bernie attacked it? ” said Podesta. ( source ) Clinton told a Goldman Sachs conference she would like to intervene secretly in Syria . “ My view was you intervene as covertly as is possible for Americans to intervene,” she told employees of the bank in South Carolina, which had paid her about $225,000 to give a speech. “We used to be much better at this than we are now. Now, you know, everybody can’t help themselves. They have to go out and tell their friendly reporters and somebody else: Look what we’re doing and I want credit for it. ” (source ) There is indeed a definite link between the Clinton campaign and what MSM is allowed to say. The campaign has colluded directly with media spokespersons that read like a Who’s Who in American Media : Dan Merica from CNN, Haim Saban of Univision, John Harwood of CNBC and the NY Times, Rebecca Quick of CNBC, Maggie Haberman of NY Times and Politico, John Harris of Politico, Donna Brazile formerly of CNN, Roland Martin of TV-One, Marjorie Pritchard of The Boston Globe, and Louise Mensch of Heat Street. ( source ) As everyone knows, the DNC deliberately screwed Bernie Sanders out of the nomination ( Bonus: Wikileaks also released some of the DNC’s voicemails on the topic ). There are emails that prove who is actually pulling HRC’s puppet strings and that puppeteer is George Soros . The shadow government is not just a conspiracy theory – it really exists and Hillary’s job is to keep George Soros happy. ( source ) Excerpts from her speeches to Wall Street read like a guide to two-faced treachery. In them, she clearly points out that sometimes you “need” to lie. “If everybody’s watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position.” ( source ) Wikileaks emails show that back when she still worked for CNN and before she became an employee of the Clinton campaign, Donna Brazile gave Hillary the questions in advance for her “impromptu” CNN Town Hall questions. ( source ) The campaign got to “approve” articles in influential publications like NY Times, HuffPo, CNN, NBC, CBS, NYT, MSNBC, and Politico, showing a massive collusion with the mainstream media, who has hounded Trump relentlessly in an effort to distract from HRC’s abysmal candidacy. ( source ) Through the treasure trove of Wikileaks emails, we can gain an accurate picture of how Hillary really feels about us all (spoiler: basket of deplorables, basement dwellers and right wing conspirators) ( source ) President Obama knew the whole time that her emails were not coming from the secure State Department server. Cheryl Mills wrote to John Podesta, “W e need to clean this up – he has emails from her – they do not say state.gov .” You see, Obama’s emails all have to be from”whitelisted”addresses. So someone, somewhere, added her nonsecure email to his whitelist. ( source )
And finally, here’s the real reason that treacherous shrew is involved in politics. And let me tell you, it isn’t because she yearns to make things better for anyone but herself. (emphasis mine.)
At the Goldman Sachs Builders and Innovators Summit, Clinton responded to a question from chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, who quipped that you “go to Washington” to “make a small fortune.” Clinton agreed with the comment and complained about ethics rules that require officials to divest from certain assets before entering government. “ There is such a bias against people who have led successful and/or complicated lives, ” Clinton said. ( source ) Together, we cannot be ignored.
I am on a mission between now and the Presidential Election on November 8th and I hope that you will join me.
I am going to work day and night to provide the coverage that the mainstream media is not. It isn’t until we combine all of our voices that we can make people listen to the scandals, the rigging, and the corruption, not only in this election but in the system in general. Please join your voice with mine by liking, sharing, and spreading the word.
Together, we cannot be ignored. Together, we are an army. The Best of Daisy Luther Tags: Daisy Luther [ ] is a freelance writer and editor. Her website, The Organic Prepper , offers information on healthy prepping, including premium nutritional choices, general wellness and non-tech solutions. You can follow Daisy on Facebook and Twitter . | 0 |
WIMBLEDON, England — Having won the first two sets against the Serbian star Novak Djokovic before the rain came, Sam Querrey had a long night at Wimbledon to consider the prospect of one of the biggest upsets in recent tennis history. He now has a lifetime to savor it, while Djokovic can ponder the Grand Slam that got away. Querrey, a Californian with a thunderclap serve and forehand, handled the mounting pressure and a total of four rain delays with surprising aplomb to close out his stunning (6) (5) victory in the third round on Saturday. Above all, he handled the Djokovic, who has been in the deepest of grooves, having won 30 straight Grand Slam singles matches and four straight Grand Slam tournaments, including, last month, the French Open for the first time. “Definitely the biggest win I’ve ever had,” Querrey said. “But there’s another match after this, so hopefully I can keep it going, make a quarterfinal of a Slam, which I’ve never done before. ” And yet this was not the same Djokovic who has deflected power and cruised through many a draw in the past two seasons. “It’s an amazing feeling, obviously, to be able to hold four Grand Slams at the same time,” Djokovic said. “Coming into Wimbledon, obviously, here I knew that mentally it’s not going to be easy to kind of remotivate myself. But the importance of this tournament is so immense that you always find ways to really get inspired and prepare and try to give your best. Obviously, my best wasn’t good enough this year. ” Last year, Djokovic dodged a similar sort of danger in the fourth round at Wimbledon when he rallied from a deficit over two days to win against another tall, and opponent: Kevin Anderson of South Africa. But the Querrey, relaxed enough between big points to keep flipping his racket in the air and catching it by the grip, was able to slam the escape hatch that Anderson had left ajar. Querrey finished with 31 aces against Djokovic, the world’s premier returner, and dominated in the short rallies, winning 124 points out of 220 in exchanges of fewer than five strokes. “I think Sam has got a really, really tricky game for anybody to play against,” said his coach, Craig Boynton. “He serves huge, and when he’s taking his full cuts at the ball, he’s not going to give you any rhythm. ” Boynton’s other pupil, Steve Johnson, also reached the fourth round, earning a shot at a major upset of his own against Roger Federer. Querrey is scheduled to face the unseeded Frenchman Nicolas Mahut. “It seemed to me Novak was a little bit off, a little edgy,” Boynton said. “A lot of people don’t understand how hard it is for these top guys. What they have to do, day in and day out, is incredible, but look: Novak is going to lose at some point. He’s human. ” Djokovic looked particularly mortal in the early and closing stages of this match, which stretched over two days because of the rain that has continued to rewrite the Wimbledon schedule. Djokovic had not lost before the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam tournament since the 2009 French Open, where Philipp Kohlschreiber beat him in the third round. But on Friday, Djokovic appeared listless and tactically adrift in the second set before play was called off. Though he came back stronger on Saturday, jumping out to a lead in the third set before play was again stopped because of rain, he faltered with a fifth set in plain view. Djokovic served for the fourth set at and was unable to close it out. He then lost a lead in the tiebreaker with a series of uncharacteristic errors as Querrey reeled off six of the next eight points, including the one that mattered most when Djokovic made an unforced forehand error on Querrey’s second match point. Querrey, hardly the most demonstrative of men, celebrated with a leaping scissor kick and a fist pump and then hustled to the net to shake the hand of Djokovic, the champion who had beaten him in eight of their nine previous matches and had blown past him, in the third round of the 2014 United States Open. Djokovic classily flashed him a before the handshake. “What makes him so good is he wins those matches where he isn’t playing his best,” Querrey said of Djokovic. “Definitely, yesterday in the second, he lost some momentum. He wasn’t playing like he usually does. Today, I mean, he made me earn it. He’s not a guy that goes away. He made me come out and win those big points. Probably not the best he’s ever played, but not the worst he’s ever played. ” Wimbledon used to be a garden party away from home for the American men. John McEnroe won three titles here in the 1980s, and Pete Sampras won seven in the 1990s and 2000. Andy Roddick reached three finals in the 2000s. But the current generation of American men, led by John Isner and Querrey, has not had nearly that sort of success at Wimbledon — or at any other major tournament. The Querrey, for all his big weapons, was only in Grand Slam singles matches before his match with Djokovic on Court 1 on Saturday and had to rally from a deficit in the first round here before beating Lukas Rosol, in the fifth set. But he has a winning record now, along with a victory for the time capsule. “It’s not career defining, but it’s really exciting,” he said. “It’s something that I’ll always get to have, which is great. ” Djokovic had played no official tournaments on grass this season before arriving at Wimbledon, but then he had played no official tournaments on grass before he won the titles in 2011, 2014 and 2015. But winning a title like the French Open can be draining in an unexpected way, and there is clearly a cumulative effect on any great champion from all the pressure resisted and upset bids thwarted. In this case, there was also the pressure of a potential Grand Slam — winning all four major titles in the same season — which no man has done since Rod Laver in 1969. Djokovic won the first two legs, at the Australian Open and the French Open, but the suspense did not last past the first week at Wimbledon. “I don’t think it played as big of a factor, to be honest,” Djokovic said. “Coming into this match, I knew that it’s going to be very close, not easy to break his serve. If he’s on a roll, as he was, it’s really hard to read his serve. He hits his spots really well. And whenever he had a chance from the rally, he was going for the shots. ” But Djokovic has snuffed out many a huge server in his career. The problem against Querrey was that he was not effective enough on his own serve. His and speeds are down significantly from a year ago. His winning percentage on his second serve — 54. 3 percent for the tournament — was his lowest at Wimbledon since 2008, and he was able to win only 65 percent of the points on his first serves against Querrey. He finished with 34 winners to 31 unforced errors and a drawn face that perhaps reflected deeper concerns. Asked if he was 100 percent healthy, Djokovic answered: “Not really, but you know, it’s not the place and time to talk about it. Again, the opponent was playing on a very high level, and he deserved to win. ” Acknowledging that you are not 100 percent healthy is not quite giving full credit to the man who just ended your Wimbledon hopes. Querrey, a mellow man in a fraught microcosm, did not complain. He has had his own share of injuries and missed opportunities. At age 19, he reached the third round in his first Australian Open in 2007. Bigger Grand Slam success seemed only a matter of time. But the path has been more arduous than he might have suspected, and there have been major roadblocks in the form of Djokovic, Federer, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray. “Those guys are just really good,” Boynton said. “It’s not that our guys aren’t good, but you’re talking to me right now because Novak lost, and it doesn’t happen that often. And there’s a reason it doesn’t happen. To get through that bubble has been very difficult, but Sam got through it today. ” | 1 |
By In5D on November 14, 2016 in Spiritual Awakening
by Missy Marston,
The first time I channeled my sister was also the first day I watched “ The Secret “.
I had spent most of that day and the night looking at the stars and asking the universe to help me open my third eye and talk to my sister. And it heard me! It was around two in the morning and I went inside to read an article my mother had left up for me. I kept getting the same phrase over and over in my head – Everything you need is inside of you, you just have to ask for it.
I took the hint, grabbed a pen and paper, and wrote it down. When I was done writing, my hand wasn’t. It kept writing. I was exhilarated, terrified, and full of love and peace all at the same time.
There was no question at first; there was this knowingness of what was happening and whom I was channeling without asking. It was my sister! Thank you, universe!
She passed along some messages of love and thanks to the family, told me to get my shit together, and began the process of educating me and keeping my mind open.
“Everything is possible with just your mind!”
Tina wrote that she could always hear those who speak to her, and that she’s been constantly trying to speak to us . She was very adamant about self-discovery through meditation in order to first visualize her, and second to transcend ! All we have to do is ask the universe, believe it will be, and keep our minds open through journeying into the self . ‘ That’s how strong your brain is!! You can do it if you can will it. You have the universe at your fingertips! ’
“We have so much to do, Missy!”
Christina wants to change the world, because Christina can change the world. Besides opening up our minds and asking the universe for help, we need to eliminate needs and focus on the inner-self . She said the inner-self is all there is. We can change the world by gaining power over our knowledge and intuition; Learning what truly matters in both the world and your self and feeding our sixth sense until it reaches its full potentia l. ‘Intuition is your best friend. Talk to it. Listen to it. It’s how you knew to grab a notepad. It’s how you know it’s me.’
“You get it?”
I asked Tina if I would always have this connection to her, and she wrote that we are one. So I’m thinking that we’re somehow the same soul, and she corrected me. She said we are ‘soul bound’ to each other.
She says I’ve done this a million times before! We’ve known each other outside of Christina – I was always the mouthpiece and she is the mouth.
As Christina said: ‘Just let yourself be filled with love; it is the fuel for your mind.’
What peace it brings to know your loved ones are near and listening! And what joy it brings to know it’s possible to hear them!
About the author : My name is Missy Marston, webmaster and editor of MetaMissy.com . I am 23 years of age living in sunny Florida. I have two dogs, two cats, and too many fish – I adore animals. I love reading, especially Kurt Vonnegut, and have a steady interest in philosophers. On October 10th, I lost my best friend and little sister, Christina. Out of that tragic experience came a reminder of my deep-rooted love for all things metaphysical and a sign for my future path. Within weeks, I began channeling Christina! I want everyone to know the enlightening truth that there is much more out there than we realize. There is so much more waiting inside of ourselves than we give credit for, and all of it is easily accessible. Come with me on a journey from deep inside your conscious to the outer rims of the multiverse! Follow me on Facebook ! RELATED ARTICLES FROM IN5D: | 0 |
By Brig Asif H. Raja on November 1, 2016
Asif Haroon Raja
The ISI had developed its long arm capability during the tenures of Gen Akhtar Abdur Rehman, Lt Gen Hamid Gul (VT editor) and Lt Gen Javed Nasir as DG ISI. It was owing to this capability of hitting the chosen target outside the frontiers of Pakistan that the ISI earned the reputation of a dreaded outfit and the best in Asia. The long arm began to shrivel when Benazir Bhutto was PM from 1988 to 1990 and Gen Waheed Kakar was COAS and Lt Gen Javed Ashraf Qazi had replaced Gen Javed Nasir. This change in posture was a result of pressure of the US and the West, pressing Pakistan to refrain from meddling in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) and in India, or else it will be declared a terrorist state. Pressure was mounted at the behest of India which had become strategic partner of USA and Israel in 1991/1992 and darling of the West.
