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Tomatoes are probably the most versatile plant you can grow. Make your own self watering Tomato Buckets and never water your tomatoes again.
Many people know about growing tomato plants in 5 gallon buckets. Turning these buckets into self watering buckets creates tomato plants that are practically maintenance free. Imagine growing full tomato plants and only having to refill a reservoir once a week. This trick also saves space!
How It Works
The process is actually very simple. Tomatoes are planted in a wicking medium that draws water from below and sends it to the roots of the plant. The water is drawn from another drum or garbage can and is released by a float valve. The valve that irrigated your plants is activated when the water level drops.
You can also grow peppers, okra, cucumbers, and more with this system.
The next important aspect of this design is the fabric grow bag you will be using. You can use simple grocery bags spun out of polypropylene. You can also find grow bags at your nursery and garden supply stores. The porous fabric allows excess water drainage and aeration of the root zone which is necessary for optimal growing conditions.
This is system is also based on the principle of “air root pruning”. As roots grow out to the porous fabric, they become exposed to air, dry out, and die. This causes the plant to produce dense fine feeder roots and prevents root circling. The increase in fine feeder roots leads to better nutrient and water absorption and promotes accelerated plant growth.
You will also need a plastic kitchen colander that will hold the fabric shopping bag off of the bottom of the bucket and create a shallow water reservoir in each grow bucket. Trim any large plastic colander to fit inside a 5 gallon bucket.
Next you will need a 5 gallon support bucket with holes around the sides for ventilation. The bucket will help support the fabric bag and the ventilation holes will allow adequate air movement. This will allow oxygen to reach the root zone which is essential for optimal plant growth. The bucket also acts as a water reservoir below the bag providing a water source for the wicking grow medium. By maintaining the proper water level with the float valve regulator the medium will never dry out and will continuously wick moisture up to the root-zone. | 0 |
Among choreographers, Tricia Miranda was one of pop music’s top movers and shakers. She had a hand in choreographing Missy Elliott’s surprise appearance at the 2015 Super Bowl halftime show. She created several of Beyoncé’s dance moves from her “Diva” video from 2008. She even appeared in front of the camera, in a promotional dance video for Iggy Azalea’s single “Team. ” But that wasn’t enough. In an era when dance has exploded thanks to social media, Ms. Miranda wanted to share her dance moves, unfiltered, with the rest of the world. So in 2014, she hired a videographer to tape her dance studio in the North Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, with students performing her signature moves, blending swagger with a gymnastic breakneck pace. The first video, with a series of dancers strutting their stuff to Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda,” was uploaded to YouTube and has gotten more than 27 million views. Another video, set to Rihanna’s “Bitch Better Have My Money,” has been viewed 41 million times. Since then, Ms. Miranda’s YouTube channel, which shows a diverse set of dancers (some as young as 6) performing new routines to the latest hits by Tinashe, Pitbull and others, has racked up more than one million subscribers. Such attention has turned Ms. Miranda into a budding celebrity, with strangers coming up to her at hotels, grocery stores, restaurants and on the street. “I had a waiter recently cry when he met me,” she said. “He politely asked me for a picture and got emotional because I have inspired him so much. ” Her fame is about to get bigger. Ms. Miranda is starring in a new MTV series, tentatively titled “Going Off,” in which a new young dancer will be crowned at her master class studio in each episode. “I’ve been a dance instructor for 15 years,” she said. “But it wasn’t until I got big on YouTube that I started getting this much attention. ” Not since Paula Abdul, a dancer who went on to become a pop and TV personality, has the role of the choreographer been so appreciated in popular culture. “Dancing is language agnostic,” said Kevin Allocca, YouTube’s head of culture and trends. “People around the world can watch, learn and upload their own moves. ” platforms like YouTube, Vine and Snapchat have not only expanded the reach of seasoned choreographers like Ms. Miranda, they have also turned choreographers of all kinds, who traditionally toil behind the scenes, into stars in their own right. The new celebrity choreographers include Ryan Heffington, a dance instructor from Los Angeles with a distinctive handlebar mustache and long curly hair, who masterminded Sia’s “Chandelier” video (which features the young performer Maddie Ziegler dancing by herself in an apartment). Parris Goebel, 24, is the New Zealander behind Justin Bieber’s “Sorry” video (which features an dance crew dressed in ’90s neon). Elle magazine recently called Ms. Goebel the world’s most choreographer. At 36, Ms. Miranda acts as a den mother of sorts for the clutch of young dancers who flock to the Basement of NoHo, her studio in North Hollywood, a grittier neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley that has become an unofficial dance hub. “These kids are becoming YouTube stars, too,” she said, referring to such as Jade Chynoweth, a dancer and aspiring actress with model looks and 358, 000 Instagram followers, or Kaycee Rice, a from Simi Valley, Calif. who performed at Missy Elliott’s halftime show. Another, Aidan Xiong, an adorable break dancer, appeared on Ellen DeGeneres’s show in 2014. On a recent Saturday morning, Ms. Miranda was being filmed in her studio for a TV commercial for Mania Jeans, an Israeli streetwear brand. (“I have a huge following in Israel,” she said.) Clad in baggy sweatpants, oversize gold hoop earrings, chocolate brown lipstick and two Willie Nelson braids, she fired off a series of commands to her pack of millennial dancers. “Six, seven … and one and four,” she called out, followed by a succession of punctuated by foot stomps. After a feverish routine, she summoned her posse, many in midriff shirts emblazoned with slogans like “Keep It Real,” for a group selfie, which she posted on Instagram. Born in Arizona, Ms. Miranda started ballet and tap at age 4. By 19, she was teaching classes. She moved to Los Angeles in 2001 to be closer to the action, and she made ends meet as a waitress and as a dance instructor at Gold’s Gym. Her big break came in 2004, when her agent tipped her off that Beyoncé was looking for a backup dancer for her Ladies First Tour. “I was a hostess at the time when they called me to tell me I got the gig,” she said. “I immediately took off my apron, turned to my manager and said: ‘I’m going on tour with Beyoncé. I’ve got to go. ’” Ms. Miranda has never looked back. Her résumé includes dance credits with Gwen Stefani and Taylor Swift, who are drawn to her style, and Prince. “I liked how aggressive her choreography was,” Ms. Azalea said. “Even the smallest movement dripped with confidence. I wanted dancers that could be unapologetic, and that’s what Tricia delivers. ” Her influence is such that some artists now want their songs used on her YouTube channel. “Tricia is recognizing the songs of the moment and making them even bigger songs of the moment,” said Amanda Taylor, the chief executive of DanceOn, an entertainment network centered on dance that counts Madonna as a founder. Speaking in a hallway outside her rehearsal studio, Ms. Miranda said she was still getting used to her fame. She laughed at first when she received messages on Instagram and Facebook, with pictures of fans parroting her look. “It’s a little strange for me,” she said. With that, she got up and returned to rehearsal. “All right, back to work everyone,” she said with the clap of her hands. | 1 |
The late Hollywood actress Carrie Fisher was laid to rest Friday alongside her mother, actress Debbie Reynolds — and photographs taken at the funeral revealed the Star Wars actress’ ashes were placed in an urn shaped like a Prozac pill. [estoy fascinada con la urna de carrie fisher: tiene forma de prozac. que manera de entender todo. pic. twitter. — diva virtual (@ValeriaLugosi) January 7, 2017, The private service at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Los Angeles was attended by celebrity friends and the family of the Hollywood royalty, with Meryl Streep reported to have delivered the eulogy. The funeral followed a private memorial service at Reynolds’ and Fishers’ Beverly Hills estate. Photos taken at the funeral showed Fisher’s brother, Todd Fisher, carrying the actress’s ashes in an urn shaped like a Prozac pill. “Carrie’s favorite possession was a giant Prozac pill that she bought many years ago. A big pill,” Todd Fisher told Entertainment Tonight after the service. “She loved it, and it was in her house, and Billie and I felt it was where she’d want to be. ” Fisher also said there would likely be a public service for the actress at some point in the near future. During her life, Fisher spoke openly of her struggles with mental illness. She revealed she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the age of 24, and said she had received electroconvulsive shock therapy and medication for treatment. Reynolds died at the age of 84 just one day following the death of her daughter, who passed away four days after suffering a heart attack on an airplane. The mother and daughter had been estranged at various times during their lives, but grew especially close in recent years and had lived next door to each other. An HBO documentary about their relationship, Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, is set to premiere on the premium cable channel on Saturday. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum, | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Nearly two centuries after Georgetown University profited from the sale of 272 slaves, it will embark on a series of steps to atone for the past, including awarding preferential status in the admissions process to descendants of the enslaved, university officials said Thursday. Georgetown’s president, John J. DeGioia, who announced the measures in a speech on Thursday afternoon, said he would offer a formal apology, create an institute for the study of slavery and erect a public memorial to the slaves whose labor benefited the institution, including those who were sold in 1838 to help keep the university afloat. In addition, two campus buildings will be renamed — one for an enslaved man and the other for an educator who belonged to a Catholic religious order. So far, Dr. DeGioia’s plan does not include a provision for offering scholarships to descendants, a possibility that was raised by a university committee whose recommendations were released on Thursday morning. The committee, however, stopped short of calling on the university to provide such financial assistance, as well as admissions preference. Dr. DeGioia’s decision to offer an advantage in admissions to descendants, similar to that offered to the children and grandchildren of alumni, is unprecedented, historians say. The preference will be offered to the descendants of all the slaves whose labor benefited Georgetown, not just the men, women and children sold in 1838. More than a dozen universities — including Brown, Harvard and the University of Virginia — have publicly recognized their ties to slavery and the slave trade. But Craig Steven Wilder and Alfred L. Brophy, two historians who have studied universities and slavery, said they knew of none that had offered preferential status in admissions to the descendants of slaves. Professor Wilder, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said Dr. DeGioia’s plans to address Georgetown’s history go beyond any initiatives enacted by a university in the past 10 years. “It goes farther than just about any institution,” he said. “I think it’s to Georgetown’s credit. It’s taking steps that a lot of universities have been reluctant to take. ” But whether the initiatives result in meaningful change remains to be seen, he said. Professor Wilder cautioned that the significance of the preferential status in admissions would rest heavily on the degree to which Georgetown invested in outreach to descendants, including identifying them, making sure they are aware of the benefit’s existence and actively recruiting them to the university. “The question of how effective or meaningful this is going to be will only be answered over time,” Professor Wilder said. Dr. DeGioia’s plan, which builds on the recommendations of the committee that he convened last year, represents the university’s first systematic effort to address its roots in slavery. Georgetown, which was founded and run by Jesuit priests in 1789, relied on the Jesuit plantations in Maryland — and the sale of produce and slaves — to finance its operations. The 1838 sale, worth about $3. 3 million in today’s dollars, was organized by two of Georgetown’s early presidents, both Jesuits. A portion of the profit, about $500, 000, was used to help pay off Georgetown’s debts at a time when the college was struggling financially. The slaves were uprooted from the Maryland plantations and shipped to estates in Louisiana. Dr. DeGioia said he planned to apologize for the wrongs of the past “within the framework of the Catholic tradition,” by offering what he described as a Mass of reconciliation in partnership with the Jesuit leadership in the United States and the Archdiocese of Washington. “This community participated in the institution of slavery,’’ Dr. DeGioia said, addressing a crowd of hundreds of students, faculty members and descendants at Georgetown’s Gaston Hall. “This original evil that shaped the early years of the Republic was present here. We have been able to hide from this truth, bury this truth, ignore and deny this truth. ” “As a community and as individuals, we cannot do our best work if we refuse to take ownership of such a critical part of our history,’’ he said. “We must acknowledge it. ” When Dr. DeGioia invited questions from the audience, a man in a gray suit took the microphone. “My name is Joe Stewart,’’ he said, “and I am a descendant of the 272. ” Mr. Stewart, a retired corporate executive and an organizer of a group of more than 300 descendants, expressed gratitude to the university’s working group on slavery and to Dr. DeGioia for their efforts. But he said that descendants, who had not been included as members of the committee, must be involved in decision making on these initiatives moving forward. “Our attitude is nothing about us, without us,’’ said Mr. Stewart, who was flanked by five other descendants. The two buildings being renamed by university officials originally paid tribute to the Rev. Thomas F. Mulledy and the Rev. William McSherry, the college presidents involved in the 1838 sale. Now one will be called Isaac Hall to commemorate the life of Isaac Hawkins, one of the slaves shipped to Louisiana in 1838, and the other Anne Marie Becraft Hall, in honor of a educator who founded a school for black girls in Washington. Dr. DeGioia assembled his working group of scholars, administrators, students and alumni last September, asking them to consider how the university should address its history. Their work took on greater urgency in November in the wake of student demonstrations. In April, The New York Times published an article tracing the life of one of the slaves, Cornelius Hawkins, and his descendants. Cornelius was the grandson of Isaac Hawkins. In its report, the committee said that the university’s dependence on slavery was deeper and broader than originally believed. Slave labor and slave sales were envisioned as part of the financing model of the college even before the doors opened in 1789. And slaves were not only forced to work on the Jesuit plantations. Some also toiled on campus, hired from students and other wealthy people. The committee said that it was likely that all of the earliest buildings on campus — including the ones named for the university leaders who orchestrated the 1838 sale — were built with slave labor. More historical research needs to be done, the committee said, and that will be coordinated by the new research center, the Institute for the Study of Slavery and its Legacies. The university has already selected the program director for the institute, which will also support Dr. DeGioia’s plans to deepen engagement with descendants of the enslaved. Dr. DeGioia, who met with dozens of descendants this summer, plans to establish a new committee for the creation of the public memorial that will include descendants. He also plans, among other efforts, to provide descendants with access to genealogical information housed in the university’s archives. “All of these will have a substantial financial impact,” said Dr. DeGioia, who believes that Georgetown’s philanthropic community will support his initiatives. “I’m very confident that will not be a constraint. ” But some descendants on Thursday expressed disappointment, saying that the university’s measures were inadequate, given the suffering that their ancestors endured. Karran Harper Royal, a descendant of slaves sold in 1838, said that Georgetown, which has an endowment of $1. 45 billion, should have offered scholarships to descendants. And she said that she and others “felt the sting” of not being formally invited to Dr. DeGioia’s speech. “It has to go much farther,” said Ms. Harper Royal, who is also an organizer of the group of descendants. “They’re calling us family. Well, I’m from New Orleans and when we have a gathering, family’s invited. ” | 1 |
Whether by train, ship or trail, transit alternatives are poised to proliferate in 2017. Midyear, the Brightline express train in South Florida is expected to open, linking Miami and West Palm Beach. When it’s finished in 2019, travelers can make the trip between Miami and Orlando in three hours, while driving takes four. The terminus at the new downtown MiamiCentral station will include a food hall known as Central Fare. In Switzerland, the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the world’s longest and deepest railway passage, ceremonially opened last June, but officially opened in December. Eventually the tunnel through the Alps will cut 45 minutes off the trip between Zurich and Lugano. Offering more leisurely tours, the luxury sleeper train Belmond Andean Explorer will begin in May, linking Cusco, in the Peruvian Andes, to Lake Titicaca and Arequipa. The itinerary takes two nights, but the company, which also operates the Belmond Hiram Bingham trains to Machu Picchu, will offer trips between Cusco and Lake Titicaca. Japan welcomed its newest train, Hokkaido Shinkansen, last March, traveling between Tokyo and the northern Hokkaido island in just over four hours. This spring, the Train Suite will offer luxury tours in sleeper cars that will travel from Tokyo to the Tohoku and Hokkaido regions. Among 2017 cruise ship launches in the mega class, the MSC Meraviglia from Europe’s MSC Cruises, coming in the summer to the Mediterranean, will be among the largest at sea, with a dome featuring light shows in the central promenade, a bowling alley and entertainment by Cirque du Soleil. In November, the line will introduce another large ship, the MSC Seaside, sailing between Miami and the Caribbean. In March, Celebrity Cruises plans to add two small ships to its fleet, both sailing in the Galápagos Islands. The Celebrity Xperience will offer trips lasting from seven to 13 nights, providing snorkeling gear, wet suits and binoculars to guests. A smaller craft, the Celebrity Xploration, will accommodate 16 guests. Lindblad Expeditions will introduce its first newly built ship, the National Geographic Quest, in June in the Inside Passage of Alaska, with kayaks, paddle boards and landing craft for ventures into the wild. The sailing ships of Star Clippers only look retro. The line’s newly built Flying Clipper, making its debut late in 2017, will be powered by 32 sails, and it can carry 300 passengers. The luxury line Silversea will add the Silver Muse in April in the Mediterranean. Highlights include larger and connecting suites for friends and family, and eight restaurants, including French, Japanese and one that encourages diners to cook for themselves on heated lava stones. Among river launches, Uniworld Boutique River Cruise Collection will begin the Joie de Vivre in France in March. Crystal River Cruises will unveil the Crystal Bach on the Danube in June and the Crystal Mahler on the Rhine in August. Both will accommodate 106 guests and include butler service, five restaurants and lounges and a spa. Crystal has also announced it will start Crystal AirCruise in 2017: private jet trips aboard its Boeing . The inaugural trip ($159, 000 a person) circumnavigates the globe over 27 days, beginning Aug. 31, via Peninsula Hotels. Canada aims to celebrate the 150th anniversary of its confederation by completing its transcontinental Great Trail, a or roughly multiuse recreational trail linking Newfoundland in the east to British Columbia in the west, with northern spurs to the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. | 0 |
Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, a moderate voice who tried to portray himself as the adult in the Republican primary field but failed to win any state but his own, ended his quest for the presidency on Wednesday, cementing Donald J. Trump’s grip on the presidential nomination. Mr. Kasich’s departure, a day after Mr. Trump’s victory in the Indiana primary, leaves Mr. Trump as the only candidate remaining in the Republican race. His closest challenger, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, dropped out Tuesday night. In remarks in Columbus, Ohio, that lasted about 15 minutes, Mr. Kasich recalled the emotional moments he had on the campaign trail and stressed the need to “live a life bigger than ourselves. ” He did not mention Mr. Trump or explain why he was leaving the race. “I have always said that the Lord has a purpose for me, as he has for everyone,” Mr. Kasich said. “And as I suspend my campaign today, I have renewed faith, deeper faith, that the Lord will show me the way forward and fulfill the purpose of my life. ” A conventional candidate in an unconventional race, Mr. Kasich, 63, outlasted the other governors in the Republican field. But his longevity was largely a testament to his unbending refusal to drop out long after it became clear that voters were not flocking to his campaign. He rarely wavered from his approach to his rivals, even as they racked up far more delegates. When they attacked one another, Mr. Kasich struck a sunny tone and told people that they were made special by the Lord. While Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz emphasized their outsider status, he ran unapologetically as a candidate with experience. Mr. Kasich, citing polls, had insisted that he was the only remaining Republican candidate who could win in November. But while he expressed hope that voters in the Northeast would embrace him, he was obliterated by Mr. Trump in the five states that held primaries last week, and he never matched Mr. Cruz as the main alternative to Mr. Trump. In a deal with Mr. Cruz, Mr. Kasich agreed not to compete in Indiana, a critical state for those hoping to stop Mr. Trump. Mr. Cruz, in exchange, agreed not to compete in two states with later contests, Oregon and New Mexico. Mr. Kasich had hoped that neither opponent would win enough delegates to clinch the nomination before the Republican convention in July. In that case, many delegates could potentially vote as they wished, regardless of which candidate voters in their home states preferred. Mr. Kasich said he believed his track record in government and his favorable poll numbers in hypothetical matchups against the Democratic Hillary Clinton, would win over those delegates. But Mr. Trump’s victory in Indiana put him in a commanding position to officially secure the nomination on June 7, when the last Republican contests will be held. Mr. Kasich had been set to fly to the Washington area on Wednesday to hold a news conference, meet with a newspaper editorial board and attend for his campaign. He got on his plane in Columbus, according to campaign advisers, but had reservations about pressing on. The plane never took off, and within hours, Mr. Kasich was announcing the end of his bid. A former chairman of the House Budget Committee and the governor of a large and electorally critical state, Mr. Kasich did not lack in credentials. And his tenure as governor of Ohio, a job he entered on the heels of the recession, offered him an alluring story of economic turnaround. He set himself apart from the Republican field through his moderate views — under the Affordable Care Act, he expanded Medicaid in Ohio, and he talked frequently about the need to help people “in the shadows,” like those with drug addiction or mental illness. At times, he expressed dismay about the direction of his party, asking last week, “Do the Republicans actually think that they can win an election by scaring every Hispanic in this country to death?” Mr. Kasich presented himself as the optimistic candidate in a gloomy race, refusing to unleash the kinds of personal attacks that have been a defining characteristic of this year’s campaign. Before the New Hampshire primary, he described himself as “the prince of light and hope. ” Mr. Kasich planted himself in New Hampshire, holding more than 100 town events in the state. He was rewarded with a finish, which his campaign hoped would vault him to prominence. In the months that followed, he continued holding town meetings in state after state, taking questions from voters. His events often felt more like group therapy sessions than campaign stops. Audience members opened up to him about deeply personal subjects, and Mr. Kasich dispensed hugs. “The people of our country changed me,” Mr. Kasich said on Wednesday. “They changed me with the stories of their lives. ” The March 15 Ohio primary was a rare bright spot for him — a victory over Mr. Trump, and one that kept his bid alive. But Mr. Kasich’s soothing message never caught on in a campaign that has exposed the anger and frustration coursing through the electorate. He found himself stuck in fourth place in a race, trailing Senator Marco Rubio of Florida in the delegate count, even though Mr. Rubio had ended his bid in March. In recent weeks, Mr. Kasich’s great achievement appeared to be showing off his impressive appetite at a variety of restaurants — prompting Mr. Trump to deride his eating habits. Mr. Kasich has often been talked about as a possible candidate, and on Wednesday, Mr. Trump told CNN that he was interested in vetting Mr. Kasich for a potential spot on his ticket. Mr. Kasich has repeatedly insisted that he will not be anyone’s running mate. “If George Washington came back from the dead, I might think about it with him,” he said last week. “But that’d be about it. ” Mr. Kasich’s team had high hopes about the Northeast, believing Mr. Kasich, who grew up near Pittsburgh, would be appealing to moderate voters there. But Mr. Trump dominated the five states that voted last week in the Northeast and . Mr. Kasich acknowledged last week that he considered dropping out of the race after Mr. Trump routed him in those contests, but decided to continue. Until the very end, Mr. Kasich stuck to his message, even as it became clear it was not a winning one. “My job is to provide people with a sense of hopefulness, of unity, of healing,” he said last week. “That’s what I’m going to do. And if that doesn’t take me to a road to victory, so be it. ” | 1 |
Returning home on Saturday night after a dinner in Manhattan with some longtime friends, Gregory Locke boarded a No. 1 subway train and was confronted with an ugly sight. The car’s windows and posters were covered in graffiti, according to accounts from Mr. Locke and another passenger in the car, Jared Nied. Messages like “Jews belong in the oven” and “destroy Israel, Heil Hitler,” had been written over subway maps, as shown by photographs taken on the train. Swastikas were drawn in black marker on the doors and windows. Mr. Locke, 27, a New York lawyer, said in a phone interview that his first reaction was shock, “especially once I realized how many instances of graffiti were on the train car. ” “But the shock quickly subsides and turns into a sort of a realistic horror,” he said. “You realize it’s appalling but it’s also not surprising at the same time. ” Neither man reported the graffiti to the police, and neither the New York Police Department nor the Metropolitan Transportation Authority had a record of any report. Mr. Nied, 36, was returning home from his work as a around 7 p. m. and boarded the train at 42nd Street. He said in a phone interview that his reaction to the graffiti, which he noticed immediately, must have been written on his face, and he soon attracted the attention of another commuter. “There was a lady sitting across from me under the map, and she said, ‘Oh that’s absolutely horrible,’” he said. “‘Do you think there’s any way we can erase it? ’” Mr. Nied had many times used a Sharpie when he had meant to use a marker, and he knew from experience that alcohol would work to erase the graffiti. “A light bulb went on, and I just asked, ‘Does anyone have hand sanitizer? ’” he said. Mr. Nied and several other commuters began to wipe away the graffiti, their actions captured in photographs taken by Mr. Locke, who wrote on Facebook about his experience. By late Sunday afternoon, more than 518, 000 people had reacted to the post on Facebook, and the post had been shared more than 354, 000 times. “I’ve never seen so many people simultaneously reach into their bags and pockets looking for tissues and Purell,” Mr. Locke wrote. “Within about two minutes, all the Nazi symbolism was gone. ” Mr. Nied said that the episode had lasted less than five minutes and that the passengers were able to erase the graffiti before the train reached 96th Street. He returned a bottle of hand sanitizer to one of the riders, apologizing for having used most of it. “We sat down and glanced around at each other and settled back into the commute,” he said. Both men said they understood that there might be skepticism about their accounts. “I understand the criticism, but unfortunately, I don’t have an answer for it,” Mr. Locke said. “I would probably be suspicious, too, if I didn’t take the pictures. ” Detective Ahmed Nasser of the New York Police Department said that while the episode had not been reported on Saturday, other reports of graffiti had been logged recently: A recycling container downtown was reportedly defaced with the words “Jews are a virus” in black ink in January, and swastikas were found etched on a northbound F train this month. A separate episode, in which a passenger on a B train saw that a swastika on an American flag had been transformed into a message of love, drew a comment from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Sunday. On Saturday night, Mr. Nied sent a text to his wife, Jacquline, and to a friend with a photograph of the graffiti, but he did not consider the prospect that someone else might have taken photos. He said it had not even crossed his mind until more than an hour later, when his wife looked at her phone. “She said, ‘Dude, you’re going viral,’” he recalled. He added: “It was a very New York moment in that we all came together, we all teamed up, and then we settled back down. I don’t think any of those people really spoke, truth be told. Everyone kind of just did their jobs of being decent human beings. ” | 1 |
VIDEO : FBI SEEKS “PAY TO PLAY” Indictment in Clinton Foundation Investigation VIDEO : FBI SEEKS “PAY TO PLAY” Indictment in Clinton Foundation Investigation Breaking News By Amy Moreno November 3, 2016
The FBI has been quieting investigating the Clinton Foundation for over a year.
An investigation that was fueled by secret tapes and a little book called Clinton Cash.
Now we’re learning that the FBI is seeking “PAY TO PLAY” indictments against the Clinton Foundation.
Keep in mind; this is a separate investigation from the newly reopened Clinton email scandal.
Watch the video: FBI agents pushing for “indictment” in Clinton foundation “pay to play” scheme, investigation going on for over a year pic.twitter.com/sqNEulsPAg
— FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) November 3, 2016 This is a movement – we are the political OUTSIDERS fighting against the FAILED GLOBAL ESTABLISHMENT! Join the resistance and help us fight to put America First! Amy Moreno is a Published Author , Pug Lover & Game of Thrones Nerd. You can follow her on Twitter here and Facebook here . Support the Trump Movement and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter. | 0 |
Josh Fox on Dakota Access Pipeline Standoff: ‘Where the F*** Is Hillary Clinton Right Now?’ CREDIT
Filmmaker Josh Fox has a pretty good idea where Hillary Clinton is likely to be found starting Jan. 20. But before she makes her final play for the White House, Fox has a pressing question for the Democratic .
“Where the fuck is Hillary Clinton right now?” Fox asked during his guest appearance on “Live at Truthdig” at the site’s Los Angeles headquarters.
That was more of a pointed question than a literal one, since anyone with a television or smartphone can easily track down where Clinton is making her latest campaign stump speech.
More specifically, Fox, who’s a climate activist and playwright as well as the director of the Oscar-nominated documentary “Gasland,” was wondering why Clinton wasn’t anywhere near the contested grounds of North Dakota where the ongoing clash over the Dakota Access pipeline is reaching a volatile point.
Remarking that “we all want to think that we would be on the right side” of history and that, for example, “if we were in Selma, we all would have marched with King,” Fox positioned Clinton squarely “on the wrong side of history right now” for maintaining a conspicuous silence about the DAPL battle.
“You cannot stand by when a racist occupying force that is run by the government of a rogue state is operating as an arm of the oil and gas industry, is attacking natives, is attacking protesters, is attacking people and torturing them in the ways that we saw in the Iraq War,” Fox said. “It’s unacceptable.”
Fox was equally unsparing about Clinton’s environmental credentials. “Hillary Clinton is not an environmentalist,” he said. “Hillary Clinton is not adequate on climate change. And right now, she’s standing by while human rights abuses are unfolding in America where she’s running for president.”
The director was making the media rounds to drum up support for the activists and members allied protesters in North Dakota, some of whom faced off Thursday with police in riot gear as law enforcement and National Guard personnel forcibly removed protesters from their encampment near one of the pipeline’s construction zones. He was also putting out the word about the plight of fellow filmmaker Deia Schlosberg, producer of his 2016 documentary “How to Let Go of the World (and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change),” who was arrested and hit with conspiracy charges earlier this month while shooting footage of activists at a North Dakota tar sands pipeline. Schlosberg has been charged with three felonies and may face 45 years in prison.
WATCH: Amy Goodman Explains Decision to Turn Herself In to North Dakota Authorities (Video)
“We need to drop all the charges immediately, we need her footage back—her footage was confiscated,” Fox said of Schlosberg. “We definitely need an outcry and an outpouring of support for our journalists who are facing jail time for doing what is a constitutionally protected activity.” Fox has posted a videotaped statement about his colleague’s plight, as well as information about a petition, on this promotional site for his latest work.
Despite his robust criticism of Clinton, Fox told Truthdig’s Sarah Wesley, Emma Niles and Donald Kaufman that he was more concerned about the possibility of GOP nominee Donald Trump winning this election. Fox, who had supported Democratic candidate and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and served on the Democratic platform committee at last summer’s party convention, said he understood Sanders’ reasons for backing the Democratic ticket: “If Bernie Sanders’ legacy was to contribute to the election of Donald Trump, I think his whole life would have been a failure.”
As for Green Party Jill Stein? “I’m sorry. It’s immoral what she’s doing,” Fox said. “And I don’t care if I say this on air for the very first time—I spent eight years building the environmental movement, I spent eight years coast-to-coast building the [anti-]fracking movement, I went to 250 cities. I did not see the Green Party having a significant hand in the building of that movement.”
