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[Photo: Syria is a hornet’s nest not a pinata. Credit: Daryl Cagle .] =By= John Feffer Editor's Note Was there an end game in mind when the U.S. decided to fuel a rural conflict rooted in almost five years of drought into a “civil war” and then an outright attempt at regime change? Was there a plan for the (effectively) mercenary force the U.S. created who after training found that ISIS paid much better, so the U.S. rebooked al Nusra and al Qaeda from terrorist groups to “moderate”“rebels. Of course there is the off shore oil and Israel’s interest in the territory and region. But who gave a thought for the people of Syria? They were all mostly “civilians,” just like in almost any country – until they were forced to pick a side or be shot. Where is the peace to be found if the goal is still to remove the recognized government (for better or worse) of Syria? Yet another blood red “color” revolution. T he war in Syria is a nightmare. It’s a nightmare for all the civilians who suffer from constant aerial bombardment, who are trapped without food and medical assistance inside crumbling cities, who experience the retribution of either the Islamic State or the regime in Damascus. It’s a nightmare for those who try to escape and face the prospect of death in transit or limbo in refugee camps. Syria is a nightmare for individuals, millions of them. But it’s not just that. If states could dream, then Syria would be their nightmare as well. Syria was once a sovereign state like any other. It had a central government and fixed boundaries. The Syrian state enjoyed a monopoly on violence and, on several occasions, deployed that violence against its citizenry to devastating effect. The economy functioned, more or less, with considerable revenue coming from the oil sector. In 2009, tourism accounted for 12 percent of the economy. Not that long ago and despite its many problems, Syria attracted a large number of eager travelers. In perhaps the most ironic twist, the Syrian state once had delusions of grandeur. It wanted to abolish the old colonial boundaries and unify the entire Arab world. Under Hafez al-Assad, its authoritarian ruler from 1970 until 2000, Syria attempted to absorb Lebanon, unite with Egypt and Libya in a short-lived Federation of Arab Republics, displace Iraq as the undisputed ideological leader in the region, and even take charge of the Palestinian cause.
How quickly dreams can segue into nightmares. Syria has fallen in upon itself, fracturing into four distinct pieces. The government in Damascus controls a gerrymandered slice of territory around the capital and the coast. The Kurds have carved out an autonomous region along the Turkish border in the northeast. The Islamic State still claims a large expanse in the heart of the country. And various rebel factions have secured a patchwork of land in all four corners of what had once been a unified Syria.
The government in Damascus, needless to say, no longer enjoys its monopoly on violence. It can’t control the borders of the country. The economy shrank by 19 percent in 2015 and will probably contract another 8 percent this year. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have died in the current conflict. Out of a pre-war population of 23 million, nearly half have fled their homes—4.8 million leaving the country and 6.6 million displaced internally. The war, according to one estimate, has cost over $250 billion.
Much like the Balkans before it, Syria is emerging as a metaphor for the fragmentation and chaos that the modern world barely contains. Many states are held together by little more than surface tension, like the meniscus of liquid that rises above the sides of a glass. Nationalism has reached a boiling point in many places, as has religious extremism. Armaments are everywhere, militias are proliferating, and violence has become pervasive. After scoring a number of impressive victories—in Northern Ireland, in East Timor, most recently in Colombia—international diplomats are stymied by the breakdown of order in places like Syria, Libya, Sudan, and Somalia. The countries jockeying for influence in Syria today face many of the same divisive forces that have torn apart that benighted country. The dream of these intervening powers: to turn the current war to their advantage. Their nightmare: that whatever is tearing apart Syria is contagious. The Illusion of Totalitarianism
There is no such thing as a totalitarian state. Some dictators, of course, imagine that they can create just such a state, in which the government is a mere extension of the leader’s will and no significant opposition challenges this central authority. Such a society is a pyramid with one person at the top, every block serving to support that uppermost platform. Mere authoritarian societies tolerate potential rival sources of power, such as an intelligentsia or a business sector. In the ideal totalitarian system, all is for one and one is for all.
Even North Korea under the Kim dynasty—Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Eun—fails to achieve this kind of totalitarian control. True, the government has managed to suppress virtually every sign of political dissent, indigenous NGOs are practically non-existent, and all culture is subordinate to the state. However, private markets have sprung up beyond the state’s compete control (though, as a sign of grudging acceptance, the state taxes the sellers). Citizens watch contraband movies and listen to taboo music thanks to flash drives smuggled in from China. There have even been signs of disagreement at the highest levels of governance (or so the execution of Kim Jong Eun’s uncle Jang Song Thaek suggests).
Once upon a time, the leader of Syria also hoped to create a totalitarian dynasty in the heart of the Middle East. Hafez al-Assad embraced a version of Baathism, the anti-colonial, nationalist, pan-Arabist, and nominally socialist hybrid that emerged from the ideological tumult of the 1940s. As in North Korea, Assad created a one-party state with an extensive secret police, the Mukhabarat. He ruthlessly eliminated opposition, as in 1982 when the state brutally suppressed an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood. After a brief excursion into reform, the designated successor, Assad’s son Bashar, followed in his father’s footsteps. He attempted to extinguish the Arab Spring uprising just as his father had dealt with the Islamists. The current war is the result of Bashar al-Assad’s failure to perceive the declining power of his unitary state.
As much as the younger Assad would have liked to maintain a firm grip on power, Syria 2012 was a much different place from Syria 1982. During those 30 years, the bonds that had kept the country together had weakened. Popular organizations had begun to demand democracy. Groups defined by their ethnicity saw the potential for greater autonomy. Religious organizations sensed an opportunity to dislodge what had once been a distinctly secular regime. Other centers of power had appeared in Syrian society, and the Baathist regime was ill equipped to deal with this kind of pluralism.
This scenario might seem unique. It isn’t. Disharmonious pluralism has become the new global standard. Other countries—Turkey, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the EU, even the United States—gaze upon the Syrian example and tremble. It Can Happen Here
Stripped of its magic sovereignty, Syria has been turned into a piñata whose hidden treasures are now available for all to see and seize. Even as they continue to wield their bats, the intervening powers can’t help but perceive how quickly sovereignty can disappear and how little prevents them from becoming piñatas in turn.
Turkish leaders, for instance, must be quite aware of the structural features their country shares with Syria. The glue that has traditionally held together modern Turkey—Kemalism, named for the father of Turkey, Kemal Ataturk—has a somewhat Baathist flavor. It, too, is anti-colonial, nationalist, and secular. Kemalism, like Baathism, has unified an extraordinarily diverse country. Where ideology has proven insufficient, the central government, as in Syria, has used considerable firepower to suppress any movement—but particularly the Kurds in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)—that challenges the territorial integrity of the country. Turkey’s current leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, wants to consolidate power internally and project Turkish influence throughout the Middle East (and beyond). Syria has long been integral to this dual project. The two countries mended fences in the early 2000s when Syria figured prominently in Turkey’s “zero problems with neighbors” policy. Once Assad’s position became tenuous during the Arab Spring, however, Erdogan saw an opportunity to switch horses. As the conflict deepened, and no horse emerged as a clear winner, Erdogan decided to use the cover of war to bomb the PKK and their supporters over the border. He hoped to identify a “responsible” Kurdish faction with which to do business—as Ankara has done with Kurdistan in Iraq. More recently, by creating a “safe zone” in northern Syria, Turkey plans to resettle Syrian refugees now in Turkish camps and use that as a base of operations for promoting Turkish business in post-war reconstruction. The Nightmare
That’s the dream, anyway. The nightmare is not far away. The failed coup in July was a rather inept demonstration of the latent anxiety in certain sectors about Erdogan’s consolidation of domestic power. The rekindled war with the Kurds in the southeast reveals the continued ethnic divide in the country. So far, Erdogan has cleverly combined the secularist Kemalism and the soft-pedaled Islamism of his Justice and Development Party into a Turkey-first nationalism. But blowback from Syria—from Kurds, from Islamic State supporters, from a disgruntled Turkish army—could open up a rift in Erdogan’s coalition, and Turkey would then be on the verge of turning into a Syria.
Even though it follows a very different operating system, Iran, too, looks on Syria as a cautionary example. The government in Tehran is currently split between reformers under President Hassan Rouhani and the religious hardliners who constantly fret over theological deviations. The Green Movement that emerged around the 2009 elections revealed strong opposition to the theocrats within the urban middle class. If Rouhani and his cohort are not able to take full advantage of the nuclear deal and Iran’s reentry into the global economy, Iran could slide backward economically—and then, after the next elections, politically—to the days of Mahmoud Ahmadine- jad. Disenchanted with formal politics, the next iteration of the Green Movement might give up on peaceful demonstrations and plunge Iran into its own civil war. Saudi Arabia seems like a solid enough entity at the moment. But it too faces a religious challenge from its Wahhabist fringes and a potential territorial challenge from minority Shia in the Eastern Province. The House of Saud rules with an iron fist, and its Committee for the Protection of Virtue and Prevention of Vice intrudes into the private lives of the citizens. The collapse of oil prices has put a squeeze on the kingdom’s finances, which will inevitably open up cleavages within Saudi society. In the absence of a strong national identity, Saudi Arabia could fracture along tribal lines, much like Somalia.
These challenges are not limited to the Middle East. The European Union faces multiple centrifugal forces —Brexit, defaulting economies, a restive Russia. Euroskeptics decry the undemocratic power wielded by political institutions in Brussels. The crisis in Syria is by no means abstract for European countries. The influx of Syrian refugees has driven a huge wedge between countries that want nothing to do with them (particularly Eastern Europe) and countries that want to share the burden equally. The disintegration of Syria is now integrally linked to the disintegration of Europe, which might seem fitting to those who believe in the vengeful ghosts of colonialism.
The United States is far away from the Syrian conflict, and so far the Obama administration has limited the number of incoming refugees to 10,000 (compared to more than a million that Europe has accepted). The issue of immigrants has certainly divided the two major presidential candidates, and there is no consensus at the top on Syria policy—the recent ceasefire agreement exposed a serious fault line between the State Department (let’s work with the Russians) and the Pentagon (really, the Russians?). But Syria won’t set Americans against Americans as it has pitted Europeans against themselves. Moreover, despite considerable disagreement in the highest reaches of American power on a range of other issues—between Congress and the president, within the Supreme Court, between states and the federal authority—these conflicts have been paralyzing rather than fissiparous.
The more serious concern is the sheer number of guns in the United States—over 300 million—and their greater public visibility. You can now carry around your gun openly in 45 states, and more than 14 million people have permits to do so. The number of anti-government militia groups has been rising steadily since the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Trust in the federal government has fallen to record lows. Approximately one in four Americans want their states to secede from the union. Divisions between rich and poor, white and black, native born and immigrants have widened. Ordinarily, all this roiling discontent could be contained by a well-functioning economy or by a set of foreign enemies to focus American enmity. But the election of a much-disliked president next year—take your pick—may well prove to be a tipping point. It doesn’t take much to turn a well-armed population into a mob.
And that, of course, is the ultimate nightmare for Turkey and Iran and Saudi Arabia and the United States—when Syria ceases to be a gloomy metaphor for what is happening outside its borders and becomes instead a grim reality. | 1 |
The New York Times Company posted a net loss for the second consecutive quarter, in part because of severance costs related to the closing of the company’s editing and prepress operations in Paris. The company had strong growth in digital subscriptions, it said on Thursday, but digital advertising revenue, which has been a bright spot in the past, declined. In its earnings release, the company said that it had added 51, 000 net subscriptions in the quarter for its news products and 16, 000 net crossword product subscriptions. The Times now has about 1. 2 million subscriptions for its news products and more than 1. 4 million total subscriptions, an increase of more than 25 percent compared with the same time a year ago. During an earnings call with investors, Mark Thompson, the company’s chief executive, struck an optimistic tone. “It was an excellent quarter for audience growth, engagement and our digital subscription business,” he said, adding that The Times drew 126 million unique users in June, and that engagement for nonsubscribers increased 20 percent . In the next quarter, The Times expects to add 55, 000 to 60, 000 net subscriptions for its news products and roughly 15, 000 net subscriptions to its crossword product. The company reported a slight net loss of about $500, 000 for the quarter, compared with net income of $16 million in the second quarter of 2015. The company took a charge of roughly $12 million, largely in severance costs related to the Paris closings. Total revenue fell 3 percent, to $373 million from $383 million, in the same quarter a year earlier, as The Times continued to struggle with declining advertising revenue. Total advertising revenue fell about 12 percent, to $131 million. Print advertising revenue slid 14 percent in the quarter, and digital advertising revenue dropped 7 percent, to $45 million. Digital advertising revenue now accounts for more than a third of the company’s total ad revenue. “Digital advertising was somewhat lower than we expected for the quarter,” Mr. Thompson said. Increases in mobile, branded content and programmatic advertising, he added, were “not enough to offset declines in web home page and other traditional display advertising. ” The company expects total advertising revenue to continue to decrease in the digits next quarter, though it anticipates growth in digital advertising. Circulation revenue increased about 3 percent, to $219 million, as growth from the company’s digital subscription revenue and an increase in prices offset a decline in print copies sold. Total daily print circulation declined 6 percent in the quarter, and Sunday circulation fell 4 percent. Circulation revenue from subscriptions increased 15 percent, to $56 million. Adjusted operating profit, the company’s preferred method of assessing performance, decreased to $55 million in the quarter, from $64 million in the period. Like many newspapers faced with declining print circulation and falling advertising revenue, The Times has looked for new revenue opportunities. It has focused on virtual reality, video and branded content, for example, and pushed aggressively into Facebook Live. The company produced more than 400 Facebook Live videos in the quarter, Mr. Thompson said. In February, The Times announced a sweeping strategy review of the newsroom that will include reshaping the newsroom for the digital age and identifying areas for . The company also aims to double its total digital revenue to $800 million by 2020. “We’re taking a good, hard strategic look at costs,” Mr. Thompson said. “You can expect to hear more about that on future earnings calls. ” Charges related to the company’s recent buyout offerings were not reflected in this quarter’s earnings. About 80 Times employees took buyouts. The Times expects to take a severance charge next quarter of about $11 million resulting from the buyouts. | 0 |
0 комментариев 13 поделились Фотоархив Правды.Ру
Об этом сегодня на брифинге в Москве заявила официальный представитель МИД РФ Мария Захарова, отметив, что постоянно звучат заявления о том, что РФ не выполняет свои обязательства в контексте мирного плана по Сирии.
"Чтобы прекратить всяческие инсинуации на это тему Российская Федерация приняла решение распространить документ, в котором собраны и приводятся все факты по исполнению российской стороны своих обязательств и невыполнения обязательств американской стороной своих - представлены все факты и цифры", - рассказала Захарова.
По ее словам, этот документ будет представлен на площадке ООН не только в Нью-Йорке, но и в Женеве.
«Приведены факты, даты, цифры. Этот объемный документ уже распространён в Женеве нашим постпредством и будет распространён сегодня российским постпредством при ООН в Нью-Йорке», - подытожила она.
В ходе брифинга Захарова также обратила внимание на то, что Вашингтон на словах рассуждает о вариантах мирного урегулирования, но не подкрепляет это делом.
"На деле не исключается вариант пособничества боевика, мы видели, что в 2013 году рассматривались варианты прямой агрессии, а сейчас мы видим, что реально обсуждаются варианты поставки вооружения боевикам", - заявила официальный представитель МИД РФ.
Вместе с тем Захарова выразила надежду, что США не станут поставлять тяжелое вооружение умеренной оппозиции в Сирии: "Мы надеемся, что в американском руководстве разумный и трезвый расчет действительно возобладает над авантюрными подходами, которые могут привести к непредсказуемым военным и политическим последствиям. Будем продолжать следить за реальными действиями Вашингтона".
Чем ближе взятие Алеппо, тем яростнее будут обвинения в адрес России , считает сотрудник Центра анализа стратегий и технологий Максим Шеповаленко. Информационные вбросы, подобные истории об российском ударе по школе в провинции Идлиб , будут продолжаться до конца войны. "Все пошло враздрай: никаких мирных переговоров, вступил в силу План Б - по вооружению боевиков. Значит, информационная война в самом разгаре" - сказал аналитик в беседе с Pravda.Ru
Всем очевидно, что чем ближе мы будем к взятию Алеппо, тем истеричнее и фантасмагоричнее будут все эти придумки и рассказы, уверен он.
Читайте последние новости Pravda. Ru на сегодня | 0 |
Secret Service Knew About, Managed Clinton Private Server November 03, 2016 Secret Service Knew About, Managed Clinton Private Server
Federal law enforcement officials not only knew about, but may also have played a role in managing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private server located in her New York mansion in as early as 2011, new documents show. A Secret Service agent told the FBI that the Clintons also enlisted Secret Service resources to do work for the Clinton Foundation. A spokesman for the foundation denied using government resources They suggested that a Secret Service agent who recounted investigating a hack on the foundation’s server must have confused it with Clinton’s home-brew server.
If the foundation spokesman’s assertion is correct, it suggests information may have been stolen when the home-brew server was attacked, which Clinton has denied.
As the FBI summarized the testimony of a Secret Service agent whose name was redacted, the agent “was assigned to the protective detail of William Clinton from [redacted] to [redacted]. Because of [his] information technology (IT) skills, he was asked to do network assessments and troubleshoot IT issues at the Clinton Foundation… [he] assisted the Clinton Foundation in a case related to theft of information on the Clinton Foundation information systems.”
The testimony was included among documents from the FBI’s email investigation that were made public Wednesday by the law enforcement agency.
In addition to protecting high-level officials, the Secret Service has a secondary mission that allows it to investigate cyber-crimes, as The Weekly Standard, which first reported the testimony, noted.
But the Secret Service’s cyber-crimes division hadn’t decided to take the case, the former president had used the taxpayer-funded guard to do other tasks, including “troubleshooting IT issues,” which doesn’t indicate cyber-crimes. The agent was not a cyber-crimes specialist, but rather someone who happened to have some IT skills.
He conducted “open source research relating to the security of email servers,” likely a euphemism for reading online forums and tutorials.
The agent’s testimony said the assistance started for the foundation, then was expanded to include another server located in the Clintons’ home. The agent “was contacted by Justin Cooper in January 2011 to assist with the security of an email server at the Clinton residence in Chappaqua, New York.” Cooper is an aide to Douglas Band, Clinton’s long-time personal assistant and business associate.
The agent “contacted Bryan Pagliano to recommend adding outbound IP filtering to the server.” Pagliano, a Clinton campaign staffer turned State Department aide, has since pleaded the Fifth Amendment, refusing to answer questions from congressional investigators.
The Clinton Foundation told the Weekly Standard that “it appears the agent is conflating the Clinton Foundation with the president’s personal office,” suggesting that the foundation was never hacked and that both instances must have referred to Bill Clinton’s personal office email.
Clinton’s email and the former president’s personal office both ran off the same email server, Clinton has said, adding
“The use of that server, which started with my husband, certainly proved to be effective and secure.”
The FBI summary of the agent’s testimony said the agent “was aware of no other information pertaining to the email server located in Chappaqua.”
Secret Service sources interviewed by the Weekly Standard said the agency “absolutely” worked on the “theft of information” case for the Clinton Foundation and that records show it.
If an intrusion did not occur on the foundation’s server and the agent was confusing the home and foundation servers, then it suggests that Clinton’s private server had a “theft of information” situation.
Clinton has combated criticism of the private server by saying it was safe because the Secret Service guarded the property —“It was on property guarded by the Secret Service, and there were no security breaches.” The testimony, however, weakens that argument, as the testimony indicates that the Secret Service was providing traditional physical security, and one guard happened to have some IT familiarity.
Federal security had already been informed of the server’s existence at least as early as November 2010. That month, IT aide Pagliano reported to the Secret Service 10 unsuccessful hack attempts on the server that Clinton used to conduct State Department business.
The hackers had used the login “Huma,” the first name of Clinton’s closest personal aide at the Department of State, according to emails obtained under a lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch.
The “theft of information” situation does not seem to refer to that failed attempt, since the Secret Service was contacted about it in November 2010, but the testimony refers to being contacted about the personal server in January 2011.
President Barack Obama said in March 2015 he only learned of the server from the news media, even though as State Department aides frantically worried about after the denial, Clinton and Obama had emailed using the private address. Article by Doc Burkhart , Vice-President, General Manager and co-host of TRUNEWS with Rick Wiles Got a news tip? Email us at Help support the ministry of TRUNEWS with your one-time or monthly gift of financial support. DONATE NOW ! DOWNLOAD THE TRUNEWS MOBILE APP! CLICK HERE! Donate Today! Support TRUNEWS to help build a global news network that provides a credible source for world news
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Some say that Abrams tanks sold as export have less armor than those Abrams tanks used by US troops. If true, and if this was such a lesser-armed version, a horrible surprise for its crew here. | 0 |
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The sun will rise on Wednesday November 9 on a new American landscape, the same way it rose on a new American landscape almost exactly 8 years ago.
That was the dawn of Obama-time. Millions of Americans had dined delightedly on Obama’s rhetoric of dreams and preened at his homilies about the inherent moral greatness of the American people. Obama and the Democrats triumphed at the polls. The pundits hailed a “tectonic shift” in our national politics, perhaps even a registration of the possibility that we had entered a “post-racial” era of progressive politics and economics.
But the realities of American politics don’t change much from year to year. After years of Obama, the nation remains bogged down in at least 8 different wars and the national divisions of wealth and resources have grown wider today than they have been at any time since the late 1920s. For many of us, the post-electoral dawn will shine its light on an eerily familiar assemblage of characters: Hillary and Bill, John Podesta and Robert Rubin, Ken Salazar and Cheryl Mills. The same people who engineered the deregulation of the American economy will be back in the control room, ready for another round of looting.
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Jared Kushner, President Trump’s landed in Iraq on Monday, military officials said, visiting the country as the American military is aiding Iraqi forces in their brutal fight to retake Mosul from the Islamic State. It was unclear what Mr. Kushner, who has been expanding his reach in his ’s administration, planned to gain from the trip. Mr. Kushner, 36, who serves as a senior adviser to Mr. Trump, was invited by Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Navy Capt. Greg Hicks, a spokesman for the chairman, said early Monday that the general had arrived in Iraq for meetings, including with coalition officials, accompanied by Mr. Kushner and Thomas P. Bossert, the president’s homeland security adviser. The general invited Mr. Kushner and Mr. Bossert to accompany him “to receive an update on the status of the campaign in Iraq and Syria,” Captain Hicks said. Mr. Kushner is “traveling on behalf of the president to express the president’s support and commitment to the government of Iraq and U. S. personnel currently engaged in the campaign” against the Islamic State, Captain Hicks added. Mr. Trump has repeatedly turned to Mr. Kushner as an envoy to foreign leaders, at times creating a parallel structure to the one led by Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson. Mr. Kushner has had a role in discussions with Mexico, whose government officials have expressed concern over Mr. Trump’s incendiary remarks on trade policy and his vow to build a wall at the border. The president has also charged Mr. Kushner, who has no previous government or diplomatic experience, with a vague edict to establish peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Mr. Kushner is also taking the lead in preparing the West Wing for Mr. Trump’s meeting this week with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, at the president’s club in Palm Beach, Fla. In addition, Mr. Kushner has created an Office of American Innovation, which is intended to use ideas from the business world to improve the government. | 0 |
Iran to resume gas exports to Turkey soon Fri Oct 28, 2016 12:10PM Energy Iran says it will resume exports of natural gas to Turkey by Monday after an explosion in the Turkish territory halted the supplies on Thursday night.
Iran says its exports of natural gas to Turkey that have been halted reportedly as a result of an explosion inside the Turkish territory will resume within the next few days.
Sadeq Akbarpour, the head of Gas Exports Measurement Facilities at Iran-Turkey Border, told the domestic media that the required coordination is being carried out with the Turkish Botas company to resume Iran’s exports by next Monday.
Akbarpour emphasized that Iran is ready to supply Turkey with its required gas whenever it voices its readiness.
Majid Bojarzadeh, the spokesman of the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC), also told Iran’s Shana news agency that Ankara had informed Tehran of a problem in the pipeline that carried Iranian gas into Turkey on Thursday night.
Furthermore, Majid Aqababaei, the director general for border affairs of Iran’s Interior Ministry, acknowledged, as reported by Shana, that an explosion near Iran’s border had caused the problem.
Iran is Turkey’s second supplier of gas after Russia, providing one-fifth of the country’s consumption. The current volume of natural gas that Iran is piping to its northwestern neighbor is 30 million cubic meters per day (mcm/d). Officials in Tehran had already emphasized that the Islamic Republic is ready to increase its gas exports to Turkey by 6 mcm/d.
Iran has also for long been working on a plan to export its natural gas to Europe through Turkey. The plan – that was to be carried out though the Nabucco scheme – was eventually put on hold due to a series of technicalities. Nevertheless, officials in Tehran announced last month that the possibility that gas exports to Europe would return to the agenda exist “if the requited agreements with Europeans countries over the plan are reached”. Loading ... | 0 |
Vanity Fair has the recent viral outrage over Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot supposedly being paid 46 times less than Man of Steel star Henry Cavill for their work on similar films. [From Vanity Fair: “It was a stat that swiftly went viral Tuesday morning: Gal Gadot, the magnetic star of the summer hit Wonder Woman, was paid just $300, 000 for a film that had already made $573 million worldwide. Meanwhile, Henry’s Cavill had been paid $14 million — 46 times as much! — for his own first outing as Superman in Man of Steel. It would be perfectly indicative of the gender pay gap that lingers in Hollywood. . . if it were at all true. As the Elle article that sent the stat viral said itself, Cavill’s $14 million earning include bonuses for box office performance, while Gadot’s $300, 000, per a 2014 Variety report, is just the base salary for each film she’s made thus far in the DC Universe,” they continued. “Though the details of Cavill’s reported $14 million could not be verified, a source with knowledge of studio negotiations on franchise films told Vanity Fair, ‘It certainly isn’t for one picture. That’s insane.’ For superhero franchises just getting started, though, the process is usually simple: find a star on the rise, pay them relatively little, and then offer more if the franchise takes off. Marvel pioneered the effort with Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, and Chris Hemsworth, all of whom were reportedly paid less than $500, 000 for their first solo superhero outings, but eventually landed much bigger paydays for subsequent entries. (Downey Jr. famously made $50 million for The Avengers, and helped his negotiate higher salaries themselves.) Cavill, like Hemsworth and Evans and Gadot when their franchises started, was more of an unknown, and likely to have signed the same lowball salary contract with a promise of future returns. Despite Vanity Fair’s explanation, the exaggerated facts, which were pushed by Elle Magazine, have since gone viral, with Teen Vogue‘s Lauren Duca receiving over 10, 000 retweets and 20, 000 likes on an outraged Twitter post, which was also shared by Piers Morgan, who responded, “Now THIS is sexism. ” Gal Gadot made $300, 000 for Wonder Woman as compared to Henry Cavill’s $14M for Man of Steel. The most compelling DC villain is the pay gap. — Lauren Duca (@laurenduca) June 20, 2017, Now THIS is sexism. https: . — Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) June 20, 2017, You can read the full report at Vanity Fair. Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook. | 0 |
The United States Mint will release a commemorative gold coin in April that will feature Lady Liberty as a black woman, marking the first time that she has been depicted as anything other than white on the nation’s currency. The coin, with a $100 face value, will commemorate the 225th anniversary of the Mint’s coin production, the Mint and the Treasury Department announced on Thursday. Going on sale April 6, it will be 24 karats and weigh about an ounce. It is part of a series of commemorative coins that will be released every two years. Future ones will show Lady Liberty as Asian, Hispanic and Indian “to reflect the cultural and ethnic diversity of the United States,” the Mint said in a statement. The announcement comes at a pivotal cultural moment for the United States, a week away from a transfer of power, following a bruising election dominated by debates about immigration, race and political correctness. And Lady Liberty is among the most potent of American symbols. Her depiction, a gift from France in 1886, stands in New York Harbor, a giant statue of a woman with white European features beckoning with a lamp to the refugees of the world. “Part of our intent was to honor our tradition and heritage,” Rhett Jeppson, the principal deputy director of the Mint, said in a phone interview on Friday. “But we also think it’s always worthwhile to have a conversation about liberty, and we certainly have started that conversation. ” Do not expect to see anyone spending the coins at the store. Coins like this do not circulate for everyday use, but are minted for collectors in limited quantities. There will be 100, 000 of them with the black Lady Liberty. They will sell for far more than face value, depending on the value of gold, currently more than $1, 000 an ounce. “As we as a nation continue to evolve, so does Liberty’s representation,” Elisa Basnight, the chief of staff at the Mint, said at a presentation on Thursday in Washington. The coin’s head (what the Mint calls the obverse) was designed by Justin Kunz and engraved by Phebe Hemphill, and it shows a profile of Lady Liberty with a crown of stars that holds back her hair. The tail (the reverse, in Mint lingo) shows an eagle in flight. Mr. Jeppson said that several women had approached him after seeing the coin and told him, “she looks like me when I was younger. ” “I saw real value in that,” he said. “That we see ourselves in the images in our coins. ” The Mint is expecting the coin to sell well, Mr. Jeppson said. Any profit the Mint generates from the sale of its coins is returned to the Treasury. Last year, the Mint sent about $600 million back to the federal government, Mr. Jeppson said. In addition to the 100, 000 gold coins — more than is typical for this sort of commemorative coin — that will be printed at West Point, the Mint will also produce 100, 000 of what it calls medals, silver reproductions of the image that will sell for around $40 to $50. “The silver medals will be done at Philadelphia, because that is the birthplace of the Mint,” Mr. Jeppson said. The Coinage Act of 1792 established the Mint, and it also mandated that any coins produced include an image of “liberty” as well as an inscription of the word. Since then, the idea has appeared in many forms on American currency, both circulated and collectible, most often as the feminine Lady Liberty. “When you look at the very first coins that we produced, they had a Liberty on there,” Mr. Jeppson said. These coins are already in production. The next ones in the series are in the planning stage. Rough guidelines are given to sets of artists and sculptors, some of whom are staff at the mint and others who are part of a pool, as Mr. Kunz was. Their work is then shared with the members of two commissions — one a group of citizen advisers and one a fine arts commission — who make recommendations on the final design for the coin. “It’s difficult for us to say what future coins will look like until we get there,” Mr. Jeppson said. All American coins embody the idea of liberty, in keeping with the Mint’s mandate. But the new coin is what Mr. Jeppson called an “allegorical liberty,” meaning Lady Liberty does not represent a specific figure from history. Women, in generic depictions or historic ones, have been underrepresented on American currency. The suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony appeared on $1 coins from 1979 to 1981, and Helen Keller, the author and activist, appeared on the reverse image of the Alabama state quarter in 2003. Sacagawea, the Shoshone guide who led Lewis and Clark to the West Coast, appeared on a $1 coin that has been minted since 2000. Last year, after a public campaign to put a woman on the $10 bill, the Treasury secretary, Jacob J. Lew, announced a broad remaking of the nation’s paper currency — the bills that, unlike a $100 coin, circulate among many Americans every day. Harriet Tubman, the abolitionist and former slave, will appear on the $20 bill, and women and civil rights leaders will be added to the $5 and $10 bills. Collectors expect the black Lady Liberty coin to be popular. Whenever the Mint does something new, it creates buzz, said Gilles Bransbourg, a curator with the American Numismatic Society and a research associate at New York University. “It’s departing from any of the coins that have been produced so far,” he said. “It sends a strong message that the Mint is departing from the tradition that will be perceived as very white. ” The Mint’s recent commemorative productions have occasionally featured nonwhite characters, he said, pointing to a 2006 gold series that revived the popular “Indian head” nickel of the early 20th century. It shows an American Indian whose face is believed to be a combination of three different men who sat for its designer. Symbolism aside, the new Lady Liberty coin is “really beautiful,” said Jeff Garrett, the president of the American Numismatic Association, who saw the coin several months ago in Washington. “It’s struck in high relief, which means the high points are much higher than circulating coinage. ” “I’ll buy one for sure,” he said. “I’ll probably buy several. ” | 1 |
We Are Change
Published on Nov 2, 2016 In this video Luke Rudkowski breaks down the latest election news as we talk about confirmed Hillary Clinton cover ups and disinfo on the internet that is muddying the waters. We go over the serious scandals and how they need to be addressed and how to get away from speculation. Vote with your dollar and support our efforts destroying the msm on https://www.patreon.com/wearechange
Sources
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/21803…
https://vault.fbi.gov/vincent-foster
https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/…
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/c…
https://twitter.com/FiveRights/status…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKQ59…
https://twitter.com/avanconia/status/…
https://twitter.com/FBIRecordsVault/s…
https://twitter.com/zachhaller/status…
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/c…
https://twitter.com/FBIRecordsVault/s…
http://imgur.com/WzYf68D
http://truepundit.com/breaking-bombsh…
https://twitter.com/johncardillo/stat…
http://observer.com/2016/11/breaking-…
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/…
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/c…
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/artic…
https://twitter.com/jasoninthehouse/s…
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/c…
https://twitter.com/Lukewearechange/s…
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/…
http://observer.com/2016/11/this-elec…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/artic…
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The post The Three Massive Cover Ups By Clinton That Need To be Stopped NOW ! appeared first on We Are Change .
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By Christopher Manion November 1, 2016
“Most voters see America as a divided nation and only expect things to get worse over the next year no matter who the next president is,” reports Rasmussen Polls
Oh dear. What shall we do”?
Start with Hillary’s primal scream: “Those nasty Russians are trying to destroy our democracy, and Donald Trump is helping them!”
The perpetration of this ideological fiction so hilariously concocted by the bottom-feeders in Clinton campaign is bad enough; that the hapless Nobel-Peace-Prize-winner-foreign-policy-disaster Narcissist-In-Chief jumps aboard is farce itself.
“The Russians Are coming” routine is designed not merely to distract any Americans who might still know where Russia is from the corruption of the Obama-Clinton regime. It has a future purpose, more sinister and more profound than its immediate purpose of merely manipulating the gullible.
After the election, should Hillary’s criminals be able to pull off a victory, half the country will be boiling in contempt and resentment, not ignorant fear but informed and righteous anger, at the corruptos who control the Bipartisan National Establishment.
These naysayers will be the establishment’s enemy, and a President Hillary will have to bring them to heel.
Here’s how.
If there is a single bureaucracy in Washington that has not been infected fatally with the disease, we don’t know about it. And so, after the election, there will be no time to waste for the Establishment Mafia – not to allay the defiance of their detested Deplorables, but to manipulate it.
The bipartisan establishment hates the military, of course, but it is willing to use wars and the rumors of wars to line its own pockets, expand its commercial interests, and satisfy its insatiable desire for power. At the same time, as we learned from Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush, the establishment doesn’t actually want the military to win wars – because that means peace will be at hand, and that is not good for the establishment.
Better to have chaos.
“Hey, they need our help!”
So they load the military with PC crap, solar panels, pregnant sailors and puny grunts, all guaranteed to have access to a generous dollop of the degenerating sex of any variety. Nothing like having critical personnel take long leaves to have their babies or their sex-change operations while on duty.
Well, we go to war with the military we have, but we do need war: after all, as we edge closer to Orwell’s vision of the future and away from Huxley’s, it is a permanent war that will keep the masses at bay – by keeping them occupied and keeping them subjugated.
In 1916, Wilson ran on the mantra, “He kept us out of war!” A majority of Americans opposed getting involved in Europe’s mess, but Wilson found a critical ally in the Catholic Primate of America, James Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore.
America was “divided” then, too, in a sense: Anti-Catholicism was real and widespread among the Protestant elites (few care today that the KKK hates Catholic a lot more than it hates Jews or Blacks).
So Gibbons defied his own Pope (Benedict XV) and told Wilson that Catholics would fight for their country. Right or wrong, he feared a backlash against the “Papists” who were “loyal to a foreign power.”
Conscripted Catholics could not refuse to serve. “Division” was ended – by war.
A quarter-century later, Roosevelt’s administration was a socialist disaster. In running for his own third term, he mouthed the peaceful pleasantries that resonated the firm desire of the American people to stay out another one of Europe’s wars. Of course, he had already sold his soul to the internationalists who insisted otherwise. So he had to lie.
Lucky for FDR in 1940, he didn’t have Donald Trump to run against.
But Hillary does, and while “Crooked Franklin” confronted strong opposition from the heartland, Bush and Obama have successfully eviscerated everything west of the East Coast.
Today the establishment has no formal competition, and the Military-Industrial-Financial-Etcetera Complex has been inoculated with the ideology of the Clinton generation of the 60s – communists, proven terrorists, liars, and their simpering useful idiots gorging at the trough.
But now, 100 million Americans know the score. They are patriots in the old sense of the term. They love their patria – their fatherland. That implies that they have a pedigree – an aristocratic anachronism that the Left hates, of course. They have a home, a neighborhood, a church, a family, and the community that they love.
That is also hateful to the Left, which has attempted over the years to destroy communities everywhere with all sorts of “civil rights” pretexts drawn from class envy – to the point where today we are commanded to welcome the stranger who has been brought up, south of the border and in the Middle East, to hate America, everything it stands for, because it is the source of their suffering.
As Lord Peter Bauer cryptically explained, they all grew up believing that “their poverty is our fault.”
And so the Left will demand war. To keep the peace (a.k.a. Martial Law) domestically, they will follow Stalin’s practice of bringing in troops of different ethnic backgrounds to police resistant neighborhoods and communities. Conscripted inner-city black youths will be sent to predominantly white communities to “pacify” them, while conscripted rural whites will be sent to gang-infested Latino enclaves, and so on.
Having effectively and intentionally weakened the military itself with gay activists, PC blather, purging of well-meaning patriots, and the rest, they will nonetheless send it into battle to keep the plunderers of the military-industrial complex well oiled with taxpayer cash.
What about victory? As Robert Strange McNamara and Clark Clifford had to slowly and clearly explain to LBJ, “victory” is not what we’re about here; in fact, the longer the war the better.
We are at war with Al Queda and Syria is our ally. We are at war with Syria and Al Queda is our ally.
Both can be true at once – even though both are false. DoubleThink rules.
Here’s the dirty little secret of their enterprise: while the Establishment hates the military, there still resides among the Deplorables a nostalgic, patriotic allegiance to the military. These people might hate the establishment, but they love their country more. The corrupters, confident that they now have the major persuasive public organs at their command, will immediately go into high gear identifying that patriotism with the New War of the corruptos .
There will be one avenue of resistance that falls outside the mold: millions of millennials hate both the establishment and war. One might believe, therefore, that these draft-eligible millions (both men and women now registered with the Selective Service) would be strong opponents of the war, as were their grandparents during the Vietnam era. But not to worry: the corruptos will encourage those socialists to enter government service at all levels, to stay in school (free college!) as long as they do it to defend socialism, and otherwise to support the war effort without having to take part in it.
No, the cannon fodder will be drawn from the ranks of the deplorable trash – the millennials whose families had been impoverished, whose communities have been destroyed, whose futures are so bleak that being drafted will not be so much a disaster as a means of feeding their families.
The thought police have it all figured out. Of course, there will be pockets of resistance – but war is the health of the state and a fatal disease to its dissenting and resisting subjects. Those who pose a real danger will easily be identified with the help of the NSA – how laughable that Hillary blamed the Russians! – And they will be dealt with in many ways easy to predict. Some will be isolated, some will be disappeared, and some will be sent to fight for their country – the way David had Joab send Uriah the Hittite to the front lines to be conveniently killed so that David could satisfy this salacious carnal desires with Bathsheba.
The Establishment Hot Tub is full of Bathshebas.
Hillary’s hordes (America’s legacy media) have created this myth about Russia to deflect attention (as usual) from reality. One might consider this a cute ploy, but this sets the stage for a very dangerous consequence which she if elected, will find it hard to avoid.
Namely, war with Russia.
Perhaps they don’t teach 1984 anymore in high schools. Pity. Our youth (who will be drafted to fight this endless carnage) have never heard of the daily “Two Minutes Hate” at the Ministry of Truth.
Yet Hillary throws this out there, as a self-serving temporary device, ignorant of the long-term consequences.
If she wins she will face a bevy of threats – from Congress, a rebellious FBI, more lawsuits, and general chaos.
There is only one way a Leftist can imagine “uniting” such a country:
War.
And when it comes, we will no longer be permitted to explain it rationally. In the tradition of Father Abraham, who jailed thousands during the War Between the States, Hillary will have to act forcefully “to preserve the Republic.”