After the occupation of Afghanistan by 1, 50,000 Soviet forces in December 1979, Pakistan under Gen Ziaul Haq had decided to provide refuge to about 5 million Afghan refugees and to support the Afghan Mujahideen in their resistance. The US came forward with a package of $ 3.5 billion in June 1981 after making a measured assessment that Pakistan had the will and capability to fight the proxy war. The offer was accepted only when it was conveyed that the ISI will coordinate and conduct the entire war without the aid of CIA and that the US and others would restrict their support to provision of funds and weapons/equipment only. As a Frontline State, Pakistan suffered a great deal throughout the Afghan war at the hands of KGB-KHAD-RAW-AlZulfiqar nexus and Afghan armed forces, but achieved the miracle by defeating and pushing out Soviet forces in February 1989. After achieving its objective without employing a single soldier, the US abandoned Pakistan as well as the Mujahideen who had sacrificed 1.5 million people and had helped the US in becoming a sole super power.
Once Pakistan fell from the grace of USA and it was put under sanctions on account of its covert nuclear program suspected to be geared towards making an Islamic bomb, it came under the shadow of black star. Pakistan’s nuclear program became an eyesore for India, Israel and USA. It faced the whole brunt of fallout effects of ten-year Afghan war that had been fully supported by the US led free world. USSR that had shrunk to Russian Federation was highly bitter, while India was perpetually hostile. Iran was not so friendly owing to its reservations over the developments in Afghanistan. Explosive situation in Afghanistan due to civil war and power tussle among the seven Mujahideen groups impacted the security of Pakistan.
Start of armed insurgency in IOK in late 1989 and India pumping in over 700,000 troops into the Valley had its effects on Pakistan’s security dynamics. In 1990/91, both sides had come close to war. Internally, the society had become militarized due to the Afghan war and sectarianism fomented by Iran and Saudi Arabia had created serious law and order situation in Punjab. PPP and PML-N acrimoniously tussled with each other for power because of which no govt could complete its mandatory 5 years tenure.
Fragmentation of USSR and demise of communism on account of its military defeat in Afghanistan and increase of influence of Pakistan and India decreasing its influence in Afghanistan had vexed India. It feared that Pakistan may exploit the situation in IOK and liberate it with the help of over 60 Jihadi groups and take its revenge of the humiliation it had suffered in East Pakistan in 1971. It dreaded that Pakistan may replicate its model of supporting the Mukti Bahini. Sensing the gravity of the situation, India started propagating that Pakistan is behind the insurgency in IOK and that the ISI is funding, training and launching terrorists from Azad Jammu & Kashmir (AJK). It urged the UN and world powers to rein in Pakistan and restrain ISI from conducting cross LoC terrorism.
The US, both Republicans and Democrats, had been constantly wooing India to join its camp since early 1950s, but India preferred the Soviet camp, although it professed to be non-aligned. It was elated when India feeling orphaned after the collapse of USSR fell like a ripe apple into the waiting arms of USA and both became bedfellows in 1991. Once its newfound love sought help from her paramour, the latter stood behind her and sternly cautioned Pakistan to lay its hands off IOK. Change in circumstances compelled Pakistan to restrict its support to the Kashmiris in distress to moral, political and diplomatic levels only. The Kashmir oriented Jihadi groups based in AJK and in Southern Punjab however continued to extend support to the Kashmiris seeking right of self-determination as provided for in the UN resolutions. Indian security forces equipped with draconian laws and license to kill without any fear of accountability or censure by the UN and world powers carried out inhuman torture, employed massive force, and used rape as a weapon to break the will of the freedom fighters. The UN and international community turned a deaf ear to the cries of Kashmiris.
Despite the fact that IOK had become the most militarized region of the world (one soldier for 17 civilians), and Kashmiris had suffered over 100,000 fatalities, 10,000 rapes, detention of thousands in secret dens and destruction of their property, the freedom fighters kept the torch of liberty aglow. The heroics of Kashmiris against heavy odds had a telling effect on the morale of Indian Army and paramilitary forces in IOK. Soldiers suffered from demoralization and homesickness; cases of suicides, desertions, killing of seniors and comrades by soldiers, and indiscipline jumped up at an alarming rate. Officers and men dreaded posting to Kashmir, while rate of compassionate cases wanting posting out from Kashmir shot up. A stage came when recruitment in Army dropped to rock bottom levels. The then Indian Army chief had to appear on the TV and run an ad campaign to appeal to the youth to join the Army on better pay scale and perks. Kashmir had become a perforated wound for India and economic cost was becoming unbearable. It was becoming difficult for India to hide its massive human rights violations and barbarities of Indian security forces.
Here I may add that the Indian Army had suffered humiliation at Dras-Kargil in 1999 at the hands of handful of Mujahideen and irregulars of Northern Light Infantry. It was eventually bailed out by the US led G-8 by exerting immense pressure on Pakistan to immediately vacate the captured territories. The Indian armed forces went through another embarrassment in 2002 when it had to sheepishly withdraw from its western border after a ten-month standoff during which it had constantly huffed and puffed but couldn’t pick up courage to cross the border. Aggressive response of Pak armed forces had taken the steam out of their chauvinism.
Unfortunately, all that was gained on the Kashmir front and on the military front was wasted away after Gen Musharraf wilted under the US pressure in 2003 and decided to take steps to please USA and India. Reining in Kashmir focused Jihadi groups, allowing India to fence the LoC and signing peace treaty with India in January 2004 changed the perspective. It helped Indian military to suppress Kashmir freedom movement. Earlier on, Musharraf had submitted to all the 7 demands of Washington in September 2001. Free hand given to CIA and FBI had enabled the two to establish their network in FATA and gain control over airports and seaport in Pakistan. Intelligence acquisition in FATA was taken over by CIA and ISI pushed on the back seat.
Indo-Pak peace treaty in 2004 enabled RAW to ignite FATA, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Baluchistan and Karachi. While RAW assisted by CIA, NDS, MI-6 and Mossad made full use of its long arm to bleed Pakistan with the help of proxies, Pak security forces and ISI remained handicapped. The so-called friends pushed Pakistan to fight terrorism but secretly backed the terrorists. The US kept twisting the arm of Pakistan that if ISI meddled into India or Afghanistan it will be declared a rogue outfit. Perforce, the ISI undertook protective measures only, but its defensive actions were more often breached because the so-called allies stabbed Pakistan in the back. As a consequence, RAW and its strategic partners carried out one-sided covert war while the ISI at best tried to ward off the attacks. In spite of defensive policy of the govt and ISI, and Pakistan suffering much more human casualties than any other country in the war on terror, ISI was blamed to be in collusion with Al-Qaeda, Taliban, Haqqani Network, Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). These were termed as strategic assets of military establishment to overcome conventional inferiority against arch enemy India. The lost intelligence space In FATA/KP was gradually recovered when Lt Gen Shuja Pasha took over as DG ISI and Gen Ashfaq Kayani as COAS in 2008.
All the terror attacks that took place in India between 2001 and 2008 were pinned on JeM and LeT and their connection was made with ISI. Since Pakistan made no effort to disprove Indian contention even after it was revealed by Indian investigative agencies and Home Ministry officials that Hindu terror groups and Indian military intelligence officers were involved in the attacks, it became easier for India to further strengthen its narrative of portraying Pakistan as a terror abetting state and a nursery of terrorism. India’s narrative was boosted up by its strategic allies. The US dubbed Pakistan as the most dangerous county in the world. Pakistan’s overall defensive policy and apologetic stance emboldened its detractors to keep whipping and bleeding it without fear of tit for tat response from ISI.
Other than the salvos fired by the Indo-Afghan-US-Israel nexus on Pak Army and ISI, Pakistan political leadership of major political parties also view the two premier institutions with distrust. Both PPP and PML-N in line with their 2006 Charter of Democracy made efforts to enfeeble ISI and keep Army under their thumb. First attempt was made by Benazir Bhutto when she replaced Lt Gen Hamid Gul with retired Lt Gen Kallue in 1989 and next tasked Air Marshal Zulfiqar to cut ISI to size under the garb of reforms. PM Yusaf Raza Gilani tried to civilianize ISI in August 2008 by placing it under Ministry of Interior. Kerry Lugar Bill in 2009 and Memo scandal in 2011 were other attempts to curtail military’s power. Nawaz Sharif has a history of locking horns with every Army chief and has still not got out of the hangover of Gen Musharraf. Although he didn’t clash with Gen Raheel but at times civil-military relations became tense.
It has now been conclusively established that RAW and NDS in unison and backed by other agencies are deeply involved in proxy war in Pakistan since 2003 and have inflicted tens of thousands of cuts on the body of Pakistan and its people. Series of conspiracies have been hatched and launched to destabilize and fragment Pakistan. RAW-NDS nexus backed by CIA is continuing to use Afghanistan as a launching pad for terror attacks in Pakistan. In order to scuttle CPEC, focus of attacks is on Baluchistan and KP. India is keeping the LoC on fire. So far it has violated 2003 ceasefire agreement 178 times and killed 19 civilians and injured 80.
The anti-Pakistan foreign agencies are making full use of TTP, Jamaat Ahrar, Lashkar Jhangvi, BLA, BRA, BLF and MQM as proxies. London is a safe haven for MQM leadership and Baloch rebel leaders, while Afghanistan has provided sanctuaries to TTP runaway leaders in Kunar, Nuristan and Nangarhar. Besides these strategic assets, the detractors are also making use of NGOs, human rights activists and segment of media to make Pakistan a compliant state of India. Since HN, JeM, and LeT are not playing the game of foreign agencies, they are dubbed as terrorist groups and strategic assets of Pak Army/ISI. They want Pakistan to take strict action against them or else face isolation and sanctions.
It was in the backdrop of this concern of US and India that the Dawn News published a story on October 6. The planted story was allegedly furnished by someone from within the PM House where a national security conference presided by the PM and attended by Foreign Secretary, Punjab Chief Minister, COAS, DG ISI and National Security Adviser was held. The invented story written by Cyril Almeida gave an impression of serious rift between civil and military leadership and that while the govt wanted to proceed against the defunct militant groups, the ISI didn’t. Probable motive of concocted story was to demean the Army/ISI and to reinforce Indo-US stance that Pak Army and ISI were in league with terror groups. The types of Hussain Haqqani, Ayesha Sadiqa, Farzana Bari and several other liberal journalists assembled in London two days ago to play up this story. MQM (Altaf) hosted them. To ascertain the truth, a high powered committee comprising members from three intelligence agencies will carry out inquest.
Having collected tons of evidence, yet Pakistan takes the barbs and whips without a whimper and doesn’t pick up courage to strike back. The long arm of ISI remains sheathed for reasons best known to the policy makers. It implies our leaders have decided to give a free hand to our enemies to continue bleeding Pakistan without any fear of retaliation or even protest. Going by the well-established concept that ‘offence is the best defence’, until and unless the ISI pay back the RAW and NDS in the same coin, one sided bleeding of Pakistanis will continue. Long arm must be unsheathed.
The writer is retired Brig, war veteran, defence analyst, columnist, author of 5 books, Vice Chairman Thinkers Forum Pakistan, DG Measac Research Centre, and Member Executive Council PESS. Related Posts: | 0 |
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“I’m trying to make this campus more aware,” said Jessica Adams, coordinator of LGBT services at the Cross Cultural and Gender Center at Fresno State University in California. “I’m asking most people to unlearn this concept of gender that they have been taught for years. And it’s not an easy task.”
No doubt. Most people are “stuck” believing boys are boys and girls are girls.
Adams argues that those who hold to such beliefs are the ones with the problem. She recently helped “Mr. Love” — a female who is “transitioning” to a male — become one of the first of these “transgender” students at Fresno State to change her name on her student ID card. This is considered “a huge victory” by Adams because, she claimed, “You feel fraudulent as a person, yet no one is allowing you to be who you are. If you can imagine being called the wrong name for the rest of your life, or even for a day.… If you kept telling them and they refused to acknowledge that, that’s painful.”
“Mr. Love” is transitioning by taking natural supplements, rather than testosterone injections. But this is not her first “transition.” In the past, she was, at one time, “bisexual,” and has suffered from anxiety and depression. In fact, Mr. Love (shown) reacted to the tragic news that 49 people were murdered by an Islamic terrorist in Orlando by considering suicide.
“It was all just too much,” Mr. Love recalled. “I wanted to die.” One survey has found that more than 40 percent of transgender people have attempted suicide. In a study conducted by The New Atlantis , sex “reassigned individuals were about 5 times more likely to attempt suicide and about 19 times more likely to die by suicide.” Whatever the exact figures, it is obvious that these are deeply mentally disturbed individuals.