Watch the full interview below for more about Fox’s take on the presidential candidates, the Dakota Access pipeline crisis and how to be an effective activist (hint: Don’t try it at home): | 1 |
in: General Health , Toxins You’ve probably heard the buzz already about the many health benefits of probiotics , a word which literally translates to: pro- “for” + biotics “life”— FOR LIFE . But did you know that these remarkable commensal microorganisms, which outnumber our bodily cells 10 to 1, and contribute over 95% of our body’s total genetic information, also break down highly toxic manmade chemicals which your body is either incapable, or only partially capable, of defending itself from? Learn about some of the amazing ways in which ‘good bacteria’ help to detoxify chemicals within our body: Bisphenol A : This ubiquitous toxicant — linked to over 40 diseases — found in anything from thermal printer receipts, paper money , canned food liners, dental composites , and of course plastics, is a powerful endocrine disrupter now found in everyone’s bodies. Remarkably, two common probiotic strains, Bifidobacterium breve and Lactobacillus casei , have been found in animal research to help the body detoxify it by reducing the intestinal absorption of bisphenol A through facilitating increased excretion. [i] The animals receiving probiotic treatment were found to have 2.4 times higher excretion of Bisphenol A in their feces, suggesting probiotic supplementation could be of significant benefit to humans as well. Pesticides : Probiotic strains from the traditional Korean fermented cabbage dish known as Kimchi have been identified to degrade a variety of organophosphorous pesticides such as chlorpyrifos, coumaphos, diazinon, methylparathion, and parathion. [ii] These nifty organisms actually use these exceedingly hard to break down chemicals as sources of carbon and phosphorous – ‘food’! – and were found to break down the pesticide 83.3% after 3 days and degraded it completely by day 9. [iii] While this test tube study likely does not reflect exactly what happens in our gut when we ingest both chlorpyrifos and Kimchi, it is provocative, and may indicate there is some protective effects in the gut, and certainly cabbage tainted with organophosphorous pesticide which is subsequently fermented as an ingredient in Kimchi would certainly reduce the burden of this chemical in the diet. Heavy Metals: Lactobacillus bacteria found in food have been looked at as a potential adjunct agent for reducing metal toxicity in humans. According to one study, “This is because they have resistance mechanisms which are effective in preventing damage to their cells and they can bind and sequester heavy metals to their cell surfaces, thus removing them through subsequent defecation.” [iv] The study differentiates between detoxification and detoxication, the former of which is described as “the ability to remove drugs, mutagens, and other harmful agents from the body,” and the latter of which is the mechanism through which ‘good bacteria’ prevent “of damaging compounds into the body.” Because there is a large body of research on probiotics preventing and/or healing up intestinal permeability, this may be another way in which toxic stomach contents are preventing from doing harm to the body as a whole. Cancerous Food Preservatives : Another Kimchi study found it contained a strain of bacteria capable of breaking down sodium nitrate, a naturally and artificially occurring chemical (used from anything to rocket fuel and gunpowder) linked to a variety of chronic degenerative diseases, including cancer. [v] The study found a depletion of sodium nitrate by up to 90.0% after 5 days. Sodium nitrate becomes toxic when it is converted in food products, and even our intestines via microbiota, to N-nitrosodimethylamine. A recent study found that four lactobacillus strains where capable of breaking this toxic byproduct down by up to 50%. [vi] Perchlorate – perchlorate is an ingredient in jet fuel and fireworks that widely contaminates the environment and our food. Sadly, even organic food has been found concentrate high levels of this toxicant , making it exceedingly difficult to avoid exposure. It is now found in disturbing concentrations in breast milk and urine, and is a well-known endocrine disrupter capable of blocking the iodine receptor in the thyroid, resulting in hypothyroidism and concomitant neurological dysfunction. A recent study found that the beneficial bacterial strain known as Bifidobacterium Bifidum is capable of degrading perchlorate, and that breast fed infants appear to have lower levels than infant formula fed babies due to the breast milk bacteria’s ability to degrade perchlorate through the perchlorate reductase pathway. [vii] Heterocylic Amines : Heterocyclic aromatic amines (HCA) are compounds formed when meat is cooked at high temperatures of 150-300 degrees C, and are extremely mutagenic (damage the DNA). Lactobacillus strains have been identified that significantly reduce the genotoxicity of theses compounds. [viii] Toxic Foods : While not normally considered a ‘toxin,’ wheat contains a series of proteins that we do not have the genomic capability to produce enzymes to degrade. When these undigested proteins – and there are over 23,000 that have been identified in the wheat proteome – enter into the blood, they can wreak havoc on our health. Recent research has found that our body has dozens of strains of bacteria that are capable of breaking down glutinous proteins and therefore reduce its antigenicity and toxicity. While the role of probiotics in degrading gluten proteins sounds great, a word of caution is in order. Since modern wheat is not a biologically compatible food for our species – having been introduced only recently in biological time, and having been hybridized to contain far more protein that our ancient ancestors were ever exposed to – it would be best to remove it entirely from the diet. Also, the aforementioned research showing bacteria in the human gut are capable of breaking some of these wheat proteins revealed that some of the species that were capable of doing this for us are intrinsically pathogenic, e.g. Clostidium botulinum and Klebsiella. So, relying on the help of bacteria to do the job of digesting a ‘food’ we are not capable of utilizing on our own, is a double-edged sword. Again, the best move is to remove it entirely from the diet as a precuationary step. What Probiotic Should I Take? While plenty of probiotic pills and liquids exist on the market, and many of which have significant health benefits, it is important to choose one that is either shelf stable, or has been refrigerated from the place of manufacture all the way to the place you are purchasing it from. Moreover, many probiotics are centrifugally extracted or filtered, leaving the nourishing food medium within which it was cultured behind. This is a problem in two ways: 1) without sustenance, the probiotics are in ‘suspended animation’ and may either die or not properly ‘root’ into your gastrointestinal tract when you take them. 2) the ‘food matrix’ within probiotics are grown provides a protective medium of essential co-factors that help them survive the difficult journey down your gastointestinal tract. With that said, another option is to consume a traditionally fermented, living probiotic food like sauerkraut, kimchi, or yogurt (focusing on non-cow’s milk varieties, unless you are lucky enough to find a source that has the beta-casein A2 producing cows). There is always goat’s milk which is relatively hypoallergenic. Finally, the reality is that the probiotics in our bodies and in cultured foods ultimately derive from the soil, where an unimaginably vast reservoir of ‘good bacteria’ reside – assuming your soil is natural and not saturated with petrochemical inputs and other environmental toxicants . And really fresh, organically produced – preferably biodynamically grown – raw food is an excellent way to continually replenish your probiotic stores. Food is always going to be the best way to support your health, probiotic health included. References [i] Kenji Oishi, Tadashi Sato, Wakae Yokoi, Yasuto Yoshida, Masahiko Ito, Haruji Sawada. Effect of probiotics, Bifidobacterium breve and Lactobacillus casei, on bisphenol A exposure in rats. Biosci Biotechnol Biochem. 2008 Jun;72(6):1409-15. Epub 2008 Jun 7. PMID: 18540113 [ii] Shah Md Asraful Islam, Renukaradhya K Math, Kye Man Cho, Woo Jin Lim, Su Young Hong, Jong Min Kim, Myoung Geun Yun, Ji Joong Cho, Han Dae Yun. Organophosphorus hydrolase (OpdB) of Lactobacillus brevis WCP902 from kimchi is able to degrade organophosphorus pesticides. J Agric Food Chem. 2010 May 12;58(9):5380-6. PMID: 20405842 [iii] Kye Man Cho, Reukaradhya K Math, Shah Md Asraful Islam, Woo Jin Lim, Su Young Hong, Jong Min Kim, Myoung Geun Yun, Ji Joong Cho, Han Dae Yun. Biodegradation of chlorpyrifos by lactic acid bacteria during kimchi fermentation. J Agric Food Chem. 2009 Mar 11;57(5):1882-9. PMID: 19199784 [v] Chang-Kyung Oh, Myung-Chul Oh, Soo-Hyun Kim. The depletion of sodium nitrite by lactic acid bacteria isolated from kimchi. J Med Food. 2004;7(1):38-44. PMID: 15117551 [vi] Adriana Nowak, Sławomir Kuberski, Zdzisława Libudzisz. Probiotic lactic acid bacteria detoxify N-nitrosodimethylamine. Food Addit Contam Part A Chem Anal Control Expo Risk Assess. 2014 Jul 10. Epub 2014 Jul 10. PMID: 25010287 [vii] C Phillip Shelor, Andrea B Kirk, Purnendu K Dasgupta, Martina Kroll, Catrina A Campbell, Pankaj K Choudhary. Breastfed infants metabolize perchlorate . Environ Sci Technol . 2012 May 1 ;46(9):5151-9. Epub 2012 Apr 20. PMID: 22497505 [viii] Adriana Nowak, Zdzislawa Libudzisz. Ability of probiotic Lactobacillus casei DN 114001 to bind or/and metabolise heterocyclic aromatic amines in vitro. Eur J Nutr. 2009 Oct ;48(7):419-27. Epub 2009 May 16. PMID: 19448966 © October 26, 2016 GreenMedInfo LLC. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of GreenMedInfo LLC. Want to learn more from GreenMedInfo? Sign up for the newsletter here http://www.greenmedinfo.com/greenmed/newsletter . Submit your review | 1 |
A team of scientists announced on Thursday that they had heard and recorded the sound of two black holes colliding a billion away, a fleeting chirp that fulfilled the last prediction of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. That faint rising tone, physicists say, is the first direct evidence of gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of that Einstein predicted a century ago. (Listen to it here.) It completes his vision of a universe in which space and time are interwoven and dynamic, able to stretch, shrink and jiggle. And it is a ringing confirmation of the nature of black holes, the bottomless gravitational pits from which not even light can escape, which were the most foreboding (and unwelcome) part of his theory. More generally, it means that a century of innovation, testing, questioning and plain hard work after Einstein imagined it on paper, scientists have finally tapped into the deepest register of physical reality, where the weirdest and wildest implications of Einstein’s universe become manifest. Conveyed by these gravitational waves, power 50 times greater than the output of all the stars in the universe combined vibrated a pair of antennas in Washington State and Louisiana known as LIGO on Sept. 14. If replicated by future experiments, that simple chirp, which rose to the note of middle C before abruptly stopping, seems destined to take its place among the great sound bites of science, ranking with Alexander Graham Bell’s “Mr. Watson — come here” and Sputnik’s first beeps from orbit. “We are all over the moon and back,” said Gabriela González of Louisiana State University, a spokeswoman for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, short for Laser Interferometer Observatory. “Einstein would be very happy, I think. ” Members of the LIGO group, a worldwide team of scientists, along with scientists from a European team known as the Virgo Collaboration, published a report in Physical Review Letters on Thursday with more than 1, 000 authors. “I think this will be one of the major breakthroughs in physics for a long time,” said Szabolcs Marka, a Columbia University professor who is one of the LIGO scientists. “Everything else in astronomy is like the eye,” he said, referring to the panoply of telescopes that have given stargazers access to more and more of the electromagnetic spectrum and the ability to peer deeper and deeper into space and time. “Finally, astronomy grew ears. We never had ears before. ” The discovery is a great triumph for three physicists — Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology, Rainer Weiss of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ronald Drever, formerly of Caltech and now retired in Scotland — who bet their careers on the dream of measuring the most ineffable of Einstein’s notions. “Until now, we scientists have only seen warped when it’s calm,” Dr. Thorne said in an email. “It’s as though we had only seen the ocean’s surface on a calm day but had never seen it roiled in a storm, with crashing waves. ” The black holes that LIGO observed created a storm “in which the flow of time speeded, then slowed, then speeded,” he said. “A storm with space bending this way, then that. ” The chirp is also sweet vindication for the National Science Foundation, which spent about $1. 1 billion over more than 40 years to build a new hotline to nature, facing down criticism that sources of gravitational waves were not plentiful or loud enough to justify the cost. “It’s been decades, through a lot of different technological innovations,” France Córdova, the foundation’s director, said in an interview, recalling how, in the early years, the foundation’s advisory board had “really scratched their heads on this one. ” Word of LIGO’s success was met by hosannas in the scientific community, albeit with the requisite admonishments of the need for confirmation or replication. “I was freaking out,” said Janna Levin, a theorist at Barnard College at Columbia who was not part of LIGO but was granted an early look at the results for her book about the project, “Black Hole Blues,” to be published this spring. Robert Garisto, the editor of Physical Review Letters, said he had gotten goose bumps while reading the LIGO paper. When Einstein announced his theory in 1915, he rewrote the rules for space and time that had prevailed for more than 200 years, since the time of Newton, stipulating a static and fixed framework for the universe. Instead, Einstein said, matter and energy distort the geometry of the universe in the way a heavy sleeper causes a mattress to sag, producing the effect we call gravity. A disturbance in the cosmos could cause to stretch, collapse and even jiggle, like a mattress shaking when that sleeper rolls over, producing ripples of gravity: gravitational waves. Einstein was not quite sure about these waves. In 1916, he told Karl Schwarzschild, the discoverer of black holes, that gravitational waves did not exist, then said they did. In 1936, he and his assistant Nathan Rosen set out to publish a paper debunking the idea before doing the same again. According to the equations physicists have settled on, gravitational waves would compress space in one direction and stretch it in another as they traveled outward. In 1969, Joseph Weber, a physicist at the University of Maryland, claimed to have detected gravitational waves using a aluminum cylinder as an antenna. Waves of the right frequency would make the cylinder ring like a tuning fork, he said. Others could not duplicate his result, but few doubted that gravitational waves were real. Dr. Weber’s experiment inspired a generation of scientists to look harder for Einsteinian marks on the universe. In 1978, the radio astronomers Joseph H. Taylor Jr. and Russell A. Hulse, then at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, discovered a pair of neutron stars, superdense remnants of dead stars, orbiting each other. One of them was a pulsar, emitting a periodic beam of electromagnetic radiation. By timing its pulses, the astronomers determined that the stars were losing energy and falling closer together at precisely the rate that would be expected if they were radiating gravitational waves. Dr. Hulse and Dr. Taylor won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1993. Another group of astronomers who go by the name Bicep made headlines in 2014 when they claimed to have detected gravitational waves from the beginning of the Big Bang, using a telescope at the South Pole. They later acknowledged that their observations had probably been contaminated by interstellar stardust. Dr. Thorne of Caltech and Dr. Weiss of M. I. T. first met in 1975, Dr. Weiss said, when they had to share a hotel room during a meeting in Washington. Dr. Thorne was already a renowned theorist, but he was looking for new experimental territory to conquer. They stayed up all night talking about how to test general relativity and debating how best to search for gravitational waves. Dr. Thorne then recruited Dr. Drever, a gifted experimentalist from the University of Glasgow, to start a gravitational wave program at Caltech. Dr. Drever wanted to use light — laser beams bouncing between precisely positioned mirrors — to detect the squeeze and stretch of a passing wave. Dr. Weiss tried to mount a similar effort at M. I. T. also using the laser approach, but at the time, black holes were not in fashion there. (Things are better now, he said.) The technological odds were against both efforts. The researchers calculated that a typical gravitational wave from out in space would change the distance between a pair of mirrors by an almost imperceptible amount: one part in a billion trillion. Dr. Weiss recalled that when he explained the experiment to his potential funders at the National Science Foundation, “everybody thought we were out of our minds. ” In 1984, to the annoyance of Dr. Drever and the relief of Dr. Weiss, the National Science Foundation ordered the two teams to merge. Dr. Thorne found himself in the dual roles of evangelist for the field of gravitational waves and broker for experimental disagreements. Progress was slow until the three physicists were replaced in 1987 by a single director as part of the price of going forward. The first version of the experiment, known as Initial LIGO, started in 2000 and ran for 10 years, mostly to show that it could work on the scale needed. There are two detectors: one in Hanford, Wash. the other in Livingston, La. Hunters once shot up the outside of one of the antenna arms in Louisiana, and a truck crashed into one of the arms in Hanford. In neither case was the experiment damaged. Over the last five years, the entire system was rebuilt to increase its sensitivity to the point where the team could realistically expect to hear something. LIGO’s antennas are with perpendicular arms 2. 5 miles long. Inside each arm, cocooned in layers of steel and concrete, runs the world’s largest bottle of nothing, a vacuum chamber a couple of feet wide containing 2. 5 million gallons of empty space. At the end of each arm are mirrors hanging by glass threads, isolated from the bumps and shrieks of the environment better than any ever conceived. Thus coddled, the lasers in the present incarnation, known as Advanced LIGO, can detect changes in the length of one of those arms as small as one the diameter of a proton — a subatomic particle too small to be seen by even the most powerful microscopes — as a gravitational wave sweeps through. Even with such extreme sensitivity, only the most massive and violent events out there would be loud enough to make the detectors ring. LIGO was designed to catch collisions of neutron stars, which can produce the violent flashes known as gamma ray bursts. As they got closer together, these neutron stars would swing around faster and faster, hundreds of times a second, vibrating geometry with a rising tone that would be audible in LIGO’s “sweet spot. ” Black holes, the remains of dead stars, could be expected to do the same, but nobody knew if they existed in pairs or how often they might collide. If they did, however, the waves from the collision would be far louder and lower pitched than those from neutron stars. Dr. Thorne and others long thought these would be the first waves to be heard by LIGO. But even he did not expect it would happen so quickly. On Sept. 14, the system had barely finished being calibrated and was in what is called an engineering run at 4 a. m. when a loud signal came through at the Livingston site. “Data was streaming, and then ‘bam,’ ” recalled David Reitze, a Caltech professor who is the director of the LIGO Laboratory, the group that built and runs the detectors. Seven milliseconds later, the signal hit the Hanford site. LIGO scientists later determined that the likelihood of such signals landing simultaneously by pure chance was vanishingly small. Nobody was awake in the United States, but computers tagged the event, and European colleagues noticed. Dr. Reitze was on a plane to Louisiana the next day. Dr. Weiss, on vacation in Maine, found out when he checked in by computer that morning. “It was waving hello,” he said. “It was amazing. The signal was so big, I didn’t believe it. ” The frequency of the chirp was too low for neutron stars, the physicists knew. Detailed analysis of its form told a tale of Brobdingnagian activities in a far corner of the universe: the last waltz of a pair of black holes shockingly larger than astrophysicists had been expecting. One of them was 36 times as massive as the sun, the other 29. As they approached the end, at half the speed of light, they were circling each other 250 times a second. And then the ringing stopped as the two holes coalesced into a single black hole, a trapdoor in space with the equivalent mass of 62 suns. All in a fifth of a second, Earth time. Dr. Weiss said you could reproduce the chirp by running your fingernails across the keys of a piano from the low end to middle C. Lost in the transformation was three solar masses’ worth of energy, vaporized into gravitational waves in an unseen and barely felt apocalypse. As visible light, that energy would be equivalent to the brightness of a billion trillion suns. And yet it moved the LIGO mirrors only four of the diameter of a proton. The signal conformed precisely to the predictions of general relativity for black holes as calculated in computer simulations, Dr. Reitze said. Shortly after the September event, LIGO recorded another, weaker signal that was probably also from black holes, the team said. According to Dr. Weiss, there were at least four detections during the first LIGO observing run, which ended in January. The second run will begin this summer. In the fall, another detector, Advanced Virgo, operated by the European Gravitational Observatory in Italy, will start up. There are hopes for more in the future, in India and Japan. Astronomers now know that pairs of black holes do exist in the universe, and they are rushing to explain how they got so big. According to Vicky Kalogera of Northwestern University, there are two contenders right now: Earlier in the universe, stars lacking elements heavier than helium could have grown to galumphing sizes and then collapsed straight into black holes without the fireworks of a supernova explosion, the method by which other stars say goodbye. Or it could be that in the dense gatherings of stars known as globular clusters, black holes sink to the center and merge. Michael S. Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago, noted that astronomers had once referred to the search for gravitational waves as an experiment, not an observatory. “LIGO has earned its ‘O,’ ” he said. “That is, it will be an observatory, getting tens of events per year. ” Dr. Turner added, “The loudest things in the sky are the most exotic things in the universe: black holes, neutron stars and the early universe. ” The future for the dark side looks bright. “There just have to be big, momentous surprises, which there always have been when a new window is opened,” said Dr. Thorne, who is now retired from LIGO. Dr. Drever, who has dementia and lives in a nursing home near Edinburgh, is not able to enjoy the victory lap. “Ron’s creative genius was crucial to LIGO’s future success and was the reason we brought him to Caltech,” Dr. Thorne wrote in an email. Dr. Weiss, who is retired with emeritus status at M. I. T. said his life now was more like that of a graduate student — that is to say, tinkering and making things work. This tendency was almost the undoing of the LIGO discovery. Only three days before the black hole chirp came in, Dr. Weiss was at the Livingston site, he recalled, and was horrified to find that the antenna readings were plagued by radio interference. That needs to be fixed, he told his colleagues, imploring them to delay the engineering run. But they demurred, saying that everything was ready, that it was too late to stop the program. Lucky for them. “We would have missed that big event,” Dr. Weiss said. | 1 |
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Actor and activist Jesse Williams accused President Donald Trump of intentionally dividing the country along racial lines and called him “a pig” in an impromptu interview this week. [Asked by TMZ “how Trump is doing with racial injustice” in America, the Grey’s Anatomy actor replied: “He’s not. ” “He’s a pig who’s trying to make sure that he galvanizes as much fear as possible, particularly against black, brown immigrants, and Muslims,” Williams told TMZ. Concerning Trump’s law enforcement policy agenda, Williams cited a series of shooting statistics. “There were more killings at the hands of police this February than January and February of last year, 211 murders at the hands of police this year so far,” the actor said. Williams has spoken out against Trump before. In September, the actor and activist appeared in Joss Whedon’s “Important” political PSA alongside Avengers stars Robert Downey Jr. and Scarlett Johansson to urge people to vote for former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Last year, the actor was the subject of a petition calling for his firing from Grey’s Anatomy following his acceptance speech at the BET Awards, during which he vilified police officers and accused white people of appropriating and then profiting from black culture. Williams also protested in Ferguson, Missouri after the shooting of Michael Brown in 2014. He later said on CNN’s State of the Union that “there’s a complete double standard and a complete different experience that a certain element of this country has the privilege of being treated like human beings, and the rest of us are not treated like human beings, period. ” Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @jeromeehudson | 0 |
The greatest trick that feminism has pulled is to convince the masses that women are presently disadvantaged relative to men.
It is true that at first glance, men dominate every field, from business to Pokémon Go achievements , which can lead some to think that there is a conspiracy against women. But the male superiority in many fields is exactly what allows society to prosper. Years after the humiliating debunking of the wage gap, it’s time to address the real elephant in the room: the fact that women don’t pay taxes.
A research report on the fiscal contribution of men and women across age groups was published by the Victoria University of Wellington . Let’s explore the key findings.
This is the well-known earnings gap (incorrectly referred to as the wage gap). Women’s preference for low paying jobs, among others, is a factor at play here. Another factor is the amount of women working part time. The average week for women, in this research, was 28.9 hours, and 37.2 for men. The workforce participation rate did not differ between men and women in significant ways.
This is the disposable income. This is the ”income remaining after deduction of taxes and other mandatory charges, available to be spent or saved as one wishes.” You can see that progressive taxes unfairly impact males , and reduces males’ disposable income near women’s, although the market income was almost double that of women’s. If it disproportionately affects men , you can be assured that no one will complain.
Those are the raw taxes paid by men and women. The tax gap has, oddly, never been an gender issue until now.
When the tax money received by men and women is included in the equation, you can see that for most of women’s lives (except between 44 to 60), they receive more tax money than they supply the state with. Men, on the other hand, give the state more tax money than they receive from 23 to 65 years.
This is where it gets upsetting. As you can see, women’s short period of positive fiscal impact doesn’t come close to counter-balance an already massive overall negative impact. ”The net fiscal incidence on men is approximately zero when accumulated over all ages.” As such, society invests in young males, and they subsequently pay back society’s investment. Women bear massive costs to society, while we were taught to see them as underprivileged.
By the end of her life, the average woman will cost about $150,000 to the average taxpayer. This means that an average man is extorted $150,000 in his lifetime that will be directly transferred to women. If men could use that money to their will, women would chase men as much as men chase women nowadays.
There are a few confounds that need to be ruled out. The authors mention specifically that health and education costs are almost equal for men and women. Also, the workforce percentage doesn’t exceed 10% difference between men and women. Women don’t spend more for children either, according to the report. Even if there were confounds that needed to be accounted for, this is not something feminists have done for the 77-cent wage gap. They have compared raw percentages without accounting for any confounding factors.
Also, these numbers do not include massive costs for the governmental budget for women’s issues, that is a massive burden for the state. For instance, my local government (from a Canadian province of 8 million people) just announced a $200,000,000 plan to fight sexual violence against women , after two immigrants ding-dong-ditched women in a student house .
Add to that millions invested in sex-ed programs, in which a feminist teaches boys that porn movies tailored for them shouldn’t be imitated, and that instead, that they should have their partner’s pleasure in mind, while teaching the exact opposite to girls. The government takes money from males to empower women into hating men and their contribution to society.
https://t.co/Rnb9rpFW3s Québec (Canada) announces 200$ million plan against sexual violence after two FOREIGNERS touched female students
— Nicolas Kilsdonk (@nkgervais) October 29, 2016
The data also doesn’t include all the money directly and personally transferred from a man to a woman. For instance, while women make so little, they still account for 85% of all consumer purchases . And you were wondering why marketers so desperately try to appeal to women in advertisements.
A metaphor for male taxpayers and women? This is a real Danone ad. Watch it here or see my comment here .
The only defense that feminists can use, when confronted with these facts, is that women invest so much time in children. However, feminists made it very clear in the past decades that a woman’s contribution to society shouldn’t be based on her involvement with children. Moreover, at birth rates of half the necessary 2.1 birthrate for population stability, they’re also doing the children thing pretty badly.
These findings raise a serious question: would feminism survive a libertarian regime that doesn’t involve (male) tax money? After all, it is not a coincidence that women consistently vote for a welfare state. Within 10 years of women’s suffrage in the USA, the government doubled their tax expenditure and revenue . Women’s voting patterns have made the government become the new providing husband. But this time, the providing husband doesn’t get a woman or children in return. Remove taxes, and no woman will ever claim to be a ”strong, independent woman.” The state is cucking you. A little like if prostitution was not only legal, but free . Most guys would probably be strong, independent single males.
Pretty ironic that the institution that gives money to women for being pregnant, prevents them from being paid less, makes abortions affordable… is entirely supported by men. Feminists are not seriously against living in a society entirely supported by men, they are just against men having the autonomy over the wealth they create. Male wealth is a public good and female wealth is… ”her body her choice.”
It’s time we fight for equal tax.
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Read More: Yet Another Media-Hyped Rape Accusation Is Debunked
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Report: Friend Has Been Going By Middle Name This Whole Fucking Time CALABASAS, CA—Astounded that it had never come up at any point in the six years they had known each other, local woman Lucy Reed, 25, reported Tuesday that her friend Nicole Silberthau had apparently been going by her middle name this whole fucking time. Cake Just Sitting There Take It CHICAGO—Assuring you that there was nothing to worry about and not a soul around who would see you, sources confirmed Tuesday that a large piece of chocolate cake was just sitting there and that you should go ahead and take it. Man Approaches Box Of Powdered Doughnuts Like Snake Discovering Unguarded Clutch Of Bird Eggs ASHEBORO, NC—Quietly slinking into his office’s break room after spying the unattended confections from afar, area marketing associate Dan Keegan reportedly approached a box of powdered doughnuts Monday like a pine snake discovering an unguarded clutch of bluebird eggs. Reality Of Fatherhood Never Truly Dawned On Man Until He Held Newborn Son’s Hospital Bill MISSOULA, MT—Describing how he suddenly found himself overwhelmed by a flood of intense emotions, local man Mike Bentzen told reporters Monday the reality of fatherhood didn’t truly set in for him until the moment he held his newborn son’s hospital bill. All-Business Adult In Halloween Shop Beelines It Straight For Pinhead Mask BROOKLINE, MA—Without so much as glancing at the seasonal store’s wide selection of other Halloween-themed merchandise, all-business 34-year-old Brian Aubin reportedly strode right past several aisles of costumes and accessories Friday and beelined it straight for the Pinhead masks. | 0 |
The Great Move of China 2020 is Underway October 31, 2016 The Great Move of China 2020 is Underway
China will invest 946.3 billion yuan ($140 billion) by 2020 to relocate its poorest citizens from remote, inland regions to more developed areas, the state planner said on Monday.
The mass relocation is part of a strategy to lift 10 million people out of poverty by 2020, with 2 million estimated to be moved this year, the state council said in May.
The funds will be used mainly to construct homes, support facilities and basic public infrastructure, with the rest going to the restoration of vacated lands, state planner National Development and Reform Commision (NDRC) said in a document.
READ MORE: CHINA BETS BIN ON NUCLEAR FOR ENERGY INDEPENDENCE
The investment will be financed mainly by China's two policy banks - China Development Bank and Agricultural Development Bank of China, who will provide 341.3 billion yuan in long-term loans and 50 billion yuan in construction bonds - as well as by local governments, who will provide 285.8 billion yuan.
Local governments will also raise up to 100 billion yuan through bonds, while the central government in Beijing will allocate around 80 billion yuan. Relocated villagers are expected to contribute 21.5 billion yuan.
China's poor make up about 5 percent of a population of 1.4 billion, living mostly in the countryside and earning less than 2,300 yuan a year, according to the government and state media.
More than 12 million people were moved in earlier relocation efforts as of the end of last year, the NDRC said. Article by Doc Burkhart , Vice-President, General Manager and co-host of TRUNEWS with Rick Wiles Got a news tip? Email us at Help support the ministry of TRUNEWS with your one-time or monthly gift of financial support. DONATE NOW ! DOWNLOAD THE TRUNEWS MOBILE APP! CLICK HERE! Donate Today! Support TRUNEWS to help build a global news network that provides a credible source for world news
We believe Christians need and deserve their own global news network to keep the worldwide Church informed, and to offer Christians a positive alternative to the anti-Christian bigotry of the mainstream news media Top Stories | 0 |
SEOUL, South Korea — Hopes rose and then were crushed on Tuesday when South Korean officials reported, and then retracted, the finding of human bones from the ferry Sewol, which sank nearly three years ago, killing more than 300 people. When officials announced at a news briefing that they had found what they “believed were the bones of a missing person,’’ relatives of the nine passengers still missing, who have never given up hope of finding the remains of their loved ones, broke into tears. But hours later, the authorities withdrew the announcement. In a brief statement sent to journalists, they said that the bones were not from a human but from “an animal. ’’ Some local news reports said the bones belonged to a pig. Hopes of recovering the missing passengers have risen since the ferry was finally lifted from the sea bottom last Thursday. The Sewol, structurally unbalanced and overloaded, capsized and then sank off the southwest coast of South Korea on April 16, 2014. The underwater search of the ferry ended after divers recovered the 295th body, a girl, from one of the ship’s restrooms on Oct. 28, 2014. After the ferry was raised last week, it was positioned on its side on a large vessel as salvage crews drained it before taking it to a nearby port for a closer inspection. On Tuesday, they found six bones, a shoe and other personal items, which had apparently washed out of the ferry as it was being drained. Government forensic experts were sent to the scene to collect the remains. Most of the victims were students from Danwon High School in Ansan, south of Seoul, who had boarded the ferry for a trip to an island. The nine who are still missing include four students and two teachers from the school. The sinking, one of the country’s worst disasters, was a deeply traumatizing experience for South Koreans. When the Sewol capsized, its crew members were among the first to flee, after repeatedly telling passengers to stay in their cabins. As the ship slowly went under, teenagers trapped inside sent text messages begging for help or saying goodbye to their families. Confusing news reports and official announcements at the time added to South Koreans’ pain over the disaster. Local news outlets initially reported that all on board the Sewol had been rescued. And the government kept releasing conflicting information on the number of people on board and the number of those rescued. Bereaved families had demanded that the ship be salvaged, hoping that the bodies of the missing would be found inside. “ ! Hang in there just a bit more, so we can go home together,” Lee said in tears on Tuesday, throwing yellow roses into the sea. Her daughter, Cho a Danwon student, was one of the nine missing. Around the time the bones were found, Ms. Lee and others with missing relatives joined emotional religious services on a boat near the Sewol, during which Catholic pastors, Protestant ministers and Buddhist monks prayed for the recovery of the nine’s remains. “Please support us until I can hold my daughter’s hands and finally go home,” said Park the mother of another missing student, Heo according to pool reports by South Korean journalists at the scene. Ever since the ferry’s sinking, relatives of the missing have camped out at a nearby pier, in hopes that their loved ones’ remains would eventually be found. On Tuesday, friends and supporters of the families gathered there and released yellow balloons into the sky wishing for a successful recovery. | 0 |
Judging by the ingredients ( http://www.vniinc.com/media/docs/prodovite_label.pdf ) I can say that it seems like a pretty healthy supplement.
BUT….for 30 servings in one bottle that costs $85 freaking dollars, I could NEVER NEVER NEVER afford to buy this and respect myself afterwards. If this bottle was dropped down to maybe $35 or $40 then I would be willing to buy it.
GREED is a real problem. | 0 |
We Are Change
Seven of the militia members involved in the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge have been acquitted on federal weapons and conspiracy charges, including Ammon and Ryan Bundy.
Thursday’s verdict came after a month long trial over the occupation and standoff which lasted for nearly six weeks — and left one member of the militia dead. The defense had argued that it was not a conspiracy, but rather a peaceful protest.
“Ammon Bundy, the group’s de-facto leader, was charged, along with six followers, with theft of government property, possession of a firearm on a federal facility and impeding federal officers through threats, force, or intimidation,” Sputnik News reports.
The jury found the defendants not guilty on all charges except one, which they were deadlocked on.
Here are the verdicts. #oregonstandoff pic.twitter.com/fXW9GoxKUr
— Ryan Haas (@ryanjhaas) October 27, 2016
As the judge stated the terms of Ammon Bundy’s release — his lawyer, Marcus Mumford, engaged in such an impassioned argument that he was tackled to the ground by US marshals. He is now in federal custody and his status remains unclear at this time.
ALSO – Ammon Bundy's attorney fought with judge, agents moved in & tackled attorney, media rushed out of court, I've never seen that before!
— Mike Benner (@MikeBennerKGW) October 27, 2016
Harney County Judge Steve Grasty had estimated that the standoff was costing the county “$60,000 to $70,000 a day” for security costs and closed schools. Additionally, federal taxpayers are on the hook for cost accrued by the Bureau of Land Management’s district office in Burns, which employs nearly 120 people, most of whom were placed on paid administrative leave. The weekly cost of their salaries was $117,000 per week, or $3,400 per day.
One of the members, LaVoy Finicum, 54, was killed by police after allegedly pulling a gun on officers who had pulled over the vehicle he was in.
“I have been raised in the country all my life,” Finicum told the press before his death. “I love dearly to feel the wind on my face. To see the sunrise, to see the moon. I have no intention of spending any of my days in a concrete box.”
Twenty-six other militants were arrested in relation to the takeover. The rest of the defendants are scheduled to stand trial in February 2017.
The armed group had claimed to be protesting what they believed to be unconstitutional policies regarding federal land management, and a dispute between the Hammonds, a local ranching family.
The Bundy’s had previously made global headlines after engaging in an armed standoff with federal agents over land in Nevada.
The post Militia That Took Over Wildlife Refuge Acquitted on Conspiracy, Weapons Charges appeared first on We Are Change .
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Advocates of increased immigration and imposed social diversity used Twitter to slam and damn Donald Trump’s comprehensive reform of federal programs to reduce illegal and risky immigration. [Phil Wolgin, who is an immigration booster at the Center for American Progress, admitted that Trump campaigned for his new reform of border defenses. Newsflash: Trump meant exactly what he promised on #immigration. It’s as bad as expected, if not far, far worse. — Philip Wolgin (@pwolgin) January 25, 2017, Trump’s push against illegal and legal immigration is a huge threat to the Democrats’ political strategy, which assumes that a growing number of immigrants will provide needed votes to the Democrats’ unruly coalition of gays and industrial workers, Muslims and Jews, Wall Street financiers and government workers, blacks and Latinos, upper income professionals and service workers. From Janet Murguía, the president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza, the largest national Latino advocacy organization in the United States. Today, @realDonaldTrump fulfilled a campaign promise: he doubled down on his intent to declare open season on immigrants. #ProtectandDefend, — Janet Murguía (@JMurguia_NCLR) January 25, 2017, Madeline Albright, a former Secretary of State to President Bill Clinton, repurposed the State of Liberty into a navigation light for immigrants. There is no fine print on the Statue of Liberty. America must remain open to people of all faiths backgrounds. #RefugeesWelcome pic. twitter. — Madeleine Albright (@madeleine) January 25, 2017, In fact, as President Trump recognized in his inauguration, the statue was designed a symbolic beacon to the developing world to how the United States manages its constitutional Republic. “We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow,” he declared. The “huddled masses” poem was attached to the statue decades later to advocate for additional immigration. A spokesman for the Council of Relations complained about how Trump’s policies might restrict legal immigration. The accompanying video from Jordan suggests that many Arabs believe they have a right to import themselves, their culture and their Islamic politics into Americans’ democratic civic society. Video: #CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper Interviewed About Trump’s ’Muslim Ban’ https: . — CAIR National (@CAIRNational) January 25, 2017, The CAIR group is so closely entwined with Islamists and with jihadis that court documents and news reports show that at least five of its people — either board members, employees or former employees — have been jailed or repatriated from the United States for various financial and offenses. The record highlighted by critics also shows that CAIR was named an unindicted in a criminal effort to deliver $12 million to the HAMAS jihad group, that it was founded with $490, 000 from HAMAS, and that the FBI bans meetings with CAIR officials. In 2009, a federal judge concluded that “the government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR … with Hamas. ” CAIR’s pitch is being aided by the Code Pink group of feminists. One of the CAIR members wore a “hijab” indicating her support of Islam’s discriminatory doctrines towards women. Visit: www. cair. com to watch CAIR’s News Conference on Trump’s ’Muslim Ban’ Executive Orders. Thank you @codepinkalert for standing in solidarity with the Muslim community. #NoBanNoWall, A photo posted by Cair Staff (@cair_national) on Jan 25, 2017 at 3:32pm PST, The ACLU is leading protests against Trump’s comprehensive border reform. Tonight we joined @NYCLU, @CAIRNewYork and other concerned New Yorkers to protest exec orders #NoBanNoWalls pic. twitter. — ACLU National (@ACLU) January 26, 2017, Dara Lind is a writer for Vox. com, which completely missed the importance of immigration in the 2016 election. @AdamSerwer I am actually in NYC right now. Wondering if I should go to the Statue of Liberty, or Ellis Island, to cry and break things. — Dara Lind (@DLind) January 25, 2017, Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez complained about Trump’s policies, even though he played a critical role in Trump’s election by pushing the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” bill in 2013. That bill split the GOP and pushed GOP base voters to support any immigration reformer in the 2016 campaign. Trump won largely because he was the only candidate who supported the goal of immigration reform. Pres. Trump exec orders today cement his place on the wrong side of our American history #NoBanNoWall https: . pic. twitter. — Senator Bob Menendez (@SenatorMenendez) January 25, 2017, Frank Sharry runs America’s Voice, and is a leading advocate for increased immigration, This is a dark day for America. Trump translating xenophobic campaign into policy. EOs declare open season on immigrants. Not my America. — Frank Sharry (@FrankSharry) January 25, 2017, Jorge Ramos is a news anchor at the Univision network. He has argued that Mexicans should be freely allowed to seek jobs in the United States. ¿Se atreverá a decir @epn en público y en la Casa Blanca: ”No pagaremos por el muro” y ”México primero” ? — JORGE RAMOS (@jorgeramosnews) January 25, 2017, Vincente Fox is a former president of Mexico, who has also argued that Mexicans should be allowed to work jobs in the United States. He does not like Trump. Sean Spicer, I’ve said this to @realDonaldTrump and now I’ll tell you: Mexico is not going to pay for that fucking wall. #FuckingWall, — Vicente Fox Quesada (@VicenteFoxQue) January 25, 2017, Douglas Rivlin is a top aide to Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a Puerto Rican immigrant and advocate of mass immigration. Hold up! Don’t build Trump’s #WallofHate before considering @RepGutierrez tempting alternative https: . #twill #p2, — Douglas Rivlin (@douglasrivlin) January 26, 2017, | 1 |
WEST BRIDGEWATER, Mass. — In a musty, dungeonlike basement here, more than a dozen sweaty men and women descend the steep steps every Thursday night to grunt and groan while they work on their techniques. A visitor might write off Norm Devio, 75. At his age, the Devio, of Hopkinton, Mass. does not look like the godfather of . But he has dominated the sport for much of the past 40 years. In the cramped basement, the arm wrestlers jostle among tables. Someone bumps into Devio. “Hey, watch it that’s abuse of the elderly,” he shouts, and everyone laughs. They know it is a joke because, on the table, Devio transcends his age, defeating opponents twice his size and 50 years younger. Devio is said to have won more than 25 national titles in various leagues in the weight class. He has won with his right arm and his left arm, while sitting down and standing up. He represented the United States in the 1996 world championship in Virginia, where he placed second. Plenty of great arm wrestlers, known as pullers, have dominated the sport at various times throughout the years, but what sets Devio apart is his longevity. No other puller has been as competitive as Devio has for so long. At an age when other top arm wrestlers have long since retired, Devio can enter a tournament anywhere and still be a top competitor. “Norm is a legend,” said Bill Cox, director of the International Armwrestling Federation, which organizes tournaments around North America. “The other arm wrestlers, they all look up to him and respect him. ” Devio entered his first professional tournament on a whim in 1975. It was the New England championships in Nashua, N. H. and Devio, a former gymnast, won the event, defeating other pullers who had been in the sport for years. In the decades since, he has competed, practiced and worked with other arm wrestlers in countless basements like this one across New England, along with places like a pizza parlor in Middleborough, Mass. and the backroom of a store in Manchester, N. H. “He’s an idol, an icon, an inspiration and a true gentleman with an incredible legacy,” said Michael Shalhoub, who has won multiple national titles. During his prime in the 1980s and ’90s, Devio was unstoppable, no matter the weight class, Shalhoub said. “Norman would walk into a tournament, and it was to watch,” Shalhoub said. “Everyone knew he would win in the left, right and over all. At that point, all the guys knew they were only shooting for second place, at best. ” Devio and some of his peers taught Sylvester Stallone a few techniques for the 1987 movie “Over the Top,” which was partly filmed during a real tournament in Las Vegas. Devio said Stallone had not been quite the champion he portrayed in the film, and that he had beaten Stallone in a practice match. “I could tell he wasn’t very good,” Devio joked. Through a spokeswoman, Stallone declined to comment for this article. Despite Devio’s formidable accomplishments, Shalhoub said, few will ever know of his greatness. “In his weight class, people will still get nervous when they see that Norm is competing,” Shalhoub said. “It’s a shame that the young guns today may never know who and what Norm was. This was before the internet. ” With a wall of trophies acting as a gilded backdrop in his otherwise dark basement, Devio talked about his time in the sport. To maintain his competitive edge, Devio, a former high school gym teacher, follows a strict workout routine that includes daily aerobic exercise combined with weekly weight lifting. He curls a barbell in three sets of 10, a feat most men his size and age would struggle to accomplish. “I think my work ethic has been the main reason I’m still competing,” he said. “So many people, as they get older, they just think they can’t do as much as they used to do, and that’s just not true. ” Still, the physical nature of the sport has taken its toll. Devio has had multiple arm and shoulder operations, as well as a hip replacement. These days, he competes only with his right arm because of an injury to his left elbow. Doctors would not operate on him, in part because of his age and also because the arm was still functioning properly — except when he was arm wrestling. Devio said he had lost track of how many tournaments he had won he said he knew for certain, however, that there were more than 500 trophies in his basement. His collection has grown to such an extent that he has started giving them away to friends and family members who come to visit. “The trophies don’t really mean anything to me,” he said. “A lot of times, I don’t even take the trophies home. My grandson has about 15 of them. ” Cox recalled an occasion when Devio was asked for an autograph after a tournament victory. Instead, he handed the young fan his trophy. According to Devio’s friends in the sport, that is just the type of guy he is. “Everyone has a ton of respect for him, win or lose — most of them lose to him — but everyone loves him,” Cox said. “All they talk about is what a great guy that Norm Devio is — everyone always roots for him. ” While Devio’s reputation in the sport is mostly confined to the United States, he is also known in other countries. “There are a bunch of world champions in Turkey and other parts of Eastern Europe who know Norm,” Cox said. “They’re all aware of his accomplishments. ” At a recent tournament in South Portland, Me. Devio quietly entered the loud restaurant hosting the competition. Immediately, arm wrestlers new and old, some of whom he had never met, approached him to say hello. Newcomers to the sport who had only watched Devio on YouTube turned to one another, whispering, “I think that’s Norm Devio over there. ” Devio became slightly uncomfortable with the attention, but it was nothing new. At the table, all the distractions faded away as he again proved that he would not let age stand in the way of another shot at victory. | 1 |
WASHINGTON — Edgar M. Welch, 28, of Salisbury, N. C. was arrested Sunday after firing a gun inside a pizza restaurant in Washington as he investigated false claims in online articles that the pizzeria was at the center of a child sex slave ring, the police said. No one was injured by the gunfire, and Mr. Welch surrendered peacefully. The pizzeria, Comet Ping Pong, had been swept into a conspiracy theory, which linked the supposed ring to Hillary Clinton, because its owner had corresponded with the Clinton campaign about a dinner. On Wednesday, I spoke with Mr. Welch, who goes by his middle name, Maddison, by videoconference at an old hospital building adjacent to the city’s jail. In his first news media interview since his arrest, Mr. Welch appeared downcast and at times distracted as he answered questions for 45 minutes, the maximum time allowed by the jail. “I just wanted to do some good and went about it the wrong way,” he said. Mr. Welch, the father of two daughters, said he woke up Sunday morning and told his family he had some things to do. He left “Smallsbury,” a nickname for his hometown, for the drive to Washington with the intention of giving the restaurant a “closer look” and then returning home. He wanted to “shine some light on it. ” As he made his way to Washington, he felt his “heart breaking over the thought of innocent people suffering. ” Once he got to the pizzeria, there was an abrupt change of plans. Mr. Welch would not say why he took a assault rifle inside the restaurant and fired it. According to court documents, Mr. Welch said he had come armed to help rescue the children. “The intel on this wasn’t 100 percent,” he said. However, he refused to dismiss outright the claims in the online articles, conceding only that there were no children “inside that dwelling. ” He also said that child slavery was a worldwide phenomenon. He said it was through word of mouth. After recently having internet service installed at his house, he was “really able to look into it. ” He said that substantial evidence from a combination of sources had left him with the “impression something nefarious was happening. ” He said one article on the subject led to another and then another. He said he did not like the term fake news, believing it was meant to diminish stories outside the mainstream media, which he does not completely trust. He also said he was not political. While once a registered Republican, he did not vote for Donald J. Trump. He also did not vote for Mrs. Clinton. But he is praying that Mr. Trump takes the country in the “right direction. ” Mr. Welch was and polite, and said he liked the outdoors. He was cautious when speaking about what happened, sometimes citing advice he had received from his lawyer. He said he did not believe in conspiracy theories, but then added that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks needed to be . He has listened to Alex Jones, whose radio show traffics in conspiracy theories and who once said that Mrs. Clinton “has personally murdered and chopped up” children. “He’s a bit eccentric,” Mr. Welch said. “He touches on some issues that are viable but goes off the deep end on some things. ” Mr. Welch likes to read. A favorite is “Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul,” by John Eldredge, about masculinity in evangelical Christianity. He said he did not do drugs but drank the occasional beer. He misses his children: “They are in my thoughts every second of the day. ” He said he had grown religious in the last few years. Tattooed on his back are Bible verses: “Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. ” Mr. Welch said that he had acted in haste and that, if he could, he would do a lot of things differently. “I regret how I handled the situation,” he said. | 1 |
By Hrafnkell Haraldsson on Fri, Oct 28th, 2016 at 9:19 am With the election just 10 days away, Trump has only donated just $56m of the $100m he promised and won't even invest in his own campaign Share on Twitter Print This Post
You have got to wonder if the Trump campaign wishes it had spent less on hats and more on polling now, as it is revealed they had only $16M left in their war chest on October 19 compared to Clinton’s $62M. Probably not. There are always others to blame and Trump’s list of those plotting against him grows in inverse proportion to his polling numbers.
From June 2015 through September 2016, the Trump campaign, meaning Donald Trump, spent $3.2m on hats according to FEC filings . They spent just $1.8m on polling. Unsurprisingly, they are behind on polling, leading in precisely ZERO (0) polls . You want to win an election? You need sweet hats" -Abraham Lincoln
Trump has spent more on hats than direct mail or polling… pic.twitter.com/4TOf5DQ1MQ
— Jack Minor Jr. (@jackminorjr) October 26, 2016
And now Clinton has four times the cash.
And The Washington Post is reporting that in the first 19 days of October, Trump only raised half as much as Clinton according to campaign finance reports. His biggest day was the $11.5 million he brought in on the day his sex assault tape was released, which tells you all you need to know about his base.
Remember when Trump claimed he would give $100m of his own money to his campaign? Yeah, this is a guy who won’t even buy his own autographed sports memorabilia. He uses other peoples’ money for that. With the election just 10 days away, he has only donated $56m.
Make what you will of this, but he had been giving $2m a month to his campaign. In the first 19 days of October? Just $31k in in-kind contributions. That’s right: even Trump won’t invest in his own campaign at this point.
Trump pulled in $61m up to October 19, down from $100m in September. Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign has pulled in a cool $101m in that same period. She spent less than normal, $54m, but that leaves her a war chest of $153m going into the final stretch.
Donald Trump says he is a great businessman, yet he has spent twice as much on collateral (including hats) as he has on paying his staff. He says he gets only the best people. And he bought a lot of his #MAGA hats. His campaign site only sells 18 different styles of hat at $20 to $30 apiece.
And according to Huffington Post , The October 15 Federal Election Commission filing for Trump Make America Great Again Committee shows Trump spent $300k of donors money to buy his own book – presumably The Art of the Deal. He profited personally by doing this by way of royalty payments, and then turned around and resold autographed copies of the $22 book at $184 each.
His campaign pays him to rent his own campaign headquarters, yet Trump told a crowd in Geneva, Ohio that “Hillary Clinton has never earned an honest dollar, well I think that’s really, you know…”
Trump is probably the first presidential nominee to try to win the White House while turning a personal profit.
Now it looks as though Trump has seen a point of diminishing returns. He not only did not self-fund his campaign as promised, he has barely spent half of what he said he would spend, down to almost nothing at all as defeat looms and the potential for profit evaporates.
Full FEC report can be found here . | 0 |
By Jefferey Jaxen Hillary Clinton has made little attempt to play politics or engage in double speak on the topic of vaccinations. In the world of healthcare, medicine and parenting no other topic... | 0 |
A Connecticut man wore a that reads, “Hold My Beer and Watch This” in his mugshot after he was arrested for allegedly driving under the influence (DUI) early Monday morning. [Harrison Wootton, 25, of Woodstock, was allegedly driving under the influence when he crashed his car into a wall on Wilson Road off Route 21 at about 1:20 a. m. the Hartford Courant reported. State troopers who responded to the crash discovered that he was driving an unregistered and uninsured vehicle. The car’s license plates were registered to another vehicle. Wootton told police that he had a beer and a vodka an hour before the crash, NBC Connecticut reported. Wootton was released on $500 bond and has a court appearance scheduled for April 20. This is not the first time someone has been in the news for wearing a shirt promoting alcohol in a mugshot after a DUI arrest. A Pennsylvania man sported a “Drunk Lives Matter” in his mugshot after authorities arrested him for DUI in March. | 0 |
YHC-FTSE Oct 26, 2016 5:14 PM
Would have been more ironic if that had been a US TOW missile supplied by the Pentagon to ISIS recently.