In the spirit of Tom Lehrer, “If we’re going to write any songs about World War Three, we’d better write them now!” The Best of Christopher Manion Tags: Christopher Manion [ ] a Catholic teacher and writer, is president of Manion Music, LLC , which produces copyrighted, royalty-free music collections for telecommunications media and commercial and hospitality sites that use background music or music-on-hold. He writes from the Shenandoah Valley, where he is a volunteer Spanish translator for local law enforcement. Copyright © 2016 Christopher Manion | 1 |
A new report indicates that San Francisco has the lowest percentage of children of any major city in America. [The report by the New York Times indicates that only 13 percent of San Francisco’s population is under 18 years old. “Sometimes I’ll be walking through the city and I’ll see a child and think, ‘Hey, wait a second. What are you doing here? ’” Courtney Nam, who works downtown at a tech told the New York Times. “You don’t really see that many kids. ” The combination of and distance of public schools has resulted in what can be regarded as a mass exodus of families with kids to cities that are more affordable. The Times notes that the San Francisco has invested millions in upgrading parks, according to Phil Ginsburg, the general manager of the city’s Recreation and Parks Department. San Francisco Chronicle writer and San Francisco resident Amy Graff — who is also a mother to three kids — relates her own experience in the city: I was elated when one of my dearest friends finally had a baby, but crestfallen when she decided to move to Lafayette before her son started preschool. I’d assumed her son would grow up with my kids. Same thing happened with another best friend who fled for Mill Valley. My heart eventually numbed to the the mass exodus and I now approach new friendships in the way an army brat might at her third high school. I’m eager to meet new people but hesitant to get too close to protect myself from future partings. | 0 |
Just a few weeks ago, things seemed to be breaking Philippe A. Dauman’s way in his legal bid to maintain his grip on Viacom — which owns, among other things MTV, Comedy Central and Paramount Pictures — by having its majority owner and chairman, the media mogul Sumner Redstone, declared mentally incompetent. In Massachusetts, a judge denied motions to dismiss Mr. Dauman’s suit, calling it “plausible” that Mr. Redstone was suffering under the undue influence of his daughter, Shari Redstone. The judge set an October trial date and ordered Mr. Redstone’s lawyers to turn over his medical records. In Delaware, in a parallel lawsuit brought by Frederic V. Salerno, Viacom’s lead independent director, a judge also ruled that the case could proceed and cleared the way for a medical examination of Mr. Redstone “in a dignified way,” while cautioning Viacom’s lawyers to refrain from acting like “attack” dogs. The Redstone forces dreaded the prospect of more examinations of the ailing and enfeebled billionaire, giving Mr. Dauman and his allies considerable leverage. So when word circulated late last week that a settlement had been reached, there was reason to expect that Mr. Dauman had largely prevailed. This week Viacom disclosed the terms of the settlement in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. And for all practical purposes, Mr. Dauman “got nothing,” said John C. Coffee, a professor and expert in corporate governance at Columbia Law School. Mr. Dauman is already out as chief executive, and he will lose his board seat and position as chairman in a few weeks. He gets a severance package worth $72 million — but he would have gotten that anyway under his contract had he simply accepted his fate months ago and exited gracefully. Shari Redstone achieved almost total victory, but at the cost of months of expensive litigation and debilitating paralysis at Viacom. (This weekend’s box office dud, “” is the latest in a string of flops from Paramount.) She will soon be free to replace a majority of Viacom’s directors with people of her own choosing and has already named five new directors. For all intents and purposes, she has now gained unfettered control of her father’s vast media empire. And perhaps Mr. Redstone can retain what’s left of his dignity. So why did Mr. Dauman capitulate? Through a Viacom spokesman, Jeremy Zweig, Mr. Dauman declined to comment. His dwindling supporters contend that he simply acted in the best interests of Viacom’s shareholders after he realized that even a victory in the court cases would take years of litigation and appeals. But surely he knew that (and his lawyers would certainly have told him) before he launched his assault. The real reason, my interviews this week with numerous participants suggest, is that Mr. Dauman had little choice after he lost the backing of many of his handpicked directors on Viacom’s board, who concluded that his confrontational tactics were harming the company and threatening to damage their own reputations. The settlement was largely negotiated not by Mr. Dauman and his lawyers, but by Mr. Salerno, the lead independent director, and representatives of Ms. Redstone, and dictated to Mr. Dauman. Before the settlement, Mr. Dauman played the role of attack dog decried by the Delaware judge — an approach he no doubt learned from decades at the side of Mr. Redstone who, in his prime, was notoriously combative and litigious. The two were so close that Mr. Dauman was once considered a surrogate son. “Dauman learned Sumner’s approach, which is he wanted total control at all times,” Mr. Coffee said. Mr. Redstone rewarded Mr. Dauman handsomely: Viacom paid him $491. 7 million over the last 10 years, according to Equilar, which compiles compensation data. But when Mr. Redstone finally stepped down as Viacom’s chairman in February, Ms. Redstone, newly reconciled and installed in the Redstone mansion as her father’s primary caregiver, opposed Mr. Dauman’s succession as Viacom’s executive chairman. In May, Mr. Redstone moved to replace Mr. Dauman and another longtime confidant of Mr. Redstone’s, George Abrams, as directors of the trust that governs National Amusements. National Amusements in turn controls Mr. Redstone’s 80 percent voting stake in Viacom. (Ms. Redstone controls the remaining 20 percent.) Mr. Dauman and Mr. Abrams sued to block their ouster from the trust, since that was obviously just the first step toward Mr. Dauman being replaced at Viacom. This seemed a dubious strategy from the given that Mr. Redstone and his daughter controlled the company and Mr. Redstone, however physically impaired, had clearly turned against Mr. Dauman. To win in court, Mr. Dauman and his allies had to prove that Mr. Redstone “suffers from profound physical and mental illness,” as his complaint alleged — only months after he said in another court case that Mr. Redstone was “engaged and attentive. ” Despite Mr. Dauman’s early court victories, “there was no way he was going to ultimately win,” said Charles Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. “It all comes down to the fact that the Redstones had the votes. You may not agree philosophically with the dual class of shares that gave them control, but that’s the reality. ” Perhaps Mr. Dauman was simply buying time, hoping that the mercurial Mr. Redstone might again abruptly shift his affections. In any event, Mr. Dauman had the support of the Viacom board, and, by casting their lots with Mr. Dauman over Ms. Redstone, they, too, were likely to lose their positions if the Redstones prevailed. Remarkably, Viacom agreed to pick up all of the costs of Mr. Dauman’s litigation assault against the Redstones, as well as Mr. Salerno’s Delaware lawsuit. Though they publicly maintained a united front, the board members began to waver in their support as the summer wore on, and Viacom under Mr. Dauman’s leadership posted disastrous operating results. The latest film in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, Paramount’s big summer movie, failed at the box office, prompting a profit warning. On Aug. 4, the company reported a 29 percent drop in profit for the latest quarter. Ratings agencies said they might downgrade the company’s debt to junk status. Given the uncertainty, companies didn’t want to make deals with Viacom, and key employees threatened to leave. Viacom shares have been battered, dropping 46 percent over the last two years. Then Mr. Salerno was distressed to learn that Mr. Dauman’s lawyers were pursuing settlement talks with the Redstone camp — without telling Mr. Salerno or other directors — that would provide him with some kind of transition role. While those talks were going on, Mr. Salerno was speaking regularly with Aryeh Bourkoff, founder and chief executive of LionTree, a boutique investment advisory firm. Mr. Bourkoff had no formal role (and wasn’t being paid) but, as investment bankers often do, offered his advice, which was to focus on the interests of the company and not Mr. Dauman’s increasingly bitter and personal feud with the Redstones. Once Mr. Salerno recognized that Mr. Dauman’s position as chief executive was no longer tenable, given Viacom’s deteriorating performance and continued hostility from the Redstones, he realized that his goals for the company weren’t all that different from Ms. Redstone’s. An early resolution of the lawsuits and the removal of Mr. Dauman would end the paralysis at the company, which is losing ground in a media environment. Mr. Bourkoff contacted Ken Lerer, a venture capitalist, a founder of The Huffington Post (recently acquired by Verizon) and chairman of BuzzFeed. Mr. Lerer is close to Ms. Redstone, and she had publicly named him as one of her choices for the Viacom board. Mr. Bourkoff suggested Mr. Lerer meet privately with Mr. Salerno. With Ms. Redstone’s blessing, Mr. Salerno, Mr. Bourkoff and Mr. Lerer met at Mr. Lerer’s weekend home in Quogue, on Long Island, on Aug. 7, just three days after the weak earnings news. According to both Mr. Lerer and Mr. Bourkoff, it didn’t take long to reach the basic terms of an agreement. There wasn’t much in it for Mr. Dauman, although he avoided the prospect of years of mudslinging litigation that might well have damaged his reputation as much as Mr. Redstone’s. Mr. Salerno kept Mr. Dauman informed, but ultimately gave him little choice but to accept the terms. Mr. Salerno and the directors fared a little better. They get to stay on the board until the next annual meeting and board election, which will be moved up to no later than Feb. 3. National Amusements can then choose three of the six independent directors up for election, meaning three current board members will retain their seats. Thought it hasn’t been decided yet who those three will be, Mr. Salerno’s negotiating manages to keep some independent directors. Ms. Redstone’s five nominees (Mr. Lerer among them) will join the board now, and no material decisions can be made without a supermajority vote, effectively giving Ms. Redstone’s representatives immediate veto power over any major decision, such as a sale of Paramount. So what did Mr. Dauman accomplish, other than indulging his anger toward Mr. Redstone and enriching a bevy of lawyers and other advisers, to the detriment of Viacom? About the best that can be said for Mr. Dauman, Mr. Coffee offered, is that “it could have been worse. ” “He didn’t fight to the final bunker,” Mr. Coffee added. If he had, “Viacom would have been paralyzed for years. ” | 1 |
The recording that emerged on Friday revealing Donald J. Trump speaking in vulgar and demeaning terms about women prompted extraordinary backlash from Democrats and Republicans, raising questions about whether the Republican Party could dump its nominee at the last minute and find someone more viable a month before Election Day. While the idea of replacing Mr. Trump has been a fantasy for some “Never Trump” Republicans for months, the reality is that removing him from the ticket at this point would be exceedingly complicated. Here’s a look at some of the questions that Republicans are mulling. “It’s the equivalent of a triple bank shot, really,” said Benjamin Ginsberg, a lawyer at Jones Day who was national counsel for the presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney and George W. Bush. Mr. Ginsberg said that the Republican Party did not have a mechanism to replace a nominee just because it wants to. The party’s rules state that “the Republican National Committee is hereby authorized and empowered to fill any and all vacancies which may occur by reason of death, declination, or otherwise of the Republican candidate for president of the United States. ” That essentially means that Mr. Trump would have to die or become incapacitated for the Republican Party to replace him. The use of the word “otherwise” has led some people to suggest that the party has some leeway for ridding itself of Mr. Trump. However, election law experts do not agree. The issue came up before the Republican National Convention when critics of Mr. Trump mused about ways to keep him from winning the nomination. Josh Putnam, a political science lecturer at the University of Georgia, addressed the idea on his blog, FrontloadingHQ, in August and deemed it a nonstarter. “The intention there was to allow the party latitude to replace someone who was incapacitated, neither dead nor dropped out of the race,” Mr. Putnam said. “It’s not about what to do if someone made some controversial comments on a tape 11 years ago and we want to replace them now. ” Mr. Putnam concluded that Mr. Trump’s dropping out of the race was the most probable scenario for getting him off the ticket absent a health calamity. If Mr. Trump dropped out of the race, the Republican National Committee would have to race against the clock to find a replacement that members could agree upon. The rules committee would scramble to determine who would be eligible to be nominated and how such a nomination would proceed. The 168 committee members representing state delegations would have to hold a vote and, as Mr. Trump did at the convention in Cleveland, the new nominee would need to win at least 1, 237 delegates to become the party’s . Mr. Trump and the nominee, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, are already on the ballots across the country, and Mr. Ginsberg said that swapping the nominee would require a dizzying amount of litigation to try to get states to add someone else’s name and reprint their ballots. Adding to the complexity is the fact that early and absentee voting has started in many places and, presumably, many ballots have been cast for Mr. Trump. Mr. Ginsberg says that the laws are murky here, with voters technically picking “electors” who are bound in some states to whoever is the nominee and in other states to the specific candidates. Ideally for the party, votes cast for Mr. Trump would go to the new nominee, but that would probably be subject to litigation. “It is an exercise of lawyers’ fantasies to imagine the litigation that would take place,” Mr. Ginsberg said. “You would have to amass an army of lawyers and send them to each state. ” There is. Richard Winger, the editor of Ballot Access News, points out that in 1912, the Republican incumbent nominee for vice president, James Sherman, died in October. His name remained on the ballots but all of the Republican electors voted for the new nominee, Nicholas Murray Butler, who had been chosen in late October by the national Republican committee. On the Democratic side, the death of Horace Greeley in 1872 came after the election but before the Electoral College cast its votes. In that case, most electors voted for other presidential and candidates. Congress rejected the votes by Democratic electors that went to Mr. Greeley, who had lost to Ulysses S. Grant. “The electors are the deciders,” Mr. Winger said. “I suspect there are a few Republican electors who expect to be elected and who are planning to vote for someone other than Trump. I think both Evan McMullin and Gary Johnson are trying to persuade various likely Republican electors to vote against Trump in the Electoral College in December. ” The Republican National Committee could try to change its rules (or its rules about changing rules) and come up with a new way to find a different nominee. Of course, this would probably bring chaos and cause Mr. Trump and his legions of supporters to declare the process “rigged. ” | 1 |
Bank of Canada Commentary Whipsaws Loonie
by: otterwood
Over the last two weeks we’ve seen more evidence of declining confidence in central banks (see my video on eroding confidence in the establishment here ). The Canadian dollar experienced wild swings on the back of comments from the Bank of Canada and Governor Poloz.
Last Wednesday the Canadian dollar rallied after the Bank of Canada referenced downside risks to inflation and then barely an hour later the Loonie plummeted when Governor Poloz said the committee “actively” considered cutting rates.
Then on Monday we saw a similar dynamic play out when Poloz said “the best plan right now, we think, is to wait for the next 18 months or so,” in a testimony to the House of Commons. The Loonie strengthened significantly on the comment only to completely reverse when Poloz said the comment referred to the output gap and note monetary policy.
The lack of consistency in the Bank of Canada’s communication is creating volatility in asset markets and it can be seen in the USDCAD, see below. | 0 |
Remy Porter Remy escaped the enterprise world and now works as a consultant. Editor-in-Chief for TDWTF.
In 1989, a pair of physicists claimed to have achieved the fusion of hydrogen at room temperatures. This came as quite a shock to other physicists, since fusion was only known to happen inside of stars. Within a few months, their claims were roundly rejected. Cold fusion became synonymous with junk science.
Fast forward to 1995. when a small company wanted to make its own set of generous claims about its web application framework. Allaire, Inc (eventually bought out by Macromedia, which itself was eaten by Adobe), claimed that its Cold Fusion could solve all your web development problems. All of your web development challenges could be solved through the judicious application of CFML.
Fast forward to today, where I’m surprised to learn that ColdFusion is still in active development. Brian recently had the pleasure of attempting to install it. First, he was annoyed at just the install size- 1.2GB for a web runtime and its assorted libraries. Then… the install failed. Brian poked around in the installer and found the following shell script: DISTRO_NAME= GUEST_OS_NAME= if [ -f /etc/issue ] ; then DISTRO_NAME=`cat /etc/issue` fi if [ ! -z "$DISTRO_NAME" ] ; then if [ ! -z "$(echo $DISTRO_NAME | awk '/Ubuntu/')" ] ; then jre_success=`exec "$actvm" 2>&1` case "$jre_success" in *No*such*file*or*directory*|*install*bin*|*cannot*execute*binary*file* ) echo "JRE libraries are missing or not compatible...." echo "Exiting...." ;; *) exec "$actvm" $options $lax_nl_java_launcher_main_class "$propfname""$envPropertiesFile" $cmdLineArgs ;; esac elif [ ! -z "$(echo $DISTRO_NAME | awk '/CentOS/')" ] ; then jre_success=`exec "$actvm" 2>&1` case "$jre_success" in *No*such*file*or*directory*|*install*bin*|*cannot*execute*binary*file* ) echo "JRE libraries are missing or not compatible...." echo "Exiting...." ;; *) exec "$actvm" $options $lax_nl_java_launcher_main_class "$propfname""$envPropertiesFile" $cmdLineArgs ;; esac elif [ ! -z "$(echo $DISTRO_NAME | awk '/SUSE/')" ] ; then jre_success=`exec "$actvm" 2>&1` case "$jre_success" in *No*such*file*or*directory*|*install*bin*|*cannot*execute*binary*file* ) echo "JRE libraries are missing or not compatible...." echo "Exiting...." ;; *) exec "$actvm" $options $lax_nl_java_launcher_main_class "$propfname""$envPropertiesFile" $cmdLineArgs ;; esac
There are a few issues here. First, while /etc/issue is a file that you can reasonably expect a modern Linux system to have, there is no guarantee that it is there, or that its contents will include the identifier of the system distribution. If there isn’t one, the installer makes no attempt to fail over to a different file (like /etc/system-release , which while also not guaranteed, is probably more accurate), or even uname . But that’s all minor details.
Regardless of what it finds in the /etc/issue file, it executes the exact same command anyway, raising the question of why it even checked in the first place. [Advertisement] Incrementally adopt DevOps best practices with BuildMaster , ProGet and Otter , creating a robust, secure, scalable, and reliable DevOps toolchain. | 0 |
Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee will be made in an open hearing. [The announcement came last week that Sessions would follow up Director James Comey’s testimony before the same committee with his own appearance, but it was speculated that appearance would be in a closed session. The Intelligence Committee’s chairman, Sen. Richard Burr ( ) announced Monday that the attorney general’s testimony will be before the public as Comey’s was last Thursday. The subject of the hearing, which will take place Tuesday at 2:30 p. m. Eastern Time in the Hart Senate Office Building, will be the ongoing probe into Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential campaign and the controversy about Comey’s firing from the FBI and subsequently leaks to the press of potentially privileged memos about his conversations with President Donald Trump. Sessions, who recused himself from all involvement in the Department of Justice’s own Russia investigation, was thrust back into the fracas by Comey’s testimony. The fired FBI head strongly implied that the attorney general refused to protect him from or offer advice on how to deal with an overbearing President Trump. He also posited that he was not made aware of the scope and parameters of Sessions’ recusal. Sessions’ spokesman categorically denied these claims in a statement Friday, offering an email sent to Comey in March laying out the attorney general’s reasons for recusing himself and the extent to which he did so. Among the more striking revelations of Comey’s testimony was his admission that he had himself used friend and Columbia University law professor, Daniel Richman, to leak the now infamous “let this go” memo on an alleged conversation between himself and the president. Comey further admitted that he did so specifically to force the appointment of a special counsel, a purpose fulfilled when Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who had been heading the investigation, appointed Comey’s predecessor and mentor Robert Mueller to that position last month. Also likely on the docket will be Sessions’ own interactions with members of the Russian government. The attorney general’s political opponents have made much of his failure to disclose, during his confirmation hearings and on his security clearance application, certain meetings he had, primarily with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, during the 2016 campaign. Despite Sessions’ insistence that all these meetings were made in the scope of his official duties as a United States senator, voices from the left, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren ( ) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi ( ) have gone so far as to demand Sessions resign over the matter. Sessions will likely seek to dispel whatever taint Senate Democrats attempt to create over these meetings and clarify the exact chain of events that led to Comey’s dismissal, an action he publicly endorsed at the time. Sessions and Comey’s testimony in rapid succession before the Senate Intelligence Committee is not the first time the two men will lock political horns. As far back as October, Sessions was expressing his misgivings about Comey. The pair’s latest spar will play out before the American public Tuesday afternoon. | 0 |
When Donald J. Trump went to Detroit last week to deliver a speech on his economic proposals, he laid the chronic problems of the heavily black city at the feet of his opponents, saying Democrats had a stranglehold on power, “and unless we change policies, we will not change results. ” But Mr. Trump had no firsthand encounter with the very difficulties he described: He flew into the city on his private plane, got into his sport utility vehicle and motorcaded on highways past several black neighborhoods before reaching the downtown convention center where he addressed the heavily white Detroit Economic Club. Then he left without taking questions about the decline and nascent recovery of the country’s automotive capital, a hub of black America. In attempting to fashion a populist message, Mr. Trump has criticized Democrats for doing little to address urban joblessness and despair. But in the more than a year since he began his White House bid, the Republican nominee has not held a single event aimed at black voters in their communities, shunning the traditional stops at churches, historically black colleges and barber shops and salons that have long been staples of the presidential campaign trail. Mr. Trump may not have purposefully snubbed black neighborhoods — he rarely plunges into any community to tour businesses, sample local cuisine or spontaneously engage in the handshake and rituals of everyday campaigning. His preferred style of politicking consists almost entirely of addressing rallies, conducting media interviews and receiving visitors in private at events or at his Manhattan skyscraper. But the white billionaire has not just walled himself off from voters where they live. He has also turned down repeated invitations to address gatherings of black leaders, ignored conservatives in states he needs to win and made numerous inflammatory comments about minorities. Mr. Trump’s mix of provocation and neglect has infuriated black Republicans, who fear that the party’s already dismal standing with may sink so low that it barely registers in swing states. “He’s alienated a number of minority voters, and that’s reflected in his low numbers,” said Tara Wall, a communications consultant who helped with black outreach on both of George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns and Mitt Romney’s 2012 bid. “You have to do the bare minimum, and he’s not even doing that. ” Republican presidential candidates typically perform poorly among black voters, perhaps the most loyal constituency in the Democratic Party. Since President Gerald R. Ford received 16 percent of the vote in 1976, no Republican nominee has attained more than 12 percent. But as demonstrated in the past two White House races — in which John McCain received 4 percent of black votes in 2008 and Mitt Romney received 6 percent in 2012 — when a Republican collapses into single digits among and struggles with other minorities, it reduces the number of white votes a Democrat needs to win the presidency. That is what worries Republicans this year, particularly in states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania with heavily black cities, where an NBC Street poll last week showed Mr. Trump receiving only 1 percent of the black vote. (The poll’s three percentage point margin of error among all voters suggests that his support could be slightly higher.) “As is the case with many other groups, Donald Trump is in a race to the bottom,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster who last year wrote a book warning his party to expand its appeal or face doom. “He will likely have to get more than 65 percent of the white vote to win. ” Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers recognize the severity of the challenge and have called on him to broaden his campaign. Conceding that she is “extremely concerned” about Mr. Trump’s standing among blacks, Omarosa Manigault, his director of outreach, said she wanted to bring him before black audiences. “I am now looking at opportunities for Mr. Trump to get in front of key partners in the community, particularly civil rights groups and faith groups, particularly historically black colleges and universities,” said Ms. Manigault, who achieved fame as a contestant on the first season of Mr. Trump’s television show “The Apprentice. ” “We have to make an effort,” she said. “It’s unacceptable to say, ‘Oh, it’s just too late, we are not going to try to do anything. ’” While Mr. Trump once prided himself on how popular “The Apprentice” was among and boasted of his friendships with black celebrities, he has squandered whatever good will he once enjoyed among . Interviews with black Republicans and Democrats reveal one reason he is so toxic: He is perhaps the most prominent “birther” in the country, contending in 2011 that President Obama was not born in the United States and leading a charge calling on Mr. Obama to release his birth certificate. And if that was not troubling enough to blacks, Mr. Trump’s call to restore the country’s greatness can sound to ears as if he is nostalgic for a time before a black family was in the White House. He also initially refused to denounce David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader who has expressed support for Mr. Trump, and has never expounded on Mr. Duke’s bigotry beyond dismissively saying that he “disavows” him. Then there are Mr. Trump’s heated rallies, in which the candidate has encouraged rough treatment of minority protesters, his attacks on the Black Lives Matter movement and his recognition in June of a black supporter, in a sea of white faces, as “my . ” “We’ve never seen numbers this bad for someone at the top of the ticket,” said Cornell Belcher, a Democratic strategist. “This is much deeper than simply not agreeing with Donald Trump on the issues. This is a much deeper rejection of him. ” Making matters worse, Mr. Trump has demonstrated little appetite to go outside his comfort zone. The encounters he has had with blacks have largely been confined to meetings at Trump Tower. And when Ms. Manigault and other Trump advisers have tried to have him speak to influential black audiences, their efforts have been rejected. In recent interactions with predominantly black and Hispanic organizations — some of which typically receive presidential candidates of both parties every four years — the Trump campaign has either not responded to requests for him to appear or has waited until shortly before the events to say he would not be attending. It took almost seven months for the N. A. A. C. P. to get a “no” from the Trump campaign in response to an invitation to speak at the group’s annual convention in July. Five days before its start, a campaign official emailed to say that Mr. Trump had a scheduling conflict. In early May, a representative from the National Association of Black Journalists invited Mr. Trump to speak at a convention it was hosting with the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. After several phone calls and a round of emails back and forth, the Trump campaign told the groups on the day before the convention began that he could not attend. Even among black groups that may have members open to the candidacy of a business executive, Mr. Trump has shown little interest. The National Urban League said it had invited Mr. Trump to speak three times. The first two times, it received no official answer. Most recently, the group extended an invitation for Mr. Trump to speak at its annual conference this month. Ms. Manigault said she had stressed to Trump advisers that he should accept. He declined. “We didn’t get any reason. We just got an email declaration,” said Marc H. Morial, the National Urban League president. “My view is that candidates who run for public office should work to appeal to every segment of the electorate. ” Yet Mr. Trump is not even reaching out to some black Republicans. Joe Watkins, a Philadelphia pastor who worked in George Bush’s White House, said he saw no sign that the nominee was trying to reach Pennsylvania’s black voters. “Every cycle except for this one, the Republican presidential campaigns have reached out to me to help them,” Mr. Watkins said. He is not the only black conservative confounded by Mr. Trump. Gregory Cheadle, the man Mr. Trump referred to as “my ” said he was inspired by Mr. Trump’s success and wealth but was frustrated that the candidate has not done more to appeal to black voters. “He’s a billionaire and so his life doesn’t have to include black people,” Mr. Cheadle said. “It would be great if he went to a N. A. A. C. P. meeting or just interacted with blacks more — and not necessarily for political gain — but just to understand our struggle and what we go through. ” Blacks in Detroit, feeling spurned by Mr. Trump, felt much the same. Marvin Beatty, who like Mr. Trump is a developer and casino executive, said the Republican could have easily found a black entrepreneur in the city willing to host him and highlight the city’s burgeoning comeback. “Would it have necessarily moved the needle? Probably not,” Mr. Beatty said. “But would it have indicated that he has an interest across racial lines in a business attempting to serve the community and fulfill his agenda? Without question. ” | 1 |
By Alexa Erickson
This past Sunday, the latest ABC/ Washington Post poll showed a 12-point national polling in favor of Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. This poll, along with various other recent polls from the Washington Post , Reuters, and ABC, has shown a 9-percentage point sampling bias toward registered Democrats , causing an uproar of speculation.
Keep in mind, we are neither Trump supports nor Hillary Supporters.
The website Zero Hedge reported : “METHODOLOGY – This ABC News poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Oct. 20-22, 2016, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 874 likely voters. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 36-27-31 percent, Democrats – Republicans – Independents.”
These small sampling details shouldn’t be taken so lightly, as they can change the results of the poll immensely, as well as shift people’s perceptions of their candidate’s likelihood of winning. This in turn can deter people from voting altogether. There may be a few more registered Democrats, but they certainly don’t have a 9-point registration average, which the latest sampling polls have shown.
Furthermore, the media organizations involved are pulling a certain demographic sampling to get the results they have.
Zero Hedge put it into perspective by noting:
As a quick example, the ABC / WaPo poll found that Hillary enjoys a 79-point advantage over Trump with black voters. Therefore, even a small “oversample” of black voters of 5% could swing the overall poll by 3 full points . Moreover, the pollsters don’t provide data on the demographic mix of their polls which makes it impossible to “fact check” the bias…convenient.
The many recent WikiLeaks documents have exposed Hillary Clinton’s scandalous behaviour, including the release of the contents from her private e-mail server. One of them in particular revealed the close ties the Clinton campaign has had with polling organizations, creating speculation that the campaign is paying the organizations to push the polls in Clinton’s favor.
With media organizations using specific demographic sampling details to rig the results of polling, more dismay, confusion, and anger over the possible, if not absolute, corruption that occurs in the U.S. presidential election can be the only result.
And to really expose just how rigged the polls are, the latest Podesta emails, which were just released by WikiLeaks , show in disturbing detail just how to “manufacture” the hoped-for results from a certain poll. The email correspondence exposes the request for recommendations regarding “oversamples for polling” in order to “maximize what we get out of our media polling.”
One email said, “I also want to get your Atlas folks to recommend oversamples for our polling before we start in February. By market, regions, etc. I want to get this all compiled into one set of recommendations so we can maximize what we get out of our media polling.”
And among some of the most damaging materials was an attachment of a 37-page guide. One instance revealed that, in Arizona, the oversampling of Hispanics’ and Native Americans’ populations was highly recommended:
“Research, microtargeting & polling projects
– Over-sample Hispanics
– Use Spanish language interviewing. (Monolingual Spanish-speaking voters are among the lowest turnout Democratic targets)
– Over-sample the Native American population”
And in Florida, the report discusses “consistently monitoring” samples for ensuring they’re “not too old” and “has enough African American and Hispanic voters.” The report even acknowledges that national polls over sample “key districts/regions” and “ethnic” groups “as needed.”
“– General election benchmark, 800 sample, with potential over samples in key districts/regions
– Benchmark polling in targeted races, with ethnic over samples as needed
– Targeting tracking polls in key races, with ethnic over samples as needed”
Many of the Podesta emails give clear insight into why the mainstream media has refused to report on the most damning allegations against Clinton — with this latest revelation simply affirming the reality that the “consent of the governed” is, in reality, nothing more than manufactured consent by one group that holds total power.
Ultimately, these elections are a mere distraction, and as John F. Hylan, among others, told us:
The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation … The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties … [and]control the majority of the newspapers and magazines in this country. They use the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of office public officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government. It operates under cover of a self-created screen [and]seizes our executive officers, legislative bodies, schools, courts, newspapers and every agency created for the public protection. ( source )( source )
These are the ones we should be focusing our attention on.
Source: Collective Evolution
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WASHINGTON — For a look at how sharply policy in Washington will change under the administration of Donald J. Trump, look no further than the environment. Mr. Trump has called climate change a “hoax. ” He has vowed to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency “in almost every form. ” And in an early salvo against one of President Obama’s signature issues, Mr. Trump has named Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute to head his E. P. A. transition team. Mr. Ebell has asserted that whatever warming caused by greenhouse gas pollution is modest and could be beneficial. A 2007 Vanity Fair profile of Mr. Ebell called him an “oil industry mouthpiece. ” Global warming may indeed be the sharpest example of how policy in Washington will change under a Trump administration. President Obama has said his efforts to establish the United States as the global leader in climate policy are his proudest legacy. But if Mr. Trump makes good on his campaign promises, experts in climate change policy warn, that legacy would unravel quickly. The world, then, may have no way to avoid the most devastating consequences of global warming, including rising sea levels, extreme droughts and food shortages, and more powerful floods and storms. Mr. Trump has already vowed to “cancel” last year’s Paris climate agreement, which commits more than 190 countries to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide pollution, and to dismantle the Clean Power Plan, Mr. Obama’s domestic climate change regulations. “If Trump steps back from that, it makes it much less likely that the world will ever meet that target, and essentially ensures we will head into the danger zone,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which produces global reports on the state of climate science. Mr. Trump cannot legally block other countries from fulfilling their Paris agreement commitments, nor can he quickly or unilaterally erase Mr. Obama’s climate rules. But he can, as president, choose not to carry out the Paris plan in the United States. And he could so substantially slow or weaken the enforcement of Mr. Obama’s rules that they would have little impact on reducing emissions in the United States, at least during Mr. Trump’s term. That could doom the Paris agreement’s goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions enough to stave off an atmospheric warming of at least 3. 6 degrees Fahrenheit, the point at which, many scientists say, the planet will be locked into an irreversible future of extreme and dangerous warming. Without the full participation of the United States, the world’s greenhouse gas polluter, after China, that goal is probably unattainable, even if every other country follows through on its pledges. And, the experts say, without the participation of the United States, other governments are less likely to carry out their pledged emissions cuts. “That target is already extremely difficult to achieve, but it could be done with very hard, very diligent work by every single country,” Mr. Oppenheimer said. The election of Mr. Trump is likely to cast a pall over Marrakesh, Morocco, where global negotiators have gathered for a conference to hash out the next steps for the Paris accord: how to verify commitments are being met, and how to pay for enforcement by poor countries that cannot afford the technology or energy disruptions. Traveling in New Zealand, Secretary of State John Kerry was asked if he still planned to attend the conference, given the results of the election. “I’m absolutely going to Marrakesh, perhaps even more important,” he said. “And I look forward to being there very, very much. ” Pessimism appears to be warranted. Mr. Oppenheimer and other climate policy experts said all major emitters needed to take action in the near term to stave off the 3. increase. Scientific reports released over the last two years have concluded that the measurable warming of the planet because of human activities has already begun. This year is on track to be the hottest on record, blasting past the previous records set in 2015 and 2014. An analysis by Climate Interactive, a scientific think tank that provides data used by many governments, concluded that the policies by the United States would account for about 20 percent of the expected greenhouse gas reductions under the Paris plan from 2016 to 2030. But absent the expected policy actions in the United States under the Trump administration, scientists at Climate Interactive said, the math of emissions reductions will be much more difficult to maintain. “Pessimists will find abundant support for despair this morning,” John Sterman, a professor of system dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in a Climate Interactive analysis on Wednesday morning. “With Mr. Trump in the Oval Office and Republican majorities in both houses,” Mr. Sterman wrote, “there is little hope that the Clean Power Plan will survive in the Supreme Court or for federal action to meet the U. S. commitment under the Paris accord. Worse, other key emitter nations — especially India — now have little reason to follow through on their Paris pledges: If the U. S. won’t, why should developing nations cut their emissions?” The Clean Power Plan is the ambitious centerpiece of Mr. Obama’s climate change legacy and the key to his commitment under the Paris accord. At its heart is a set of Environmental Protection Agency regulations intended to curb pollution from power plants. If enacted, the rules could transform the American electricity sector, close hundreds of plants and usher in the construction of vast new wind and solar farms. The plan is projected to cut United States power plant emissions 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. But the program is currently under litigation by 28 states and more than 100 companies, and it is expected to go before the Supreme Court as early as next year. Mr. Trump and other Republicans have attacked the Clean Power Plan as a “war on coal. ” As president, Mr. Trump would not have the legal authority to unilaterally undo the regulations, which were put forth by the E. P. A. under a provision of the 1970 Clean Air Act. However, Mr. Trump could target the rules by appointing an justice to the Supreme Court and then refusing to defend the plan when it goes before the court. He could also direct the E. P. A. to reissue the plan to be extremely friendly to industry. Such a move would also be subject to lawsuits by environmental advocates, which would further drag out the process. And in concert with congressional Republicans, he could decimate the E. P. A. ’s budget, crippling its capacity. “They may still have to have a regulation, but they don’t have to do it the way the Obama administration did it,” said Jeff Holmstead, a former E. P. A. official in the George W. Bush administration. “And in the meantime, those suits often go on for years and years. ” Even if Mr. Trump ultimately fails to gut Mr. Obama’s climate change rules, he could ensure that their enforcement is delayed through his term, as lawsuits wind their way through the courts. Mr. Trump would face difficulties in his plans to eliminate the E. P. A. although it is likely he could substantively reduce its size. He would need approval from Congress to completely erase the agency, said Jody Freeman, a professor of environmental law at Harvard University and a former counselor to Mr. Obama. Ms. Freeman noted that several major environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, specifically call for rules to be enacted and overseen by the E. P. A. Changing those rules would also require action from Congress, and Senate Democrats would certainly block such efforts — unless Senate Republican leaders opt to scuttle what is left of filibuster rules already weakened by Democrats. In China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas polluter, climate change officials said they intended to continue with plans to cut carbon emissions regardless of Mr. Trump’s plans. The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, has vowed under the Paris agreement that Chinese emissions will drop after 2030, and that China will put in place a national system next year to force companies to pay a fee for their carbon pollution. “China’s attitude toward development, as President Xi Jinping has said when he met with Secretary of State Kerry earlier, is that tackling climate change is not something anybody asks us to do,” Chai Qimin, a Chinese negotiator, said in an emailed response from the Marrakesh talks. “It’s what we want to do. ” But in India, the world’s greenhouse gas polluter, the election of Mr. Trump has raised doubts about a willingness to move forward. Under the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, pledged that rich countries would mobilize $100 billion annually by 2020 to help poor countries make the transition to cleaner forms of energy. Indian officials have made clear that their steps to cut emissions will depend on financial aid from rich countries, but Mr. Trump has also vowed to cut all “global warming payments. ” “I think most certainly it will affect the momentum in negotiations because it throws up a lot of questions,” said Arunabha Ghosh, chief executive of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, a New Delhi policy group. “The chances of public funds coming from climate finance are much more dismal now,” he said. “Right now I don’t feel very optimistic. ” | 1 |
Los Angeles may feature an abundance of holistic arts, yoga and macrobiotic diets, but it’s probably not the first city that comes to mind when you hear the term “ . ” You can largely thank the 900 miles of freeways and highways in Los Angeles County for that. Few would dispute that the city’s culture is a one, with an obsessive focus on driving routes, smog alerts and the best times of day to avoid traffic. It’s an obsession that has been mocked on “Saturday Night Live,” captured in pop songs and recorded in academic essays. It’s possible, though, to escape the routines of the typical visitor in the name of environmental friendliness. I set out to marry the city’s organic cuisine and healthy, active lifestyle with something that it isn’t widely associated with — leaving a small carbon footprint — by ditching the car and creature comforts of regular hotels. I discovered that it’s possible to rely on the Metro, Los Angeles’s imperfect but quite functional public transportation system, which includes buses, a light rail system and, yes, even a subway. I was able to find a comfortable yurt — that’s right, the traditional Central Asian round tent — in a quiet, wooded part of the city accessible by light rail and just minutes from downtown. And all while saving some money in the process. My girlfriend, Brette, and I rode the long escalator into the bowels of the subway station at Santa Monica Boulevard and Vermont Avenue. “Wow,” she said, “I can’t believe this exists. ” It does feel strange to ride the subway in Los Angeles because it dispels the one huge stereotype nearly everyone subscribes to: that you need a car to get around. “And it’s so quiet and clean,” she said, touching her Metro Tap card to the turnstile (subtracting the $1. 75 fare) and going through. The platform was mostly empty. The limitations of the subway quickly become apparent in that there are only two lines, purple and red, which basically cover the same route. The red line goes from downtown through Koreatown, into Hollywood, before terminating in North Hollywood. If you happen to live within walking distance of one of the 14 stations on the line, and your destination is also on that line, then the subway is supremely useful. But most of the approximately 500 square miles of the city remain unserved by the lines. Bus and light rail lines are more comprehensive and help pick up the slack. Pershing Square, in the heart of downtown, is, however, one of the subway stops, and it deposits you just a block or so from one of the city’s major culinary destinations: Grand Central Market. It was founded as a large arcade in 1917, and can still feel like a market at businesses like Torres Produce and Chiles Secos. But in recent years it’s morphed into its current incarnation: a big, vibrant food hall peppered with a selection of popular restaurants. Opening a place or holding an event at Grand Central is an immediate notch in the belt of any Los Angeles chef. Food prices have naturally skyrocketed, but some good deals can be found. One of the best is the Fast Burger from Belcampo ($5) built in the style: American cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion and a Thousand sauce. The quality of the beef is what makes this burger a bargain natural juices run immodestly from the freshly ground patty, perfectly complementing the vegetables. The feel of downtown Los Angeles is unflinchingly urban — mere miles away, though, lies an entirely different world. We made our way to Union Station, the city’s rail hub and the largest railroad terminal in the Western United States. A gorgeous, soaring structure erected in the 1930s, its architecture mixes bits and pieces of Art Deco and Mission Revival styles. We found the Metro Gold Line (also $1. 75 on the same Tap card) one of the city’s four light rail lines. It was uncharacteristically drizzly, and those of us waiting for the line squeezed under the shelter on the outdoor platform. The announcement board said the train would be arriving in four minutes. Four minutes passed, then another four. Then another four. The platform was becoming crowded. Finally, it arrived. About 15 minutes later, we stepped out in the Mount Washington neighborhood and began the walk to our lodgings. I found our yurt on Airbnb for $98 a night. It’s essentially a big, round tent with a front and back door a latticelike structure braces the frame. Wooden ribs support the dome, and at the top is a covered translucent wheel, or crown, that acts like a circular skylight. It’s quite beautiful, and the luxuries — a proper bed, for example, as well as electricity — give the illusion of camping without any of the real stuff. It turns out that while I find saying the word “glamping” to be slightly nauseating, the actual act is very pleasant. The yurt is set on a raised platform in a quiet, hilly section of Mount Washington, a neighborhood in northeast Los Angeles known for its steep and winding streets. The owners left the keys and some lovely touches: tea and coffee, an electric kettle, a French press, even a bottle of inexpensive wine. There were travel books in the night stand, as well as a small portable heater. The back door led to the outdoor bathroom and shower area, with a dry composting toilet (and instructions for how to use it) as well as a sink and shower with a “gray water” system (it runs off and feeds the plants in the garden the hosts provide soap). Using the outdoor shower was one of the highlights of the stay: I was expecting to take a quick, freezing shower and immediately towel off and run back inside. But the water heater worked well, and I was able to take a relaxing, warm shower in the drizzly, weather, right next to an enormous prickly pear cactus on the hillside. While the city’s public transit system proved mostly reliable, I decided to try other transportation options. CicLAvia is an initiative that creates daylong events for biking, skating and walking. The aim is to get people to explore their neighborhoods by means other than cars by creating large, open public spaces out of Los Angeles’s streets. “L. A. is mostly known for destination points — you go from point A to point B,” said Romel Pascual, executive director of CicLAvia. “You do that in a car and you miss everything in between. This makes you slow down and appreciate the moments. ” My brother, Loren, in town for a visit, and I decided we would rent bikes and participate in the San Fernando Valley edition of CicLAvia. We met at Retro Xpress Bicycles on Victory Boulevard and asked for two day rentals. “Well,” the man behind the counter said, pursing his lips, “we don’t have many bikes left. ” He stopped and pointed at two pink girls’ bikes that were way too small. “This is all we got left. ” I couldn’t tell if he was just trolling me or if he was serious. He was serious. We walked out with the two bright pink bikes and two helmets for $19. 95 apiece. The ride up to the corner of Van Nuys and Roscoe, where the event began, was mostly uneventful — we did get a few honks, hoots and hollers from passing cars. Once we were in the confines of the stretch of CicLAvia, no one cared. The entire boulevard was closed to traffic, and tents and food trucks were set up along the sidewalks. It was a giant street fair there were lots of pets, children and residents of all ages. Many were biking, others conversing and getting to know one another. Mr. Pascual was right — it was enlightening to slow down and get an perspective on the neighborhood, all while strengthening a sense of community. I had covered four of the five major alternatives to cars in Los Angeles: foot, bike, subway, light rail. That left the bus. Brette and I embarked on an epic trip (Line 733) from downtown to Venice one afternoon — it was a good 80 to 90 minutes to make the 14. haul and reach the big roundabout near Main Street and Venice Way, just steps from the Venice Boardwalk. Our destination was Seed Kitchen, a restaurant opened in 2008 by Eric Lechasseur and Sanae Suzuki that specializes in vegan, macrobiotic meals. I ordered a saisai doniburi macro bowl ($12. 95) which contained kale, shiitake mushrooms, beans and Japanese pumpkin. I was surprised by how flavorful it was — the balsamic miso dressing certainly helped. But why pay at all for your food when you can snack free on the plants and flowers that grow all around you? That’s the philosophy of Pascal Baudar, a forager and wild food consultant. He leads regular classes and excursions into Los Angeles’s forested areas in search of edible plants, mushrooms and flowers. Brette and I paid $20 each to join him one morning close to the Tujunga Wash, near the Angeles National Forest in the far northern part of the city. Our group of six began a leisurely stroll through the forest, and Mr. Baudar stopped to point out dozens of plants that have culinary uses: bright yellow mustard flowers, elderberry, curling dock and watercress. We spotted a couple of men carrying large bags of watercress they’d picked near the Wash. “Those guys,” Mr. Baudar said, “they make mistakes. ” I asked him what he meant. He explained that we were at a horse crossing, and where plants grow in water, you want to pick plants upstream of any animal activity, to avoid possible bacteria. Mr. Baudar had other useful tips, including how to differentiate poison hemlock from edible hemlock . (Cow parsley and Queen Anne’s lace, for example, have tiny hairs on their stems poison hemlock has smooth stems.) Later, we sipped on a homemade soda he had made from elderflowers and munched on our trove of wild plants. I was learning that Los Angeles’s sprawl and geographical diversity work for it in many ways. They yield an impressive breadth of activities, which, with a little work, can take place without spending one minute in a car. | 1 |
Imagine the Rolling Stones coming out with a new acoustic album or Christo preparing to wrap some remote island in parachute fabric. That is the kind of anticipation that surrounds the artist Damien Hirst’s first new body of work in several years, to be unveiled in Venice on April 9, a month before the Biennale there. The show, billed as “10 years in the making,” is also the first time the Pinault Collection’s two locations — the Palazzo Grassi and the Punta della Dogana — will be dedicated to a single artist. Like previous Hirst extravaganzas, this project is being rolled out with the same hypervigilant level of control and fanfare. And hovering over the project is whether — given the precipitous drop in his prices after his Sotheby’s auction in 2008 — the celebrity artist can have another chapter. Has the darling of the ’90s — who led the Young British Artists, or Y. B. A. s, and was known for his $12 million shark in a tank — jumped the shark? And given that many buyers were left bitterly holding the bag after Mr. Hirst flooded the market with his work at the Sotheby’s sale, doing an end run around his dealers, will collectors give him another chance? “He’s certainly confounded the market before. It depends on how successful the work is,” said Marc Porter, a chairman of Sotheby’s fine art division. “He’s taking on Venice and that’s audacious. ” The project, “Treasures From the Wreck of the Unbelievable,” according to those who have glimpsed it, resembles jeweled buried treasure covered with coral as if just pulled out of the ocean, like relics from the lost city of Atlantis or Captain Nemo. It includes some 250 pieces in various sizes ranging in price from about $400, 000 for small jade objects to $4 million for a malachite head of Medusa. Potential buyers cannot view the work in person, nor can they receive images by email, a courtesy typically afforded top collectors. Instead, a representative from one of Mr. Hirst’s two galleries — Gagosian in New York and White Cube in London — visits with an iPad to flip through photographs of the work. Mr. Hirst declined to comment, as did his dealers, Larry Gagosian and Jay Jopling of White Cube, who said all news media requests had to go through Mr. Hirst’s studio, Science UK Limited. The Pinault Collection’s owner, François Pinault, also refused to be interviewed his museum has posted just a couple of tantalizing photographs of Mr. Hirst’s coming show on its website. The Venice show is the third prong of Mr. Hirst’s apparent stab at a second act. The first was his opening of the Newport Street Gallery in south London in October 2015, which presents exhibitions of work from his collection. Then in April Mr. Hirst, 51, announced that he was returning to the Gagosian gallery, having left it in 2012. Already his market is showing signs of strengthening. One of his large butterfly canvases sold at Christie’s in November for a respectable $1 million, given the estimate of $900, 000 to $1. 2 million. Just about everyone in the art world agrees that Mr. Hirst has some healing to do. While he pulled off the unthinkable by selling $200 million of his work at the Sotheby’s sale on Sept. 15, 2008 — bypassing the usual gallery channels and on the same infamous day that Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy — the result was a surfeit of Hirst pieces on the market, which hurt his prices. “In many ways that auction marked the beginning of the end,” said the dealer Helly Nahmad. Where his pill cabinet “Lullaby Spring” sold at Sotheby’s in 2007 for $19. 2 million, for example, his pill cabinet “Lullaby Winter” sold at Christie’s in 2015 for $4. 6 million. More recently, one of his spot paintings sold in Sotheby’s contemporary art day sale in November for just $396, 500, considerably lower than the $1. 7 million they sometimes fetched in 2013. “People inexplicably bought into that sale, precipitating a downward market death spiral that took us all down with them,” said Adam Lindemann, the collector and dealer, referring to Mr. Hirst’s Sotheby’s auction. “His market collapsed and hasn’t really revived since. “And now he’s back like Arnold,” Mr. Lindemann continued, referring to a line from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Terminator” films. “Remember the old saying, ‘Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. ’” Because Mr. Hirst is so prolific, there is the growing sense that his works are ubiquitous, an impression that would be countered, collectors say, by a catalogue raisonné that offered a full accounting of his work. “As an investor, which I am, before undertaking such an investment you have to really make sure that the production is somewhat under control,” Mr. Nahmad said. “The market doesn’t like chaos and the market doesn’t like confusion. If Damien Hirst came out with an extensive catalogue raisonné, people could see an order to his body of work. How many units exist? How many butterflies? How many spot paintings?” At the same time, art experts say, Mr. Hirst is the real deal — not just a flash in the pan or a relic of the past, but an artist with exceptional talent and staying power. True, he had the temerity to charge $100 million for a diamond encrusted skull in 2007 and to take over all of Gagosian’s galleries in 2012 (11 of them at the time) with a retrospective of his spot paintings. But Mr. Hirst, collectors, dealers and auction executives say, is worthy of attention, as evidenced by the Tate Modern’s decision to devote a retrospective to his work in 2012. “He is still one of the greatest artists of this century,” said the real estate developer Aby Rosen, who described himself as “long on Hirst” in his art collection, calling the new “Treasures” work “stunning. ” “He will produce till he dies because he has so much brain — he’s so deep,” Mr. Rosen added. “And this guy is not going away. ” As to whether collectors unable to sell their Hirsts had a right to be frustrated, Mr. Rosen said: “If you want to be a collector, you have to collect wide and deep, and within your portfolio things will go up and down. If you buy two stocks and one goes down, don’t be angry at IBM or G. M. ” There are those who say that Mr. Hirst’s coming shows in Venice are inextricably linked with Mr. Pinault, who owns Christie’s auction house and has avidly collected Mr. Hirst’s work. Does he want to the Hirst market out of art experts ask, to raise the value of his own holdings? Whatever the case, most agree that Mr. Hirst — with an estimated net worth of $350 million — doesn’t need the money. “I do believe that Damien Hirst — especially early Damien Hirst — will have an important footprint in art history,” Mr. Nahmad said. “The true Damien Hirst collectors, if they love what he’s doing now, they’ll buy into it and disregard that this guy so many times in the past has way overproduced. ” Perhaps more than any other artist, Mr. Hirst has embodied the meteoric rise of the artist as celebrity, the auction market at its height and collectors competing to pay millions for a stuffed shark or flattened butterfly. But as art has increasingly become an asset class, Mr. Hirst has also come to symbolize how a stock can tank. Here, a look back at some of the critical junctures in the volatile yet riveting trajectory of Mr. Hirst. 1991: Formaldehyde Mr. Hirst takes the art world by storm with his tiger shark suspended in formaldehyde, which the billionaire manager Steven A. Cohen buys for a reported $12 million. 1990s: Butterflies Mr. Hirst explores themes like death and science with butterflies pinned under glass. 2000s: Pill Cabinets Mr. Hirst’s colored, handmade pills recall Victorian curiosity cabinets and explore modern notions of medicine. 2007: Luxe Skulls Mr. Hirst announces sale of his skull for $100 million. 2008: Sotheby’s Sale Brings $200 Million Mr. Hirst bypasses dealers to sell all 223 works, breaking the record for a auction, set in 1993 when an Picasso sale brought $20 million. : Tanking at Auction After his Sotheby’s sale, Mr. Hirst’s prices at auction top out at $1. 5 million (for his “Mickey” canvas at Christie’s London in 2014) and eventually fail to sell (his “Beautiful Mickey Mouse Painting,” estimated at $400, 000 to $600, 000 at Christie’s in May 2015). January 2012: Spot Paintings Everywhere Larry Gagosian agrees to show Mr. Hirst’s spot paintings in all of his 11 galleries. December 2012: Hirst Leaves Gagosian Mr. Hirst stuns the art world by announcing that he is leaving the Gagosian gallery, where he has been represented for 17 years. 2016: Hirst and Gagosian Reunite Four years after leaving Larry Gagosian, Mr. Hirst returns to the gallery. “I share a long history with Larry,” the artist says in a statement, “and am pleased we are working together once again. ” Mr. Gagosian says: “Take Damien Hirst out of contemporary art history, and there’s an incredible void. Great artists, like great people, have second acts. ” 2017: Hirst to Unveil a New Work at Pinault Collection in Venice Ten years in the making, Mr. Hirst’s exhibition is to open just before the Venice Biennale, the first time that the two Venetian locations of the Pinault Collection will be dedicated to a single artist. | 1 |
REYNOSA, Tamaulipas — The ongoing hunt for the leader of the Gulf Cartel in this border city has led to more than nine days of continuous gun battles. The clashes resulted in the deaths of at least 14 individuals — including most of the gunmen. Anecdotal accounts by residents place the death toll much higher. As Breitbart Texas reported, Mexican authorities have been targeting the leadership of the Gulf Cartel in this city. Officials focused their efforts on capturing or killing Gulf Cartel leader Julian “Comandante Toro” Loisa Salinas, also known as Juan Manuel Loisa Salinas. Law enforcement officials consulted by Breitbart Texas point to El Toro possibly being forced out of Reynosa and turning control of the plaza to another Gulf Cartel commander. The ongoing violence has sparked rumors about a curfew placed in the city where residents were asked to not be out on the city streets after a certain hour. Those rumors spread through social media as well as messaging applications raising the level of concern among citizens. Breitbart Texas reached out to Tamaulipas law enforcement officials who stated that government agencies at the local, state nor federal level implemented no such measure. Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and their original Spanish. This article was written by “A. C. Del Angel” from Reynosa, Tamaulipas and Breitbart Texas’ Ildefonso Ortiz. | 0 |
The Russian Far East looks to the American West for inspiration RD Interview: Yaroslav Lissovolik, the Eurasian Development Bank’s chief economist, discusses the prospects for the development of Russia’s Far East into an important economic and technological hub in the region. RD Interview: Yaroslav Lissovolik, the Eurasian Development Bank’s chief economist, discusses the prospects for the development of Russia’s Far East into an important economic and technological hub in the region.