After writing a suicide note to some friends, Mr. Love was forced into an ambulance and transported to a mental health center in Fresno. But what really upset her was when she looked down and saw the name on the plastic medical bracelet. They had use Mr. Love’s birth name, instead of Mr. Love.
It was an Aztec female name, meaning “goddess of music and dance.”
Mr. Love explained, “You have to realize every time you say it, it’s going to be like knives to the heart.”
To those in the “transgender community,” birth names that identify the person as male, when he wants to be known as a female, or identify the person as female (as in the case of Mr. Love) when a transgender individual wishes to be known as a male, are referred to as “dead names.”
Sometimes Mr. Love uses the name of Alex, because it is more gender neutral.
When Mr. Love was a high-school student at Clovis United, the school board refused to adopt a gender-neutral dress code. Boys and girls who supported the transgender students swapped clothes as a protest against school policy. Although no federal statute exists that requires local school districts to allow transgender males into girl’s locker rooms, and vice-versa, the Obama administration has told schools across the country they will either do so, or face the loss of federal funds.
The Charlotte Observer recently editorialized in favor of allowing transgenders to use the bathroom they identify with, and not their biologically appropriate one. The paper dismissed concerns that sexual predators could use trangender-oriented “bathroom laws. Besides, the paper lectured, “The thought of male genitalia in girls’s locker rooms — and vice versa — might be distressing to some. But the battle for equality has always been in part about overcoming discomfort.”
So according to the Charlotte Observer , anyone who opposes a naked boy strolling into a shower full of naked girls is no better than a segregationist. After all, it was discomforting to a white bigot to be around black people, and opposition to transgenders using the bathroom of the opposite sex, well, that is a bigoted stance, too.
Of course, a similar opposing argument would have just as much, or more, logical validity: Maybe transgenders should get used to the "discomfort" of being naked around their own biological sex and that to do otherwise, and force their nakedness on the unwilling, opposite sex, is akin to sexual assault.
Although Mr. Love wants to be recognized as a man, she wants to keep her mezzo-soprano voice (considered one of the highest female singing voices). “I’ve come to terms with my voice. My voice is everything, it’s all I have,” Mr. Love said.
Mr. Love insists that she is a man, trapped in a biological woman’s body, and that she cannot help it. “I didn’t ask for this life. I didn’t choose it. I really didn’t.”
But a recent study in The New Atlantis journal concluded that trangenderism is not supported by the science. The report was co-authored by Dr. Paul McHugh, who is the former Chief of Pyschiatry at Johns Hopkins University. “Examining research from the biological, psychological, and social sciences, this report shows that some of the most frequently heard claims about sexuality and gender are not supported by scientific evidence. The hypothesis that gender identiy is an innate, fixed property of human beings that is independent of biological sex — that a person might be ‘a man trapped in a woman’s body’ or ‘a woman trapped in a man’s body’ — is not supported by scientific evidence,” insisted the researchers.
But it is not just that the acceptance of transgenderism (one will note that the mainstream media dutifully calls a transgender person by the pronoun that person prefers) is unscientific. The report argues that such enabling is harmful. “An area of particular concern involves medical interventions for gender-nonconforming youth. They are increasingly receiving therapies that affirm their felt genders, and even hormone treatments or surgical modifications at young ages.”
In a statement released in March by the American College of Pediatricians, a similar conclusion was reached. The report was entitled “Gender Ideology Harms Children,” and in it, they assert that taking “gender dysphoria” as anything other than a psychological problem is harmful.
One woman, Cari Stella, took to YouTube to describe how this ideologically driven movement harmed her. “I am a real, live 22-year-old woman, with a scarred chest and a broken voice, and five o’clock shadow because I couldn’t face the idea of growing up to be a woman. That’s my reality.… When I was transitioning, I felt a strong desire — what I could have called a ‘need’ at the time — to transition.”
But the transition only worsened her mental health. “Testosterone made me even more disassociated than I already was.”
Stella’s situation is an example of an observation made in The New Atlantis study: “The potential that patients undergoing medical and surgical sex reassignment may want to return to a gender identity consistent with their biological sex suggests that reassignment carries considerable psychological and physical risk.” The report concluded that the promotion of transgenderism is influenced more by politics and the culture than by science.
On the Carol Burnett Show , Vikki Lawrence once performed a skit where she portrayed a mother with an infant child. When someone asked the common question, “Is the baby a boy or a girl?” Lawrence effected offense, answering, “This is 1970! The baby can make that decision at age 21.”
Of course, the audience predictably guffawed at the absurdity of it all. But that was 1970. Now, in 2016, such a skit on television would probably lead to boycotts and condemnations from our modern “progressive” society. | 0 |
Hackers have stolen Disney’s upcoming film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and have threatened to release it online unless the studio pays the thieves a hefty ransom, according to reports. [Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed Monday at a town hall meeting with ABC employees in New York City that one of the studio’s upcoming films had been stolen, but did not specify which film, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Deadline reported later Monday that the film in question is the studio’s upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean, the fifth film in the swashbuckling pirates franchise starring Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow. The studio is working with the FBI to identify the source of the hack. The hackers have reportedly threatened to release portions of the film online until their ransom demand is met. THR reported that the hackers planned to release the first five minutes of the film and then continue on with increments until payment is made. Sources told Deadline that Disney is not currently planning to pay the ransom, though the studio has not yet commented publicly on the situation. The Disney hack comes as studios and production outfits have dealt with increasing security threats presented by hackers. Even if hacking groups cannot access private files on the server of a major studio like Disney, they can attack outfits or other firms that possess copies of private material and that have weaker security measures than major companies. In April, a group of hackers calling themselves The Dark Overlord infiltrated Netflix and released all ten episodes of the streaming giant’s hit series Orange is the New Black, after the company refused to meet the group’s ransom demand. That group also said it possessed stolen copies of other television shows including Celebrity Apprentice and NCIS: Los Angeles. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is due out in theaters May 26. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 1 |
After spending half the season perpetrating an protest against the national anthem, NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick announced his free agency. But, with teams snapping up players, Kaepernick has thus far gone ignored by the NFL. Now, sports writer Mike Freeman, searching for a reason for the player’s fall, ultimately decided that Kaepernick is being punished for “the crime of speaking his mind. ”[For BleacherReport. com, Mike Freeman seems gobsmacked that no team has come forward to offer the 49ers quarterback a new birth. With his analysis, Freeman seems to blame the country and the NFL for being racist for not allowing Kaepernick to have unlimited success and untold accolades. Freeman also proclaims that Kaepernick is being punished for “the crime of speaking his mind. ” The San Francisco quarterback became the talk of the league this season with his protests by refusing to stand for the playing of the national anthem at the start of each game. But, just as Kaepernick declared his free agency he also announced the abrupt end of his refusal to stand for the anthem. With the league’s free agents signing to teams at a quickening pace, Kaepernick has thus far gone unsigned. Kaepernick, once considered an up and coming player with a bright future, helped lead the 49ers to the Super Bowl in 2012 only a year after he went pro, and then led the team to an NFC Championship the following year. Since then his playing has declined. After several seasons of lackluster play, rumors circled that the 49ers would trade him ahead of the season. Freeman even notes that some football analysts feel Kaepernick has lost a step, saying, “some teams genuinely believe that he can’t play. They think he’s shot. I’d put that number around 20 percent. ” But Freeman goes on to claim that Kaepernick has become toxic mostly because of his protests: Second, some teams fear the backlash from fans after getting him. They think there might be protests or [President Donald] Trump will tweet about the team. I’d say that number is around 10 percent. Then there’s another 10 percent that has a mix of those feelings. Third, the rest genuinely hate him and can’t stand what he did [kneeling for the national anthem]. They want nothing to do with him. They won’t move on. They think showing no interest is a form of punishment. I think some teams also want to use Kaepernick as a cautionary tale to stop other players in the future from doing what he did. One executive even reportedly told Freeman that Kaepernick is “an embarrassment to football. ” Freeman does admit that teams may just be waiting for the most advantageous time to bid for Colin’s services. But, he thinks that what is happening to Kaepernick is “highly unusual. ” It all adds up to little interest in the player, “and that’s putting it kindly” Freeman writes. Freeman does add a long list of reasons people have criticized Kaepernick for his play, reasons that have nothing to do with his protests. The writer says that some criticize Kaepernick’s throwing accuracy, others think he isn’t much of a team player because he is a moody loner, and still others say he seems out of his depth when asked to learn new schemes. Despite all the complaints about Kaepernick’s play and prickly personality, Freeman finds his lack of free agency opportunity shocking. Freeman writes: Still, it’s hard to emphasize how unusual Kaepernick’s current situation is. If a Super Bowl quarterback can walk and chew bubble gum simultaneously, he gets opportunities. Those opportunities usually arrive until that player is totally and completely done. That’s not the case with Kaepernick. So, why is Kaepernick being left behind? It’s all because everyone is punishing him for “the crime of speaking his mind,” Freeman thinks. Kaepernick’s new agents appear to have foreseen all of this, which is why it wasn’t surprising when sources told ESPN’s Adam Schefter that Kaepernick would start standing for the anthem. Now, he sits. Waiting and waiting. A player whose political statement may have cost him his NFL career. With this, Freeman proves that, like many, he misunderstands freedom of speech. It is absolutely correct that Kaepernick has the right to say America has never been great, to slam our soldiers, the police, and other first responders, to tout Black Lives Matter and the like. But, it is the fans’ corresponding right to decide they don’t like him when he expresses those ideas. It is also highly logical for teams assessing Kaepernick’s free agency to decide they don’t want to bring his controversial views into their locker rooms and to assault their fans with his protests. Kaepernick has a right to speak out, but he doesn’t have a right to expect no repercussions from that speech. Consider the most perfect example of cause and effect concerning the topic of free speech, when country band the Dixie Chicks went on tirades overseas against the United States in the early 2000s Then, here at home they pretty much lost their fan base because of their outbursts. Sure, the Dixie Chicks had a right to mouth off against the U. S. A. and no one said they didn’t have that right. But, fans also had the corresponding right to stop patronizing their musical product, and it wasn’t long before their musical career went from chart topping hits to invisible on the music scene. The reaction to Kaepernick, who said even worse things about the U. S. than the Dixie Chicks ever did, is entirely similar. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 1 |
Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean October 25, 2016 Daniel Greenfield
Brooding and bearded face shadowed by an odd hat, cutlass scars on his arms and a dark patch where his eye ought to be. The pirate is a familiar stereotype. Countless movies have worn him down to a smooth and unremarkable cliche.
But what if that cliche has depths that have yet to be mined by the movie industry?
That is the question that Israeli-American director Arnon Z. Shorr (Blood and Stone: A Legend of the Golem, A Modest Suggestion, Glimpse) has chosen to tap into with the Pirate Captain Toledano . Beneath the pirate's hat hides another sort of hat. A Jewish one. For the Pirate Captain Toledano is a Jewish pirate. What sort of Jew becomes a pirate and why?
Touching on true history, that is one of the questions that Shorr's film proposes to answer.
Recent years have seen growing interest in the history of Jewish pirates. And what initially seems absurd quickly becomes a fascinating exploration of how much of history is lost when legend becomes cliche. As a pioneering filmmaker, Arnon Z. Shorr has chosen to tackle this ambitious project with the aid of two vessels at the Ocean Institute, a dedicated cast and support from the public.
Though the process of bringing the Pirate Captain Toledano from vision to reality has only begun, the journey has already been marked by fortuitous coincidences, including the discovery that cast member Stephen DeCordova (Captain Toledano) hailed from ancestors who were Jewish pirates and a treasured Kiddush cup in his possession, which likely dates back from those days, will play a key role in the story.
Like the ocean, history has unseen depths and strange currents that can only be glimpsed from the right angle. Arnon Z. Shorr is currently laboring to bring up a lost piece of history from the deeps. | 0 |
Our definitions of death may have to change in the very near future. Joining Jimmy Church ( ) in the first half, Ira S. Pastor, CEO of BioQuark and Reanima , discussed how neuro-reanimation after death will one day be a possibility. Followed by paranormal expert Ronny LeBlanc , who reported on strange occurrences in Leominster, Massachusetts, which is known as "Monsterland," home to sightings of UFOS, Bigfoot and orange orbs. Website(s): | 0 |
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Author George R. R. Martin’s books inspired the hit HBO TV series Game of Thrones , and he’s no stranger to political intrigues. Even the legendary fantasy writer Martin never imagined an American demagogue, who could blithely step on every third rail of American politics and survive in the race until the general election. But the man who wrote television’s most hated character – Joffrey Baratheon – just took to his blog to explain definitively why Donald Trump will never be fit to sit on the Iron Throne be president.
In my lifetime, there has never been a presidential candidate more unfit to lead this nation.
You don’t need to like Hillary. You don’t need to listen to what Hillary says about Trump, or what I say about Trump. You just need to listen to Trump. If you can do that, and still consider voting for him… well…
Martin’s book “Song of Fire and Ice” inspired the hit TV series, which is loosely based on the War of The Roses , as the warring clans of Westeros fight for control of the Iron Throne. For much of the series, the throne has been captured by golden haired Joffrey Baratheon, whose endless list of offensive behaviors begins as a callous child, and continues through his disastrous reign. Like the fictional boy-king, Donald Trump loves to sit on fancy, throne-like chairs and using his family’s wealth and influence to play at being king.