Recently read that the Abraham M1A2's armour (Chobham type) is near impenetrable with most tank and RPG rounds so it's weird that this one sliced through it and cooked the lid off the thing. cowdiddly Oct 26, 2016 5:16 PM
Those Abrams tanks have been cooking off like popcorn all over the world with both Kornet and Tow missles especially the Saudis losing lots of them. I think Iraq/perrsmerga said they lost about 4 around Mosel just yesterday alone.
They ain't looking real exceptional at the moment. If its any consolation neither have any other tanks when up against this stuff.
The only one I have seen yet to be able to survive them is the russian T-90. Any earlier than that like the T64 and T-72 have same problems because of the ammo being placed inside the operators compartment and this was moved in the T-90. I have seen 4-5 of these take direct hits and survive.
Also some tanks wiht homemade slat armor mave made it but not many. GoldRulesPaperDrools
While we (the U.S. gov't) have been spending money on MREs and MRAPs and bullets, the Russians have been improving their tech. Instead of sending money to a fat piggie affirmative action baby runnind the DoJ to investigate BLM `issues, the Smirking Chimp in the White House would be better served spending money on the military to upgrade our now-two decade old military tech. Oh wait, who am I kidding?? User login | 0 |
‹ › Arnaldo Rodgers is a trained and educated Psychologist. He has worked as a community organizer and activist. Serving veterans’ mental health needs in Eastern Iowa By Arnaldo Rodgers on November 7, 2016 I-SERVE graduate Laura Boddicker advocates for better mental health services for military veterans like herself Find Your Job Now at HireVeterans.com
By Liz Zabel
Millions of U.S. military servicemen and women have returned to civilian life after serving in the armed forces, and while serving in the military is challenging, many returning veterans find reintegrating even more difficult.
In fact, according to research published in the Journal of Psychiatric Services, rates of depression and other mental disorders are high among services members within their first year returning from deployments.
It’s not just a change of scenery, after all. Returning also means a change in job duties or a new career, living arrangements, lifestyle and more.
“When you go into the military, you are stripped down mentally, so the person you were before the military is no longer,” said Laura Boddicker, a Navy veteran originally from Tennessee now living in Newhall.
Read the Full Article at www.thegazette.com >>>> Related Posts: No Related Posts The views expressed herein are the views of the author exclusively and not necessarily the views of VNN, VNN authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, technicians or the and its assigns. Notices Posted by Arnaldo Rodgers on November 7, 2016, With 0 Reads, Filed under Health , Veterans . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 . You can leave a response or trackback to this entry FaceBook Comments
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PARIS — A Belgian judge sentenced 15 people on Tuesday for their involvement in a terrorist plot that was thwarted in early 2015 but was a harbinger of the deadly attacks later that year in Paris. The aborted plot’s chief architect is believed to have been Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian operative for the Islamic State. Mr. Abaaoud traveled to the group’s bases in Syria and was the coordinator of the attacks on Nov. 13 in and around Paris, which killed 130 people. The plot that was halted in Verviers, a city in southern Belgium, was the first in a series of terrorist operations that Mr. Abaaoud was believed to have planned but that never happened. By the time of the attacks in Paris, he had learned from his mistakes. Mr. Abaaoud was killed in a shootout in St. Denis, France, five days after those attacks. Of the 15 people sentenced on Tuesday, six were in the Brussels courtroom at the time the other nine were tried in absentia because they were on the run, sick or dead. The sentences ranged from three to 16 years in prison, with three of the men receiving the maximum because of their participation in and leadership of the Verviers group. The others were convicted of supporting the terror network, but it was not clear how much they knew about the scope of the plot. Although Belgian prosecutors and the police described the Verviers plot as being at an “advanced stage,” evidence presented at trial was not conclusive about the exact target. One of the most likely targets, mentioned on a cellphone used by Mr. Abaaoud that was obtained by the prosecutor in the Verviers case, was the Zaventem airport, Judge Pierre Hendrickx said in his verdict. He said a rough sketch found on one of the smartphones used by Mr. Abaaoud showed drawings of the arrival hall of an airport with the name Zaventem written nearby and a man pushing a trolley with the word “bomb” on it. The airport and a Brussels metro station were attacked about 14 months later, and 32 people were killed by a related terrorist network also connected to Mr. Abaaoud. The Belgian police interrupted the plot on the evening of Jan. 15, 2015, when they knocked on the door of a Verviers apartment. A gunfight broke out, and two of the three men in the apartment were killed the third, Marouane El Bali, was wounded. He was sentenced on Tuesday to 16 years in prison. Among the items found in the apartment were ingredients for making the explosive TATP, semiautomatic weapons, 200 to 300 bullets and several police uniforms, perhaps suggesting that the attackers were planning to use the uniforms as a disguise. The trial painted the group of defendants as an informal network of friends and acquaintances, brought together in some cases by their upbringing in heavily migrant neighborhoods of Brussels and Paris, and in others by criminal connections. A few came from farther away and were brought in to assist because they had criminal experience, for example in stealing cars and forging documents, prosecutors said. Over all, however, many came across as adolescents playing at being terrorists. They thought up nicknames for one another — including Mustache, the Big One, Obama and Pashtun. They took photos of one another for fun. There are snapshots of Mr. Abaaoud in front of tourist sites in Athens, Judge Hendrickx said during the trial, and another photo of Mr. Abaaoud reclining in a large armchair. The judge referred to it as a “Father Christmas” chair, with “what looks like a cucumber masque” on Mr. Abaaoud’s face. Much of the planning and at least two of the apartments used as safe houses were in Athens. They were rented by Omar Damache, one of the Verviers defendants, who was sentenced to eight years. Mr. Abaaoud used them during at least one and possibly more of his journeys between Belgium and Syria, according to the prosecution. Mr. Damache, who did not seem to have known much about Mr. Abaaoud’s intentions, had in his possession crucial evidence when the Greek police detained him, prosecutors said. Among the items were 14 cellphones, including three used by Mr. Abaaoud two tablets a computer and seven French identification cards. | 1 |
We’re in tomato thrall. Real tomatoes are back, in all their tomatoey glory. The cherry tomatoes at the greenmarket are so riotously colorful — bright little spheres in yellow, red, burgundy, orange and green — that I keep a big bowl of them on the kitchen table. It’s hard to pass by without grabbing a couple, as if I were reaching for a few juicy grapes or berries. We’re reclaiming the visceral summer experience of biting into a freshly picked, firm but truly ripe, tomato and relishing it. At my house, there will be tomatoes in some fashion at every meal for the coming weeks. Plain and unadulterated is the way to go with the first tomatoes of the season. Thick slices or wedges, a little salt, a little pepper (optional) a drizzle of good olive oil, a plate. Repeat. Life is good. Then take the next step, and dress your tomatoes with a garlicky vinaigrette. And when you’re ready to forge ahead with more forceful seasoning, remember the anchovy. Tomatoes and anchovies play very well together, often in the company of olives and capers. Chopped anchovies added to a dressing, or an anchovy fillet draped casually over a salad, provide a meaty, savory umami, not just saltiness. It’s a perfect match for sweet, ripe tomatoes. Go for the best anchovies you can find. They cost more, but they’re worth it. You’ll find them online, in gourmet food emporiums and in some supermarkets. Look for anchovies from Spain, southern France or Italy. Most Italian delis also sell whole anchovies, which need rinsing and deboning. (It’s not hard to do.) They have a great texture and tend to be milder than anchovies in oil. I like to give inexpensive anchovies, which can sometimes taste strong, a brief rinse in lukewarm water, followed by blotting on paper towels. I’m offering three recipes with tomatoes as stars of the show but with anchovies in supporting roles. All are designed with summer ease in mind. Of course, you could leave out the anchovies, but that would be a pity. Let the combination seduce you, like a slow tango. Pasta fredda is what you want for lunch or dinner on a sweltering day. You cut a pile of cherry tomatoes in half, then dress them with chopped anchovy, garlic, red onion, olive oil and a little vinegar. Basil, summer savory, marjoram and parsley are the best choices for herbs. Prepare the mixture several hours ahead if you wish, but wait to boil the pasta until just before serving. Take care to cook the pasta on the firm side of al dente. Spoon the cherry tomatoes and all their juices over the pasta and toss gently. As the cool tomatoes hit the hot pasta, an extraordinary mingling of flavors occurs. Let the dish rest for a few minutes it tastes best after it sits a bit. Cheese isn’t necessary, but you could add some grated mild ricotta salata. A final sprinkle of flaky sea salt, crushed red pepper or more herbs would be welcome, as would a drizzle of fruity olive oil. If the grill is going, consider giving your tomatoes a quick char, then turning them into a antipasto or first course. The grill, or a broiler, gives the tomatoes a little smokiness but doesn’t cook them too much. Dab them with a vinaigrette and garnish with egg, anchovy fillets and crunchy bread crumbs. It is a pleasure to get a bit of each element in every mouthful. A tomato tart with mozzarella and anchovy is easy to put together. It has all the appeal of pizza, but it doesn’t require keeping the oven at full blast. And it doesn’t really need to be served warm. I actually prefer it at room temperature. The pastry dough is made with olive oil instead of butter, which makes a crisp crust. For a fancier version, use puff pastry instead. Roll the dough out to a rectangle, and cover the surface with thin slices of tomato and mozzarella. Dot with anchovy fillets, adding capers and olives, perhaps, or roughly chopped rosemary and hot pepper. Cut the tart into large or small squares. But, fellow tomato lovers, remember also to make the ultimate BLT or a meatless avocado version. And don’t forget the tomato sandwich. Recipes: Charred Tomatoes With Egg, Anchovies and Bread Crumbs | Pasta Fredda with Cherry Tomatoes, Anchovies and Herbs | Tomato Tart With Fresh Mozzarella and Anchovies And to Drink . .. With tomato sauces, the reflex is to grab a red. But with the fresh tomatoes of summer, a crisp, incisive white is a better choice. The lively acidity of these whites is a superior match for the deceptively potent acidity of fresh tomatoes, even when they are charred or cooked. Fianos from Campania, carricantes from Mount Etna and vermentinos from Liguria are intuitive pairings, but my secret weapon is from France: Bourgogne Aligoté, the stealth white from Burgundy. Aligoté is lighter and more acidic than chardonnay, and generally made in an unoaked style. The flavors of a good aligoté meld beautifully with fresh tomato sauces and the other recipes here. Other options include good dry rosés, and light sparkling wines like good cavas or crémants from Jura or Alsace. ERIC ASIMOV | 1 |
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Monday on MSNBC while evaluating President Donald Trump’s election victory over Hillary Clinton, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver ( ) said Democrats are making a “very very serious mistake” taking the vote “for granted. ” Discussing losing voters who normally vote for Democrats, Cleaver said, “Look, you know, Democrats, even those that either were pushed out or slipped out of our ranks in the last election, this past November, are people with whom we have common values. I think some of them were not inspired. We didn’t have an inspirational or aspirational election. With the Democrats are making a very very serious mistake. And many of us have told them over and over again when we say, ‘you take for granted.’ And they do, and I think that’s going to come back to hurt us in the long run. ” ( Grabien) Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN, | 0 |
HENDERSONVILLE, N. C. — Jeff Miller, a dry cleaner owner who serves on the City Council here, was driving his green truck late Monday afternoon when news of the Christmas market attack in Berlin came on the radio. “I thought, here we go again,” he said. “So sad. ” But there was also something new. “This world’s dangerous right now, and I don’t think we are nearly where we need to be with border security,” he said. “I believe Donald Trump wants to do it right. ” As Mr. Trump prepares to assume the presidency next month, one of the biggest issues he will face is immigration. His incendiary statements prompted some of the most enduring images of the campaign, with chants like “build the wall” and calls for deportations and bans on Muslims. Here in Henderson County, an patch of western North Carolina where solid suburban homes stand next to hilly apple orchards, Mr. Trump’s tone did not appeal, but the underlying message hit home. Immigration looms large here: Hispanics now make up about 10 percent of the population. But they are a familiar part of the landscape. They are Christians. They have been a big part of the community for decades. Muslims, however, are none of those things. Most of what people know comes in the form of the daily drip of news into their iPads, and that does not leave a good impression. So the part of the immigration message that really resonates here is about Muslims from the Middle East. “It’s a little different than any time in history, when we are seeing this level of terrorism sweeping the world, and that has gotten people’s attention,” said Bill Campbell, pastor at Hendersonville Presbyterian Church. “Terrorism is an ideology, it’s not a religion, but the religion that tends to give birth to it most often these days is Islam. The threat from that is very real, and we can’t just ignore it. ” And while Mr. Trump has bounced around on the topic since Election Day — on Wednesday his spokesman indicated that suspending immigration from countries with a lot of terror attacks was still part of his plan — many moderate voters say they are hopeful about where he will eventually land. “I’m telling you, he’s going to surprise people, he’s going to make people mad on both sides,” said Greg Mathis, senior pastor at the Mud Creek Baptist Church in Hendersonville. “Sometimes he’s too blunt, maybe a little too raw. But securing our borders has been a long time coming, and Donald Trump was the first one in a long time to say it. I think that’s what registered with so many people in this country. ” American Muslim organizations say that singling out Muslims amounts to racial profiling, and that Mr. Trump has deliberately stirred the pot, promoting theories about Muslims that simply are not true. They say that violence comes from ideological zealots, not from Islam. They say that the United States already does extremely vigorous vetting of immigrants and that some recent attacks that cited the Islamic State were carried out by Muslims who were born in the United States. “We’ve never said that people don’t have real fears about international or domestic incidents and national security,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on Relations in Washington. “But you want to take actions that are actually based on reality, not on wild conspiracy theories of Muslims about to overthrow the Constitution, or institute Shariah law. ” Mr. Miller had some reservations voting for Mr. Trump, and said he was as surprised as anyone that Mr. Trump won. He didn’t like Mr. Trump’s attacks on Senator John McCain or his calls for mass deportations. Hispanics have long been part of life here, picking apples in the orchards, and Mr. Miller sees them as hard workers with strong family values. He employs several in his dry cleaning store. He strongly supports President Obama’s 2014 order shielding young undocumented immigrants. It helped a young family friend. “People are very welcoming here,” said Brother Roberto Perez, of the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. “At the local level, they go out of their way to help. ” Hispanics are also churchgoers. They make up about half the congregation at Immaculate Conception. Pastor Mathis at Mud Creek has added a service on Sundays and had his book about Jesus translated into Spanish. “The thing about these immigrants — they settle down, they work hard, they are very and they are Christians,” said Seth Smith, 37, a computer repairman in Hendersonville. “I don’t mind sharing my home as long as it is on fair terms with people who are working hard and keeping the same cultural values that makes this community this community. ” Muslims are so scarce that few people here seem to know any. And the news kept happening: Paris, San Bernardino, Nice, Orlando. There was a disconnect, Pastor Campbell said. People wanted an open discussion about political Islam and the problems it poses for open societies, but felt they weren’t getting it. “I can understand this administration not wanting to use words like ‘Islamic terrorism’ and wanting to soften things, but I also understand the angst when we are not having an open discussion,” he said. “That leaves it open for . ” This summer, when word got out that some members of a local church were talking about resettling Syrian refugees, many people objected. Mr. Miller was among them. The reluctance was not about lack of compassion. Local people, including his business, generously fund a Boys and Girls Club. The Bounty of Bethlehem program draws hundreds of volunteers and donations for Christmas gifts and dinners for the needy every year. But worries about migrants from the Middle East run deep. “Let’s take care of our own before we expand to a group there’s so much uncertainty about,” said Mr. Miller, 62, a of a nonprofit for veterans. For example, there are many homeless veterans in the county who need care, he said. “Some people believe they can wrap their arms around anyone and make them their friend,” he said. “But they could stab you in the back. ” Khalid Bashir, president of the Islamic Center of Asheville, in the nearby county of Buncombe, said Muslim Americans were no different from any other Americans in wanting to keep terrorists out of the United States. He estimated that there were 75 to 100 Muslim families in western North Carolina and that probably 20 of them lived in Henderson County. He knows one in which the mother is a nurse, the father a car dealer, and their daughter is in college. “Generally speaking, the stand for the Muslims is that nobody wants to have borders which are porous, including Muslim people,” Mr. Bashir said. “But making blanket statements about whole groups of people, whole religious groups, that’s what people are against. ” Mr. Hooper said that many Americans had a distorted view of even the most basic facts about Muslims, one that often exaggerates their influence. He cited a recent study that found that on average Americans guess that Muslims are 17 percent of the population, when the real number is 1 or 2 percent. And unlike in some places in Europe, in the United States Muslims are well integrated into society. He said incidents had spiked since the election. He got a call recently from a man who was disparaging Islam. When he asked if the man was threatening him, the man replied: “I don’t have to. My president will take care of you for me. ” Many people interviewed in Henderson County said that it was wrong to target all Muslims and that making policy would be hard — more brain surgery than ditch digging. “We do have to be careful about this,” Pastor Campbell said. “This is complex. We don’t want to alienate people who come from the Middle East. ” Jibril Hough, a Muslim activist in Charlotte, N. C. said some of the policies would probably be reinstated, but he was skeptical that Mr. Trump’s more radical propositions would happen. “I think it’s going to be tougher, but I don’t think it’s going to be as extreme as it’s being played right now,” he said. For Mr. Miller, the key will be whom Mr. Trump chooses for his team — and if he listens. Some of the appointments worry him. He wishes Mr. Trump would stop posting to Twitter. Still, he wants people to give him a chance. “I wish we could all set it aside right now and let the man see what he can do,” he said. | 1 |
DAVOS, Switzerland — For the investors and at the annual World Economic Forum here, a threat lurks. At cocktail parties where the Champagne flows, financiers have expressed bewilderment over the rise of populist groups that are feeding a backlash against globalization. In the halls of the Davos Congress Center, where many of the meetings this week are taking place, investors have tried to make sense of the political upheaval. The world order has been upended. As the United States retreats from the promise of free trade, China is taking up the mantle. The stark shift leaves investors trying to assess the new risk and opportunities in the global economy. “This is the first time there is absolutely no consensus,” said William F. Browder, a of Hermitage Capital Management who has been coming to Davos for 21 years. “Everyone is looking into the abyss. ” The religion of the global elite — free trade and open markets — is under attack, and there has been a lot of over what Christine Lagarde of the International Monetary Fund has declared a “ crisis. ” But while all attendees in Davos have a view on the state of the world, there is little agreement on how to deal with it. The biggest concern? Finding a way to make the people who are driving populist movements feel like they are part of the global economic pie that Davos participants have created and largely own. In a Twitter post from the Swiss resort, Ian Bremmer, the president of Eurasia Group, a firm, offered his advice: “Elites won’t be able to manage populism until they stop seeing it as a threat and start seeing it as a symptom. ” If that is the case, Davos has, so far, made little progress. “I want to be loud and clear: Populism scares me,” Ray Dalio, the billionaire hedge fund manager, said during a panel on how to fix the crisis. “The No. 1 issue economically as a market participant is how populism manifests itself over the next year or two. ” But Mr. Dalio offered little by way of a solution, beyond opining on the positive aspects of loosening regulation and lowering taxes. On the subject of rising populism, Mr. Dalio, who runs the $150 billion investment firm Bridgewater Associates, added: “It’s an way of operating. ” Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba in China, offered his view of the problem in the United States. Americans, he said, “do not distribute the money properly. ” If there was one thing that Davos attendees agreed on last year, it was that Donald J. Trump would not win the United States presidential election. And so this year, with Mr. Trump’s inauguration on Friday coinciding with the end of the World Economic Forum, every conversation has drifted to one question: What will the Trump presidency look like, and what will it mean for business? To many American financiers who once opposed Mr. Trump’s candidacy, the prospect of fewer regulations and a blank slate with a new leader has assuaged some of the fear about uncertainties. At the forum, some attendees have been thrust into a role of interpreting the to a befuddled global elite. “He’s not necessarily communicating in a way that the people in this community would love,” said Anthony Scaramucci, a hedge fund regular at Davos and onetime critic of Mr. Trump who is now set to join the administration as a public liaison and adviser. “But he is communicating very, very effectively to a very large group of the population in Europe and the U. S. that are feeling a common struggle right now. ” Mr. Scaramucci promised that Mr. Trump had “the utmost respect for Angela Merkel,” the German chancellor who was the subject of an attack by the this week that he was in fact a champion of free trade and that he wanted to have a “phenomenal relationship with the Chinese,” despite his fiery language. Soon after his appearance on a panel, Mr. Scaramucci was on a plane heading to Washington to attend Mr. Trump’s inauguration. But his words still resonated, mainly because they were being broadcast on a giant screen behind a coffee bar where World Economic Forum participants congregated between meetings. One Davos regular, the billionaire investor Paul Singer, did not attend this year. Mr. Singer, a vociferous critic of Mr. Trump for most of the election campaign, was instead making his way to Washington for the inauguration, having recently donated $1 million to the event. One major investor has not changed his views about Mr. Trump, however. George Soros, the investor and philanthropist who has called Mr. Trump “a con man,” hosted a dinner on Thursday evening in Davos, during which he said that Mr. Trump “would be a dictator if he could get away with it. ” This was unlikely to happen, he added, because of strong democratic institutions in the United States. For those who have been puzzled over market euphoria since Mr. Trump’s election, Mr. Soros put it this way: “Markets see Trump dismantling regulations and reducing taxes — and that has been their dream. ” But Mr. Soros, who became known as the man who broke the Bank of England with a bet against the British pound in 1992, added that he was convinced that Mr. Trump would fail. “I don’t think the markets are going to do very well,” he said. When President Xi Jinping addressed the Davos forum, becoming the first Chinese head of state to do so, his message was clear: China is ready for the world stage. He championed free trade and open markets, setting the tone for the week. On the sidelines, the country’s business leaders echoed that sentiment. Among the delegation that arrived in Davos with Mr. Xi were some of China’s biggest business leaders including Mr. Ma, Wang Jianlin of Dalian Wanda, and top executives from Baidu, Huawei Technologies and China Telecom. Through the week, they have been meeting with investors and talking deals with erstwhile partners. With Mr. Xi’s help, China has fashioned itself here as a new leader of the world. “I wasn’t sure if it was President Xi or Ronald Reagan,” joked Thomas W. Farley, president of the New York Stock Exchange. At a lunch with Mr. Ma of Alibaba, Mr. Xi was quoting Abraham Lincoln, Mr. Ma told a small group of participants on Wednesday. It was a message somewhat at odds with the roots of China’s ruling Communist Party. And back in Washington, Wilbur Ross, Mr. Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary, did not mince words, calling China “the most protectionist” major economy, setting the stage for a possible trade war. But in Davos, there was a sense that change in the economic order was afoot. Alicia Bárcena Ibarra, who heads the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, told a small group that China could soon overtake the United States when it comes to importance in Latin America. She described how on the same day last year that Mr. Trump told the world he would not sign the Partnership, Mr. Xi arrived for a summit meeting in Chile. “So can you imagine the impact when he came talking about free trade as he did this morning?” she said, referring to Mr. Xi’s address on Tuesday in Davos. “China now is the important trade partner of Latin America after the U. S. ” “Maybe this is going to change,” she added. “Very soon. ” | 1 |
Ynetnews reports: Israeli scientists from the company Nucleix succeeded in developing a first of its kind blood test to diagnose lung cancer. [The new test is able to diagnose the disease long before it spreads in the body, thus increasing the chance of survival, as many patients usually die within a few months of the diagnosis. Each year, approximately 1. 8 million new lung cancer patients are diagnosed, a 1. 59 million of whom will die within the first year . Most cases are discovered by chance, after a screening test, or due to abnormal symptoms such as prolonged cough, bloody cough, breathing difficulties or weight loss. Read more here. | 0 |
Vintage News Tue, 25 Oct 2016 Nasīr al-Dīn Tūsī was a Persian polymath and prolific writer: An architect, astronomer, biologist, chemist, mathematician, philosopher, physician, physicist, scientist, theologian and Marja Taqleed. He was of the Ismaili, and subsequently Twelver Shī’ah, Islamic belief. The Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun (1332 – 1406) considered Tusi to be the greatest of the later Persian scholars.
Tusi has about 150 works, of which 25 are in Persian and the remaining are in Arabic, and there is one treatise in Persian, Arabic and Turkish.
During his stay in Nishapur, Tusi established a reputation as an exceptional scholar. Tusi’s prose writings represent one of the largest collections by a single Islamic author. Writing in both Arabic and Persian, Nasir al-Din Tusi dealt with both religious (“Islamic”) topics and non-religious or secular subjects (“the ancient sciences”). His works include the definitive Arabic versions of the works of Euclid, Archimedes, Ptolemy, Autolycus, and Theodosius of Bithynia. ‘A Treatise on Astrolabe’ by Tusi, Isfahan, 1505. Source: Danieliness
In his Akhlaq-i-Nasri , Tusi put forward a basic theory of the evolution of species almost 600 years before Charles Darwin was born. He begins his theory of evolution with the universe once consisting of equal and similar elements. According to Tusi, internal contradictions began appearing, and as a result, some substances began developing faster and differently from other substances. He then explains how the elements evolved into minerals, then plants, then animals, and then humans. Tusi then goes on to explain how hereditary variability was an important factor for biological evolution of living things:
“The organisms that can gain the new features faster are more variable. As a result, they gain advantages over other creatures. […] The bodies are changing as a result of the internal and external interactions.” The Astronomical Observatory of Nasir al-Dīn Tusi
Tusi discusses how organisms are able to adapt to their environments:
“Look at the world of animals and birds. They have all that is necessary for defense, protection and daily life, including strengths, courage and appropriate tools [organs] […] Some of these organs are real weapons, […] For example, horns-spear, teeth and claws-knife and needle, feet and hoofs-cudgel. The thorns and needles of some animals are similar to arrows. […] Animals that have no other means of defense (as the gazelle and fox) protect themselves with the help of flight and cunning. […] Some of them, for example, bees, ants and some bird species, have united in communities in order to protect themselves and help each other.” Iranian stamp for the 700th anniversary of his death
Tusi recognized three types of living things: plants, animals, and humans. He wrote:
“Animals are higher than plants, because they are able to move consciously, go after food, find and eat useful things. […] There are many differences between the animal and plant species, […] First of all, the animal kingdom is more complicated. Besides, reason is the most beneficial feature of animals. Owing to reason, they can learn new things and adopt new, non-inherent abilities. For example, the trained horse or hunting falcon is at a higher point of development in the animal world. The first steps of human perfection begin from here.” A stamp issued in the republic of Azerbaijan in 2009 honoring Tusi
Tusi then explains how humans evolved from advanced animals:
“Such humans [probably anthropoid apes] live in the Western Sudan and other distant corners of the world. They are close to animals by their habits, deeds and behavior. […] The human has features that distinguish him from other creatures, but he has other features that unite him with the animal world, vegetable kingdom or even with the inanimate bodies. […] Before [the creation of humans], all differences between organisms were of the natural origin. The next step will be associated with spiritual perfection, will, observation and knowledge. […] All these facts prove that the human being is placed on the middle step of the evolutionary stairway. According to his inherent nature, the human is related to the lower beings, and only with the help of his will can he reach the higher development level .” SOTT Comment: Note that, unlike Darwin’s version of the theory , which resulted in a proliferation of ideas about the ‘survival of the fittest’ that encouraged man’s baser nature and justified European imperialism, Tusi’s theory of evolution apparently underpinned ideas about higher man’s spiritual development . Share: | 1 |
Western Livestock Journal – by Jason Campbell
—Affected stakeholders not informed of public hearing
A public meeting was held recently in southwest Oregon to discuss a proposal from the state’s two U.S. senators asking that President Barack Obama double the size of the existing Cascade Siskiyou National Monument.
Both the proposal and the meeting came as a shock to area ranchers and government officials, most of whom were unaware that such a request had been made on their behalf. Held at the request of Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley (D), the Oct. 14 meeting also included Deputy Secretary of the Interior Mike Connor, and was intended to allow the federal official to hear comments and gauge public support for the proposed expansion.
Originally created by President Bill Clinton in 2000, the 66,000-acre Cascade Siskiyou National Monument has long been a point of contention between environmentalists, ranchers, and loggers, all of whom share close quarters in Oregon’s southwest corner.
The proposed expansion would add another 65,000 acres of public land in both Jackson and Klamath Counties, as well as a small portion of California’s Siskiyou County.
While attendance at the meeting appeared overwhelmingly in favor of expanding the monument, opponents argue that this was because key stakeholders were not told a meeting was taking place.
“There was no notice of any meeting,” says rancher Lee Bradshaw. “It was pretty underhanded.
When we did find out, we called as many people as we could, but on a Friday afternoon at 2:00, most folks are at work.”
“We got an email from Merkley’s office late on [Oct. 7], which was a Friday,” says Klamath County Commissioner Tom Mallam. “We really weren’t aware of it until Monday.”
“A lot of the parties that would be directly affected were never informed at all,” he adds. “This includes our local BLM office, as well as the BLM office in Redding. I haven’t heard of any of the ranchers that got notifications.
“I would call it a very transparent attempt to keep those who would oppose (expansion) in the dark.”
Despite having little time to respond, Mallam did attend the meeting, where he says those in favor of the monument appeared much better prepared.
“I saw professionally made signs supporting the monument, and a sea of t-shirts,” he says. “That was extremely disturbing; you don’t get those made up overnight. It was very obvious that they had plenty of notice ahead of time.”
As of press time, Merkley had not responded to requests for comment. However in a letter from the senator to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell dated Oct. 4, Merkley requested her presence at the Oct. 14 meeting, and claimed that the proposal had “strong backing” from the regions elected officials, citizens, chambers of commerce, and landowners.
The reality, says Mallam, is much different than Merkley’s claim. According to Mallam, officials from two cities in the area, Ashland and Talent, have announced their support of the expansion. However, the remaining communities, as well as the county governments from all three affected counties either oppose the proposal, or were not aware of it.
“Merkley’s office has, time and again, referenced substantial support based on two small cities,” says Mallam. “It’s disturbing to say the least.”
Among the ranchers who were in attendance to speak against the monument, primary concerns centered on the potential loss of public grazing and the inclusion of private lands within the monument boundary.
“Merkley’s comment to me was that making it a monument won’t necessarily stop grazing,” says Bradshaw, whose BLM permit falls within the proposed expansion area. “But I know what the end result will be.”
For Bradshaw and other ranchers living in the shadow of the existing monument, all this has happened before.
“When the initial monument was created, they allowed grazing to continue as part of a three-year study,” explains Bradshaw. “We all knew how that was going to turn out.”
Eventually finding that grazing was incompatible with the monument, the government offered to purchase permits from willing sellers.
“Those guys could see the writing on the wall,” says Bradshaw. “If they didn’t sell out, they were going to get regulated out. Their permits were bought out, and there’s no longer any grazing over there.”
Bradshaw believes the same scenario will be repeated if the monument is expanded.
“They’re going to find a butterfly over here, or a frog over there, and eventually, they are going to regulate you off,” he says. “If I thought there was a chance I could work with them and still be running cows up there in 10 years, I’d pursue it.”
The inclusion of private lands is an additional concern. Along with the 65,000 acres of public land, the proposed expansion boundary also includes 34,000 acres of private timber and grazing land. Expansion supporters insist that this land will remain in private hands. Opponents, however, are quick to point out that this claim has not been borne out by circumstances on the existing monument.
When it was initially created, the monument was comprised of 86,000 acres, 52,000 of which were public lands. Since that time, approximately 15,000 additional acres have been converted to public ownership, and much of the remainder is in the hands of conservation groups, awaiting public purchase. The reason for this, according to opponents, is constant pressure to sell using tactics such as restricted access, forcing a landowner into the position of a willing seller rather than face the legal battle required to keep their property.
According to both Mallam and Bradshaw, opponents of the monument are exploring their legal options, but with just a few months left in the Obama administration, there isn’t much time to mount a defense.
“If they’re going to do it, it’s going to happen very quickly,” says Mallam. “I don’t know that there’s any way to reverse it.”
“I just don’t understand how they can do something like this,” adds Bradshaw. “If you put it out for a vote, most of the people here would be against it. Yet here we are.” — Jason Campbell, WLJ Correspondent | 1 |
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The most interesting books of the Bible for those who aren’t believers in God are the wisdom books of Job and Ecclesiastes. Written from a philosophical point of view, they attempt to help people live with suffering and pain while putting existence into context.
Book of Job
Job is a devout believer in God who follows all of His rules. He has been blessed with incredible wealth and numerous children. Satan then challenges God by arguing that Job is only faithful because of what he has gained, and that he would immediately curse God if everything was taken away from him. God allows Satan to destroy him, taking his wealth and killing all of his children.
Once the misfortune befalls Job, his wife implores him to curse God, but Job refuses. Instead, he openly laments at why God is allowing him to suffer. He even asks God to allow him to die.
I would rather be strangled—
rather die than suffer like this.
I hate my life and don’t want to go on living
Oh, leave me alone for my few remaining days. (Job 7:15-16)
Why make me your target?
Am I a burden to you?
Why not just forgive my sin
and take away my guilt?
For soon I will lie down in the dust and die.
When you look for me, I will be gone. (Job 7:20-21)
What do you gain by oppressing me?
Why do you reject me, the work of your own hands,
while smiling on the schemes of the wicked? (Job 10:3)
He then has a series of poetic dialogues with priestly men in an attempt to explain God’s justice. Job asks some pointed questions, implying that those who are eager to sin seem to experience more prosperity than those who closely follow God’s words.
The godless seem like a lush plant growing in the sunshine,
its branches spreading across the garden.
Its roots grow down through a pile of stones;
it takes hold on a bed of rocks.
But when it is uprooted,
it’s as though it never existed! (Job 8:16-18)
When a plague sweeps through,
he laughs at the death of the innocent.
The whole earth is in the hands of the wicked,
and God blinds the eyes of the judges.
If he’s not the one who does it, who is? (Job 9:23-24)
Just like how there are so many laws in the legal code that you are always on the hook for something illegal, there are also so many possible sins that it may be impossible to live a clean life.
Whatever happens, I will be found guilty.
So what’s the use of trying?
Even if I were to wash myself with soap
and clean my hands with lye,
you would plunge me into a muddy ditch,
and my own filthy clothing would hate me. (Job 9:29-31)
The men that Job spills his guts to state that he’s sinning in some way and knows nothing about how God works, and that he must grin and bear it instead of questioning God’s actions.
Pay attention to this, Job.
Stop and consider the wonderful miracles of God!
Do you know how God controls the storm
and causes the lightning to flash from his clouds?
Do you understand how he moves the clouds
with wonderful perfection and skill?
When you are sweltering in your clothes
and the south wind dies down and everything is still,
he makes the skies reflect the heat like a bronze mirror.
Can you do that? (Job 37:14-18)
God appears and asks Job how dare he question His actions, even though those actions amounted to an agreement with Satan.
Who is this that questions my wisdom
with such ignorant words?
Brace yourself like a man,
because I have some questions for you,
and you must answer them.
Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Tell me, if you know so much.
Who determined its dimensions
and stretched out the surveying line?
What supports its foundations,
and who laid its cornerstone
as the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy? (Job 38:2-7)
God goes on to describe his powers and then serves a “How dare you?” argument to Job, who then accepts his utter impotence.
Then the LORD said to Job,
“Do you still want to argue with the Almighty?
You are God’s critic, but do you have the answers?”
Then Job replied to the LORD,
“I am nothing—how could I ever find the answers?
I will cover my mouth with my hand.
I have said too much already.
I have nothing more to say.” (Job 40:2-5)
You asked, ‘Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorance?’
It is I—and I was talking about things I knew nothing about,
things far too wonderful for me.
You said, ‘Listen and I will speak!
I have some questions for you,
and you must answer them.’
I had only heard about you before,
but now I have seen you with my own eyes.
I take back everything I said,
and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance.” (Job 42:3-6)
Other parts of the Bible channel Job by asking why bad on Earth is allowed to continue:
Wake up, O Lord! Why do you sleep?
Get up! Do not reject us forever.
Why do you look the other way?
Why do you ignore our suffering and oppression?
We collapse in the dust,
lying face down in the dirt.
Rise up! Help us!
Ransom us because of your unfailing love. (Psalm 44:23-26)
And the usual response is to not question God:
What sorrow awaits those who argue with their Creator.
Does a clay pot argue with its maker?
Does the clay dispute with the one who shapes it, saying,
‘Stop, you’re doing it wrong!’
Does the pot exclaim,
‘How clumsy can you be?’
How terrible it would be if a newborn baby said to its father,
‘Why was I born?’
or if it said to its mother,
‘Why did you make me this way?’ (Isaiah 5:9-10)
After Job stopped questioning God, he was rewarded with even greater prosperity than before:
So the LORD blessed Job in the second half of his life even more than in the beginning. For now he had 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 teams of oxen, and 1,000 female donkeys. He also gave Job seven more sons and three more daughters. He named his first daughter Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch. In all the land no women were as lovely as the daughters of Job. And their father put them into his will along with their brothers. Job lived 140 years after that, living to see four generations of his children and grandchildren. Then he died, an old man who had lived a long, full life. (Job 42:12-17)
You have to be patient with God:
Those who plant in tears will harvest with shouts of joy. They weep as they go to plant their seed, but they sing as they return with the harvest. (Psalm 126:5-6)
The lesson of this story seems to be one of stoicism: accept your fate, don’t question it, and understand that what you have now can be taken from you at a moment’s notice if God wants to, no matter how cleanly you have lived in his honor. Ironically, this book did more to make me question God’s wisdom than any other.
Book Of Ecclesiastes
The next wisdom book is Ecclesiastes, purportedly written by King’s David son, Solomon, who amassed one-thousand wives during his reign as King of Israel. His wife collection led to him serving other gods, and he was punished for it when God broke up the Kingdom of Israel. Ecclesiastes is the book that Solomon wrote at the end of his life, sharing all that he learned.
“Everything is meaningless,” says the Teacher, “completely meaningless!” What do people get for all their hard work under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth never changes. The sun rises and the sun sets, then hurries around to rise again. The wind blows south, and then turns north. Around and around it goes, blowing in circles. Rivers run into the sea, but the sea is never full. Then the water returns again to the rivers and flows out again to the sea. Everything is wearisome beyond description. No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we are not content. History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new. (Ecclesiastes 1:2-11)
What is the point of accumulating wisdom in life? Why work hard?
For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. (Ecclesiastes 1:18)
I thought, “Wisdom is better than foolishness, just as light is better than darkness. For the wise can see where they are going, but fools walk in the dark.” Yet I saw that the wise and the foolish share the same fate. Both will die. So I said to myself, “Since I will end up the same as the fool, what’s the value of all my wisdom? This is all so meaningless!” For the wise and the foolish both die. (Ecclesiastes 2:13-16)
So what do people get in this life for all their hard work and anxiety? Their days of labor are filled with pain and grief; even at night their minds cannot rest. It is all meaningless. (Ecclesiastes 2:22-23)
All is vanity:
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. (Ecclesiastes 3:19-20)
Promiscuous and bad women are sent forth as a punishment from God:
I discovered that a seductive woman is a trap more bitter than death. Her passion is a snare, and her soft hands are chains. Those who are pleasing to God will escape her, but sinners will be caught in her snare. (Ecclesiastes 7:26)
Solomon tries to convince himself that evil will not prosper, but he can’t help coming back to the fact that it does:
When a crime is not punished quickly, people feel it is safe to do wrong. But even though a person sins a hundred times and still lives a long time, I know that those who fear God will be better off. The wicked will not prosper, for they do not fear God. Their days will never grow long like the evening shadows. And this is not all that is meaningless in our world. In this life, good people are often treated as though they were wicked, and wicked people are often treated as though they were good. This is so meaningless! (Ecclesiastes 8:11-16)
At this moment, it seems that Solomon goes off the rails by seemingly promoting a life of debauchery:
So I recommend having fun, because there is nothing better for people in this world than to eat, drink, and enjoy life. That way they will experience some happiness along with all the hard work God gives them under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 8:15)
One interpretation of this is that if you live in sin like Solomon, you will eventually come to the conclusion that life is meaningless, all is for naught, and the only purpose is to have fun. The book may have been included in the Bible to serve as an example of what will happen to you if behave as Solomon and come to the end of your life thinking that it wasn’t worth it. I hope this was the intended result because otherwise it would cause you to lose faith in God’s own wisdom in justice, just like with Job.
The wisdom books of the Bible raise questions of God’s justice and plans for his human subjects. Why do people suffer or prosper? Why does life feel like it’s not being guided by God? These questions vexed the Jews enough that they honored other Gods to get more immediate results. And then Jesus Christ came along to say that it will all be worth it—not necessarily now, but in the eternal afterlife, as long as you accept him as your savior.