The missile destroyer USS John S. McCain is on visit to Vladivostok on the Russian Pacific coast, taking part in the May 9 Victory Day celebrations. T he American crew praying for the dead. Photo: RIA Novosti
Bolstering the Far East region has now become one of the nation’s top priorities, as indicated by The Eastern Economic Forum, which took place last September in Vladivostok. In fact, it highlighted one of the most salient trends in Russia’s domestic and foreign policy: shifting priorities to the Asia-Pacific region and rein-vigorating the idea of neo-Eurasianism, which sees Russia as the center of a big and robust Eurasia, bridging the East and the West. However, will Russia's Far East be able to become the economic hub that will link two dynamic parts of the world — Asia and Europe, taking into account the region's numerous economic challenges. To answer the question, Russia Di-rect sat down with Yaroslav Lissovolik, the Eurasian Development Bank’s chief economist.
Russia Direct: The Russian Far East has become a buzzword for those who try to revive the ideas of Russian Eura-sianism and see the Far East as the link between the West and the East. Given Russia’s economic challenges and the fact that the first version of Eurasianism failed, to what extent are their attempts viable? Yaroslav Lissovolik: Geography is destiny. It is inevitable for us if we are located between the two dynamically developing regions of the West and the East . ;If there is economic cooperation between these two centers of the world economy, it is beneficial for us. We could and should bring them together. It is a matter of using the advantages of our geography to yield economic dividends. At any rate, this should be taken into account in conducting our foreign and economic poli-cy.
After all, Russia has a century’s worth of experience and the potential of cooperating with Europe, and we should take into account this historical and cultural factor, gain dividends from it and attempt to find new ways of integration [between the West and the East]. Un-til recently, we did have very ambitious projects on a free trade zone with Europe, but today we have to look for more flexible and realistic integration ones.
That’s why, we should not be obsessed with this idea in the current situation, when the factor of distance no longer plays the same role that it did previously. The diversification of regional trade alliances is taking place throughout the world. If you look at coun-tries like South Korea or Chile, they have dozens of alliances not only in their re-gions, but also all over the world. So, in our attempts to build alliances in other re-gions, we should look and think globally.
In this regard, the prob-lems of the BRICS group [which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa] should attract more attention. Yet this integration group is scattered throughout the world and represented, in fact, across every world continent. It is the most representative group from the point of view of world geogra-phy.
Also read: " Fulfilling Eastern Economic Forum pledges: Easier said than done " However, we are hardly likely to be able to create such projects like a full-fledged free trade zone with the BRICS countries. Nevertheless, we should not rule out the possibility of economic cooperation with the countries located in the continents, represented by the key BRICS members. Such a global approach hasn’t been actively discussed so far. Hopefully, it will get a boost in the future. ; ;
RD: To what extent does the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) pose a threat to Russia's in-tegration projects or could Moscow gain from the TPP? If so, how could it do it? Y.L.: At the end of last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced key Rus-sian priorities: [establishing closer cooperation with] the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). This statement came shortly after the announcement about the conclusion of the TPP agreement on Oct. 5. So, it can be seen as a response to the creation of the TPP.
Remarkably, the Russian president mentions both the SCO and ASEAN, because the latter can be a sort of bridge for Russia to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which also includes some of the ASEAN countries. Regarding the SCO, it is a more independent project in-tended to develop Eurasian continental integration. That’s why such a dual ap-proach means that Russia wants to keep its option opens.
On the one head, there is a move [from Russia] to establish closer ties and intensify the cooperation with the TPP coun-tries. On the other hand, Russia focuses on the [SCO] continental project as a se-cure alternative. This is the very approach that Moscow will stick to.
RD: What are the odds of Russia’s Far East exten-sively cooperating with America’s West Coast? Y.L.: In my view, the most interesting and realistic approach would be the creation of an alliance in the scientific and technological spheres , given the fact that a great deal of the world’s powerful economic think tanks are primari-ly located in the Pacific region, be it California in the U.S. or Japan in Asia. And today we are witnessing the attempts to create such a center, a think tank in the Russian Far East.
The integration of these efforts could be synergistic and bring certain results. In fact, this project is a more short-term and realistic project. In the mid- and long-term it would be rea-sonable to focus on investment and more standard tools of integration such as trade cooperation. At the same time, it would be good to be more selective and look for other spheres of potential cooperation. Again, it is a matter of long-term planning, but we need to start thinking about it now.
RD: How can Russia gain from the historic experience of the U.S. in developing its Western frontiers to bolster the Far East? Y.L.: Russia could learn from the experience of creating a leading devel-opment region in Silicon Valley — how it worked, why it succeeded and how it be-came a region of accelerated economic development and started playing the lead-ing role in the Asia-Pacific region. It would be useful for Russia to learn the experi-ence of how the U.S. has looked at their [Western] regional development historical-ly: It would give some hints why Russia’s regions on the Pacific Coast failed to do it and are losing human capital. ;
RD: Historically, the American West Coast didn’t bring together a significant number of talented people until it became an economic hub and the center of new technologies. Y.L: Certainly, there are a lot of similarities [between the American West and the Russian East] and we need to look at the first steps of American pioneers undertaken to “saturate” this region with human and intellectual resources as well as with investment and trade flows. It was part of one systemic and integral process. All this was coming together. And one of Russia’s problems regarding its policy in the Far East is that we try to modernize it non-systemically, by fits and starts . Or we just focus too much one field — be it education or trade — without paying enough attention to other areas. The systemic approach is key. ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
RD: In the late 19th – early 20th centuries, the Far East was seen as the Russian California . Do you think it has enough potential to become the Russian counterpart of Silicon Valley today, given the economic challenges and confrontation with the West ? Y.L.: Definitely, I see the Far East as one of the regions, which should be-come one of the world’s intellectual centers because of its proximity to other intel-lectual centers in Asia-Pacific and the American West Coast. So, the factor of geo-graphical proximity does matter in this situation. Vladivostok is a good candidate given the fact there is one of the leading universities here — the Far Eastern Fed-eral Universities, the venue of the annual Eastern Economic Fo-rum.
Also read: " The bold plan to turn Vladivostok into a Russian San Francis-co " After all, the creation of intellectual centers should be located in a place with big companies and a great deal of demand for intellectual resources. The Far East and Russia’s other regions do have such demand. Although it is diffi-cult to create such centers, we have to diversify re-gional development and “saturate” them with human and economic resources. It is a matter of necessity. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
RD: In the 20th century Americans invest-ed in some Russian and Soviet infrastructure projects in the Far East, including the Trans-Siberian Highway, despite political differences and confrontation. Do you think it is possible today? Y.L.: We cannot rule this out and we should work in this direction together with other regional stakeholders such as Ja-pan and South Korea. On the one hand, they can be the self-reliant economic heav-yweights in the region; on the other hand, for Russia, they can be the bridges to the West, because they cooperate economically with both the ASEAN countries [with which Russia is cooperating] and the U.S. So, the can be seen as the linking points between the TPP and other countries within the concept of the Big Eurasia concept. So, we should foster different formats of cooperation in this re-gard.
This interview was originally published in Russia Direct's report " Crossing the bridge to the Far East ." ;To get access to the report, ; subscribe ;to Russia Direct. | 1 |
At work, propped against a wall, near piles of stuff, stands an Elvis Presley cutout. It’s made of cardboard, pretty beat up, taller than I am and not the greatest photo. (He looks drunk. So does his lamé suit.) But I pass that cutout almost every day, and every day I have the same thought. Elvis was hot. He was a musician, but he didn’t have to be playing music for you to feel this way. Cardboard would do. That’s charisma. And the only star who had more than Elvis was Prince. His hotness differed, of course it came from somewhere else. Cardboard won’t cut it for him. If Elvis was sex, Prince was a sexual orientation. His own. And it was oriented toward you. And you. And you. Name a pop act from the 1980s, and, amazingly, androgyny was somewhere in the mix: Thompson Twins, the Human League, pick a act. For Boy George and Jermaine Stewart, it was the whole mix. Most of these guys were vague on gender and passive on desire: “Hold Me Now” “Don’t You Want Me?” Guys, if you have to ask … Officially, Prince wasn’t gay. But was he straight? Did he blow out his hair, love heels and platforms, and own every look, from flouncy Romantic consumptive to bathhouse matador to Easter Sunday deacon? He did. On “Controversy,” he rhetorically poses the question: “Am I straight or gay?” And yet it never seemed to matter. Even after he changed his name to the symbol of the male gender sign overlaid atop its female counterpart, he was always only ever Prince. And how not vague was he? How not passive? He always knew what he wanted, and most of the time that was you. He could plead, the way he does on “If I Was Your Girlfriend,” from “Sign O’ the Times,” a magnum opus from 1987 where Prince tries seduction by hypothetical . But he keeps hitting a wall, and gets testy. It’s a gorgeous conflation of sexual intensity and sex comedy, Prince as feminist and Pepé Le Pew. He wasn’t a breakup artist (“Purple Rain” is a rare “it’s over” song). He was both a artist and a breakdown master. The includes luscious ballads like “Adore,” “Still Would Stand All Time,” and “Pink Cashmere. ” And a lot of what broke him down was lust. At some black churches, the high point of the service involves somebody catching the holy spirit. The high point of some Prince songs involves him catching the horny spirit. “Kiss” is basically a danceable personal ad (“U don’t have to be beautiful to turn me on”) and when he loses it at the end, screaming, “Ain’t no particular sign I’m more compatible with,” it’s like he’s been out on his 14th different date with a woman who wants to talk astrology. He just wants to go home with the right lady. And where is she? Carnality was to Prince what photosynthesis is to plants. And in this metaphor, as befits a man famous for playing all his own instruments, he’s also the bee, pollinating pleasure. On his records, he could be artistically and sexually promiscuous. But he was curious and studious of whomever he was with, too. And sometimes it could all make him seem ridiculous without equal. Take “The Continental. ” It’s a jam in the middle of 1992’s “Love Symbol” album, the least properly rated of his underrated records (it’s the one with “Sexy MF” and “7,” one of his vaguest but very best songs). On it, he makes an entreaty: “Tell me how you want to be done,” and it conjures images of a man standing at the sex grill in a “[bleep] the cook” apron. This is to say that Prince, in his music, wasn’t shy. (The first song on the “Love Symbol” album announces, “My name is Prince, and I am funky. ”) Some of that was the music: the thump of a kick drum the way his drum programming could sound as if it was knocking on crates, doors, clouds the wizardly keyboard work his alchemical synthesis of James Brown’s precision, ’s shape shifts, the fraying blues of Jimi Hendrix and Betty Davis’s grit. Some of this was the songwriting. He was a terrific poet. And terrific poetry can be thrilling to recite, even if it gets you sent to the principal’s office or slapped in the face. For Sheena Easton, he wrote a song that no could resist. It was called “Sugar Walls. ” Take it from me: “Sugar Walls” will land you in detention. Prince knew. On that one, he used the pseudonym Alexander Nevermind, presumably so that when the song enraged Tipper Gore, the head of the Parents Music Resource Center — and it did — he could restring his guitars in peace. Obviously, Prince saved his best stuff for himself. None of his peers had better randy songs about attraction. No one had a better falsetto ad lib for lust, either: “Owah!” You’d have to go back to the blues or forward to for rivals. Consider “Raspberry Beret,” the first single from 1985’s “Around the World in a Day. ” After the hard edges of the songs on “Purple Rain,” here was something totally new: melting strings, finger cymbals and a melody that sails upward like a balloon. Lyrically, it’s the first cousin of “Little Red Corvette,” a filthy song that should also get you in trouble but whose metaphors — and singing — are too virtuosic for condemnation. The story Prince tells in “Raspberry Beret” is practically a short one. A girl walks into the store where the narrator’s and he rides off to some idyllic place that’s ideal for doing it. This is a song I favor at karaoke. I like the complete sentences, and the confident language makes me feel sexy. But the bridge is the reason I like to sing it. I haven’t found a better one. “Rain sounds so it hits the barn the horses wonder who U drowns out what the lightning feel like a movie star. ” For lots of other artists, that would be enough. But there’s more, because he was clearly on a roll: “They say the first time ain’t the I tell I had the chance to do it all wouldn’t change a ’cause baby I’m the a girl as fine as she was then. ” By the end, he’s caught the horny ghost. The story is so gorgeously worded that I can see what’s happening. Prince was never a big fan of music videos — the ones he does appear in aren’t great. But with lyrics this good, they didn’t have to be. Too many of Prince’s sex songs are too perfect to assert that any one is better than the rest. But if you made me pick the best composed, conceived and executed of that class of songs, I’d choose “Raspberry Beret. ” At least, I would today. Unsurprisingly, the thing about Prince and sex is that you have to be in the mood. He’s great enough to seduce you, but sometimes you want to sweat, sometimes you don’t. And for sweat, I’m partial to the frustration jams like “Tambourine,” a song from “Around the World in a Day” that should have been released as a single. It’s dirty, but it’s no “Sugar Walls. ” “Tambourine” has a tight funk that rattles and thrums. And the screaming is ecstatic. Even better was the slinkier funk of “Hot Thing,” which appears on 1987’s “Sign O’ the Times. ” It’s hard to overstate the importance of screaming to Prince’s hotness. It means something. He, Madonna, and Michael Jackson are the biggest and most important pop stars of the 1980s and early ’90s, and of the three, it’s Prince who could really embed different expressions of lust in his songwriting. Madonna embodied it. Jackson made it sound like a gospel emergency and had more control over that roaring register. But I don’t know that Prince wanted control. Losing it was built into the songs. He never lost it more than on “Darling Nikki,” a song from “Purple Rain” whose notoriety precedes it. All that really happens is that some woman named Nikki — “I guess you could say she was a sex fiend” — sleeps with the narrator and is leaving when he wakes up. I was 9 when the album came out, and the P. M. R. C. campaign against the song must have reached my mother because I was told I couldn’t have a copy. So I didn’t spend much time with that song until I was an adult. It wasn’t until I took a long drive with a friend that I actually heard “Darling Nikki. ” We listened to “Purple Rain” four times. That’s enough to catch new things. We heard the screaming. It wasn’t from an orgasm but from pain. He’s wailing. Then we noticed that pain was tied to the frenzied beating of a kick drum and wondered if the P. M. R. C. heard that, too. Prince eventually expunged the song from his live repertoire. He’d become more conservative and more religious. But speaking practically, who can keep up that level of frustration? There’s something about the way Prince hits bottom that makes me think that he never wanted to go back there, to having sex alone. Raspberry berets for everybody! His interest in partnership and flattery and pleasure were hot — to his partner, but especially to him. In his music, he offers to dance naked ballets and catch the other person’s germs. He would brag about himself. He would also spread the boasting around. His name was Prince, and he was funky. But the hot thing? That’s U. | 1 |
Subscribe: iTunes | Google Play Music This week, The New York Times Book Review unveils its 10 Best Books of 2016. One of those books is “War and Turpentine,” by Stefan Hertmans. The editors of the Book Review write: On this week’s podcast, Stefan Hertmans talks about “War and Turpentine” editors at the Book Review talk about the year’s best books Alexandra Alter has news from the publishing world Ian McGuire discusses “The North Water” and Gregory Cowles and John Williams on what people are reading. Pamela Paul is the host. Here are the books mentioned in this week’s “What We’re Reading”: “Scoop” by Evelyn Waugh “The Undoing Project” by Michael Lewis “Today Will Be Different” by Maria Semple We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to books@nytimes. com. From a desktop or laptop you can listen by pressing play on the button above. Or if you’re on a mobile device, the instructions below will help you find and subscribe to the series. 1. Open your podcast app. It’s a app called “Podcasts” with a purple icon. 2. Search for the series. Tap on the “search” magnifying glass icon at the bottom of the screen, type in “Inside The New York Times Book Review” and select it from the list of results. 3. Subscribe. Once on the series page, tap on the “subscribe” button to have new episodes sent to your phone free. You may want to adjust your notifications to be alerted when a new episode arrives. 4. Or just sample. If you would rather listen to an episode or two before deciding to subscribe, just tap on the episode title from the list on the series page. If you have an internet connection, you’ll be able to stream the episode. On your Android phone or tablet: 1. Open your podcast app. It’s a app called “Play Music” with an icon. 2. Search for the series. Click on the magnifying glass icon at the top of the screen, search for the name of the series, and select it from the list of results. You might have to scroll down to find the “Podcasts” search results. 3. Subscribe. Once on the series page, click on the word “subscribe” to have new episodes sent to your phone for free. 4. Or just sample. If you would rather listen to an episode or two before deciding to subscribe, just click on the episode title from the list on the series page. If you have an internet connection, you’ll be able to stream the episode. | 0 |
Comedian Rosie O’Donnell made a surprise appearance at Saturday night’s GLAAD Media Awards in New York City, where she jokingly “texted” President Donald Trump with a defiant, profane message on behalf of the LGBT community. [While honoring Tony actor Billy Porter with the evening’s Vitto Russo Award on behalf of his LGBT advocacy, O’Donnell, who was not previously announced as a presenter at the event, pulled out a cell phone and “texted” Trump, according to Variety. “F*ck you. Donald. From, the gays,” O’Donnell said. “Sent. ” The 28th annual GLAAD Media Awards at the New York Hilton Midtown in Manhattan honored individuals and media properties that best represented acceptance and inclusivity of the LGBT community over the past year. The night’s big honorees included Porter, Daily Show host Trevor Noah, and actress Debra Messing, who was honored with the organization’s Excellence in Media award. O’Donnell also pledged $100, 000 to fight legislation at the event, according to a GLAAD press release. The actress and comedian has feuded with Trump for years. The award show’s host, television personality Ross Matthews, also took aim at Trump during the event. “We have big stars here tonight. We have more stars than a Trump inauguration,” Mathews said, according to Variety. “To be fair, my Yelp review of the Burger King in Times Square has more stars than Trump’s inauguration. ” Matthews also reportedly noted that the ballroom in which the awards show was being held was the same one used by Trump to deliver his victory speech after winning the presidential election in November. “Since this is the room where Trump won, we’re going to sage the room,” he joked, pulling a stick of incense and a lighter from his pocket. But Matthews and O’Donnell weren’t the only two stars to slam the president during the show. Will and Grace star Messing criticized Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, while accepting the Excellence in Media award. “It’s not enough to simply say that women’s issues are important to you. It’s time to do something. You can change the lives of millions of women and children just by telling your dad stories about real people who are suffering,” Messing addressed Trump’s eldest daughter. “Please stop blindly defending your father and start defending what you say you believe in,” the actress added. Other big winners on the night included MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow (Outstanding TV Journalism Segment, “Gay Community in U. S. ‘Forged in Fire’”) Tegan Sara (Outstanding Music Artist) Teen Vogue (Outstanding Magazine Overall Coverage) and the Oxygen network program Strut (Outstanding Reality Program). View the full list of winners from GLAAD’s Media Awards here. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 0 |
A protest planned for Saturday at CNN headquarters in Atlanta is gaining steam as protesters rally around President Donald Trump and Republicans following a shooting on Wednesday aimed at GOP lawmakers and staff as they practiced for the annual Congressional baseball game at Nationals Park. [The shooter, an outspoken Bernie Sanders supporter and activist for liberal causes, wounded five people, including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, who remains in critical condition following multiple surgeries. “We encourage everyone to keep Rep. Scalise in your prayers for a speedy recovery and the other victims,” Debbie Dooley of Main Street Patriots, organizer of the rally, told Breitbart News. “We will have a moment of silence at the protest to pray for the victims of the leftist assassin. ” The gunman, James T. Hodgkinson of Illinois, died from his injuries after Capitol Police on security detail for Scalise engaged him in a gun battle. Organizers of Saturday’s event say they want to show support not only for President Donald Trump but now for Republicans — like Scalise, a longtime Trump supporter — and speak out against the “ rhetoric” and fake news from CNN and other media outlets. “I am very encouraged by the interest in the CNN fake news protest,” Dooley told Breitbart News. “ I’ve noticed a big uptick in the intensity level of folks interested in attending the protest after the cowardly assassination attempt of Republican Congressmen by someone on the radical left in Alexandria, Virginia on Wednesday. ” Dooley said she is not concerned about the safety of protesters. “One big reason is that Georgia is an open carry state and violent thugs would be insane to attempt violence at our peaceful protest,” Dooley said. “This hate filled rhetoric against President Trump has permeated many media outlets like CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times,” Dooley said. “Some of CNN’s hosts engage in hysteria in their attempt to bring down the President of the United States. ” “They helped create the toxic atmosphere that Hodgkinson would believe it is ‘open season’ on Republicans,” Dooley said. “It is time for Trump supporters to rise up and say with a loud voice, enough. ” Bikers for Trump 2020 will also take part in the protest. “Bikers for Trump will be at CNN headquarters on Saturday because in our opinion there is no way to measure this level of journalistic malpractice,” Founder Chris Cox told Breitbart News. “CNN exemplifies vigilante journalism. ” Tim Selaty, president of Citizens for Trump, will also bring supporters to Saturday’s rally. “We the American citizenry, who dutifully elected Donald J. Trump as our president, are completely fed up and disgusted with CNN and other liberal media outlets continually launching malicious fabricated propaganda (aka fake news) attacks on our P. O. T. U. S. ,” Selaty told Breitbart News. He went on: We believe this fake news media movement to destroy our president is not only hurting the credibility of mainstream media and undermining our election process but is equally impacting our American society in a very negative way as we’ve seen by the recent attack in Virginia on our elected Republican officials. We demand that CNN and all media outlets have ethics and truth in their reporting or we will continue to mass protest at their headquarters and express our discontent with their sponsors. We ask all of our fellow patriots to stand with us this Saturday at CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia and send a clear message to CNN and all other media outlets guilty of spreading unsubstantiated stories to hurt our president and fellow Americans. “No more fake news,” Selaty said. The protest will take place from 11:00 a. m. to 12:30 p. m. Saturday at CNN, located at 190 Marietta St. NW, Atlanta, Georgia. Cox’s group will also hold a rally on Sunday in Marietta, GA. in support of Republican congressional candidate Karen Handel. “The Bikers for Trump phenomenon will continue to support congressional races across the country for the Republican candidates that pledge support for Trump and we will hold them accountable to that pledge,” Cox said. “We’re encouraging people to come out and support our president,” said Dooley, who is also one of 22 national of the Tea Party. “And to condemn the extreme biased coverage at CNN. ” | 1 |
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — A prominent Cambodian political commentator who had recently helped found a new independent political party was gunned down at a gas station in central Phnom Penh on Sunday morning in what analysts called a major setback for democracy and freedom of expression in the country. The commentator, Kem Ley, 46, had stopped in for his morning coffee at the station’s convenience store when he was shot and killed. “The offender was arrested and is being interrogated,” said Gen. Kirth Chantharith, a spokesman for the Cambodian National Police. The general added that the man had identified himself as Chuob Samlab, an unlikely name that translates as “Meet Kill” in the Khmer language. The police said in a statement that the suspect, 38, was from a rural area along Cambodia’s western border and had migrated to Thailand to work on a plantation. A leaked video of his confession to the police that circulated on social media showed him with blood streaked across his face as he explained that he had bought a pistol in Thailand with the intention of killing Mr. Kem Ley because he was owed $3, 000. With its brazenness and target, the killing seemed to hark back to an era of political violence in Cambodia that many had hoped was over. The leading Cambodian opposition figure, Sam Rainsy, called the killing an “assassination” and an “act of state terrorism” on Facebook. Public assassinations of opposition figures and union leaders occurred with chilling regularity throughout the 1990s and but began to taper off about a decade ago as the country’s authoritarian prime minister, Hun Sen, managed to defeat or buy off his rivals and consolidate much of the country’s political power. However, Mr. Hun Sen is now grappling with the most serious challenge to his authority in years. Fueled by the rise of a younger generation of voters who are more educated and better informed than their parents, as well as increasing frustration with widespread corruption and sclerotic government institutions, the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party nearly won the 2013 election. The prime minister and his Cambodian People’s Party have responded with a monthslong crackdown on protesters and dissenting voices, in which many government critics have been jailed or face lawsuits. The National Rescue Party has been paralyzed as its two top leaders have recently faced court cases that could put them in jail for years. Mr. Hun Sen condemned the killing in a statement on Facebook and called for greater security. Mr. Kem Ley was already a commentator in 2014 when he announced that he was fed up with the country’s political scene, which he called stagnant and elitist. He founded a political action network that he hoped would develop new leaders and tackle issues important to farmers that go untouched by both major parties. Last year, his Khmer for Khmer network registered the Grassroots Democracy Party and announced that it would field candidates for local elections in 2017. In the days before his death, Mr. Kem Ley had spoken out about a recent report about the vast wealth accumulated by the family of Mr. Hun Sen, as well as use of the courts as a political tool against the opposition party. “He could simplify complicated ideas into the language of the people,” said Ou Virak, the head of Future Forum, a local think tank. “He was straightforward, often able to narrate stories to make his point interesting and to get the message across to ordinary Cambodians. ’’ Mr. Ou Virak said the killing would have a chilling effect on freedom of expression in Cambodia, making government critics fear for their safety as they had in the past. An angry and grieving crowd of hundreds gathered on Sunday at the gas station where Mr. Kem Ley was shot. Yang Sokhy, a driver, had arrived with a packet of incense, hoping to be allowed to light a stick and pray over Mr. Kem Ley’s body. “I’m just a citizen who liked him, his fan, because he spoke the truth about what is happening in our society,” Mr. Yang Sokhy, 37, said. “In our country, it’s always like this. All people who dare to speak out meet this ending. ” | 1 |
ESSEN, Germany — To loud applause, Chancellor Angela Merkel told her party members on Tuesday that Germany should ban veils “wherever legally possible” and that it would not tolerate any application of Shariah law over German justice. Accepting her party’s nomination as its candidate for another term, the chancellor used the moment to broaden her stance on banning the veil, trying to deflect challenges from forces that have made some of their deepest gains since World War II. In welcoming nearly one million asylum seekers to Germany a year ago, Ms. Merkel emerged as a powerful voice for tolerance across a Europe gripped by anxiety over waves of arriving migrants and fears of terrorism. Now, as parties have advanced at the expense of mainstream parties, including her own, Ms. Merkel tried a tricky balancing act between holding fast to Western values and tilting farther right to avoid being outflanked by populist challengers. In the speech, she repeated the same catalog of beliefs in freedom and equal treatment she had made as an implicit criticism of Donald J. Trump, but also stiffened her position on the veil and suggested that Germany would be more cautious in welcoming migrants in the future. In a clear nod to criticism that the state had appeared to lose control over its borders, the chancellor opened her speech to the annual conference of her Christian Democratic Union with a promise that such a situation “cannot, may not and should not be repeated. ” But the biggest applause lines concerned law and order, including a promise that Shariah law would never replace German justice — a problem that has barely arisen but has been cast as a specter by the party Alternative for Germany. The loudest cheers came for her line on Shariah, followed by her statements on face coverings. “Here we say, ‘Show your face,’” Ms. Merkel told the party. “So full veiling is not appropriate here. It should be prohibited wherever legally possible. ” She did not say what circumstances that included. But the language seemed more expansive than she had previously used. Last summer, when debates broke out across Europe over the burkini swimsuit, Ms. Merkel and other German leaders said they favored a partial ban on full veils. At that time, Ms. Merkel had said that “from my standpoint, a fully veiled woman scarcely has a chance at full integration in Germany. ” But rather than push any new law on face coverings, she and other government officials seemed to prefer the application of common sense. Faces cannot be covered, for instance, when going through a security check at airports. Her statements on Tuesday appeared to expand that definition, though clearly some of her party’s members wanted more. Jenovan Krishnan, 25, the leader of the Ring of Christian Democrat Students, a group with 8, 000 members in several universities, said he and his associates wanted an explicit ban on face veils. Julia Klöckner, one of Ms. Merkel’s deputies as party chairwoman, called last summer for an outright ban on the veils. She was the top in elections for the six deputies at the congress on Tuesday. The atmosphere at the conference was less tense than at last year’s, Mr. Krishnan said. Fewer migrants have arrived since spring, when Balkan states largely closed their borders to migrants. The migrant flow through Turkey has also dropped sharply since Ms. Merkel arranged a European Union agreement to pay the Turks to care for migrants and prevent them from heading west to Central Europe. In the prelude to the party conference, Ms. Merkel had attended a series of regional meetings, occasionally facing a demand to resign, or hostile criticism of her decision to allow migrants free passage in 2015. Little of those critiques surfaced at the briskly managed conference on Tuesday, and Ms. Merkel won a standing ovation. She was reaffirmed in the party leadership she has held since 2000 by a thumping 89. 5 percent of votes from 994 party delegates. The campaign ahead, she suggested, had not been made easier by the result of the United States election — a rare rhetorical distance for a German chancellor, particularly one from the Christian Democratic Union. Washington is easily Germany’s most important ally outside Europe. While not mentioning Mr. Trump by name, Ms. Merkel indicated that his victory could make it harder to define global policy and tackle international security challenges. “A good quarter century after the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the two blocs, many people have the feeling that the world has gone off the rails,” Ms. Merkel said. “We are dealing with a world situation — and that is especially true after the American elections — in which the world must first sort itself out,” she added. “Especially when looking at important things like NATO and the relationship to Russia. ” She also repeated as general principle the catalog of beliefs in freedom and equal treatment for all that she cited as her basis for cooperation with Mr. Trump the day after he was elected. Ms. Merkel was critical of Russia, noting that it was supporting Syria in the bombing of Aleppo. She also said that “something is not right” in Germany, as tens of thousands here have rallied against an pact while “not a single person” has marched against the tragedy unfurling in Aleppo. As a measure of the challenges ahead in politically unpredictable times, Ms. Merkel appealed for support as she enters the election campaign. “People told me I must stand again,” she told her party members. “You must, you must, help me. ” | 1 |
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James Comey went from being the darling of the left, to their arch nemesis in an instant. When the four devices, including a laptop, were seized in the Anthony Weiner sexting case, over 10,000 of Huma Abedin’s State Department emails were discovered. First off, Comey had a duty to disclose those emails. Second, as far as redemptive opportunities go, this one is golden. Comey gets a chance to do the right thing and remove some of that tarnish from his name and from the FBI.
Now, Congress is considering holding an emergency hearing this next Friday… just four days before the general election. It’s unprecedented and you can bet the Democrats will try to stall. Comey will star at the hearing and the fact that the Department of Justice is either stalling or just refusing to issue a warrant for those emails is telling. That won’t hold up forever… eventually, a federal judge will step in if the DOJ insists on flaunting more corruption. But timing is everything here. Almost assuredly those laptops that the FBI supposedly destroyed, but didn’t, will come up as well.
From Western Journalism :
Both parties in Congress jockeyed for position Saturday in the wake of the dramatic bombshell delivered by the FBI on Friday regarding new evidence that has led the FBI to breathe new life into its investigation of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clintonâs use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.
Republicans sought to move the issue to the front burner in the week before Election Day, while Democrats castigated the FBI for announcing its probe.
One report claimed House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, was considering holding a hearing Friday to grill Comey about the most current evidence and investigation.
Congress is currently on its usual pre-election recess.
The possibility of a pre-election hearing or briefing was also raised by Sen. Ron Johnson , R-Wis., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.
If the hearing happens (and I pray it does), there will be fireworks all the way into election day and beyond. There’s a really good chance now that Trump may win because of all this. If Clinton wins, this scandal will follow her into the White House as will impeachment proceedings and an indictment. We could wind up with her resigning almost immediately and Tim Kaine becoming president. Shudder.
I doubt that House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz is going to let this slide. He’ll be a bull dog on it and he’ll get his hearing this next Friday probably. Both Clinton and Abedin are going to go down over this. I don’t think Congress has ever faced an emergency quite like this one in our lifetime. Related Items Terresa Monroe-Hamilton
Terresa Monroe-Hamilton owns and blogs at NoisyRoom.net . She is a Constitutional Conservative and NoisyRoom focuses on political and national issues of interest to the American public. Terresa is the editor at Trevor Loudon's site, New Zeal - trevorloudon.com . She also does research at KeyWiki.org . You can . NoisyRoom can be found on Facebook and on Twitter . | 0 |
A national sport in Russia. Habibah Agianda, Creative Common s
Why are the Russians Exposing their Pre Election Links with the Trump Campaign?
(Washington, DC) A senior Russian diplomat announced that the Russian government had ongoing ties to the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump.