The author Martin described the highly unusual nature of this year’s presidential election by zeroing in on the striking difference between negative advertisements for the two candidates. He shrewdly pointed out that Donald Trump’s attack ads are standard political ad hominem affairs – lots of selective editing and bluster, no substance – while Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton doesn’t even create traditional attack ads.
Martin’s list of the many Clinton attack ads doubles as a fine reason that nobody in their right mind, should choose the Republican nominee for President this upcoming Tuesday, November 8th:
Hillary does not need to use the sort of hoary attack ads that Trump is using. She only needs to present him as he is, and let his own words condemn them.
And they do.
No one has to accuse Trump of anything, he has laid it all out there in public for the world to see.
Yes, he mocked a disabled reporter. There he is, doing it.
Yes, he told Billy Bush he liked to kiss women without their consent and grab them by their pussies. There he is, boasting about it. When you’re a star, you can do anything.
No need to accuse Trump of going into the dressing rooms of Miss Universe and Miss Teen USA pagaents when the contestants were changing so he could see them naked. There’s Trump himself, telling Howard Stern about it.
Yes, he said women should be punished for having abortions. There he is, telling Chris Matthews. His own words, his own face.
Yes, he said he wants to ban all Muslims from entering the US. Here, see the clip.
Yes, he’s in favor of Japan and Saudi Arabia and South Korea having nukes, here’s the clip where he says so.
And on and on and on and on. The Gold Star family, the bad hombres, Judge Curiel, the Miss Universe contestant… his own speeches, his own tweets, his own words.
Martin even remarked that for a man whose campaign resembles a nastier version of George Wallace, it is eerily starting to look like his braggadocious claim was correct, when in January, Trump said he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue in New York and get away with it. If there’s any one moment in the Republican’s campaign that could be described as Joffrey-esqe, that was the one, where like the fictional, twisted boy king , Donald Trump reveled openly in a threat to kill senselessly, and kill with impunity.
The dastardly character Joffrey’s Uncle described him in a way that anyone watching Donald Trump might describe the oddly coiffed Republican candidate, “We’ve had vicious kings, and we’ve had idiot kings, but I don’t think we’ve ever been cursed with a vicious idiot for a king!”
The same harsh words equally apply to Republican nominee Donald Trump’s disastrous fall as the standard bearer of his failed party, the GOP.
We agree with George R. R. Martin, all any voter needs to do is listen rationally to the irrational Trump speak, and realize that he’s not Presidential material, and has a personality only fit to be an erratic boy-king, and certainly never to sit in the chair behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.
Watch a hilarious mashup here: | 0 |
UN: Migrant Deaths in Mediterranean Hit Record in 2016 BBC News, October 26, 2016
At least 3,800 migrants have died or are missing in the Mediterranean Sea in 2016–the deadliest year on record, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has said.
It said this was despite a significant drop in migrant crossings compared with 2015, when 3,771 deaths were reported.
Smugglers were now more often using flimsy boats and putting more people aboard, the UNHCR said.
{snip}
The agency said the most dangerous route had been between Libya and Italy, with one death in every 47 arrivals recorded.
By comparison, another–much shorter–route from Turkey to Greece had a ratio of 1 in 88.
{snip}
Nearly 330,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean Sea this year, compared with more than one million in 2015.
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For more than seven years, Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, made a name for himself as one of the nation’s most aggressive and outspoken prosecutors of public corruption and Wall Street crime. With Mr. Bharara, 48, being told on Friday to step down from his post, it was unclear what effect his expected departure might have on the office’s current investigations. In past presidential transitions, the storied office, long known to be so independent of Washington that some people referred to it as the Sovereign District of New York, has in large measure moved forward unaffected by politics. Under Mr. Bharara, the office prosecuted Democratic and Republican officials with equal ardor, most notably Sheldon Silver, the former Democratic speaker of New York’s Assembly, and Dean G. Skelos, the former Republican majority leader of the State Senate. His office is preparing to try a group of former aides and associates of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in a bribery and case and has been investigating Mayor Bill de Blasio’s campaign as part of an inquiry into whether he or other officials exchanged official acts for political donations. The investigation into Mr. de Blasio’s perhaps the office’s highest profile continuing inquiry, began roughly a year ago and appears to be in its final stages, with prosecutors and F. B. I. agents interviewing the mayor for four hours two weeks ago. The mayor’s press secretary said at the time that Mr. de Blasio was cooperating in the inquiry and that “at all times the mayor and his staff acted appropriately and well within the law. ” Investigators have scrutinized scores of donors to the mayor’s 2013 campaign and his now defunct political nonprofit, seeking to determine whether anyone received favorable city action in exchange for their largess. And with the mayor gearing up for his campaign — he is now seeking to raise the bulk of his war chest from smaller donors — his lawyers are pressing prosecutors to conclude the investigation or, they say, risk affecting the election’s outcome. It remains unclear whether Mr. Bharara and his top aides have determined whether they will seek charges — against the mayor, any of his top aides or his primary . Under Mr. Bharara’s stewardship, the office was also known for its insider trading investigations, civil rights cases and terrorism prosecutions. Another pending investigation appears to focus on how Fox News structured settlements of claims brought by network employees. Mr. Bharara would presumably be succeeded temporarily by his deputy, Joon H. Kim, a longtime prosecutor and former head of the office’s criminal division. Also on Friday, the United States attorney for New Jersey, Paul J. Fishman, said in a statement that his resignation had been requested and in Brooklyn, Robert L. Capers, said he had been “instructed to resign. ” Mr. Bharara had not issued a statement as of Friday evening, when his office was uncertain whether the resignation request applied to him. The announcement that he had been told to resign along with 45 other United States attorneys around the country comes little more than three months after he met with Donald J. Trump, then at Trump Tower, and announced afterward that Mr. Trump had asked him to stay on as the United States attorney. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Mr. Bharara said that Mr. Trump had asked to see him to discuss “whether or not I’d be prepared to stay on as the United States attorney to do the work as we have done it, independently, without fear or favor for the last seven years. ” “We had a good meeting,” Mr. Bharara said. “I said I would absolutely consider staying on. I agreed to stay on. ” Mr. Bharara also said at the time that he had already spoken with Jeff Sessions, the Republican of Alabama who Mr. Trump appointed attorney general. “He also asked that I stay on, and so I expect that I will be continuing,” Mr. Bharara said. Among the names of lawyers mentioned as a possible United States attorney in Manhattan in the Trump administration is Marc L. Mukasey, a former Southern District prosecutor and the son of Michael B. Mukasey, the former attorney general in the Bush administration. The younger Mr. Mukasey is now a lawyer at Greenberg Traurig, a law firm in New York where Rudolph W. Giuliani, a close associate of Mr. Trump, also works. Mr. Mukasey declined to comment on Friday. Mr. Bharara is no stranger to politics: before being appointed United States attorney by President Barack Obama in 2009, he served as chief counsel to Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, and played a major role in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation into the politically motivated firings of United States attorneys by the Justice Department under President George W. Bush. If there is a “credible whiff that justice has been politicized,” Mr. Bharara told The New York Times in 2014, “there’s nothing worse than that. ” | 1 |
By Shane Trejo The Dakota Access Pipeline protests have made national news, as millions of Americans are concerned with potential property rights violations and environmental... | 0 |
Part Three of a series … In Part One we saw how the gospel of globalism inspires its believers to disdain, even despise, nationalists — that is, the people who voted for Donald Trump. And in Part Two we saw how the Deep State, one of the many weapons in the globalist arsenal, is now targeting Trump and his agenda for America. Here in Part Three, we will focus on how one Trump opponent is seeking to pick off a key member of the new presidential staff. 1. Fake News: “Bannon vs. Trump” Attacks on Stephen K. Bannon, the former executive chairman of Breitbart, slated to become the top strategist in the Trump White House, are nothing new. Just since the election, Mother Jones magazine has called him “worse . . . than a racist,” Joy Behar labeled him “a fascist,” and former Vermont governor Howard Dean insisted, against all evidence, that he is “a Nazi. ” You get the idea. Okay, these assaults haven’t gotten very far they were tried, too, during the 2016 campaign, and Bannon’s standing within Trump world has never wavered. And yet, of course, the assaults keep coming. And so to help keep track of them all, perhaps we should assign them into categories. For example, in an earlier article, not part of this series, Virgil cited the ways in which “argument from authority” — argumentum ad verecundiam — can be used and, more often these days, misused. So now we can add a second, slyer, category of media falsehood. We can call this one the “assertion of a false conflict,” declaratio contra falsum. This one is a version of the familiar attempt to stir the pot, whipping up hard feelings between people: Hey, did you hear what he said about you? And here’s Brooks’ description of the gist of Bannon’s speech: Humane capitalism has been replaced by the savage capitalism that brought us the financial crisis. National democracy has been replaced by a network of global elites. Traditional virtue has been replaced by abortion and gay marriage. Sovereign are being replaced by hapless multilateral organizations like the E. U. Decadent and enervated, the West lies vulnerable in the face of a confident and convicted Islamofascism, which is the cosmic threat of our time. So that’s how Brooks characterizes Bannon’s beliefs. And Brooks is just warming up. He then goes on to compare Trump to Vladimir Putin, and Bannon to a conservative Russian political figure in Putin’s orbit, Alexander Dugin. Yet after making these dark comparisons, Brooks offers his readers a ray of light: The dark he predicts, will fail. Why? Because, Brooks chortles, Trump is such a lazy, egocentric, lightweight that he will lose interest in these Bannonite topics and so will drift over to the side of the globalists. A question leaps immediately to mind: Did Brooks get some scoop as to Trump’s thinking? Some revelatory interview? The answer, Brooks indicates, is “no. ” It’s just his hunch: I’m personally betting the foreign policy apparatus, including the secretaries of state and defense, will grind down the populists around Trump. David Brooks has enjoyed a good career in the MSM. Born in 1961, he’s nominally a conservative, having worked variously at National Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, and, since 2003, as a opinion columnist for The New York Times. And along the way, he has expressed some interesting ideas for example, in 2006, he opined that Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman should form their own third party, based mostly on their shared neoconservatism and globalism. Needless to say, nothing ever came of Brooks’ suggestion. Over his career, Brook has been notable for three things: first, a book published in 2000 that celebrated the luxe lifestyle second, a fervent advocacy of the 2003 Iraq War and third, his journalstic love affair with Barack Obama. In other words, he’s the perfect sort of housebroken “conservative” for Washington, DC, just the sort of fellow who gets that gig on the PBS NewsHour. Okay, so let’s consider Brooks’ track record on Donald Trump. We can sum it up with two points: First, he hates Trump and second, he is not a good forecaster. In March of last year, the headline of his column was “No, Not Trump, Not Ever. ” In that piece he harumphed, “Donald Trump is epically unprepared to be president. He has no realistic policies, no advisers, no capacity to learn. ” Then Brooks really got going: Trump is perhaps the most dishonest person to run for high office in our lifetimes. All politicians stretch the truth, but Trump has a steady obliviousness to accuracy. And since Trump was so terrible in Brooks’ mind, it was hard for him to imagine that anyone else could like him. Thus in June 2016, he predicted that in the November election to come, Hillary Clinton would beat Trump. As he put it, “People will be sick of Donald Trump, and they will go for her. ” To cap it off, in a column published on November 4, four days before the 2016 general election, Brooks doubled down on his endorsement of Clinton, describing her as “the bigger change agent. ” Then he went on to describe Trump as “solipsistic, impatient, combative, unsubtle and ignorant,” all the while insisting that Clinton was “better suited to getting things done. ” Amusingly, among the things Clinton would get done, Brooks told his readers, was developing a plan to “secure the border. ” Perfectly expressing the Times’ view of the world, Brooks added, “Any sensible person can distinguish between an effective operating officer [Clinton] and a whirling disaster who is only about himself [Trump]. ” Okay, so Brooks, along with 99. 9 percent of the rest of the Times, liked Clinton and didn’t like Trump. We get that. Yet further details of that column are revealing — revealing, that is, about Brooks. Here’s how the piece starts: A few weeks ago I met a guy in Idaho who was absolutely certain that Donald Trump would win this election. He was wearing tattered, soiled overalls, missing a bunch of teeth and was unnaturally skinny. He was probably about 50, but his haggard face looked 70. He was getting by aimlessly as a handyman. We might linger over some of those snobby word choices: “tattered, soiled overalls . . . missing a bunch of teeth. ” Virgil might pause to ask: Since the 1972 movie Deliverance, has has there ever been a more profoundly perfect stereotype of how a posh Easterner looks down his nose at the rubes in the rest of the country? In the piece, Brooks, himself blissfully confident that Hillary was going to prevail, then goes on recount how he tried patiently to explain to the man that he was wrong in his thinking. And yet, Brooks writes with a sigh, “It was like telling him a sea gull could play billiards. ” One might think that the actual election results, four days later, would have humbled Brooks a bit, but they haven’t — not at all. Since the election, he’s been as strongly as ever. And, amazingly, he’s still in the game of making predictions for Times readers, “The guy will probably resign or be impeached within a year. ” As for Steve Bannon, he has views that can only be described as Trumpian, and he has held them for a long time. So of course the globalists hate him, too. Since Bannon only rarely gives interviews, some might be curious to know more about his thinking — that is, looking beyond the nasty canards hurled at him by the likes of Mother Jones, Behar, and Dean. In fact, Bannon has been articulating his vision for a long time since 2004, he has produced no fewer than 16 documentaries. Yet a more direct and personal window into Bannon’s thinking can be found in his 2014 speech to the Vatican that’s the one that Brooks ripped in his January 10 column. So, without Brooks’ “help,” let’s take a closer look: Bannon begins by saying that he believes, strongly, that there’s “a crisis” in our time — that is, “a crisis of our faith, a crisis of the West, a crisis of capitalism. ” And so he begins with the spiritual question yes, many today are well off, but the question they should be asking themselves is deeper than money: What is the purpose of whatever I’m doing with this wealth? What is the purpose of what I’m doing with the ability that God has given us, that divine providence has given us to actually be a creator of jobs and a creator of wealth? He continues in this vein: It really behooves all of us to really take a hard look and make sure that we are reinvesting that back into positive things. Yes, we should invest in positive things, things of faith and belief, which money can’t buy. Thus the “crisis of faith. ” So now we come to Bannon’s “crisis of the West. ” Here, we need only look to Angela Merkel’s Germany it’s the richest country in Europe, and yet it is now in deadly danger of demographic dissolution — and threatens to take the whole continent down with it. Indeed, Bannon’s words from 2014, before Merkel foolishly chose to open her borders while subsidizing permanent dependence, now look prescient. He warned then that the threat from jihadi Islam is “going to come to Europe . . . it’s going to come to the United Kingdom. ” Moreover, in his talk he took note of a tweet that very day from ISIS, promising to turn the United States into a “river of blood. ” Yes, a crisis of the West, indeed. Hawkins summarized Bannon’s Vatican speech, in which Bannon argued that in recent decades, capitalism seems to have come mostly in two forms, both at least somewhat pernicious: First, there’s the “crony capitalism” that we saw in the scandalous 2008 bailouts and second, there’s the “Ayn Rand influenced . . . libertarian capitalism, which he sees as commoditizing people into mere producers and products. ” This latter kind, Hawkins continued, weakens “our collective moral strength. ” The answer, Hawkins concluded, is “enlightened capitalism” — that is, the capitalism in which capitalists think about the fate of their country, not just their bank account. As Hawkins put it: It was this enlightened capitalism that gave the — through wide asset ownership — strong middle class and an aspirant and affluent working class which provided the moral and economic foundations for the West to defeat Nazism in 1945 and support Ronald Reagan in to and defeating the Soviet Union during the Cold War. And now this has been corrupted and in turn weakened the West itself and Bannon believes the West now faces losing everything it has gained across more than 2000 years. [emphasis added] Hawkins ended his essay with these hopeful words: With Bannon, Trump and “Trumpism” the US and the West has an opportunity for economic, moral and political renewal — a new enlightenment. Okay, so Hawkins ably describes the problem, and outlines the ultimate desired outcome. And yet we might ask: How, exactly, does America get there? How do we get from the crisis of 2017 to a better place — as soon as possible? For the answer, we might return to Bannon’s 2014 talk, in which he called for aggressively building “a populist movement,” the heart of which should be: . . . the middle class, the working men and women in the world who are just tired of being dictated to by what we call the party of Davos. Interestingly, that seems to have happened in the last three years! We can also pause to note that “Davos,” of course, is shorthand for the World Economic Forum, a conclave of billionaire globalists and their courtiers, meeting every year in Davos, Switzerland. And so Bannon’s reference to “the party of Davos” speaks to the reality that global high finance seems to have conquered most of the politics, and most of the parties, of most of the world — and as a result, the America middle class, now sinking in the globalist broth, has been made worse off. It might be worth noting that the next Davos meeting is just a few days away, on January 17 to 20. And since this is the first session since the November election, there’s going to be some — and a lot more attempted . And yet Davos Men, and Davos Women will not be giving up so easily. For instance, one of the scheduled “chats” at Davos will be between Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook and Meg Whitman of HP together they will offer their audience their thoughts on shaping “a positive narrative for the global community. ” That is, a “global community” that’s safely profitable for Facebook and HP, wherever in the world they might choose to operate. Will these efforts at spinning globalism succeed? Will the globalists be permitted to keep inflating their financial bubbles — and keep getting bailed out when they pop? The Davosians surely hope so, but it’s possible, after Trump (and before Trump, Brexit) that the jig is up. But wait! There’s still hope for the globalists. The new American president might not think much of Davos, but the president of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping, thinks differently. Indeed, he is scheduled to speak at Davos in a few days it will the appearance by a Chinese head of state. We can assume, of course, that Xi, picking up the torch from, say, Barack Obama, will offer a defense of globalism after all, globalism has been very, very good for his country. 4. Trump’s Moment, In the meantime, the eyes of the world are on the 45th president. As noted in Part One, Trump’s energetic economic activism is already making itself felt: And the good news has continues to pour forth: Just on January 12, Amazon announced that it would commit to creating 100, 000 new jobs in the US. Moreover, on January 13, Lockheed, which had earlier been chastised by Trump for announced that it would pledge not only lower costs for its fighter, but also an additional 1800 jobs in Texas. As Virgil also noted earlier, it’s astonishing that past presidents didn’t engage in this sort of economic patriotism perhaps they didn’t know how, or perhaps they didn’t care. In any case, Trump does know how, and he does care. And the American people are noticing. According to a January 10 Quinnipiac Poll, 47 percent of Americans believe that Trump’s economic policies will help the economy, while only 31 percent say they will hurt. In other words, Trump has already built for himself a advantage on that question. And his presidency has not yet even begun. To be sure, in the next few years, Trump, and his team, will be tested again and again. And while it’s impossible to predict the future, it would be foolish to bet against them. | 1 |
During Friday’s Weekly Address, President Donald Trump discussed the importance of women to the economy, saying he will deliver on his promise to help women in the workforce and ensuring they have “equal access to the capital, markets and networks of support that they need. ” Transcript as follows: My fellow Americans, we have taken major steps during the first few weeks of my administration to remove wasteful regulations and get our people back to work. I’ve been saying I was going to do that for a long time. This week, I signed two pieces of legislation to remove burdens on our economy, continued to keep my promises to the American people, and so much more. I signed House Joint Resolution 38, which eliminates an regulation put forward by unelected bureaucrats. Our coal miners have been treated horribly, and we are going to turn that around, and we’re gonna turn it around quickly. We are going to fight for lower energy prices for all Americans as part of the deal. That’s why I also signed a resolution to eliminate a costly regulation imposed on American energy companies. By stopping this regulation, we were able to save American companies and workers millions and millions of dollars in compliance costs. But to truly succeed as a country, we must realize the full potential of women in our economy. That is why I was thrilled to host the White House’s Women Business Leaders Roundtable. Very exciting. Great women. As president, I am committed to ensuring that women entrepreneurs have equal access to the capital, markets and networks of support that they need — and I mean really need. And it’s going to happen. This is a priority for my administration. I campaigned on helping women in the workforce and we are going to deliver on that promise, believe me. In fact, as part of my first official meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, this week we announced the creation of the Joint United Council for Advancement of Women Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders. Actually, very exciting. The United States also reaffirmed our unbreakable bond this week with our cherished ally Israel. It was an honor to welcome my friend Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House. I affirmed to the prime minister America’s commitment to working with Israel and our allies and partners toward greater security and stability. The threat of terrorism — and believe me it is a threat — must be confronted and defeated and we will defeat it. We share with Israel our deep conviction that we must protect all innocent human life. So as you head into Presidents’ Day weekend, the American people should know that we are working tirelessly on your behalf. We are not here for the benefit of bureaucrats, consultants or pundits. We are here to work for you and only for you, the American people. Thank you, God bless you and God bless America. Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 1 |
posted by Eddie When it comes to brute force, law enforcement and private security currently have the upper hand on the ground in Standing Rock, North Dakota. They’re employing armored vehicles, riot gear, tasers, rubber bullets, pepper spray, sound cannons, and other shows of force against peaceful opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline. But unlike most of the corporate media, the Internet is taking note of the struggle at Standing Rock and is trying to do its part to contribute to the protests. Over the weekend, unconfirmed reports emerged that police were using Facebook check-ins at Standing Rock to track individuals who arrived at the location to join water protectors. As word spread of the apparent news, the Internet stepped up to neutralize the power of the police-surveillance state.
Shortly after, Facebook users from around the country and world began checking into Standing Rock, which registers as Cannon Ball, North Dakota, in an effort to confuse police. According to a statement many posters are copying and pasting: “ The Morton County Sheriff’s Department has been using Facebook check-ins to find out who is at Standing Rock in order to target them in attempts to disrupt the prayer camps. SO Water Protectors are calling on EVERYONE to check-in at Standing Rock, ND to overwhelm and confuse them. This is concrete action that can protect people putting their bodies and well-beings on the line that we can do without leaving our homes. “ Others merely checked in while still others added their own commentary. “ If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor ,” wrote Patrick Quinn below his check-in. Shortly after, Facebook users from around the country and world began checking into Standing Rock, which registers as Cannon Ball, North Dakota, in an effort to confuse police. According to a statement many posters are copying and pasting: “ The Morton County Sheriff’s Department has been using Facebook check-ins to find out who is at Standing Rock in order to target them in attempts to disrupt the prayer camps. SO Water Protectors are calling on EVERYONE to check-in at Standing Rock, ND to overwhelm and confuse them. This is concrete action that can protect people putting their bodies and well-beings on the line that we can do without leaving our homes. “ Others merely checked in while still others added their own commentary. “ If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor ,” wrote Patrick Quinn below his check-in. “ Messing with fascists ,” Luba Petrusha commented. While the troll effort is exciting, it’s unclear whether the efforts are having an effect. According to Snopes, a self-described fact-checking blog whose conclusions are generally reliable , police claim they are not using Facebook to track protesters. Snopes reported “ [a Morton County] officer explained not only that they were not using Facebook check-ins as a gauge of anything, but that the metric presented no intelligence value to them. The rumor suggested that protesters cited Facebook check-ins as a manner in which police could target them, but check-ins were voluntary — and if police were using geolocation tools based on mobile devices, remote check-ins would not confuse or overwhelm them.” Snopes also claimed it spoke to protesters within a large camp at Standing Rock who said they did not issue a call to Internet users to check in. Nevertheless, they reportedly said they appreciated the show of solidarity. Regardless of whether or not the online check-ins have any effect, the Internet has played a decisive role in the developing events in North Dakota. Livestreams have documented serious violations of free speech and the right to protest, and Facebook was accused of blocking such footage on at least one occasion. Amid the ongoing lack of mainstream coverage , the independent media has successfully drawn attention to the Standing Rock protests. Considering the establishment has come out in full force in North Dakota, from their use of surveillance to their haphazard employment of heavily armed police, the increasing number of check-ins at Standing Rock shows just how much technology empowers people. Even if police aren’t scouring social media and the check-ins fail to produce any tangible result, the rapid mobilization of efforts highlights a growing sense of opposition to unjust and exploitative power — and thanks to the Internet, the world is watching. source: | 0 |
None of the men in the Man Book Club had a problem with the scene in “The Power of the Dog,” a 1967 novel by Thomas Savage. But more than one member of this reading group in Marin County, Calif. got squeamish when the host announced that the taco appetizers he had prepared that night were filled with Rocky Mountain oysters — that is, animal testicles. “The fun part was looking at the expressions,” said the club’s founder, Andrew McCullough, 53. “Some guys had real difficulty swallowing. I kept eating. I have standards I need to adhere to, as secretary and founder. ” The Man Book Club is going into its ninth year. It has 16 members, a number of whom are lawyers and engineers in their . Each month, the host must prepare a meal appropriate to the book under discussion. There was an French supper to accompany Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer” and a meal of refined comfort food presented on TV trays for Bill Bryson’s memoir, “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. ” “I was always a little jealous of my wife’s book clubs,” Mr. McCullough said. “Now our wives are jealous of us. We’ve created something that is more durable. The book club my wife belongs to — there’s a lot of changeover. ” Women, it seems, can afford to drop in and out of reading groups. In its 2011 survey of voluntary organizations, the Pew Research Center found that 11 percent of Americans were active in “literary, discussion or study groups such as book clubs” and that women were more than twice as likely to take part in such gatherings as men were. Perhaps because participation in reading groups is perceived as a female activity, some book clubs have an outsize need to proclaim the endeavor’s masculinity. In addition to going by the name the Man Book Club, for instance, Mr. McCullough’s group expresses its notion of manliness through the works it chooses to read. “We do not read chick lit,” he said. “The main character cannot be a woman. ” This is detailed in the Man Book Club’s criteria, on the group’s website: “No books by women about women (our cardinal rule)”. The members of the club rate books on a scale of 1 to 10. The leader, with a score of 8. 8, is “Nobody’s Fool” by Richard Russo the book, at 3. 3, is “Oscar and Lucinda” by Peter Carey. Another reading group, this one with a name even more insistently macho than that of the Man Book Club, is the International Ultra Manly Book Club, of Kansas City, Kan. It was started by a group of college friends, and its website hammers home its identity through prominent images of Chuck Norris, Dwayne Johnson (better known as the Rock) and Oprah Winfrey, standing before an Oprah’s Book Club logo beneath the legend “Not Your Mother’s Book Club. ” Unlike the Marin County group, the International Ultra Manly Book Club is not big on the element. When one of its members does bring food to one of the monthly it tends to be “manly — like, spicy,” said John Creagar, 32, one of the regulars. In explaining the club’s purpose, the International Ultra Manly Book Club website makes explicit the notion that men take literature as seriously as women. The “About Us” section says it was founded, in part, on the vision that “one day we could step out of the shadow of our mothers’ book clubs and proclaim that yes, we too, are intellectuals. ” If that mission statement seems a tad defensive, there are indeed women who treat book clubs as entities that lie beyond the masculine sphere. Two years ago, Edward Nawotka, 44, a writer and editor in Houston, was out for drinks with the guys from his reading group, the Houston Men’s Book Club, when a woman started hitting on its president. “She asked how we knew each other, and when we said, ‘book club,’ she was like, ‘Wait, are you gay? ’” Mr. Nawotka said. (He added that he and the woman ended up dating.) He said he understood her reaction. “Fiction is designed to examine empathy,” Mr. Nawotka said. “Men aren’t encouraged to talk about their feelings or emotions in public. When your friend gets divorced, you don’t sit around with the guys wondering, ‘How do you think Jon feels about getting divorced? ’” But over discussions of José Saramago, Haruki Murakami and Anthony Doerr, the 15 members of his group have formed a bond. “We’ve seen each other through family tragedies,” Mr. Nawotka said. “When I needed a divorce attorney, I turned to these guys. ” And when the founding member’s wife died from cancer, all the club members attended the funeral. Jon Tomlinson is the founder of the NYC Gay Guys’ Book Club, which meets at the Jefferson Market Library in New York City and has 1, 200 members in its Meetup. com group. Anywhere from 10 to 60 men show up at the monthly meetings. “People come to connect, to find their place in a new city, to fall in love,” Mr. Tomlinson said. Especially popular NYC Gay Guys’ Book Club novels have included “Giovanni’s Room” by James Baldwin, “A Single Man” by Christopher Isherwood and “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt, Mr. Tomlinson said. The selection process, he added, is largely democratic, but at times he feels obligated to vet suggestions. “Some guy wanted to read a book on lesbians who were persecuted in Russia,” he said. “I’m not going to get people to read that book. ” For the International Ultra Manly Book Club, in Kansas City, the monthly meetings provide a space to explore literary depictions of what it means to be a man. The regulars have considered the issue while discussing everything from “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” by Seth to “Rabbit, Run” by John Updike. “Manliness means something different for all of us,” Mr. Creagar said. But all the members share a love of books. “There’s this idea that if guys read, we don’t think that deeply about it,” Mr. Creagar said. The club rates the books it reads on a system for overall quality, and on a system for “manliness. ” “Gilead,” by Marilynne Robinson, for instance, earned four and a half stars and three hand grenades. Mr. Creagar suspects there are many male readers who would love to join a book club. “But they don’t get asked,” he said, “or they worry that, if they do join, they’ll be seen as intruding on a female activity or stigmatized as being the only guy. ” For this reason, the International Ultra Manly Book Club sees itself as a resource for men seeking a literary community. In addition to listing its reading schedule, its site includes “best of” lists, including the “Top 100 Books for Every Man. ” Though it includes rough stuff like “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” by Hunter Thompson and “Blood Meridian” by Cormac McCarthy, the list has room for gentler works, like “The Chronicles of Narnia” by C. S. Lewis and the Harry Potter series. And yet the group has standards. “We are not allowed to suggest books that our mothers have suggested,” Mr. Creagar said. “We had an accident one time. We read ‘Water for Elephants.’ It was a huge mistake. ” | 1 |
Politics US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump gestures while speaking to a crowd of donors at the McGlohon Theater in Charlotte, North Carolina, on October 26, 2016. (Photo by AFP)
US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will win the November 8 election, says an American professor who has correctly predicted almost every presidential election in the United States.