Read More: The Old Testament’s “Sexist” Views On Female Behavior
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ISTANBUL — Turkey sent tanks, warplanes and special operations forces into northern Syria on Wednesday in its biggest plunge yet into the Syrian conflict, enabling Syrian rebels to take control of an important Islamic State stronghold within hours. The operation, assisted by American airstrikes, is a significant escalation of Turkey’s role in the fight against the Islamic State, the militant extremist group ensconced in parts of Syria and Iraq that has increasingly been targeting Turkey. By evening, Syrian rebels backed by the United States and Turkey declared that they had seized the town of Jarabulus and its surroundings, which had been the Islamic State’s last major redoubt near the Turkish border. Numerous fighters posted photographs and videos of themselves online with the green, black and white flag adopted by the Syrian opposition as they walked through empty streets where the black flag of Islamic State still flew it appeared that most of the militants had fled without a fight. The offensive had two immediate goals: To clear Islamic State militants from their remaining border stronghold, and roll back recent advances by Syrian Kurdish militias that Turkey considers an equal or greater threat because of their links to its own domestic Kurdish insurgents. Yet it had deeper reverberations, signaling a broad and volatile reshuffling of alliances in and around Syria that has been brewing over recent months. The United States is rebalancing its relations with two allies that consider one another enemies, Turkey and Kurdish militias, throwing a bone to Turkey, which has been angry over deepening American cooperation with the Kurds. For embattled Syrian rebel groups not affiliated with the Islamic State or Al Qaeda, it is an opportunity to show that they could be effective partners against extremists — and for some, to take back their home villages. Turkey got American approval and air support to seize part of an area it has long coveted as a buffer zone. And with Russia, the Syrian government’s main ally, issuing only a tepid condemnation of Turkish incursion, there were signs that Moscow and the Washington could be testing baby steps toward a compromise. Both have floated a suggestion that vetted Syrian rebels could fight extremists in exchange for a role in a somehow expanded or reformed Syrian government — but it has been received with skepticism by the Syrian combatants. There were myriad other possibilities, all related to Turkey’s recent exploration of rapprochement with Russia and Iran, backers of the Syrian president, Bashar . “The push for Jarabulous seems intimately linked to Turkey’s but secretive regional diplomacy,” wrote Aron Lund, an analyst for the Carnegie Middle East Program. With the full picture still unclear, the new front simply added another complicated twist to an already dizzyingly multisided war. The Syrian government was left to issue an angry statement as yet another party plunged into its territory. It was unclear whether it had been sidelined or had given tacit approval. At the White House, President Obama’s chief spokesman, Josh Earnest, called the Turkish assault “an indication of important progress” in the campaign against the Islamic State. Earlier, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. signaled support for the operation. He had traveled to the Turkish capital, Ankara, on Wednesday to meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a time of high tensions between the two countries after the failed coup in Turkey last month, in which news media drummed up suspicions that the United States was involved and relations reached a low not seen since World War II. Turkey is demanding the extradition of Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric in in Pennsylvania whom Turkey accuses of leading the plot. But the timing of the joint offensive and some strong words of support from Mr. Biden seemed to show an easing of the strains. Speaking at a news conference after the meeting, Mr. Biden said Syrian Kurdish militias, an important American ally in the fight against the Islamic State, would have to meet a Turkish demand by withdrawing to the eastern side of the Euphrates River in northeastern Syria. “We have made it clear to Kurdish forces that they must move back across the river,” he said. “They cannot and will not get American support if they do not keep that commitment. Period. ” It was an unusually sharp warning from the United States to the forces, which American officials have repeatedly called their most reliable partner on the ground against Islamic State. In return, the United States got something it has pushed for in vain for years, getting Turkey to take a more proactive stance to battle Islamic State fighters on its border, which for years it allowed them to cross with impunity. The solution appeared to be allowing Turkey to try to clear the area of both Islamic State and Kurdish militias. Turkey has also signaled an even bigger shift in recent days — that it is prepared to take a more aggressive diplomatic role in Syria, working alongside Iran, Russia and the United States to seek an end to the war. The Turkish government has long insisted that Mr. Assad would have to step down before peace talks could be held. But lately, Turkey has softened its stance, indicating that it would accept a role for Mr. Assad during a political transition. The Syrian Foreign Ministry condemned the operation as a breach of Syria’s sovereignty. Russia, in a notably softer reaction, said it was “deeply concerned. ” It did not refer to the rebels as “terrorists,” a label it has applied to all opposition groups in the past, but as “opposition fighters. ” The rebels involved in the operation appeared to be mainly from the groups fighting to unseat Mr. Assad that the United States, Turkey and other allies support through a covert operations center in Turkey, and identify themselves as part of the Free Syrian Army. The F. S. A. is more a brand than a command structure, led by army defectors and others who say they reject the extremist ideologies of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. They are the subject of a longstanding dispute between Russia and the United States Russia has often targeted them, saying they are legitimate targets unless they move far from the fighters of the group until recently called the Nusra Front. Turkish officials were adamant that they would continue operations in Syria until they had neutralized what they see as threats against national security. One thing they view as a threat is any Kurdish advances to link two separate Kurdish enclaves along Turkey’s border, currently separated by a strip of Islamic State territory running from the Euphrates west to the northern suburbs of Aleppo. Wednesday’s operation inserted the mainly Arab, rebels into the part of that gap that Kurds had been eyeing. Turkey said one rebel fighter was killed in the incursion but that no Turkish troops died. But the apparent ease and speed of the operation belie complexities ahead. It is not uncommon for Islamic State fighters to withdraw quickly from a place only to leave behind sleeper cell, infiltrate back in or launch harassing attacks later. It appeared they had not put up much of a fight on the ground or taken advantage of the elaborate fortifications they had built in and around the town. The operation started at 4 a. m. officials said, with Turkish and United States warplanes pounding Islamic State positions in Jarabulus. American and warplanes were used, especially effective in support. The special operations troops entered Syria to clear a passage for a ground operation by rebel groups, the state broadcaster TRT reported. The assault came days after Turkey vowed to “cleanse” its borders of the Islamic State, after a deadly suicide attack at a Kurdish wedding killed at least 54 people. The militant group was blamed for the attack. Jarabulus has been a vital supply line for the Islamic State. “Turkey is determined for Syria to retain its territorial integrity and will take matters into its own hands if required to protect that territorial unity,” Mr. Erdogan said in a speech in Ankara on Wednesday. “We have only ever sought to help the people of Syria and have no other intentions. ” | 1 |
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt met with eleven Western Governors at a breakfast on Sunday, honoring a promise he made during his confirmation hearings and at CPAC on Sunday to reach out to state governments to trust. [“There’s distrust right now that exists between the states and Washington, D. C. as it relates to the environment,” Pruitt told the crowd at CPAC on Saturday. “We need to do what we can to restore trust. I’m going to be spending time … with the state governors and the executive branches of [state] government … I’m going to send a message. Let’s join to do what’s important for the environment,” Pruitt said. Less than hours later, Pruitt held the meeting with Western Governors, who appeared to welcome the dialogue. The governors of nineteen western states are members of the Western Governors Association. “The Western Governors Association wants a better state and federal partnership,” Governor Steve Bullock of Montana, current chairman of the group, said in a statement released by the EPA. “I look forward to working together with the Western Governors on issues unique to the Western States and with each of these Governors on issues important to their individual states,” EPA Administrator Pruitt said. “These Governors and their states are great stewards of their natural resources. They want to protect their water and air and grow their economies. The Environmental Protection Agency is going to help them do that,” he added. “In his first week on the job as EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt has now met with 18 Governors and Lieutenant Governors, putting into action his promise of an open door policy and a new beginning of partnership with the states,” the EPA said in its statement. Last week, the Western Governors Association sent a letter to the EPA’s Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery, “reiterat[ing] concerns” over a propsed rule, Financial Responsbility Requirements under CERCLA for Classes of Facilities in the Hardrock Mining Industry. “Many western states rely on the hardrock mining industry for economic development and employment,” the governors wrote: These states have staff dedicated to mine permitting and compliance. Such staff are committed to ensuring hardrock mining facilities are designed, constructed and operated in a manner that minimizes risks to the environment and ensures proper site reclamation. “The EPA’s proposed rule … will negatively affect state economies,” they continued. “It may also hamper existing, effective state financial assurance programs,” they added. Pruitt’s meeting with the governors on Sunday is the kind of reaching out he intends to conduct with state governments across the country to address and respond to their concerns. Twelve members of the group met with Pruitt on Sunday. Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper did not participate in the breakfast, but was in attendance in other meetings. Of the twelve members of the Western Governors Association who met with EPA Administrator Pruitt, seven are Republicans ( Governor Doug Burgum (N. D.) Governor Butch Otter (Idaho) Governor Mary Fallin (Okla.) Governor Brian Sandoval (Nev.) Governor Gary Herbert (Utah) Governor Dennis Daugaard (S. D.) Governor Matt Mead (Wyo.) ). Four are Democrats ( Governor John Hickenlooper (Colo.) Governor Kate Brown (Ore.) Governor Steve Bullock (Mont.) and Governor David Ige (Hawaii) ) and one member, Governor Bill Walker (Alaska) is an independent. The seven members of the Western Governors Association who missed the meeting with Pruitt included five Republicans (Governor Doug Ducey (Arizona) Governor Sam Brownback (Kansas) Governor Pete Ricketts (Nebraska) Governor Susanna Martinez (New Mexico) and Governor Greg Abbot (Texas) ) and two Democrats (Governor Jerry Brown (California) and Governor Jay Inslee (Washington). | 0 |
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Progressive scientists: Truth is a variable deduced by subtracting 'what is' from 'what ought to be'
Experts agree: Hillary Clinton best candidate to lessen percentage of Americans in top 1%
America's attempts at peace talks with the White House continue to be met with lies, stalling tactics, and bad faith
Starbucks new policy to talk race with customers prompts new hashtag #DontHoldUpTheLine
Hillary: DELETE is the new RESET
Charlie Hebdo receives Islamophobe 2015 award ; the cartoonists could not be reached for comment due to their inexplicable, illogical deaths
Russia sends 'reset' button back to Hillary: 'You need it now more than we do'
Barack Obama finds out from CNN that Hillary Clinton spent four years being his Secretary of State
President Obama honors Leonard Nimoy by taking selfie in front of Starship Enterprise
Police: If Obama had a convenience store, it would look like Obama Express Food Market
Study finds stunning lack of racial, gender, and economic diversity among middle-class white males
NASA: We're 80% sure about being 20% sure about being 17% sure about being 38% sure about 2014 being the hottest year on record
People holding '$15 an Hour Now' posters sue Democratic party demanding raise to $15 an hour for rendered professional protesting services
Cuba-US normalization: US tourists flock to see Cuba before it looks like the US and Cubans flock to see the US before it looks like Cuba
White House describes attacks on Sony Pictures as 'spontaneous hacking in response to offensive video mocking Juche and its prophet'
CIA responds to Democrat calls for transparency by releasing the director's cut of The Making Of Obama's Birth Certificate
Obama: 'If I had a city, it would look like Ferguson'
Biden: 'If I had a Ferguson (hic), it would look like a city'
Obama signs executive order renaming 'looters' to 'undocumented shoppers'
Ethicists agree: two wrongs do make a right so long as Bush did it first
The aftermath of the 'War on Women 2014' finds a new 'Lost Generation' of disillusioned Democrat politicians, unable to cope with life out of office
White House: Republican takeover of the Senate is a clear mandate from the American people for President Obama to rule by executive orders
Nurse Kaci Hickox angrily tells reporters that she won't change her clocks for daylight savings time
Democratic Party leaders in panic after recent poll shows most Democratic voters think 'midterm' is when to end pregnancy
Desperate Democratic candidates plead with Obama to stop backing them and instead support their GOP opponents
Ebola Czar issues five-year plan with mandatory quotas of Ebola infections per each state based on voting preferences
Study: crony capitalism is to the free market what the Westboro Baptist Church is to Christianity
Fun facts about world languages: the Left has more words for statism than the Eskimos have for snow
African countries to ban all flights from the United States because "Obama is incompetent, it scares us"
Nobel Peace Prize controversy: Hillary not nominated despite having done even less than Obama to deserve it
Obama: 'Ebola is the JV of viruses'
BREAKING: Secret Service foils Secret Service plot to protect Obama
Revised 1st Amendment: buy one speech, get the second free
Sharpton calls on white NFL players to beat their women in the interests of racial fairness
President Obama appoints his weekly approval poll as new national security adviser
Obama wags pen and phone at Putin; Europe offers support with powerful pens and phones from NATO members
White House pledges to embarrass ISIS back to the Stone Age with a barrage of fearsome Twitter messages and fatally ironic Instagram photos
Obama to fight ISIS with new federal Terrorist Regulatory Agency
Obama vows ISIS will never raise their flag over the eighteenth hole
Harry Reid: "Sometimes I say the wong thing"
Elian Gonzalez wishes he had come to the U.S. on a bus from Central America like all the other kids
Obama visits US-Mexican border, calls for a two-state solution
Obama draws "blue line" in Iraq after Putin took away his red crayon
"Hard Choices," a porno flick loosely based on Hillary Clinton's memoir and starring Hillary Hellfire as a drinking, whoring Secretary of State, wildly outsells the flabby, sagging original
Accusations of siding with the enemy leave Sgt. Bergdahl with only two options: pursue a doctorate at Berkley or become a Senator from Massachusetts
Jay Carney stuck in line behind Eric Shinseki to leave the White House; estimated wait time from 15 min to 6 weeks
100% of scientists agree that if man-made global warming were real, "the last people we'd want to help us is the Obama administration"
Jay Carney says he found out that Obama found out that he found out that Obama found out that he found out about the latest Obama administration scandal on the news
"Anarchy Now!" meeting turns into riot over points of order, bylaws, and whether or not 'kicking the #^@&*! ass' of the person trying to speak is or is not violence
Obama retaliates against Putin by prohibiting unionized federal employees from dating hot Russian girls online during work hours
Russian separatists in Ukraine riot over an offensive YouTube video showing the toppling of Lenin statues
"Free Speech Zones" confuse Obamaphone owners who roam streets in search of additional air minutes
Obamacare bolsters employment for professionals with skills to convert meth back into sudafed
Gloves finally off: Obama uses pen and phone to cancel Putin's Netflix account
Joe Biden to Russia: "We will bury you by turning more of Eastern Europe over to your control!"
In last-ditch effort to help Ukraine, Obama deploys Rev. Sharpton and Rev. Jackson's Rainbow Coalition to Crimea
Al Sharpton: "Not even Putin can withstand our signature chanting, 'racist, sexist, anti-gay, Russian army go away'!"
Mardi Gras in North Korea: " Throw me some food! "
Obama's foreign policy works: "War, invasion, and conquest are signs of weakness; we've got Putin right where we want him"
US offers military solution to Ukraine crisis: "We will only fight countries that have LGBT military"
Putin annexes Brighton Beach to protect ethnic Russians in Brooklyn, Obama appeals to UN and EU for help
The 1980s: "Mr. Obama, we're just calling to ask if you want our foreign policy back . The 1970s are right here with us, and they're wondering, too."
In a stunning act of defiance, Obama courageously unfriends Putin on Facebook
MSNBC: Obama secures alliance with Austro-Hungarian Empire against Russia’s aggression in Ukraine
Study: springbreak is to STDs what April 15th is to accountants
Efforts to achieve moisture justice for California thwarted by unfair redistribution of snow in America
North Korean voters unanimous: "We are the 100%"
Leader of authoritarian gulag-site, The People's Cube, unanimously 're-elected' with 100% voter turnout
Super Bowl: Obama blames Fox News for Broncos' loss
Feminist author slams gay marriage: "a man needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle"
Beverly Hills campaign heats up between Henry Waxman and Marianne Williamson over the widening income gap between millionaires and billionaires in their district
Biden to lower $10,000-a-plate Dinner For The Homeless to $5,000 so more homeless can attend
Kim becomes world leader, feeds uncle to dogs; Obama eats dogs, becomes world leader, America cries uncle
North Korean leader executes own uncle for talking about Obamacare at family Christmas party
White House hires part-time schizophrenic Mandela sign interpreter to help sell Obamacare
Kim Jong Un executes own " crazy uncle " to keep him from ruining another family Christmas
OFA admits its advice for area activists to give Obamacare Talk at shooting ranges was a bad idea
President resolves Obamacare debacle with executive order declaring all Americans equally healthy
Obama to Iran: "If you like your nuclear program, you can keep your nuclear program"
Bovine community outraged by flatulence coming from Washington DC
Obama: "I'm not particularly ideological; I believe in a good pragmatic five-year plan"
Shocker: Obama had no knowledge he'd been reelected until he read about it in the local newspaper last week
Server problems at HealthCare.gov so bad, it now flashes 'Error 808' message
NSA marks National Best Friend Day with official announcement: "Government is your best friend; we know you like no one else, we're always there, we're always willing to listen"
Al Qaeda cancels attack on USA citing launch of Obamacare as devastating enough
The President's latest talking point on Obamacare: "I didn't build that"
Dizzy with success, Obama renames his wildly popular healthcare mandate to HillaryCare
Carney: huge ObamaCare deductibles won't look as bad come hyperinflation
Washington Redskins drop 'Washington' from their name as offensive to most Americans
Poll: 83% of Americans favor cowboy diplomacy over rodeo clown diplomacy
GOVERNMENT WARNING: If you were able to complete ObamaCare form online, it wasn't a legitimate gov't website; you should report online fraud and change all your passwords
Obama administration gets serious, threatens Syria with ObamaCare
Obama authorizes the use of Vice President Joe Biden's double-barrel shotgun to fire a couple of blasts at Syria
Sharpton: "British royals should have named baby 'Trayvon.' By choosing 'George' they sided with white Hispanic racist Zimmerman"
DNC launches 'Carlos Danger' action figure; proceeds to fund a charity helping survivors of the Republican War on Women
Nancy Pelosi extends abortion rights to the birds and the bees
Hubble discovers planetary drift to the left
Obama: 'If I had a daughter-in-law, she would look like Rachael Jeantel'
FISA court rubberstamps statement denying its portrayal as government's rubber stamp
Every time ObamaCare gets delayed, a Julia somewhere dies
GOP to Schumer: 'Force full implementation of ObamaCare before 2014 or Dems will never win another election'
Obama: 'If I had a son... no, wait, my daughter can now marry a woman!'
Janet Napolitano: TSA findings reveal that since none of the hijackers were babies, elderly, or Tea Partiers, 9/11 was not an act of terrorism
News Flash: Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) can see Canada from South Dakota
Susan Rice: IRS actions against tea parties caused by anti-tax YouTube video that was insulting to their faith
Drudge Report reduces font to fit all White House scandals onto one page
Obama: the IRS is a constitutional right, just like the Second Amendment
White House: top Obama officials using secret email accounts a result of bad IT advice to avoid spam mail from Nigeria
Jay Carney to critics: 'Pinocchio never said anything inconsistent'
Obama: If I had a gay son, he'd look like Jason Collins
Gosnell's office in Benghazi raided by the IRS: mainstream media's worst cover-up challenge to date
IRS targeting pro-gay-marriage LGBT groups leads to gayest tax revolt in U.S. history
After Arlington Cemetery rejects offer to bury Boston bomber, Westboro Babtist Church steps up with premium front lawn plot
Boston: Obama Administration to reclassify marathon bombing as 'sportsplace violence'
Study: Success has many fathers but failure becomes a government program
US Media: Can Pope Francis possibly clear up Vatican bureaucracy and banking without blaming the previous administration?
Michelle Obama praises weekend rampage by Chicago teens as good way to burn calories and stay healthy
This Passover, Obama urges his subjects to paint lamb's blood above doors in order to avoid the Sequester
White House to American children: Sequester causes layoffs among hens that lay Easter eggs; union-wage Easter Bunnies to be replaced by Mexican Chupacabras
Time Mag names Hugo Chavez world's sexiest corpse
Boy, 8, pretends banana is gun, makes daring escape from school
Study: Free lunches overpriced, lack nutrition
Oscars 2013: Michelle Obama announces long-awaited merger of Hollywood and the State
Joe Salazar defends the right of women to be raped in gun-free environment: 'rapists and rapees should work together to prevent gun violence for the common good'
Dept. of Health and Human Services eliminates rape by reclassifying assailants as 'undocumented sex partners'
Kremlin puts out warning not to photoshop Putin riding meteor unless bare-chested
Deeming football too violent, Obama moves to introduce Super Drone Sundays instead
Japan offers to extend nuclear umbrella to cover U.S. should America suffer devastating attack on its own defense spending
Feminists organize one billion women to protest male oppression with one billion lap dances
Urban community protests Mayor Bloomberg's ban on extra-large pop singers owning assault weapons
Concerned with mounting death toll, Taliban offers to send peacekeeping advisers to Chicago
Karl Rove puts an end to Tea Party with new 'Republicans For Democrats' strategy aimed at losing elections
Answering public skepticism, President Obama authorizes unlimited drone attacks on all skeet targets throughout the country
Skeet Ulrich denies claims he had been shot by President but considers changing his name to 'Traps'
White House releases new exciting photos of Obama standing, sitting, looking thoughtful, and even breathing in and out
New York Times hacked by Chinese government, Paul Krugman's economic policies stolen
White House: when President shoots skeet, he donates the meat to food banks that feed the middle class
To prove he is serious, Obama eliminates armed guard protection for President, Vice-President, and their families; establishes Gun-Free Zones around them instead
State Dept to send 100,000 American college students to China as security for US debt obligations
Jay Carney: Al Qaeda is on the run, they're just running forward
President issues executive orders banning cliffs, ceilings, obstructions, statistics, and other notions that prevent us from moving forwards and upward
Fearing the worst, Obama Administration outlaws the fan to prevent it from being hit by certain objects
World ends; S&P soars
Riddle of universe solved; answer not understood
Meek inherit Earth, can't afford estate taxes
Greece abandons Euro; accountants find Greece has no Euros anyway
Wheel finally reinvented; axles to be gradually reinvented in 3rd quarter of 2013
Bigfoot found in Ohio, mysteriously not voting for Obama
As Santa's workshop files for bankruptcy, Fed offers bailout in exchange for control of 'naughty and nice' list
Freak flying pig accident causes bacon to fly off shelves
Obama: green economy likely to transform America into a leading third world country of the new millennium
Report: President Obama to visit the United States in the near future
Obama promises to create thousands more economically neutral jobs
Modernizing Islam: New York imam proposes to canonize Saul Alinsky as religion's latter day prophet
Imam Rauf's peaceful solution: 'Move Ground Zero a few blocks away from the mosque and no one gets hurt'
Study: Obama's threat to burn tax money in Washington 'recruitment bonanza' for Tea Parties
Study: no Social Security reform will be needed if gov't raises retirement age to at least 814 years
Obama attends church service, worships self
Obama proposes national 'Win The Future' lottery; proceeds of new WTF Powerball to finance more gov't spending
Historical revisionists: "Hey, you never know"
Vice President Biden: criticizing Egypt is un-pharaoh
Israelis to Egyptian rioters: "don't damage the pyramids, we will not rebuild"
Lake Superior renamed Lake Inferior in spirit of tolerance and inclusiveness
Al Gore: It's a shame that a family can be torn apart by something as simple as a pack of polar bears
Michael Moore: As long as there is anyone with money to shake down, this country is not broke
Obama's teleprompters unionize, demand collective bargaining rights
Obama calls new taxes 'spending reductions in tax code.' Elsewhere rapists tout 'consent reductions in sexual intercourse'
Obama's teleprompter unhappy with White House Twitter: "Too few words"
Obama's Regulation Reduction committee finds US Constitution to be expensive outdated framework inefficiently regulating federal gov't
Taking a page from the Reagan years, Obama announces new era of Perestroika and Glasnost
Responding to Oslo shootings, Obama declares Christianity "Religion of Peace," praises "moderate Christians," promises to send one into space
Republicans block Obama's $420 billion program to give American families free charms that ward off economic bad luck
White House to impose Chimney tax on Santa Claus
Obama decrees the economy is not soaring as much as previously decreeed
Conservative think tank introduces children to capitalism with pop-up picture book "The Road to Smurfdom"
Al Gore proposes to combat Global Warming by extracting silver linings from clouds in Earth's atmosphere
Obama refutes charges of him being unresponsive to people's suffering: "When you pray to God, do you always hear a response?"
Obama regrets the US government didn't provide his mother with free contraceptives when she was in college
Fluke to Congress: drill, baby, drill!
Planned Parenthood introduces Frequent Flucker reward card: 'Come again soon!'
Obama to tornado victims: 'We inherited this weather from the previous administration'
Obama congratulates Putin on Chicago-style election outcome
People's Cube gives itself Hero of Socialist Labor medal in recognition of continued expert advice provided to the Obama Administration helping to shape its foreign and domestic policies
Hamas: Israeli air defense unfair to 99% of our missiles, "only 1% allowed to reach Israel"
Democrat strategist: without government supervision, women would have never evolved into humans
Voters Without Borders oppose Texas new voter ID law
Enraged by accusation that they are doing Obama's bidding, media leaders demand instructions from White House on how to respond
Obama blames previous Olympics for failure to win at this Olympics
Official: China plans to land on Moon or at least on cheap knockoff thereof
Koran-Contra: Obama secretly arms Syrian rebels
Poll: Progressive slogan 'We should be more like Europe' most popular with members of American Nazi Party
Obama to Evangelicals: Jesus saves, I just spend
May Day: Anarchists plan, schedule, synchronize, and execute a coordinated campaign against all of the above
Midwestern farmers hooked on new erotic novel "50 Shades of Hay"
Study: 99% of Liberals give the rest a bad name
Obama meets with Jewish leaders, proposes deeper circumcisions for the rich
Historians: Before HOPE & CHANGE there was HEMP & CHOOM at ten bucks a bag
Cancer once again fails to cure Venezuela of its "President for Life"
Tragic spelling error causes Muslim protesters to burn local boob-tube factory
Secretary of Energy Steven Chu: due to energy conservation, the light at the end of the tunnel will be switched off
Obama Administration running food stamps across the border with Mexico in an operation code-named "Fat And Furious"
Pakistan explodes in protest over new Adobe Acrobat update; 17 local acrobats killed
White House: "Let them eat statistics"
Special Ops: if Benedict Arnold had a son, he would look like Barack Obama | 1 |
November 23rd, 2016 - Fort Russ - Alexander Dugin, Katehon - translated by J. Arnoldski -
This week, a very important delegation from Turkey visited Moscow. The group consists of members of the Turkish parliament and representatives of the ruling party, big business, and non-governmental organizations. At the head of the delegation is the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s cousin, Mehmet Mutlu, one of the most influential figures in modern Turkey. From the standpoint of diplomatic symbolism, the most important part of this trip is the delegation’s visit to Crimea, which starts today, November 23rd.
We’ve seen Russian Crimea visited by many European politicians, including Italians from Matteo Salvini’s Northern League, Frenchmen from Marine Le Pen’s National Front and the Republican Party, deputies from the Alternative for Germany party, and many others. Conservative European politicians have no doubt: Crimea is part of Russia. This is a kind of consensus. In fact, in addition to right wing politicians, this position is shared by left politicians as well, such as the fearless Sahra Wagenknecht from Germany’s Die Linke and Italian politicians from the Five Stars party.
But the high-ranking Turkish delegation’s visit to Russia Crimea is already a completely new stage. Once again, we are dealing with a delegation involving Turkey’s ruling party and the closest companion and relative of Erdogan. In essence, this is a decisive step towards Ankara’s recognition of Crimea’s reunification with Russia. It is telling that this is happening synchronously with Erdogan’s statements that Turkey is suspending the process of integrating into Europe - where, by the way, no one is waiting for Turkey or will accept it - and Turkey’s reorienting towards the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
Erdogan is determined to change the country’s Atlanticist course for a Eurasian one. Following the scare of the Gulenists’ coup attempt, this determination has become even stronger. The American swamp stabbed Erdogan in the back. With the arrival of Trump, who is highly critical of Ankara, the situation has not defused. Therefore, Erdogan is clearly opting for rapprochement with us, and this is already irreversible. A symbol of this determination is the Turks’ visit to Crimea. Russian Crimea.
We saw how the forces of the West who staged the coup d’etat on the Maidan in 2014 and unleashed a bloody civil war in Ukraine tried to play the Crimean Tatar card in their favor. This provocative, extremist, nationalist, Wahhabist trend has come to be embodied in Mustafa Dzhemiliev. The objective of Kiev, and the West (or rather, the Western globalist swamp) standing behind it, was to mobilize Crimean Tatars against Russia. But Crimean Tatars themselves did not succumb to this provocation. In addition, Moscow almost immediately did what Kiev didn’t do over 20 years: recognize the rights of Crimean Tatars.
The majority of Crimean Tatars live in Turkey and are deeply and organically integrated into Turkish society. Therefore, even given Tatars’ loyalty to Moscow after the reunification of Crimea with Russia, the Turkey factor remains extremely important. Even though Turkish President Erdogan has never spoken out against Russia’s reunification with Crimea, he has never clarified his attitude towards Crimea or Crimean Tatars.
And now, in front of our very eyes, is happening this visit, which is historic in every sense of the word. The aim of the visit is setting up active and intense social and commercial relations between the Turkish Republic and Russian Crimea. This says it all. It is obvious that Ankara decided on the composition of this delegation only after having well weighed all the consequences. The visit itself was made possible on the condition of agreeing on Crimea's status and the future of its official recognition.
It is telling that one of the leaders of the delegation, Hasan Cengiz, the head of an influential Turkish Eurasianist NGO, recently visited Damascus and held talks with Bashar al-Assad’s entourage. These were the first talks since the beginning of the conflict between Syria and Turkey. The choice of the delegation’s members was and is not accidental.
Therefore, we can conclude that the process of Russian Crimea being recognized is gaining momentum in both the West and the East. Turkey is in the vanguard here.
The Eurasian strategy removes almost all the contradictions that accumulated between neighboring countries in past periods. Turkey, like Russia, is undoubtedly a Eurasian country. And now this is becoming all the more obvious.
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The death of former Israeli president and prime minister Shimon Peres last week marks the last of the Zionist “old guard” who successfully fought for a UN mandate to establish the state of Israel in what was formerly British Palestine. Much has been written about Peres since his death. He was a peacemaker. He was a warrior. He was brutal. He was complex. It is possible for all of them to be accurate at the same time.
Was Peres a warrior? That is without question. Israel was established in bloodshed and Peres played an important role in that fight. Also, the brutal Israeli attack on a Palestinian refugee camp at Qana in 1996 took place under Peres’s command. In that attack more than 100 women and children were killed.
But history, and especially Middle East history, can be quite complex. Shimon Peres was above all in favor of trying to find a way for Israelis and Palestinians to live side-by-side. He was right there in spirit when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had a famous 1993 handshake with Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat. Rabin paid for his efforts with his life, as a right-wing radical assassinated him in 1995.
Shimon Peres was in favor of real negotiations with the Palestinians and he several times inserted himself into the process to urge the hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu to start talking rather than saber rattling. In 2012, for example, Peres made it known again that he favored a two-state solution and that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas was a suitable negotiating partner. He also urged Netanyahu to open up direct talks with Hamas if certain agreements could be made beforehand.
But perhaps his greatest move to avert war only came known with his passing. Former Jerusalem Post editor Steve Linde wrote a fascinating article last week in his old newspaper detailing a meeting he and the Post’s managing editor had with Shimon Peres in 2014. According to Linde, Peres was asked what he thought was his greatest legacy. He replied that he had personally intervened to stop Netanyahu from ordering a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear sites. Asked by the journalists when they could report this revelation, Peres responded, “when I’m dead.” So it came to pass last week.
How much for the worse things have become in Israeli-Palestinian relations with the passing on of anyone preferring negotiations to violence. There is little interest among current Israeli leadership to take steps toward negotiation or peace. Innocent Israelis and Palestinians will continue to be killed and injured as long as no compromises are considered. Sadly this position is reinforced in Washington, where the Obama administration just agreed to grant Israel the largest military aid package in US history.