A centerpiece of the Clinton presidential campaign was Russian interference with the 2016 United States election. From charges that Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee email server to horror show claims that the Russians would somehow hack election voting machines, Clinton and her cadre were clear about the threat posed by Russia. In addition, there were charges that Trump had ties to Russian oligarchs as a source for business funding. Worst of all, there was the general claim that somehow Donald Trump was under the sway of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who rose to power through the Russian intelligence apparatus known as the KGB.
The U.S. mainstream media supported the Clinton campaign charges. In late September, ABC investigative reporters ran a detailed article about the “hundreds of millions of dollar” in investments Trump has received from Russian businessmen. The Daily Beast ran a comprehensive four part series on consecutive days starting on November 3. The series outlined Trump’s alleged role as a useful idiot for Putin and business entaglements exposing him to Russian influence (parts one , two , three , and four ). The series culminated with a description of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manefort’s ties to the deposed pro Russian president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich.
Trump denied “any relationship with Vladimir Putin” and any influence due to business conducted with Russian business interests. Trump surrogates denied any Russian influence and countered with charges that as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton gave a sweetheart deal to Russian oligarchs in return for donations to the Clinton Foundation.
The lines seem clearly drawn. The Clinton storyline argues that Trump endorses policies favored by Russia likely in return for financial and mind control influence by Putin and Russian business interests.
Why did the Russian’s give credence to the Clinton campaign charges?
The Washington Post headlined a story on November 10 about a statement by senior Russian diplomat, Sergei Ryabkov:
“Obviously, we know most of the people from his [Trump’s] entourage,” Ryabkov said.
“We have just begun to consider ways of building dialogue with the future Donald Trump administration and channels we will be using for those purposes,” Ryabkov was quoted as saying.
Ryabkov provided no further details, and his remarks drew a swift denial from Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks, who said the campaign had “no contact with Russian officials” before Tuesday’s election. Washington Post, November 10
For just a moment, let’s assume the veracity of the Clinton campaign and mainstream media claims of Russian influence on the Trump campaign. Why would the Russians go out of their way to admit this? Why would the Deputy Foreign Minister, of all the possible Russian sources, provide this information?
Even a cursory review of Russian diplomacy over the past several years demonstrates a high degree of discipline and caution. Unlike the U.S. government, the Russians speak with one voice. Russian diplomatic efforts are couched in international law. President Putin, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and other Russian diplomats are precise in their language and proposals. They don’t shoot from the hip. This may be difficult to grasp for the politically motivated Clinton campaign and media sources that benefit from demonizing Putin but these are the facts nevertheless.
This statement by Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov was no accident. His remarks clearly opened the way for speculation that the Trump campaign was somehow in collusion with Moscow. Ryabkov’s claim that these were routine contacts is an explanation without an audience.
Of special interest is the timing of the reported contacts with Trump. The Russians didn’t respond to allegations of contact. They announced the relationship with the Trump campaign. They also announced that a similar offer of contact to the Clinton effort was turned down.
Why did the Russian’s initiate this announcement knowing it could hurt Trump at a critical post election juncture? He’s losing the popular vote and demonstrations are emerging all over the country protesting his policies. The New York Times estimates a 1.2% popular vote victory by Clinton when all the votes are tabulated. Trump will be subjected to the battle accusation of imposing extreme changes in policy based on a minority mandate.
Why would Russia deliberately release this information?
The information is potentially devastating to Trump’s legitimacy as the new president. The Post story is showing up in major national and regional media outlets.
Given the calculated, mistake-free style of Russian diplomacy, how do we interpret this outcome in light of the supposed capture of Trump as a tool of the Russian government? | 1 |
Lyft, the ride hailing company in the United States, is trying to raise more money just as Uber, its bigger rival, grapples with questions about its culture and leadership. Lyft is talking with investors about new that would put the company’s value around $6 billion, according to three people briefed on the financing who asked to remain anonymous because the proceedings are confidential. One of the people said the valuation could be as high as $7 billion. The company was valued at $5. 5 billion early last year after investors, including General Motors, poured about $1 billion into it. It is unclear how far along Lyft is with the new and whether the round will be completed. Lyft, which is based in San Francisco, declined to comment. The funding effort was earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal. The may bolster Lyft competitively, given that Uber has been caught up in an escalating series of internal problems. Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive, has been under scrutiny this year for his participation in an economic advisory council for President Trump amid a social media campaign for people to delete their Uber app. Mr. Kalanick eventually stepped down from the council. Uber has also wrestled with concerns about its workplace culture over the past few weeks, after a former employee published an account of her year at the company, which included allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination. In addition, Uber was caught misleading journalists about an accident caused by one of its cars. And Waymo, the car business spun out of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, sued Uber last week, claiming it had used technology stolen by one of its employees. This week, Mr. Kalanick apologized for his behavior toward an Uber driver after a video of him losing his temper with the driver surfaced. Lyft has long been the underdog to Uber. Lyft operates only in the United States while Uber is a global company. The two have previously engaged in pricing wars and have each other. In August, Lyft held discussions with General Motors, Apple, Google, Amazon, Uber and Didi Chuxing about selling itself. The company could not agree with potential buyers on a price. Yet Lyft’s brand has recently looked comparatively attractive. As Uber struggled with its ties to President Trump’s administration in January, Lyft donated $1 million to the American Civil Liberties Union. Lyft’s app subsequently soared to the top of the Apple app store’s download list. Neither Lyft nor Uber has emerged as a financially sound business. Their battle has led them to lower prices and offer deals to lure new customers and maintain their market share. It has been hard for either company to raise prices enough to cover costs. Both Lyft and Uber are still unprofitable and depend on private investment capital to fund their operations. | 0 |
On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Mika Brzezinski urged CNN to stop giving President Donald Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway airtime because she said was “politics porn. ” Brzezinski said, “Note to CNN, sorry, I love CNN but you have to got to stop putting Kellyanne on the air. It is politics porn. You are just getting your little ratings crack. But it is disgusting. There is nothing she brings to the table is honest. Your hosts know it. Your hosts look pained when they interview her. They know they are just doing politics porn. They are not doing news. We need to stick to the news. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0 |
HOUSTON — As recently as two summers ago, Latshaw Drilling was so fully booked it sometimes had to turn away oil companies eager to rent one of its 39 rigs at $22, 000 a day. But that was before the collapse of oil prices, which despite a recent upturn from February lows, are still nowhere near their 2014 levels. Because of slumping world demand and a glut of global supply, oil players of all sorts — whether major producers like Royal Dutch Shell, smaller companies or service providers like Latshaw Drilling — are still struggling to cope with the industry’s doldrums. In the case of Latshaw, based in Tulsa, Okla. only 16 of its rigs are now in use, although it has cut the daily rental price by a third and aggressively phoned, wined and dined prospective customers. Even when Latshaw does make a deal, not all the workers it laid off want to return to a business that is so cyclically volatile. “It’s gone quiet,” said Steve McCoy, Latshaw’s vice president for contracts. “You have to pursue every lead, turn over every rock, to try to get ahead of the game. ” As the big oil companies reported their earnings this week, not even Exxon Mobil and Chevron, the two American industry leaders that posted results on Friday, could escape the fallout from a market of deteriorating oil prices and declining profit margins from refining. Exxon’s profit was down nearly 60 percent from a year earlier, to $1. 7 billion. Chevron reported a loss of $1. 47 billion, in contrast to a profit of $571 million in last year’s second quarter. The price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude oil, a benchmark, was $41. 38 Friday — compared with just over $100 this time two years ago. Oil companies have slashed their exploration and production budgets, many by as much as half. The cuts total more than $150 billion through next year. An estimated 150, 000 energy workers have lost their jobs in the United States, while more than 150 oil and gas companies in North America have filed for bankruptcy since early 2015. The latest quarter’s results have been even more dismal than industry analysts predicted. Chevron’s loss for the quarter was its largest since 2001. Even though Exxon Mobil slashed its capital budget 38 percent, to $5. 16 billion in the second quarter, those cuts were not enough to compensate for a $4. 7 billion drop in profits from oil and gas production and a $1. 7 billion drop in refinery earnings. The major European producers, which have also cut exploration budgets and hundreds of thousands of jobs, did little better. Royal Dutch Shell, Total and BP all reported sharp declines in profits — Shell’s were down 93 percent — and executives expressed little optimism for a rapid rebound. “You have to continue to reinforce cost reduction, efficiency — rethink almost everything you do,” BP’s chief executive, Bob Dudley, said in an interview this week. In a sign of the mounting pressures in the industry, contract maintenance workers staged a strike Tuesday on seven Royal Dutch Shell platforms in the British North Sea to protest proposed pay cuts. A strike is scheduled for next week. “We are disappointed at this development,” Shell said in a statement on Friday. “It is clear that in order for the North Sea oil and gas industry to remain competitive in the lower oil price environment, structural change is needed. ” But the basic problem all the oil companies face is essentially out of their control: No matter how much they curb production, there is still way too much supply of crude oil in a global market where demand is soft — especially in Europe and in the developing world. A near doubling of United States oil production in recent years, because of a frenzy of new activity in shale fields, produced a glut that persists even as output gradually falls in the United States, China, Brazil and Mexico. Crude and petroleum product inventories remain at record highs around the world, in large part because the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries cartel, which is led by Saudi Arabia and still accounts for a third of global oil output, is unwilling to restrain production. The biggest recent production increases in the OPEC cartel have come from Iran, which is taking advantage of the lifting of international sanctions. And now Canadian output, which was briefly curtailed by recent wild fires, is coming back on the market. United States refiners, meanwhile, bought so much oil at bargain prices in recent months that they now have record stockpiles of gasoline and diesel. That has led to the lowest summer gasoline prices in more than a decade. But it also has obliged refiners to cut fuel production, thus further cutting demand for crude. Scattered signs indicate the oil industry has hit bottom and may be primed for a bounce next year. Many energy analysts are optimistic prices will rise for oil and natural gas over the next few years because the industry has so sharply curtailed exploration and production. Barclays Research, for instance, projects that the global oil price could average $85 a barrel by 2018. That would still be lower than levels reached in 2014, but enough for healthy profits. “We’re at the bottom, but we’re not expecting an immediate and sharp recovery,” said Paal Kibsgaard, chief executive of Schlumberger, the giant oil service company, in a conference call this month. “It’s going to be a slow and steady recovery. ” Latshaw Drilling’s 16 active rigs exceed the 12 it had in service last December. Signed contracts would raise that number to 20 by late fall. “We’re optimistic about our future,” Mr. McCoy said. Not everyone is in a position to ride out the storm, though, as heavy debts continue to sink some companies. Just this week, Halcon Resources, a sizable Houston oil company, filed for bankruptcy. Exxon Mobil is in far better financial condition than most other companies in the industry. And its stock had been soaring this year, although in morning trading on Friday it was down more than 2 percent. But even Exxon has been stretched by debt — much of it an overhang from the company’s purchase seven years ago of XTO Energy, a shale gas driller, for about $41 billion. This year Exxon Mobil lost its AAA credit rating, and was forced to stop buying back shares to conserve cash. “The industry debt level is essentially like a tanker dragging an anchor. You are not going to go anywhere very fast,” said Ed Hirs, managing director of Hillhouse Resources, a small Houston oil company. Mr. Hirs, seeking to raise $50 million to drill a clutch of oil wells in South Texas, is meeting resistance. He took a prominent private equity fund executive out for coffee the other day in downtown Houston and patiently showed him well maps and charts. Mr. Hirs argued that his wells were potentially so rich and easily developed that they could make money at $20 a barrel, less than half the current price. Even if only one of eight wells proved to be a gusher, he promised, big profits were coming. But the banker cut him off. “There’s too much risk,” the banker said, according to Mr. Hirs. And the banker explained that his fund was having trouble raising money from its own investors, who were worried about how long it might take the oil and gas industry to finally recover, Mr. Hirs said. “Things are stuck,” he said. | 1 |
At a moment when all eyes are glued to the tumult of escalating news headlines, let’s take a few hours, a day, perhaps even a long weekend to take refuge in the stories that transcend the news cycle and the books that more deeply explain the forces behind it. From the new Zadie Smith novel to Wesley Lowery’s penetrating look at lives (and deaths) in America, these books will elucidate, offer escape from and — with luck — outlive the noisy politics of our times. Pamela PaulEditor of The New York Times Book Review THEY CAN’T KILL US ALL: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement, by Wesley Lowery (Little, Brown, $27.) In his review, our critic Dwight Garner wrote that this book by a young Washington Post reporter is “electric, because it is so well reported, so plainly told and so evidently the work of a man who has not grown a callus on his heart. ” SWING TIME, by Zadie Smith. (Penguin Press, $27.) Two multiracial girls in North London dream of becoming dancers (one has talent, the other doesn’t) in Smith’s exuberant new novel about friendship, music, race and global politics. Come on, it’s Zadie. You know you want to read it. TESTIMONY, by Robbie Robertson. (Crown Archetype, $30.) The lead guitarist and principal songwriter for the Band has written a confident and memoir that is packed with incident. At times it has the mythic sweep of an early Terrence Malick movie, according to Dwight Garner. MUSLIM GIRL: A Coming of Age, by Amani . (Simon Schuster, $20.) This memoir of growing up Muslim American in the wake of was published earlier than originally planned because it’s so timely and enlightening. The most haunting line: After the young author’s father tells her, “They’re going to blame us. ” THE by David Constantine. (Biblioasis, paper, $14. 95.) Our reviewer, Stacey D’Erasmo, gave this book an rave and compared it to the recent critically acclaimed film “45 Years. ” In David Constantine’s lyrical novel, a widow immerses herself in the letters her late husband received from an earlier lover. NEWS OF THE WORLD, by Paulette Jiles. ( $22. 99.) In a novel shortlisted for the National Book Award, a septuagenarian widower and a girl who was captured by the Kiowa travel across War Texas. NOBODY’S SON: A Memoir, by Mark Slouka. (Norton, $26. 95.) Mark Slouka, a novelist, offers an intrepid memoir of a chaotic childhood. Here’s one memorable line, something the author’s mother told him when he was only 17 and contemplating suicide: “Life was a death sentence. ” Imagine growing up with that. IZA’S BALLAD, by Magda Szabo. Translated by George Szirtes. (New York Review, paper, $16. 95.) A meditative Hungarian novel about grief and history by the author of “The Door,” one of the Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2015. | 0 |
Citizen journalism with a punch Syrian Girl Mysteriously 'Saved' Again and Again (PHOTO, VIDEO)
This girl sure gets herself into a lot of Russian airstrikes. Luckily there are always anti-Assad activists near by to pull her from the rubble Russkaya Vesna
This time we offer our readers an opportunity to be film critics and to assess acting talents and make-up artist’s work. Because that’s how one should examine a footage with a girl who presumably suffered from Bashar al-Assad’s army attacks.
At first sight the photos which went viral in the Arab and Western media on August 28 2016 excite pity and seemingly righteous indignation: a peaceful Lamb of God aka White Helmets’ volunteer is carrying two injured children. Social media say the photos have been made after attack on Al-Nayrab(Arabic: النيرب ) district of Aleppo.
We remind that disputable activity of that «volunteer organization» has been picked to pieces inRussian Spring’s review: Armed "saviours" under "an-Nusra" flags — Russian Spring investigation of White Helmets' strange "peacemaking" in Syria (PHOTOS, VIDEO 18+) , that is why today we are going to focus on the footage only.
Pay attention to the injured girl: scared, dishevelled, with blood on her face. devochka_obstrely_informvoyna_1.jpg
But she was «saved» more than once: the same girl is carried by the three (!) different «volunteers» each after each.
Here is the girl in another man’s hands: still White Helmets’ emblem and car got into the shot: | 0 |
The Cedillo family was already running an hour late, so when the Range Rover stretch limo dropped them off at St. Agatha Church in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, Lucero Cedillo and her court of nine chambelanes, the equivalent of groomsmen, dashed out of the car. Lucero led the way, holding the hem of her strapless ball gown in one hand and a matching bouquet of silk garden roses in the other. Her parents, Alberta and Abundio Cedillo, followed. From a distance, the chambelanes could have easily been mistaken for cadets at a police academy graduation, walking in sync wearing black suits with gold aiguillettes around their right shoulders, eyes hidden under peaked hats with gold insignia. The Rev. Silvio A. Ortiz began the quinceañera Roman Catholic Mass by congratulating Lucero, who knelt before him at the altar. He blessed several items, including a porcelain doll, a symbol of Lucero’s childhood. Applause echoed through mostly empty pews. Then Lucero and her court scurried into the limo, heading for the party, a catered affair for 150 guests at a Greek Orthodox church hall in Bay Ridge. Widely celebrated among Latinos, the quinceañera marks an important milestone in a girl’s life. Part birthday party, part rite of passage, it symbolizes a girl’s entrance into womanhood when turning 15, traditionally showcasing her purity and readiness for marriage. But the quinceañera has also been Americanized. And the increasingly elaborate celebrations reflect the changing landscape of Latinos in the United States. In fact, Lucero’s quinceañera was not, strictly speaking, a quinceañera at all. The celebration, held in February, had many of the traditional trappings: a Mass, a catered bash with live music, and a ceremony in which Lucero’s transition to womanhood was marked by trading her flats for heels. But Lucero turned 15 a year ago this was an adapted Sweet 16. “I wanted to switch it up,” Lucero said. “I wanted to keep some of my parents’ traditions but celebrate at a different age. ” “It’s how it’s done in the United States,” she added. “The modern quinceañera has become the manifestation of what it means to be visible in an American system on your own terms,” said Rachel V. a folklorist and professor in the Department of Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. At the same time, she added, the celebrations create “a space that recalls your cultural heritage. ” Lucero initially felt reluctant to ask her parents for the party, calling it “a big waste of money on just one day. ” Contemporary quinceañeras do tend to have a hefty price tag. Event planners, bakers and caterers, hair stylists, makeup artists and D. J. s have all become part of what will soon be a industry, said María Bejarano, director of Quinceañera Magazine, a trade publication. “When you put the numbers together, it’s stratospheric,” Ms. Bejarano said. “The quinceañera business is a monster that keeps on growing. ” The celebration has spawned specialized retailers, fashion expos, even a reality show, “Quiero Mis Quinces,” promoting custom parties. Disney’s “Frozen” was among the most popular themes last year, according to quinceañera store owners. Many girls are incorporating decidedly secular and elements. They choreograph their traditional dance routines to mainstream pop music instead of waltzes. Lucero opened the dance floor to a Beyoncé mix. In 2013, Disney introduced a line of quinceañera dresses, retailing for $300 to $900, and its theme parks offer catered events like the Belle of the Ball package, which starts at $20, 000. For an additional $2, 500, quinceañeras can make royal entrances in carriages. In New York, a quinceañera celebration averages around $10, 000, according to Alfonso Caviedes, who owns Fantasy, a dress shop in Jackson Heights, Queens. He offers a layaway system on dresses, which on average cost $600. “Some families cannot afford to pay for the dresses up front,” Mr. Caviedes said. Rosa Jimenez, who owns Bridal by Rosa’s in East Harlem, puts the typical cost even higher. “I would recommend that families set aside at least $15, 000,” she said. “It’s like a wedding. ” The median household income for Latinos in the United States in 2014 was just over $42, 000, according to the Census Bureau, and in New York City the figure is lower. But the high prices don’t dissuade families from celebrating. Villa Russo, an event hall in Queens, charges up to $18, 700 a night for 275 guests. About 30 quinceañeras a year are held there. Families book custom bakers, like Iva Velazquez in Brooklyn. Ms. Velazquez supplies cakes for 15 quinceañeras a year her prices can quickly run into the thousands, depending on sugar flowers, ruffles and other intricate details. Some have come to resent such extravagance. “Nowadays, families are disrespectful to the church,” said Ana Morales, quinceañera coordinator at St. Paul’s Church in East Harlem. “They bring in these loud musicians, like mariachis, to the quinceañera. The parties in the pews are taking pictures they are on their cellphones. They seem to have forgotten why they are in church. ” As a result, St. Paul’s has been less inclined to hold such Masses. “The quinceañera is a symbol of status and recognition,” Ms. Bejarano, the magazine director, said. “Families want to celebrate big. But it’s these strong ties to tradition that distract parents from thinking about how they will pay for their daughters’ future education. ” Professor of the University of Texas, finds such criticism problematic. “People don’t tend to question lavish bat mitzvahs,” she said. “People make the assumptions that Jewish communities are more affluent, whereas Latino communities are stereotyped as impoverished. ” “It’s like talking to someone who is on a diet and saying, ‘You shouldn’t really eat that,’ and assuming that they don’t know what they are putting in their mouth,” she added. Lucero’s parents, cooks by trade, had been saving for this day for two years. Now both 50 years old, they immigrated to the United States from Mexico in their early 20s. “My parents grew up poor,” Lucero said. “They used to work in the fields. My mom, when she first got to the U. S. she used to work in factories. My mom never had a quince, so she told me, ‘I didn’t have a chance, but you do! ’” “Of course this is a sacrifice for us,” Mr. Cedillo acknowledged. “But we don’t see it that way. This is tradition. Lucero is a good daughter, and she deserves a party. ” The quinceañera appeals to both new immigrants and those established for several generations, Professor said, but for different reasons. For newer arrivals, it’s about “creating a display of affluence,” she said. For or Latino Americans, the quinceañera has become a way to reclaim traditions with which they’ve lost touch. Staging these elaborate celebrations requires a system of patronage, particularly in Mexican communities, in both Mexico and the United States. The girl’s parents reach out to relatives and friends to help pay for everything from the limo to the beer. Lucero’s godparents — 12 relatives and friends had been selected — helped cover the celebration’s cost: around $13, 000. At the church hall in Bay Ridge, Lucero walked slowly between two columns of chambelanes as they held their costume swords. When she arrived at a white throne, two of her godparents handed her a long, bedazzled scepter and placed a crystal tiara atop her carefully curled hair. Mr. Cedillo knelt before his daughter with a silk pillow holding sparkling silver shoes. Lucero lifted her ball gown just enough to let her feet emerge from the layers of fabric. He removed her flats, swapping them for the heels. The moment, a traditional part of the quinceañera, is supposed to be the first time a young girl wears high heels and dances with a man. This was not quite the case with Lucero. “I’ve danced since I was 9,” she said after the party. “This is definitely not the first time I’ve put on heels. ” At nearly 1 a. m. the staff was clearing away empty plates. Lucero’s parents called up the godparents and handed each a basket of fruit and blankets as thanks for their sponsorship and attendance. The family huddled to say a prayer. Then the lights dimmed and banda — traditional Mexican music — blasted through the speakers. Lucero’s father and uncle emerged from the kitchen, carrying a roasted pig on their shoulders. The guests had formed a running circle around the dance floor, and Lucero joined them after changing into a cream dress. Soon she was dancing barefoot to her own manic adolescent rhythm, her sparkling high heels clutched tightly at her side. | 1 |
By Lisa Brown
Good morning beautiful light family!
Stargates are active and we have Quickening occurring too. These “shake” the density realms and align all to the light realms.
These align Galactic/Heaven and Earth…. synchronizing realities to higher consciousness ones.
So many experiencing the physicalness of their own separation/unconsciousness, without realizing what is truly occurring now. All when it’s time…. when the heart opens, as one takes their power back, truly opens up fully…..
Those unconscious programs run on a loop cycle, where the human aspect has much to “learn” about SOUL EXISTENCE and living as an ASCENDED BEING here.
The entire external reality teaches us…. IT is our teacher, along with our higher self aspect until we integrate this inside.
There is a process…. first you realize you have a higher self, then you open up to listening to it, then you let it tell you what to do/Guide you…. in every moment… then you become them (They) and THEY dissappear because you ARE THEM…. No more channeling, no more anyone to ask…. You work together, inside, with/AS the entire Universe…. no more separation….
YOU must achieve UNITY CONSCIOUSNESS within you. You don’t need the Universe to push you to step up, YOU STEP UP….. you observe your own humanness, you dissolve/resolve all within you, back into the PURITY of Love……
YOU observe, you see your own patterns and themes. Where you slack, come from lack, where you are holding back, where you judge, don’t support, share, give back, procrastinate and have fear. You see every time you don’t, when you had/have the capability, you see… what you couldn’t before….. you see the ENERGY that you hold that created/creates that…. and that this is all on you to shift/change/transform/do……
WE don’t need lessons anymore, because we are always observing, realizing, shifting, changing, transforming, tuning our own energy intentionally to SOURCE CONSCIOUSNESS and holding this inside at ALL TIMES…. We don’t allow ourselves to separate off anymore to go human…….
You are the one that births NEW EARTH from inside of you and holds all in place. You hold the programming for every reality by what you believe, allow, transmit, do/don’t do… not from your head, but from your fully conscious higher-heart-mind. You don’t get to blame others or be a victim anymore. That scary (fear) for humans. Stepping up and taking responsibility for everything …
Your true power is within you. It’s when you STOP allowing/continuing the old programs yourself. You have to see them first. You break the patterns….
You are here to inspire, support, honor, REMEMBER…… Open up fully. Step up fully. Into your SOUL’s roles….. Your human will always shortchange you……
I love you!
Lisa Transcendence Brown
Awakening to Remember
Via: In5D
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Delta Air Lines is working to reset its operations on Tuesday morning, after a power failure grounded flights and led to cancellations and delays a day earlier. As of 12:30 p. m. Eastern time, Delta had canceled more than 500 flights scheduled for Tuesday. On Monday, around 1, 000 of 6, 000 Delta flights were canceled, the airline said. Delta is offering full refunds — and $200 vouchers — to passengers whose flights were canceled or delayed significantly. The airline also extended a waiver of its change fee for passengers scheduled to fly on Monday, Aug. 8, and Tuesday, Aug. 9. Passengers may rebook flights for any day up to Friday, without being charged a difference in fare. The company said it provided hotel rooms, where available, to some passengers who were stranded in airports overnight. The big computer systems that get airplanes, passengers and baggage to their destinations every day are having a bad summer. Delta Air Lines experienced the latest debacle on Monday, when a failure of a piece of electrical equipment at one of its Atlanta facilities shut down its computer systems worldwide, starting a cascade of hundreds of canceled and delayed flights throughout the day. A similar chain of events played out at Southwest Airlines three weeks earlier, when a single router failed at a data center in Dallas, resulting in about 2, 300 canceled flights over four days. The failure itself lasted only an hour, but it took 13 hours to reboot the carrier’s computer systems. Both episodes left thousands of passengers stranded and airline employees scrambling to get planes back in the air. But for those wondering how this could happen — why backup systems, for example, were not equal to the challenge — a better question might be why it doesn’t happen more often. “These systems are so complex, it’s surprising we haven’t had more major failures,” said Bob Offutt, principal of Travel Technology Consulting and former chief architect at Sabre, the world’s largest computer reservations system. These events are hardly isolated. Last year, malfunctions in United Airlines’ computer systems grounded hundreds of flights, and American Airlines experienced delays after a bug in its iPad software meant that pilots did not have accurate airport maps. In Southwest’s case, a backup system was in place, but the airline said that system was not triggered as it should have been when the router failed. And Delta said on Monday that it was investigating why some of its own critical operations had not switched over to backup systems. “In the case of Delta, whatever occurred was clearly a catastrophic failure, and it is alarming that the backup system didn’t kick in,” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst at Atmosphere Research Group. Delta said the problem was touched off by a power failure about 2:30 a. m. Eastern, shutting down computers and grounding flights for about six hours before the airline began to bring its systems back online. (As it happens, the culprit inside Delta — a failed switchgear, an item similar to a box in a house — is a piece of equipment typically installed to guard against breakdowns.) Throughout the day, the consequences were playing out in human terms. In Terminal C of La Guardia Airport, a central hub for Delta in the New York City region, it was standing room only Monday morning, with children splayed out napping on backpacks, business travelers scrambling for outlets, and many passengers leaning against the cylindrical pillars for support. As the morning wore on and the system began to slowly reboot, occasional problems also caused more confusion. “For those of you traveling to Detroit on Flight 831,” a gate agent said over the loudspeaker, “you may have just received a text message saying we are departing at 9 a. m. ” That, she indicated, would be great, but also nearly impossible. The computer system had shut back down before the pilot’s papers, including the flight plan, could even be processed. In Phoenix, Anthony Navarro, 25, was headed to Atlanta, and then to Miami for a cruise to the Bahamas. He and a friend boarded a flight scheduled to leave Phoenix at 12:35 a. m. but then sat in the plane, parked at the gate, for about five hours. When he realized he would miss their connection, Mr. Navarro left the plane and said he would seek a refund from both Delta and Norwegian Cruises. “We had been planning this trip for months, and to find out that based off of one flight, everything is canceled,” he said, “we’re very bummed out. ” Some departures resumed Monday morning, but the company said it expected delays to cascade throughout the day. As of 7 p. m. Eastern, 740 Delta flights had been canceled, the airline said. It did not provide a figure for the number of passengers affected. Delta was scheduled to operate roughly 6, 000 departures on Monday, and by the early evening, about 3, 340 of those flights had departed. “Systems are fully operational and flights resumed hours ago,” the airline said, “but delays and cancellations remain as recovery efforts continue into the evening. ” While it is too early to measure the costs to Delta, Southwest has said its malfunction on July 20 will cost the company tens of millions of dollars. Airlines were early adopters of information technology, building electronic reservation systems in the 1960s. The systems have been rebuilt over the years, but given the high volume of transactions, their data is not backed up continuously, Mr. Offutt said. He said that while airlines did have secondary systems in place — to provide power during a power failure, for example — the data was backed up only a few times each day, rather than in real time. That means that even after a malfunctioning router or power source is fixed, it can take hours to bring the systems back online. “The systems are very complicated, so it may be that they have a backup processor, but not backup data,” he said. Major airlines primarily use processors like Sabre, Amadeus and Travelport to distribute their flight data to travel booking sites like Expedia and Travelocity. They also contract with these services to run their own internal reservation systems, as well as their departure control systems to process boarding, bookings and seat assignments. Delta uses an system to process passenger services and flight operations, but the system infrastructure is run by Travelport in its Atlanta data center. Southwest uses Sabre for its domestic reservations and Amadeus for its international bookings, though it is migrating everything to the Amadeus system. Each passenger on each plane represents multiple transactions: Each seat assignment, meal preference, child requirement and number is a separate log. Andrea Huguely, a spokeswoman for Sabre, said that each minute its system processed 164, 000 requests and approximately $250, 000 worth of travel spending. Airlines, of course, are only one of many industries with complex systems whose failure can be catastrophic. Many companies, like banks and large financial traders, manage the risk by copying data to service areas powered by different data centers, so they can continue working in the event of a malfunction. Delta did not elaborate on the nature of its own backup systems, beyond saying it was investigating their failure. The airline said it would grant full refunds to passengers whose flights were canceled or significantly delayed. (“Significant” is determined case by case, said Michael Thomas, a Delta spokesman.) In addition, it said it would provide $200 in travel vouchers to customers who were delayed more than three hours or whose flight was canceled. The company is also waiving the change fee for flights scheduled for Monday. Passengers may rebook those flights for any day up to Friday, without being charged a difference in fare. Josh Hall, 31, whose company develops simulation software for military use, said he was steps away from the terminal in Minneapolis when he received the alert that his 1 p. m. flight to London through Orlando had been delayed. The first leg of his trip was delayed at least five hours, with no clear indication when he would actually get to London. “It would have been nice if they’d alerted me,” he said. “I would have done something else with my time. ” So instead of heading overseas to meet clients, Mr. Hall was passing the time watching the Olympics. He had had two whiskeys, but was starting on some water. “I’d just like to get on the plane,” he said. | 1 |
Nobody believed him. His family told him to get help. But Timothy Trespas, an recording engineer in his early 40s, was sure he was being stalked, and not by just one person, but dozens of them. He would see the operatives, he said, disguised as ordinary people, lurking around his Midtown Manhattan neighborhood. Sometimes they bumped into him and whispered nonsense into his ear, he said. “Now you see how it works,” they would say. At first, Mr. Trespas wondered if it was all in his head. Then he encountered a large community of people on the internet who call themselves “targeted individuals,” or T. I. s, who described going through precisely the same thing. The group was organized around the conviction that its members are victims of a sprawling conspiracy to harass thousands of everyday Americans with weapons and armies of gang stalkers. The goal, as one website put it, is “to destroy every aspect of a targeted individual’s life. ” Mental health professionals say the narrative has taken hold among a group of people experiencing psychotic symptoms that have troubled the human mind since time immemorial. Except now victims are connecting on the internet, organizing and defying medical explanations for what’s happening to them. The community, conservatively estimated to exceed 10, 000 members, has proliferated since cradled by the internet and fed by genuine concerns over government surveillance. A large number appear to have delusional disorder or schizophrenia, psychiatrists say. Yet, the phenomenon remains virtually unresearched. For the few specialists who have looked closely, these individuals represent an alarming development in the history of mental illness: thousands of sick people, banded together and demanding recognition on the basis of shared paranoias. They raise money, hold awareness campaigns, host international conferences and fight for their causes in courts and legislatures. Perhaps their biggest victory came last year, when believers in Richmond, Calif. persuaded the City Council to pass a resolution banning weapons that they believe could be used for mind control. A similar lobbying effort is underway in Tucson. Dr. Lorraine Sheridan, who is of perhaps the only study of said the community poses a danger that sets it apart from other groups promoting troubling ideas, such as anorexia or suicide. On those topics, the internet abounds with medical information and treatment options. An internet search for “” however, turns up page after page of results that regard it as fact. “What’s scary for me is that there are no counter sites that try and convince targeted individuals that they are delusional,” Dr. Sheridan said. “They end up in a closed ideology echo chamber,” she said. In instructional tracts online, veterans of the movement explain the ropes to rookies: • Do not engage with the voices in your head. • If your relatives tell you you’re imagining things, they could be in on it. • “Do not visit a psychiatrist. ” The tribe cuts across all classes and professions, and includes lawyers, soldiers, artists and engineers. In Facebook forums and support groups, they commiserate over the skepticism of their loved ones and share stories of black vans that circle the block or conscripted into the campaign. They have dozens of with titles like “Tortured in America” and “My Life Changed Forever. ” In hundreds of YouTube videos they offer testimonials and try to document evidence of their stalking, even confronting unsuspecting strangers. “They wanted to basically destroy me, and they did,” a young mother in Phoenix says in one video, choking back tears. She lost custody of her daughter and was sent to a behavioral health hospital, says the woman, whose name is being withheld to protect her privacy. “But I am going to fight back for the rest of my life. ” She adds, “And guess what, I’m not crazy. ” Dr. Sheridan’s study, written with Dr. David James, a forensic psychiatrist, examined 128 cases of reported . It found all the subjects were most likely delusional. “One has to think of the T. I. phenomenon in terms of people with paranoid symptoms who have hit upon the idea as an explanation of what is happening to them,” Dr. James said. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the community is divided over the contours of the conspiracy. Some believe the financial elite is behind it. Others blame aliens, their neighbors, Freemasons or some combination. The movement’s most prominent voices, however, tend to believe the surveillance is part of a field test done in preparation for global domination. The military establishment, the theory goes, never gave up on the ambitions of MK Ultra, the C. I. A. ’s infamous program to control the mind in the 1950s and ’60s. A leading proponent of that view is an anesthesiologist from San Antonio named John Hall. In his 2009 book, “A New Breed: Satellite Terrorism in America,” Dr. Hall gave his own account of being targeted. Agents bleached his water, he wrote, and bombarded him with voices making murderous threats. The book made a splash because of the messenger: a licensed member of the medical establishment who was telling those who feel targeted that psychiatrists were misleading them. A janitor knows as much about the human mind, he wrote. Dr. Hall, 51, was invited for an interview on “Coast to Coast AM,” a radio show based in California that is said to reach millions of listeners. After that, he said, “I had probably three or 4, 000 emails from people saying: ‘It’s happening to me in this state.’ ‘It’s happening to me in Florida.’ ‘It’s happening to me in California.’ ” The similarities of the cases spoke to a campaign, he said. “If the psychiatrists want to say that this is schizophrenia or delusional disorder, that’s fine,” he said. “But every one of these victims have the same story. ” While Dr. Hall has faced scrutiny from the Texas Medical Board over his mental fitness, he retains his license. Over time, however, many others who identify as victims end up out of work. They are mocked by colleagues, tolerated by family. Friends and spouses fall away. The despair that results has led some to lash out in violence. Many in the community, for example, are convinced that Aaron Alexis, who killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard in 2013, was a victim. Mr. Alexis, a former sailor, left behind a document accusing the Navy of attacking his brain with “extremely low frequency” electromagnetic waves. On the side of his shotgun were etched the words “my elf weapon. ” It was unclear when Myron May’s mental distress began, but by the fall of 2014, it had become too much. He quit his job as a prosecutor in New Mexico and traveled to Florida. There, he videotaped a testimonial about how had ruined his life. “As you can see right now,” he says into the camera, “I am totally not crazy. ” Laying out his case, he describes an episode at a gas station where he believed somebody in dark glasses was mimicking his movements. “It was really creepy,” he said. “Everything I did, he did. ” Later in the video, he prays for forgiveness for his future sins. “Father,” he says, “right now I ask that you look down on all the targeted individuals across the globe. Help them to cope with this madness. ” On Nov. 20, 2014, Mr. May walked into a library at Florida State University, where he had graduated in 2005, and shot three people, leaving one paralyzed. He dared the police to kill him, then fired in their direction before being fatally shot, officials said. He was 31. The vast majority of people with psychosis never resort to violence. Still, studies suggest that a small number of those experiencing psychotic episodes — especially paranoid thoughts, accompanied by voices making commands — are more likely to act on hostile urges than people without a mental illness. Many in the T. I. community, as anyone would, have repudiated the shootings by Mr. Alexis and Mr. May. But some also harbor troubling views about their perceived oppressors. They question how people could be so cruel. Karen Stewart of Tallahassee, Fla. believes large numbers of regular people have been brainwashed by the National Security Agency into thinking that she is a traitor or terrorist. Wherever she goes, she says — to church, to the grocery store, to the doctor’s office — they are there, watching. It baffles her, she said. But worse, “It makes me angry to see how many people in this country are sociopaths. They are absolute groupthink drones,” she said. “I don’t even consider them human anymore. ” Susan Clancy, a psychologist who has researched people who believe they’ve been abducted by aliens, said it could be extremely difficult to dissuade patients who have latched onto beliefs that they think explain their delusions. “I think it’s a need for meaning and a need to understand your life and the problems you’re having,” she said. “You’re not some meaningless nobody. You’re being followed by the C. I. A. ” In that way, Dr. Clancy said, the behavior shares a trait with religious belief: To abandon it would be life upending. Paula Trespas, Mr. Trespas’s mother, said she avoided debating with him. “It wasn’t something that he was making up,” she said. “He really felt the way he felt and experienced what he experienced. I got to the point where I was just finally saying to him: ‘I’m very, very sad that you have to go through this. I wish that there was something that I could do.’ ” The big hope is that society will wake up to what’s happening and put a stop to it, those who feel targeted say. In some cases, they do seek psychiatric help. In others, the delusions subside. For the rest, the prognosis isn’t good, psychiatrists say. Many contemplate suicide. Mr. Trespas, now 49, says he went so far as to prepare a rope. Sitting at a coffee shop in Brooklyn last month, he says the stalking has thankfully quieted down. But he says his harassers have also been seeding his body with Morgellons, a painful, insectlike infestation of the skin that many doctors say is psychosomatic. He is gaunt, with weary, sad eyes. It’s been eight years since it all began, he says. He can’t hold a job. His friends have drifted away. The online community has been a crucial support, he says. “But we don’t know exactly what’s happening,” he says. “Maybe we’re believing the wrong thing. I don’t know. That’s why I try to keep my mind open about who and what and why and how. ” One thing he is certain of though, he says: He’s not crazy. | 1 |
• Slowed healing and recovery time• Increased fatigue and slowed physical recovery• Reduced fertility• Acceleration of Alzheimer's and dementia• Reduced cardiovascular performance• Liver damage• Kidney damageAre these the kind of effects you want to experience when the grid goes down and you're trying to SURVIVE?Don't be stupid. Stop buying toxic ingredients as a form of "survival" food. It's moronic. If you're trying to store some food to keep you ALIVE, don't buy foods laced with chemicals that are designed to KILL (such as pesticides and herbicides). I will be announcing a clean, certified organic, laboratory verified preparedness food line in just two days This project took six months longer than planned, but it's finally ready. In just two days, I'm going to be announcing a certified organic survival / preparedness meal pack that will blow your mind with its cleanliness, nutrition and incredibly great taste. All these organic meal packs and ingredients can be turned into delicious, nutritious, ORGANIC meals by just adding water and heat . (You can cook these on a miniature camp stove, if you want...) All current affiliates for Numanna will be able to carry and sell this new line of Health Ranger approved organic storable food (see below).Here's what's included in the pack (ALL certified organic): Mac 'n Cheese (crazy delicious, the macaroni is made with organic milled flaxseed, delivering a wholesome source of omega-3s, very filling, energy lasts for hours) Classic Chili (amazing chili that's super delicious, even without using any chemical taste enhancers) Pancake Mix (incredibly delicious, made primarily with organic wheat flour, organic milk powder and organic whole powdered eggs) Cheddar Broccoli Soup (tastes gourmet, like you'd get in a fancy restaurant, yet all organic, incredibly satisfying) Brown Sugar Oatmeal (you're going to go ape over this one, with organic oats, organic cane sugar and organic molasses solids, this will blow you away) Organic nonfat dry milk (made from Grade A pasteurized skim milk, just add water to reconstitute) Italian Pasta Marinara (organic wheat flour and organic flaxseed paste, rich tomato taste, super delicious) Pasta Primavera (a thick, creamy organic pasta with organic dehydrated vegetables, incredibly nutritious) Sweet Habanero Chili (sweet and spicy, this mind-blowing recipe is a customer favorite) Organic Black Chia Seeds (high in omega-3s and magnesium, can add to smoothies, soups, breads and more) Organic Quinoa (a complete protein, makes a delicious soup by just adding eggs and onions)All this will be announced in just two days. If you want a heads up, just subscribe to my email newsletter (link below) to be alerted before everyone else. Certified organic ingredients and NO JUNK, no GMOs, no MSG, no hydrolyzed or autolyzed anything! Want to know what's in it? Here's the actual ingredients list for our Italian Pasta Marinara :Organic Pasta (Organic Whole Durum Wheat Flour, Organic Milled Flaxseed), Organic spray dried Tomato, Organic Cornstarch, Organic Dehydrated Vegetables (Onions, Tomatoes, Green Bell Peppers), Organic Cane Sugar, Organic Garlic, Sea Salt, Organic Parsley, Organic Annatto Color, Organic Spices.And our Sweet Habanero Chili ingredients list looks like this:Organic Pre-cooked Pinto, Organic Pre-cooked Black Beans, Organic spray dried Tomato, Organic Cornstarch, Organic Pineapple Dices, Organic Dehydrated Vegetables (Onions, Red & Green Bell Peppers), Organic Chili Powder, Organic Cane Sugar, Organic Spices, Organic Garlic Powder, Sea Salt, Organic Caramel Color, Organic Onion Powder.You're going to be amazed at the incredible taste, nutrition, wholesomeness and cleanliness of this entire line of storable emergency food.Check Natural News this Thursday for details on how to order. We've got thousands in stock and ready to ship , but even then I suspect we're going to run out very quickly. All Numanna affiliates will be able to start selling this breakthrough product in about two weeks This launch is historic for the food preparedness industry. No one has ever created an organic, lab-verified line of delicious emergency foods while avoiding all the toxic ingredients and total crap used by most other companies in the industry (with very few exceptions).Here's even more great news: All distributors and affiliates of Numanna storable foods will be able to start selling this certified organic food line in about two weeks! I'm also available to be interviewed on your podcasts, videos or websites to help explain this product to your viewers. Anyone who wants to start selling this product and earning affiliate fees should contact Numanna .Watch this space for the full announcement in two days... Health Ranger Approved AquaTru Water Filter Back in Stock
I've secured 500 units of the amazing AquaTru at $100 off for Natural News readers (while supplies last).