Professor Helmut Norpoth, of New York’s SUNY Stony Brook University, said his model shows Trump performed comparatively better in the primaries so he will triumph next month, The Independent reported on Thursday.
Norpoth developed a model which, when applied retroactively, successfully predicted every presidential election in the United States since 1912 all but one, which was the 2000 election, when it said Democratic nominee Al Gore would beat Republican candidate George W. Bush. But instead Bush won the election.
Al Gore won the popular vote, but Bush was awarded more votes in the Electoral College following a disputed result in Florida. So Bush was declared winner.
The political scientist’s model suggests that the person who emerges as the strongest candidate in the primaries will go on to win the presidency.
“I think he was the strongest candidate in the primaries and that he will prevail,” Professor Norpoth told the New York Post .
“The model predicted a Trump win in February and nothing has changed since then. Whatever happens in the real world doesn’t affect the model,” he stated. US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton Professor of Political Science at Stony Brook Helmut Norpoth, New York
Recent polls show that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton Clinton’s national lead over Trump is shrinking as Election Day is approaching.
The former secretary of state has the support of 49 percent of likely voters, while the billionaire businessman has 44 percent support, according to the CNN/ORC survey released on Monday.
In addition, preliminary figures suggest the US presidential race remains tight in so-called swing states, despite boasting by Clinton’s campaign that she is far ahead.
Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, has an edge in several of the roughly 10 swing states that will decide the 2016 White House race.
Trump has also potential advantages of his own in some battleground states.
On Wednesday, Trump said that he would win the key battleground states of Ohio, Florida and North Carolina, that could help him claim the election. "I think I'm gonna win," Trump told ABC News.
The billionaire said that he intends to pour in millions of dollars in the final days of the campaign. Loading ... | 0 |
Will Trump Resist War Hawks on Iran? November 15, 2016
Though President-elect Trump seems ready to reduce tensions with Russia, his consideration of neocon John Bolton as Secretary of State could presage more Mideast warmongering toward Iran, writes Gareth Porter at Middle East Eye.
By Gareth Porter
Post-election comments on Middle East policy last week by President-elect Donald Trump and one his campaign advisers have provoked speculation about whether Trump will upend two main foreign policy lines of the Obama administration in the Middle East.
But the more decisive question about the future of U.S. policy toward the region is whom Trump will pick for his national security team – and especially whether he will nominate John Bolton to become Secretary of State. Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton.
Bolton, one of the most notorious members of Dick Cheney’s team plotting wars in the George W. Bush administration, would certainly push for the effective nullification of the main political barrier to U.S. confrontation with Iran: the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal.
Trump created a minor stir by giving an interview to the Wall Street Journal last Thursday in which he reiterated his criticism of the Obama administration’s involvement in the war against Syria’s Assad and supported cooperation with Russia against the Islamic State group. And a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser once connected with an extremist sectarian Christian militia in Lebanon named Walid Phares suggested in an interview with BBC radio that Trump would demand that Iran “change [a] few issues” in the agreement and that “the agreement as it is right now … is not going to be accepted by a Trump administration”.
The significance of that interview, however, is very unclear. Trump himself had avoided threatening such a move during the campaign, denouncing the nuclear agreement as “disastrous” but avoiding any pledge to renounce it as his Republican rivals Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio had done. In his speech to AIPAC, Trump thundered against the agreement but promised only to enforce it strictly and hold Iran “accountable.”
Trump has consistently embraced the long-standing official U.S. animosity toward Iran, but thus far he has given no indication that he intends to provoke an unnecessary crisis with Iran.
In any case, Trump’s own views will only be the starting point for policymaking on Syria and Iran. His national security team will have the power to initiate policy proposals as well as effective veto power over Trump’s foreign policy preferences. That is why Trump’s choices of nominations for the top positions on national security will certainly be the crucial factor in determining what policy lines ultimately emerge on those issues – and why the real possibility of Bolton’s nomination as Secretary of State now represents the greatest threat to international peace and security.
Undermining Obama
Barack Obama became president with a firm intention to get U.S. combat forces out of Iraq within 16 months as he had promised during the campaign. But in his very first meeting with CENTCOM Commander Gen. David Petraeus, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen in late January 2009, Petraeus and his two allies pressed Obama to back down on his pledge, arguing that it wasn’t realistic. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on May 1, 2011, watching developments in the Special Forces raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Neither played a particularly prominent role in the operation. (White House photo by Pete Souza)
In the end, Obama accepted a scheme devised by the military and Pentagon officials under which combat brigades remained in Iraq long after the August 2010 Obama deadline for their withdrawal with no reduction in combat capability. They were simply given additional tasks of advising and assisting Iraqi military units and renamed “advisory and assistance brigades.”
Later in 2009, Obama’s national security team, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, pushed for a major U.S. military escalation in Afghanistan in 2009-2010. Obama didn’t buy the arguments by Petraeus, Gates and Mullen for a huge increase in U.S. troops in Afghanistan. He and Vice-President Joe Biden argued that the implosion of Pakistan was a much bigger problem than Afghanistan and that there was no evidence of a threat that Al Qaeda would return to Afghanistan. But the war coalition leaked a story to the press that the White House was ignoring a new intelligence assessment that the Afghan Taliban would invite Al Qaeda back into the country if they won the war.
In fact, the intelligence community had produced no such assessment, but the proponents of a big counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan were demonstrating their power to use the media to raise the political cost to Obama of resisting their demand. Obama gave in on the additional troops, again imposing a deadline for their withdrawal, and the U.S. is still engaged in a losing war in Afghanistan seven years later.
Those largely unknown episodes underline just how vulnerable Donald Trump will be as president to pressures from his national security team to support policies with which he may disagree – unless he chooses people who agree with his policy preferences. But Trump has a peculiar problem in that regard. Because he has already alienated virtually the entire Republican Party national security elite by attacking sacred cows such as NATO, and he has been boycotted by the corps of senior officials from the George W. Bush administration – except for Bolton.
War with Iran
Although he is best known as U.S. Ambassador the United Nations in the George. W. Bush administration, it was in his previous role as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security from 2001 through 2004 that he played his most important role in U.S. foreign policy. Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani celebrates the completion of an interim deal on Iran’s nuclear program on Nov. 24, 2013, by kissing the head of the daughter of an assassinated Iranian nuclear engineer. (Iranian government photo)
Although the story was never covered in the corporate news media, I have recounted in my history of the Iran nuclear issue how Bolton, with the full approval of Vice President Dick Cheney and in coordination with Israel, began in 2003 to implement a strategy aimed ultimately at maneuvering the U.S. into a military confrontation with Iran. The strategy relied on the accusation that the Islamic Republic was carrying out a covert nuclear weapons program.
Bolton and Cheney failed to get their war with Iran, and Bolton was moved to the United Nations in the second Bush term. But Bolton has never stopped talking about the need for the United States to bomb Iran.
In a New York Post op-ed on Nov. 14, he called on Trump to “abrogate” the nuclear agreement on his first day in office. He wants to be Secretary of State in order to pursue just such a policy, and he is under serious consideration, according to news reports last week. If he were nominated as Secretary of State it would be an open invitation for more plotting of schemes within the Trump administration for the war against Iran that Bolton still craves.
Bolton would not necessarily prevail in pushing for a direct military confrontation with Iran over the nuclear issue, because the U.S. military would probably exercise its veto over any policy that risks war with Iran. But he could nevertheless provoke a crisis with Iran by subverting the agreement itself. He would begin by trying to get Trump to stop using his presidential waiver power to carry out its provisions on lifting sanctions against Iran.
Under normal circumstances, Bolton would never have a chance to reprise his role as war provocateur, but the political circumstances today are anything but normal. There is a very real danger that the Trump transition team will turn to him because it sees no alternative among the usual suspects.
The only alternative is to turn to a seasoned diplomat who has not served in senior national security positions in a Republican administration. And if the choices for other top positions are not determined to avoid the kind of confrontation that Bolton would try to provoke, he could conceivably succeed.
So the disintegration of the political order controlled by the old Democratic and Republican party elites could spawn new threats of war unless Trump and his advisers are clever enough to see the need to avoid them in their choices of national security officials in the coming days.
Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism. He is the author of the newly published Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare . [This story originally appeared in Middle East Eya.] | 0 |
Amusing comment Gary! “Those week!” So, are you saying with that sentence that press only has followers for one week ? Or are you saying that the press rules the weak ? | 0 |
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Election eve, one finds the nation itself to be more pathetically unaware than the leading candidates are evil (morally reprehensible, arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct), although the margin of difference is negligible. The crowds gathered to hear Clinton and Trump, t-shirts and hoodies decorated with campaign slogans, are two sides of the same mindless fascistic adoration of power, righteousness, indignation, a voluntary submission betraying the same ideological convictions of American exceptionalism and psychodynamics of gut hatred for and fear of difference from themselves and image of ethnocentric superiority.
Study the faces as the news cameras pan the waiting lines or audiences, smugness, occasional contorted features, feigned innocence disguising certitude. The emptiness of the American public, obediently laying down before billionaire wealth and militaristic narcissism (here self-love engendered through capitalism and assisted by compulsive attachment to the hegemonic purposes of the State). Each side, contemptuous of the other, in reality, brothers/sisters-in-arms, raises to leadership the perfect expression of their own, and hence similar if not identical, needs for recognition to cover their inner nakedness of spirit and purpose.
Trump, a bottomless pit of mammon-worship, Clinton, a sinkhole of war and aggression, express the fusion of capitalism and militarism, each in America vital to the presence and fruition of the other, that typifies the national mission of unilateral global domination. It was not always thus, although historical-institutional development pointed the direction for at least a century, when America outstripped its earlier foundations, the normalization of advanced industrial capitalism, to claim world moral-political pre-eminence based on spurious privileged association with God in carrying out His/Her divine mission of promised economic salvation.