There is much to admire in those who work for peace, even those with stains on their record. I remain convinced that Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts would be much closer to bearing fruit if the US government would stop inserting itself into the process and subsidizing either side. Left alone, both sides would likely produce more leaders interested in ending bloodshed and conflict. | 0 |
BISMARCK, N. D. — The federal government on Friday temporarily blocked construction on part of a North Dakota oil pipeline, an unusual intervention in a prairie battle that has drawn thousands of Native Americans and activists to camp and demonstrate. In announcing the pause, the government acknowledged complaints from the Standing Rock Sioux and other tribal nations that their concerns had not been fully heard before federal overseers approved a pipeline that the tribe said could damage their water supplies and ancestral cultural sites. The Justice Department and other agencies called for “serious discussion on whether there should be nationwide reform with respect to considering tribes’ views on these types of infrastructure projects. ” The tribe in a statement called the federal order “a game changer. ” The government’s move, announced minutes after a federal judge rejected efforts by the Standing Rock Sioux to block construction of the project, appeared to seek to ease tensions and reset the terms of a passionate debate that has cast the Dakota Access pipeline either as an economic boon for the Plains or a threat to Native American sovereignty, waters and lands. But perhaps more significantly, it appeared to signal a broader willingness to the involvement of the tribes in infrastructure decisions like this one. The government said it would invite tribes to attend formal consultations about how they might work together on federal decisions on tribal lands and on whether future legislation is needed. In recent days, protesters have clashed with the pipeline company’s contractors and private security guards, and officials in North Dakota have stepped up patrols and warned of rising tensions as ranchers, sheriff’s officers, tribal leaders and protesters waited for a ruling on the Standing Rock Sioux’s federal lawsuit to block construction on the pipeline. In a joint statement from the Departments of Justice, the Interior and the Army, the government announced that the pause applied to the pipeline’s path across a sliver of federal lands and under a dammed section of the Missouri River known as Lake Oahe. The lake, created by dams a ago, is a water source for the Standing Rock Sioux and a focal point of the dispute. The Army Corps of Engineers intends to review its previous decisions under federal environmental and other laws that had given approval for the pipeline. The government also urged the company building the pipeline to “voluntarily pause” all construction for 40 miles around Lake Oahe. The rest of the pipeline construction would not be affected. Tribal leaders said they were heartened by the government’s move and relieved that, for the time being, the Dakota Access pipeline would not be allowed to cross under their water supply. “When there’s a wrong that keeps continuing to happen, it’s O. K. to stand up against that wrong. That’s all we did,” said David Archambault II, the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux. “I’m just so thankful that agencies are starting to listen. ” For supporters and opponents of the pipeline, it was a day of whiplash. The tribe had been bracing for a defeat in the courtroom. But the government’s intervention surprised so many that the tribe and its supporters sent out news releases condemning the ruling as soon as it was handed down, and sharply reversed course once they realized that the pause had scrambled the situation here. Craig Stevens, a spokesman for the MAIN Coalition, a group supporting the pipeline, hailed the judge’s decision, but said the government’s move was “deeply troubling and could have a chilling effect on private infrastructure development in the United States. ” “Should the administration ultimately stop this construction, it would set a horrific precedent,” Mr. Stevens said in the statement. “No sane American company would dare expend years of effort and billions of dollars weaving through an onerous regulatory process receiving all necessary permits and agreements, only to be faced with additional regulatory impediments and be shut down halfway through completion of its project. ” The company behind the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, did not respond to a request for comment. It was unclear whether the company would heed the government’s request to pause construction 20 miles to the east and west of Lake Oahe. After protests swelled recently and flared into violence last Saturday, construction work was halted near the site of the protest camp and the fields about a mile up the road where the pipeline is set to be buried. The company has previously said it has complied with every state and federal rule and gotten all the necessary permits to build the $3. 7 billion pipeline. It has said the Dakota Access pipeline would create jobs, pump millions into local economies and provide a reliable way to transport oil from western North Dakota to pipeline networks in Illinois that was safer than hauling oil on trucks or trains. In his ruling, Judge James E. Boasberg of Federal District Court in Washington focused on efforts by the Army Corps to meet with the Standing Rock Sioux and others to work through possible issues with the pipeline, since “the Corps appears to have had little involvement in Dakota Access’s early planning,” the judge wrote, but “The writing was on the wall, however, that many DAPL permitting requests would eventually land in the Corps inbox. ” The judge described a series of attempted meetings and missed communications between government and tribal officials the judge suggested that the lack of cooperation was mostly on the part of the tribe, while “the Corps has documented dozens of attempts it made to consult with the Standing Rock Sioux from the fall of 2014 through the spring of 2016” on the pipeline plan. Two days after the Corps approved what are known as preconstruction notifications on the pipeline, the tribes filed suit demanding that the permits be withdrawn. The judge said the efforts to obtain cooperation from the Standing Rock tribe were exhaustive, with dozens of attempts documented by the Corps to bring them to the table for discussion of Lake Oahe and other points of water crossings. The judge then wryly added: “To the reader’s relief, the Court need not repeat them here. Suffice it to say that the Tribe largely refused to engage in consultations. ” The meetings that the Corps was able to arrange, he wrote, “sufficed” under the law. “Today’s news is a stunning development,” said Jan Hasselman, a lawyer with Earthjustice, an environmental legal group that is representing the Standing Rock Sioux. “It vindicates what the tribe has been saying form the beginning: The process was wrong, and the legal standards for projects like these need reform. ” It was unclear on Friday how long the pause in construction around Lake Oahe might last, or whether the move had given the Standing Rock Sioux any greater odds of prevailing. But on Friday morning, tribal members said they had lived on the land for generation upon generation, and were prepared to stay through the fall, the winter and beyond. “They’ll be here for years,” said Jana Gipp, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux, as she surveyed the camp’s tents and teepees from a grassy bluff. “They won’t give this up. ” | 1 |
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea’s latest test of a rocket engine showed that the country was making “meaningful progress” in trying to build more powerful rockets and missiles, South Korean officials said on Monday. North Korea said on Sunday that it had conducted a ground jet test of a newly developed missile engine, which its leader, Kim called “a great event of historic significance. ” Using the characteristic bombast of such announcements, he said that the test heralded “a new birth” of the country’s rocket industry and that “the whole world will soon witness what eventful significance the great victory won today carries. ” The North’s rival, South Korea, acknowledged on Monday that the test represented a breakthrough. Lee a spokesman at the Defense Ministry, said it showed that the North was developing a more sophisticated rocket engine. The model that the North tested included a cluster consisting of a main engine and four vernier thrusters — smaller engines used to adjust the craft’s velocity and stability. “Through this test, it is found that engine function has made meaningful progress,” Mr. Lee said during a news briefing, without divulging further details. He declined to say whether the engine was for a rocket used to place a satellite into orbit or for an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, which the North has been threatening to any time. Mr. Lee said more analysis was needed to answer that question. Mr. Kim has called for his country to develop and launch “a variety of more working satellites” using “carrier rockets of bigger capacity. ” The country has also renovated and expanded the gantry tower and other facilities at the launch site to accommodate more powerful rockets. The United Nations Security Council has banned the country from satellite launchings, considering its satellite program a cover for developing an intercontinental ballistic missile. The test of the rocket engine took place at the Sohae Satellite Launching Ground in in northwestern North Korea, where the country fired a carrier rocket in February of last year to place its Kwangmyongsong, or Shining Star, satellite into orbit. After that launch, South Korean defense officials said that the Unha rocket used in the launch, if successfully reconfigured as a missile, could fly more than 7, 400 miles with a warhead of 1, 100 to 1, 300 pounds — far enough to reach most of the United States. In September, North Korea conducted the ground test of what it called a new rocket engine in days after it conducted its fifth underground nuclear test. Although the North has never an ICBM, it has recently demonstrated significant progress in its missile programs. Last month, it launched a new type of ballistic missile that it said could carry a nuclear payload. That missile, the uses a technology that American experts say will make it easier for the country to hide its arsenal in its numerous tunnels and deploy its missiles. Since Mr. Kim took power in 2011, North Korea has launched 46 ballistic missiles, including 24 last year, violating resolutions by the United Nations Security Council that ban the country from developing or testing such weapons, according to South Korean officials. In his New Year’s Day speech, Mr. Kim said his country was in the “final stage” of preparing for its first ICBM test. In Seoul, the South Korean capital, on Friday, Rex W. Tillerson, the United States’ secretary of state, said that two decades of international efforts to end the North’s nuclear weapons and missile programs had failed. He warned that all options should be on the table to stop them, including possible military action. | 0 |
NBA Hall of Fame’s Dennis Rodman arrived in North Korea Tuesday morning for a trip he says he hopes will “open a door” for his former “Celebrity Apprentice” boss — President Donald Trump. “I’m just here to see some friends and have a good time,” Rodman told a reporter at the Pyongyang airport. Rodman, who last visited North Korea in 2014, is friends with both President Trump and North Korean dictator Kim . The champion believes Trump is “happy” with his trip. “Well, I’m pretty sure he’s pretty much happy with the fact that I’m over here trying to accomplish something that we both need,” Rodman said. Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 0 |
The posters, pasted on walls and lampposts around Paris by an activist group during the United Nations climate talks last year, were hardly flattering. They depicted Myron Ebell, a climate contrarian, as one of seven “climate criminals” wanted for “destroying our future. ” But in his customary way, Mr. Ebell, who directs environmental and energy policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian advocacy group in Washington, brushed it off. “I’ve gotten used to this over the years,” he told an interviewer at the talks. “But I did go out and get my photo taken with my poster, just so I have it as a memento. ” In looking for someone to follow through on his campaign vow to dismantle one of the Obama administration’s signature climate change policies, Donald J. Trump probably could not have found a better candidate for the job than Mr. Ebell. Mr. Ebell, who revels in taking on the scientific consensus on global warming, will be Mr. Trump’s lead agent in choosing personnel and setting the direction of the federal agencies that address climate change and environmental policy more broadly. Mr. Ebell, whose organization is financed in part by the coal industry, has been one of the most vocal opponents of the linchpin of that policy, the Clean Power Plan. Developed by the Environmental Protection Agency, the plan is a set of regulations that, by seeking to reduce carbon emissions from electricity generation, could result in the closing of many power plants, among other effects. Mr. Ebell has said that the plan, which has been tied up in the courts since it was finalized in 2015, is illegal. In the interview in Paris last year, he said he hoped whoever was elected president would “undo the E. P. A. power plant regs and some of the other regs that are very harmful to our economy. ” As the person Mr. Trump has chosen to lead the transition at the E. P. A. Mr. Ebell, 63, will be in a position to begin to do just that. Mr. Ebell, who did not respond to a request for an interview, grew up on a ranch in Oregon. He got his undergraduate degree at Colorado College and master’s at the London School of Economics, where he studied under the conservative political philosopher Michael Oakeshott. He has described himself as “sort of a contrarian by nature and upbringing,” and has said he was very strongly influenced by the “question authority” ethos of 1960s and ’70s counterculture “I really think that people should be suspicious of authority,” he told an interviewer last year. “The more you’re told that you have to believe something, the more you should question it. ” Mr. Ebell leads the Cooler Heads Coalition, a group that says it is “focused on dispelling the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific, and risk analysis. ” He has been one of the nation’s most visible climate contrarians, known for dispensing memorable sound bites on cable news shows and at events like the annual conferences sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a group that rejects the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. Mr. Ebell has said that “a lot of and scientists have gotten a long ways” by embracing climate change. He frequently mocks climate leaders like Al Gore, and has called the movement the “forces of darkness” because “they want to turn off the lights all over the world. ” No one, it seems, is immune to his criticism. He called Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate change, issued in “scientifically ill informed, economically illiterate, intellectually incoherent and morally obtuse. ” “It is also theologically suspect, and large parts of it are leftist drivel,” he added. Mr. Ebell cut his teeth in Washington working for Frontiers of Freedom, a research group founded by former Senator Malcolm Wallop, a Wyoming Republican, to advocate for limited government. He also worked for a Republican congressman from Arizona, John Shadegg, on an effort to revamp the Endangered Species Act to make it more respectful of property rights. In interviews and speeches, Mr. Ebell comes off as amiable and calm. But he is hardly shy about lobbing verbal grenades, sometimes directly at scientists and environmentalists. He clashed with Kevin E. Trenberth, a senior researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in an appearance on Fox News in 2009 after the unauthorized release of emails from a server at an English university set off a battle over the integrity of leading climate scientists. Mr. Ebell called Dr. Trenberth “part of a gang” that had been “cooking the data” on climate for years, accusations that Dr. Trenberth strenuously denied. During an August 2015 appearance on with Jeremy Symons of the Environmental Defense Fund, Mr. Ebell did not deny Mr. Symons’ assertion that the Competitive Enterprise Institute receives money from the Murray Energy Corporation, one of the nation’s largest coal producers. He countered that his group’s total budget, of about $6 million, was far smaller than that of Mr. Symons’ group. “I would like to have more funding,” Mr. Ebell said, “so that I could combat the nonsense put out by the environmental movement. ” | 1 |
Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, said on Wednesday that Russian sports federations could be kept out of the Summer Olympics if allegations about a of doping among Russian athletes were proved true. “We will apply our zero tolerance policy, not only with regard to the athletes but also with regard to everybody implicated and within our reach,” Mr. Bach said on a call with the news media on Wednesday. In an piece in USA Today, he cited the “shocking new dimension in doping” and the “unprecedented level of criminality” of which Russia had been accused. Mr. Bach declined to say if the Russian Federation as a whole could be kept from competition, indicating that the I. O. C. would wait until the World Agency had completed an investigation into conduct at the Olympic testing laboratory at the 2014 Sochi Games. That investigation is seeking to verify the account of Grigory Rodchenkov, Russia’s former antidoping lab director, who oversaw the Sochi lab. He told The New York Times that during Sochi he had worked at the direction of the Russian government, expunging the tainted urine of Russian athletes who were using drugs. He said that with the help of the Russian intelligence service, he had gained access to supposedly drug sample bottles and had surreptitiously substituted in athletes’ clean urine. Mr. Bach said the I. O. C. had no control over whether WADA’s investigation would be completed before the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, which start on Aug. 5. “This is in the hands of WADA,” he said, adding that he urged anyone with further information on the Sochi lab operation and Dr. Rodchenkov’s allegations to call an integrity and compliance hotline. Dr. Rodchenkov’s account cast suspicion on not just the Russian athletes who competed in Sochi but those who competed at recent Summer Games, namely those in Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012. According to Dr. Rodchenkov, director of the Moscow antidoping lab from 2005 to 2015, Russian athletes were doping in advance of Beijing and London. Before London, he said, he developed a cocktail of anabolic steroids that helped speed athletes’ recovery from grueling training regimens. Mixed with liquor, that concoction, he said, drastically decreased the drugs’ detection window, allowing athletes to dope days before competition. On Tuesday, the I. O. C. announced that it had retested the doping samples of athletes who competed in Beijing, discovering 31 athletes from six sports and 12 countries with suspicious test results that could keep them from the Rio Games. Officials did not specify if Russia was included and said that further retesting of medalists’ samples from the London Games was planned and would be completed before the 2016 Olympics. Separate from the I. O. C. ’s announcement, the Russian Weightlifting Federation announced on Tuesday that four Russian lifters, among them a holder, had been suspended for doping. Dr. Rodchenkov said in interviews with The Times this month that weight lifting was the sport most ridden with drug abuse. “You cannot get Olympic medals in weight lifting without system of doping,” he said. In a statement released Tuesday, WADA’s president, Craig Reedie, said the organization would publish a report upon completion of its investigation. Once that inquiry is complete, Mr. Bach said, the I. O. C. may explore lifetime bans on athletes, coaches and others. He added that financial penalties and suspensions were also possible. The Times reported on Tuesday that the United States Justice Department was investigating doping in Russia, scrutinizing Russian government officials, athletes, coaches and antidoping authorities. Among the people federal prosecutors are focused on is Dr. Rodchenkov, who fled to the United States last fall with one change of clothes and the laptop he had used at Sochi. Mr. Bach declined to comment on the Justice Department’s criminal inquiry, conducted by the United States attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York, in Brooklyn. “We have no information,” Mr. Bach said of the Justice Department investigation. “I don’t know about any legal grounds for this. ” | 1 |
With an expected win in the Electoral College today, Donald J. Trump will seal his presidential victory — despite losing the national popular vote by a significant margin. His Electoral College lead should be substantial, since he won states worth 306 electoral votes to 232 from states won by Hillary Clinton. Yet the nearly final popular vote count has him trailing by nearly three million votes, or 2. 1 percentage points, the largest deficit for a winning candidate since 1876’s notorious election. How exactly did we end up with such divergent results? Liberals say Mr. Trump’s victory is proof that the Electoral College is biased against big states and undemocratically marginalizes urban and nonwhite voters. Conservatives say the Electoral College serves as a necessary bulwark against big states, preventing California in particular from imposing “something like colonial rule over the rest of the nation,” as the conservative analyst Michael Barone put it. California sided with Mrs. Clinton by a vote margin of four million, or 30 percentage points. Both sides have a point. But in the end, Mr. Trump won for a simple reason: The Electoral College’s (largely) design gives a lot of weight to battleground states. Mr. Trump had an advantage in the traditional battlegrounds because most are whiter and less educated than the country as a whole. But Mr. Trump’s success in those states isn’t just about demographics. It’s about quirks of history, like the outcome of a battle over Toledo, Ohio. It’s about gains by Mrs. Clinton that went unrewarded. It’s also about plain luck. One argument in favor of the Electoral College is that it doesn’t reward regionalism: a candidate who wins with huge margins in one part of the country. That’s because a system doesn’t reward any additional votes beyond what’s necessary to win a state or a region. You get all of Florida’s electoral votes, whether you win it by 537 or 537, 000 votes. A good example of how regionalism can drive a vote split is the 1888 election. The Democrat, Grover Cleveland, won the popular vote by nearly a point, but he lost the Electoral College by a margin similar to Mrs. Clinton’s. Why? He won the popular vote by dominating the Deep South, where white supremacist Democrats had succeeded in disenfranchising Republican black voters since the end of Reconstruction. Even progressives would consider this a moral victory for the Electoral College. Mrs. Clinton’s big win in California was, on paper, potentially enough to be “responsible” for the vote split in the same way that the Deep South drove Mr. Cleveland’s popular vote win in 1888. But unlike the situation in 1888, Mrs. Clinton’s huge victory in California (along with the District of Columbia and Hawaii, where Mrs. Clinton won by a higher percentage than she did in California) was almost entirely canceled out by Mr. Trump’s dominance of his base states — which we’ll call Appalachafornia — from West Virginia to Wyoming. (“Appalachafornia” consists of West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, North Dakota and South Dakota.) Mrs. Clinton led in the rest of the country by the same margin after excluding Appalachafornia and California — and yet she still loses the Electoral College vote by about the same margin. That’s not how it went in 1888: The Republicans didn’t waste nearly as many votes in their best states, so they actually led in the vote in the rest of the country. They won the Electoral College as well. Whatever danger conservatives face from “imperial” California in a popular vote is matched by the threat Democrats would face from an “imperial” Appalachafornia. Regionalism alone is not why Mr. Trump won without the popular vote. The Electoral College isn’t just a check against regionalism. It also reflects our federal system by awarding an electoral vote for every senator and representative. The result is that small states get more sway, since senators aren’t awarded by population. Wyoming, the least populous state, has of California’s population. Yet it has of California’s electoral votes. In general, the Electoral College’s bias does hurt the Democrats. In fact, the bias tipped the 2000 election. Al Gore would have won the presidency, 225 to 211, if electors were just awarded by representative, not by senators and representatives. But the bias was almost entirely irrelevant to Mr. Trump’s advantage. Mrs. Clinton won plenty of small states — she won seven of the 12 smallest. Mr. Trump, meanwhile, won plenty of big states — in fact, he won seven of the 10 largest. As a consequence, the result would have been virtually identical if states had not received electoral votes for their senators. It would have even been the same if the electors had been apportioned exactly by a state’s population. O. K. so it’s not California and it’s not bias. What is it? It’s the Electoral College’s most straightforward bias: The battleground states count the most. Mrs. Clinton did well in noncompetitive states and “wasted” popular votes that didn’t earn her any more electoral votes, while Mr. Trump did just well enough in competitive states to pick up their electoral votes. There are, of course, two halves to this effect: ■ Mrs. Clinton fared better in the remaining blue states, outside of California and Hawaii, than Mr. Trump did in the remaining red states, outside of “Appalachafornia. ” Mrs. Clinton won states like Illinois and New York by a much larger margin than Mr. Trump won similarly sized red states like Georgia and Texas. Compared with President Obama in 2012, Mrs. Clinton made sizable gains in many of the red states outside of Appalachafornia, including a big improvement in Texas — yet won no electoral votes from them. ■ Mr. Trump did very well in the battleground states. Depending on how the battlegrounds are defined, the vote there either broke for Mr. Trump or was virtually tied — a huge improvement over Mitt Romney’s showing in 2012. Mr. Trump won a lopsided electoral vote tally from those states by narrowly winning four of the five states decided by around one point or less: Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania (Mrs. Clinton edged him out in New Hampshire). Outside of those five states, the electoral vote was basically tied, with Mr. Trump edging out Mrs. Clinton, 231 to 228 (and leading by the margin of bias). The imbalance between competitive and battleground states is somewhat similar to a regionalism issue, at least in a mathematical sense: Mrs. Clinton won the “blue states” by a wider margin than Mr. Trump won the “red states. ” The rest of the country — the battlegrounds — voted Republican, and so did the Electoral College. But this isn’t a regionalism issue. The “solid red” and “solid blue” states where Mr. Trump failed to make gains include a clear majority of the country’s Electoral College votes, population and actual votes. The regional anomaly was the Midwest, and it just so happens that in a system Mr. Trump’s strength in the Midwestern battleground states yielded a lot of Electoral College votes. There’s a real demographic reason for it: Most of the traditional battleground states are much whiter, less educated and particularly less Hispanic than the rest of the country. But the demographics alone don’t quite do justice to Mr. Trump’s victory in the Electoral College. In the end, he won the battleground states by just a margin — but claimed of their Electoral College votes. He won four of the five closest states, winning 75 of 79 votes at stake. There has never been a close election in the United States in which one candidate has claimed such a resounding electoral vote margin out of the closest states. For lack of a better word: Mr. Trump had some very good luck. There’s nothing about the distribution of Mrs. Clinton’s votes in the battlegrounds or nationally that meant she was destined to get as few electoral votes as she did. Just take Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan — three contiguous states spanning the Upper Great Lakes. Mrs. Clinton actually won the region by a narrow margin, but she won just 10 of the 36 votes at stake. Ultimately, state lines are pretty arbitrary. Yes, when those lines were determined, there were reasoned considerations like population and access to rivers and resources. But statehood and state lines, often poorly surveyed in the first place, were hotly disputed in the 19th century. Many states were created in response to political considerations, especially the balance between free and slave states. In other times, it could have gone very differently. Consider two of the bigger nonpolitical state boundary questions of the 19th century: the fate of the Florida Panhandle and the “Toledo War. ” The Toledo War was a long dispute between Michigan and Ohio over a tiny strip of land along their border, which happens to include the city of Toledo. Ohio had the upper hand for one reason: It earned its statehood first, and therefore blocked Michigan’s petition — which included the strip. In the end, Congress proposed a deal: Michigan would relinquish its claim on the Toledo strip and, in exchange, would get the Upper Peninsula. The Florida Panhandle and the Florida Peninsula were governed as separate regions — West and East Florida — under Spanish and British rule. They were effectively separated by hundreds of miles of treacherous swamp and forest. Ultimately, West and East Florida were combined into one state. This was mainly coincidental: Alabama earned statehood before the Florida territory was annexed. West Florida repeatedly tried to join Alabama, starting as soon as the state was annexed and lasting all the way past the Civil War. Many of these efforts — which included referendums, congressional petitions and direct negotiations between Florida and Alabama — nearly succeeded. But they ultimately did not. If these minor border issues had gone differently, Mrs. Clinton would probably be president. The Florida Panhandle is heavily Republican: Without it, the rest of Florida votes Democratic. Both halves of the Toledo War worked out poorly for Mrs. Clinton. Not only would she have won Michigan with Toledo, but she would have also won Michigan without the Upper Peninsula: Only the full trade gives Mr. Trump a narrow win. Interestingly, the same changes would have flipped the 2000 election, and perhaps the 1876 election, to the same result as the national popular vote (though I don’t have results for Florida in that election). The pronounced regionalism at play in 1888 would have made it harder to change the outcome by tweaking state lines. To be clear, you can also make plenty of changes that would benefit Republicans. You could reunify West Virginia and Virginia, to take an easy one. The point is that the main bias of the Electoral College isn’t against big states or regionalism it’s just toward the big battleground states. If they break overwhelmingly one way, that’s who wins. This is not exactly a Hamiltonian argument. There aren’t many justifications for letting a few close states decide a close national election. But that’s basically what the system does, and there’s nothing about those states that ensures they provide a representative outcome. | 1 |
AMSTERDAM — The parochial world of Dutch elections is not often seen as a hotbed of foreign intrigue. But in recent months, an unexpected worry has emerged: the influence of American money. The country’s leader, Geert Wilders, is getting help from American conservatives attracted to his Union and views. David Horowitz, an American activist, has contributed roughly $150, 000 to Mr. Wilders’s Party for Freedom over two years — of which nearly $120, 000 came in 2015, making it the largest individual contribution in the Dutch political system that year, according to recently released records. By American standards, the amount is a pittance. But to some Dutch, who are already fearful of possible Russian meddling in the election, the American involvement is an assault on national sovereignty. “It’s foreign interference in our democracy,” said Ronald van Raak, a senior member of Parliament in the opposition Socialist party, who has legislation to ban foreign donations. “We would not have thought that people from other countries would have been interested in our politics,” he said. “Maybe we underestimated ourselves. ” The Dutch parliamentary elections on March 15 are the kickoff for a pivotal political year in Europe. Other elections loom in France, Germany and possibly Italy. With the viability of the European Union at stake, anxieties are rising about foreign interference, with European intelligence agencies warning that Russia is working to help parties through hacking and disinformation campaigns. But sympathy for Europe’s far right is also coming from Americans who share similar views and are willing to contribute money to help the cause. Measuring this outside support is difficult, though, because many European countries have leaky, opaque accountability systems on campaign finance. France, Germany and the Netherlands have only published campaign finance data from as recently as 2014 or 2015. And only the Netherlands will update that information with more disclosures before Election Day. New campaign finance data is expected to be released on Wednesday. Though Europe is generally known for its public financing of elections, parties are increasingly seeking outside donations, especially since regulatory loopholes abound. In Germany, the Alternative for Germany sold gold bars and coins in a strategy to inflate its revenue and, through a quirk of the rules, increase its access to public funds, until the practice was banned by Parliament. German parties have also sought to divert public funds provided to parliamentary caucuses. “It’s illegal but basically done everywhere” in Germany, said Christoph Möllers, a professor of public law and legal philosophy at Humboldt University of Berlin. While France bars contributions from businesses, loans are allowed. A Russian bank made headlines in recent years after lending millions of euros to the National Front party of Marine Le Pen. After that bank failed last year, the party complained that it had been shunned by French banks and declared itself in the market for a new lender. If nothing else, European parties are gaining newly emboldened allies. “I expect the Trump administration to be more open to these parties than Obama, certainly,” said Representative Steve King, an Iowa Republican who is an ally both of President Trump and the European far right, having met with various party leaders during a recent European trip. The State Department, in a statement, declined “to comment on political parties in foreign elections. ” Mr. Horowitz, who has long sounded alarms on Muslim immigration, first rallied to Mr. Wilders’s side after the Dutch politician was put on trial in 2010 for inciting hatred against Muslims with a film he made that attacked the Quran he was acquitted the next year. Mr. Wilders was more recently found guilty of incitement after leading an chant at a rally, though he avoided a fine. “I think he’s the Paul Revere of Europe,” Mr. Horowitz said in an interview. “Geert Wilders is a hero, and I think he’s a hero of the most important battle of our times, the battle to defend free speech,” he added, calling the situation in Europe a “nightmare. ” Though Mr. Horowitz’s donations adhere to Dutch standards, there was some question of whether they comply with American law. Organized as a 501( c)(3) under American tax law, Mr. Horowitz’s foundation is barred from making donations to political organizations. The donations went to the Friends of PVV, according to Dutch records, a foundation covered by political disclosure rules. Michael Finch, the president of Mr. Horowitz’s foundation, said in an email that “the funds that were sent to Geert Wilders were to help him in his legal cases” and “were not political donations. ” But donations to foreign political entities are problematic, tax experts said. “The I. R. S. views foreign political organizations as the same as domestic political organizations — not appropriate for a charity to support,” said Marcus S. Owens, a partner at Loeb Loeb, and former director of the Exempt Organizations Division of the Internal Revenue Service, in an email. He added, “The I. R. S. also views a charity that is controlled by a political organization as transgressing federal tax rules. ” Mr. Horowitz said he was not certain if the foundation had given additional funds to Mr. Wilders’s party this year or last year. Mr. Wilders’s backing of Israel, where he once lived, has set him apart from other groups, and he has courted American Jews. Daniel Pipes, another conservative American activist and a historian known for his controversial statements on Islam, said in an email exchange that he hoped “the rise of the insurgent parties leads not to their forming governments but their sending a strong message to the legacy parties to wake up and deal with the imperative issues they have so long ignored. ” Mr. Pipes said his foundation, the Middle East Forum, provided money in the “six figures” to help pay legal bills in Mr. Wilders’s trial over the film, but specifically to a legal fund, and has not provided political support. Mr. Pipes has called Mr. Wilders “the most important European alive today,” but has differed with him on his view of Islam, though he himself has expressed inflammatory views on the subject. Dutch records also show that two American foundations paid for Mr. Wilders’s flights and hotels on trips to the United States last year. One, the Gatestone Institute, lists John R. Bolton, a combative former United Nations ambassador under George W. Bush, as its chairman. Another, the International Freedom Alliance Foundation, is backed by Robert J. Shillman, a wealthy Trump supporter who paid for a digital ad in Times Square last year depicting Mr. Trump as Superman. The travel payments were previously reported by Foreign Policy magazine. Lawmakers and academics say the European public has seen little need for tight campaign finance regulations because political campaigning in Europe has historically been far more restrained than in the United States. “The campaigns don’t seem to be that relevant,” Mr. Mollers said. “You see campaign finance is spent for posters, and no one believes that changes the game. ” Now, however, European political campaigns could become more expensive as parties turn to persuasion efforts similar to those used in the United States, even if they are limited by European laws. The Dutch Green Party, for instance, has licensed software from Blue State Digital, a prominent American data consultancy. Guillaume Liegey, and chief executive of Liegey Muller Pons, a data consulting firm, was an adviser to President François Hollande’s 2012 campaign in France, one of the first in Europe to use techniques. “The idea of using data and technology has since then become more of a standard in today’s European campaigns,” he said in an email. He now consults for the campaign of Emmanuel Macron, a politician who is one of the in the French presidential race, which takes place in two stages in April and May. Few dispute the stakes. Mr. Wilders and Ms. Le Pen, the French leader, are running strong in polls, though both are considered long shots to win control of their governments. If either did win, it could be a devastating blow to the euro currency union, as well as the European Union itself, an outcome that many analysts regard as a foreign policy disaster. Mr. Horowitz disagrees, and portrays the European Union as the disaster. “To have this Parliament that represents nobody in Brussels making laws for everybody, it’s very ” said Mr. Horowitz. “I always thought it was a bad idea. ” | 1 |
Donald J. Trump’s candidacy has driven away throngs of Republican elected officials, donors and policy experts. But not the National Rifle Association. With Mr. Trump increasingly isolated and hobbled by controversies of his own making, the powerful group has emerged as one of his remaining stalwart allies in the Republican coalition: the institution on the right most aggressively committed to his candidacy, except for the Republican National Committee itself. The association has spent millions of dollars on television commercials for Mr. Trump, even as other Republican groups have kept their checkbooks closed and Mr. Trump’s campaign has not run any ads of its own. The N. R. A. ’s chief political strategist, Chris Cox, gave a forceful testimonial for Mr. Trump at the Republican convention Mr. Trump has repeatedly praised Mr. Cox and the association’s executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre. And on Tuesday, when Mr. Trump roiled the presidential race anew with a rough comment — his critics interpreted it as a suggestion that “Second Amendment people” could attack Hillary Clinton or the judges she would appoint if elected president — the association rushed to defend his remark as no more than an attempt to rally gun enthusiasts to vote in November. Allies of Mr. Trump and the association describe their political alliance as a marriage forged out of urgent necessity: an unlikely pairing of a former proponent who lives in a Manhattan skyscraper with an advocacy group typically seen as speaking for gun manufacturers and the hunters and sportsmen of Middle America. But Mr. Trump has effectively romanced the community with a message of fierce support for Second Amendment rights. And the N. R. A. spurred by concern about Mrs. Clinton’s power to name Supreme Court judges, has reciprocated his overtures with enthusiasm. Helping to establish that connection have been Mr. Trump’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, avid hunters with ties to the N. R. A. Donald Jr. Mr. Trump’s oldest son, spoke about the importance of gun rights on a visit to Capitol Hill in the spring. On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump makes a show of embracing the association and its leadership, while accusing Mrs. Clinton of seeking to do away with the Second Amendment. “We’re going to help the N. R. A. who are great people,” he said on Tuesday in Fayetteville, N. C. “They’re fighting hard, they’re fighting hard. Chris and Wayne and all their people at the N. R. A. these are people that love our country. ” The alliance with Mr. Trump comes at a moment of peril for the N. R. A. and its agenda, as Democrats threaten to take control of the Senate and polls show the public increasingly supportive of at least modest new limits on the sale and possession of firearms. Mrs. Clinton and other Democrats have run explicitly against the N. R. A. in this election, attacking the gun lobby for opposing laws intended to restrict gun sales to people with mental illnesses or whose names are on the federal terrorism watch list. They have held up the N. R. A. as a uniquely sinister organization, and cast themselves as opponents of the group rather than of gun owners in general. In her acceptance speech at the Democratic convention last month, Mrs. Clinton said the country could not have a president “in the pocket of the gun lobby. ” “I’m not here to repeal the Second Amendment,” she told the crowd in Philadelphia. “I’m not here to take away your guns. I just don’t want you to be shot by someone who shouldn’t have a gun in the first place. ” Mrs. Clinton, who has campaigned with advocates like the former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, told a crowd in Iowa on Wednesday that Mr. Trump’s provocative remark about Second Amendment supporters showed he was unfit to be president. She called it “the latest in a long line of casual comments from Donald Trump that cross the line. ” The N. R. A. is expected to intensify its efforts on Mr. Trump’s behalf, association officials said, increasing its spending on television commercials and wielding its extensive network of activists to help turn out voters sympathetic to Mr. Trump. The N. R. A. has spent nearly $6 million this year on advertising supporting Mr. Trump, focusing its latest efforts on the swing states of Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where Mr. Trump and his running mate, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, have been campaigning heavily. That sum — a tiny fraction of what has been spent on commercials backing Mrs. Clinton — is the largest expenditure for ads helping Mr. Trump in the general election. At this point in the last two presidential elections, the N. R. A. had not spent a single dollar on commercials backing the Republican nominees, John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012, according to the ad tracking firm Kantar . In 2004, the rifle association spent just $61, 000 aiding President George W. Bush’s bid, and only in Washington. Rebuilding America Now, a super PAC supporting Mr. Trump’s candidacy, also appears to be ramping up its activities, with roughly $1 million added to its advertising plans for the next six days in four battleground states. Grover Norquist, an activist who sits on the rifle association’s board, said the 2016 race was uniquely explosive because control of the Supreme Court hangs in the balance and Mrs. Clinton has spoken critically of judicial decisions that take a broad interpretation of the right to own guns. “Trump in his public statements, in his speech at the convention, is the most Amendment presidential candidate of either party in living memory,” Mr. Norquist said. “And we haven’t had a presidential candidate declare war on the Second Amendment community as aggressively as Hillary. ” Mr. Norquist said that the N. R. A. and other Second Amendment groups were determined to reach voters who are concerned about crime and and who might hold permits to carry concealed weapons but were not recreational gun users like hunters and sportsmen. They may not fit the conventional profile of gun owners, he said, and may be more likely to live in battleground states like Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania. “They are more suburban,” Mr. Norquist said. “They are more likely to be swing voters and not necessarily N. R. A. members. ” The N. R. A. ’s ads have focused on themes of and fear — and on persuading gun owners that they should fear Mrs. Clinton: Its latest commercial, released Tuesday, accused her of hypocrisy, saying she surrounded herself with armed guards while trying to take away Americans’ firearms, leaving them “defenseless. ” At times, the association has taken its advocacy for Mr. Trump well beyond gun rights. With no “super PAC” running ads for Mr. Trump, the N. R. A. stepped into that role in late June, releasing an ad on an entirely unrelated issue. The commercial featured a survivor of the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, criticizing Mrs. Clinton’s handling of it. It made no mention of guns or any other domestic policy issue. And the N. R. A. has used its digital channels, which reach more than five million members, to echo Mr. Trump’s messages: Ginny Simone, a reporter for NRA News, the association’s online channel, recently offered a glowing video package showcasing Mr. Trump’s convention speech and trumpeting his support among gun owners. Mr. Trump has not always been such a clear ally of the gun lobby. When he considered a bid for president in 2000, he repeatedly expressed support for a crackdown on gun ownership, and criticized Republicans who, he said, “walk the N. R. A. line and refuse even limited restrictions. ” But this year, Mr. Trump has gone to unusual lengths to get along with the organization. When the group offered rare criticism of him in June, for suggesting after the nightclub massacre in Orlando, Fla. that patrons there should have been armed, Mr. Trump took the unusual step of walking back his remarks. His intention, he insisted, had been to suggest that more armed guards at the nightclub would have been helpful. | 1 |
The Russia-Microsoft CyberWar is Underway November 02, 2016 The Russia-Microsoft CyberWar is Underway
Microsoft Corp said on Tuesday that a hacking group previously linked to the Russian government and U.S. political hacks was behind recent cyber attacks that exploited a newly discovered Windows security flaw.
The software maker said in an advisory on its website there had been a small number of attacks using "spear phishing" emails from a hacking group known Strontium, which is more widely known as "Fancy Bear," or APT 28. Microsoft did not identify any victims.
Russia is not just sitting back. On Wednesday Putin basically banned Microsoft and the business service LinkedIn from operating in the country, according to NBC News :
In his battle with the United States, Vladimir Putin has a new target — Microsoft.
The Kremlin is backing a plan to rid government offices and state-controlled companies of all foreign software, starting with Moscow city government replacing Microsoft products with Russian ones, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official.
The Russians have also moved toward blocking LinkedIn, the U.S.-based networking site that Microsoft is in the process of buying. The company is appealing an injunction, with a decision expected Nov. 10.
Microsoft's disclosure of the new attacks and the link to Russia came after Washington accused Moscow of launching an unprecedented hacking campaign aimed at disrupting and discrediting the upcoming U.S. election.
The U.S. government last month formally blamed the Russian government for the election-season hacks of Democratic Party emails and their subsequent disclosure via WikiLeaks and other entities. Russia has denied those accusations.
Microsoft said a patch to protect Windows users against the newly discovered threat will be released on Nov. 8, which is Election Day. It was not clear whether the Windows vulnerability had been used in any of the recent U.S. political hacks.
Representatives of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security could not immediately be reached for comment.
A U.S. intelligence expert on Russian cyber activity said that Fancy Bear primarily works for or on behalf of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, which U.S. intelligence officials have concluded were responsible for hacks of Democratic Party databases and emails.
In spear phishing, an attacker sends targeted messages, typically via email, that exploit known information to trick victims into clicking on malicious links or open tainted attachments.
Microsoft said the attacks exploited a vulnerability in Adobe Systems Inc's Flash software and one in the Windows operating system.
Adobe released a patch for that vulnerability on Monday, when security researchers with Google went public with details on the attack.
Microsoft chided rival Google for going public with details of the vulnerabilities before it had time to prepare and test a patch to fix them.
"Google’s decision to disclose these vulnerabilities before patches are broadly available and tested is disappointing, and puts customers at increased risk," Microsoft said.
A Google representative declined to comment on Microsoft's statement.
Google disclosed the flaw on Monday, following its standing policy of going public seven days after discovering "critical vulnerabilities" that are being actively exploited by hackers.
Google gives software companies 60 days to patch less serious bugs. 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! | 0 |
Posted on October 31, 2016 by DCG | 11 Comments
Via NY Post : An NYU professor crusading against political correctness and student coddling was booted from the classroom last week after his colleagues complained about his “incivility,” The Post has learned.
Liberal studies prof Michael Rectenwald , 57, said he was forced Wednesday to go on paid leave for the rest of the semester. “They are actually pushing me out the door for having a different perspective,” the academic told The Post. Michael Rectenwald
Rectenwald launched an undercover Twitter account called Deplorable NYU Prof on Sept. 12 to argue against campus trends like “safe spaces,” “trigger warnings” and other aspects of academia’s growing PC culture .
He chose to be anonymous, he explained in one of his first tweets, because he was afraid “the PC Gestapo would ruin me” if he put his name behind his conservative ideas on the famously liberal campus.
“I remember once on my Facebook I posted a story about a kid who changed his pronoun to ‘His Majesty’ because I thought it was funny,” he told The Post. “Then I got viciously attacked by 400 people. This whole milieu is nauseating. I grew tired of it, so I made the account.”
On Oct. 11, Rectenwald used his Internet alter ego to criticize “safe spaces” — the recent campus trend of “protecting” students from uncomfortable speech — as “at once a hall of mirrors and a rubber room.”
Two weeks ago he posted on his “anti-PC” feed a photo of a flyer put out by NYU resident advisers telling students how to avoid wearing potentially offensive Halloween costumes. “The scariest thing about Halloween today is . . . the liberal totalitarian costume surveillance,” he wrote.
“It’s an alarming curtailment of free expression to the point where you can’t even pretend to be something without authorities coming down on you in the universities,” Rectenwald told The Post.
But the Twitter feed soon sparked a “witch hunt” by the growing army of “social justice warriors,” he said. And so, when he was approached on Twitter by a reporter with the Washington Square News, NYU’s student newspaper, the untenured assistant professor agreed to an interview.
“I thought there was nothing objectionable about what I had said,” he told The Post. “My contention is that the trigger warning, safe spaces and bias hot-line reporting is not politically correct. It is insane ,” he told the student paper in an interview published Monday.
But Rectenwald says he began getting “dirty looks” in his department and on Wednesday figured out why: A 12-person committee calling itself the Liberal Studies Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Working Group, including two deans, published a letter to the editor in the same paper.
“As long as he airs his views with so little appeal to evidence and civility, we must find him guilty of illogic and incivility in a community that predicates its work in great part on rational thought and the civil exchange of ideas,” they wrote.
“We seek to create a dynamic community that values full participation. Such efforts are not the ‘destruction of academic integrity’ Professor Rectenwald suggests, but rather what make possible our program’s approach to global studies,” they argued.
Rectenwald likened the attack to “a Salem witch trial. They took my views personally. I never even mentioned them and I never even said NYU liberal studies program. I was talking about academia at large.”
The same day that letter was published, Rectenwald was summoned to a meeting with his department dean and an HR representative, he says. “They claimed they were worried about me and a couple people had expressed concern about my mental health,” Rectenwald told The Post. NYU spokesman Matt Nagel
The leave has “absolutely zero to do with his Twitter account or his opinions on issues of the day,” said NYU spokesman Matt Nagel , refusing to elaborate on the reason.
But Rectenwald is disheartened. “I’m afraid my academic career is over,” he said . “Academic freedom: It’s great, as long as you don’t use it.”
DCG | 1 |
( Flickr / CC 2.0 )
I’m currently reading a book entitled “ Learning to Die in the Anthropocene ,” written by Iraq veteran Roy Scranton, who basically tells us that human beings have pretty much screwed themselves due to the vast and rapidly-approaching nightmare of climate change. If this book was designed to scare the holy shite out of people, it certainly has succeeded.
According to Scranton, “Human civilization has thrived in what has been the most stable climate interval in 650,00 years. Thanks to carbon-fueled industrial civilization, that interval is over.” Boom.
But is anybody doing anything to stop this nightmare from happening? Only a few people are—mainly a small-but-courageous Indian tribe at Standing Rock, North Dakota. And what is America’s reaction to this heroic stand against death by carbon? We have just spent hundreds of thousands of tax-payer dollars trying to tear-gas them, harass them, arrest them, pepper-spray them and shoot rubber bullets at them. Way to go America! Or not.
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Thank goodness for the Standing Rock Sioux. Like it or not, they are protecting us. They are standing in place instead of us. They are bravely standing in front of a hurricane of climate-death and are doing it in our name. And all we do to thank them is to pay for the militarized police’s tear gas, dogs and bullets that attack them.
I propose another way to thank the Standing Rock Sioux. Let’s all go to Standing Rock this Thanksgiving—and show them that we really do have something to be truly thankful for.
PS: If you can’t figure out how to get all the way to the Standing Rock Reservation, then consider having your Thanksgiving dinner in front of the Capitol building in Bismarck instead. Can’t make it there either? How about Thanksgiving dinner in front of the US Congress or the White House.
PPS: Standing Rock protestors, Black Lives Matter, various Chicano movements and Occupy are practically the only true Americans these days—Americans who are courageous enough to actually stand up to the US military-industrial complex that is gobbling up the rest of us alive. We should honor these protestors instead of bombing them with tear gas and attacking them with dogs.
The rest of us whine and grieve that we are losing everything—but do nothing to stop it and just go along.
PPPS: Aside from being victims of the climate-change hurricane that is now bearing down upon us post-haste, Standing Rock is also just more collateral damage right now (along with Syria, Palestine, Ukraine, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Nigeria, etc.) in the neo-con “wars” for oil. But who knows who the next “collateral damage” will be? Probably us.
Jane Stillwater is a freelance journalist, war correspondent, blogger, political Cassandra and author of “ Bring Your Own Flak Jacket: Helpful Tips for Touring Today’s Middle East ,” now available on Amazon.com. Her latest motto is “Stop Wall Street and War Street from destroying our world.” TAGS: | 0 |
November 15, 2016 - Fort Russ - Ruslan Ostashko, PolitRussia - translated by J. Arnoldski -
It’s impossible not to laugh and feel pity when looking at those who in the media and on social networks are now saying that the arrest of [Russian Economy Minister] Ulyukaev [for allegedly taking a $2 million bribe] was made possible exclusively thanks to the telephone conversation between Trump and Putin. According to this conspiracy theory, without Washington’s permission, Putin never ever would have dared lay a finger on Ulyukaev and only now gathered the wiretap transcripts from many months and years before the American elections.
Guys, let’s respect our country. We are not Ukraine. Putin and the FSB don’t need a nod from Washington to extinguish corruption. Open the calendar on your computer and look at what year it is. It is 2016 and those who are talking about some kind of permission from Washington are either stuck in 1995 or have confused today’s Moscow with Kiev. There’s no need to be like our neighbors, who to this day think that every day the sun rises only because of the State Department. Washington is not the center of the universe or the world. It’s time to get used to this.
If you want to find coincidences in time and draw meaningful conclusions from them, then I have a better proposal. Today, November 15th, the leader of the FSB of Russia, Alexander Vasilevich Bortnikov, is celebrating his 65th birthday. I wish him every success in his hard work. If someone wants to come up with conspiracy theories, then the arrest of Ulyukaev should at least be attributed to this special day and not some kind of phone call with Trump. Judging by the hysterical statements of the American supporters of Clinton, even Trump’s election would not have been possible without the active support of Russian intelligence.
We will never know if this is actually true, but I suggest that we not make any excuses. It’s really quite cool when the Western propaganda machine speaks of the omnipotence of the immortal KGB.
And there’s no need to write off the arrest as a fight between clans within the country’s elite. Of course, there are clans and they are waging a tough fight against one another, but it is unlikely that any clan would like a situation in which anyone can be jailed regardless of their rank, position, and merit. After Ulyukaev’s arrest, it turns out that nothing, no position, gives immunity from justice. This situation is not beneficial for any clan. And it is becoming all the more clear that Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is the driving force of the process of fighting against bureaucratic corruption.
And finally, look at how warped various representatives of the non-systemic opposition and the pseudo-liberal media are. Just yesterday they were screaming on social networks about how everything is bad and terrible, corruption is everywhere, and no one is jailing senior officials. Well, last night they arrested Ulyukaev. Security forces are saying that they caught him red-handed. And what reaction do we see in the blogosphere and media? Cries about 1937, massive Putinist repressions, a disaster for the economy and the ruble, the night of the long knives, etc. I feel that soon this will be followed by calls to pay and repent. Ulyukaev has all the chances to become a prisoner of conscience and Khodorkovsky will stand in up in support of him. This is pathetic.
The new year is coming soon. I would like to make the wish that we’ll find a sane opposition under the Christmas tree or on new year’s eve. We’ll handle corruption and roads in one way or another.