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SEOUL, South Korea — When the South Korean artist Hong produced a painting that depicted President Park as a scarecrow manipulated by evil forces, including her dictator father, her senior aides discussed how to “punish” Mr. Hong, according to a diary one of them kept. Soon after the painting’s completion in August 2014, the retaliation began as planned in the aide’s diary, which surfaced in November in the investigation into the corruption scandal that has led to Ms. Park’s impeachment trial. First, a civic group sued Mr. Hong on charges of defaming Ms. Park. Then his work was excluded from the Gwangju Biennale, South Korea’s international arts festival, an act Gwangju’s mayor later admitted was due to government pressure. The retaliation did not stop there, Mr. Hong said. “Dozens of conservative activists showed up in front of my apartment like a goon squad, shaking my photographs and calling me a ‘Communist painter,’” he said. “I received death threats on the phone. ” As it turned out, Mr. Hong was one of thousands of artists reportedly blacklisted by the government of Ms. Park, whose powers have been suspended as she faces an impeachment trial on charges of corruption and abuse of power. The blacklist is just one element in the sprawling case that has infuriated the public and prompted national introspection about South Korea’s young democracy and its authoritarian past. On Thursday, three of Ms. Park’s former aides, including one of her former culture ministers, Kim were arrested on charges of blacklisting cultural figures deemed unfriendly and barring them from support programs. So far, two versions of the blacklist have been reported by the news media, citing anonymous sources. Officials, including the special prosecutor in the case, Park have confirmed the existence of the blacklist but have not released it. A 2015 version of the list included more than 9, 000 people, according to news reports. The list contained some of South Korea’s most beloved filmmakers, actors and writers, including the director of “Oldboy,” Park and the “Snowpiercer” actor Song . Officially, Ms. Park has made promoting movies and other cultural products one of her key priorities. But secretly, her government has blackballed artists, reviving a practice of past military dictators like her father, Park and in so doing has “seriously undermined the freedom of thought and expression,” the special prosecutor’s office said. The revelations about the cultural blacklist added a new layer of notoriety to the scandal surrounding Ms. Park, and prosecutors planned to use the list to help strengthen the impeachment charges against her. When the National Assembly voted to impeach Ms. Park last month, it accused her of conspiring with her longtime confidante, Choi to solicit bribes from businesses and crack down on uncooperative officials and journalists. The special prosecutor is investigating whether Ms. Park and Kim — her former chief of staff, who was depicted as one of the dark forces in Mr. Hong’s painting — were involved in the blacklisting of artists. Both Ms. Park and Mr. Kim, her former chief of staff, have denied involvement. However, another of Ms. Park’s former culture ministers, Yoo said the list was dictated by the president’s office. On Monday, the current culture minister, Cho said, “I understand how pained artists must have felt when excluded from government support just because of their political and ideological beliefs. ” For many South Koreans, news of the blacklisting of artists reawakened memories from the nation’s dictatorial past. Ms. Park’s father, who ruled South Korea from 1961 to 1979, censored newspapers and imprisoned dissident writers and publishers. Chun a military dictator during the 1980s, banished a comedian from TV after people compared the appearances of the two men. (Both were bald.) Subsequent governments were accused of favoring scholars and civic groups when doling out research projects and subsidies. Under Ms. Park’s conservative predecessor, Lee some celebrities and journalists deemed progressive were barred from broadcasters. But the latest revelations marked the first time the existence of an extensive government blacklist was revealed since South Korea moved toward democracy in the late 1980s. “It’s an honor to be on the list,” Ko Un, one of South Korea’s poets, told the broadcaster SBS last month, when it reported on another version of the list. “This shows how disgusting the government is. ” Under Ms. Park, whose leadership style is often compared to her father’s, rumors of a blacklist have been circulating for years. The rumors intensified after two theatrical directors were mysteriously booted from government subsidy programs: one had campaigned for Ms. Park’s main opponent in the 2012 election another had produced a play spoofing Ms. Park and her father. And after the organizers of the Busan International Film Festival screened a documentary that delved into what it called Ms. Park’s botched response to the Sewol ferry disaster in 2014 in which more than 300 people died, the festival lost half of its government funding. Mr. Yoo, the former culture minister, said Mr. Kim, Ms. Park’s chief of staff at the time, began ordering the culture ministry to blacklist certain artists in 2013. Last month, a former aide to Ms. Park was indicted on charges of colluding with her in an attempt to blackmail a vice chairwoman of CJ, which runs South Korea’s biggest film studio, into retiring in 2013. The company had angered Ms. Park’s office by financing a movie about her ideological enemy, the former President Roh Mr. Yoo said in a radio interview last month. “I thought this kind of thing happened only under the past military rule,” CJ’s chairman, Sohn told a parliamentary hearing last month. Mr. Yoo said that an early version of the blacklist he saw in June 2014 included hundreds of artists. Shortly before he was replaced a month later, Mr. Yoo said he met Ms. Park to warn against the list. (Ms. Park has denied being warned.) By 2015, the list had ballooned to include more than 9, 000 visual artists, musicians, actors, film and musical directors, and writers deemed critical of Ms. Park, particularly those who took aim at her handling of the ferry disaster or who were suspected of supporting her rivals, according to the Hankook Ilbo newspaper, which published what it claimed was the list in October. Ms. Park’s office zealously pursued her opponents after the ferry disaster, according to the diary of Kim the former presidential aide who detailed the retaliation against Mr. Hong. The ferry tragedy is a central motif in Mr. Hong’s painting. During a meeting of senior presidential aides in 2014, Mr. Kim, Ms. Park’s chief of staff at the time, called for a “combative response to leftists in the cultural and art circles” and ordered the aides to “discover their networks,” according to the diary. He compared progressive teachers and journalists “to poisonous mushrooms. ” The diary also recorded instructions to punish artists who satirized Ms. Park, conduct a “loyalty check” of senior government officials, “intimidate” courts of law and “induce” scholars to write newspaper columns. “Make them afraid to challenge the president,” Mr. Kim was quoted as saying in a diary entry dated July 4, 2014. He has denied giving such an order and said that the diary did not faithfully record what was actually discussed during the aides’ meetings. The author of the diary, Kim died in August, but prosecutors said they found it useful in building their case against Ms. Park. Mr. Hong, the painter, said that for poor artists, being cut off from travel and other government support programs could be crushing. In 2015, Mr. Hong was invited to show his painting at a Berlin arts festival. But no domestic logistics company would transport the work for fear of government retaliation. Mr. Hong had to travel alone and hurriedly repaint a copy of the original in Berlin. He also suspected the government was behind a tax audit of his wife’s clinic last year. “It makes me shudder that Park and her cronies tried to tame artists by holding back a pittance of government support while they themselves pocket millions,” Mr. Hong said. “They showed how depraved political power can be. ” | 1 |
Chicago Soars Past 600 Homicides After Bloody October CBS Chicago, November 1, 2016
With 78 homicides, October was the second deadliest month of 2016, and Chicago surpassed 600 homicides for the first time in more than a decade.
The last time Chicago had at least 600 homicides in a single year was 2003.
Homicides and non-fatal shootings have skyrocketed in 2016, with 605 homicides and more than 3,600 shooting victims through the end of October.
In October, there were 78 homicides and 427 shooting victims. Only August had more homicides, when 90 people were slain in Chicago. It was the bloodiest month in the city in 20 years.
The city is on pace for 726 homicides in 2016, a number not seen since the late 1990s.
{snip} | 0 |
US impunity erodes world justice By Nicolas J S Davies Posted on October 27, 2016 by Nicolas J S Davies
In the past week, Burundi and South Africa have joined Namibia in declaring their intention to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC). They are likely to be followed by a parade of other African countries, jeopardizing the future of an international court that has prosecuted 39 officials from eight African countries but has failed to indict a single person who is not African.
Ironically, African countries were among the first to embrace the ICC, so it is a striking turnaround that they are now the first to give up on it.
But it is the United States that has played the leading role in preventing the ICC from fulfilling the universal mandate for which it was formed, to hold officials of all countries accountable for the worst crimes in the world: genocide; crimes against humanity; and war crimes—not least the crime of international aggression, which the judges at Nuremberg defined as “the supreme international crime” from which all other war crimes follow.
As the ICC’s founding father, former Nuremberg prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz, lamented in 2011 , “You don’t have to be a criminologist to realize that if you want to deter a crime, you must persuade potential criminals that, if they commit crimes, they will be hauled into court and be held accountable. It is the policy of the United States to do just the opposite as far as the crime of aggression is concerned. Our government has gone to great pains to be sure that no American will be tried by any international criminal court for the supreme crime of illegal war-making.”
The U.S. has not only refused to accept the jurisdiction of the ICC over its own citizens. It has gone further, pressuring other countries to sign Bilateral Immunity Agreements (BIA), in which they renounce the right to refer U.S. citizens to the ICC for war crimes committed on their territory.
The U.S. has also threatened to cut off U.S. aid to countries that refuse to sign them. The BIAs violate those countries’ own commitments under the ICC statute, and the U.S. pressure to sign them has been rightly condemned as an outrageous effort to ensure impunity for U.S. war crimes.
Resistance to U.S. impunity
To the credit of our international neighbors, this U.S. strategy has met with substantial resistance. The European Parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution stating that BIAs are incompatible with E.U. membership, and urged E.U. member states and countries seeking E.U. membership not to sign them.
Fifty-four countries have publicly refused to sign BIAs , and 24 have accepted cut-offs of U.S. aid as a consequence of their refusal. Of 102 countries that have signed a BIA , only 48 are members of the ICC in any case, and only 15 of those countries are on record as having ratified the BIAs in their own parliaments.
Thirty-two other ICC members have apparently allowed BIAs to take effect without parliamentary ratification, but this has been challenged by their own country’s legal experts in many cases.
The U.S. campaign to undermine the ICC is part of a much broader effort by the U.S. government to evade all forms of accountability under the laws that are supposed to govern international behavior in the modern world, even as it continues to masquerade as a global champion of the rule of law.
The treaties that U.S. policy systematically violates today were crafted by American statesmen and diplomats, working with their foreign colleagues, to build a world where all people would enjoy some basic protections from the worst atrocities, instead of being subject only to the law of the jungle or “might makes right.”
U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child and other multilateral treaties that our country ignores, violates or refuses to ratify.
a billion dollars per year on public relations or, more bluntly, propaganda, including $600 million from the Pentagon budget. The work of its P.R. teams and contractors is laundered by U.S. newspapers and repeated and analyzed ad nauseam by monolithic, flag-waving TV networks.
“information warfare” machine presents the United States as a global leader for democracy, human rights and the rule of law, even as it systematically and catastrophically undermines those same principles. It enables our leaders to loudly and persuasively demonize other countries and their leaders as dangerous violators of international law, even as the U.S. and its allies commit far worse crimes.
similar assault on Mosul . Both attacks are killing civilians and reducing much of a city to rubble; the rationale is the same, counterterrorism; and there are many more people in the line of fire in Mosul than in east Aleppo.
U.N. Charter to attack at least eight countries (Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Syria), and the resulting wars have killed about two million people .
ate new interventions and escalations as if we are the fire brigade not the arsonists. (By contrast, the U.S. government and the Western media are quick to accuse Russia or other countries of “aggression” even in legally murky situations, such as after the U.S.-backed coup in 2014 that ousted the elected president of Ukraine.)
are an integral part of U.S. war-making. Most are shrouded in secrecy, and the propaganda machine spins the atrocities that slip through into the public record as a disconnected series of aberrations, accidents and “bad apples,” instead of as the result of illegal rules of engagement and unlawful orders from higher-ups.
his Nobel lecture to speak about the real role that the U.S. plays in the world and how it whitewashes its crimes. Pinter recounted a meeting at the U.S. Embassy in London in the 1980s in which a senior embassy official, Raymond Seitz, flatly denied U.S. war crimes against Nicaragua for which the U.S. was in fact convicted of aggression by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Seitz went on to serve as Assistant Secretary of State, U.S. Ambassador to the U.K., and then vice-chairman of Lehman Brothers.
nducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.
“The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right-wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.
“Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it.
“It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”
If in 2016 the world seems to be more violent and chaotic than ever, it is not because the United States lacks the will to use force or project power, as both major party candidates for president and their military advisers appear to believe, but because our leaders have placed too much stock in the illegal threat and use of force and have lost faith in the rule of law, international cooperation and diplomacy.
After a century of commercial dominance, and 75 years of investing disproportionately in weapons, military forces and geopolitical schemes, perhaps it is understandable that U.S. leaders have forgotten how to deal fairly and respectfully with our international neighbors. But it is no longer an option to muddle along, leaving a trail of death, ruin and chaos in our wake, counting on an elaborate propaganda machine to minimize the blowback on our country and our lives.
Sooner rather than later, Americans and our leaders must knuckle down and master the very different attitudes and skills we will need to become law-abiding global citizens in a peaceful, sustainable, multipolar world.
Nicolas J S Davies is the author of “Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.” He also wrote the chapters on “Obama at War” in “Grading the 44th President: a Report Card on Barack Obama’s First Term as a Progressive Leader.” Commentary . Bookmark the permalink . | 1 |
Dictionnaire visuel Le prince et l’imposteur : qui est le mystérieux millionnaire d’Instagram ? À la fin de l’été, deux personnages identiques sont apparus sur Instagram : de grands hommes grisonnants, riches, dépensiers, passant tous deux leur temps à voyager et à faire la fête en charmante compagnie. L’un est l’italien Gianluca Vacchi, l’autre le russe Boris Bork. L’un d’entre eux vit vraiment une vie de rêve, l’autre est un imposteur. Par Daria Donina
Cette semaine, le réseau social russe a été le théâtre de débats acharnés au sujet du faux compte du « riche » retraité russe Boris Bork, lorsque le spécialiste en relations publiques moscovite Roman Zaripov a annoncéêtre derrière l’ Instagram de Boris Bork.
En mars 2016, Roman Zaripov et ses amis ont décidé de faire une expérience : combien de temps et d’argent faut-il pour devenir une superstar d’Instagram ? La réponse : 50.000 roubles (moins de mille euros) et un peu de chance.
Roman et Mikhaïl ont trouvé leur héros sur les réseaux sociaux : Boris Bork (le nom est imaginaire), un retraité moscovite de 65 ans. Il était « loin de l’image d’un riche » , ne vivait que de sa retraite et louait un une-pièce dans la banlieue de Moscou, mais il avait l’air « cool » , selon Zaripov.
Quelques heures après le premier post sponsorisé sur le réseau social russe vk.com , Boris avait 2000 abonnés. Lorsque le nombre d’abonnés atteignit 8000, Boris fut invité par la chaîne de télévision Russie 1 à un talk-show sur « la vieillesse heureuse », et les marques de mode ont commencéà lui proposer de participer à leurs campagnes publicitaires. Bork recevait des messages privés d’hommes d’affaires lui proposant de coopérer, et même de jeunes femmes.
Désormais, l’expérience est terminée, Roman a décidé qu’il était trop difficile d’investir de l’argent dans l’entourage et les accessoires de ces photos truquées. Mis à jour pour la dernière fois il y a 17 semaines, l’Instagram de Boris Bork continue d’attirer les abonnés. Il en a maintenant plus de 18.000. | 0 |
Really? That's not what God says?
"Woe to the fools."
◄ Isaiah 14:13 ►
You said in your heart, "I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon.
◄ Revelation 19:12 ►
His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. | 0 |
... @reptedlieu tells @chrislhayes: ”we have a raging fire at the white house. .. a classic case of obstruction of justice. ..” pic. twitter. On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “All In,” Representative Ted Lieu ( ) commented on the New York Times’ report that President Trump called FBI Director James Comey a “nutjob” and told Russian officials that firing Comey relieved “great pressure” by stating Trump committed “a classic case of obstruction of justice, a federal crime. ” Lieu said, “Let me say that, we no longer just have smoke. We have a raging, fire at the White House. As a former prosecutor, what the president did, in firing James Comey, and then saying he did it to relieve pressure on himself because of the FBI investigation is a classic case of obstruction of justice, a federal crime. Anybody else who did something like this would be facing a federal indictment and a criminal trial. ” Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Several of the Republican Party’s most generous donors called on the Republican National Committee on Thursday to disavow Donald J. Trump, saying that allegations by multiple women that Mr. Trump had groped or made inappropriate sexual advances toward them threatened to inflict lasting damage on the party’s image. To an elite group of Republican contributors who have donated millions of dollars to the party’s candidates and committees in recent years, the cascade of revelations related to Mr. Trump’s sexual conduct is grounds for the committee to cut ties with the party’s beleaguered finally and fully. “At some point, you have to look in the mirror and recognize that you cannot possibly justify support for Trump to your children — especially your daughters,” said David Humphreys, a Missouri business executive who contributed more than $2. 5 million to Republicans from the 2012 campaign cycle through this spring and opposed Mr. Trump’s bid from the outset. Bruce Kovner, a New York investor and philanthropist who with his wife has given $2. 7 million to Republicans over the same period, was just as blunt. “He is a dangerous demagogue completely unsuited to the responsibilities of a United States president,” Mr. Kovner wrote in an email, referring to Mr. Trump. “Even for loyalists, there is a line beyond which the obvious moral failings of a candidate are impossible to disregard,” he wrote. “That line has been clearly breached. ” Mr. Kovner argued that the Republican National Committee should shift its attention to candidates who reflected its core values, like free markets and limited government. “I hope the R. N. C. sticks to candidates who articulate these principles!” he said. Outrage among the party’s largest financiers over Mr. Trump’s behavior has also stirred questions about the leadership of Reince Priebus, the national committee’s chairman, who has remained loyal to Mr. Trump even as dozens of Republican elected officials have abandoned his candidacy. Mr. Priebus told members of the committee on Monday that the party was enthusiastically supporting Mr. Trump, reassuring some of them. But to some leading Republican benefactors who have advocated a tougher line with Mr. Trump, the party should have distanced itself from his candidacy well before the publication of a recording last week in which he boasted profanely about committing sexual assault. “The R. N. C. long ago should have cut ties with Donald Trump,” said William E. Oberndorf, a California investor who has given more than $3 million to Republicans since 2012. “Reince should be fired and replaced with someone who has the competence and leadership skills to rebuild the R. N. C. ” Even some of Mr. Priebus’s longtime associates in his native Wisconsin appear to have reached their breaking point. “Reince Priebus has to ask, how much of his soul does he want to sell for Donald Trump at this point?” said Charlie Sykes, a conservative talk show host in Milwaukee, calling on Mr. Priebus to “man up. ” Mr. Sykes also alluded to Mr. Trump’s repeated denunciations this week of Speaker Paul D. Ryan — another Wisconsinite and a close friend of Mr. Priebus’s — who said Monday that he would no longer defend or campaign for Mr. Trump. At a event in Florida on Wednesday night, Mr. Trump told donors that he did not respect Mr. Ryan. Referring to Mr. Priebus, Mr. Sykes asked, “Is he going to allow Donald Trump to throw Paul Ryan under the bus?” For all Mr. Priebus’s public expressions of loyalty, he has been deeply shaken by revelations about Mr. Trump and the rifts within the party, seeing years of Republican organizational work potentially being undone, according to multiple people who described private conversations with Mr. Priebus on the condition of anonymity. He has said he feels adrift, fearing that Mr. Trump is headed for disaster, and told one longtime associate that he was having sleepless nights. Mr. Priebus did not respond to requests for comment. The Republican financial apparatus under Mr. Priebus, sputtering since Mr. Trump claimed the presidential nomination, is wheezing painfully in the final weeks of the race. The committee’s officials now quietly acknowledge that Mr. Trump is a thoroughly compromised candidate, party donors said, but implore potential contributors to give anyway, stressing graver concerns like control of the Supreme Court. Many donors have stopped giving, though, and some have deserted the party, including two major donors who confirmed on Thursday that they were supporting Gary Johnson, the former New Mexico governor who is the Libertarian candidate for president. Julian H. Robertson Jr. a billionaire hedge fund investor who has directed more than $5 million to Republicans since the 2012 election, is now backing Mr. Johnson, said Fraser P. Seitel, a spokesman for Mr. Robertson. And Jeffrey Yass, a Pennsylvania investor who has given more than $3 million to conservative candidates and committees, said in an email that he was “rooting for Johnson. ” Even some of Mr. Priebus’s allies believe that Mr. Trump is certain to be defeated and that it is time for the party to protect its image by disavowing him. “We’re headed for destruction,” said Al Hoffman, a former Republican National Committee finance chairman and a longtime Florida donor, who plans to host Senator John McCain of Arizona at his house for a this week. “I just hope we can find a group of conservatives and moderates who are rational thinkers to the party. ” But other leading Republicans believe the party has little choice but to prop up Mr. Trump, fearing that excommunicating him would be catastrophic for other Republican candidates and all but hand over control of Congress to Democrats. And in some parts of the country, Mr. Trump has been a boon to the party. “He will bring over a minimum of two state House guys and two state senators for us,” said the Pennsylvania state Republican chairman, Rob Gleason, who predicted a record presidential turnout for his party west of the Susquehanna River. While some Republican donors and elected officials have had it with Mr. Trump, another constituency dear to Mr. Priebus remains committed to the nominee: the 168 members of the national committee. In a series of emails shared this week with The New York Times, some Republican state chairmen and chairwomen and national committee members affirmed their support for Mr. Trump and saluted Mr. Priebus for standing by him. “He is our candidate,” Rosie Tripp, the Republican committeewoman from New Mexico, wrote to other members of the committee. “I am dismayed by our own Republicans who are bailing like rats off a ship. He who is without sin can cast the first stone. I am sure they are not as pure as the driven snow, either. ” Juliana Bergeron, the Republican committeewoman from New Hampshire, agreed. “There are worse things in this world,” Ms. Bergeron wrote, referring to Mr. Trump’s conduct, “and Hillary Clinton is near the top of that list. ” The views of the committee members, most of whom are party activists, not political professionals, are important because Mr. Priebus is considering running in January for another term as chairman. And when the party does not control the White House, the chairman is selected by a vote of the members. Should he seek another term, Mr. Priebus is expected to face competition from Mr. Trump’s critics as well as his loyalists. Matt Borges, the Ohio Republican Party chairman and an outspoken Trump detractor, is said to be considering the chairman’s post, as are several officials supportive of Mr. Trump. Asked about his interest in the job, Corey Lewandowski, Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager, declined to rule out a run, saying only that he was happy in his current work as a CNN commentator. | 1 |
Watch This, America! Bone-Chilling HUMA Video # Isotrop 1600
For the past 10 years, I have reported on the dangerous liaison between Hillary and Huma. Born to leaders in the jihad-terror movement, Huma lived in Saudi Arabia for 18 years. Within two years of arriving in the USA, she was a close aide to Hillary Clinton. They have been inseparable ever since. That was no accident. Tags | 0 |
Fans of the Tim sitcom Last Man Standing have threatened a boycott of ABC after the network cancelled the series last week despite strong ratings and critical acclaim. [Last Man Standing ran for six seasons on ABC before being cancelled on Wednesday. The sitcom centered on Allen’s Mike Baxter, a marketing director for a sporting goods store and his relationship with his wife Vanessa (Nancy Travis) and his three teenage daughters (Molly Ephraim, Kaitlyn Dever, and Amanda Fuller). The show was one of the few (if not the only) on broadcast television to appeal to conservative, audiences taken together with Allen’s own political conservatism, some Last Man Standing fans have accused ABC of cancelling the show for political reasons, particularly because the series drew relatively strong ratings in its Friday night time slot. Over the weekend, fans of the show took to social media to call for a boycott of the network, while some urged other platforms like Netflix and CMT to pick it up. @starcrosswolf @ABC @AnitaWhiteee @RobertsRooms @gotspeed2burn @1Talking_Stick @mary_p7mary3 @mollyday15 @LibertyNews1776 @CB618444 . @ABCNetwork Is your goal to make money? Im not sure you know how … #BoycottABC pic. twitter. — 💞AmericanKelli 💞 (@kshw5678) May 12, 2017, @dcexaminer @slone #BoycottABC won’t be hard.. @LastManABC was only show I watched and now gone so — #ByeByeABC, — Sunshiney Days (@SunshineyDays13) May 15, 2017, #BoycottABC @LastManABC great show and family friendly! Bad move @ABC may you tank! Not everyone is liberal! It’s ok to not be! #FacistTV, — HappyLifex2 (@HappyLifex2) May 15, 2017, My favorite show ”Last Man Standing” has been cancelled by liberal ABC. I hope all 8. 1 million viewers join #BoycottABC, I am. What a shame. — Stacy Bolton (@sbolton20) May 14, 2017, Wow @ABCNetwork you are SO #liberal you were afraid to have anything pro conservative that you cancelled last man standing. #BoycottABC, — Jerad Sackuvich ® (@TheBlueRanger07) May 11, 2017, Representatives for ABC did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the reasons for the show’s cancellation. But a Deadline report this month suggested that the network, now responsible for the cost of producing the show at this point in its run, balked at the price tag. Whatever the reason, fans were not yet ready to see it go. At least a petitions have been launched on Change. org to attempt to persuade either ABC or another network to give Last Man Standing new life. The most popular petition had already gathered more than 10, 000 signatures as of Monday morning. “Last Man Standing is one of the only shows on broadcast television, and the only sitcom, that is not constantly shoving liberal ideals down the throats of the viewers. And sadly, that is likely the real reason the show has been cancelled,” wrote the petition’s creator. “The intent of this is to attempt to get ABC to renew the show. With that in mind, I will no longer be watching any ABC shows. I have cancelled the DVR settings for the other ABC shows that I regularly watch. If you want to help try to save Last Man Standing, I encourage you to do the same. ” Fans do have some precedent to be hopeful for a renewal. NBC executives this week “ ” the drama series Timeless after social media users pleaded and petitioned for the show to come back. All previous seasons of Last Man Standing are currently streaming on Netflix. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 0 |
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It seems to be PM Modi’s signature style. He will often stay silent for a prolonged period of time, absorbing criticism, ridicule and even abuse from opponents and sympathisers, and then suddenly, seemingly like a bolt from the blue, he will do something that trolls the pants off his critics. Yesterday was one such day when PM Modi once again proved to media houses that his is the prime time show with the highest TRPs when he announced via an address to the nation that his government is abolishing Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 notes, effective midnight. Some initial reactions to Modi’s decision to abolish Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes pic.twitter.com/YwBN3e5rCJ
— The UnReal Times (@TheUnRealTimes) November 8, 2016
Even as black money hoarders writhed and squirmed, PM Modi rubbed it in with his version of English. As if his decision wasn’t enough, PM Modi purposely dragged out his English address to add insult to injury to black money holders #Legend
— The UnReal Times (@TheUnRealTimes) November 8, 2016
For a while after the address, there were no reactions from PM Modi’s political opponents, mostly because many of them were scrambling to get rid of their cash by midnight. The means they adopted followed from their respective intellectual abilities. Some did this… JUST IN: Suresh Kalmadi spotted trying to buy 100 kilos of onion using 500 rupee notes
— The UnReal Times (@TheUnRealTimes) November 8, 2016
…while others decided to take advantage of the fact that government hospitals will continue to accept 500/1000 rupee notes for another three days One way for black money holders to spend some of their money is to get a heart attack and get treated in a govt hospital in the next 3 days
— The UnReal Times (@TheUnRealTimes) November 8, 2016
We thought we’d give people an option, but it remains to be seen how many fell for it… Attention folks. We are ready to accept 500 rupee notes from anyone who buys “Unreal Aliens” and posts snapshot :P https://t.co/gE186TXsd4
— The UnReal Times (@TheUnRealTimes) November 8, 2016
Some unfortunate souls, however, were short on options. The worst affected are media anchors who desperately want to go out & spend their 500 / 1000 notes but are forced to do debates on the move
— The UnReal Times (@TheUnRealTimes) November 8, 2016
While Arnab Goswami predictably raved about the move, veteran journalist Rajdeep Sardesai equally predictably was busy looking for a contrarian voice… Rajdeep Sardesai moving from panelist to panelist hoping to get someone to agree with his “..or is it a foolhardy move?”
— The UnReal Times (@TheUnRealTimes) November 8, 2016
…and eventually found one in Congress spokesperson Sanjay Jha who inexplicably brought up Panama papers like he inexplicably brings up 2002 in every debate concerning Modi. Back on Times Now, Saba Naqvi tried to evoke pathos by talking about the poor housewife or domestic help who will be inconvenienced, only to be promptly trounced by the nation’s noise.
NDTV would normally have featured an interview with finance minister Arun Jaitley, and he was willing too, but… Arun Jaitley to NDTV: “Aa jaun kya interview ke liye?” NDTV: “Er, no Jaitley ji, we’re busy until midnight”
— The UnReal Times (@TheUnRealTimes) November 8, 2016
Meanwhile, down in Mumbai, residents heard a string of loud FMLs and curses from a posh residence near Mafatlal Park. When the man inside was done cursing, he picked up the phone to talk to PM Modi: How this surgical strike may help PM Modi fulfill another poll promise… pic.twitter.com/rWwrQIZt4f
— The UnReal Times (@TheUnRealTimes) November 8, 2016
At least for those in India this was just one blow. For some across the border, this was PM Modi’s second surgical strike. Somewhere in Pakistan… pic.twitter.com/vtUHaLVXML
— Karthik Laxman (@karthlax) November 8, 2016
While Modi was trolling others, a beggar decided to troll a specific politician…
— The UnReal Times (@TheUnRealTimes) November 8, 2016
When he was done trolling everyone in the real world, PM Modi trolled some in the unreal world too… Just got payment from BJP for unreal services rendered – a bag of Rs. 500 / 1000 rupee notes and a post-it saying “LOL”
— The UnReal Times (@TheUnRealTimes) November 8, 2016
When all the tamasha was done and dusted, a satisfied PM Modi caught up with BJP President Amit Shah to get a cup of tea. An awestruck Amit Shah who probably hadn’t been told about the move in advance either, asked PM Modi what his plans were… PM Modi’s next Surgical Strike pic.twitter.com/CDQ73jLTsE Tweet About UnReal Mama
Ek chatur naar badee hoshiyaar, apane hee jaal me phasat jaat ham hasat jaat are ho ho ho ho ho! | 1 |
Some 25 colleges and universities — many of them public — have answered a call by professors at UCLA to use their regular class time to “teach, organize, and resist” what they view as the discriminatory political agenda of Donald Trump. [Slated for Wednesday, January 18, the dubbed #J18, is taking place between the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday and Trump’s inauguration. The event’s planners say: Let it be known that on #J18 and beyond, universities, colleges, and high schools refused to bear silent witness to the politics of hate and fear that in these times, these places of teaching and learning not only served as a sanctuary for its students and workers but also stood up to proclaim the power of knowledge on the frontlines of social justice. On January 18, the professors are calling upon their colleagues to “Teach, Organize, Resist,” and “affirm the role of critical thinking and academic knowledge in challenging Trumpism. ” They continue: On that day, we intend to teach about the agendas and policies of the new administration, be it the proposed dismantling of economic and environmental regulations or the threatened rollback of the rights that form the fragile scaffolding of American democracy. On that day, we intend to organize against the proposed expansion of state violence targeting people of color, undocumented people, queer communities, women, Muslims, and many others. On that day, we intend to resist the institutionalization of ideologies of separation and subordination, including white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, Islamophobia, and virulent nationalism. In addition to UCLA, universities participating in the event to date include: American University, Washington, D. C. University of California, Berkeley University of Cincinnati University of Dayton University of Minnesota New York University Princeton University Texas State University University of Kentucky Vanderbilt University and University of Washington. An editable flyer for the event states: “January 18, 2017, is a day to Teach, Organize, Resist. Transform your classrooms and commons into spaces of education that protest policies of violence, disenfranchisement, segregation, and isolationism. ” According to the “Media Resources” page of the event’s website, social media hashtags to be used for the day include: #J18, #Sanctuary Campus, #NotMyPresident, #ChallengeIneq, #UCLARave. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson has decided to lift all human rights conditions on a major sale of fighter jets and other arms to Bahrain in an effort to end a rift between the United States and a critical Middle East ally, according to administration and congressional officials involved in the debate. Mr. Tillerson’s decision comes as the Trump administration looks to bolster Sunni Arab states in the Middle East and find new ways to confront Iran in the Persian Gulf. Bahrain is a key player in that effort, and home to the United States Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which patrols the strategic waterway. But the decision to drop the human rights assurances as a condition of the sale is bound to be read by Saudi Arabia and other states in the region as a sign that the new administration plans to ease its demands to protect and respect political dissidents and protesters. The conditions on the sale of 19 new American fighter jets, worth $2. 8 billion, had been imposed by the Obama administration amid continuing concerns about the tiny Sunni monarchy’s crackdown against majority Shiites. The State Department declined to comment on queries about Mr. Tillerson’s decision, which has been discussed at length with some members of Congress but not yet publicly announced. The State Department on Wednesday notified Congress of its intent to proceed with the sale without the conditions, according to Micah Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Congress now has two review periods to examine the sale and raise any objections. Mr. Tillerson will attend his first meeting of NATO on Friday in Brussels, where he may run into resistance from European allies who are trying to build a new relationship with Tehran, and who have made human rights a more central feature of their foreign policy. Human rights groups, informed by The New York Times of the decision, immediately assailed any effort by the administration to lift the conditions on the arms sales. “If they lift the conditions, they’re saying we don’t think you need to reform, and the Bahrainis have a free pass to continue cracking down,” said Sarah Margon, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group. Mr. Tillerson’s decision is likely to be welcomed by the Republican majority on Capitol Hill. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, said in an interview on Wednesday that he applauded the move to lift the human rights restrictions. He said arms sales should be decided by American strategic needs, and not be mixed with pressure on allies to change their domestic behavior. “This type of conditionality would be unprecedented and counterproductive to maintaining security cooperation and ultimately addressing human rights issues,” Mr. Corker said. “There are more effective ways to seek changes in partner policies than publicly conditioning weapons transfers in this manner. ” Mr. Tillerson, the former chief executive of Exxon Mobil, has taken on much of the diplomacy with the Gulf Arab states himself, often bypassing American ambassadors and other American officials in the region. A Trump administration official said Mr. Tillerson knew many of the regional players from his time at Exxon Mobil. The decision on Bahrain also suggests that Mr. Tillerson is likely to deal similarly with Saudi Arabia, the largest and most powerful Sunni force in the region. The Obama administration deepened its rift with its Gulf allies in December over the conflict in Yemen when it blocked a transfer of precision munitions to Saudi Arabia because of concerns about civilian casualties that American officials attributed to poor targeting. But Mr. Tillerson has signaled he favors reversing that decision, and allowing Raytheon to sell the Saudis about 16, 000 guided munitions kits, which upgrade dumb bombs to smart bombs that can more accurately hit targets. The kits, if purchased over the life of the proposed contract, are valued around $350 million. Mr. Tillerson has argued that if civilian casualties are the concern, it makes no sense to deprive the Saudis of precision weaponry. The new secretary of state was criticized this month for skipping the release of his department’s annual human rights report, an event his Democratic and Republican predecessors used as a moment to pressure allies and adversaries alike by highlighting abuses. During his confirmation hearing, Mr. Tillerson declined to criticize the killings in the Philippines or repression in Saudi Arabia, saying he had to make his own assessment of the facts, and could not trust what he read in news reports. But the sale of to Bahrain was the first test of whether the Trump administration would reverse the efforts by former President Barack Obama to use America’s main leverage — military support — to force domestic political change in the tiny Gulf state. For weeks, Mr. Tillerson has been talking to members of Congress about easing the restrictions to allow the $2. 8 billion sale of fighter jets, and a separate $1 billion deal to support the existing fleet of aircraft. Obama aides had urged the Bahraini government to release political dissidents from jail and diversify its predominantly Sunni security forces. But on a trip to the country last April, Mr. Tillerson’s predecessor, John Kerry, was relatively muted in public about criticizing the country. How the Trump administration handles the politically delicate issues could prove crucial to future relations with the strategically valuable Persian Gulf nation. The Navy’s Fifth Fleet is the key to ensuring flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf, and safeguarding American interests in the highly volatile region. Mr. Tillerson is no stranger to the politics of the region. Exxon Mobil has close connections with Qatar’s national oil company, and has joined with Doha to build a liquefied natural gas terminal on the Gulf of Mexico coast that is designed for importing gas and possibly for exporting it as well. As a result, the company had a strong interest in keeping the shipping lanes in the region open — for which cooperation with Bahrain is key. At the core of the decision, however, is the Trump administration’s growing determination to find places to confront Iran for its activities in the region. In visits to Washington in the past several weeks, Gulf officials have praised President Trump for promising to get tougher with Tehran, which they regard as the great Shiite scourge of the Sunni Arab monarchies. | 1 |
Pop superstar Katy Perry has again been accused of cultural appropriation, with critics now saying the singer is stealing elements of black culture for use in her latest music. [In a searing article published on BET. com Wednesday, Keith Murphy says the singer has “become the latest white pop act looking to reinvent themselves on the back of Black urban culture. ” Murphy — pointing to what he called the “Firework” singer’s “cringeworthy” May 20 Saturday Night Live performances, one which featured Atlanta rap trio Migos — says Perry is no longer the “bubbly, witty and at times brunette who had began her professional career in 2001 as a virginal contemporary Christian music vocalist before hitting peak pop superstar levels. ” “In her place stood a static individual who was hardly recognizable,” Murphy wrote. Perry’s performance of her single “Bon Appétit” on SNL last week was heavily panned by critics online and on social media (and in the comments section on YouTube). Perry’s act was called “odd” by Spin and became the subject of several memes — many of them accusing the singer of exploiting black culture. Katy Perry looks like an out of touch teacher trying to relate to the black youth. This was hilariously terrible. pic. twitter. — IV:XX Hotep Doobs (@DOEDoobs) May 21, 2017, When you need Black culture to sell songs but you’re whiter than Strom Thurmond drinking a glass of milk watching Andy Griffith @katyperry pic. twitter. — Chris Krapek (@Chris_Krapek) May 22, 2017, When I saw Katy Perry’s performance with Migos on SNL pic. twitter. — Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) May 22, 2017, @jemelehill Katy Perry is in phase one of the ”Miley Cyrus going black” Plan!😏 — T7J4H4 (@TravarisHarpe) May 22, 2017, Even rapper Snoop Dogg joined in and roasted Perry with a meme. A post shared by snoopdogg (@snoopdogg) on May 23, 2017 at 11:22am PDT, Murphy writes: “By the end of the entire ordeal, you were left to wonder: What the hell happened to Katy Perry? And why did the pop protagonist, who first arrived on the pop music scene in 2008 feel the need to Blacken things up?” Perry’s past collaborations with black musicians, including “Snoop Dogg (“California Gurls”) Kanye West (“E. T. ”) and Juicy J (“Dark Horse”) Murphy writes, were “all done on equal, seamless footing like David Bowie’s mid ‘70s exploration of Philly soul. ” However, Murphy notes, Perry’s most recent reinvention and “the stumbling drum up to Perry’s upcoming fifth album Witness has so far been craven in its attempts to create a spark by injecting some Black girl magic. ” Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson | 0 |
WASHINGTON — When former Gov. Sonny Perdue of Georgia stepped off the elevator on the 26th floor of Trump Tower last week for his interview with Donald J. Trump, he expected a grilling by the and a phalanx of associates, something along the lines of the confrontational boardroom scenes at the sleek conference table in the television show “The Apprentice. ” What he found instead was Mr. Trump, calm and solicitous behind a desk cluttered with papers and periodicals, in a large corner office with a hodgepodge of memorabilia and décor that appeared little changed from the 1980s. Nick Ayers, an aide to Vice Mike Pence, and Stephen K. Bannon, who will serve as Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, listened from the sidelines. Mr. Trump, who offered Mr. Perdue a seat across from his desk, was in charge. “He was approaching this from a deal standpoint, and he wanted to know if he was on the right track,” said Mr. Perdue, who is being considered for secretary of agriculture and wore a tie adorned with tractors to the meeting. “He believes that we in the United States have been sort of patsies over the years in the way we’ve dealt with our foreign competitors and international trade — and I agree with him — and he wanted to know what I would do about it. ” For more than a decade, millions of Americans tuned in to watch Mr. Trump interrogate prospective employees on “The Apprentice” with a mix of arrogance and disdain. But in private over the past few weeks, a less theatrical spinoff of the spectacle has unfolded in Mr. Trump’s office in Manhattan, and occasionally at his golf resort in Bedminster, N. J. or at his getaway in Palm Beach, Fla. Mr. Trump’s interview style in the real world is direct but conversational, according to people who have sat opposite him. He did not take notes or appear to refer to a set list of questions, but he did have dossiers on his visitors and often displayed intricate knowledge of their backgrounds and experience. He rarely drank or ate. He kept his suit jacket on. In New York, he liked to show off the sweeping views of Central Park visible over his shoulder. Job seekers, who must parade before the news media in the marble and bronze lobby of Trump Tower — “It was almost like walking the red carpet in Hollywood,” said Representative Lou Barletta, Republican of Pennsylvania, who has offered himself up as a secretary of transportation or labor — said that the often asked questions and had little patience for meandering answers. “If you filibuster, he’ll cut you off,” said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who was initially in the running to be Mr. Trump’s secretary of state but has since said he is not interested in a cabinet post. “He wants to know what you can do for him. ” Mr. Gingrich said Mr. Trump’s approach to putting together his administration was the same one he has used with his business. “He’s used to defining jobs, measuring capability and making a judgment: ‘Do I think you can run my golf course? Do I think you can run my hotel? Do I want your restaurant in my building? ’” Mr. Gingrich said. Mr. Trump has been more in the interviews than his predecessors were. George W. Bush rarely spoke in person to more than one finalist for each cabinet post, said Clay Johnson III, who directed his transition effort in 2000. President Obama also interviewed a single finalist for each post in most cases, usually in a discussion meant to confirm an already conclusion that the candidate would be right for the job, said Dan Pfeiffer, a senior transition official in 2008. “In some cases, he knew who he wanted and it was a question of convincing them to do it,” Mr. Pfeiffer said, citing examples like Hillary Clinton, who became Mr. Obama’s secretary of state, and Robert M. Gates, whom he persuaded to stay on as defense secretary. Mr. Obama was also adamant that the deliberations not spill out into the open, but that has not been the case with Mr. Trump. Members of Congress, generals, business executives and others mingle outside his office, waiting for an audience with the . Mr. Barletta waited more than 45 minutes for his meeting, passing the time chatting with his Republican colleague Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, who was waiting for his turn to audition for secretary of homeland security. “It was like a green room, a waiting room of people you know or you know of, all waiting their turn,” said Robert L. Johnson, the founder of the television network BET, who visited Mr. Trump at Bedminster to discuss ways the incoming president could reach out to . As Mr. Johnson was coming in, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York whom Mr. Trump is considering for secretary of state, was going out. Mr. Trump wants a gut sense for a potential hire, people close to him said, prizing personal chemistry and an entrepreneurial spirit. But he also leans on the judgment of trusted advisers — particularly Mr. Pence and his elder daughter, Ivanka Trump — when assessing a candidate. It was Ms. Trump who reached out to Mr. Johnson, the businessman and BET founder, after she saw a statement he issued the week after her father’s victory. In it, Mr. Johnson urged black voters to participate in elections and insist that both political parties address their concerns in order to earn their support. Days later, Mr. Johnson was being led into a room at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster to meet with Mr. Trump, along with Reince Priebus, whom Mr. Trump has named chief of staff, Mr. Bannon and Ms. Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner. Mr. Trump asked what jobs he might consider taking in the administration, but Mr. Johnson said he quickly made it known he was not seeking a post. “I told him as we sat down in the room that, ‘ Trump, you shouldn’t ask voters what they have to lose, as you did in your campaign what you should have said, and what you should be talking about now is, this is what you have to gain from a Trump administration,’” Mr. Johnson said. Mr. Trump seemed to take the advice. He said, “ ‘So I should focus on the aspirational aspects,’ ” Mr. Johnson said. Mr. Trump has taken advice from other job seekers as well. During his interview with James N. Mattis, who was selected last week to be the secretary of defense, Mr. Trump questioned the retired general about whether torture works as a tool for extracting vital information from terrorism suspects. General Mattis told him it did not, a view Mr. Trump later said surprised him and gave him reason to reconsider his position on the matter. Mr. Trump, who prizes loyalty, also wanted to know precisely what the job seekers did to propel him into the White House. “He asked about what I had done to help in Georgia,” said Mr. Perdue, who told the that he and his cousin, Senator David Perdue, had repeatedly reassured campaign officials about Mr. Trump’s prospects there and encouraged them to focus their energies elsewhere. Scott Brown, a former Massachusetts senator who met with Mr. Trump last month about becoming his secretary of veterans affairs, said that Mr. Trump asked how he could help him deliver on his campaign pledges and how to ensure a “good value” for veterans receiving services from the agency or private contractors. “He made it clear that he’s a businessman and he’s going to delegate to people like me, potentially, and others,” Mr. Brown said. “He’s going to say, ‘Do your job, and do it well, and otherwise — you’re fired. ’” | 1 |
posted by Eddie A child was born in 55 days after the death of its mother. Doctors declared the woman brain-dead, but she was kept alive in this hospital in Poland till the birth of her child. The 41-year-old woman had a brain tumor. Doctors say she didn’t want to be operated on. She was afraid of the risks. She was brought to the clinic in Wroclaw in November unconscious with no brain activity. Doctors found out that the she was 17 weeks pregnant when they heard the baby’s heartbeat. The medics decided to save the child. So they had to extend the woman’s life for at least two months. Anesthesiologists, neonatologists, gynecologists and neurosurgeons were working as one team to save the baby’s life. Every day they had to fight the infections and disorders in the mother’s body. Neonatologists said that we have to support the mother until 30 weeks of pregnancy. But it’s too long for the brain-dead body, because the organism can have a lot of disorders. Gynecologists set the goal to prolong the mother’s life to at least 25 weeks of pregnancy. This is a minimum for the fetus to grow until it can be born and get a chance to live. After Cesarean section Wojtek was born. The boy weighed only 1 kilogram. His dad patiently waited for the birth for 55 days reading him fairy tales. A little boy was put in intensive care and spent three months in an incubator. A few days ago a boy and his dad were discharged from the hospital and they are finally at home. Now Wojtek weighs 3 kilograms and he is doing well. Each of the 145 days that his father spent in the hospital was very hard for him. He doesn’t want to share this unique story with strangers. He is busy taking care of his small miracle. Source: | 0 |
The bar was low for Donald J. Trump after the worst two weeks for a presidential campaign in recent memory, and he seemed to clear it at Sunday’s debate. Another decisive loss in a with Hillary Clinton could have led to a mass revolt from Republican officials and raised the possibility of a landslide defeat in November. It’s too soon to be sure that Mr. Trump staved off further defections from the Republican leadership. But if they abandon him, it will probably not be because of this performance. He did not do more damage beyond what was already done by a videotape that emerged on Friday, when Mr. Trump was heard bragging about groping women and getting away with it because he was a celebrity. Many commentators argued that Mr. Trump held his own Sunday night some argued he won the debate outright. And his tactics — intentionally or not — probably made it harder for the Republican establishment to abandon him. He gave a lot of red meat to the G. O. P. base, calling Mrs. Clinton a liar and calling for her imprisonment. By energizing his supporters, he made it more challenging for Republicans to rescind their support. But Mr. Trump’s performance did not seem strong enough to change the dynamics of a race that has moved sharply against him over the last few weeks. Mrs. Clinton had a considerable lead even before Friday. The Upshot’s model gives him just a 17 percent chance of winning the election, based on and polls. Mr. Trump’s challenge got considerably worse over the weekend, after the release of the videotape led dozens of Republican officials to drop their endorsements. And he didn’t seem to go out of his way Sunday to try to broaden his support. The polls suggest as much: According to the CNN poll, Mrs. Clinton won the debate, 57 to 34 percent. But 63 percent of voters said that Mr. Trump did better than expected. A YouGov poll found that Mrs. Clinton won the debate by five percentage points, but that she was more presidential by a margin of 57 to 31. Instant polls are not always especially representative of the electorate, but both findings tell two sides of the same story: Mr. Trump may have averted total calamity, but he did not do so well as to fundamentally alter the race. Mr. Trump needs something big to break his way, and soon. It is quite possible that the next set of polls will show him trailing by a large margin — by more than the or deficit he faced before the release of the videotape. It’s hard to imagine that the polls will show Mr. Trump faring any better than he was ahead of that news. Needless to say, even if his deficit remained at five or six points, he would not be well positioned to win. If the polls show him slipping farther, he will need to make a bigger turnaround over the last month than any modern presidential candidate has been able to accomplish. | 0 |
The WaPo reporters Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein are compromised individuals.