The formula has been a surefire winner because scrupulously backed by the real or implied threat (and use) of force, a silent militarism when not engaged in war to announce global financial-and-market penetration presumed to be uncontested (or when contested, the mark of the adversary). Exceptionalism is the ideological battering ram to knock down all opposition, and for those standing in line for the political bread-and-circuses of the two major parties, a validation of their distorted hatreds brought on by their own subordination in the great chain of capitalist being.
If deep-down, though not consciously admitted, there is recognition of systemic rottenness in misshaping their yearnings and thwarting their present wellbeing and future prospects, this throws them, again both sides of the supposed political divide, into the arms of the Leadership Structure not unlike the authoritarian submission characterizing fascism in the transition from Weimar to Nazi Germany. (To be still in the transition phase and not to have as yet crossed the line, holds little promise of reversion to democratic government; too much has happened to suggest drawing back from the brink.) Collective ego-loss, seen in the faces of the ecstatic political faithful, the now-worshippers of power, goes a long way to explaining the candidates and their visions on offer.
A closed system awaits the body politic. There is little room for turning left or right, when the center subsumes an already hard-bitten right and the near-ejection of the left from the political spectrum. The vanished center, however fictitious, is kept alive for purposes of self-deception and authoritative indoctrination, a useful cloak for democratic pretentions, as meanwhile the society is placed, willingly so, on a permanent footing of structural hierarchy at home, incessant intervention abroad. The interests of capitalism must be guarded (and celebrated) at all times, lest an alternative way of life become visible, founded on humane standards of international peace and societal betterment. To break out of the present imprisonment in invidious class debasement, is more painful, given long-term ideological habituation, than risking a future of freedom (of system, of conscience, of social solidarity).
Thus, only days remain in the exercise of meaningless choice. After that, one can expect few impedances to the downward cast of policy, with increasing risks of war, class division, false consciousness to grease the rails of additional discontents as context for resentments and hatreds poisoning the atmosphere. More environmental spoliation, more gun violence, as tokens of the wayward path to fascism. | 0 |
MI5: Bonds to save UK from Russian spies 02.11.2016 Andrew Parker, Head of the British Counter-Intelligence Servive MI5, claimed that Russia is a growing threat to the stability of Great Britain and is using all the possible tools to attain its goals. In an interview with the Guardian, Parker said, 'It is using its whole range of state organs and powers to push its foreign policy abroad in increasingly aggressive ways - involving propaganda, espionage, subversion and cyber-attacks'. According to him, Russia is currently working across the whole Europe and the UK, and the MI5 is to oppose it. There re a lot of Russian intelligence officers in the territory of Great Britain, but what is different from the cold war is that there is cyberwarfare today. Russia tries to get military secrets, information about industrial projects, economy, government and foreign policy, Director-General of the Security Service stated. As Pravda.Ru reported, before that the US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton claimed that Russia was responsible for cyber attacks on the US. The US special services went all out to spy on Moscow. It is planned that underground CIA agents will be involved as well as abilities of the NSA within cyber espionage, satellite systems and other means. Russia in its turn allocates minimum funds for espionage. Pravda.Ru | 0 |
Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” network personality Geraldo Rivera announced he was withdrawing his opposition to a border. Rivera, who has had some heated on O’Reilly’s show over the past decade on the issue of immigration, acknowledged that elections have consequences, therefore he doesn’t oppose the wall — despite thinking it was a waste of money. “I’m going to shock you. I am withdrawing my opposition to the wall,” Rivera said. “No, listen, elections have consequences. This was his signature issue, and if the people want the wall, which I think is a waste of money. ” “Geraldo is down with the wall now,” O’Reilly replied. “And you know, I think you should have a piece full wall … sponsored by Geraldo. You could have your picture there. “You’re going to have a $ wall and a $25 ladder and the ladder will triumph,” Rivera added. Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor | 1 |
Home / Be The Change / Government Corruption / Due Process is Dead: A Staggering 95% of All Inmates in America Have Never Received a Trial Due Process is Dead: A Staggering 95% of All Inmates in America Have Never Received a Trial Claire Bernish January 25, 2016 268 Comments
In the Land of the Free, one-quarter of the entire planet’s prison population, some 2.2 million people, currently languish behind bars; yet, an astonishing number of them — around 2 million — have never been to trial . Indeed, these figures categorically debunk the notion the criminal justice system in the United States maintains any semblance of its formation’s original intent: to ensure the guilty suffer punishment befitting their crimes, while the innocent avoid false conviction.
As the fundamental basis for the justice system in the United States, the Sixth Amendment states: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.”
Justice, as an untold — though no doubt, appalling — number can attest, has been utterly abandoned for the interests of the careless expedience , apathetic convenience, and unabashed profiteering of the U.S. prison-industrial machine.
“The reality is that almost no one who is imprisoned in America has gotten a trial,” explains award-winning journalist, Chris Hedges, in a recent Truthdig column . “There is rarely an impartial investigation. A staggering 97 percent of all federal cases and 95 percent of all state felony cases are resolved through plea bargaining.” Of those millions who bargained away their right to a trial by accepting plea deals, “significant percentages of them are innocent.”
Plea bargaining failed in its attempt to facilitate pragmatic justice seen in earlier courts, before the advent of the “adversary system and the related development of the law of evidence,” as John H. Langein once described . After the Civil War, as Judge Jed S. Rakoff explained in the New York Review of Books , rising crime and immigration rates began to burden the system and plea bargains offered an acceptable solution. In other words, court proceedings were at one time swift and simple, and though such expediency might have seemed a desirable quality in the past, the incontrovertible reality at present is a system wholly focused on speed at the expense of the necessary — in fact, imperative — assumption of innocence of the accused.
Indeed, for incontrovertible proof the court system no longer functions for the people — neither in its capacity to protect the public from the actual criminals, nor in its ostensible assurances no innocent person will be punished unfairly — take even a cursory glance at the trial system. Plea bargains have actualized a replacement of justice with a farcical, well-oiled machine of incarceration. “In actuality,” as Rakoff described, “our criminal justice system is almost exclusively a system of plea bargaining, negotiated behind closed doors and with no judicial oversight. The outcome is very largely determined by the prosecutor alone.”
Of all federal criminal cases, “fewer than 3 percent went to trial. The plea bargains largely determined the sentences imposed.”
Plea deals are presented to defendants as a way to escape the near certainty of a heavy-handed sentence should they be found guilty by a jury at trial — because defense attorneys’ and prosecutors’ most pressing goal is to prevent a trial in the first place. “Once you are charged in America,” Hedges said, “whether you did the crime or not, you are almost always found guilty.”
In part, such ‘unconditional guilt’ begat the need for The Innocence Project — “a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.” Since 1989, there have been 337 DNA-related exonerations with individuals having served a combined total of around 4,606 unjustified years — an average of 14 years, each, before being freed. Of those 337 cases, 31 individuals , who had served over 150 combined years, “pled guilty to crimes they didn’t commit — usually seeking to avoid the potential for a long sentence (or a death sentence),” states The Innocence Project’s website.
“If all of the accused went to trial, the judicial system, which is designed around plea agreements, would collapse. And this is why trial sentences are horrific. It is why public attorneys routinely urge their clients to accept a plea arrangement. Trials are a flashing red light to the accused: DO NOT DO THIS. It is the inversion of justice. ” Of the students he teaches in prison, those “who have the longest sentences are usually the ones who demanded a trial.”
While the rich and powerful, especially those associated with corporations and banks , are able to escape significant punishment — even when their crimes affect millions of people, such as those complicit in the 2008 financial crash — the poor, whether guilty or not, fall victim to this slanted system. As Hedges summarized:
“If you are poor, you will be railroaded in an assembly-line production, from a town or city where there are no jobs, through the police stations, county jails and courts directly into prison. And if you are poor, because you don’t have any money for adequate legal defense, you will serve sentences that are decades longer than those for equivalent crimes anywhere else in the industrialized world … Being poor has become a crime. And this makes mass incarceration the most pressing civil rights issue of our era.” Share | 0 |
by Yves Smith
By Gaius Publius , a professional writer living on the West Coast of the United States and frequent contributor to DownWithTyranny, digby, Truthout, and Naked Capitalism. Follow him on Twitter @Gaius_Publius , Tumblr and Facebook . Originally published at at Down With Tyranny . GP article archive here . Originally published at DownWithTyranny
Proposed pipeline routes through the Middle East to gas markets in Europe. The purple line is the Western-supported Qatar-Turkey pipeline. All of the nations it passes through — Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey (all highlighted in red) — have agreed to it … except Syria. The red line is the “Islamic Pipeline” from Iran through Iraq into Syria. See text below for further explanation. (Source: MintPress News ; click to enlarge)
Summary first: We have been at war in Syria over pipelines since 1949. This is just the next mad phase.
I’m not sure most Americans have figured out what’s happening in Syria, because so much of what we hear is confusing to us, and really, we know so little of the context for it. Is it an insurgency against a brutal ruler? Is it a group of insurgencies struggling for power in a nearly failed state? Is it a proxy war expressing the territorial and ideological interests of the U.S., Russia, Turkey and Iran?
Or something else?
According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. it is something else — a war between competing national interests to build, or not build, a pipeline to the Mediterranean so natural gas can be exported to Europe. Inconveniently for Syria, that nation lies along an obvious pipeline route.
Which makes it another war between interests for money — something not very hard to understand at all.
Here’s Kennedy’s argument via EcoWatch. This is a long piece, well worth a full read, but I’ll try to present just the relevant sections here.
The Historical Context: Decades of CIA-Sponsored Coups and Counter-Coups in Syria
Kennedy’s introductory section contains an excellent examination of the history of U.S. involvement in Syria starting in the 1950s with the Cold War machinations of the Eisenhower-appointed Dulles brothers, John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State, and Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA. Together, they effectively ruled U.S. foreign policy.
Kennedy writes (my emphasis):
Syria: Another Pipeline War
… America’s unsavory record of violent interventions in Syria—obscure to the American people yet well known to Syrians —sowed fertile ground for the violent Islamic Jihadism that now complicates any effective response by our government to address the challenge of ISIS. So long as the American public and policymakers are unaware of this past, further interventions are likely to only compound the crisis. Moreover, our enemies delight in our ignorance.
… [W]e need to look at history from the Syrians’ perspective and particularly the seeds of the current conflict. Long before our 2003 occupation of Iraq triggered the Sunni uprising that has now morphed into the Islamic State, the CIA had nurtured violent Jihadism as a Cold War weapon and freighted U.S./Syrian relationships with toxic baggage.
During the 1950’s, President Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers rebuffed Soviet treaty proposals to leave the Middle East a cold war neutral zone and let Arabs rule Arabia. Instead, they mounted a clandestine war against Arab Nationalism—which CIA Director Allan [sic] Dulles equated with communism—particularly when Arab self-rule threatened oil concessions. They pumped secret American military aid to tyrants in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon favoring puppets with conservative Jihadist ideologies which they regarded as a reliable antidote to Soviet Marxism. At a White House meeting between the CIA’s Director of Plans, Frank Wisner, and Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, in September of 1957, Eisenhower advised the agency, “We should do everything possible to stress the ‘holy war’ aspect.”
The CIA began its active meddling in Syria in 1949 —barely a year after the agency’s creation. Syrian patriots had declared war on the Nazis, expelled their Vichy French colonial rulers and crafted a fragile secularist democracy based on the American model. But in March of 1949, Syria’s democratically elected president, Shukri-al-Kuwaiti, hesitated to approve the Trans Arabian Pipeline, an American project intended to connect the oil fields of Saudi Arabia to the ports of Lebanon via Syria. In his book, Legacy of Ashes , CIA historian Tim Weiner recounts that in retaliation, the CIA engineered a coup , replacing al-Kuwaiti with the CIA’s handpicked dictator , a convicted swindler named Husni al-Za’im. Al-Za’im barely had time to dissolve parliament and approve the American pipeline before his countrymen deposed him , 14 weeks into his regime.
Kennedy then details the history of coups and counter-coups in and against Syria, and concludes this section with this:
Thanks in large part to Allan Dulles and the CIA, whose foreign policy intrigues were often directly at odds with the stated policies of our nation, the idealistic path outlined in the Atlantic Charter was the road not taken. In 1957, my grandfather, Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, sat on a secret committee charged with investigating CIA’s clandestine mischief in the Mid-East . The so called “Bruce Lovett Report,” to which he was a signatory, described CIA coup plots in Jordan, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Egypt, all common knowledge on the Arab street, but virtually unknown to the American people who believed, at face value, their government’s denials.
The report blamed the CIA for the rampant anti-Americanism that was then mysteriously taking root “in the many countries in the world today.”… A parade of Iranian and Syrian dictators, including Bashar al-Assad and his father , have invoked the history of the CIA’s bloody coups as a pretext for their authoritarian rule, repressive tactics and their need for a strong Russian alliance. These stories are therefore well known to the people of Syria and Iran who naturally interpret talk of U.S. intervention in the context of that history.
While the compliant American press parrots the narrative that our military support for the Syrian insurgency is purely humanitarian, many Syrians see the present crisis as just another proxy war over pipelines and geopolitics. Before rushing deeper into the conflagration, it would be wise for us to consider the abundant facts supporting that perspective.