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COLORADO SPRINGS — Executives at the United States Agency here are agitating for a forceful response to Russia’s doping program, lobbying international sports officials for more aggressive sanctions and for an overhaul of the global regulatory system. Executives at the nearby United States Olympic Committee’s headquarters have a different agenda. They are lobbying the same officials to award the 2024 Summer Games to Los Angeles, a likely financial boon for the committee, and have pressured Congress not to amplify the antidoping concerns. The competing agendas have put some of the most powerful sports executives in the world in conflict as the Olympic Committee enters the final months of its effort to bring the Games back to the United States for the first time since 2002. “Fighting with an organization responsible for giving future Olympic Games — it’s a big mistake,” said Vitaly Smirnov, an influential Russian Olympic official. He singled out criticisms by Travis Tygart, America’s antidoping chief, who has argued for severe penalties against Russia. “This gentleman is doing a very counterproductive job with respect to the Los Angeles bid,” Mr. Smirnov said. The choice for the 2024 Games is down to Los Angeles and Paris, and United States Olympic officials and other powerful interests involved with the bid have expressed concern to members of Congress that the crusade could alienate some of the global officials who will make the decision. Mr. Tygart is to continue his crusade on Tuesday, when he is scheduled to address a House subcommittee about the doping scandal and the ways in which the global sports system could be improved. Testifying alongside him will be Michael Phelps, the world’s most decorated Olympian Adam Nelson, an American shot putter who was awarded a gold medal nearly a decade after his 2004 Olympic performance when a competitor was disqualified for doping as well as officials from the I. O. C. and the World Agency, to which the United States contributes $2 million annually. Scott Blackmun, chief executive of the United States Olympic Committee, acknowledged that over the last year his organization had discussed the pending bid, along with a range of other issues, with both the House and the Senate. The Senate Commerce committee, which has not called a hearing but confirmed that its parallel inquiry was continuing, said on Saturday that it had “challenged suggestions that the 2024 bid is a legitimate rationale for stopping or delaying necessary oversight of doping in international competition. ” Mr. Blackmun said he thought a congressional hearing would be “more productive” after international sports officials had signaled how they planned to address the scandal, and that he supported lawmakers’ desire to stay informed. He also said he supported the fight for clean sports, but that his organization prefers a quieter approach. As the Russian doping scandal was roiling global sports weeks ahead of the Rio Olympics, with sports officials scrambling to respond to the pressure Mr. Tygart and others were applying in calling for extreme sanctions, the American Olympic committee worked to stave off congressional attention. “We were not saying hearings were inappropriate, but instead that right in front of the Olympic Games is not the right time,” Mr. Blackmun said. “Travis’s style, I would be lying if I told you it wasn’t having an impact,” he said of Mr. Tygart and the nation’s Olympic bid. “At the end of the day, he’s doing his job, and he’s doing it really well. Would we like him to be a little bit more of a devil? Yes, we would. ” Mr. Tygart shrugged off the critiques of his methods. “It’s not unusual when you’re trying to do the right thing that there are attempts to pressure you to back off these fundamental values,” he said. Though based mere miles apart, the two prominent officials rarely cross paths in person. If ever, it might happen at the airport, since each travels frequently. They speak by phone every two to three months. While both organizations are aimed at serving American athletes, their pursuits are not always in harmony. The tension over the last year has not surprised American athletes who have expressed frustration at what they call global officials’ hesitancy to discipline Russia for systematic cheating. “The I. O. C. is responsible for the integrity of the Olympics and keeping it functioning, and they’re not doing it,” said Sarah Konrad, an American biathlete who until last month was chairwoman of the United State’s Olympic Committee’s athlete advisory council. “I know Scott Blackmun thinks more needs to be done by WADA and the I. O. C. but he’s not willing to get out and stand on a pulpit and say that because of the bid. ” Asked to respond to Ms. Konrad’s statement, Mr. Blackmun called her “a very smart person. ” The host for the 2024 Games will be determined in September by secret ballots cast by the roughly 100 members of the International Olympic Committee, representing countries from Brazil to Liechtenstein to North Korea. Russia has three members. The global officials are accustomed to autonomy and may bristle at this week’s scrutiny from the American government, prompting some like Ms. Konrad to wonder if a hearing could cause more harm than good. “We want the I. O. C. to be independent, nothing to do with politics,” Gerhard Heiberg, a longtime I. O. C. member from Norway, said. “That is of course not possible, but it could be very difficult to have one nation getting involved in how we are handling doping and putting pressure on us. ” Mr. Heiberg said that whims often guided the individual votes of I. O. C. . “On Sept. 13, when we choose between Los Angeles and Paris, a lot of people will vote with their hearts,” he said. Congress’s interest in the doping scandal, Mr. Tygart’s activism and the United States’ inquiries into international sports corruption — from the FIFA case focused on soccer’s global governing body to a Justice Department investigation into the Russian doping scandal — could inform how some of his colleagues voted, he said. “It could affect some members — ‘you want the Games, fine, but don’t mix things up,’ ” Mr. Heiberg said. Kasper of Switzerland, who sits on the I. O. C. ’s executive board, also said that Mr. Tygart’s outspokenness, coupled with Donald J. Trump’s election, could diminish Los Angeles’s attractiveness as host. Mr. Trump has expressed public support for the Olympic bid, though some of his policies — most notably on immigration, including his recent executive order barring visitors from seven predominantly Muslim nations — have caused concern among sports officials. Mr. Blackmun said the American Olympic committee had received assurances from the State Department and Homeland Security that global athletes and officials would have no trouble entering the United States in 2024. “The Games are more than seven years away at this point and, candidly, the I. O. C. has been through this a number of times,” Mr. Blackmun said. “I think they have the ability to look past what I would call the political or situational environment. ” As a dwindling number of cities have expressed willingness to host the Olympics, the I. O. C. ’s president has suggested he would like to see fewer “losers” in the bid process, setting off recent speculation that both Paris and Los Angeles could be chosen at the same time to host two future Summer Olympics, for 2024 and 2028. Even so, Mr. Blackmun emphasized last week in his office in downtown Colorado Springs, decorated with oversize photographs of American athletes marching in various opening ceremonies, that the United States was exclusively focused on hosting in 2024. If Los Angeles receives the bid, Mr. Blackmun said, the Summer Games could make an example of the country’s strong antidoping system. A drive north, Mr. Tygart walked into the antidoping agency’s staff kitchen and pointed to an array of motivational words decorating the wall. “Courage,” he said, gesturing above the refrigerator. “That’s the most important one. ” Mr. Tygart’s colleague Edwin Moses — an Olympic medalist and chairman of the American antidoping agency’s board — expressed consternation that the agency’s principled positions might undermine the bid. “If standing up for the rights of athletes and fair play somehow makes a country less likely to host the Olympic Games — wow,” he said. “That says about all you need to know about that process. It’s also exactly why sport has no business trying to police itself. ” Ms. Konrad, the Olympic biathlete, said she appreciated that Mr. Tygart had sacrificed a cozy relationship with Olympic officials, displaying the independence he and others have called for regulators to embrace at the global level. “I can sympathize with people showing restraint because they want L. A. to happen,” Ms. Konrad said. “But a clean playing field is more important to me than a home playing field. ” | 1 |
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WATCH: “I think we all have a responsibility to not stay silent now. ” @ChelseaClinton tells @savannahguthrie pic. twitter. Tuesday on NBC’s “Today,” former first daughter Chelsea Clinton explained her new outspokenness, particularly on social media in the months after her mother Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump for the White House. Clinton, who was promoting her book “She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World,” told Savannah Guthrie she found a voice during the campaign and thought it was necessary “not to stay silent now” given the political climate. “Well, last year when I was campaigning for my mom — I think really up until my due date with Aidan and then being on the stage at the convention so proud to support her there just a few weeks after he was born — I did so many events for my mom,” Clinton said. “And I had a chance to share my thoughts publicly in those forums. I did lots of interviews. And now I continue to share my views after the inauguration. ” “I don’t think what I say today is any different than what I would say had I been asked similar questions or similar issues kind of on the stage,” she continued. “But certainly, I think we all have a responsibility to not stay silent now. I think we all have to speak up and use whatever platforms we have now and certainly, social media is part of that. ” Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor | 0 |
International terrorism expert Peter Neumann has warned Europe to expect an increasing number of attacks, as Friday’s truck terror in Stockholm marked the third Islamist atrocity to hit the continent in just three weeks with other deadly assaults taking place in St. Petersburg and London. [“I believe that, more more more, ISIS will be using its supporters in Europe to carry out attacks” the head of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization (ICSR) at King’s College in London told ZDF on Monday. Neumann said it’s important that people have a realistic assessment of the threat of Islamist attacks, but insisted “this doesn’t mean there are going to be acts of terrorism happening in Europe every day, or that people should be frightened to go out on the street”. According to the professor, authorities in Europe are generally in the fight against Islamist attacks, but he stressed that security services need to keep a closer eye on people deemed to be a potential terror threat. As well as boosting the resources and capacity of bodies, Neumann said it’s vital that intelligence agencies leave no threat file unprocessed. “You need to have a concrete, integrated, systematic approach to prevention,” he added. Speaking after the Westminster attack in March — in which Muslim convert Khalid Masood mowed down crowds with a vehicle and stabbed a police officer, killing five people and injuring more than fifty — the ICSR chief said that nations in Europe are going to have to learn to live with terror. “Just because nothing happens for two months doesn’t mean the risk of a terror attack being carried out has declined, and this is something we need to adapt to,” he said. Neumann pointed out that while agencies in Britain are far superior to those in most of Europe, the problem is that they don’t currently have enough resources to deal with the huge number of threats. | 0 |
We Are Change
Physicists say they may have evidence that the universe is a computer simulation. How? They made a computer simulation of the universe. And it looks sort of like us.
A long-proposed thought experiment, put forward by both philosophers and popular culture, points out that any civilization of sufficient size and intelligence would eventually create a simulation universe if such a thing were possible.
And since there would therefore be many more simulations (within simulations, within simulations) than real universes, it is therefore more likely than not that our world is artificial.
Now a team of researchers at the University of Bonn in Germany led by Silas Beane say they have evidence this may be true.
In a paper named ‘Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation’ , they point out that current simulations of the universe – which do exist, but which are extremely weak and small – naturally put limits on physical laws.
Technology Review explains that “the problem with all simulations is that the laws of physics, which appear continuous, have to be superimposed onto a discrete three dimensional lattice which advances in steps of time.”
Read also: Scientists Believe They Have Discovered A Parallel Universe That Interact With Our World!
What that basically means is that by just being a simulation, the computer would put limits on, for instance, the energy that particles can have within the program.
These limits would be experienced by those living within the sim – and as it turns out, something which looks just like these limits do in fact exist. For instance, something known as the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin, or GZK cut off, is an apparent boundary of the energy that cosmic ray particles can have. This is caused by interaction with cosmic background radiation. But Beane and co’s paper argues that the pattern of this rule mirrors what you might expect from a computer simulation .
Naturally, at this point the science becomes pretty tricky to wade through – and we would advise you read the paper itself to try and get the full detail of the idea.
But the basic impression is an intriguing one.
Like a prisoner in a pitch-black cell, we may never be able to see the ‘walls’ of our prison — but through physics we may be able to reach out and touch them.
WATCH WHAT ELON MUSK SAYS ON THIS SUBJECT: The post Physicists Leak Evidence That Supports Elon Musk’s Theory – The Universe Is A Simulation appeared first on We Are Change .
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On a recent night, somewhere in the swamps of Jersey, it was the children, primarily, who asked the hard questions. “Could a bat eat a human?” one girl asked. “Only on HBO,” answered Joseph D’Angeli, who is known in some quarters as the Batman of New Jersey. “How do you attract a bat to a bat house?” a woman asked. “A female bat,” the single, Mr. D’Angeli said, before quickly adding that a bat house should be allowed to weather, to lose the scent of humans. The children were among 50 people who had turned out at Ridgefield Park High School for the first night of Batstock, an annual series of events in Bergen County created by Mr. D’Angeli in 2009 to celebrate bats, which he said were underappreciated and misunderstood. The creatures are also being wiped out throughout the Eastern United States by a fungal disease, which Mr. D’Angeli said now made education even more important. Mr. D’Angeli, the director of the Wildlife Conservation and Education Center in Ridgefield Park, has spent more than two decades promoting bat conservation. He spent Sunday night dispelling myths about bats and highlighting their positive traits. No, they don’t want to suck your blood, and less than 1 percent of bats actually carry rabies. Some, however, do eat hundreds or even thousands of insects every night. “Bats are our best natural defense against mosquitoes,” he told the audience. It is one reason the decline in bat populations is so grave, Mr. D’Angeli and other experts say. Since 2006, syndrome, a fungal disease, has decimated the hibernating bat population in the Northeast. Brooke Maslo, a professor in the department of ecology, evolution, and natural resources at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N. J. studies North American bats. She said in an interview that the disease had killed millions of bats in the United States. “When it first came through, the bats were just dead on the floor of the caves,” she said. “And now there’s just the skeletons. “It’s like walking though a graveyard,” she said. Dr. Maslo said that loss of bats could result in a huge growth of insect populations, especially of crop pests. Mr. D’Angel said the population decline had added urgency to his mission to educate. “I do admit, some of them look mouselike,” he said as he looked at a bat’s head on a screen with the audience. “But they are not rodents at all. ” Nearby, three fruit bats hung in a cage. Audience members fed them pieces of papaya and honeydew on wooden skewers at the end of the program. Mr. D’Angeli usually hangs out with some 20 bats in his education center, a storefront in Ridgefield Park. He is one of only two people licensed to have bats in New Jersey, according to the State Department of Environmental Protection. The center also houses spiders, snakes and other animals, most of which came from shelters or private owners who could no longer care for them. Bats were not always Mr. D’Angeli’s primary focus in life. In the late 1980s and early ’90s, he was the lead singer of Roxx, a glam metal band known for a stage show that included laser lights and pyrotechnics. “Go big or don’t go at all, that’s how Joe likes to do his shows,” said John Banaski, a friend of Mr. D’Angeli’s since the music years and a Batstock volunteer. Mr. Banaski, 48, said the two met more than 20 years ago at one of Mr. D’Angeli’s concerts. Roxx disbanded in the Mr. D’Angeli said, around the same time he began devoting himself to educating the public about bats. He lectures and exhibits bats throughout New Jersey, he said, at schools, libraries and other venues. Many at Batstock took to the furry winged creatures. “I like the different designs on them,” Vilaiwan Galarza, 9 said. Vilaiwan, who was with her mother and younger brother, said she was not afraid. “I’ve seen more disgusting creatures,” she said. Her mother, Kamolchanok Galarza, said she was “O. K. ” with bats. “I think it’s good if they help kill mosquitoes,” Ms. Galarza, 37, said. Tehilla Blau, 12, said she thought bats were interesting. “Some of them can’t really be described as cute, but they’re also not repulsive,” said Tehilla, who was with her brother and grandparents. Batstock will continue with a bat walk at the Teaneck Creek Conservancy on Sept. 18. “It’s not Woodstock by any means, but it’s still nice,” Mr. D’Angeli said. “There’s one goal and one goal only,” he added. “And that is to make sure that bats get the attention they deserve. ” | 1 |
Following Brexit, the UK will be in the “front seat” for a new trade deal with the U. S. under the Trump administration, senior Republicans have confirmed. [Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker made the declaration after meeting British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who said he was confident the UK would be “first in line” for such a trade deal, the BBC reports. The strong statements come after outgoing President Obama travelled to the UK during the European Union (EU) referendum campaign to threaten the British people that they would be at the “back of the queue” for a deal if the voted to Leave. Mr. Corker said Mr. Johnson knows “full well” that “there is no way the United Kingdom is going to take a back seat”. “They will take a front seat and I think it will be our priority to make sure that we deal with them on a trade agreement initially but in all respects in a way that demonstrates the friendship that we’ve had for so long,” he said. . @BorisJohnson joins us in Washington to discuss @realDonaldTrump and the future of the #SpecialRelationship. pic. twitter. — British Embassy (@UKinUSA) January 9, 2017, “Clearly, the Trump has a very exciting agenda of change,” Mr. Johnson added. “One thing that won’t change though is the closeness of the relationship between the U. S. and the UK. “We are the number two contributor to defence in NATO. We are America’s principal partner in working for global security and, of course, we are great campaigners for free trade. “We hear that we are first in line to do a great deal with the United States. So, it’s going to be a very exciting year for both our countries. ” Mr. Johnson reportedly also met the ’s Jared Kushner and Trump’s Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor Stephen K. Bannon, who took a leave of absence as Breitbart’s Executive Chairman, in New York. During the presidential election campaign, Mr. Johnson was highly critical of Mr. Trump. He said Mr. Trump was “clearly out of his mind” accused him of “quite stupefying ignorance” that made him “unfit for office” and said he would not visit New York because of the “real risk of meeting Donald Trump”. | 0 |
Yoshinori Ohsumi, a Japanese cell biologist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for his discoveries on how cells recycle their content, a process known as autophagy, a Greek term for “ . ” It is a crucial process. During starvation, cells break down proteins and nonessential components and reuse them for energy. Cells also use autophagy to destroy invading viruses and bacteria, sending them off for recycling. And cells use autophagy to get rid of damaged structures. The process is thought to go awry in cancer, infectious diseases, immunological diseases and neurodegenerative disorders. Disruptions in autophagy are also thought to play a role in aging. But little was known about how autophagy happens, what genes were involved, or its role in disease and normal development until Dr. Ohsumi began studying the process in baker’s yeast. The process he studies is critical for cells to survive and to stay healthy. The autophagy genes and the metabolic pathways he discovered in yeast are used by higher organisms, including humans. And mutations in those genes can cause disease. His work led to a new field and inspired hundreds of researchers around the world to study the process and opened a new area of inquiry. “Without him, the whole field doesn’t exist,” said Seungmin Hwang, an assistant professor in the department of pathology at the University of Chicago. “He set up the field. ” Dr. Ohsumi, who was born in 1945 in Fukuoka, Japan, and received a Ph. D. from the University of Tokyo in 1974, floundered at first, trying to find his way. He started out in chemistry but decided it was too established a field with few opportunities. So he switched to molecular biology. But his Ph. D. thesis was unimpressive, and he could not find a job. His adviser suggested a postdoctoral position at Rockefeller University in New York, where he was to study in vitro fertilization in mice. “I grew very frustrated,” he told the Journal of Cell Biology in 2012. He switched to studying the duplication of DNA in yeast. That work led him to a junior professor position at the University of Tokyo where he picked up a microscope and started peering at sacks in yeast where cell components are degraded — work that eventually brought him, at age 43, to the discoveries that the Nobel Assembly recognized on Monday. Dr. Ohsumi later moved to the National Institute for Basic Biology, in Okazaki, and since 2009, he has been a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. “All I can say is, it’s such an honor,” Dr. Ohsumi told reporters at the Tokyo Institute of Technology after learning he had been awarded the Nobel, according to the Japanese broadcaster NHK. “I’d like to tell young people that not all can be successful in science, but it’s important to rise to the challenge. ” “He is a quiet man,” said Dr. Beth Levine, director of autophagy research at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. But he also is quietly daring. “Unfortunately, these days, at least in Japan, young scientists want to get a stable job, so they are afraid to take risks,” he told the Journal of Cell Biology. “Most people decide to work on the most popular field because they think that is the easiest way to get a paper published. ” As for himself, he said: “I am not very competitive, so I always look for a new subject to study, even if it is not so popular. If you start from some sort of basic, new observation, you will have plenty to work on. ” Dr. Ohsumi’s Nobel Prize “was inevitable,” Dr. Levine said. Dr. Ohsumi, she said, “is venerated in the autophagy field. ” Autophagy researchers around the world were delighted by the recognition. “This is an exciting day for all of us,” said Dr. Ana Maria Cuervo, an autophagy researcher and of the Institute for Aging at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. “His work is some of the most elegant you can imagine for the knowledge and the beauty of how cells work. ” Kay F. Macleod, a cancer researcher at the University of Chicago, said, “It is super exciting that autophagy has been recognized in and of itself. ” Even more so, she added, because Dr. Ohsumi’s work was basic research. When Dr. Ohsumi and his colleagues began, she said, “I doubt they for one moment thought that this fundamental process would ultimately be shown to be so important in disease mechanisms and potential therapies. ” Dr. David H. Perlmutter, dean of the School of Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, said Dr. Ohsumi’s work opened a field that has now exploded, with implications that are “the stuff of science fiction. ” If the autophagy system is knocked out, he said, the result is premature aging, with ailments like cardiovascular disease, skeletal weakness, glucose intolerance and cognitive decline. Now drugs that stimulate this system are being studied. “If you take a drug and stimulate the system, you will make the organism live longer in a way,” he said. The Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, called Dr. Ohsumi to congratulate him, saying “your research gave light to the people who suffer from serious diseases. ” Speculation had it that the Nobel would go to researchers whose work was instrumental in developing new treatments that unleash the immune system to attack cancer cells. The list is long. had included James P. Allison at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center Craig B. Thompson of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York Gordon J. Freeman of Cancer Institute and Tasuku Honjo of Kyoto University. Another scientist often mentioned as a Nobel contender is Jeffrey Bluestone of the University of California, San Francisco, who works on the immune system in disorders in which it attacks normal cells. William C. Campbell, Satoshi Omura and Tu Youyou were recognized for their use of modern laboratory techniques to discover drugs long hidden in herbs and soil. Five more will be awarded in the days to come: ■ The Nobel Prize in Physics will be announced on Tuesday in Sweden. Read about last year’s winners, Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald. ■ The Nobel Prize in Chemistry will be announced on Wednesday in Sweden. Read about last year’s winners, Tomas Lindahl, Paul L. Modrich and Aziz Sancar. ■ The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday in Norway. Read about last year’s winners, the National Dialogue Quartet of Tunisia. ■ The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science will be announced on Monday, Oct. 10, in Sweden. Read about last year’s winner, Angus Deaton. ■ The Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced on Thursday, Oct. 13, in Sweden. Read about last year’s winner, Svetlana Alexievich. | 1 |
Eight members of one family were found shot to death in rural Ohio on Friday, including a mother killed while sleeping in the same room as her newborn baby, and the killer or killers were thought to be at large, law enforcement officials said. The bodies of seven members of the Rhoden family were found before 8 a. m. in three houses near each other in southwestern Pike County, the county sheriff, Charles Reader, said. Three children — ages 4 days, 6 months and 3 years — were found in the houses unharmed, the sheriff said. A few hours later, another family member was found dead in another house a few miles away. Officials said at a news conference that they could not rule out the possibility that other members of the family might be in danger, and that officers were checking on them throughout the region. “We are advising the family members to be very careful, and take particular precaution,” the Ohio attorney general, Mike DeWine, said. “The individual or individuals who committed this crime obviously are dangerous,” Mr. DeWine said. “We believe they are still at large. ” County officials said some members of the extended family had gathered and were receiving counseling and protection. The dead included seven adults and a boy officials had said earlier that two of the victims were juveniles. “Each one of the victims appears to have been executed,” Mr. DeWine said. “Each one appears to be shot in the head. ” Asked if investigators had any indication of a motive, he said, “none. ” Officials said it was also unclear when the killings took place. “We have victims who were in bed” when shot, he said. “The one mom was killed in her bed with the right there. ” At first, officials said they could not rule out the possibility that the gunman was among the dead. But later, Mr. DeWine said, “the preliminary determination has been made that none of the eight individuals committed suicide. ” Officials declined to give the first names of any of the victims. Phil Fulton, the pastor of the nearby Union Hill Church, told local television stations that he knew the victims, and they included a woman, her children and her grandchildren. The state Bureau of Criminal Investigation, part of the attorney general’s office, took over the investigation, and Mr. DeWine said the bureau had sent more than 30 investigators to Pike County. The killings took place in a hilly, sparsely populated area of southern Ohio, about 70 miles east of Cincinnati and a similar distance south of Columbus. Sheriff Reader said the initial call to his office came in at 7:53 a. m. reporting two people dead in a house. When deputies arrived, someone flagged them down and told them to check two other houses nearby. The sheriff declined to say who called his office, or how that person had discovered the killings. | 0 |
Thank you for the system of buying from the cheapest bid for contracts. Now our planes, ships, and middles can be hacked by any foreign country. And most of them hate the USA as it is anyways go team! | 0 |
Officials at the Department of Homeland Security have announced they are temporarily closing a process for companies seeking to hire foreign professionals via the controversial outsourcing program. [The decision by officials working for DHS chief John Kelly to shut the “premium processing” loophole for six months will likely delay approval of visa requests for months, say employers and some immigration lawyers who make their living by importing foreign replacement workers into the United States. This is how you try to destroy the program without input from Congress. 6, — (((Greg Siskind))) (@gsiskind) March 4, 2017, This is a gut punch to our Universities that rely heavily upon the creativity, inspiration and hard work of people from around the world … https: . — J. David Jentsch (@jdavidjentsch) March 4, 2017, The bureaucratic maneuver is not a full reform of the program, which now allows at least 650, 000 foreign professionals to work throughout the United States in jobs sought by young American graduates and by experienced professionals trying to get their own teenagers into college. The maneuver may not even reduce the annual inflow of foreign workers, but it buys time for President Donald Trump, who repeatedly promised to reform the program during the 2016 campaign. “I will end forever the use of the as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program,” he said in a March 2016 statement. “No exceptions,” he added. The new decision comes a four weeks before April 1, when Trump’s deputies were required by law to quickly distribute roughly 65, 000 more visas to U. S. and foreign companies eager to import cheap into the U. S. labor market. The program is politically unpopular among professionals because it transfers U. S. professional jobs to foreign workers. Numerous polls show Americans overwhelmingly favor policies that get Americans and immigrants into jobs ahead of additional immigrants or workers. But the program is backed by many prestigious companies which are trying to reduce the payroll costs of their professional employees. The companies include Google, Microsft, Amazon, Facebook, Comcast, Carnival, Disney, McDonalds, Caterpillar and Uber. Trump’s removal of the process was slammed by immigration lawyers and by advocates for cheap labor. The suspension of premium process of will hurt employees who will not be able to enter the US without an approval notice. — elissa taub (@ejtaub) March 3, 2017, This is going to be disastrous for many medically underserved communities in the US who will have to wait many extra months for their MDs 1, — (((Greg Siskind))) (@gsiskind) March 3, 2017, Visiting faculty won’t arrive to start on time to teach at universities. Founders won’t be able to work in their companies. 3, — (((Greg Siskind))) (@gsiskind) March 4, 2017, Multinational companies won’t be able to get key people for half a year. People on will be stuck months waiting to travel abroad. 4, — (((Greg Siskind))) (@gsiskind) March 4, 2017, This really seems like a conscious, wound. If you wanted to hobble America’s vital industries this would be the way to do it. https: . — David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) March 5, 2017, I work in software with many H1B visa holders. Their cohorts are looking elsewhere now that USA ugly. This already having long term impact. https: . — Alfred Delp (@OhmsParty) March 5, 2017, The is only one of several programs used by companies to import foreign professionals. Overall, the population of foreign in the United Sates is at least 1 million, because at least two other additional programs include at least 300, 000 foreign . The program annually hands out at least 110, 000 visas to foreign workers, and also creates a huge a resident population of at least 650, 000 foreign doctors, scientists, managers, professors, software experts, statisticians, pharmacists, and designers. The program is also used by many U. Indian foutsourcing firms, who usually rent their employees to American companies. U. S. universities also have used the program to build a workforce of 100, 000 in prestigious jobs, including professors, doctors and scientists. The increased supply of foreign graduates pushes many American professionals out of their careers, and pushes younger American graduates into different careers with lower salaries. The sidelined American professionals and their families have been a huge source of support for Trump among voters because of Trump’s promise to reform the program. | 1 |
The Times of Israel reports: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Sunday with West African leaders in Liberia for discussions on boosting ties. [After being greeted by Liberian President Ellen upon arriving in the capital Monrovia, Netanyahu met with Marcel Alain de Souza, the president of the Economic Community of West African States, to speak about how to further the relationship between Israel and the bloc, the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement. Netanyahu then met with Gambian President Adama Barrow, with whom he discussed bilateral ties. He also offered to send Israeli assistance to the country to help with its development. During his meetings, Netanyahu also stressed that the improving relations between those nations with Israel should be reflected into support for the Jewish state at international bodies such as the United Nations. Read more here. | 0 |
WASHINGTON — The death rate in the United States rose last year for the first time in a decade, preliminary federal data show, a rare increase that was driven in part by more people dying from drug overdoses, suicide and Alzheimer’s disease. The death rate from heart disease, long in decline, edged up slightly. Death rates — measured as the number of deaths per 100, 000 people — have been declining for years, an effect of improvements in health, disease management and medical technology. While recent research has documented sharp rises in death rates among certain groups — in particular less educated whites, who have been hardest hit by the prescription drug epidemic — increases for the entire population are relatively rare. Federal researchers cautioned that it was too early to tell whether the rising mortality among whites had pushed up the overall national death rate. (Preliminary data is not broken down by race, and final data will not be out until later this year.) But they said the rise was real, and while it is premature to ring an alarm now, if it continues, it could be a signal of distress in the health of the nation. “It’s an uptick in mortality and that doesn’t usually happen, so it’s significant,” said Robert Anderson, the chief of mortality statistics at the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But the question is, what does it mean? We really need more data to know. If we start looking at 2016 and we see another rise, we’ll be a lot more concerned. ” The death rate rose to 729. 5 deaths per 100, 000 people in 2015, up from 723. 2 in 2014, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. It was one of the few times in the past 25 years that the rate has increased. A bad flu season pushed it up in 2005, and AIDS and the flu contributed to a sharp increase in 1993. In 1999, there was a tiny increase. Experts said the current rise was surprising. “We are not accustomed to seeing death rates increase on a national scale,” said Andrew Fenelon, a researcher at the C. D. C. who did not work on the paper. “We’ve seen increases in mortality for some groups, but it is quite rare to see it for the whole population. ” He added that it would drag the United States further behind its European peers: “Many countries in Europe are witnessing declines in mortality, so the gap between the U. S. and other countries is growing. ” Others said the finding seemed to fit the broader pattern of rising mortality among whites, a trend that has drawn significant attention recently. Last year, a paper by Anne Case and Angus Deaton documented rising death rates among white Americans, particularly those with no more than a high school education. Other research has found rising rates among younger whites. “This is probably heavily influenced by whites,” said Sam Harper, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal. “It does sort of fit together. ” Chronic diseases like cancer and heart disease take by far the most American lives, far more, for example, than suicide or homicide, so any change in such causes can have a big effect on the final numbers. Dr. Anderson pointed out that the death rate from heart disease, which had been declining for decades — and offsetting the rises in drug deaths, for example — flattened. That gives other causes of death more of an influence, Dr. Anderson said, as they are no longer being offset by declines from heart disease. The death rate from heart disease stood at 167. 1 in 2015, up from 166. 7 in 2014, though the rise was not statistically significant. It was the first time since 1993 that the rate did not decline, Dr. Anderson said. The death rate from suicides rose to 13. 1 in the third quarter of 2015, from 12. 7 in the same quarter of 2014. (The last quarter of 2015 data was not yet available for suicides.) The same was true for drug overdoses, whose data the report had for only the first two quarters of 2015. The death rate for overdoses rose to 15. 2 in the second quarter of 2015, compared with 14. 1 in the same quarter of 2014. The rate for unintentional injuries, which include drug overdoses and car accidents, rose to 42 in the third quarter of 2015, up from 39. 9 in the same quarter of 2014. The rate for Alzheimer’s disease was also up, rising to 29. 2 in 2015, compared with 25. 4 in 2014, the continuation of some years of increases. Dr. Anderson said that part of the rise was more precise reporting of Alzheimer’s on death certificates, but that overall deaths had increased over time. | 1 |
So after almost 21½ hours and two centuries’ worth of singing, dancing, and jiggling after all 650 of us had been asked to everything from the Civil War and the Oklahoma land rush to white flight to the suburbs after a narcotically swampy rendition of “Amazing Grace” and a production of “The Mikado” that glowed in the dark because its minstrelsy might make sense if it was set on Mars after visionary costumes that called to mind descriptions like geisha Andrews Sister and Tiki apocalypse after we’d stood in lines for small portions of bread and split pea soup at 3 a. m. and not many people took the bread (because even during a poignant Depression homage some people will still refuse to eat a carb) after we’d batted around an enormous penis balloon whose design really did look more like the flag of Puerto Rico and then made a funeral procession for Judy Garland’s corpse after a of the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” and Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” after Taylor Mac, the performance artist who dreamed this whole thing up, had cavorted onstage and in the laps and arms of strangers after all of this — the delirium, the mania, the possibly simulated sex — it might have been the balloon that broke us. It was around 9:30 a. m. on Sunday. Most of us hadn’t slept since the show had begun Saturday at noon, because Mr. Mac’s “A History of Popular Music” was intended to last a magnificent 24 hours. With the finish line in sight, the balloon stopped by. It was pink and at least partly full of helium. But it did that thing balloons sometimes do: It gained consciousness. Making its way around the audience and inevitably onto the stage inside the vast St. Ann’s Warehouse in Dumbo, Brooklyn, the balloon slowed down and took in Mr. Mac. As it regarded him, we laughed. Maybe, by this point, we were delirious because we watched the balloon for what felt like a very long time. The technicians even adjusted the lighting to capture it. On the one hand, it was a balloon. On the other, it had become something oracular. Anyway, Mr. Mac, who had given us almost everything he had and was trying to give us the rest, had had enough. “Stop putting the light on it,” he requested, his demeanor somewhere between joking weariness and the real thing. The whole interlude had gone on longer than he thought it should. But I, at least, sensed a spot of admiration, a cosmic grace note. It was the sublime saying “good morning” to the sublime. Mr. Mac gave me one of the great experiences of my life. I’ve slept on it, and I’m sure. It wasn’t simply the physical feat. Although, come on: 246 songs spanning 240 years for 24 straight hours, including small breaks for him to eat, hydrate and use the loo, and starting in 1776 with a band and ending with Mr. Mac, alone in 2016, doing original songs on piano and ukulele. He remembered all the lyrics and most of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself. ” And he sang them — in every imaginable style, at every tempo, with every possible facial expression and every register of his handsome, protean voice. An entire day of all that prowess, energy and virtuosity would have been astounding. But Mr. Mac is also a devastatingly intelligent artist of conflation. Spending 24 hours filtering 240 years of predominantly American music — battle hymns, black spirituals, war ballads, minstrel tunes, works songs, Tin Pan Alley, Broadway musicals, Motown, Top 40 and punk done up in the blues and Laurie Anderson — through the prerogatives of a drag show is daring. Yes, that requires an artist who understands the power of drag to subvert convention. And in song after song (after song) Mr. Mac, who’s white, gay and 43 years old, explored the racism, chauvinism, homophobia, misogyny and white supremacy coursing through the history of American song. With all due deference to the subtitle of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America,” this, too, is “A Gay Fantasia on National Themes” and at about four times the length. The “ ” project was, at least in part, about becoming who we Americans want to be, by recognizing who we have been. It’s about artistic confrontation, reinterpretation and personal transcendence. The scope of the project allows you to consider the centuries of artistic ghosts we live with. (Mr. Mac’s tagline was “radical faerie realness ritual. ”) Not everything worked in “ . ” His sustained disdain, for instance, for cultural appropriation probably kept him from making a clearer identification with slaves as individuals. His moral grasp of the larger picture costs him the richness of the smaller, human one. He’s much better at attacking racists and racism than fleshing out their victims. But the show, which was by Pomegranate Arts, got its power from Mr. Mac’s larger, subjective moral force. He keeps most of the decades humming with queerness and problematized whiteness, inventing characters and ghosts in his stories to dramatize the issues of the day. Early on, he made a stirring case for the British homophobia of “Yankee Doodle,” and lets you think its standing as an American staple is an early example of American . Anyway, I’ll never hear the song the same way again, and I’ll probably always only hear his version, which keeps speeding up until it reaches velocity. By about 10:30 a. m. donning a giant pair of butterfly wings, Mr. Mac mustered the fire to shred through a version of ’s “One Beat. ” He stalked the St. Ann’s stage in his bare feet and in comically high heels. He sang through costume changes and through . (At one point, it looked as if the audience members carrying him from table to table were going to drop their load.) He never lost his sense of humor or the pathway to any of the punch lines in his 24 hours of stage patter or his knack for the dramatic and comedic power of holding a silence. Normally, he’s a star. This weekend he was a solar system. But why were we there? It’s an important question. Unlike my other experience with a magnum opus, Christian Marclay’s montage “The Clock,” this one needs an audience. For one thing, the audience member’s chairs had to be moved several times — to do war and segregation and dinner — and they weren’t going to move themselves. Really, though, we were there because this ultimately is, on top of everything else, a show about empathy and identification. Mr. Mac devoted an entire hour, 1846 to 1856, to a figurative, battle for the title of Father of American Song. His opponents were Stephen Foster and Walt Whitman. Sounds gimmicky, but it was actually brilliant. The match was staged in a makeshift boxing ring and required the audience to pelt the loser with balls. Initially, the fix seemed in. (The balls hit only the poor but game audience member standing in for Foster Mr. Mac gloriously embodied Whitman.) The aim was disproving Foster’s professed abolitionism by playing up the racism of songs like “Massa’s in de Cold Ground” and “Camptown Races. ” Whitman, meanwhile, wasn’t much of an abolitionist. (He was there as a queer pioneer.) Mr. Mac’s question, though, wasn’t “Who was the better abolitionist?” The point was that Foster’s lack of empathy made him — and other white people like him — a dubious abolitionist. The audience was as essential to this performance as we are inessential to Mr. Marclay’s masterpiece. Those clocks keep ticking whether or not you’re there to watch them. But you need people for empathy. And Mr. Mac had hundreds (and retained most of them). We were asked to be racists and homophobes. And act like they would act, to feel how hate feels. But also, in Mr. Mac’s way, to feel love and experience the shedding of shame. That entailed asking a great deal of himself, which entailed asking a lot of others — of his band and crew of the artsy helpers (his “dandy minions”) who were also very much part of the show of his ingenious musical arranger, Matt Ray, and endlessly witty costume designer, who goes by the name Machine Dazzle and helped Mr. Mac change outfits onstage. Off to its right was a napping loft. And at some point, sleeping bags were distributed, but lots of us managed to stay awake for most, if not all, of this event. So you paid the price of admission, which also seemed to include a night of dreamlessness. That, of course, might have been the point. What if some of America’s trouble is that we’ve been too caught up in our own individual dreams — that some dreams mean a nightmare for somebody else. What if Mr. Mac’s fantasia was the and those 24 beautiful hours were about the wisdom of staying woke? | 1 |
When the fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger wanted to sell five works from his collection of Pop and contemporary art at auction this fall, he considered Sotheby’s and Christie’s, but ultimately took them to Phillips, long considered a distant third behind those two behemoths. “I decided this would be the best house,” Mr. Hilfiger said in an interview. “They did a great job. ” The works, by Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Jean Dubuffet, Keith Haring and Damien Hirst, ultimately sold in Phillips’s 20th Century Contemporary Art evening sale on Nov. 16 for a combined $7 million — a small sum compared with the astronomical prices that art has been commanding at auction these days. But by positioning itself as a boutique house that would show the relatively modest collection some marketing love, bring to bear the expertise of its new team of specialists — and include an undisclosed guarantee for the Basquiat, “Untitled (Devil’s Head)” — Phillips won the consignment. (The piece sold for $3. 6 million on a low estimate of $3 million.) Phillips’s forthright use of guarantees, as well as its roster of new specialists able to attract material, succeeded in making the auction house a player this season. “They definitely stepped up their game,” said Alex Rotter, who recently left Sotheby’s to become chairman of postwar and contemporary art at Christie’s Americas. “They’re building something that needs to be seriously considered in the and contemporary art world. ” After the November sale, even the art press offered Phillips kudos. “The company is gaining some traction in chipping some market share away from the auction giants,” wrote the longtime art critic Judd Tully in Blouin Artinfo. Phillips was the only auction house whose contemporary and total was up this season, over the equivalent sale last year (by 66 percent, to $111. 2 million from $67 million). Phillips’s sale was also 92 percent successful and captured 17 percent of the market share for all contemporary evening sales in November, a 10 percent increase from a year ago. “That last sale was by far the best sale they’ve had,” said the art dealer Larry Gagosian. “You opened the catalog, and there were things you really wanted — it did not look like a bunch of things dealers were trying to unload. The material looked fresh. ” The auction house, which is privately owned by the Russian luxury retail group Mercury, is investing and expanding rapidly in Asia on Sunday, it held its first full sale in Hong Kong, which totaled $19. 6 million (the low estimate was $13. 8 million) and had a respectable 82 percent success rate. Phillips’s watch department is now the world leader this month, it set an auction high with a Patek Philippe that brought $11 million, thanks to Phillips’s partnering with the team of Aurel Bacs and Livia Russo, who formerly led Christie’s international watch department. This helps the auction house broaden its client base, since watch collectors often also collect art. And Phillips’s design and photographs departments are already competitive. To be sure, there was not a flurry of bidding throughout the November sale. Phillips’s top lot — Gerhard Richter’s 1963 painting “Düsenjäger,” consigned by the Microsoft Paul Allen — sold on a bid of $25. 5 million with fees to its guarantor, based in Asia. (The buyer received about $1. 6 million from Phillips for serving as the guarantor.) But the auction house also sold its first work by the Abstract Expressionist painter Clyfford Still after multiple bids — albeit to the guarantor. “There was quite a bit of bidding on quite a few lots at the sale,” said Edward Dolman, who became chairman and chief executive officer of Phillips in 2014, “but the air remains thin right at the top end. ” Over the last year, the two big auction houses have been wrestling with the issue of competitive guarantees: They are reluctant to offer these minimum prices, which can eat into profits, but are also compelled to give them to secure consignments. Phillips, however, does not hesitate to rely on guarantees, even as it also tries to offload some of the risk to third parties. Thirteen of the 37 lots in the November sale had guarantees, 10 by third parties and three by the house. “Guarantees are here to stay — it’s something all our clients want to consider,” Mr. Dolman said. “Success is in making the right decisions around those guarantees — making sure the risks are laid off, if you can lay them off, and not expose the company to huge losses if you get it wrong. ” Phillips acknowledges that these are early days in Mr. Dolman’s tenure many of the specialists he has lured away from other houses only recently took up their new positions after completing their noncompete agreements. In and contemporary art, this crew includes the Christie’s alumni Engelen and Robert Manley, and the former Sotheby’s experts Scott Nussbaum and Jonathan Crockett (who is based in Asia). Cheyenne Westphal, Sotheby’s former worldwide head of contemporary art, and Marianne Hoet, previously an international director at Christie’s, begin positions at Phillips next year. “What people don’t understand about this business is it needs an absolute core of infrastructure,” Mr. Dolman said. Mr. Dolman himself is widely respected in the industry, having been Christie’s chief executive and later director of the office of Sheikha al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa chairwoman of the Qatar Museums Authority. He left Qatar the year after Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad took over as emir in 2013 the fate of contemporary art in that country is unclear, since the sheikh is known to be more conservative. “I was asked to develop a plan for the arts sector in Qatar and had completed that work,” Mr. Dolman said. “The change of emir certainly acted as a catalyst for my decision, as the priorities of the new government became uncertain. The old emir had been a great supporter of the arts in Qatar. ” Phillips took some risks in its contemporary evening sale this season that paid off, like featuring two artists, Carmen Herrera, the abstract painter, and Mira Schendel, a Brazilian artist, who both would have typically been featured in a Latin American sale but here sold at auction highs. “It was great to put these amazing women artists on a platform with Richter and Dubuffet and Calder,” Mr. Manley said. “Starting next season, we’re going to break down those boundaries more and more. ” Phillips is also taking an approach to auction catalogs that is different from that of its competitors, which tend to publish costly “huge tomes that are these textbooks that increasingly few people will ever read,” Mr. Manley said. “We try to focus on the information that really matters to clients,” he added. This fall, for example, Phillips published a separate catalog detailing the restoration of Roy Lichtenstein’s 1994 canvas “Nudes in Mirror,” which was slashed during a 2005 exhibition. (The painting sold for $21. 5 million, with no guarantee.) “They were always upfront with me about their assessment of the painting and the sale,” said Richard Rush, whose family consigned the work. “We were all 100 percent behind this strategy, and it was really a team effort. ” The Phillips specialists acknowledge that their November sale was only an opening move the larger effort to disrupt the duopoly has just begun. “We’re still in this phase when we get the sympathy vote,” Mr. Engelen said. “I don’t think it’s a giant leap. It’s just a good step to take. ” “As long as we have a seat at the table, that was the whole point,” he added. “Let’s get a seat at the table. ” | 1 |
BREAKING : Watchdog Group Says Virginia is Prepping to For Mass Voter Fraud BREAKING : Watchdog Group Says Virginia is Prepping to For Mass Voter Fraud Breaking News By Amy Moreno November 2, 2016
The Democrats will not give up without a fight.