The Watergate Burglars “Plumbers” were CIA assets, Operation 40 counterparts…
Ironic that the author Timm Amundson, doesn’t mention HRC’s inclusion on the House Judiciary Committee Impeachment Inquiry staff in 1974 .
At the time of Watergate I had overall supervisory authority over the House Judiciary Committee’s Impeachment Inquiry staff that included Hillary Rodham—who was later to become First Lady in the Clinton White House.
During that period I kept a private diary of the behind the scenes congressional activities. My original tape recordings of the diary and other materials related to the Nixon impeachment provided the basis for my prior book, Without Honor, and are now available for inspection in the George Washington University Library.
After President Nixon’s resignation, a young lawyer, who shared an office with Hillary, confided in me that he was dismayed by her erroneous legal opinions and efforts to deny Nixon representation by counsel—as well as an unwillingness to investigate Nixon. In my diary of August 12, 1974 I noted the following:
John Labovitz apologized to me for the fact that months ago he and Hillary had lied to me [to conceal rules changes and dilatory tactics]. Labovitz said, ‘That came from Yale.’ I said, ‘You mean Burke Marshall’ [Senator Ted Kennedy’s chief political strategist, with whom Hillary regularly consulted in violation of House rules.] Labovitz said, ‘Yes.’ His apology was significant to me, not because it was a revelation but because of his contrition.
At that time Hillary Rodham was 27 years old. She had obtained a position on our committee staff through the political patronage of her former Yale law school professor Burke Marshall and Senator Ted Kennedy. Eventually, because of a number of her unethical practices I decided that I could not recommend her for any subsequent position of public or private trust. | 0 |
110904 Views October 30, 2016 BROADCAST King World News FOR DIRECTIONS ON HOW TO PLAY OR DOWNLOAD AUDIOS: CLICK HERE Nomi Prins: Keynote speaker who just addressed the Federal Reserve, IMF and the World Bank – Nomi is a renowned journalist, author and speaker. Her latest book, All the Presidents’ Bankers, is a groundbreaking narrative about the relationships of presidents to key bankers over the past century and how they impacted domestic and foreign policy. She was also on a Federal Reserve Advisory Council . Nomi is on the advisory board of the whistle-blowing organization ExposeFacts, and a board member of the animal welfare and wildlife conservation group, Born Free USA. She has also appeared on numerous international and national media. Nomi Prins is a renowned journalist, author and speaker. Her latest book, All the Presidents’ Bankers, is a groundbreaking narrative about the relationships of presidents to key bankers over the past century and how they impacted domestic and foreign policy. To buy Nomi Prins’ new book “ All the Presidents’ Bankers: The Hidden Alliances that Drive American Power “ CLICK HERE or ON THE BOOK Nomi Prins: Keynote speaker who just addressed the Federal Reserve, IMF and the World Bank – Economic signals are everywhere, from magazine covers to grocery stores to military events. They reveal the story of the world economy. Central bankers have done their best to conjure forth inflation in the hopes that this will vanquish deflation but the risk is that our daily lives, and the sustainability of governments, will be affected by an ongoing battle between these two forces. There will be important consequences. Quantitative Easing is now catching people in a vice by pushing up their cost of living even as their income is still falling. This breaks the vital social contracts between citizens and their governments and sets in motion many seemingly unrelated outcomes: social unrest in emerging markets, the movement of manufacturing and jobs back to the US and the West, improvements to the value added of emerging market firms, higher food and energy prices. The rising price, but shrinking size, of a steak, a candy bar and an apartment not only cause pain at home, they also propel some nations to deploy their militaries to secure resources and protect their citizens from the ill effects of inflation and deflation alike. This is already resulting in military confrontations, incidents and near misses between American, Chinese and Russian planes, warships and submarines. The solution is growth and innovation. Luckily, anonymous individuals are balancing their hubris against the risk of failure and proceeding to build a more dynamic economy and the new social contracts that will exist tomorrow. The only question is whether governments are hostile or hospitable to these efforts. By being alert to the many signals around us anyone can better navigate through the turbulence to the treasures of the world economy instead of being continuously overwhelmed and surprised by it.
All the Presidents’ Bankers: The Hidden Alliances that Drive American Power – Who rules America?
All the Presidents’ Bankers is a groundbreaking narrative of how an elite group of men transformed the American economy and government, dictated foreign and domestic policy, and shaped world history.
Culled from original presidential archival documents, All the Presidents’ Bankers delivers an explosive account of the hundred-year interdependence between the White House and Wall Street that transcends a simple analysis of money driving politics—or greed driving bankers.
Prins ushers us into the intimate world of exclusive clubs, vacation spots, and Ivy League universities that binds presidents and financiers. She unravels the multi-generational blood, intermarriage, and protégé relationships that have confined national influence to a privileged cluster of people. These families and individuals recycle their power through elected office and private channels in Washington, DC.
All the Presidents’ Bankers sheds new light on pivotal historic events—such as why, after the Panic of 1907, America’s dominant bankers convened to fashion the Federal Reserve System; how J. P. Morgan’s ambitions motivated President Wilson during World War I; how Chase and National City Bank chairmen worked secretly with President Roosevelt to rescue capitalism during the Great Depression while J.P. Morgan Jr. invited Roosevelt’s son yachting; and how American financiers collaborated with President Truman to construct the World Bank and IMF after World War II.
Prins divulges how, through the Cold War and Vietnam era, presidents and bankers pushed America’s superpower status and expansion abroad, while promoting broadly democratic values and social welfare at home. But from the 1970s, Wall Street’s rush to secure Middle East oil profits altered the nature of political-financial alliances. Bankers’ profit motive trumped heritage and allegiance to public service, while presidents lost control over the economy—as was dramatically evident in the financial crisis of 2008.
This unprecedented history of American power illuminates how the same financiers retained their authoritative position through history, swaying presidents regardless of party affiliation. All the Presidents’ Bankers explores the alarming global repercussions of a system lacking barriers between public office and private power. Prins leaves us with an ominous choice: either we break the alliances of the power elite, or they will break us. About author | 1 |
We Use Cookies: Our policy [X] Warning: They’re All Out Today October 27, 2016 - BREAKING NEWS Share 0 Add Comment
THE government has raised the warning level from orange to red with extra gardaí are being deployed across the country, and news broadcasters are urging the public to not make journeys unless they’re absolutely necessary, due to the fact that they’re all out today.
Early signs that they were all out today came this morning, as remarked upon by local man Harold Fennihan as he made the school run with his two kids.
“You allow for one or two of them when you’re out and about, but they were all out this morning,” said Fennihan, speaking exclusively to WWN, “Every junction, every turn, everywhere I went, there was another of them. I said it to the kids, I said look; they’re fuckin’ all out today. Turns out it wasn’t just Waterford, it was countrywide. God help us all”.
No explanation is currently available as to why they’re all out today, but theories range from the changing of the seasons to a comet passing closer to Earth than expected, with others suggesting that the phenomenon is a sign that God is angry with humanity.
Regardless, it is important to remain calm, and hope that they won’t be all out tomorrow. | 0 |
Haaretz are full of crap.The Jewish Extremists might harm the peaceful protestors? Who were mainly Jewish women?Are you truly that hateful to Jews you still need to throw n some Anti Semitism?Must be hard for racists to report on Jewish women extending the hand of peace to Islam?If you think they are protesting Netanyahu you miss understand.They are standing against the UNESCO trying to remove Jewish sovereignty from Israel. | 0 |
November 4, 2016 US on alert for terror strikes around elections
Following threats from Al Qaeda and ISIS, US security authorities have warned officials in New York, Texas and Virginia about possible attacks by al Qaeda or ISIS in the run-up to Election Day on Nov. 8. No specific locations were mentioned. However, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates airports, tunnels and bridges around New York City said they will continue with “high level of patrols” in the four days leading up to and after Tuesday’s vote. “The FBI, working with our federal, state and local counterparts, shares and assesses intelligence on a daily basis and will continue to work closely with law enforcement and intelligence community partners to identify and disrupt any potential threat to public safety” the Bureau said Friday. The terror alert came a day after DEBKAfile’s intelligence and counterterrorism sources reported that Islamists may be planning terrorist attacks to occur around the time of the presidential election. After checking out the information, the FBI and Homeland Security Department decided to alert the public to a possible Al Qaeda/ISIS terrorist threat. | 0 |
We are Gulag Bound / *Resisters' Log* / Election Countdown and the Russians, with Trevor Loudon Election Countdown and the Russians, with Trevor Loudon November 5, 2016, 9:06 am by Terresa Monroe-Hamilton Leave a Comment 0
By: Cliff Kincaid | America’s Survival
Trevor Loudon talks abut his film, “Enemies Within,” and Russian involvement in the November 8 election… 0 Gulag-wide Bulletins from Sovereignty Unbound We respect your privacy, time, and inbox. Track us Down @GulagBound Like the Gulag There are many important matters that Gulag Bound itself is not treating on a daily basis. For that reason we suggest The Globe & Malevolence and the sites shown under "Key Links in our Chains," below. Your Daily Intelligence Brief MattSkosh on Secret Service Agents Pay a Visit to Anti-Obama Artist Sabo Tags activism Agenda 21 anti-American revolution authoritarianism Barack Hussein Obama II candidate eligibility collectivists & propaganda communisty organizations corruption crisis strategy Democrat finance & banking fraud George Soros globalism - NWO global Marxist-fascist movement government domination of resources history illegal immigration Islam Islamism jihad jihadism Israel kleptocracy labor unions Marxism Marxofascism Marxstream media Military Mitt Romney Obamacare health control Occupy Wall Street race-baiting/racism Republican Right of Private Property Russia Sovereignty Tea Party terrorism U.S. Congress U.S. Constitution U.S. Presidency (POTUS) United Nations (UN) video violence voting youth & education Sabotage What good will it do, to protect the United States of America, or our presumed interests against the aggressiveness of China, Russia, or Islam, if, partially in fear of these threats, we lose our free and independent nation to the stealth imperialism of transnational and global governance? As America threatens to shatter, we must see how a semi-covert, global, cartel collective and their NWO in the USA ("progressive" neo-Marxists and neo-fascists corporatists, updated with 21st Century techniques and technology) intentionally perpetrate this sabotage, while we patriots try to prevent it. Have a look around our camp, as we struggle to survive. - your tour guide Archives Militarization in America About DHS militarization, see the new, breakthrough analysis from James Simpson, " Police Militarization, Abuses of Power, and the Road to Impeachment " and our earlier, "Marxist President’s Military Exercises in These U.S. Cities; Yours One?"
About the trajectory of this, we must pray, communicate, keep calm, and do not become the first to engage. If it comes to it, do not even respond in kind, until after the after the first times that extreme, anti-American violence is done by them. It calls for an attitude of self sacrifice -- first cheek, second cheek, then no more.
And speak out about the potential and strategic "sense" of the Obama/NWO's DHS carrying out false flag missions of violence, blaming it on American patriots, perhaps upon our militia movements.
We are in a real war, right now (of which others and I have been trying to alert fellow Sovereign Citizens for years) and the prime war is for the minds, hearts, and wills of the American People. We are opposed by an anti-American insurrection using any means of power (see Gramsci, Frankfurt School) including government power, as they are granted that opportunity. | 0 |
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The establishment has been celebrating that its Paris climate agreement has supposedly gone into effect on November 4. The pseudo-treaty, designed to regulate so-called greenhouse gas emissions, was negotiated by representatives of 195 countries at the 21st Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris and adopted by consensus last December 12. At least 55 parties to the UNFCCC, which are responsible for at least 55 percent of the world’s carbon gas emissions, had to ratify the agreement for it to take effect. But the U.S. Senate was never given the opportunity to ratify the deal as required by the Constitution, meaning that, as far as the United States is concerned, Obama's UN agreement is legally meaningless.
As of November 4, the agreement had been “ratified” by 97 of the 197 UNFCCC parties, held to be responsible for 67.5 percent of emissions, according to France’s environment minister Ségolène Royal, the outgoing president of the UN climate talks. Though the agreement is now supposed to be officially in force, its provisions will not be implemented until 2020.
The Paris Agreement is the first climate deal that purports to bind all the world’s governments, rich and poor, to a commitment to cap “global warming,” which the UN and Obama allege is caused by the burning of coal, oil, and gas.
A key feature of the agreement is that it will attempt to limit global warming to “well below” two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-Industrial Revolution levels, and will to strive for 1.5 C. Of course, this provision presumes that annual global temperatures are determined by human activity and does not take into consideration that temperatures may be the result of natural cycles in the Earth’s climate that have always occurred, long before mankind produced industrial carbon emissions.
The assertion that humans are responsible for global warming was inherent in statements such as one issued jointly by UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa and Moroccan Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar: “Humanity will look back on November 4, 2016, as the day that countries of the world shut the door on inevitable climate disaster.”
“The timetable is pressing because globally, greenhouse gas emissions which drive climate change and its impacts are not falling,” AFP quoted Espinosa and Mezouar as saying.
The AFP report cited figures from the International Energy Agency stating that implementing the agreement’s provisions would require “investments” of $13.5 trillion in low-carbon and energy technology between now and 2030 — making up almost 40 percent of total energy sector spending.
AFP also reported that presidential candidate Donald Trump has threatened to “cancel” Washington’s participation in the agreement if he is elected president on November 8. Secretary of State John Kerry signed the agreement for the United States on April 22.
In an article posted by The New American on October 20 , foreign correspondent Alex Newman challenged a statement made by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon asserting that “The Kigali Amendment to the [1987] Montreal Protocol [which the U.S. Senate ratified during the Reagan administration] builds on the strong global momentum for multilateral efforts to address climate change, including the landmark Paris Agreement.”
Newman pointed out that Ban’s statement omitted the fact that the U.S. Senate has not ratified the Paris Agreement. The article noted: Ironically, despite Ban’s factually challenged boasting, the U.S. government is currently prohibited by law from sending a single taxpayer dollar the UNFCCC. The “Paris Agreement” he mentioned, meanwhile, cannot possibly “enter into force” as it relates to the United States, as the U.S. Senate has not even considered the radical “climate” regime, much less ratified it by a two-thirds majority as required in the Constitution.
A New York Times report noted that the Paris agreement relies on a carbon tax that would force industries to pay for the their carbon emissions, but that the framework for enforcing these penalties has barely started to emerge. The Times reported: Top energy policy makers and corporate leaders caution that it will be challenging to meet even the deal’s modest goals to reduce planet-warming emissions of greenhouse gases. Many companies have not even figured out yet how much greenhouse gas they emit, much less made plans to curb these emissions. Rapid technological advances in areas like electric cars are not enough to stop the world’s long climb in oil consumption, let alone reverse it.
There are two separate but important reasons why the United States should not capitulate to UN climate mandates such as the Paris Agreement. The first, most basic reason is simply that any such international control over our economic activities is a violation of our national sovereignty.
Beyond the matter of sovereignty, however, is the fact that the entire agenda aimed at reducing carbon emissions to prevent global warning is based on faulty science. In the above-cited article, Newman noted: In an August 22 piece ridiculing Obama’s Secretary of State Kerry , scientist Larry Bell, who heads the University of Houston’s graduate program in space architecture, took aim at the entire UN anti-HFC charade. Noting that the satellite data had shown no statistically significant global warming in two decades, Bell said Kerry was exploiting a “manufactured crisis” to push his agenda.
Fortunately, continued Newman: … the Paris Agreement, UN Agenda 2030, and all of the other recent globalist plots are built on a foundation of quicksand. With no ratification by the U.S. Senate, the UN instruments are legally meaningless in the United States, despite Obama's rule-by-decree machinations pretending to give them legitimacy. They could be stopped tomorrow using various different strategies. And even if the Senate were to ever ratify the schemes, the federal government cannot grant itself new powers merely by ratifying a treaty, as America's founders and even the Supreme Court have made clear.
Over the past few years, The New American has published many articles refuting the “global warming” hysteria (see list of related articles below for several of them). Among these is “ Earth Is Cooling, Sea Levels Not Rising, Scientists Say .” In that article, we cited statements made by a group of experts in various scientific fields at a three-day conference sponsored by the Chicago-based Heartland Institute in 2010 challenging the theory of alleged global warming caused by man-made emissions.
Among the speakers at the conference was Dr. Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University. According to Professor Easterbrook, author of more than 150 peer-reviewed papers, the Earth is now in the beginning period of a trend of global cooling.
“Rather than global warming at a rate of 1 degree Fahrenheit per decade, records of past natural cycles indicate there may be global cooling for the first few decades of the 21st century to about 2030,” said Easterbrook. The cooling trend, he continued, will likely be followed by “global warming from about 2030 to 2060,” which will then be followed by another cooling spell for the next several decades.
Easterbrook’s statements merely confirm what has been observed by scientists for centuries. There has always been climate change, with ice ages occurring during some historic periods, and warming trends during others. These changes have not been the result of human activity, but are rather part of the Earth’s natural cycles.
Therefore, even if the Paris Agreement were not a violation of our sovereignty, its attempt to enforce arbitrary restrictions on UN member nations, including the United States, would be completely unwarranted, because they are based on a false underlying premise. Photo of Arc of Triumph illuminated in green with the words "Paris Agreement Is Done" in French: AP Images | 1 |
Когда за скандалами не разглядеть таланта 24 ноября 2016 Происшествия
Речь пойдет об американской актрисе Эмбер Херд. Большинство читателей если и вспомнят эту актрису, то благодаря тому, что она увела всемирно известного Джонни Деппа из семьи после того, как они вместе снялись в кинокартине «Ромовый дневник». К слову сказать, сама актерская игра Херд в этом фильме сразу же отошла на второй план: роль у стройной блондинки со стандартной внешностью тоже была вполне традиционная, и ничего особого при ее исполнении Эмбер не показала.
Возможно, никто бы не запомнил эту девушку, и ей суждено было затеряться в стройных рядах многочисленных голливудских красавиц, если бы не умение актрисы обрастать скандалами на ровном месте. В последнее время тридцатилетняя Эмбер Херд настолько часто появлялась в новостных заголовках, что ей могли бы позавидовать многие матерые западные звезды. Сначала все мировые СМИ на разные лады расписывали роман молодой актрисы с Джонни Деппом. А когда парочка подтвердила свои отношения, журналисты получили новую почву для обмусоливания: кто же такая эта малоизвестная девушка, если сумела разбить одну из самых крепких и романтичных пар Голливуда? Вскоре после этого все вспомнили и об истории пятилетней давности, когда Эмбер открыто заявила о своей бисексуальности.
Когда церемония бракосочетания Херд и Деппа наконец состоялась, можно было предположить, что девушка наконец перестанет быть одним из основных ньюсмейкеров актерской среды. Но вскоре последовал не менее громкий развод: то сама Эмбер, которая до этого встречалась с Джонни на протяжении трех лет, обвиняла актера в психологическом и физическом насилии, то ее бывший супруг заявлял, что Херд хочет на нем нажиться. В общем, примерно так оно и произошло: деньги, которые выплатил ей бывший муж, Эмбер пустила на благотворительность, но вот звездной славы поднабралась на несколько лет вперед.
Эта буря тоже улеглась, но ничего не изменилось: вот она, Эмбер Херд, снова в новостных заголовках. На этот раз из-за того, что актриса отказалась раздеться во время съемок фильма «Лондонские поля». И это притом, что девушка прочитала книгу, сценарий, а после этого подписала все документы об участии в картине, ни разу не заикнувшись о необходимости пересмотреть постельные сцены. Теперь продюсеры фильма решили подать на Херд в суд, дабы взыскать с нее 10 миллионов долларов за нарушение контракта.
К слову сказать, сама картина на международном кинофестивале в Торонто провалилась. То ли отсутствие постельных сцен подвело, то ли игра актрисы в целом, то ли фильм изначально не подавал особых надежд. Ну а Эмбер Херд при своей скромной фильмографии в очередной раз получила от ситуации все. Вероятно, мы еще не раз о ней услышим, а вот увидим ли когда-нибудь ее пронзительно талантливую игру – большой вопрос. | 0 |
October 27, 2016 - Fort Russ News - RusVesna - translated by J. Arnoldski -
The Syrian Army has beat back a powerful terrorist offensive against its positions in the city of Khan esh-Shih in Western Huta near Damascus. The terrorist gangs suffered heavy losses.
As visible in the footage, SAA troops rapidly destroyed the terrorists’ armored vehicles.
As a result of the battle, one enemy armored group composed of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles as well as several militant transport vehicles was destroyed. In addition, several dozen terrorists were eliminated.
After repelling the terrorist offensive, the Syrian Army, supported by artillery, struck in the southeastern direction and took a number of farms near the city of Khan esh-Shih.
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The Trump administration is swiftly moving to an embrace of a tax plan that emphasizes rate cuts and economic growth over concerns about the budget deficit. [Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin reflected this in answer Monday to a question from the White House press corps. Mnuchin said the administration’s tax plan would focus on a tax cut, tax simplification, and making U. S. businesses more competitive. Asked if the plan would be revenue neutral, meaning any reductions in expected revenue from tax cuts would be offset from increases in revenue or spending cuts elesewhere, Mnuchin instead said the plan would “pay for itself” through economic growth. This is a signal that the administration may be planning to put forth a tax proposal that the Congressional Budget Office would forecast as increasing the deficit. While some Capitol Hill budget hawks reflexively oppose deficit spending, Trump has long been perceived as being more open to debt financed government spending. Many believe that tax cuts that produce economic growth can “pay for themselves,” even if official government forecasts don’t reflect that view. Budget deficits arise when the federal government issues bonds to investors instead of balancing all of its spending with taxes and fees on households and businesses. They can be increased when tax cuts reduce revenue and aren’t offset with spending cuts. They fall when the government increases the amount of money taxed relative to spending, which reduces the share of the budget funded by . Since Treasuries are dollar denominated, there is no risk that the United States government will not be able to repay its debt, as the government can always pay debt issued in the currency it controls. The only risk to the economy that deficits create is higher inflation. Despite several years of historically high deficits, all indicators say that inflation will remain quite low for decades to come. During a meeting inside the Oval Office last week, President Donald Trump said that he wants massive tax cuts, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. He ordered them to prepare a plan to slash the corporate tax rate to 15% prioritizing tax cuts over attempts not to increase the deficit, according to “a person familiar with the directive” who spoke with WSJ. Top lawmakers are scheduled to meet with Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn on Tuesday to discuss the administration’s tax proposals. Trump plans to make a major announcement on tax policy on Wednesday. | 0 |
November 10, 2016 at 11:09 pm
order out of chaos!!! usa played again!!yous never seen that coming did yous!! a few written stories in emails and youv voted in someone with actually no single clue about human right, legislation, etc. welcome the new world order with someone with no clue policing it. they are gonna shred your rights and freedoms……wait and see!!! | 0 |
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13904 Views November 09, 2016 193 Comments Analyses The Saker
So it has happened: Hillary did not win! I say that instead of saying that “Trump won” because I consider the former even more important than the latter. Why? Because I have no idea whatsoever what Trump will do next. I do, however, have an excellent idea of what Hillary would have done: war with Russia. Trump most likely won’t do that. In fact, he specifically said in his acceptance speech:
I want to tell the world community that while we will always put America’s interests first, we will deal fairly with everyone, with everyone — all people and all other nations. We will seek common ground, not hostility; partnership, not conflict .
And Putin’s reply was immediate:
We heard the statements he made as candidate for president expressing a desire to restore relations between our countries. We realise and understand that this will not be an easy road given the level to which our relations have degraded today, regrettably. But, as I have said before, it is not Russia’s fault that our relations with the United States have reached this point.
Russia is ready to and seeks a return to full-format relations with the United States. Let me say again, we know that this will not be easy, but are ready to take this road, take steps on our side and do all we can to set Russian-US relations back on a stable development track.
This would benefit both the Russian and American peoples and would have a positive impact on the general climate in international affairs, given the particular responsibility that Russia and the US share for maintaining global stability and security.
This exchange, right there, is enough of a reason for the entire planet to rejoice at the defeat of Hillary and the victory of Trump.
Will Trump now have the courage, willpower and intelligence to purge the US Executive from the Neocon cabal which has been infiltrating it for decades now? Will he have the strength to confront an extremely hostile Congress and media? Or will he try to meet them halfway and naively hope that they will not use their power, money and influence to sabotage his presidency?
I don’t know. Nobody does.
One of the first signs to look for will be the names and backgrounds of the folks he will appoint in his new administration. Especially his Chief of Staff and Secretary of State.
I have always said that the choice for the lesser evil is morally wrong and pragmatically misguided. I still believe that. In this case, however, the greater evil was thermonuclear war with Russia and the lesser evil just might turn out to be one which will gradually give up the Empire to save the USA rather than sacrifice the USA for the needs of the Empire. In the case of Hillary vs Trump the choice was simple: war or peace.
Trump can already be credited with am immense achievement: his campaign has forced the US corporate media to show its true face – the face of an evil, lying, morally corrupt propaganda machine. The American people by their vote have rewarded their media with a gigantic “f*ck you!”– a vote of no-confidence and total rejection which will forever demolish the credibility of the Empire’s propaganda machine.
I am not so naive as to not realize that billionaire Donald Trump is also one of the 1%ers, a pure product of the US oligarchy. But neither am I so ignorant of history to forget that elites do turn on each other , especially when their regime is threatened. Do I need to remind anybody that Putin also came from the Soviet elites?!
Ideally, the next step would be for Trump and Putin to meet, with all their key ministers, in a long, Camp David like week of negotiations in which everything, every outstanding dispute, should be put on the table and a compromise sought in each case. Paradoxically, this could be rather easy: the crisis in Europe is entirely artificial, the war in Syria has an absolutely obvious solution, and the international order can easily accommodate a United States which would “ deal fairly with everyone, with everyone — all people and all other nations ” and “ seek common ground, not hostility; partnership, not conflict “. The truth is that the USA and Russia have no objective reasons for conflict – only ideological issues resulting directly from the insane ideology of messianic imperialism of those who believe, or pretend to believe, that the USA is an “indispensable nation”. What the world wants – needs – is the USA as a *normal* nation.
The worst case? Trump could turn out to be a total fraud. I personally very much doubt it, but I admit that this is possible. More likely is that he just won’t have the foresight and courage to crush the Neocons and that he will try to placate them. If he does so, they will instead crush him. It is a fact that while administrations have changed every 4 or 8 years, the regime in power has not, and that US internal and foreign policies have been amazingly consistent since the end of WWII. Will Trump finally bring not just a new administration but real “regime change”? I don’t know.
Make no mistake – even if Trump does end up disappointing those who believed in him what happened today has dealt a death blow to the Empire. The “Occupy Wall Street” did not succeed in achieving anything tangible, but the notion of “rule of the 1%” did emerge from that movement and it stayed. This is a direct blow to the credibility and legitimacy of the entire socio-political order of the USA: far from being a democracy, it is a plutocracy/oligarchy – everybody pretty much accepts that today. Likewise, the election of Trump has already proved that the US media is a prostitute and that the majority of the American people hate their ruling class. Again, this is a direct blow to the credibility and legitimacy of the entire socio-political order. One by one the founding myths of the US Empire are crashing down and what remains is a system which can only rule by force.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn used to say that regimes can be measured on a spectrum which ranges from regimes whose authority is their power and regimes whose power in in their authority. In the case of the USA we now clearly can see that the regime has no other authority than its power and that makes it both illegitimate and unsustainable.
Finally, whether the US elites can accept this or not, the US Empire is coming to an end. With Hillary, we would have had a Titanic-like denial up to the last moment which might well have come in the shape of a thermonuclear mushroom over Washington DC. Trump, however, might use the remaining power of the USA to negotiate the US global draw-down thereby getting the best possible conditions for his country. Frankly, I am pretty sure that all the key world leaders realize that it is in their interest to make as many (reasonable) concessions to Trump as possible and work with him, rather than to deal with the people whom he just removed from power.
If Trump can stick to his campaign promises he will find solid and reliable partners in Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. Neither Russia nor China have anything at all to gain from a confrontation or, even less so, a conflict with the USA. Will Trump have the wisdom to realize this and use it for the benefit of the USA? Or will he continue with his anti-Chinese and anti-Iranian rhetoric?
Only time will tell. The Essential Saker: from the trenches of the emerging multipolar world $27.95 | 1 |
Home / Be The Change / The State / Sheriff Says Cannabis Makes People Murderers Because “Rational Thought” Leads to Violence Sheriff Says Cannabis Makes People Murderers Because “Rational Thought” Leads to Violence Claire Bernish May 10, 2016 35 Comments
It isn’t gang violence. It isn’t even domestic violence. What is the leading cause of murder in Carson City? According to Sheriff Ken Furlong, it’s marijuana.
“It’s against that law,” Furlong told local ABC affiliate, KOLO 8. “It does change people’s attitude and we do see people dying as a result of it, needlessly, and there’s no excuse for it.
“In the last 13-15 years, all of the violence we’ve seen that has turned deadly, have [sic] been in someway related to a marijuana issue.”
Before you get too excited, thinking Furlong nailed it — the fact cannabis remains a federal Schedule 1 drug and thus technically illegal in the ongoing yet utterly failed war on drugs — that isn’t all he had to say on the matter.
KOLO 8 noted the 2016 deaths of 18-year-old Grant Watkins and 40-year-old Dennis Watkins, Jr. — both killed during transactions involving the sale of cannabis.
“During a transaction, they set it up, ‘I’m going to sell this to you,’ then all of a sudden someone gets shot and killed,” Furlong continued. “It’s not because they were under the influence; it’s because they were doing something deadly and it turned out that way.”
As Furlong explained, the threat to life isn’t due to the drug’s effects on the system, per se , but the ‘culture and crimes’ surrounding it ‘that can be overwhelming,’ as KOLO 8 paraphrased.
“It’s a very cherished culture and people have very strong beliefs,” the Sheriff elaborated. “When you violate someone’s beliefs, you put them in a position where they can act out.”
But Furlong’s complete lack of understanding of all things cannabis — including both medicinal and recreational aspects — didn’t stop there. According to the Sheriff, the community faces repercussions following a law enforcement drug bust — because addicts suddenly have no way to procure their … cannabis.
“We’re watching very closely, not only for a spike in crime, but for people who are in critical need of medical care because of that lack of treatment, based on withdrawal from the drug,” he asserted.
Yes, you read that right. Carson City’s Sheriff-in-charge firmly believes depriving people of cannabis — a plant scientifically and anecdotally proven to save lives — will lead to a crime wave and health crisis of no small proportions.
But what he explained next, as paraphrased by KOLO 8, harkens back to the earliest days of cannabis prohibition and the propagandist classic, Reefer Madness:
‘Sheriff Furlong says unlike other drugs like heroin or methamphetamines that can distort your mind, people using marijuana usually have rational trains of thought which give them the ability to act out and become violent when someone takes away or violates their drug.’
At this point, if you’re having a good laugh, stunned, or shaking your head, you most certainly are not alone.
Obviously, Sheriff Furlong grasps the potential perils in black market trade — but he wholly fails to recognize removing cannabis’ illegality would thus remove the risk of violence. When the State is removed from consensual business transactions, individuals are free to conduct trade as they see fit — if cannabis were abundant and legal, it would be highly unlikely people would continue killing each other over soured deals.
But Furlong’s stupefying lack of knowledge concerning the effects cannabis has on the body, though certainly laughable, also should concern the residents he’s tasked with overseeing.
Mischaracterizing cannabis so broadly as to believe it will warp people’s minds to a heightened frenzy where they’re likely to commit violence is downright dangerous.
For one thing, this inexcusable misperception could color the training Sheriff Furlong decides to give law enforcement trainees and officers. Considering the absolutely epidemic national spate of violence inflicted by trigger-happy cops who already seem to have an irrational fear of the public, training them to further view cannabis users as likely to act out physically is nothing short of dangerous.
If sheriff’s deputies conduct a raid on a residence known for cannabis transactions with the preconception the people inside could turn violent instantly, it’s arguable they would be more likely to misinterpret anything they encounter. This unnecessarily heightened fear that their life could be in peril from a cannabis-crazed maniac would have obvious influence on their decisions for whether or not to employ deadly force.
Sadly, Sheriff Furlong likely isn’t alone among law enforcement in the United States. As long as the drug war remains firmly entrenched in policy and culture, dangerous misunderstandings and lack of knowledge will arguably be the greater source of violence than would the substances be were they not illegal.
In the meantime, while forced to pick apart drug laws state by state, perhaps drug and cannabis education — not fear- and prohibition-based propaganda, but serious education — should be mandatory in law enforcement training. Share Google + Lannim
All he did, without knowing it, was admit that the real criminals are the ones who enforce prohibition and create this culture of violence. When you suppress a legitimate market it will be replaced by a black market that is regulated by force instead of voluntary interaction. Violence begets violence, and it doesn’t get any more violent than the state. ACAB Matt Agorist
EXACTLY! James Michael
Considering the government never created a constitutional amendment allowing prohibition the entire drug war is treason and felonius…. EVERY killing a murder…. EVERY raid a felony home invasion…. EVERY jailing a false imprisonment…. EVERY fine extortion…… The cops and the courts are a criminal enterprise…. AKA RICO….. and meet the definition of it perfectly…. Lannim
Exactly. I would say that the drug war would be just as illegitimate and criminal with an amendment, but being able to argue that it’s ALSO unconstitutional helps, considering most Americans think their rights are contingent upon what’s written on sacred documents. b4integrity
The federal government is a continuing, criminal, domestic, terrorist enterprise.
We need a DEA eradication program. Paschn
Goddamn it does my old heart good to see folks lay things out as you did! Couple that with SCOTUS’ treason with corporate citizenship, Patriot act, Habeas corpus gone, Posse Comitatus, gone granting civil immunity to big pharma, setting up a federal committee to “review” claims made by citizens harmed by “safe” vaccines, then paying off those claims WITH TAX PAYER MONEY to protect the bottom line of the elites…. Murdering Ranchers for pointing out the FED’s treason.. Let us not forget the 2 sets of books most governments run (CAFR). Let me know when you folks have had enough SEWER NATION – IDIOT CULTURE. Centrist Force
This is easy to solve. end the criminal part of this. There is no need for marijuana to be illegal. You want to end drug deals and guns get the cops out of the equation and nobody needs to play this mob games. Gregory Pius
We did that in Oregon and Washington. Tax revenues are bursting the state coffers, and the police now have to find honest work (or at least overzealously enforce something else). Everybody wins. Sadly, almost all LEOs I’ve ever heard to talked to have a deeply-held conviction that legalization of cannabis will result in the loss of their job. A … kaynash
We have far too many ignorant people in positions of power…..of course our press doesn’t help either, they are just as ignorant, so no one is getting educated from that source any longer. But really, a Sheriff? If you are going to criminalize people, you should have a much better understanding of what you are saying. Because thinking people in law enforcement are more than aware that it’s criminalizing drugs that is the problem….and this guy actually comes close to realizing that and then draws the totally wrong conclusions from it. dufas_duck
“When you violate someone’s beliefs, you put them in a position where they can act out.”