So much for our supposed interest in “humanitarian” intervention in Syria. From a Syrian point of view, it has never been thus. It has been about pipelines since 1949, and they understand that, even if we don’t.
The Current Conflagration
Kennedy then turns to the present, or the near-present. Refer to the map above as you read:
A Pipeline War
In [the Syrians’] view, our war against Bashar Assad did not begin with the peaceful civil protests of the Arab Spring in 2011. Instead it began in 2000 when Qatar proposed to construct a $10 billion, 1,500km pipeline through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey .
Qatar shares with Iran, the South Pars/North Dome gas field, the world’s richest natural gas repository. The international trade embargo, until recently, prohibited Iran from selling gas abroad and ensured that Qatar’s gas could only reach European markets if it is liquefied and shipped by sea, a route that restricts volume and dramatically raises costs.
The EU, which gets 30 percent of its gas from Russia, was equally hungry for the pipeline which would have given its members cheap energy and relief from Vladimir Putin’s stifling economic and political leverage. Turkey, Russia’s second largest gas customer, was particularly anxious to end its reliance on its ancient rival and to position itself as the lucrative transect hub for Asian fuels to EU markets. The Qatari pipeline would have benefited Saudi Arabia’s conservative Sunni Monarchy by giving them a foothold in Shia dominated Syria.
The Saudi’s geopolitical goal is to contain the economic and political power of the Kingdom’s principal rival, Iran , a Shiite state, and close ally of Bashar Assad. The Saudi monarchy viewed the U.S. sponsored Shia takeover in Iraq as a demotion to its regional power and was already engaged in a proxy war against Tehran in Yemen, highlighted by the Saudi genocide against the Iranian backed Houthi tribe.
Which puts the Qatari pipeline squarely opposite to Russia’s national interest — natural gas (methane) sales to Europe.
Of course, the Russians, who sell 70 percent of their gas exports to Europe, viewed the Qatar/Turkey pipeline as an existential threat. In Putin’s view, the Qatar pipeline is a NATO plot to change the status quo, deprive Russia of its only foothold in the Middle East, strangle the Russian economy and end Russian leverage in the European energy market. In 2009, Assad announced that he would refuse to sign the agreement to allow the pipeline to run through Syria “to protect the interests of our Russian ally.”
That was likely the last straw vis-à-vis the U.S. Which brings us to another pipeline, the so-called “Islamic Pipeline” (see map above):
“Assad further enraged the Gulf’s Sunni monarchs by endorsing a Russian approved “Islamic pipeline” running from Iran’s side of the gas field through Syria and to the ports of Lebanon. The Islamic pipeline would make Shia Iran instead of Sunni Qatar, the principal supplier to the European energy market and dramatically increase Tehran’s influence in the Mid-East and the world. Israel also was understandably determined to derail the Islamic pipeline which would enrich Iran and Syria and presumably strengthen their proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.
Another, competing pipeline which would run through Syrian territory, but this time carrying Iranian gas instead of Qatari gas. Thus the demonizing of Assad as evil in the mold of Saddam Hussein, instead of just a run-of-the-mill Middle East autocrat, as bad as some but better than others. Kennedy includes a good section on the history of the al-Assad family’s rule of Syria, including this information from top reporters Sy Hersh and Robert Parry:
According to Hersh, “He certainly wasn’t beheading people every Wednesday like the Saudis do in Mecca.” Another veteran journalist, Bob Parry, echoes that assessment. “No one in the region has clean hands but in the realms of torture, mass killings, civil liberties and supporting terrorism, Assad is much better than the Saudis.”
In September 2013, the Sunni states involved in the Qatar-Turkey pipeline were so determined to remove Syrian opposition to the pipeline that they offered, via John Kerry, to carry the whole cost of an U.S. invasion to topple al-Assad.
Kerry reiterated the offer to Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL27): “With respect to Arab countries offering to bear the costs of [an American invasion] to topple Assad, the answer is profoundly Yes, they have. The offer is on the table.”
Obama’s response:
Despite pressure from Republicans, Barrack Obama balked at hiring out young Americans to die as mercenaries for a pipeline conglomerate . Obama wisely ignored Republican clamoring to put ground troops in Syria or to funnel more funding to “moderate insurgents.” But by late 2011, Republican pressure and our Sunni allies had pushed the American government into the fray.
The rest is a history of provocation and over-reaction — a great deal of both — and chaos and death in Syria. Kennedy provides much detail here, at one point adding:
[Syria’s] moderates are fleeing a war that is not their war . They simply want to escape being crushed between the anvil of Assad’s Russian backed tyranny and the vicious Jihadi Sunni hammer that we had a hand in wielding in a global battle over competing pipelines . You can’t blame the Syrian people for not widely embracing a blueprint for their nation minted in either Washington or Moscow. The super powers have left no options for an idealistic future that moderate Syrians might consider fighting for. And no one wants to die for a pipeline.
I’ll leave it there, but again, do read the entire piece if you want to truly understand what’s going on in Syria, and what is about to go on.
Bottom Line
Bottom line, it’s as Kennedy said: “No one wants to die for a pipeline”… but many do and will.
I’ll offer three thoughts. One , if we weren’t so determined to be deeply dependent on fossil fuels, this would be their war, not ours. Two , we are deeply dependent on fossil fuels because of the political machinations of the oil companies, their CEOs, and the banks and hedge funds who fund them, all of whom pay our government officials — via campaign contributions and the revolving door — to prolong that dependence. We’re here because the holders of big oil money want us here.
And three , keep all this in mind during the term of the next president. It will help you make sense of the phony warrior- cum -humanitarian arguments we’re almost certain to be subjected to.
We have been at war in Syria over pipelines since 1949. This is just the next mad phase. 0 0 0 0 1 1 | 0 |
Donald J. Trump became the presumptive Republican presidential nominee on Tuesday with a landslide win in Indiana that drove his principal opponent, Senator Ted Cruz, from the race and cleared the way for the polarizing, populist outsider to take control of the party. After months of sneering dismissals and expensive but impotent attacks from Republicans fearful of his candidacy, Mr. Trump is now positioned to clinch the required number of delegates for the nomination by the last day of voting on June 7. Facing only a feeble challenge from Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, Mr. Trump is all but certain to roll into the Republican convention in July with the party establishment’s official but uneasy embrace. In the Democratic contest, Senator Bernie Sanders rebounded from a string of defeats to prevail in Indiana over Hillary Clinton, who largely abandoned the state after polls showed her faring poorly with the predominantly white electorate. But the outcome was not expected to significantly change Mrs. Clinton’s sizable lead in delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination. Mr. Trump’s victory was an extraordinary moment in American political history: He is now on course to be the first of a party since Dwight D. Eisenhower, a general and the commander of Allied Forces in Europe during World War II, who had not served in elected office. Mr. Trump, a real estate tycoon turned reality television celebrity, was not a registered Republican until April 2012. He has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democrats, including his likely general election opponent, Mrs. Clinton. And, at various points in his life, he has held positions antithetical to Republican orthodoxy on almost every major issue in the conservative canon, including abortion, taxes, trade, and gun control. But none of this stopped him. With his ability to speak to the anxieties of voters, and his shrewd use of celebrity and memorable Mr. Trump systematically undercut veteran politicians in a field of candidates that many in the party had hailed as the strongest in at least three decades. He was underestimated by leading Republicans and Democrats time and again, and he succeeded while spending far less money than most of his rivals and employing only a skeletal campaign staff. After Mr. Cruz exited the race Tuesday night, Mr. Trump appeared subdued and projected a more sober than usual mien as he absorbed the ramifications of the Indiana victory. “It has been some unbelievable day and evening and year — never been through anything like this,” Mr. Trump said. Putting aside the venom he has spewed at Mr. Cruz this year, Mr. Trump said of the senator, “He is one hell of a competitor. ” He even veered toward empathy for Mr. Cruz, saying he knew how “tough it is” to be brought low by a brutal defeat. Of the 17 Republicans who ran for president this cycle, Mr. Cruz — a onetime ally of Mr. Trump’s — proved to be his strongest and most tenacious rival, winning 11 primaries and caucuses. But the senator’s appeal among traditional conservatives was no match for Mr. Trump’s fiery and uncompromising vow to fight for the interests of average Americans who have lost faith in the country’s political leadership. Republican primary voters made clear that they found Mr. Trump’s brand of nationalism more attractive. Mr. Cruz, speaking to supporters in Indianapolis, said he could not fight on without “a viable path to victory. ” “Tonight I’m sorry to say it appears that path has been foreclosed,” he said, as some admirers called out for him to reconsider. Without mentioning Mr. Trump by name, Mr. Cruz said: “We gave it everything we got. But the voters chose another path. ” As remarkable as Mr. Trump’s achievement is, his expected nomination also poses undeniable peril to the party he is poised to lead. Republican leaders, who have been reluctant to embrace his candidacy, are watching him with great trepidation, and on Tuesday night they seemed to be grappling with the implications of Mr. Trump’s emergence as the new face of their party. No candidate since the dawn of modern polling has entered the general election with the sort of toxic image Mr. Trump has in the eyes of large groups of voters. Facing a race against the country’s first female nominee, Mr. Trump is burdened with disapproval ratings as high as 70 percent among women, who make up a majority of voters in presidential elections. He is also an unpredictable voice on policy. At Trump Tower on Tuesday night, amid his litany of Mr. Trump demonstrated the degree to which his nomination represented an astonishing break from political precedent. In denouncing Mrs. Clinton’s past support for the North American Free Trade Agreement and saying it had caused “carnage” for American workers, he signaled he would run to her left on free trade and upend the bipartisan consensus on the issue. Mr. Trump starts the general election campaign with a roll of incendiary proposals and provocations that are the stuff of dreams for opposition researchers. He made his name in the last presidential campaign as the country’s most prominent birther, fueling debunked conspiracy theories that President Obama was not born in America he has used hostile and language about Hispanics, suggesting that Mexican migrants are rapists and murderers and he has not backed off his proposal to bar all foreign Muslims from entering the United States, effectively creating a religious test for immigrants. No one is more eager to talk about those positions than Mrs. Clinton, who made clear on Tuesday that she wanted to sharpen her focus on Mr. Trump as soon as possible because the fight against him was likely to be bruising. “I’m really focused on moving into the general election,” Mrs. Clinton said during an interview on MSNBC. “And I think that’s where we have to be, because we’re going to have a tough campaign against a candidate who will literally say or do anything. ’’ Yet the Indiana results were an embarrassing reminder of her vulnerabilities: Only slightly more than half of Democrats voting Tuesday called Mrs. Clinton honest and trustworthy, according to early exit polls, a remarkably shaky assessment for the party’s likely nominee. After closing the gap with white voters in parts of the Northeast last week, Mrs. Clinton lost them by 30 points in Indiana. She also again suffered with independents casting ballots in the Democratic contest: 73 percent backed Mr. Sanders. Mr. Sanders, speaking to reporters after winning Indiana, had some tough words for Mrs. Clinton after a week when he toned down criticisms of her and shifted his focus to their policy differences. “I understand that Secretary Clinton thinks that this campaign is over,” Mr. Sanders said. “I’ve got some bad news for her. Tonight we won a great victory in Indiana. Next week we are going to be in West Virginia. We think we have a real shot to win in that great state. And then we’re going to Kentucky, and we’re going to Oregon. And we think we have a pretty good chance to win there as well. ” “We feel great about tonight not only in winning here in Indiana and accumulating some more delegates but also gaining the momentum we need to take us to the finish line,” he said, adding the he realized he faced an “uphill battle. ” While Mr. Sanders devoted three days to campaigning in Indiana and spent more than $1 million on television advertisements, Mrs. Clinton did not run any ads and spent only a day campaigning in the state, visiting the Indianapolis area. Clinton advisers said they saw no point in spending a couple of million dollars on television advertising and campaign travel when Mrs. Clinton was likely to lose the state anyway: Its Democratic primary electorate includes a healthy share of independents and newly registered voters, demographics that have repeatedly favored Mr. Sanders. And the two Democrats are expected to divide the state’s 83 delegates given the close outcome. Tad Devine, a senior adviser on the Sanders campaign, said that the Indiana results would not reshape the Democratic race markedly, given Mrs. Clinton’s sizable delegate lead. While the Democratic race has turned relatively civil, the Republican fight in Indiana grew bitter in the final hours. With Mr. Cruz on edge Tuesday morning about the future of his candidacy, Mr. Trump baited him by suggesting — with no evidence — that Mr. Cruz’s father had joined Lee Harvey Oswald in passing out Castro pamphlets in New Orleans shortly before Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy. Mr. Cruz, unburdening himself after a campaign in which Mr. Trump also mocked his wife’s appearance, responded with a flourish, called Mr. Trump a “pathological liar” and delved into his rival’s personal life. “Listen, Donald Trump is a serial philanderer, and he boasts about it,” Mr. Cruz said, directly raising Mr. Trump’s marital history for the first time. “I want everyone to think about your teenage kids. The president of the United States talks about how great it is to commit adultery. How proud he is. Describes his battles with venereal disease as his own personal Vietnam. ” But the appeal did not work. Indiana Republicans proved willing to embrace Mr. Trump, the once unimaginable but now virtually certain nominee, regardless of the personal flaws and political shortcomings that would have once derailed presidents. | 1 |
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