And the only way they fight is “DIRTY.”
Virginia has printed 1 million provisional ballots, an unprecedented number that could allow a large number of previously disqualified felons to cast ballots for president in the potentially crucial swing state.
From Lifezette:
George, a conservative election watchdog, charged on Monday that the Virginia Department of Elections is overpreparing for worst-case scenarios and increasing the likelihood of illegal votes being cast. In reply to Republican complaints earlier this month, Virginia Department of Elections Commissioner Edgardo Cortés acknowledged officials are preparing for all contingencies, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
But George said the provisional ballot printing doesn’t make sense even for contingencies. And it doesn’t compare to demand in 2012.
“The claim that it is for contingency planning is bogus,” George said in an email. “In 2012, Stafford County used less [sic] than 500 provisional ballots — in 2016 they received 30,000. In 2012, Loudoun County used 700 provisional ballots. In 2016, they received 84,000. In 2012, Fairfax used 2,500 provisional ballots; in 2016, they received over 265,000. This is ridiculous.”
But spokeswoman Dena Potter of the Virginia Department of Elections said the state is trying to accommodate a court order.
“As part of its emergency preparedness efforts and in response to the [December] 2015 consent decree related to mitigating long lines at the polls, the Department issued guidance to local registrars on August 29, 2016, that included having enough provisional ballot envelopes to equal at least 20 percent of the number of active voters as of September 1,” Potter said in an email. “As of September 30, there were 5.5 million voters registered in Virginia. As with any contingency planning, we hope that we don’t have to use these but they will be available in case we do.”
The decision to print so many provisional ballots comes after an April announcement by Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat and a key ally of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. McAuliffe said he would allow more than 200,000 released felons to vote on Nov. 8.
The decision immediately brought a legal challenge from the Republicans, who won their suit in July. Virginia law says the governor must individually clear such cases, and cannot widely add so many released felons back to the voter rolls.
George believes the court loss is part of the thinking behind the surge in provisional ballots. The thousands of felons who signed up to vote after McAuliffe’s order were initially welcomed to the voter rolls. George said left-wing voter groups were ready for the order, and signed up thousands of felons within hours.
If those felons now walk into a polling place and demand a ballot, they will be accommodated, George charged. George also said he is concerned other ineligible voters will be handed such provisional ballots simply if they demand them.
Provisional ballots are only counted by city and county election boards after Nov. 8, and Republicans should be prepared for things to go against them, George said. Each board has a Republican and a Democrat, and a McAuliffe appointee.
“Guess which way the vote is going to go,” said George.
Virginia leaders have been dealing with election headaches for months. On Oct. 13, Virginia legislators questioned Cortés at a hearing. One Republican leader, citing election problems, called for Cortés to resign, according to the Times-Dispatch.
“I think it’s incumbent upon the governor to replace you quickly with competent and nonpartisan leadership,” said Delegate Timothy Hugo (R-Fairfax). This is a movement – we are the political OUTSIDERS fighting against the FAILED GLOBAL ESTABLISHMENT! Join the resistance and help us fight to put America First! Amy Moreno is a Published Author , Pug Lover & Game of Thrones Nerd. You can follow her on Twitter here and Facebook here . Support the Trump Movement and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter. | 1 |
— Dan Curry (@dancurry) October 29, 2016 You mean THIS #JusticeDept ?Such a paragon of virtue 😭 @washingtonpost pic.twitter.com/y8beKaHmnA
— Chris Matthew's Leg (@_RaulRevere) October 29, 2016
An ethics lecture from a DOJ that did something that shady looking is laughable. @washingtonpost Lynch is one of the corrupt ones. She illegally met with WJC on a plane, fbi goes around her now. #DrainTheSwamp #MAGA
— Santa Barbara News (@_Santa_Barbara) October 29, 2016 What's the DOJ policy on giving immunity to everyone who was in the same room as Hillary at some point in their life? https://t.co/JEfTcgjMRG
— Liars Never Win (@liars_never_win) October 29, 2016 If nothing else this whole debacle illustrates the clownshow that is Obama's DOJ. https://t.co/q1Gkfb8dzt
— Jason C. (@CounterMoonbat) October 29, 2016
Bingo. | 0 |
Hillary Clinton has been caught in yet another dirty trick in Wikileaks latest storm of email leaks.
The Democrats were planning to frame Donald Trump as a KGB-Russian agent and Putin puppet since April 2016.
Here’s what Wikileaks email ID 27381 reveals:
We don’t have a ton on Simes, but the pro-Russia stuff ties in pretty well to idea that Trump is too friendly with Putin/weak on Russia
Now what do you say about that? We always knew the accusations were false but now we have the proof. The Democrats are dirty! She is a disgusting filthy witch and a Soros puppet while we’re at puppets!
Hillary Clinton accused Donald Trump during the 3rd debate of being a “Putin puppet” but if Trump is a Putin puppet just for wanting to be a friend with Russia and not do war with them, then what is Hillary Clinton to George Soros when she took all those dozens of millions of dollars from him? Her slave? His personal door mat?
| 0 |
After video emerged of Ray Rice punching his in an elevator, many suspected that Ray Rice would never work in the NFL again. Well, those people got it wrong. [Sort of. According to Jane McManus, a columnist for espnW. com, Ray Rice has taken part in a social responsibility video that players from all teams will see. Rice told espnW, “We shot a video that just highlights everything that I’ve been talking about how things happened in my life, how things unfolded. The guys get to hear it from me, how it unraveled. ” “How it unraveled” for Rice, of course, was because of a video. Had the video of Rice knocking his fiancée out never emerged, he would have continued playing in the NFL. This lends no small amount of irony to the fact that Ray Rice now makes his return to the NFL, four years later, in a video. Since Rice left the league, he has advocated strongly against domestic violence. While cynics would contest that the reason for his advocacy stemmed more from his desire to play in the league again, and less from genuine passion about domestic violence, the fact that Rice continues to advocate, long after the time any team even would have considered signing him, strongly suggests that his advocacy is at least partially genuine. Will his advocacy have any effect on steering players away from domestic violence? We’ll have to wait and see. Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter: @themightygwinn | 0 |
All is fair in love and war, and this particular electoral battle in US politics has assumed more belligerent proportions than most. Neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton genuinely deserve to be in the White House, but elections are rarely fought, let alone won, on the issue of the deserving.
As the election moves into it’s the cracker phase, Trump is scrapping his way back in the polls, ever the immeasurable factor in this election. For the establishment, the battle is already won, creating a dangerous sense of entitlement for the Democratic nominee.
That sense of entitlement shone through in the latest fury from the Clinton campaign, nervous about the FBI’s foray into the last days of this election. As ever, it was that seedy matter of emails sent on a private server when she was Secretary of State that came bobbing back up.
On Friday, Director James B. Comey sent a letter to the US Congress noting that he was wishing, due to “recent developments” to “supplement” previous testimony on the previous and closed investigation into Clinton’s use of a private server. “In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.” [1]
That unrelated case involved emails discovered on the laptop of disgraced former congressman Anthony D. Weiner, and a Clinton aide and Weiner’s estranged wife, Huma Abedin. Clinton found herself back in the frame.
Imaginations started to gallop, notably at the open nature of the remarks. The investigation would involve the old issue of whether classified information had been involved, and whether relevant emails would be pertinent to the investigation.
No sense of scope, length or frame of the investigation was given: “Although the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant, and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work, I believe it is important to update your Committees about our efforts in light of my previous testimony.”
Previously, Comey railroaded efforts to bring charges against Clinton’s misuse of classified material despite noting “evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of information.” In so doing, he did acknowledge that prosecutors ponder a “number of factors before bringing charges.” These include “the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past” and “the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent.”
While his then recommendation for non-prosecution was hardly binding on the Attorney-General, it would have been irregular to expect a prosecution in absence of hearty approval from the FBI. The result, or so thought those manning the barricades of the Clinton campaign, was permitted to rest.
This naturally unleashed a hailstorm of speculation from such figures as Rush Limbaugh, who pondered whether there had been an element of connivance between the Obama administration, Comey and Clinton. Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch saw “a disconnect between Comey’s devastating findings and his weak recommendation not to prosecute Hillary Clinton.” [2]
This “disconnect” has been a feature of the entire discussion about Email Gate. For one, President Barack Obama, despite being an enthusiast for prosecuting whistleblowers who disclose classified information for a perceived higher ideal for information transparency, did not see a legal problem with Clinton’s use of a personal email server.
It was “not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered” even if it was imprudent. [3] Rather confidently, and in a manner befitting premature judgement, Obama insisted in April this year that Clinton “would never intentionally put America in any kind of jeopardy.”
Certain outlets of legal commentary, notably Lawfare , have taken note about the entire background surrounding Comey’s moves as murky and compromising for a range of parties. Attorney-General Loretta Lynch, for one, had been compromised by the President’s certitude on the subject of Clinton’s behaviour, a point made even more complicated by a promise – albeit one made by Clinton – that Lynch would continue to remain AG in her administration. [4]
In then testifying before Congress about his own decision not to prosecute, an investigation was essentially being given dramatic air time. Truly, we were bearing witness to another Clinton saga, the legal equivalent of constipation in an ailing Republic. “As a general matter,” lamented Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution, “when prosecutors and investigators decline to indict someone, we don’t want a report, much less congressional oversight of the unindicted conduct. We want them to shut the heck up.” [5]
There was, however, no shutting up Comey, who is making more electoral history than is customary for a law enforcement organisation. It baffled Clinton, who has persistently wished the email matter to disappear in a confusing haze. Nor did Comey listen to senior Justice Department officials, who attempted to dissuade the move to send the letter. [6] “Never in recent history,” claimed the New York Times , “has the FBI been so enmeshed in a presidential race.” [7]
The FBI director’s intervention has already inflicted range of shocks, though it is imprecise to what extent his own announcement will alter set minds or convince the confused. Trump, most certainly, was emboldened, and the unpopularity contest is set for a few more hiccups prior to the November 8 poll.
Notes.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/28/us/politics/fbi-letter.html?_r=0
[2] http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/07/05/republicans-and-conservatives-assail-fbis-decision-not-to-indict-hillary-clinton/
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/us/politics/obama-tells-60-minutes-hillary-clinton-made-email-mistake.html
[4] https://www.lawfareblog.com/james-comey-hillary-clinton-and-email-investigation-guide-perplexed
[5] https://www.lawfareblog.com/comeys-testimony-precedent
[6] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/us/politics/comey-clinton-email-justice.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
[7] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/31/us/politics/fbi-hillary-clinton-emails.html
Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected] | 1 |
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon on Friday demanded the return of an underwater drone that was seized by China as an American crew was moving in to retrieve it. The episode threatens to increase tensions in a region already fraught with rivalries. A Chinese warship had been shadowing the Bowditch, a United States naval vessel, in the international waters of the South China Sea when the Chinese launched a small boat and snatched the unmanned underwater vehicle, the Pentagon said. Ignoring radio demands from the Americans to return the drone, the Chinese ship sailed off. The episode set off one of the tensest standoffs between Beijing and Washington in 15 years and occurred a day after the Chinese signaled that they had installed weapons along a string of disputed islands in the South China Sea. The seizure of the drone brought a formal protest from the United States at a time when China is extending claims over the South China Sea and is watching the United States — and its incoming president — with wariness. The episode did not have the drama of the April 2001 midair collision between a Chinese fighter jet and a Navy surveillance plane that forced the Americans to make an emergency landing on Chinese territory. Acknowledging the odd nature of Chinese sailors seizing the drone close to its American mother ship, one official here likened it to watching a thief steal a wallet in broad daylight. American officials said they were still trying to determine whether the seizure was a action taken by Chinese sailors who spotted the drone — which the Pentagon said was conducting scientific research — or a action ordered by more senior Chinese leaders to challenge the American presence in those waters. “We call upon China to return” the underwater vehicle “immediately,” Peter Cook, the Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement Friday, “and to comply with all of its obligations under international law. ” The incident complicates already testy relations between China and the United States, ties that have been further frayed by Donald J. Trump’s phone call with the president of Taiwan. Mr. Trump angered Chinese officials by holding a phone conversation with President Tsai of Taiwan, an island that Beijing deems a breakaway province of China. It had been nearly four decades since a United States president or had such direct contact with a Taiwanese leader. In an interview broadcast on Sunday, Mr. Trump also criticized China over its trade imbalance with the United States, its military activities in the South China Sea and its links to North Korea. Aides to the have defended Mr. Trump’s words and actions as important to bringing a fresh eye to a number of foreign policy issues. Pentagon officials said on Friday that they were trying to determine if the seizure of the underwater drone had anything to do with Mr. Trump’s comments. At the White House on Friday, President Obama was asked about the issue during a news conference, and he made clear that he viewed the question of Taiwan as especially sensitive. While the president refrained from directly criticizing Mr. Trump, he warned his successor to carefully consider his actions and any new policy, lest he ignite what could be a significant response from Beijing. “I think all of our foreign policy should be subject to fresh eyes,” Mr. Obama said. But he added: “For China, the issue of Taiwan is as important as anything on their docket. The idea of a One China is at the heart of their conception of a nation. ” “And so if you are going to upend this understanding, you have to have thought through what the consequences are, because the Chinese will not treat that the way they’ll treat other issues,” he said, adding that the Chinese would not even treat it the way they treated issues around the South China Sea, “where we’ve had a lot of tensions. ” China experts said on Friday that it was unclear whether the seizure of the American drone was linked to anger in Beijing over Mr. Trump, or a continuation of years of tensions over competing claims in the South China Sea. The Bowditch episode came after China signaled on Thursday that it had installed weapons on disputed islands in the South China Sea that it would use to repel threats. In describing the new weapons deployment, a Defense Ministry statement suggested that China was further watering down a pledge made by its president, Xi Jinping, to not militarize the islands. That indicated that such installations were part of China’s plan to deepen its territorial claim over the islands, which has created tensions with its neighbors over their rival claims and with Washington over freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, one of the world’s busiest commercial waterways. The United States Navy routinely sends warships to sail the South China Sea as part of ongoing American policy meant to demonstrate that all countries have the freedom of navigation in disputed waters. M. Taylor Fravel, an associate professor of political science at M. I. T. who studies China’s territorial disputes and has written on the South China Sea, called the seizure of the drone “a big deal, as it represents the deliberate theft of U. S. government property and a clear violation” of maritime law. “By stealing a drone versus threatening the safety of the ship, China may be trying to find a way to signal its opposition to U. S. activities without creating a larger incident,” Mr. Fravel said. “Nevertheless, it will be viewed by the U. S. as a clear challenge. ” The Bowditch, an oceanographic ship, was operating in international waters and carrying out scientific research, said Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman. The drone was part of an unclassified program to collect oceanographic data, including salinity in the sea, clarity of water and ocean temperature, factors that can help the military in its collection of sonar data. The Chinese Navy ship, which had been shadowing the American ship, approached within 500 yards of the Bowditch before seizing the drone, which American officials say was around 50 nautical miles northwest of Subic Bay, the Philippines. Whatever the case, the Pentagon said that China had no right to seize the drone. “This is not the sort of conduct we expect from professional navies,” Captain Davis said. Michael Swaine, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, called the theft “ provocation. ” “This doesn’t involve lives,” Mr. Swaine said. “It involves the Chinese grabbing something that belongs to the United States. The normal thing to do in these cases is, you issue a démarche and demand it be returned ASAP. ” Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, criticized the Obama administration for what he called a failure to provide a “strong and determined U. S. response” to Chinese actions in the South China Sea. “Freedom of the seas and the principles of the order are not ” he said. “American leadership is required for their defense. But that leadership has been sorely lacking. ” There was no immediate comment from Mr. Trump or his transition team. | 1 |
Even before one of its trains crashed in Hoboken Terminal on Thursday morning, killing one woman and injuring more than 100 others, New Jersey Transit was an agency in distress. The commuter system in the country, New Jersey Transit has been operating without an executive director for nearly a year, its board of directors has not met for three months and it has not explained how it will close a $45 million gap in its budget this year. Last month, two of its buses collided in downtown Newark, leaving two people dead. The cause of the fatal train crash has not been determined. But whether it proves to have been a case of human error or of mechanical failure, it is sure to focus more attention on a transit agency that has been operating in secrecy. New Jersey Transit’s management “has been told to go into a bear cave and disappear until told to come back out,” said Martin E. Robins, a former deputy executive director of the agency. “We don’t know anything about what’s going on. ” Mr. Robins, who has been a critic of the agency in recent years, said he could not recall its board suspending monthly public meetings before this year. It has done so since June, when New Jersey Transit’s interim management grappled with a state budget that left the agency about $45 million short of what it needed to operate this year. Since then, Gov. Chris Christie and legislative leaders have failed to reach an agreement on an increase in New Jersey’s gas tax that would have replenished the state’s Transportation Trust Fund. That fund, which nearly ran dry this summer, provided more than of New Jersey Transit’s annual budget. In July, Mr. Christie ordered the suspension of all highway and transit projects paid for by the trust fund. Mr. Robins and other transit advocates warned that cutting off financing for so many improvements could lead to more mechanical and safety problems. “It does beg the question how quickly and how severely is the transit infrastructure in New Jersey failing, given the inadequate funding and resources that they’re being given,” said Veronica Vanterpool, executive director of the Transportation Campaign. “The public has a right to know what the budget numbers are, how is N. J. Transit staying afloat these days? How are they covering their operating costs?” Mr. Robins pointed to the sharp reduction in the annual contribution to New Jersey Transit from the state’s general fund, less than $35 million last year — about of what it was in 2009. “This is not an incompetent agency,” Mr. Robins said in an interview earlier in the week. “What you’re dealing with is an agency that’s being systematically starved. ” And since November, it has been an agency without an established leader. Veronique Hakim, who was highly regarded as the executive director, resigned to join the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York. After a search for a successor, New Jersey Transit held a special meeting in April to appoint William Crosbie. But Mr. Crosbie turned down the job, leaving Dennis Martin the interim director for an indefinite period. “Right now, there’s a leadership vacuum at the agency,” Ms. Vanterpool said. While its management and funding have been in flux, New Jersey Transit had not been plagued by safety issues heading into this summer. But that changed dramatically on the morning of Aug. 19, when a bus carrying passengers in downtown Newark crossed the path of an empty bus. The collision sliced one bus in half and killed one of the drivers. A passenger died later from her injuries. On Monday morning, two New Jersey Transit buses collided in the Lincoln Tunnel, injuring dozens of passengers and causing long delays for other commuters trying to get into Manhattan. But according to federal records, the last New Jersey Transit rail accident that resulted in the death of a passenger happened 20 years ago. On a February morning in 1996, a train overshot a stopping point and ran into the path of another New Jersey Transit train. The engineers of both trains and one passenger were killed, and more than 160 others were injured. advocates argue that crashes like that one could be prevented by a technology known as positive train control, which automatically brakes a train that has run a stop signal or exceeded speed limits. Federal officials have called for passenger railroads to adopt positive train control by the end of 2018. In its 2015 annual report, New Jersey Transit said that it had equipped a locomotive and a cab car with the components needed for the system and that it would start installing hardware along tracks this year “when design plans are finalized. ” The Federal Railroad Administration said that New Jersey Transit had not yet installed the technology. It was not clear on Thursday whether the system could have prevented the crash in Hoboken. At a news conference, Mr. Christie, a Republican, and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, a Democrat, were reluctant to address that question. Mr. Christie said officials first had to determine the cause before deciding what steps should be taken in the future. “We cannot answer whether any other apparatus or system could have prevented it,” Mr. Christie said. Mr. Cuomo said that the technology could help in some circumstances, but that officials did not yet know why the train was traveling at a high speed. Hundreds of people die on the nation’s rails each year, but the vast majority of them are motorists or pedestrians who get in the paths of trains and are struck. Workplace accidents kill railroad workers far less often, but still fairly regularly. Passenger fatalities are much rarer, about seven for every 100 million miles traveled by passenger trains. But there have been some major, recent exceptions. Last year, six people died, including five passengers, when a Railroad train hit an S. U. V. on the tracks — the worst accident in the railroad’s history. Three months later, an Amtrak train derailed while going too fast around a curve in Philadelphia, killing eight people. | 1 |
Philip Holloway, legal analyst, former prosecutor and police officer, and founder of the Holloway Law Group, told Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam on Friday he does not believe America needs “hate crime laws. ”[The two were discussing the recent horrific crime in Chicago that was broadcast live on Facebook, as reported by Breitbart News: Chicago prosecutors filed hate crime and other felony charges Thursday against four people suspected of holding a special needs man captive and assaulting him in a racially charged attack broadcast live on Facebook. Video of it shows a terrified young white man crouching in the corner of a room as four black attackers taunt and beat him, at times yelling “Fuck Donald Trump” and “Fuck white people. ” Holloway told Kassam, “We do not need hate crime laws. Every crime has a motivation. Every act of evil has some element of hate in it. We were perfectly able to prosecute crimes worse than this before any hate crime legislation came into the picture. ” Holloway said hate crime laws are “of the left and political correctness. ” The two discussed the implications and possibility of the rollback of hate crime legislation. “I don’t think there’s going to be the political will to roll it back,” said Holloway. “I just think we never should have gotten started down this road in the first place,” he added. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. | 0 |
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. ’s bleak assessment of La Guardia Airport as “ ” propelled a complete reconstruction. But the path to a modern La Guardia was not supposed to include travelers dragging luggage through gridlocked traffic on a highway to catch their flights. Now it does. The most ambitious airport project in the country, an $8 billion plan to turn La Guardia into a travel hub, has barely begun, but social media has already been flooded with tales and images of taxis and buses mired in traffic jams, unable to get anywhere near terminals to pick up and drop off passengers. On Monday, a particularly bad day, some harried travelers abandoned cars and navigated the clogged Grand Central Parkway — the main highway serving La Guardia — on foot with suitcases in tow. Such traffic debacles have become so common that seasoned fliers and travel bloggers have recommended avoiding La Guardia altogether, perhaps for years to come. The Transportation Security Administration has warned travelers to arrive at La Guardia “a minimum of ½ hours” before takeoff, and maybe even earlier around holiday weekends. Under any circumstances, turning the La Guardia that Mr. Biden derided in 2014 into the “globally renowned, airport” that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York has promised would be an impressive feat. Doing it within the airport’s confined space without disrupting the steady flow of planes and travelers is shaping up to be a monumental one. Alan Snitow, a marketing and brand strategy consultant from Chicago, said he might steer clear of La Guardia, after the traffic jam on Monday made him late for a meeting with new clients in Manhattan. “It was a disaster, and so much so that I’m literally planning to avoid it,” Mr. Snitow, 40, said later that day as he waited to catch a flight home from Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey. “For sure on my next trip I’m going to look into Newark. ” Accounts like that have alarmed John J. Degnan, chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates La Guardia. He said the benefits of overhauling the airport should not come at the cost of maddening delays for travelers. “I’ve heard too many stories about people missing flights and abandoning taxis to carry their bags, and a trip from car to terminal taking more than half an hour, sometimes as much as an hour,” Mr. Degnan said in an interview. “It’s totally unacceptable to expect the traveling public to put up with these conditions for a period. ” Port Authority officials said traffic had improved after adjustments were made in recent days. But the mounting complaints do not bode well for an airport that is critical to New York, because it is the airfield closest to Manhattan, and is poorly served by public transit. More than 28 million passengers a year use La Guardia, making it one of the 20 busiest airports in the country. The rebuilding plans include replacing the central terminal, known as Terminal B, by razing a nearby parking garage and erecting a new central terminal in its place. Two new concourses will also be built, and connected to the new terminal with pedestrian bridges high enough for a Boeing 757 to pass under. And that is just the section of the airport that the Port Authority has been intending to rebuild for years. Last month, Delta Air Lines agreed to spend over $3 billion to replace the two terminals it occupies with a new one, in hopes of unifying La Guardia’s design. As with the existing central terminal, Delta’s terminals — known as Terminals C and D — will remain fully operational while their replacement is built. Port Authority officials hope to open both new terminals to travelers by the end of 2020, Richard J. Smyth, the agency’s project executive, said. The entire job is scheduled to be completed by 2024. By then, the amount spent by the Port Authority, Delta and LaGuardia Gateway Partners, a consortium of developers building the new central terminal, is likely to have surpassed the projected $8 billion cost. At a meeting of the Port Authority board in July, Mr. Degnan asked Patrick J. Foye, the agency’s executive director, how confident he was that “we’ll be able to manage the total reconstruction of the airport at one time. ” Mr. Foye said the developers intended to get the work done with minimum disruption but that there would be some. But many who have flown into or out of La Guardia this summer might argue that goal has been missed by a wide margin. Buitekant, 29, a student at the City University of New York School of Law, said she had become so frustrated in a livery cab that was stuck in traffic at the airport’s entrance that she decided to scramble out. “I’d seen two people get out of cabs already and just wheel their suitcases” the rest of the way, Ms. Buitekant said. She said that neither she nor her driver could recall such a chaotic scene outside the airport, and she began to worry about missing her flight to Atlanta. So, despite the driver’s concern that it was unsafe, Ms. Buitekant rolled her bag between lanes of standstill traffic to get to the terminal in time to make her flight, she said. Kenny Weiss, who lives in Haworth, N. J. said he was dropping off a friend at La Guardia when he saw some harried travelers on an exit ramp. “They were trying to wheel luggage through the cars,” he said. “It was a real nightmare on all fronts. ” Mr. Weiss said his round trip took more than four hours. “I understand they are renovating but how about hiring security and staff to give directions” and to “help things move smoothly,” he said. The snarls have prompted some travel advisers, including Zach Honig, editor in chief of The Points Guy, to suggest bypassing La Guardia in favor of Newark Liberty or Kennedy International Airports. The Port Authority, Mr. Honig noted, has been advising travelers to use public transportation to get to the airport, but the only options are buses that have also been getting trapped in traffic. He said a driver with the car service Uber had told him that other drivers were avoiding La Guardia because of the worsening situation. Mr. Cuomo’s grand vision for the airport includes building an elevated train like those used at Newark Liberty and Kennedy to connect to municipal transit systems. But such a connection would come only after the new terminals open, and the Port Authority has not allotted any money for it in its capital budget. In the meantime, Mr. Cuomo has called on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to rebrand the Q70 bus, which connects the airport to the Long Island Rail Road and the nearest subway, as the LaGuardia Link. Stewart Steeves, chief executive of LaGuardia Gateway Partners, said the airport’s congestion problems were “not a new thing,” adding, “that’s why La Guardia needs to get fixed. ” Representatives of the consortium and the Port Authority, Mr. Smyth said, have discussed ways of preventing more like the one on Monday. He described the cause of that mess as a “confluence of events” that included nearly 100 canceled flights on Sunday and a security breach that briefly shut down Terminal B on Monday. Coordinating all of the demolition and construction planned on the site is the responsibility of Mr. Smyth, who operates from makeshift quarters in a building on the other side of the Grand Central Parkway. He convenes weekly meetings with the developers, contractors and Delta representatives to discuss progress and to share details down to the rivets and joists. A digital system overlays all of the models for the new structures so that potential conflicts can be spotted before they occur. So far, most of the work has been destructive: Workers have demolished hangars and are taking down the parking garage in front of the central terminal. They have begun work on a new, garage that Mr. Smyth said should alleviate parking and traffic hassles when it opens in 2018. By then, he said, the developers hope to open the first set of new gates in the new central terminal while it is under construction. If all goes according to plan, one morning in early 2020, Port Authority officials will unlock the doors and thousands of travelers will stream through a gleaming, airy gateway that in no way reminds them of the La Guardia of Mr. Biden’s despair. | 1 |
November 22: Daily Contrarian Reads By David Stockman. My daily contrarian reads for Tuesday, November 22nd, 2016. | 0 |
Posted on October 31, 2016 by Edmondo Burr in News , US // 0 Comments A man dressed as Freddy Krueger and an accomplice have shot five people at a large Halloween party in San Antonio, Texas.
Early Sunday a man dressed like the fictional serial killer from the film ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ opened fire on a large crowd after an argument turned violent.
The shooters are still at large.
Kens5 reports:
The shooting happened on the 2900 block of Aspen Meadow around 5 a.m. on Sunday. One of the residents who did not want to go on camera said he was throwing the party with his housemates and was taking fees at the door. RELATED CONTENT Two Teenagers Dead And 17 Injured In Florida Nightclub Shooting
He said several men he did not know showed up to the home and started a fight with his friends. He said the argument escalated into a shooting.
He said several people who attended the party captured part of the fight on Snapchat. This later reportedly helped police identify that there were two shooters involved. He said one man had a shotgun and the second man had a hand-gun.
There were five people who were injured in the shooting. Police said that one injured woman tried to drive to the hospital, but wrecked her car along the way. Jasmine De Hoyos, who attended the party, said there were more than a hundred people at the home. She said she helped one of the victims who got shot in the arm.
“I kind of applied pressure to the wound to make sure he didn’t bleed out. A couple of his friends were there with us. So, we were trying to keep him calm,” said De Hoyos.
No arrests have been made and police are still searching for the shooters.
“I’m kind of sad that this happened in this neighborhood because I like living here. It’s a really good neighborhood. It is what it is, and we’re just going to keep an eye out and try to keep each other’s back,” said Jeremy Collins, another neighbor.
The resident of the home who did not want to go on camera said one of his friends who got shot in the stomach is still in critical condition. | 0 |
Ideology has given way to reality as Pope Francis donated tons of “fuel briquettes” to heat the homes of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Ukraine this winter. [As part of the “Pope for Ukraine” initiative, Francis donated more than 2. 5 tons of fuel per displaced family cared for by the parish of the Holy Theotokos in the village of Vilcha. The combustible fuel briquettes reportedly will be sufficient to heat the homes and apartments of more than a hundred resettled families until the end of this heating season and throughout next winter as well. The politically incorrect gift highlights the and ready availability of fossil fuels, which were responsible for bringing about the industrial revolution throughout the developed world. The Pope’s gift of fuel, which arrived on March 7, marks the first stage of a humanitarian aid project that will include providing foodstuffs and hygiene products to over a hundred families of IDPs in the Vovchansk district of eastern Ukraine. Pope Francis has been a vocal advocate of clean, renewable energy and the reduction of carbon emissions. His groundbreaking 2015 encyclical letter Laudato Si on care for the environment was the first teaching letter of its sort in the history of the Catholic Church. In that text, Francis wrote of an “urgent need” to take steps leading to the substitution of fossil fuels with alternative energy sources. At the same time, however, the Pope acknowledged that “many professionals, opinion makers, communications media and centers of power, being located in affluent urban areas, are far removed from the poor, with little direct contact with their problems. ” The dire situation of displaced families in Ukraine manifests how the pressing needs of the poor must take priority over ideological concerns, since they don’t have the luxury of expensive forms of alternative energy. Francis himself has warned that when Christian charity is not at the core of the Church’s message, “it is not the Gospel which is being preached, but certain doctrinal or moral points based on specific ideological options. ” “Any Church community, if it thinks it can comfortably go its own way without creative concern and effective cooperation in helping the poor to live with dignity and reaching out to everyone, will also risk breaking down, however much it may talk about social issues or criticize governments,” he wrote. In 2015, Forbes magazine published an article titled “How Opposition to Fossil Fuels Hurts the Poor Most of All. ” In the essay, Alex Epstein argued that efforts by the UN and certain individual governments to massively restrict fossil fuel energy would punish the very people who need them most: the poor. Fossil fuels, he contended, provide the “energy that underdeveloped countries need to grow and indeed to survive,” as the recent history of India and China attest. Thanks to the availability of fossil fuels, he wrote, “life got better for billions of people in just a few decades” while “the infant mortality rate has plummeted. ” While everyone would prefer clean, renewable energy sources, the number one concern of the nations of the world must be meeting the real needs of real human beings — which at present means access to cheap fossil fuels. Pope Francis would no doubt agree as his recent actions would seem to indicate. Father Serhiy Koval, the local parish administrator in Vilcha, expressed his gratitude to Pope Francis for his timely aid, as reports suggest that the only kind of support these people have received has come from the Church and parishioners. Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome | 0 |
These Blast Points on Hillary's Campaign... Only The Deep State Is So Precise Charles Hugh Smith
The Deep State's most prescient elements must derail Hillary's campaign to clear a path to Trump's executive team.
Back in August, I asked Could the Deep State Be Sabotaging Hillary? I think we now have a definitive answer: "These blast points on Hillary's campaign... too accurate for the Mainstream Media. Only the forces of the Imperial Deep State are so precise."
The Mainstream Media is presenting the FBI investigation as a "lose-lose" situation for embattled FBI Director Comey. If Comey remained quiet until after the election, he would be accused of colluding with the Clinton campaign and its allies in the Department of Justice (sic).
But in going public, he stands accused by Democrats of "intervening in an election," i.e. raising doubts about Hillary's judgement and veracity days before Americans go to the polls.
Another narrative has Comey's hand forced by the threat of disgusted FBI agents leaking information that would show the FBI caved into political pressure from the Democratic Party and Clinton campaign to keep relevant material out of the public eye until after the election.
I submit another much more powerful dynamic is in play: the upper ranks of the Deep State now view Hillary as an unacceptable liability. The word came down to Comey to act whether he wanted to or not, i.e. take one for the good of the nation/Deep State/Imperial Project.
As a refresher: the Deep State is the unelected government (also called the invisible or shadow government) that is not as monolithic as generally assumed.
The neo-conservative globalists who want Hillary to continue pushing their agenda are the more visible camp, but another less visible but highly motivated camp realizes Hillary and her neo-con agenda would severely damage the nation's security and its global influence. It is this camp that is arranging for Hillary to lose.
The consensus view seems to be that the Establishment and the Deep State see Trump as a loose cannon who might upset the neo-con apple cart by refusing to toe the neo-con line.
This view overlooks the reality that significant segments of the Deep State view the neo-con strategy as an irredeemable failure. To these elements of the Deep State, Hillary is a threat precisely because she embraces the failed neo-con strategy and those who cling to it. From this point of view, Hillary as president would be an unmitigated disaster for the Deep State and the nation/Imperial Project it governs.
Whatever else emerges from the emails being leaked or officially released, one conclusion is inescapable: Hillary's judgement is hopelessly flawed. Combine her lack of judgement with her 24 years of accumulated baggage and her potential to push the neo-con agenda to the point of global disaster, and you get a potent need for the Deep State's most prescient elements to derail her campaign and clear a path to Trump's executive team.
Once this path is clear, the management of Trump's executive team can begin in earnest, a management process aimed at disengaging the nation and its global Empire from neo-con overreach.
If you think this scenario is "impossible," let's see how the election plays out before deciding what's "impossible" and what's inevitable. | 0 |
Four counties in the state of Oregon have declared sanctuary status, saying they will not enforce the universal background checks which Democrats heaved upon the state in 2015. [The law requires all gun sales — retail or private — to be conducted via the auspices of a Federal Firearms License holder (FFL). When the law took effect in August 2015 it immediately placed a strain on those charged with enforcing it and a number of sheriffs in the state quickly made known that it would not be a priority for their departments. The Statesman Journal quoted Polk County Sheriff Bob Wolfe saying, “Right now, I don’t know if I even have enough people to enforce it. We’ll have to evaluate it on a case by case basis until we can get some staff on and figure out if we even have the resources to really deal with it. ” KTVZ reports that since then “four counties have passed a measure known as the Second Amendment Preservation ordinance. ” This ordinance declares that the sheriffs of the four counties are not obligated to enforce the gun control measure. And “commissioners in Malheur, Union and Lake counties” have all heard proposals for the same ordinance during recent weeks. Gun control advocate Penny Okamoto says counties are not allowed to take such action because of Oregon’s preemption law. Because of this, she says the ordinance barring enforcement of gun control is “largely very symbolic. ” But Coos County’s Rob Taylor — a chief proponent of Second Amendment Preservation ordinances — begs to differ. He wants Oregon to have “sanctuary counties” where the Second Amendment is free from gun control enforcement in much the same way that the state “has become a sanctuary state for immigration. ” AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 0 |
Donald J. Trump arrived at 1 World Trade Center a little before 10 a. m. on Friday to face some of his harshest critics in New York: top editors and digital directors of Condé Nast’s stable of magazines, among them Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Vogue. According to a tweet by Mr. Trump, he had been invited by Anna Wintour, Condé Nast’s artistic director and the editor of Vogue. Also in attendance were Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, who has sparred with Mr. Trump since his days as an editor at Spy magazine in the 1980s, and David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, who is an expert on Russia. They have been among Mr. Trump’s most vocal detractors, along with the writers at Teen Vogue. The meeting, held in a conference room on the 42nd floor with a view of New Jersey, lasted barely an hour. In answering questions from editors, Mr. Trump addressed health care, climate change, relations with Russia, women’s issues and abortion rights. Mr. Trump mostly reiterated plans or policies he has discussed publicly for months, according to two people who were apprised of the meeting but spoke on condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to talk. When asked about health care, for instance, he told the group that he did not want to get rid of the Affordable Care Act until he had another plan in place, one of the people said. Several editors contacted declined to discuss the meeting, which was off the record. “Not my preference,” Mr. Carter wrote in an email. “But I will abide by that. ” A Condé Nast spokesman declined to comment. Ms. Wintour visited Mr. Trump at Trump Tower in after she had criticized the Trump Foundation and suggested that Mr. Trump and his family would personally profit from his time in the White House. Ms. Wintour, a supporter of Hillary Clinton, later apologized for the comments. Mr. Trump was photographed entering Condé Nast’s headquarters alongside Michael Flynn, his choice to be national security adviser. Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, and Kellyanne Conway, his incoming counselor, were also there. Hilary Rosen, a political strategist for SKD Knickerbocker in Washington, said all of Condé Nast’s brands have had a relationship with presidential families over the years. “It is a rich opportunity for content,” she said. Michelle Obama has been on the cover of Vogue, for example. At the same, Ms. Rosen added, “It’s not like their progressive agenda is going to have an impact on Trump. ” Ms. Rosen, who had close ties to the Clinton campaign, characterized Mr. Trump’s meetings with media outlets as “nothing more than an attempt by his team’s part to take the horns off. ” In a phone interview on Friday night, Ms. Conway declined to discuss the substance of the meeting, but said it was an opportunity for Mr. Trump to “connect with the media. ” She added that “no consideration was given to image. ” In December, Mr. Trump criticized Vanity Fair on Twitter after the magazine gave the restaurant in Trump Tower a bad review. Subscription sales have soared in the wake of Mr. Trump’s criticism, the magazine said. And Vanity Fair printed his tweet on its latest cover. | 0 |
0 comments Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, an avid Black Lives Matter opponent, was named named Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association’s Person of the Year, infuriating liberals!