Sounds like he described the average policeman…….. Gregory Pius | 1 |
The Food and Drug Administration has approved the first drug to treat patients with spinal muscular atrophy, a savage disease that, in its most severe form, kills infants before they turn 2. “This is a miracle — seriously,” Dr. Mary K. Schroth, a lung specialist in Madison, Wis. who treats children who have the disease, said of the approval, which was made last week. “This is a event, and this will change the course of this disease. ” Dr. Schroth has previously worked as a paid consultant to Biogen, which is selling the drug. The drug, called Spinraza, will not come cheap — and, by some estimates, will be among the most expensive drugs in the world. Biogen, which is licensing Spinraza from Ionis Pharmaceuticals, said this week that one dose will have a list price of $125, 000. That means the drug will cost $625, 000 to $750, 000 to cover the five or six doses needed in the first year, and about $375, 000 annually after that, to cover the necessary three doses a year. Patients will presumably take Spinraza for the rest of their lives. The pricing could put the drug in the cross hairs of lawmakers and other critics of high drug prices, and perhaps discourage insurers from covering it. High drug prices have attracted intense scrutiny in the last year, and Donald J. Trump has singled them out as an important issue. “We believe the Spinraza pricing decision is likely to invite a storm of criticism, up to and including presidential tweets,” Geoffrey C. Porges, an analyst for Leerink Partners, said in a note to investors on Thursday. Mr. Porges said the price could lead some insurers to balk or to limit the drug to patients who are the most severely affected, such as infants, even though the F. D. A. has approved Spinraza for all patients with the condition. “What you will have is a standoff with payers,” he said in an interview on Thursday. “How is this all going to play out?” The price of the drug would be comparable to some other drugs that treat rare diseases. A spokeswoman for Biogen said the company set the price after considering several factors, including the cost to the health care system and the clinical value it brought to patients. She said that the company has also consulted insurers about covering the drug, and that while the talks are in their early stages, insurers have responded positively to the drug’s effectiveness. “We are working to help ensure no patient will forgo treatment because of financial limitations or insurance status,” said the spokeswoman, Ligia Del Bianco. She said Biogen, like many companies that sell expensive drugs, had set up a program to help families navigate insurance approvals and other logistics, and will provide financial assistance. Kenneth Hobby, the president of Cure SMA, a patient advocacy group that invested $500, 000 in early academic research that led to the development of Spinraza, said more important than the list price of the drug is whether patients who need it will get it. “Are our families going to get access to the drug in the end?” he said. About 1 in 10, 000 babies are born with spinal muscular atrophy — or about 400 a year in the United States — and it is among the leading genetic causes of death in infants. People with the disease have a genetic flaw that makes them produce too little of a protein that supports motor neurons, leading muscles to atrophy. Spinraza addresses the underlying genetic cause of the disease and enables a backup gene to produce more of the necessary protein. Blake Farrell, 6, has the disease. As an infant, Blake reached developmental milestones, learning to roll over, sit up and crawl at all the right times. “She was doing everything on target,” Kacey Farrell, Blake’s mother, said recently from the family’s home in Cincinnati. But as she approached her first birthday, Blake started regressing. She struggled to sit on her own and stopped crawling. At 14 months, tests revealed that Blake had a moderate form of spinal muscular atrophy. As she got older, the muscle loss caused her bones to weaken, and she suffered fractures. She could no longer sit up in the bathtub, and had trouble swallowing food. In May of 2015, when she was 4, Blake was accepted into a clinical trial for Spinraza, also known as nusinersen. A third of the patients in the study were given a placebo, so the Farrells were not sure if she was getting the real thing. But after receiving her first few doses, which were injected into her spinal fluid, Blake started to improve. She joined her two sisters in the bathtub, sitting up on her own. One day, she even scooted across the floor. “I was just in shock,” Ms. Farrell said. “These were all things we hadn’t seen her do since she was 8 months old. ” In an analysis of 82 infants in the clinical trial that led to the approval, 40 percent of babies on the drug reached milestones such as sitting, crawling and walking. None of the babies that received a placebo did. The F. D. A. approved the drug months ahead of time and, because the drug treats a rare pediatric disease, granted Biogen a special voucher that it can use to gain priority review of a future drug that would not otherwise qualify for the program. The F. D. A. said the most common side effects were respiratory infections and constipation, and there is a warning about possible low blood platelet counts and toxicity to the kidneys. Even though trial investigators did not know which patient was receiving Spinraza, “anecdotally, it just seemed quickly obvious to us that some patients were following a very different trajectory than what we were used to seeing,” said Dr. John Brandsema of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, one of the investigators. He said that while the patients who improved were the most remarkable, the drug also appears to stop the progression of the disease in other patients. “It’s hard not to use very exaggerated terms when you are talking about this, because it really is a pretty major step forward,” Dr. Brandsema said. For now, Blake receives Spinraza free because she is enrolled in an extension study of the drug. But her father, Nick Farrell, a lawyer, said cost is a concern. “That is a whole lot of money,” he said, adding that among parents of children with the disease, access is already a major topic. “The conversation has already started about, O. K. what’s the next step here?” | 1 |
English pop singer and fashion icon Boy George defended Melania Trump against “ ” attacks from women who he says have harshly judged the First Lady’s former modeling career. [“I was criticizing people this morning for attacking Melania and saying horrible things,” Boy George told the Hollywood Reporter at the Dior Homme show on Saturday. “You know what? As somebody who has a past, I think it’s really wrong and of women to be so abusive,” he added, further noting that the First Lady’s Herve inauguration gown “looked amazing. ” But the artist also sounded a note of apprehension about Donald Trump’s presidency. “A leader is supposed to be compassionate and inclusive that’s a real leader,” George told THR. “Being strong isn’t necessarily the answer. It takes strength to be compassionate and to think about people you maybe don’t understand. ” George’s defense of Melania Trump comes on the heels of reports that several renowned fashion designers are lining up to dress the First Lady, after other designers had said they would not. Designer Stefano Gabbana, of fashion house Dolce Gabbana, has spent months posting photos on his Instagram of Mrs. Trump wearing clothes he designed. The photos caused controversy on social media, and Gabbana fired back at his critics who were threatening to boycott his designs. “How many stupid and ignorant people r on Instagram! !!” Gabbana wrote back in one of several comments taking aim at the negative posters. “Please if you don’t like my post unfollow me … thank you. ” In October, designer Calvin Klein said “of course” he would dress Melania Trump. “She’s beautiful,” Klein told TMZ. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson | 0 |
Rigged Voting Machine Casting Ballot for Democrat when Selecting Republican # Isotrop 0
The sad part is, whomever produced this YouTube video will be prosecuted and locked up for 5 years for exposing a crime. When it is a crime to expose criminals, we are ruled by dictators? Ask yourself, is it a coincidence that more laws have been passed during the last 6 Administrations than all the laws passed since this nation's inception. We live in a Globalist Police State. Globalism is just an Elite code word for Communism. If this doesn't prove they will do anything to steal this election, then you deserve your fate. The DNC will not surrender the Oval Office for a Square Cage. This is the Art of the Steal Op and our only course of action will be to kick the tires and light some fires. Break out your pitchforks, it's time to march on D.C.! Tags | 0 |
President Donald Trump’s and senior advisor Jared Kushner has reportedly hired top Hollywood public relations executive Josh Raffel to take a key role at the White House. [Raffel — the communications chief for horror production company Blumhouse Productions (The Purge, Insidious) and a veteran of New York PR firm Hiltzik Strategies — will reportedly join the White House Office of American Innovation, according to Variety. The outlet notes that Raffel is among entertainment industry journalists for his “sane, sensible style, and his wit. ” The Washington Post reported in March that Kushner had been tasked with overseeing the Office of American Innovation, a new White House office that will reportedly be focused on overhauling the federal bureaucracy by taking ideas from the business world and applying them to government. The office will reportedly be staffed by former business leaders and will report directly to President Trump. Among the notable names in the business world who have already participated in meetings are Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. “We should have excellence in government,” Kushner told the Post last month. “The government should be run like a great American company. Our hope is that we can achieve successes and efficiencies for our customers, who are the citizens. ” Raffel will reportedly move to Washington, D. C. to begin his new job in the coming weeks. He will be replaced at Blumhouse by former Universal Filmed Entertainment Group spokeswoman Teri Everett. Kushner has quietly become a major force in the Trump administration, as the president has entrusted the young advisor with duties ranging from negotiating a potential peace deal to maintaining a healthy diplomatic relationship with Mexico. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum | 0 |
Donald J. Trump will not be sworn in for two more months, but as of next week, the big gold letters spelling out his name will be removed from three large apartment buildings on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, tenants were told on Tuesday. Hundreds of tenants at the buildings at 140, 160 and 180 Riverside Boulevard, which contain a total of 1, 325 apartments, signed a petition to “Dump the TRUMP name,” last month after Mr. Trump’s provocative campaign statements had offended women, immigrants and liberals on the Upper West Side. The buildings, between 66th and 69th Streets, along Riverside Boulevard, are owned not by Mr. Trump but by Equity Residential, a publicly traded company based in Chicago, which bought them in 2005 for $809 million. Mr. Trump, a Republican, had been involved in the development known at various times as Riverside South and Trump Place. Equity Residential kept the name Trump Place on the exterior of the buildings and on their letterhead, signage and uniforms. Tenants got a hint that change was afoot in late October when doormen told residents that they were being measured for new uniforms that would no longer bear the Trump name. Then, on Tuesday, they received an email from Mary Pawlisa, a senior regional manager for Equity. It read: “This week, the Trump Place building names will change to the street addresses — 140, 160 and 180 Riverside Boulevard. The purpose of this change is to assume a neutral building identity that appeals to all current and future residents. ” Asked whether the letters on the buildings had hurt the company’s ability to lease vacant apartments, Martin McKenna, Equity Residential’s vice president for investor and public relations, said: “I don’t have a comment on that. A more neutral identity going forward is the path we’re taking. ” Equity Residential’s portfolio consists of about 80, 000 apartments in New York, Boston, Seattle, Southern California and Washington — coincidentally all areas where Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, won a majority. Mr. McKenna preferred to describe those markets as “ gateway cities. ” Linda Gottlieb, a resident who started the petition, was elated. “We won,” Ms. Gottlieb, a film and television producer, said. “We used the power of protest to say that we don’t have to accept the spread of the man’s influence into our very homes. To me, it feels like a cleansing of the place where I live. ” But in an interview on Tuesday, Sam Zell, the chairman of Equity Residential, said, “The tenants had no role in this. ” Mr. Zell said he and “Don” — as he called Mr. Trump — had talked about it a year ago. “We didn’t want anything to happen while the election was going on,” he said. According to Mr. McKenna, Equity entered a “use of name contract” with the Trump Organization, which did not require it to pay Mr. Trump to use his name. That contract has now expired. Amanda Miller, vice president of marketing for the Trump Organization, issued a statement saying the change “was mutually agreed upon. ” | 0 |
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Cold War 2.0 has reached unprecedented hysterical levels. And yet a hot war is not about to break out -- before or after the November 8 US presidential election. From the Clinton (cash) machine -- supported by a neocon/neoliberalcon think tank/media complex -- to the British establishment and its corporate media mouthpieces, the Anglo-American, self-appointed "leaders of the free world" are racking up demonization of Russia and "Putinism" to pure incandescence. And yet a hot war is not about to break out -- before or after the November 8 US presidential election. So many layers of fear and loathing in fact veil no more than a bluff. Let's start with the Russian naval task force in Syria, led by the officially designated "heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser" Admiral Kuznetsov, which will be stationed in the eastern Mediterranean at least until February 2017, supporting operations against all strands of Salafi-jihadism.
The Admiral Kuznetsov is fully equipped with anti-ship, air defense, artillery and anti-submarine warfare systems -- and can defend itself against a vast array of threats, unlike NATO vessels. - Advertisement -
Predictably, NATO is spinning with alarm that "all of the Northern Fleet," along with the Baltic Fleet, is on the way to the Mediterranean. Wrong; it's only part of the Northern Fleet, and the Baltic Fleet ships are not going anywhere. The heart of the matter is that when the capabilities of this Russian naval task force are matched with the S-300/S-400 missile systems already deployed in Syria, Russia is now de facto rivaling the firepower of the US Sixth Fleet.
To top it off, as this comprehensive military analysis makes clear, Russia has "basically made their own no-fly zone over Syria"; and a US no-fly zone, viscerally promoted by Hillary Clinton, "is now impossible to achieve." That should be more than enough to put into perspective the impotence transmuted into outright anger exhibited by the Pentagon and its neocon/neoliberalcon vassals.
Add to it the outright war between the Pentagon and the CIA in the Syrian war theater, where the Pentagon backs the YPG Kurds, who are not necessarily in favor of regime change in Damascus, while the CIA backs further weaponizing of "moderate," as in al-Qaeda-linked and/or infiltrated, "rebels." Compounding the trademark Obama administration Three Stooges school of foreign policy, American threats have flown more liberally than Negan's skull-crushing bloody baton in the new season of The Walking Dead.
Pentagon head Ash Carter, a certified neocon, has threatened "consequences," as in "potential" strikes against Syrian Arab Army (SAA) forces to "punish the regime" after the Pentagon itself broke the Kerry-Lavrov ceasefire. - Advertisement -
President Obama took some time off weighing his options. And in the end, he backed off. So it will be up for the virtually elected -- by the whole US establishment -- Hillary Clinton to make the fateful decision. She won't be able to go for a no-fly zone -- because Russia is already doing it. And if she decides to "punish the regime," Moscow already telegraphed, via Russia's Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov, there will definitely be "consequences" for imposing a "shadow" hot war.
Sun Tzu doesn't do first-strike Washington, of course, reserves for itself a "first-strike" nuclear capability, fully supports (Donald Trump does not, and for that he's also demonized).
If we allow the current hysteria to literally go nuclear, then we must consider the matter of the S-500 anti-missile system -- which effectively seals Russia's air space; Moscow won't admit it on the record because that would unleash a relentless arms race. A US intel source with close connections to the Masters of the Universe but at the same time opposed to Cold War 2.0 as "counter-productive," adds the necessary nuance: "The United States has lost the arms race, indulging in trillions of dollars of worthless and endless wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and now is no longer a global power as it cannot defend itself with its obsolete missiles, THAAD, Patriot and Aegis Land Based Ballistic Defense System, against Russian ICBMs, even as the Russians have sealed their airspace. The Russians may be as much as four generations ahead of the US."
Moreover, in the deep recesses of shadow war planning, the Pentagon knows, and the Russian Defense Ministry also knows, that in the event some Dr. Strangelove launched a nuclear preemptive strike against Russia, the Russian population would be protected by their defensive missile systems -- as well as nuclear bomb shelters in major cities. Warnings on Russian television have not been idle; the population would know where to go in the -- terrifying -- event of nuclear war breaking out. | 1 |
Wednesday, 16 November 2016 Ms. Thighborg's presentation was interrupted due to problems with her accent
A new update on the Assange case is again rising to the surface. Ms. Valerie Thighborg, who has visited Mr. Assange twice previously (reported in these pages) has returned to Ecuador's London embassy to review Mr. Assange's current interrogation.
Accompanied by an additional special prosecutor in a black suit (known as Mr. Black), Miss Thighborg sat down with Mr. Assange and the Ecuadorian prosecutor to continue the current interviews.
Ms. Thighborg apparently began "Darleeng . . ." but immediately changed that to "Mr. Assange."
Witnesses indicated some problems with Ms. Thighborg's accent.
Mr. Assange, however, seemed totally clear, slight smile on his pale features, pale hair somewhat disorderly.
Ms. Thighborg's mistake in addressing Mr. Assange brought some murmuring in the room so that Mr. Black momentarily stood (hunched over) before resuming his seat at the table next to Ms. Thighborg.
Ms. Thighborg then proceeded to address Mr. Assange with what sounded like:
"Would you prefer I return this evening in my short white skirt which you love so much . . ." bringing several witnesses at the hearing to their feet.
Ms. Thighborg then clarified with: "I meant to say would you prefer I return this evening with a short excursion clarifying why we insist you be held in this embassy under these conditions . . ." (the last word sounding like "condeeshuns").
Mr. Assange apparently mumbled for her to go ahead right then, somewhat lingering on the word "ahead. " (Analysts not sure of his meaning.)
Ms. Thighborg immediately followed with a list of Mr. Assange's problems:
*enemy of the "Cleentun" political party in the US due to Wikileaks exposures of the "Cleentun FrownDation."
*enemy of Mr. Obama who "please darleeng don't be ridiculous" is so intent on "being the how you say lame duck magneef-ee-sense, of course he won't pardon you . . ."
(At this point the hearing room at the embassy was even noisier, Mr. Black rising and sitting again, Mr. Assange still quietly pale.)
*although no charges have been filed, and the case was dropped by the previous prosecutor to the current one, Ms. Ingrid Isren, "Sweeden most co-op-er-ate weeth the politically correct Amurkian and Europeen community . . . "
*because most of the world wants to see you "in jail cell, darleeng, or the dangle from Breetish lamp post . . ."
(Mr. Black had Ms. Thighborg by the elbow, urging her to rise, in order to remove her from the hearing, now in uproar.)
A highly placed (but anonymous) spokesperson at the Embassy indicates Ms. Thighborg has not yet been escorted back to Sweden to face charges and imprisonment.
She seeks Ecuador's protection at the London embassy to avoid extradition.
Mr. Assange reports he has room in his small quarters to accommodate her, and "Some company would be welcome." Make joseph k winter's day - give this story five thumbs-up (there's no need to register , the thumbs are just down there!) | 0 |
The daughter and granddaughter of famed black power activist Malcolm X were arrested on charges of cruelty to animals as well as car theft, La Plata, Maryland police report. [Officials say that an off duty Prince George’s County officer became suspicious of a vehicle and called the plates in over his radio, only to discover the vehicle was reported stolen in Vermont earlier in the day. The officer alerted authorities and a Charles County police officer spotted the truck. Police stopped the vehicle in a Walmart parking lot on January 25. Officers discovered Malikah Saban Shabazz and Bettih Bahiyah Shabazz inside the vehicle. Both were arrested, Fox 5 D. C. reported. What was inside the truck was unexpected. Investigators discovered seven pit bull terriers, some with injuries, stuffed into small cages inside the truck. As a result of the discovery, police charged the older of the two women with animal cruelty for the inhumane conditions inside the truck. Animal control officers removed the dogs and report they are in stable condition. Malikah Shabazz was charged with seven counts of animal cruelty and car theft. Bettih Bahiyah Shabazz was charged only with theft. The old Malikah Shabazz is the daughter of assassinated Muslim activist Malcolm X, whose real name was Malcolm Little but later changed to Malik when he converted to Islam. Bettih Bahiyah Shabazz, Malcolm X’s granddaughter, seems to have no fixed address. Malikah Shabazz has been in trouble with the law before. In 2011 she pleaded guilty to identity theft after amassing $55, 000 in debts under the name of the widow of one of Malcolm X’s past bodyguards. She was sentenced to probation in that case, the Associated Press reported. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 0 |
Ryan McMaken blog/bad-economics-behind-monopoly/
A pro-tax disciple of Henry George gave us the board game we know today as Monopoly . Article by Chris Calton . 2:20 | 0 |
College Students Threatened by Cops for Handing Out U.S. Constitutions Nov 5, 2016 2 0
The first amendment of the US Constitution was just treated like gum on the bottom of a police officer’s shoe at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. Bullying free speech — one of the first rights we as Americans are entitled to under constitutional law — was standard operating procedure for officers who threatened students giving out copies of the document to fellow classmates.
Grand Valley State University didn’t stand behind students’ rights when they were threatened for handing out the constitution and pamphlets promoting their newly created group, citing an obscure commandment from the ‘office of student life.’ Instead the school backed up threats of arrest issued by police officers.
Campus Reform stated that one officer told students , “In order to do that, you gotta be approved by the office of student life,” asserting that the school policy applies to any distribution of materials, even if one is not selling something or asking for monetary contributions.
Nathan Berning, a Michigan field representative from the Leadership Institute who was advising the students over the phone during the altercation, told Campus Reform that he found it “unacceptable” that a person “can’t hand out Constitutions to college students” in a country that enshrines free speech in its founding document.
Instead of facing time in jail, the students politely discontinued their act of passing out materials, even though this is protected by law. Berning attests this is the third incidence lately of students being threatened for expressing their freedom of speech, even in protected ‘Free Speech Zones.’
These zones are controversial to begin with. West Virginia University recently censored their students to two small areas of campus in which they are allowed to express their thoughts. Ninety-nine percent of campus was off limits to anyone who wanted to have their way with the First Amendment.
As one Huffington Post article offers , a “Free Speech Zone’ is a backwards way of saying, “Just shut up” to University students. At a recent Yale University discussion on the topic, 66 percent of attendees felt their first amendment rights were being trampled on with these euphemist ‘zones.’
A NY Times blogger on the topic called them micro-aggressions to young people and University students at large.
The University of Chicago is taking a differen t tack. John Ellison, dean of students, wrote to a recent class of freshman,
“Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called trigger warnings, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own .”
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education or FIRE recently launched a national campaign asking colleges and universities to adopt the free speech policy statement produced by the Committee on Freedom of Expression at the University of Chicago. The statement guarantees “all members of the University community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn,” and makes clear that “it is not the proper role of the University to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.”
The GVSU reaction to free speech on campus is particularly alarming considering that students pay more than ever to attend institutions of ‘higher learning’ which have become nothing more than an extension of the corporation. Student loan debt now exceeds $1 trillion in the U.S., and while universities are more than eager to take students cash, they aren’t so keen on protecting their rights to free expression. Getting that highly coveted certificate of graduation has become more expensive than ever, but it isn’t just money at stake. Vote Up Christina Sarich Christina Sarich is a musician, yogi, humanitarian and freelance writer who channels many hours of studying Lao Tzu, Paramahansa Yogananda, Rob Brezny, Miles Davis, and Tom Robbins into interesting tidbits to help you Wake up Your Sleepy Little Head, and *See the Big Picture*. Her blog is Yoga for the New World . Her latest book is Pharma Sutra: Healing The Body And Mind Through The Art Of Yoga . | 1 |
It started with a Detroit Free Press reporter tweeting that when President Donald Trump attempts to hold Melania’s hand as they arrived in Tel Aviv, the first lady “slaps away” her husband’s hand. [It appears First Lady Melania Trump slaps away Pres. Trump’s hand as he reaches to hold it while on tarmac in Israel pic. twitter. — Niraj Warikoo (@nwarikoo) May 22, 2017, Despite repeated views of the video in which that conclusion seems doubtful at best and impossible at worst, the media eagerly reposted the video, with many including a narrative based on it that calls into question the Trumps’ relationship. — Marie Claire: “ Yikes. Speculation around Donald Trump and Melania Trump’s marriage is about to get a whole lot more intense. In a video of the pair walking away from Air Force One after landing in Tel Aviv, Melania Trump can be seen slapping her husband’s hand away when he reaches out to hold hers. ” — Slate: One imagines that many world leaders throughout history — especially those named Bill Clinton — have made public appearances with their spouses while their relationships, in private, were less than serene. Still, you rarely see tension break through in the way it appears to have done in the video above of Donald and Melania Trump’s arrival in Tel Aviv Monday. To use a few technical terms commonly thrown around in the world of geopolitical analysis: Yikes! Ouch! No bueno! Melania Trump, of course, does not live in the White House, ostensibly because she is staying with Barron Trump while he finishes his school year in New York City. — Vibe, “No action has encapsulated the essence of the presidency of Donald Trump quite like his wife, First Lady Melania Trump, slapping his hand away during their recent visit to Tel Aviv. ” — Albany New York Times Union: Headline: “Does Melania Trump hate her husband (with video)?” Kristi Gustafson Barlette says in her article: Many suggest the reason Melania and Barron aren’t relocating from their penthouse in New York City to Washington, D. C. has more to do with the First Lady’s feelings for her husband than her desire to keep the couple’s son in his school. And then today there’s the video circulating with the headline that Melania slapped Donald’s hand away when he tried taking it on the tarmac in Israel. — UK Express, The First Lady slapped away the President’s hand, in front of the world’s media, as they were greeted by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and wife, Sara, who walked side by side as they left. With Mr. Netanyahu and his partner holding hands as they strolled down the red carpet, President Trump offered the same gesture to his wife. However, the First Lady appears to bat away his hand as they continue their journey away from Air Force One. — Cosmo: “Almost immediately after arriving at Tel Aviv’s airport to kick off their trip to Israel, cameras caught Melania Trump swatting away the president’s hand after he repeatedly reached out to hold hers. The moment can be seen about four seconds into the above video. ” | 0 |
Ready Nutrition October 27, 2016
At our house, back to school means back to kids bringing home germs. When the leaves start turning, I start reaching for my cough drops, feeling that all too familiar tickle in my throat. If I can, I try to drink tons of water, wash my hands like crazy, and keep the bug from taking hold. But once I know I’m past the point of no return, the following things can help cut the duration of my cold and get me back to my busy life.
Do you know how to tell the difference between a cold and a flu virus?
Sleep Helps You Heal
You probably know this already: one of you body’s first ways of signaling that all is not right internally is to make you very tired and sluggish. Don’t fight this feeling! Take a day or two off of work , if need be. Sleeping early and often during a cold can significantly cut the duration and intensity of a common cold. Sleeping allows your body to rest and recuperate—taking 10 hours of rest now could save you days down the line. Chances are you’ll pass out right away, but if you have trouble getting good sleep (particularly if your cold symptoms include coughing and congestion) put yourself in a dark, cool room with a white noise machine and a high-quality humidifier.
Avoid catchall cold medications that are high in alcohol. Even though these drugs might seem like they’re helping you pass out, what you need is good quality, REM sleep. Alcohol can disrupt your natural, restorative sleep patterns and leave you feeling groggy. If you’re certain you need some assistance with sleeping, some people swear by melatonin as a natural sleep aid.
Exercise (Even If You Don’t Feel Like It)
So, you’ve succumbed to a cold, you’ve slept a solid 8 hours and you’re still feeling under the weather. You should definitely skip your workout today, right? Wrong! Even though the LAST thing you probably feel like doing is slogging through your exercise routine, you don’t want to flake out altogether. Movement and respiration actually speed up the healing process (doctors believe working out causes immune cells to respond to and attack viruses at a faster rate). But instead of doing your normal intensity workout, try doing light cardio such as walking or even speed walking. Listen to your body—if it feels like you can do more, push yourself a little. If you fell like you want to die, dial it back. And of course, it’s not polite to spread germs at the gym, so taking a walk outdoors or at least avoiding a community treadmill is much appreciated. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump, who has pledged to reset relations with Russia, may have been tossed a lifeline by President Vladimir V. Putin on Friday. The Russian leader, skilled at keeping several steps ahead of his adversaries, announced that he would not retaliate against the Obama administration for imposing new sanctions and expelling Russian diplomats from the United States. That clears the way for Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin to declare that they are starting anew — just what both men have publicly called for. By Friday afternoon, Mr. Trump took to Twitter to embrace Mr. Putin. For effect, Mr. Trump “pinned” the post to the top of his Twitter feed, ensuring that it will remain the first message seen on his page. In a rapid demonstration of digital glasnost, within minutes the Russian Embassy in Washington had retweeted it. “Putin is going out of his way to not take Obama seriously,” said Rolf who spent decades in the C. I. A. tracking Russia while Mr. Putin was rising in the K. G. B. Instead, he said, “he is making a gesture, presumably with the hope and expectation that Donald Trump will respond in kind. ” Now the question is whether the mutual admiration pact opens new chapters in a range of areas in which the longtime adversaries are at odds, including Syria, Ukraine, Crimea, the Middle East, the future of NATO and the development of nuclear weapons. But moving too far, or too fast, in Moscow’s direction creates enormous risks for Mr. Trump. From Capitol Hill to Europe, people are already worried that Mr. Trump will simply do Mr. Putin’s bidding. Certainly no one is more suspicious of Mr. Putin and his intentions to undermine the West, and American leadership, than the Republican Party establishment. Senator John McCain of Arizona, one of the few left in the Senate who fought on the front lines of the Cold War, plans to hold the first hearing, on Thursday, on Russia’s effort to manipulate the election. And, like the Obama White House, many of those Republicans see Mr. Putin’s gesture — including inviting the children of American diplomats to enjoy the Christmas trees at the Kremlin — as a ploy. There is little chance the Republican inquiries can be derailed. So while Republicans in Congress are investigating, Mr. Trump plans to be investing in a new relationship. In recent days, he has told associates he sees little upside to what he considers needless fights with Russia, and he has long said he sees potential in maintaining a working relationship with Mr. Putin. Mr. Trump has often said there are benefits to cooperating with Russia in fighting the Islamic State in Syria, even though Russia has directed little of its firepower against the terrorist group. Later on Friday, Mr. Trump praised Fox News, apparently for its coverage of Russia. For his part, Mr. Putin is counting the days until Mr. Trump is in the Oval Office. Despite a failing economy, the Russian president has been pursuing for the past four years what most Western analysts see as a plan to reassert Russian power throughout the region. First came the annexation of Crimea and the shadow war in eastern Ukraine. Then came the deployment of forces to the border of NATO countries, as Moscow, working to fracture the power structures in Germany and France and promote parties, sent a reinvigorated military force on patrol of the coasts of the Baltics and Western European nations. Now the question is whether Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin can work a trade: a relaxation of tensions in return for an easing of the sanctions that have helped cripple the Russian economy since the United States and its allies imposed them. Mr. Trump seemed open to backing away from those sanctions in an interview with The New York Times in March, when he questioned whether anyone, other than the Obama administration, saw much use in them. His nominee for secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, has also been critical, not surprising because they have put a huge crimp in Exxon Mobil’s hopes for oil and gas exploration. Syria could be the first area of cooperation. For months, Mr. Trump has talked about working hand in glove with Moscow against the Islamic State and other jihadist groups. That seemed a fanciful notion while Russia was painting all of the Syrian opposition with the same brush and bombing the moderate Syrian opposition more than the Islamic State. But if a shaky agreement announced on Thursday holds, it could focus Russian military action for the first time exclusively on the Islamic State and the Islamist group Jabhat Fateh formerly known as the Nusra Front. “The agreement potentially sets the table for Trump in Syria,” said Andrew J. Tabler, an expert on Syria at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Still, Mr. Tabler and other Syria specialists said the opportunity came with a number of important caveats. First, the needs to hold so that a more enduring political solution to the Syria crisis can be pursued. That will require restraint on the part of the government of President Bashar the Syrian opposition, the Iranians and the Russians. Second, unless a political settlement is achieved that eventually eases Mr. Assad out of power, Syria may continue to be a magnet for extremists and insurgency, perpetuating the very problem that Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump say they are trying to solve. While the Obama administration was not included in the discussions, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, extended a hand to Mr. Trump, who has never objected to Moscow’s growing influence in the Middle East. “I would like to express my hope that after the administration of Donald Trump assumes its duties, it will also join the efforts in order to channel this work into one direction basing on friendly and collective cooperation,” Mr. Lavrov said during a meeting Thursday with Mr. Putin. A Trump administration could become involved in future diplomatic talks, from which Secretary of State John Kerry was excluded in recent months. It could “coordinate” with the Russians militarily, something Mr. Obama’s defense secretary, Ashton B. Carter, has resisted. Syria is just the beginning. The fragile Baltic members of NATO — Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania — are looking at large military buildups meant to intimidate them. The Ukrainians have seen their lights turn off mysteriously and tracked it to Russian hackers. The British and French report that Russian practice bomber runs and submarine missions just off their shores, something they have not seen since Soviet days. The French and the Germans say they already see signs of hacking and “influence operations” in their own elections, scheduled for next year. Each has political movements with echoes of the one that brought Mr. Trump to power and that could eat away at the European Union and the NATO alliance. The most difficult problem may be what to do about the oldest form of War II competition: nuclear weapons. Emerging from his briefings, Mr. Trump has expressed surprise in recent weeks about the size and abilities of Russia’s arsenal and has largely blamed New START, the arms control treaty that Mr. Obama negotiated. Though modest, the treaty reduced deployed nuclear arsenals to 1, 550 weapons on each side, down from tens of thousands at the height of the Cold War. But Mr. Trump declared last week that he was perfectly happy to renew the arms race if need be, a declaration that was jarringly out of tune with his calls for a friendlier relationship with Russia. It is not clear if Mr. Trump has been briefed on the “nuclear modernization” program on which the Obama administration and Congress have spent billions, or seen the Pentagon’s proposals for the $1 trillion revamp of the delivery systems — submarines, missiles and bombers — to make them stealthier and more survivable. If he signs on, that race could become serious, and seriously expensive. | 1 |
KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo — The bodies were still smoking Tuesday morning, hours after the sun had risen and the killers had driven off. They were charred beyond recognition, arms held up in agony, every piece of skin burned away. “It was the government who did this,” said Félix Tshisekedi, the son of one of Congo’s most popular opposition figures. “I have no doubt. ” A dirty war is shaping up on the streets of Kinshasa, Congo’s capital. In the past two days, at least 25 people from opposing sides of the political divide have been killed by machetes, gunshots, grenades or fire. The burst of violence has paralyzed one of Africa’s biggest cities and could be a harbinger of more bloodshed to come. An expression gaining currency here is “Toyebi indako. ” In Lingala, Kinshasa’s most widely spoken language, it means: I know your house. A crashing economy, Congo’s history of brutality, inescapable poverty and a huge unemployed youth population are all fueling the unrest. As one Western diplomat said on Tuesday, there is a lot of tinder lying around. But the spark is relatively straightforward: a presidential election. Or more precisely, the absence of one. According to the Congolese constitution, President Joseph Kabila, who has been in power for the past 15 years, is required to step down in December. But Mr. Kabila has shown no signs of doing that. There are no firm plans — or even a date — for the next election. Millions of new voters must be registered, funds need to be raised and an election calendar has to be agreed upon, but none of this has happened. So the questions spread. Is Mr. Kabila trying to delay the election as long as possible? Is he ever going to leave? On Monday, thousands of opposition supporters protested in a Kinshasa slum. The demonstration spun out of control when young men rampaged through different neighborhoods, burning down stores, ransacking banks and killing several police officers. The protesters seemed to reserve a special hatred for offices belonging to Mr. Kabila’s political party. At one, they punched a hole through a solid brick wall, set fire to a giant picture of Mr. Kabila’s face and then helped themselves to desks, chairs, computers and TVs. The revenge came about 18 hours later. According to witnesses, an army truck full of uniformed soldiers zoomed up to the headquarters of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress, a leading opposition party. The soldiers fired grenades into the building and sprayed it with gunfire. By Tuesday morning, the bodies of three men lay on doors that had been ripped off their hinges to serve as stretchers. The three worked as volunteer guards at the opposition headquarters and had been inside the building when it was hit by the grenades. Beyond them lay the other victims, face up, in the rubble. Two other opposition headquarters were attacked, and all witnesses accused the army, though Congo’s government spokesman, Lambert Mende, vigorously denied its involvement. “The army’s not stupid,” he said. “What are they going to do, kill people while they’re wearing their uniforms?” In recent years, human rights groups have documented many instances of Congolese government soldiers killing and raping civilians. Mr. Mende said the government was committed to finding a solution to the election impasse and that it hoped a process called the “dialogue” — which opposition leaders called the “monologue” — would produce a compromise. Mr. Mende said that Mr. Kabila did not intend to stay in power but that he could not simply come out and say that. “When a president here in our country says ‘I won’t run again,’ even if he will be there for three months or one year, it will be three months or one year of anarchy,” Mr. Mende said. “It’s our culture. We need to have a chief plainly in charge. ” Étienne Tshisekedi, who at 83 is considered the grandfather of the opposition, said he would agree to delay the election under one condition: Mr. Kabila leaves in December. “If he doesn’t,” he said, “we will call on the people to take power themselves. ” | 1 |
Doctors confirm use of chemical weapons in Aleppo fightings 31.10.2016 | Source: AP photo One person was killed and 30 were injured as terrorists attacked western Aleppo . Al-Mayadeen satellite channel said that the terrorists used shells filled with chemical agents in the attack that took place on October 30.The terrorists attacked the area of the city known as El Hamdaniyah, where a government-controlled military academy is located. Both civilians and servicemen suffered from chemical poisoning. Later, the head of the forensic medical examination in the province of Aleppo, Zahir Hamdu Haju said that the symptoms of the victims suggested that the militants used chlorine .The victims had similar symptoms, such as tearing, foaming at the mouth vomiting and nausea. The people said that they could smell chlorine in the air during the attack, RT reports. UN special envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura, expressed indignation at the actions of the so-called opposition."Credible reports from the site of the attack indicate that dozens of civilians in western Aleppo were killed, including several children, and hundreds of people were injured due to relentless and indiscriminate attacks by armed opposition groups," the official said. Pravda.Ru Read article on the Russian version of Pravda.Ru Russia says who can settle Aleppo conflict | 0 |
Home » Gold » Gold Miners » Gold Stocks’ Winter Rally
The gold miners’ stocks have certainly had a wild ride this year. After initially skyrocketing out of deep secular lows into a mighty new bull market, they recently suffered a massive correction climaxing in an extreme plummet. This coincided with gold stocks’ major seasonal low in October. That heralds their strongest seasonal rally of the year heading into and through winter, a very bullish omen for coming months.
Buy 2017 Silver Pandas at the Best Price Online
Submitted by Adam Hamilton, Zeal:
Gold-stock performance is highly seasonal , which certainly sounds odd. The gold miners produce and sell their metal at relatively-constant rates year-round, so the temporal journey through calendar months should be irrelevant. Based on these miners’ revenues, there’s no reason investors should favor them more at certain times of the year than others. Yet history proves that’s exactly what happens in this sector.
Seasonality is the tendency for prices to exhibit recurring patterns at certain times during the calendar year. While seasonality doesn’t drive price action, it quantifies annually-repeating behavior driven by sentiment, technicals, and fundamentals. We humans are creatures of habit and herd, which naturally colors our trading decisions. The calendar year’s passage affects the timing and intensity of buying and selling.
Gold stocks exhibit strong seasonality because their price action mirrors that of their dominant primary driver, gold. Gold’s seasonality isn’t driven by supply fluctuations like grown commodities experience, as its mined supply remains pretty steady all year long. Instead gold’s major seasonality is demand-driven , with global investment demand varying dramatically depending on the time within the calendar year.
This gold seasonality is fueled by well-known income-cycle and cultural drivers of outsized gold demand from around the world. And the biggest seasonal surge of all is just now getting underway heading into winter. As the Indian-wedding-season gold-jewelry buying that fuels this metal’s big autumn rally winds down, the Western holiday season is ramping up. The holiday spirit puts everyone in the mood to spend money.
Men splurge on vast amounts of gold jewelry for Christmas gifts for their wives, girlfriends, daughters, and mothers. The holidays are also a big engagement season, with Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve being two of the biggest proposal nights of the year. Between a quarter and a third of the entire annual sales of jewelry stores come in November and December! And jewelry historically dominates overall gold demand.
According to the World Gold Council, jewelry accounted for 58% of total global gold demand in 2014 and 57% in 2015. That works out to about 4/7ths of annual gold demand. The first half of 2016 proved a historic exception, as gold investment demand trumped jewelry demand for two consecutive quarters for the first time ever . Nevertheless jewelry demand still ran 40% even in H1’16’s young investment-driven gold bull.
This outsized Western jewelry buying heading into winter shifts to pure investment demand after year-end. That’s when Western investors figure out how much surplus income they earned during the prior year after bonuses and taxes. Some of this is plowed into gold in January, driving it higher. Finally the big winter gold rally climaxes in late February on major Chinese New Year gold buying flaring up over there.
So during its bull-market years, gold has always tended to enjoy major winter rallies driven by these sequential episodes of outsized demand. Naturally the gold stocks follow gold higher, amplifying its gains due to their great profits leverage to the gold price. Today gold stocks are once again just heading into their strongest seasonal rally of the year driven by this robust winter gold demand . That’s super-bullish.
Since it’s gold’s own demand-driven seasonality that fuels the gold stocks’ seasonality, that’s logically the best place to start to understand what’s likely coming. Price action is very different between bull and bear years, and gold is absolutely in a new bull market . Between the 6.1-year secular low it suffered in mid-December and early July, gold powered 29.9% higher easily exceeding that +20% new-bull threshold.
Gold’s last mighty bull market ran from April 2001 to August 2011, where it soared 638.2% higher! And while gold consolidated high in 2012, that was technically a bull year too since gold just slid 18.8% at worst from its bull-market peak. Gold didn’t enter formal bear-market territory at -20% until April 2013, thanks to the crazy stock-market levitation driven by extreme distortions from the Fed’s QE3 bond monetizations.
So the modern bull-year seasonality relevant to this new bull year of 2016 ran from 2001 to 2012 , before the Fed-induced bear-market years between 2013 to 2015. This first chart distills down gold’s bull-year seasonal tendencies by averaging gold prices indexed within each calendar year. This methodology is essential because it renders price percentage moves perfectly comparable despite differing prevailing gold prices.
Gold’s close on the final day of each preceding year is recast at a level of 100, with all the following year’s daily gold closes indexed off that. An indexed level of 110 simply means gold is up 10% year-to-date at that point. Each calendar year’s individually-indexed gold prices are then averaged together to arrive at this gold-bull seasonality. Gold has always had a strong tendency to enjoy major winter rallies .
During its last bull-market years from 2001 to 2012, gold’s major winter rally started on average in late October . Technically gold’s major seasonal bottom averaged being carved on that month’s 16th trading day, which happened to be October 24th this year. From there gold surges into its strongest seasonal rally of the year. Between late October and late February in its last bull years, gold blasted 10.1% higher on average!
These big winter-rally seasonal gains are much larger than the 4.3% and 7.5% averages seen in gold’s other major seasonal rallies in spring and autumn! That makes late October one of the best times of the year to deploy capital into gold. That Western holiday gold-jewelry buying fuels such outsized demand that November has long proved gold’s best calendar month of the year with average bull-year gains of 4.0%.
While this bullish gold seasonality really moderates in December with an average 0.8% bull-year gain, it soon accelerates again in January on that surplus-income gold investment buying. The 2.7% average gain gold enjoyed in January during those bull years between 2001 to 2012 makes for this metal’s third best month of the calendar year. This winter-rally span is when gold enjoys its peak seasonal tailwinds .
Unfortunately the great majority of speculators and investors remain wary of deploying into gold to ride its strong seasonal winter rally. Just like last year, the former are terrified of the next Fed rate hike once again arriving in mid-December. Gold-futures speculators in particular have spent recent years fooling themselves into believing Fed rates hikes are gold’s mortal nemesis, despite history proving that totally false .
The record is crystal-clear, gold actually thrives during Fed-rate-hike cycles! Before today’s there have been 11 since 1971, and gold has averaged impressive 26.9% gains across the exact spans of all these Fed-rate-hike cycles. In the majority 6 of these where gold actually rallied, its average gains were a staggering 61.0%! In the other 5 where gold retreated, its average losses were an asymmetrically-light 13.9%.
Gold blasted higher during Fed-rate-hike cycles when they started with gold relatively low and unfolded at a gradual pace. Gold not only entered today’s current farce of a rate-hike cycle at major secular lows, the Fed under uber-dove Janet Yellen has never been slower in raising rates. With at least an entire year between hikes, it’s hard to imagine any more gradual. This snail-like rate-hike setup is very bullish for gold .
During its last rate-hike cycle between June 2004 to June 2006, the FOMC hiked at 17 consecutive meetings for a total of 425 basis points! That more than quintupled the federal-funds rate to 5.25%, an inconceivably-high level today. Even though that was an extremely-aggressive rate-hike cycle, gold still managed to power 49.6% higher over that exact span! Rate hikes are no threat to gold’s strong winter seasonals.
Meanwhile investors remain distracted by the Fed’s ludicrous stock-market levitation, which is retarding gold investment demand. When stock markets remain near record highs and drenched in complacency, investors aren’t interested in prudently diversifying into gold. Since gold tends to move counter to the stock markets , investment demand only surges when stocks weaken. That’s what ignited 2016’s gold bull.
As the Fed’s surreal stock-market levitation cracked early this year, American stock investors flocked to gold via shares in the flagship GLD SPDR Gold Shares gold ETF. When they buy its shares faster than gold itself is being bought, this ETF’s managers must issue sufficient new shares to offset all this excess demand and maintain gold tracking. The proceeds from these GLD-share sales are used to buy gold bullion.
Thus GLD holdings builds show stock-market capital migrating into gold . In Q1’16, GLD’s enormous 176.9-metric-ton build represented an incredible 80.6% of total worldwide demand growth in gold year-over-year. In Q2’16, GLD’s 130.8t build accounted for a colossal 93.6% of the total global increase in gold demand! The reason gold’s bull stalled in Q3’16 is because GLD’s holdings actually suffered a 2.1t draw.
When these lofty Fed-levitated stock markets inevitably roll over again, differential GLD-share buying will surge again for prudent portfolio diversification into gold. That will really add to gold’s strong winter seasonals, amplifying its rally in the coming months. And gold’s strongest seasonal rally doesn’t even need to be kick started by GLD demand resuming, as it relies on November’s strong holiday gold-jewelry demand.
So neither speculators’ Fed-rate-hike fears nor investors’ current apathy towards gold thanks to near-record stock markets are likely to short circuit gold’s strong winter rally this year. And if gold’s bull-market seasonals again prevail, that’s super-bullish for gold stocks in the coming months. They also enjoy strong winter seasonals thanks to gold’s, because gold miners’ profitability and thus stock prices leverage gold’s price action.
This next chart applies this same bull-market-seasonality methodology to the leading benchmark HUI NYSE Arca Gold BUGS Index. Naturally gold-stock seasonals closely mirror gold’s, so the miners are also just entering their strongest seasonal rally of the year . On average in those last bull-market years from 2001 to 2012, the HUI powered a whopping 15.9% higher between late October and late February!
Gold stocks’ strong 15.9% average winter rally bests their 13.7% and 15.0% rallies heading into spring and autumn. On average gold stocks’ major seasonal bottoming heading into their winter rally arrives on October’s 15th trading day, which translates into October 21st this year. Like their primary driver gold, gold stocks tend to rally strongly in November, moderate in December, and then surge again in January and February.
And given the sentimental, technical, and fundamental setups for gold stocks entering this year’s winter rally, the usual seasonal tailwinds are likely to help propel them much farther than usual . Just like gold and because of it, gold stocks entered a mighty new bull market early this year as well. Between mid-January and early August, they skyrocketed 182.2% higher in just 6.5 months! It was a wildly-profitable run.
That left gold stocks overbought in the middle of summer, their weakest time of the year seasonally. So as I warned in early July, gold stocks’ record summer surge soon rolled over into a major correction. That quickly ballooned to massive proportions exceeding 20%, the threshold for new bear markets in general stocks. Then gold stocks started grinding higher again in September, but were slammed by gold futures in October.
Early this month the HUI plummeted 10.1% in a single trading day, one of its worst losses ever, after gold-stock stops were run. That was sparked by cascading forced stop-loss selling in gold futures as gold slipped below $1300. By the time the dust settled, the gold stocks’ total correction per the HUI had mushroomed to a staggering 30.9% in 2.2 months! Such an enormous selloff naturally spawned great bearishness.
So the gold stocks are now entering their seasonally-strongest period of the year universally despised and very low technically . These are screaming buy signals within ongoing bull markets, greatly upping the odds gold stocks’ next major upleg is just getting underway. Add the winter rally’s strong seasonal tailwinds to exceptionally-bullish sentiment and technicals, and gold stocks’ coming gains should prove exceptional.
The gold miners’ fundamentals also powerfully line up with the winter seasonal strength this year, really boosting the bullish outlook. These companies’ third-quarter operating results will be fully released by mid-November. And they are highly likely to reveal more big gains in operating profits despite gold’s recent weakness. Improving gold-mining fundamentals will entice in more investors, magnifying seasonal gains.
Gold averaged $1185 in Q1’16 and $1259 in Q2’16. That 6.3% quarter-on-quarter gain in average gold prices led to enormous surges in operating profitability of the elite gold miners. They are represented by the leading gold-stock ETFs, the GDX VanEck Vectors Gold Miners ETF for the majors and its sister GDXJ VanEck Vectors Junior Gold Miners ETF for the juniors. These ETFs’ component stocks are excellent.
Each quarter I analyze the operating performances of the individual gold stocks included in these top ETFs. Their cash flows generated from operations are a great proxy for current profitability. In Q2’16 on that 6.3% average-gold-price increase, the top 34 component companies of GDX saw their operating cash flows surge 32.3% higher quarter-on-quarter. And GDXJ’s skyrocketed an incredible 51.1% higher QoQ!
Q3’16’s average gold price climbed another 6.0% QoQ from Q2 to $1334, despite gold’s big recent pullback. So those elite gold miners of GDX and GDXJ are very likely to soon report another major surge in operating profitability! It wouldn’t surprise me to again see big gains approaching Q2’s, which would certainly spark great trader interest. Improving fundamentals aligning with seasonals portends big upside.
If the gold stocks were entering this winter-rally period drenched in greed after a powerful upleg, the seasonal tailwinds probably couldn’t overcome the healthy correction tendency. If the gold miners’ fundamentals were deteriorating, that would likely prove too much heavy lifting for seasonals. But with the strong winter-rally seasonals aligning with very bullish sentiment, technicals, and fundamentals, gold stocks should surge.
This last chart breaks down gold-stock seasonality into more-granular monthly forum. Each calendar month between 2001 to 2012 is individually indexed to 100 as of the previous month’s final close, and then all like calendar months’ indexes are averaged together. While this November-to-February winter-rally period doesn’t encompass most of gold stocks’ strongest months, it does enjoy the most-consistent gains .
On average in bull-market years, November enjoys the third-best gold-stock gains of the calendar year at 6.3% in HUI terms. That’s not far off the best months of May and August, which have averaged rallies of 6.9% and 6.7%. But unlike the flat-or-lower months surrounding those other strong months, November is followed by December’s 2.3%, January’s 2.7%, and February’s 3.5% average bull-market-year gains.
This unparalleled consistency is what makes gold stocks’ winter-rally seasonals so impressively strong. Continuing to march higher on balance ultimately yields better upside than the two-steps-higher-one-step-back action throughout the rest of the calendar year. There are no significant gold-stock selloffs in seasonal-average terms at all between November and February, which facilitates exceptional winter gains.
Of course the standard seasonality caveat applies that these are mere tendencies , not primary drivers of gold or gold stocks. Seasonal tailwinds can be easily drowned out by bearish sentiment, technicals, and fundamentals. May and August this year are perfect cases in point. Instead of rallying 6.9% and 6.7% in line with seasonal averages in 2016, the HUI plunged 13.8% and 19.2% in May and August to shred seasonals!
Seasonality doesn’t always work, especially when it doesn’t align with the primary drivers of sentiment, technicals, or fundamentals in that order. Gold stocks entered both May and August this year up at very-overbought levels, at new bull-market highs stretched far above the HUI’s 200-day moving average. After rocketing 31.0% higher in April and surging up 11.2% in July, performance mean reversions were due.
Gold stocks’ resulting massive correction in August bucked the seasonal trends. While September saw a 4.3% HUI gain in line with normal +4.8% bull-market seasonality, early October’s plummet on stops being run was extremely excessive compared to normal October pullbacks. Thus gold stocks are unloved and oversold heading into this year’s winter-rally span, which is a super-bullish omen for outsized seasonal gains .
The serious gold-stock upside coming as bullish sentiment, technicals, and fundamentals align with seasonal tailwinds can certainly be played with those popular GDX and GDXJ ETFs. But because they hold so many gold stocks, their gains can only pace the HUI at best. A carefully hand-picked portfolio of elite individual stocks with superior fundamentals will really amplify sector gains, dwarfing the ETFs’ performances.
At Zeal we’ve spent literally tens of thousands of hours researching individual gold stocks and markets, so we can better decide what to trade and when. This has resulted in 851 stock trades recommended in real-time for our newsletter subscribers since 2001. Their average annualized realized gains including all losers are running way up at +24.1% as of the end of Q3! Why not put our expertise to work for you?
We’ve been super-aggressively adding gold-stock and silver-stock trades since that anomalous gold-stock plummet in early October. These new trades are already detailed in our popular weekly newsletter, and coming soon in our monthly one. Both draw on our vast experience, knowledge, wisdom, and ongoing research to explain what’s going on in the markets, why, and how to trade them with specific stocks. Subscribe today! For just $10 an issue, you can learn to think, trade, and thrive like a contrarian.
The bottom line is gold stocks are just entering their seasonally-strongest period of the year. Their big winter rally is fueled by gold’s own, which is driven first by outsized demand from holiday jewelry buying and later new-year investment buying. So both the metal and its miners’ stocks have strong tendencies to rally between late October and late February in bull-market years. It’s the best calendar span to own gold stocks.
And this year’s coming winter rally looks exceptionally bullish because the seasonal tailwinds won’t be overpowered by bearish sentiment, technicals, or fundamentals. All of these primary drivers are bullish today and closely aligned with the strong seasonals, making for a powerful united force to propel gold stocks dramatically higher. Speculators and investors alike should be fully deployed for the coming months.
Adam Hamilton, CPA On Sale At SD Bullion… This Week Only… | 1 |
As a Marine infantry sergeant, James LaPorta once led an intelligence team in Afghanistan. Now, as a private citizen, he is doggedly tracking the moves of an online group that has been secretly compiling and sharing nude photos of hundreds of women in the Marine Corps. With top generals admitting before Congress that they are unsure how to protect members of the Marine Corps from nameless, faceless “predators,” Mr. LaPorta is among an unlikely scattering of young veterans who have decided to take that assignment upon themselves. He and his comrades in online vigilance have been gathering intelligence and making counterstrikes, tracking the members of illicit groups, including Marines United, as they try to hide, and stripping away the anonymity that has allowed the group to thrive. They are also feeding information back to Marine Corps investigators. “The Marines’ response is to be careful and slow, but the people they are after move very fast,” Mr. LaPorta said. “If you want to catch them, you have to move at their speed. ” Indeed, Marine Corps leaders have resorted to traditional moves, commissioning a task force and mounting a meticulous investigation. But the commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Robert B. Neller, frankly admitted to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that the scandal was a cultural problem he was to address. “There is a risk I cannot protect people on social media,” General Neller said. It is certainly not easy: Marines United, which consists of thousands of and veteran Marines, has hopped from Facebook page to Facebook page, changing its name each time it gets shut down, while still trading illicit photos and taunting federal investigators. “The Marine Corps thought because they shut a Facebook page down, the group was dead,” said Mr. LaPorta, 30, who left the Marines in 2014. “We had to show them it was just metastasizing into other back rooms. ” Mr. LaPorta and other veterans trying to fight groups like Marines United have been deluged with online harassment themselves. Other Marines have called them traitors and threatened them with violence, but they have pressed on in what they see as a battle for the future of the Corps. “The Marine Corps can’t do this alone. The internet is too huge,” Mr. LaPorta said. “We need to police ourselves. ” They say the fight is up to them in part because trying to get Marine Corps leaders, who are often near retirement, to recognize and address the power of social media in the military is as slow and frustrating as teaching an aging parent to set up a new laptop. “There is a disconnect between the upper echelon and a digital millennial generation,” said Thomas Brennan, 31, a former Marine sergeant who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and revealed the existence of Marines United this month. Mr. Brennan said he was frustrated by what he saw as a slow and outdated response, as commanders convene a task force made up largely of older, Marines and put out new social media policies that will be ignored or ridiculed online. He added that the military’s response so far had been ineffective, noting that he had given investigators dozens of names and files on Marines United nearly two months ago but was not aware of the authorities’ having taken any action. “I almost feel like they didn’t want to admit this stuff existed,” Mr. Brennan said. “And when we forced them to, they were caught off guard. ” A Marine Corps spokesman said he could not comment on the ongoing investigation. Earlier this week, Representative Jackie Speier, Democrat of California, announced that investigators had identified 700 Marines and 150 Marines in the Reserve who were involved in the Marines United group. For several years, the Marine Corps has known of web pages where Marines shared racist and sexist memes, as well as photos of female Marines posted without their consent. Despite a number of public reports, the Corps has failed to crack down on the sites. For several years, and veteran Marines in a group called Just the Tip of the Spear have been posting illegal and offensive material on Facebook, Instagram and other sites. Like Marines United, they have posted nude photos of servicewomen without their permission. In some cases, they have also posted the women’s telephone numbers and other private information. When women complained, the site’s followers often harassed them more. Shawn Wylde, a Marine captain who served in a support battalion in Iraq, reported the site to Marine law enforcement as soon as he saw what was happening in 2013. “I got nothing, not even a call back,” said Mr. Wylde, 36, who was discharged in 2012 and has since built an online company that does $8 million in annual sales. “I got angry that the Marine Corps was doing nothing. ” Mr. Wylde runs a Marines Facebook page called Silkies, named after the ubiquitous green Marine Corps workout shorts: a page he uses, in part, to steer business to his company. He has become, by his own description, “pretty good at online marketing,” which gave him a fresh idea for how to tackle the problem. When news emerged this month that the Marines were still engaged in the same type of online harassment, Mr. Wylde decided to fight Just the Tip of the Spear on his own by tracking down the anonymous members and unmasking them one by one by posting their names on the Silkies Facebook page. With $10, 000 of his own money, he bought targeted ads on Facebook on Monday to appear on the pages of young Marines, especially young female Marines. The ads featured a meme of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis denouncing the shadowy groups and asking everyone to send information on the anonymous ringleaders to Mr. Wylde, so he could out them. “It’s clear the leadership doesn’t understand how social media works,” Mr. Wylde said. “But I do, so I figured I had to do something. ” Mr. Wylde is an unlikely crusader for decency. In 2013, he pleaded guilty to defrauding the government of nearly $100, 000 in unearned housing and veterans benefits, and served four months in a federal prison. But he said he was newly motivated by the disrespect the groups continued to show toward women in the Marines. “I served with a lot of great women in Iraq. One was actually killed by an I. E. D. ,” he said, referring to an improvised explosive device. “These guys harassed a woman who was a friend of mine. I wanted it to end, and it didn’t look like anyone was going to do anything. ” He added: “The main point here is to make a cultural change, not get them prosecuted. That would be great, though. ” Within hours, Mr. Wylde said, his ads began bringing in tips. Several women wrote in with information on men who they said were running Just the Tip of the Spear. Two of the tipsters claimed to be the wives of key members of the group. Some of the men are still active Marines. One of the founders of Just the Tip of the Spear was named Marine of the Year by The Marine Corps Times, according to Mr. Wylde. He has given the men’s names to the Marine Corps but said the Corps had not responded. The New York Times tried to contact several of the men named, but none replied. Some female veterans close to the men said that some were veterans who spent most of their time online and had been unable to transition from their military life. Since Mr. Wylde began his efforts on Monday, many of the Marines he has accused have shut down their social media accounts. The group has also lost at least two corporate partnerships. And one of the founders, apparently unnerved and unaccustomed to public scrutiny, has publicly challenged Mr. Wylde to a fight. All week, as Mr. Wylde has continued his crusade against anonymous trolls, his Silkies site has been flooded with messages of support, many of them from women who were targets of the group. “You are restoring my faith in my brothers,” one female Marine veteran wrote. “I’ve seen so many of those troll pages, I was starting to believe maybe that’s what our brothers really thought of us. ” | 1 |
Mainstream Presidential Polls Fuel Illusion That Voters Are Stuck With Only Two Choices
By Meleiza Figueroa go digital / CC BY-SA 2.0
Editor’s note: Meleiza Figueroa is the press director for the Jill Stein-Ajamu Baraka campaign and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a longtime activist and organizer in California.
Corporate media are focused on Donald Trump’s accusations of “oversampling” on the part of Democrats against Republicans. He’s half right, because polls do oversample declared Democrats by up to 14 percent in polls that compose the RealClearPolitics average .
The deeper story is that mainstream polls skew against youth and independents, who are undersampled in most polls up to a whopping 30 percent. A recent CNN poll sampled few people under the age of 50. Not one major poll lists alternative-party identification in the breakdown of its sample.
The first problem with sampling involves definitions. Most polls sample “likely voters,” with a bit of expansion to count for a smattering of “registered voters.” So who are “likely voters”? Voters who (1) consistently vote—which automatically excludes people ages 18 to 22, who have no voting history, (2) identify with either of the two major parties and (3) say that they intend to vote in the next election. “Registered voter” polls don’t count first-time voters not yet registered to vote, so forget about the opinions of those college students who are signed up in enthusiastic campus get-out-the-vote drives.
The questions asked in the polls reinforce established, dualistic views of the political spectrum. The presidential-preference questions in polls that deign to include Green Party nominee Jill Stein and Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson don’t ask “Who is the candidate you want to vote for?” or “Which candidate is most aligned with your positions and values?” Nearly all the polls frame the presidential question as “If the election were held tomorrow, who would you vote for?” In a media landscape where we are told—through unbalanced news coverage , controlled debates and ceaseless cultural propaganda, down to the red and blue cups at 7-Eleven stores during election season—that only the Democratic and Republican candidates are considered viable, most people will, of course, hold their noses and vote for the lesser of two evils. It’s telling that the very next follow-up question reads, “If the election were ONLY held between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, who would you vote for?” You might as well reword the questions to (1) “Which candidate do you think will win?” and (2) “Which of these two candidates do you hate the least?” Neither of these questions address the issue of who people want to be their next president.
The rest of the questionnaires wipe alternative candidates off the map completely. Third-party candidates are treated as if they don’t exist—while the approval ratings for the two parties in government and Congress as a whole are hovering around historic lows . What we can glean from the polls is that it’s clear people want change, but what kind of change they want is of no concern to the pollsters.
We did get a sample of the earth-shaking hunger for change during the 2016 primaries when the votes for Bernie Sanders turned the polling orthodoxy upside down. The most famous example was Sanders’ 21-point, poll-defying upset in the Michigan primary . The wild cards in this case were—you guessed it— independent and young voters , who turned out in droves in Michigan, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and other open-primary states to deliver a giant middle finger to the establishment candidate.
No one really knows how large the “Bernie or Bust” crowd is, but what we do know is that the floodgates opened during the tragic circus of the Democratic National Convention, and progressive Berniecrats began to burn Green. #Demexit became a trending hashtag on social media, and a recent nationwide survey of Sanders delegates found that 33 percent intend to vote for Stein .
Everywhere the Stein-Baraka campaign goes, we find an ever-growing base of support—not just among former Sanders supporters, but also among those “unlikely” voters who are underrepresented in polls: young people, Independents and people of color. These are all the demographics, when broken out in mainstream polls, that go about 4 percent to 10 percent higher for Stein. These voters compose a potentially game-changing, awakening “sleeping giant” that has the establishment working overtime to impose a media blackout on a third-party alternative.
The corporate media have shown themselves willing to lock out alternative parties. In fact, a recent video of a CNN focus-group taping caught them in the act. When a fair number of participants identified their preferences as Johnson or Stein, the scene was promptly reshot to exclude these choices, portraying these voters as “undecided.”
In this election year—when the largest voting block of registered voters are independents , and many people (especially millennials, lower-income voters and people of color) are fed up with the two-party system—the means of taking a temperature check on the state of our democracy denies a voice to those who choose to reject the establishment duopoly. Only 9 percent of Americans chose Clinton and Trump to be the major-party nominees, which puts a whole lot of people in a big margin of error.
A voter revolt could be happening right under our noses, but the establishment and their pollster apparatchiks don’t want you to notice. They want to maintain the illusion that voters are stuck with only two choices, a trap that the majority of Americans who want another major party are trying to escape. | 1 |
Comedian Mike Epps has been accused of mistreating an animal after cameras caught the Hangover star dancing onstage alongside a harnessed kangaroo Friday night during a Festival of Laughs comedy tour show in Detroit. [In a viral video, the animal is seen swinging its arm at Epps before the comedian runs off the stage. Treatment of the kangaroo spurred accusations of “animal cruelty” from some audience members, who watched the spectacle play out inside the Joe Louis Arena. Whyyyy did they bring the kangaroo on stage at Mike Epps show 😩😭. I love Detroit pic. twitter. — Amber ♍ (@_AmNico) April 1, 2017, i commented on Mike Epps picture of him with that poor kangaroo on stage and said that it’s animal cruelty to have had it on stage and … — yajara (@yeeeezyyyy) April 2, 2017, I didn’t think Mike Epps playing with that kangaroo last night was funny at all. That kangaroo look miserable and ready to snap. — P (@Pariss_Franceee) April 1, 2017, . @TheRealMikeEpps I’m a FAN ‼ But have 2 Say Animals Should Not Be used for entertainment #Born2BWild~ this is just cruel Entertainment 😞 pic. twitter. — Anika (@anikasleem) April 3, 2017, @TheRealMikeEpps That was the cruelest comedy act clip I’ve seen. You must be so proud of yourself. Terrorising animals on stage is NOT entertainment, — Lynda (@lynda_perth) April 3, 2017, @TheRealMikeEpps Nah, ur a ”man” that makes money tormenting animals. If that’s what you’ve gotta do for a laugh, your in the wrong game. — Nick Wright (@itsnik3) April 3, 2017, Epps defended the stunt in a social media message that has been deleted. A video, captured and published by The Shade Room, shows the comedian feeding a banana to a Kangaroo. “Yeh look how nice Iam 2 him! Theses guys are license zoo keepers ! #iloveanimals,” Epps wrote on Instagram. He later posted an apology note to his social media account, and said he would be donating to a kangaroo conservation charity. According to TMZ, the kangaroo that appeared onstage Friday night belongs to traveling zoo animal handler Javon Stacks. Stacks told the gossip outlet that the animal was not harmed in any way during Friday night’s performance. However, according to a report from the outlet, the U. S. Department of Agriculture is investigating the incident to determine whether the kangaroo handler was in control of the animal at all times, a requirement under the federal Animal Welfare Act. Epps was recently tapped to play the lead role in the forthcoming Lee bio drama, Richard Pryor: Is It Something I Said? The film, which the Weinstein Company will produce, will reportedly star Eddie Murphy, Kate Hudson, and Oprah Winfrey. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson | 0 |
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Legendary Star Trek actor turned LGBT activist George Takei has been very vocal this election season. He joins much of America in being so utterly appalled by Republican nominee Donald Trump that he cannot stay silent as Trump unravels our democracy further and further with each passing day, and has a perfect response to those asking him to stop being so negative: People have asked me to tweet something positive about Trump. Okay, so be it: I am POSITIVE that Trump is a national disgrace.
— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) October 28, 2016
There is nothing positive to be said about Trump, except that the revelations of his long record of sexual assault is creating a national conversation about the abuse of women at the hands of powerful rich white men.
Otherwise, Trump has been a walking manifestation of the ugliest parts of America, exposing our dirty laundry for all the world to see. Perhaps its what we needed to exorcise those demons – but it cannot be denied that it will take years to recover from the wounds this election has opened. | 0 |
Renuncian a llevar a su hijo a la escuela porque quieren educarlo en Forocoches SEGÚN LOS PADRES, ESTE FORO ES EL PRIMER PASO PARA LICENCIARSE EN LA UNIVERSIDAD DE LA CALLE Xunta de Galicia
Luis Fedra y María Ramos, residentes en Vigo, han decidido renunciar a que sus tres hijos sean educados por la vía tradicional. “No queremos que vayan a la escuela, preferimos educarlos en Forocoches”, explica Luis.
Los niños han dejado de ir a clases esta semana y ya tienen sus cuentas de usuario en este foro de Internet, que se encuentra entre las 40 webs más visitadas de España. “La universidad de la calle hoy en día es este foro: sus hilos de discusión recorren los temas más relevantes de la actualidad y de la sociedad de la España de hoy y de siempre”, defienden los padres.
Según dicen, una criatura educada conjuntamente por la comunidad de Forocoches recibirá la formación necesaria “para vivir en un país como España, con todas sus particularidades”. La escuela, insisten, “crea una burbuja irreal y luego los críos crecen y no entienden nada de lo que ocurre en la vida real, en la calle”.
“La Lei de Apoio á Familia fomenta el vacío legal del estudio alternativo”, reconoce un portavoz de la Xunta de Galicia, que pasa la pelota al Ministerio de Educación. Mientras la discusión se atranque en disputas administrativas, Luis y María se encargarán de que sus tres retoños lean y estudien temas de Forocoches como “Ford Fiesta síntomas raros”, “Los mejores chicles del siglo” o “Que te la chupen con aparatos sí o no???”.
Según han explicado algunos usuarios registrados de Forocoches, “los pequeños shurmanos han empezado nerviosos y no se han atrevido a comentar mucho, pero es normal porque es su primer día. Aquí hay mucho troll y ya irán viendo el panorama, pero vamos, peor que en el cole no va a ser”, en palabras de “pollamalaga93”.
Los padres se muestran optimistas también tras el estreno de los niños en el foro. “Carlitos, que siempre ha sacado buenas notas en Historia, ya ha creado su primer hilo de discusión: ‘Te UNIRIAS al EJERCITO si MARRUECOS nos INVADIERA?’. Le han contestado más de cien personas”, certifica la madre con orgullo. | 0 |
Pressure mounted on Tuesday for Fox News to take action against its host, Bill O’Reilly, as a series of prominent companies pulled advertising from his show and a leading women’s rights group called for his ouster. Following an investigation by The New York Times over the weekend that revealed multiple settlements over allegations of sexual harassment or other inappropriate behavior by Mr. O’Reilly, the network faced a major advertising revolt as more than a dozen marketers said that they were withdrawing their ads from “The O’Reilly Factor. ” Escalating the tension, the National Organization for Women called for Mr. O’Reilly to be fired and said an independent investigation should be conducted into the culture at Fox News. “Fox News is too big and too influential to simply let this go,” Terry O’Neill, the president of NOW, said in a statement. And inside Fox News, three women who work in the newsroom said that the continued support of Mr. O’Reilly by Fox News and its parent company, 21st Century Fox, led them to question whether the company was committed to maintaining a work environment “based on trust and respect,” as executives had promised last summer after the network’s founding chairman, Roger E. Ailes, was ousted. The employees requested anonymity because they feared retaliation for speaking publicly. The erosion of advertising support, along with pressure from advocacy groups, heightened the sense of uncertainty at Fox News, which for months has been trying to move beyond the sexual harassment scandal that led to the dismissal of Mr. Ailes. It also raised questions about how long 21st Century Fox will stand behind Mr. O’Reilly. Fox News signaled that it was trying to contain the controversy and working to restore relations with the network’s advertisers, noting that companies had reallocated their spending from Mr. O’Reilly’s program to other network shows. “We value our partners and are working with them to address their current concerns about ‘The O’Reilly Factor,’” Paul Rittenberg, the executive vice president for advertising sales at Fox News, said in a statement. “At this time, the ad buys of those clients have been into other FNC programs. ” If more advertisers leave the program, Fox News and 21st Century Fox may have to respond. Mr. O’Reilly, 67, is the network’s most visible star, leading a prime time programming slate that draws ratings with its conservative commentary. “The O’Reilly Factor,” which draws almost 4 million viewers a night, generated more than $446 million in advertising revenue from 2014 through 2016, according to the research firm Kantar Media. A spokesman for Mr. O’Reilly, Mark Fabiani, declined to comment on Tuesday. Mr. O’Reilly has said that the accusations against him are without merit and that his fame has made him a target “for those who would harm me and my employer, the Fox News Channel. ” He did not address the issue on either his Monday night or Tuesday night broadcasts. Mr. O’Reilly’s contract, which was set to expire this year, has been extended by 21st Century Fox, people familiar with the deal said. When the company agreed to the extension, it was aware of multiple settlements that had been reached with women who had complained about his behavior, and it structured the deal to include more leverage over his behavior, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. O’Reilly earns about $18 million a year. The advertising boycott and the public outcry echo what happened to the radio host Don Imus a decade ago over racially and sexually charged statements he made about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team. After a series of advertisers suspended their ads from his radio and television program, and NOW called for his ouster, NBCUniversal canceled the simulcast of his show on MSNBC. And at Fox News, the former host Glenn Beck left the network in 2011 after hundreds of advertisers refused to allow their ads on his program. On Tuesday, multiple advocacy groups started campaigns targeting advertisers of “The O’Reilly Factor. ” The Women’s March group posted a message on Twitter, encouraging people to use the term “#DropOReilly” to tell advertisers to pull their ads from the program and also encouraged people to share their own experiences with sexual harassment. The advocacy group Color of Change also started a campaign focusing on the advertisers of the show. “Their money and support is keeping him on the air,” said Rashad Robinson, executive director of the organization. “It is rewarding his actions. It is rewarding the damage he has done to people in their lives and their careers. ” “In essence, these corporations are the ones whose money is paying the settlements,” Mr. Robinson added. Among the companies pulling their ads from Mr. O’Reilly’s show are the car companies Hyundai, BMW of North America, Mitsubishi and Lexus the pharmaceutical and health care companies Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi Consumer HealthCare and Allstate, the insurance company. The decisions came after The Times investigation found that five women who had accused Mr. O’Reilly of sexual harassment or inappropriate behavior received settlements totaling about $13 million. “Mitsubishi Motors takes these allegations very seriously, and we have decided that we will pull our advertising at the present time,” Alex Fedorak, a company spokesman, said in a statement. Mitsubishi spent about $2. 1 million for ads on the “The O’Reilly Factor” in 2016, making it the show’s advertiser, according to iSpot. tv, the TV ad analytics firm. Some advertisers have said they will continue to run ads on his show. Cheryl Reed, a spokeswoman for Angie’s List, said, “Just as we trust members to make their own hiring decisions, we trust them to make their own media consumption decisions. ” The weight loss company Jenny Craig was noncommittal, saying: “As an organization, Jenny Craig condemns any and all forms of sexual harassment. As a matter of corporate policy, we do not publicly comment on our advertising strategy. ” An ad for Jenny Craig appeared during Mr. O’Reilly’s show on Monday night. The broader legal troubles for Fox News continued on Tuesday. Monica Douglas, a black Fox News employee, joined a lawsuit that was filed last week against Fox News by two other women, asserting that they were subjected to racial harassment at the network. The suit was filed in State Supreme Court in the Bronx. Fox News dismissed the executive named in the suit, Judith Slater, the longtime controller, on Feb. 28. It said in a statement “there is no place for conduct like this at Fox News, which is why Ms. Slater was fired. ” On Monday, Julie Roginsky, a current Fox News contributor, filed a lawsuit against Mr. Ailes, Fox News and Bill Shine, one of the network’s asserting that she faced retaliation for rebuffing Mr. Ailes’s sexual advances. Mr. Ailes has denied all the sexual harassment accusations against him. | 1 |
by Yves Smith
By Felix Roth, Associated Research Fellow, University of Göttingen, Lars Jonung, Senior Professor, Knut Wicksell Centre for Financial Studies, Lund University, and Felicitas Nowak-Lehmann, Senior Researcher at CEGE and IAI, University of Goettingen. Originally published at VoxEU
The euro as a common currency has recently been the subject of harsh criticism by economists from both sides of the Atlantic, including claims that citizens in some Eurozone countries are turning against the it. This column argues that, in fact, the euro currently enjoys comfortable popular support in each of the 12 original member states of the Eurozone and that potential upcoming referenda in any of these countries do not appear to pose a threat to the currency. In contrast, popular support for the euro has declined sharply in non-Eurozone EU member states since the recent crisis, with the UK standing out as the country with the most negative view.
Recently the euro as a common currency has been the subject of strong criticism by economists from both sides of the Atlantic (e.g. Stiglitz 2016, Sinn 2014). This criticism has been inspired by the financial and economic crisis in some Eurozone countries and by the slow recovery in the region after the Global Crisis of 2008. Scholars claim that a majority of citizens have turned against the euro in large member states of the Eurozone, such as Germany (Stiglitz 2016: 314) and Italy (Guiso et al. 2016: 292, Sinn in Kaiser 2016a).
In the wake of the vote for Brexit in the UK referendum in June this year, it is argued that knock-on effects in the form of potential upcoming referenda on the euro in the Eurozone (e.g. in Italy) might lead to its break-up (Feldstein 2016, Stiglitz in Martin 2016, Stiglitz in Kaiser 2016b). In addition, it has been postulated that animosity amongst EU member states is at a high (Alesina 2015: 78). This suggests a rising threat to the European project, including the common currency.
These claims concerning the standing of the euro raise the question: How does the public in EU member states actually look upon the common currency at this stage? We are able to provide an answer based on survey data on the popularity of the single currency, which are available from its creation, as polled by TNS-opinion (European Commission 2016). These data are provided through the Eurobarometer (EB). The euro is a unique currency in the sense that similar time series evidence does not exist for any other currency.
Our answer draws upon our previous contribution to this site (Roth et al. 2012), where we explored Eurobarometer survey data on public support for the common currency from 1990 to 2012. There we concluded that in the first four years of the crisis (2008-2012), public support for the euro declined only marginally. Now the question is: What has happened in the most recent years regarding public support for the euro?
Support for the Common Currency Within the Original Eurozone
We present an up-to-date picture of the evolution of public support for the euro until May 2016, adopting our approach in Roth et al. (2016). First, we focus on the original 12 Eurozone member states (Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain – the EZ12) that adopted the euro as a physical entity in January 2002. Figure 1 shows average net support (in per cent) for the single currency in the EZ12 countries over a 27-year period from 1990 to 2016.
Figure 1 Average net support (in %) for the single currency in the EZ12 countries, 1990-2016
Note : The y-axis displays net support in percent. Since the figure depicts net-support, all values above 0 indicate that a majority of the respondents support the single currency. The dashed lines distinguish the introduction of the euro as a book keeping entity in January 1999, the actual circulation of the euro in January 2002 and the start of the financial crisis in September 2008. Data for EB45 were not available. Population-weights are applied. Net-support is measured as the number of ‘For’ responses minus ‘Against’ responses and is constructed according to the equation: Net-support = (For – Against)/(For + Against + Don’t Know). Source : Figure 1 is an updated version of Figure 1 until 5/2016 (by EB’s 82-85) in Roth et al. (2016; 948).
Figure 1 leads us to the following conclusions: Over the 27-year time period, a majority of citizens within the EZ12 has supported the single currency (with average net support exceeding 15% at all times). Since the introduction of the euro in 1999, a large majority of EZ12 citizens has supported the euro (with average net support exceeding 30%). In the 8th year (in May 2016) since the start of the financial crisis, average net support of 42% has surpassed the pre-crisis level of 40% in March-May 2008.
Figure 1 gives the aggregate picture. How has support for the euro evolved in the individual members of the EZ12? Figure 2 provides an answer.
Figure 2 Net support for the single currency in EZ12 countries, 1990-2016 (%)
Source : Figure 2 is an updated version of Figure A1 until 5/2016 (by EB’s 82-85) in Roth et al. (2016: 957).
Figure 2 suggests that: Since the introduction of the euro in 1999, aside from short periods in Finland and Greece before the crisis, a majority of citizens in each member state of the EZ12 supported the euro, even in times of crisis. From 2008 to 2016, significant increases in support in Greece, Portugal and Germany (26, 23 and 10 percentage points, respectively) have levelled out the fall in net support in other EZ12 countries, ranging from 11 percentage points in Ireland to 5 percentage points in Finland. Over the 27-year time period (1990-2016), Italy has always had a pro-euro majority, with the minimum net level of 17% in November 2013, clearly above the majority threshold of 0%.
Support for the Euro Among the New Members of the Eurozone
How has support for the euro evolved in the new member states that joined the euro after its physical introduction in January 2002, that is, in Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia? After adopting the euro, aside from short periods in Cyprus, a majority of citizens in each country has supported the euro.
Figure 3 Net support for the euro across seven EZ countries that joined the euro in the period 2004-16 (%)
Source : Figure 3 is an updated version of Figure A3 until 5/2016 (by EB’s 82-85) in Roth et al. (2016: 958).
Support for the Euro Outside the Eurozone
In our 2012 column, we highlighted the distinct fall in public support for the euro in EU member states outside the Eurozone (Roth et al. 2012). What has happened since then? Figure 4, displaying the evolution of net support for the euro outside the Eurozone from 1990-2016, gives an answer.
Figure 4 Net support for the single currency in non-EZ countries, 1990-2016 (%)
Source : Figure 4 is an updated version of Figure A2 until 5/2016 (by EB’s 82-85) in Roth et al. (2016: 958).
Figure 4 suggests: Outside the Eurozone, net support for the euro has declined in a pronounced manner. Whereas in Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Poland a majority of citizens supported the euro in the years preceding the crisis, a majority in those countries has turned against the euro after the crisis. The decline in support, ranging from 65 to 30 percentage points, is strong. In contrast, in Romania and Hungary, in spite of a fall of 35 and 28 percentage points, respectively, a majority of euro support still exists. In Denmark and Sweden, the majority has turned away from euro support after the crisis. Just before the crisis, there was for brief periods a majority for the euro. The UK is an exceptional case. For the 26 years from 1991 to 2016, a majority of citizens was always against the single currency. During the crisis, net support for the euro reached levels as low as -66% (in November 2012). Given the persistent rejection of the euro, the Brexit vote should not come as a surprise but rather as reflecting a long-running critical view towards the European project. Therefore, any knock-on effects of the Brexit vote in the form of a break-up of the Eurozone via potential upcoming referenda in the Eurozone are not likely to emerge. On the contrary, recent survey data from July 2016 by the French polling institute, Ifop, suggest an enduring majority support for the euro in the Eurozone (Fourquet et al. 2016: 52).
Conclusions
Our updated analysis of public support for the common currency over a quarter of a century, from 1990-2016, brings out four major conclusions.
First, in contrast to recent claims, a majority of citizens support the euro in each member state of the original Eurozone, including in Germany and Italy. This was the case even during the peak of the recent crisis.
Second, in contrast to some critical euro voices, we do not believe, on basis of Eurobarometer data, that any knock-on effects of the Brexit vote in any potential upcoming referenda on EU issues would pose an imminent threat to the euro.
Third, taking into account our earlier findings, which identify the unemployment rate as a key driver of public support for the euro in times of crisis (Roth et al. 2016), a strong job recovery in the Eurozone is likely to increase public support for the euro.
Fourth, popular support for the common currency has fallen sharply after the recent crisis in EU member states that have not adopted the euro. Here the negative sentiment is strongest in the UK.
We suggest the following bottom line: with the exception of short periods in Finland and Greece before the crisis, the evidence points towards majority support for the euro in each original Eurozone member state (including Italy and Germany) before, during and after the crisis. So far, the euro has clear backing from the public. It has adopted the common currency as its own currency.
See original post for references 0 0 0 0 0 0 | 1 |
By Whitney Webb The US’ secret drone war has largely been shrouded in mystery since its inception. Despite its secrecy there is no denying that... | 0 |
I hadn’t thought of that, but you are absolutely right. This does need to come to an end. I know the Republican party is like a pit bull and won’t let this go. As much as it disturbs me to say it. I hope that Hillary and the President will consider this before he leaves. BTW…I’m going to miss President Obama and the world class leadership he brought to America. | 0 |
JERUSALEM — President Donald Trump on Monday visited the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem as part of his tour here in Israel. [The church, believed to be the place of Jesus’s crucifixion, burial and resurrection, is one of the holiest sites in Christianity. Trump met outside the church with leaders of local Christian denominations before going inside for a private tour closed to the news media. Afterwards, Trump went to the nearby Western Wall where he became the first sitting U. S. president to visit the Jewish holy site. The Western Wall is part of an ancient retaining wall erected around the Jewish Temple. The Temple Mount, site of the first and second Jewish Temples, is considered the holiest site in Judaism. Trump toured the holy sites after a red carpet ceremony at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv and a meeting with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin at the president’s residence in Jerusalem. Trump is headed next to a private social dinner with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On Tuesday, Trump’s schedule includes a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem and then a ceremony at Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. Trump will then give a speech at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem before departing the country for the Vatican. Trump is here in Jerusalem on Jerusalem Day, a national holiday that marks Israel’s reunification of Jerusalem after the 1967 Six Day War and the establishment of Israeli sovereignty over the eastern sections of the city, which include the Old City, Western Wall and Temple Mount. Many will be watching to see if Trump uses the visit to announce that he is moving the U. S. embassy from the beach in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, although reports put that as unlikely. Israel officially annexed Jerusalem in 1980 in a move not recognized by the international community because the Palestinians claim eastern sections of the city for a future Palestinian capital despite their never having had a state or entity in those areas. Current U. S. law does not officially recognize Israeli control over the eastern sections of the city, going so far as to prevent American citizens born in Jerusalem from listing “Israel” as their country of birth. All eyes will be on Trump to see if he makes any declarations regarding Israel’s status in Jerusalem. Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio. ” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook. | 0 |
House Democrats are pushing President Obama to pardon illegal immigrants temporarily protected from deportation by a 2012 executive order. | 0 |
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