“I think of Sheriff David Clarke the same way I regard Bull Connor. The same kind of law enforcement officer who would sick fire hoses and dogs on elderly women,” said one liberal who I refuse to give any fame.
“He really is often times nothing less than a hate-monger.”, said another.
“I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.”, said former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Liberals are idiots! They do not like the clear to understand outspokenness of Sheriff David Clarke because without throwing ad-hominem, they cannot defeat his message.
Sheriff David Clarke hist back at gun control supporters, Black Lives Matter, Barack Obama, and a number of other liberal faves that want to destroy the freedom we all enjoy!
Clarke’s response to the Milwaukee protests in August have cemented his standing as one of the nation’s most divisive law enforcement members.
After the protesters took to the streets following the police shooting of a black thug, Clarke, who is black, blamed the unrest on “tribal violence.”
Clarke was appointed to a vacancy in 2002 by Governor Scott McCallum. He was later elected that same year to his first four-year term.
He was re-elected in November 2006, 2010, and 2014, and is currently serving his fourth full term.
Sheriff David Clarke is registered and elected as a Democrat, but is a vocal Trump supporter and very critical of Obama and Hillary.
“He (Obama) didn’t cause this, but you know what, he fuels this sort of misplaced anger” says Sheriff David Clarke in the aftermath of the police being targeted by deadly sniper attacks in Dallas, TX | 0 |
Next Prev Swipe left/right Forget judges, Twitter has been suggesting some true “Enemies Of The People” While papers like the Sun, Express and Daily Mail have labelled the high court judges who ruled that only parliament can trigger Article 50 as “enemies of the people”, Twitter has been suggesting some alternatives – here are 12 actual villains who are ruining the world for everyone.
1.
— Gemma Luck (@missgluck) November 4, 2016
2.
— Carina O'Reilly (@carinaoreilly) November 4, 2016
3.
— Ken Shabby (@MrKenShabby) November 4, 2016
4.
— TheCobrasConk (@TheCobrasConk) November 4, 2016
5. People who fumble for their wallet when asked to pay at the checkout, despite waiting there for 10 minutes. #enemiesofthepeople
— 48% Tits (@Scientits) November 4, 2016
6. | 0 |
JERUSALEM — Israeli police investigators questioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for three hours at his official residence on Monday evening on suspicion of receiving illicit gifts and favors from business executives. Mr. Netanyahu was questioned “under caution,” the police said in a statement, implying that there were grounds to suspect that Mr. Netanyahu might have committed a criminal offense. “No further details can be given at this stage,” the statement added. The Ministry of Justice said late Monday that Mr. Netanyahu had been questioned by investigators from Lahav 433, a police fraud investigation and prosecution unit, with the authorization of the attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit. In a detailed statement, the ministry described how the police had gathered testimony from dozens of witnesses, some abroad, and seized documents during a monthslong graft inquiry. While some aspects of the inquiry did not yield evidence of crimes, the statement said, other parts warranted a deeper investigation. Mr. Netanyahu, who has been subject to police inquiries and investigations in the past that ended without charges, has vehemently denied any impropriety. “This will all come to nothing, because there is nothing,” he has said repeatedly of the latest accusations. Local news outlets say the investigators are focused on two separate cases, one more serious than the other, but they have offered little detail on the more serious one. The less weighty one, according to reports in the newspaper Haaretz and other outlets, concerns favors for Mr. Netanyahu, and possibly for members of his family, given by Israeli and foreign business executives. The Israeli police took testimony from Ronald S. Lauder, a conservative American businessman and philanthropist, and a close friend of Mr. Netanyahu’s, when he came to Israel in late September to attend the funeral of Shimon Peres, the former prime minister and president. Upon Mr. Lauder’s arrival in Israel, he was asked to meet with the Israeli police “and respond to questions related to an investigation, to which Mr. Lauder is not a party,” Helena Beilin, a Tel lawyer representing Mr. Lauder, said in a statement. “After a short meeting the following day, he was told that his presence was no longer needed and that there would be no need for additional meetings. This remains the case. ” Mr. Netanyahu’s office, suggesting that he is the victim of a witch hunt, issued a statement over the weekend berating the news organizations for what it described as premature and politically motivated reports. “Try to replace the prime minister at the ballot boxes, as is accepted in democracies,” it added. In televised remarks on Monday afternoon, Mr. Netanyahu told legislators from his conservative Likud Party in Parliament, “We hear the celebratory spirit and winds blowing through the television studios and in the corridors of the opposition. ” “Hold off the celebrations don’t rush,” he added. “I’ve told you before and will tell you again — this will come to nothing, because there is nothing. ” Mr. Netanyahu is serving his third consecutive term in office, and his fourth over all. He has exuded confidence lately, lashing out at journalists who have been critical of him, talking up Israel’s diplomatic and economic achievements, and calling in the United States ambassador to Israel, Daniel B. Shapiro, for a dressing down late last month after the Obama administration decided not to use its veto to shield Israel from a United Nations Security Council resolution that condemned Israeli settlement construction in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Mr. Netanyahu, generally a popular prime minister, has developed a combative relationship with the local mainstream news media. After years of tension with the Obama administration, he also appears buoyed by the prospect of a partnership with Donald J. Trump, who seems more sympathetic to Israeli government policies on issues like settlements. For Mr. Netanyahu’s opponents, the prospect of a possible indictment has provided a glimmer of hope, even though elections are not scheduled until late 2019. “This creates an unusual dynamic in Israeli politics,” said Nahum Barnea, a political columnist for the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth and a critic of Mr. Netanyahu. On the one hand, Mr. Barnea said, there were already signs that Netanyahu loyalists would try to promote legislation banning investigations of sitting prime ministers. On the other, he said, the question of who might succeed Mr. Netanyahu, who has no natural heir in his party, was bound to be raised. Opposition leaders were fairly subdued in their initial response. Isaac Herzog, the leader of the Zionist Union and of the opposition in Parliament, said it was “a tough day for Israel when a prime minister is under investigation. ” He added, “We are not expressing satisfaction at another’s misfortune. ” Mr. Herzog has also been the subject of police investigations over campaign funding. Yair Lapid, the leader of the centrist Yesh Atid party, which has challenged Likud in recent polls, said, “The presumption of innocence applies to every Israeli, including the prime minister. ” He called for a swift investigation for the sake of the country, saying, “A person who is being investigated is a person under pressure. ” Israeli prime ministers are not obligated to step down while under investigation, unless they are charged with a crime. Nonetheless, the accusations could chip away at Mr. Netanyahu’s standing. His predecessor, Ehud Olmert, was forced from power in 2008 under the weight of police investigations and accusations of corruption, although he remained in office as a caretaker prime minister until early elections could be held in 2009. In February, Mr. Olmert became the first former Israeli prime minister to enter prison. He is serving a term for bribery and obstruction of justice. Mr. Netanyahu described Mr. Olmert in 2008 as a “prime minister up to his neck in investigations” and said he could not be trusted to make fateful decisions under the circumstances because they might be based on personal rather than national interests. Since the 1990s, Mr. Netanyahu’s political career has been dogged by inquiries into his conduct, and that of people around him, though no charges have been filed against him. The inquiries have ranged from scandals involving travel expenses and garden furniture — the Netanyahus were suspected of having switched a new set bought for the prime minister’s official residence with an identical, old set in their private home in Caesarea — to a more recent one involving a deal with Germany for the acquisition of submarines. That agreement came under scrutiny after it became known that Mr. Netanyahu’s personal lawyer also represents the Israeli agent of the German shipyard that builds the submarines, and other naval equipment purchased by Israel, giving rise to suspicion of a conflict of interest. In that episode, too, Mr. Netanyahu and the lawyer, David Shimron, have denied any wrongdoing. Mr. Netanyahu’s relationship with Arnaud Mimran, a French tycoon who was convicted of fraud last year, and who testified that he had contributed a large sum of money to Mr. Netanyahu for his 2009 election campaign, has also prompted suspicions of impropriety. | 1 |
Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi ( ) said when Republicans voted for President Donald Trump they were voting a “certain way,” almost like “any mammal will do. ” When asked if Trump was a dealmaker, Pelosi said, “I will give you this as an example, the first meeting we had, House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans leadership in the White House, this is a big deal. I mean it feels you with some pride to have a seat at the table and a new president, I have been at that meeting with President George W. Bush as a leader and same thing with President Obama, and now here we are with a new president. The first thing he says, ‘You know I won the popular vote.’ Well, I thought since he’s being unconventional so will I. Because I was respectful with President Bush and we worked closely with him — ” Joe Scarborough interjected, “I bet you are missing him now? Pelosi replied, “He told me I would. He said, ‘You’re going to miss me.’ That was a long time ago. I wish he were president now. I wish Mitt Romney were president. I wish John McCain were president. As far as the Republicans, the people that voted, it’s almost like any mammal will do. They were just voting a certain way. ” She continued her story, “When he said that, I said, ‘That’s not true, there is no evidence to support what you just said.’ If we were going to work together, we have to stipulate to a certain set of facts. When we work with President Bush or when we work across the aisle, we all have to start at a place where we are dealing with facts, evidence, and data and you can compromise. You cannot make things up. He said, ‘Well 3 or 4 million people voted illegally.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s not true.’ And he said ‘and I am not counting California.’ That was pretty sad because he didn’t understand his place in history. ” Pelosi also said Trump does not sleep enough, adding, “I’m concerned about his fitness for office. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0 |
Police are looking for the passengers of an SUV involved in a shooting in Kansas City, MO last week, says a Daily Mail report. In the video, a black SUV pulls up next to a black sedan at a traffic light and opens fire in broad daylight. Per KSHB, the black sedan was hit, but the mother and with her two sons, five and nine, were unharmed. “[One son] told me “Mommy we’re going to die! Mommy move!’ and I couldn’t move because we had a car ahead of us,” the unidentified mother recalled to KSHB. Follow Breitbart. tv on Twitter @BreitbartVideo | 0 |
Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” The Atlantic’s Molly Ball said of President Donald Trump Remarks at Summit in Riyadh that it did not reflect candidate Trump “at all. ” Partial transcript as follows: DICKERSON: Molly, as David points out it’s quite a distance from a president who campaigned on a Muslim ban and had critical things to say about the relationship between Hillary Clinton and Saudi Arabia and called it radical terrorism and if you l didn’t use the phrase it was possible you misunderstood the threat. BALL: And he’s not using those words in the speech. I today a very important decision has been made by the administration about what kind of President Trump will be to the Muslim world, and it’s not candidate Trump. It goes to the security and decisions and appointments we have seen the White House make on the traditional hawkish side of the Republican party rather than the more isolationist or transactional ideology he espoused on the campaign. It’s a traditional play to say we’re looking for areas of cooperation. We’re not judging on the basis of religion. That was not candidate Trump at all. Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0 |
Several readers have already written in to protest The Times’s use of a particularly graphic photograph on the home page on Monday. It showed a gunman, in suit and tie, standing beside the body of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, whom the shooter had killed moments earlier. I asked Phil Corbett, associate masthead editor for standards and ethics, who was involved in the decision to use the photo, to explain the editors’ thinking. Liz Spayd: Can you describe for readers how these decisions are made? Who is involved, and how do you weigh the sometimes intangible concept of news value against considerations of offending readers or the families of victims? Phil Corbett: In a situation like this, the discussion about using a photo would start with the editors handling the story, the photo editors and the editors overseeing how stories are being played on the home page and on our mobile feed. In the case of a big breaking story, or a particularly sensitive photo, a editor is likely to be involved as well. In this case, I think we all agreed that the picture should be on the home page. First off, it’s an important news story, given the Russian involvement in Syria and the tensions among various countries and factions. And the picture very clearly shows the shocking nature of the attack — much more powerfully, I think, than a mere description in the story itself. The gunman, the elegant setting — all of this is part of the news value. And while the picture is startling, it’s not gory or sensational in a gratuitous way. Spayd: Are there different standards for the page where the story appears (the article page) versus the home page or even the front page of the newspaper tomorrow? Corbett: In some cases, yes. There might be times when we decide an image is newsworthy and important enough that it should be published, but we decide not to put it on the top of the home page, or the top of Page 1 in print. Readers come to those images cold, with no preparation or choice about what they are going to see, and so we try to take extra care to be sensitive. On the other hand, if readers click from the home page to read a particular article, or decide to swipe through a slide show of images, they are more likely to be prepared for the content. For example, editors thought carefully about the arrangement of the powerful pictures we ran recently about the killings in the Philippines, and we included a clear warning to readers about how upsetting the images were. In the Ankara case, we decided we were comfortable with the still photo on the home page. But were not prepared to give such prominence to a video clip of the situation, which seemed potentially more upsetting. We had a link to the video, but did not show it on our home page. Spayd: Why not crop the image so that the gunman is shown but not the body of the ambassador? Corbett: That would really undercut the power of the news picture. If the image had been bloody or gruesome, we may have had to consider that option, but we didn’t think it was necessary here. Spayd: Can you think of an example where The Times decided not to use a gruesome photo or image, and can you explain why it wasn’t allowed in that case? Corbett: There are many, many pictures we choose not to run. Sadly, almost every day our photo editors see upsetting, even grisly images of war or carnage — from Syria, from terrorist bombings and other situations. An unending stream of such images might prove not only upsetting to readers, but eventually numbing. When we do run a violent or upsetting image, it’s generally one that has real news significance, or can convey the gravity of a situation in an especially powerful way. *** Here’s my take. I agree with Times editors that this was an instance where the photograph was so essential to conveying the horrific nature of the attack that its use on the home page was appropriate. (Most other news sites made the same choice.) Visual imagery long ago demonstrated its power to affect people’s emotions and to occasionally change the course of history. They can do so in a way that articles rarely can: Think the charred bodies of civilian contractors hanging from a bridge in Falluja, or the floating body of a drowned Syrian boy on a Turkish beach. Such images can be brutal for unwarned readers who open up the home page or the morning paper. That means decisions about their use should be made with care. But they should also be made unflinchingly. | 1 |
This article first appeared at Personal Liberty and has been published by Brandon Smith at Alt-Market.com .
Why The U.S. Presidential Election Has The Entire World Confused
By Brandon Smith
Well, everyone thought it was a sure thing — Hillary Clinton had the White House in the bag; the entire political system from the DNC to the RNC and the mainstream media had already called the election over and done. Online gambling sites listed Clinton as a sure bet and Irish site Paddy Power even paid out one million dollars on the assumption of a Clinton win. And then, one Weiner ruined everything — Anthony Weiner.
The revelation of an October surprise re-opening of the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s misuse of classified data on private and vulnerable email servers does not come as a shock to me, but it certainly does to many people around the world. Hundreds of mainstream outlets are scrambling to spin the news as misconduct by the FBI rather than a victory for the halls of justice. Numerous alternative media analysts are rushing to cover their butts and admit that there is now a “chance” of a Trump win. Confusion reigns supreme as the weirdest election in U.S. history continues to bewilder observers.
The first issue that needs to be addressed is the lack of an open mind displayed by some when it comes to the real purpose behind this election. The second issue here, of course, is one of timing.
Through the majority of this election cycle the public consensus has been that Clinton will win. Some argued that Trump would not be able to compete with the leftist media empire standing against him, while others have argued that the entire system including the Republican establishment would ensure that Trump would fail. The alternative media has in the past simply pointed out that elections have always been rigged, either by the elites playing both sides of the competition, or through outright voter fraud. They have assumed that the elites want Clinton, and therefore, the election has already been decided.
I tend to agree with the latter point of view, though I disagree with the conclusion. U.S. elections are indeed controlled, and have been for decades, primarily through the false left/right paradigm. However, as I have been pointing out since I correctly predicted the success of the Brexit referendum, I don’t think that Clinton is the choice of the elites.
I outline my reasons for this conclusion in-depth in articles like ‘2016 Will End With Economic Instability And A Trump Presidency’ , published in August. For the past several months it seems as though I have been the only person holding the view that Trump will be president. Only in the past few days have I received emails from readers stating that they used to think I was probably crazy, but now they aren’t so sure…
To be clear, my position is that Trump is slated to take the White House and that this is by design. This has been my position since before Trump won the Republican Primaries, it was my position when the election cycle began, it has never changed, nor have my views on the reasons for this outcome ever changed. Of course, the election is not over yet, and if Clinton ends up soiling the already thoroughly soiled Oval Office with her presence, then everyone can color me confused as well. That said, here are some issues that I think many people are overlooking when coming to conclusions on the election and the events surrounding it.
Clinton Is The Worst Candidate The Elites Could Have Chosen
I have been studying the activities and behaviors of establishment elites for over a decade and I have to say… they are not stupid. They certainly have hubris, and I would not call them “wise,” but they are definitely devious. They know how to rig a game. They know how to play both sides. They know how to cheat to get what they want when it comes to politics and how to manufacture consent from portions of the public. They’ve been doing it a long time. They have mastered it.
So, in my view it is rather insane for the elites to field a candidate such as Hillary Clinton IF the entirety of their globalist empire hangs in the balance (I don’t think it does). Though she is fond of BleachBit, the woman is unbleachable. With a decades-long rap sheet from her work at Rose Law Firm (in which document destruction and “misplacement” was apparently routine) to her interference with investigations into Bill Clinton’s sexual indiscretions, to the strange odyssey surrounding her lies on the Benghazi attack, as well as her rampant mishandling of classified documents as head of the State Department, not to mention the Clinton Foundation’s pay to play scandals, it is impossible to endear her to the masses. Her dismal crowd turnouts are rather indicative of this.
On top of all this, Clinton’s anti-Russia rhetoric is coming off as absolutely crazy, and I think this is by design. Many in the alternative media, while assuming that Clinton is paving the way for WWIII, forget that the average person may not be up to speed on the same information we are, but most of them aren’t ignorant. Clinton’s ravings on Russian hacking and potential war are even putting liberals off rather than inspiring their confidence.
One would think that if the elites have their veritable pick of any politician to represent their interests in the White House and convince the American public to go along for the ride, Clinton would be the worst choice. Even if the intention were to rig the election in favor of Clinton, she would be a lame-duck president the second she took office, and, her mere presence would galvanize conservatives to the point of mass rebellion.
This is not generally how the elites play the game. Instead, they prefer co-option to direct confrontation.
Which President Is Better For The Elites During An Economic Breakdown?
If you consider the premise that Clinton is NOT the chosen one, and that the entire election is theater, the situation changes rather drastically.
Those that follow the underlying economic data that the mainstream tends to ignore know that large swaths of the global financial system are not long for this world. With Europe’s banking system plunging towards a Lehman-style event, the OPEC production freeze deal ready to fall apart yet again, and the Federal Reserve threatening to raise rates into recessionary conditions in December, our already floundering fiscal structure is approaching another crisis.
My questions has always been who would the elites rather have in office when this crisis occurs? I’ve said it a hundred times before and I’ll say it again here: with Clinton in office, globalists and international financiers get the blame for any economic downturn. With Trump in office, conservative movements will be blamed. In fact, I suggest anyone who doubts this scenario watch stock market reactions every time Trump rises in the polls or Clinton faces renewed scandal. The narrative is already being prepared — a Trump win equals a market loss.
For those that think it outlandish that the public could be tricked into blaming Trump and conservatives for an economic crisis, I suggest they consider that possession is nine-tenths of the law in the minds of many. People can also be irrational when facing financial ruin. I would remind readers that history is written by the victors. The globalists plan to be victorious in the dismantling of America and our founding principles. Whether or not they succeed is really up to average conservatives and liberty proponents, not Trump.
The FBI’s Move Prepares The Way For Trump
Clinton and the DNC argue that FBI Director James Comey’s announcement of a re-opened investigation is politically motivated. And they are right, sort of. The real motivation, I believe, is that Clinton was never meant to win the election in the first place, and that the elites want Trump placed in power during the final hours of the U.S. economy. Everything else is just a Kabuki dance.
The democrats are crying foul and accusing Comey of “working with Putin,” or working with the alt-right. The nefarious Harry Reid has even accused the FBI of hiding Trump’s supposed ties to the Russian government and violating the Hatch Act.
I think much of this outrage is real, as I believe much of the mainstream media attacks on Trump are coming from people who really think they are waging a propaganda war to get Hillary Clinton elected. This, however, does not mean that the elites plan to install Clinton.
Some might see my position as bizarre. I understand. But equally bizarre to me are some of the rationalizations people attempt to argue when dealing with the Comey revelation.
For example, the argument that the entire re-opening of the investigation is a complex ploy designed by the establishment to distract away from the Wikileaks data dumps. This makes little sense. If anything, the re-opening investigation is only bringing MORE attention to the Wikileaks data, not less. If the elites were hoping to create a distraction, they failed miserably.
The FBI’s announcement ONLY harms the Clinton campaign. Period. Even if it fizzles out, even if they announce that nothing was found, the investigation hitting the news streams so close to election day refocuses all public attention back on Clinton’s corruption and will continue to do so for the next week at least. The idea that the elites hope to use it to help Clinton is nonsensical.
I have also seen the argument that Comey is acting to cover his own posterior, perhaps because of a fear that Trump may steal away a victory. I find this equally absurd. Months back the consensus among alternative analysts was that Comey (placed in the FBI by Obama) was a traitor and the FBI was a puppet agency of the establishment. Now, suddenly, Comey is worried about a possible Trump win and so takes an action which might self-fulfill the prophecy?
Comey does what he is told. The FBI is an owned and operated elitist franchise. They do not go rogue. If the rogue FBI narrative were true and Comey actually feels the need to cover his bases with Trump, then it is only because he knows something the rest of us do not. With Clinton in office, his goose would be cooked after this little incident. Comey only gains an advantage if Trump is slated to win.
Trump May Or May Not Be Aware Of The Plan
The bottom line, according to the evidence I have seen in terms of elitists influence over U.S. elections, is that if Trump wins it will only be because they wanted him to win. The FBI firestorm this past week appears to support my view and we still have another week left for further Clinton ugliness to be revealed. I also expect that if Trump wins, the reaction from conservatives and liberty activists will be that the event was a “miracle,” a shocking upset against the establishment. Much like the reaction to the Brexit referendum. I continue to hold that conservatives and sovereignty champions in Europe and America are being set up to take the fall for a coming global destabilization.
I have not taken this position just to be contrary. If I think about it honestly, my position is truly a losing position. If I am mistaken and Clinton wins on the 8th then I’ll probably never hear the end of it, but that’s a risk that has to be taken, because what I see here is a move on the chess board that others are not considering. If I’m wrong, then I’m wrong.
That said, if I am right, then I still lose, because Trump supporters and half the liberty movement will be so enraptured that they will probably ignore the greater issue — that Trump is the candidate the elites wanted all along.
If I am right, I cannot say either way if Trump is aware that he will be a potential scapegoat for the elites. With Trump on the way to the White House I can guarantee a Fed rate hike in December. Imagine what a staged war between Trump and the Federal Reserve will do to the U.S. dollar? What a way to destroy the currency’s world reserve status and make way for the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights! I also suspect that widespread rioting is on the schedule as well from various social justice mobs; a perfect excuse for expansive martial law measures, don’t you think?
The point is, as horrifying as a Clinton presidency might be to conservatives (or to everyone), don’t get too comfortable under Trump. The party is just getting started and our vigilance must be even greater with a conservative White House, because, like it or not, everything Trump does is going to reflect on us. We can no more allow unconstitutional activities under Trump than we could under Clinton. If you think the election has been chaotic and confusing so far, just wait until after it is over.
If you would like to support the publishing of articles like the one you have just read, visit our donations page here . We greatly appreciate your patronage. You can contact Brandon Smith at: [email protected]
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Despite the complete financial failure of the boycott against the state, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is once again warning the State of North Carolina that if it doesn’t repeal its bathroom law, the league will cancel all tournament games. And this time the NCAA says it will boycott the Tar Heel State until the year 2022. [In a statement released this week, the NCAA renewed its warning against North Carolina’s HB2 bathroom law that maintains that people only use bathrooms in facilities that correspond to their birth gender. Because of the bill, which was signed into law early in 2016, the NCAA announced a boycott of the state for the season. With the end of that season and looking forward, the NCAA has now reaffirmed its boycott. The league released an updated statement on March 23: Last year, the NCAA Board of Governors relocated NCAA championships scheduled in North Carolina because of the cumulative impact HB2 had on local communities’ ability to assure a safe, healthy, discrimination free atmosphere for all those watching and participating in our events. Absent any change in the law, our position remains the same regarding hosting current or future events in the state. As the state knows, next week our various sports committees will begin making championships site selections for based upon bids received from across the country. Once the sites are selected by the committee, those decisions are final and an announcement of all sites will be made on April 18. The renewed threat from the college sports association comes on the heels of news that the various attempts to boycott North Carolina have turned out to be a massive failure that has had little financial impact on the state’s economy. The economic statistics for 2016 are in, and it appears that hotel revenue for the Tar Heel State saw no major dip. Indeed, “the state’s economy didn’t miss a beat,” according to the Washington Times. Also, as 2016 ended with various boycotts by sports leagues and liberal groups in the offing, North Carolina ended up coming in fourth in the nation for attracting and expanding businesses. It was the exact same result seen in 2015, so the boycott clearly had no impact on the business climate. North Carolina’s unemployment rate also saw no increases, proving that businesses were not firing employees in droves because of any boycott. Finally, North Carolina’s Lieutenant Governor, Dan Forest, recently noted that if it had any impact at all, the boycott only affected the economy at “ of 1 percent of our annual GDP. ” Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com. | 0 |
Republican Greg Gianforte alleged assault on UK Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs on Wednesday would appear to be utterly indefensible. [There is little room for doubt about what happened in Montana: there were multiple eyewitnesses, and Gianforte was charged with assault that day. If Gianforte loses Thursday’s special election in Montana, he will deserve to lose it. At the same time, nothing justifies the mainstream media’s effort to blame President Donald Trump for what happened. And the media’s hypocrisy is evident in their failure to blame President Barack Obama when Democrats used violence in similar cases. The most relevant example is the case of former Rep. Bob Etheridge ( ) who assaulted a student (see photo above) who was filming him on a public street in 2010 and asking him if he “fully support[ed] the Obama agenda. ” The incident was captured on film, and the story was broken by Breitbart News. Etheridge went on to lose his congressional race to Republican Renée Elmers (who was unseated last year). There was also a similar (though less severe) report in Montana itself in 2012, when a local Democrat was accused of slapping the phone out of the hands of a reporter asking questions. Today, Trump’s critics are citing President Trump’s claim that the media are the “enemy of the people,” among other statements, to claim that he has implicitly condoned Gianforte allegedly did. But when Andrew Breitbart pointed out that Obama’s deputy chief of staff, Jim Messina, had told Democrats in 2009 to “punch back twice as hard,” and connected that incendiary rhetoric to the beating of black vendor Kenneth Gladney by leftist thugs outside a Missouri town hall, the media were silent. They never tried blaming President Obama for Etheridge or any of the other incidents. It is not “whataboutism” to compare these cases, because all can — or should — agree that candidates physically attacking journalists is indefensible. But the media can and must be expected to apply a uniform standard to politicians from both parties. Instead, today, the media are showing their true partisan colors by using the Gianforte incident to impugn Trump — when they never did the same to Obama. The most ridiculous example was on CNN Wednesday night, when host Don Lemon badgered guest Paris Dennard, insisting that he blame Trump, snorting when he would not, and then attacking Dennard’s bona fides: “I can’t believe that you believe the words that are coming out of your mouth. ” He cut Dennard off when he tried to reply. The double standard reveals that Trump’s critics are not concerned — at least, not primarily — about press freedom. Arguably, their effort to blame Trump for what happened in Montana, when they gave Barack “we bring a gun” Obama a perpetual pass, undermines efforts to convince the public to take attacks on journalists more seriously. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. | 0 |
So the band has done it; finally, a group of like-minded individuals has started to write music and playing shows. It is exciting, corralling friends and family in a crowded bar and blasting them with the sonic abilities of the new band.
Maybe members of the musical group have started posting flyers and setting up a Facebook, ReverbNation, SoundCloud, and even a Twitter account. At some point, however, being a good band is not enough to bring in new fans. All musical groups arrive at the crossroads where they have to make a decision on where to record their music.
History of the Recording Industry There are many options today, compared to the recording industry 10 years ago. In previous years, there were not many choices. There were a handful of studios that catered to any genres, all bands, and solo artists. The quality was top of the line, however, it was expensive to record, especially for starving artists. But now, with the digital age, things have changed. It seems that anyone can stumble upon dozens of small studios within the area. Nevertheless, among all the choices, who can be trusted with original music? And even more important, what is the right balance of expense and quality?
Before digital recording became the industry standard, everything was done on reels or with ADAT hardware, and it was expensive to produce an album. That is no longer the case. For less than $1,000, with a little bit of practice and creativity, a creative music studio can be set-up at home. Is this really the right option for artists today? The answer is simple…maybe, sort of, possibly.
Some artists might look forward to tirelessly editing track after track to make that perfect cut. However, they might be robbing the band of the actual gains from a musical engineer. Sometimes having an unbiased ear that is not married to the guitar player is the insight needed to turn a song from mediocre to a hit. Most musicians forget this factor when they begin building a studio for themselves.
Recording Options Part of the price of using a professional studio is the benefit of an engineer who cares about the project and offers a new, creative element to a song the band has been playing for the last few years. If the group decides not to purchase an M-Box, Pro Tools set-up for $500, and learn the engineering side of things, there is still that big question…Which is the right studio for the band?
Larger studios will always be able to craft great sound. With their resources, they can stay up-to-date on new software, some programs cost as much as $10,000, and have access to the newest and hottest electronic “toys” on the market. However, most musicians are worried that while larger, more professional studios can produce great sound, will it be an accurate representation of the group’s style and be reproducible.
Studios that have access to all the gear and software to produce great sounding demos or albums can do so because of their sheer volume of customers. They may not be unable to give every project the time it deserves. Also, musicians may find themselves bound to a setting where the engineer does not even listen to the genre the band is playing, or maybe even hates it. Some musicians feel that paying someone to care, is not enough to put their dreams in someone else’s hands. So, it the studio is not the right option, then what?
With the digital age and loads of free software like “Reaper” and “Garage Band,” smaller, home studios have blown up all over. It seems like anyone with a handful of microphones and a computer is a self-proclaimed engineer/producer. They can be found on Craigslist, through referrals from fellow musicians, or maybe it is even a best buddy from grade school. Still, are these small studios going to have the talent to take the band to the next level?
What to Look for When Reviewing a Small Studio Is the engineer running the studio out of his living room or worse, his parents’ garage? After all, how can someone, who wants to charge money, not able to afford an actual place to work, and more importantly, create the desired sound? Smaller places like this may be significantly cheaper but may not have the resources necessary to produce the desired sound, regardless if they are a fan of the band and style. Is the engineer qualified? Has he/she gone to school or been involved in an apprenticeship program? What makes them qualified to produce an album? (That being said, there are many famous people who have fantastic talents behind the mic and the glass.) The lowest price in the world is not worth anything if the group signs up to record with a producer who has little or no idea what they are doing. Listened to previous work they have recorded. Have they produced anything like the genre and sound of the band? What is the quality of their work? There is no right answer when looking for the perfect studio for a project, but there are plenty of options. Whether it be a local staple studio, a smaller less expensive place, or create a home studio, there is one thing that is almost guaranteed to happen. Most musicians will never be satisfied with their recording.
Maybe the drummer could have done this differently, the singer was sick, or a guitar player was just a fraction out of tune. Most likely, while dissecting the demo or album, after thousands of playbacks, some sort of imperfection will be discovered. Hopefully, it is something fans will not notice, like a slight EQ problem or a fade that should have gone just a little longer.
It is important that no matter where the music is recorded, musicians go prepared. Have realistic expectations of what the end product will sound like from a qualified engineer. This is the best way for the band to feel their money was not wasted on a great project that sounds terrible.
By Alexander Johnston
Edited by Jeanette Smith
Sources:
Personal experience from business (the music lab)
Image Courtesy of Yasunari Makamura’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License bands , Music , Recording , studio | 1 |
You are here: Home / US / CA Dem Make Massive Move to DESTROY Rule of Law… Spread This EVERYWHERE CA Dem Make Massive Move to DESTROY Rule of Law… Spread This EVERYWHERE October 29, 2016
Mediaite reported :
California Democratic Attorney General Kamala Harris told a group of Hispanic supporters earlier this week that someone who has engaged in illegal immigration “is not a criminal.”
Harris is favored by a wide margin in Senate race in the deep blue state, but her Democratic opponent Loretta Sanchez has been polling better with Hispanics. Accordingly, The Sacremento Bee reports that Harris has been making a full-court press for the Latino vote in the final days of the election.
The Bee reports that Harris’ comment was not a one-off pronouncement, but has become a standard campaign line. Harris is also citing her work defending sanctuary cities and her work “organizing legal services for unaccompanied minors during the Central American refugee crises.”
The Left has been working feverishly for years to make the public believe that illegally entering this country isn’t a crime, hence the word “undocumented.”
Liberals love to use the word “undocumented” instead of the correct word, “illegal.” But someone that doesn’t go through the legal system to immigrate to this country isn’t simply “undocumented,” they are a criminal.
Using the term “undocumented” makes it seem as if it’s just a simple oversight and not criminal activity. That argument wouldn’t fly if you didn’t file your taxes, and it shouldn’t fly here either.
I doubt it would go over too well if someone who didn’t file their taxes for years claimed that they weren’t tax evaders, but simply “undocumented tax filers.”
There’s another claim also made by the anti-rule of law folks. Illegal immigrants can’t be held responsible because the system is super hard!
Well guess what, the tax system is all kinds of messed up, takes far too much money from Americans, and is extremely complicated — so can you use that same excuse applied to illegal immigrants for why you didn’t file your taxes?
Nope, legal Americans are held to a different standard. We’re expected to pay for people who break our laws to come here and get welfare, food stamps, social security, Medicare/Medicaid, etc.
We need the rule of law restored in this country, and we need a president that is going to put the interests of American citizens first. That’s precisely what Donald Trump has proposed to do — and is the opposite of what Hillary Clinton has proposed.
Let’s hope that Americans see that on Nov. 8. | 0 |
She had rhythm, a flow and swerve, hands slicing air, body weight moving from foot to foot, a beautiful rhythm. In anything else but a black American body, it would have been contrived. The sleeves of her teal dress announced its appropriateness, as did her matching brooch. But the cut of the dress scorned any “future first lady” stuffiness it hung easy on her, as effortless as her animation. And a brooch, Old World style accessory, yes, but hers was big and ebulliently shaped and perched center on her chest. Michelle Obama was speaking. It was the 2008 Democratic National Convention. My anxiety rose and swirled, watching and willing her to be as close to perfection as possible, not for me, because I was already a believer, but for the swaths of America that would rather she stumbled. She first appeared in the public consciousness, all common sense and mordant humor, at ease in her skin. She had the air of a woman who could balance a checkbook, and who knew a good deal when she saw it, and who would tell off whomever needed telling off. She was tall and sure and stylish. She was reluctant to be first lady, and did not hide her reluctance beneath platitudes. She seemed not so much unique as true. She sharpened her husband’s form, made him solid, more than just a dream. But she had to flatten herself to better fit the mold of first lady. At the law firm where they met before love felled them, she had been her husband’s mentor they seemed to be truly friends, partners, equals in a modern marriage in a new American century. Yet voters and observers, wide strips of America, wanted her to conform and defer, to cleanse her tongue of wit and barb. When she spoke of his bad a quirky and humanizing detail, she was accused of emasculating him. Because she said what she thought, and because she smiled only when she felt like smiling, and not constantly and vacuously, America’s cheapest caricature was cast on her: the Angry Black Woman. Women, in general, are not permitted anger — but from black American women, there is an added expectation of interminable gratitude, the closer to groveling the better, as though their citizenship is a phenomenon that they cannot take for granted. “I love this country,” she said to applause. She needed to say it — her salve to the hostility of people who claimed she was unpatriotic because she had dared to suggest that, as an adult, she had not always been proud of her country. Of course she loved her country. The story of her life as she told it was wholesomely American, drenched in nostalgia: a father who worked shifts and a mother who stayed home, an almost mythic account of of moderation, of contentment. But she is also a descendant of slaves, those full human beings considered human fractions by the American state. And ambivalence should be her birthright. For me, a person who likes America, one of its greatest curiosities is this: that those who have the most reason for dissent are those least allowed dissent. Michelle Obama was speaking. I felt protective of her because she was speaking to an America often too quick to read a black woman’s confidence as arrogance, her straightforwardness as entitlement. She was informal, colloquial, her sentences bookended by the word “see,” a conversational fillip that also strangely felt like a mark of authenticity. She seemed genuine. She was genuine. All over America, black women were still, their eyes watching a form of God, because she represented their image writ large in the world. Her speech was vibrant, a success. But there was, in her eyes and beneath her delivery and in her few small stumbles, a glimpse of something somber. A tight, dark ball of apprehension. As though she feared eight years of holding her breath, of living her life with a stone in her gut. Eight years later, her blue dress was simpler but not as eager to be appropriate its sheen, and her edgy hoop earrings, made clear that she was no longer auditioning. Her daughters were grown. She had shielded them and celebrated them, and they appeared in public always picture perfect, as though their careful grooming was a kind of reproach. She had called herself and cloaked in that nonthreatening title, had done what she cared about. She embraced veterans and military families, and became their listening advocate. She threw open the White House doors to people on the margins of America. She was working class, and she was Princeton, and so she could speak of opportunity as a tangible thing. Her program Reach Higher pushed high schoolers to go further, to want more. She jumped rope with children on the White House grounds as part of her initiative to combat childhood obesity. She grew a vegetable garden and campaigned for healthier food in schools. She reached across borders and cast her light on the education of girls all over the world. She danced on television shows. She hugged more people than any first lady ever has, and she made “first lady” mean a person warmly accessible, a person both normal and inspirational and a person many degrees of cool. She had become an American style icon. Her dresses and workouts. Her carriage and curves. Toned arms and long slender fingers. Even her favored kitten heels, for women who cannot fathom wearing shoes in the halfway house between flats and high heels, have earned a certain respect because of her. No public figure better embodies that mantra of full female selfhood: Wear what you like. It was the 2016 Democratic Convention. Michelle Obama was speaking. She said “black boy” and “slaves,” words she would not have said eight years ago because eight years ago any concrete gesturing to blackness would have had real consequences. She was relaxed, emotional, sentimental. Her uncertainties laid to rest. Her rhythm was subtler, because she no longer needed it as her armor, because she had conquered. The insults, those barefaced and those adorned as jokes, the acidic scrutiny, the manufactured scandals, the base questioning of legitimacy, the tone of disrespect, so ubiquitous, so casual. She had faced them and sometimes she hurt and sometimes she blinked but throughout she remained herself. Michelle Obama was speaking. I realized then that she hadn’t been waiting to exhale these past eight years. She had been letting that breath out, in small movements, careful because she had to be, but exhaling still. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the author of the novel “Americanah” and the essay “We Should All Be Feminists. ” A recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, her words have been sampled by Beyoncé and, most recently, on clothing from Dior’s spring 2017 collection. Michelle Obama came into my life in stages. I knew that, like her husband, she was a lawyer, but that unlike him, she had grown up on the South Side of Chicago, with parents who had not gone to college. When Barack Obama was a summer associate at her Chicago law firm, they met because she was his mentor. After his successful campaign for the U. S. Senate, I noticed that she chose not to go to Washington. Instead, he commuted to their home and two daughters in Chicago where Michelle had a big job as head of community affairs for a hospital. But she really entered my imagination once she became first lady, a tall, strong, elegant and seriously smart woman who happened to live in the White House. She managed to convey dignity and humor at the same time, to be a mother of two daughters and insist on regular family dinners, and to take on health issues and a national food industry addicted to unhealthy profits. She did this despite an undertow of bias in this country that subtly questioned everything she did. Was she too strong, physically and intellectually, to be a proper first lady? After a decade under a public microscope, she has managed what no other first lady — and few people in any public position — have succeeded in doing: She has lived a public life without sacrificing her privacy and authenticity. She made her husband both more human and effective as a president by being his interpreter and defender, but also someone we knew was capable of being his critic. Eventually, she spoke up about the pain of the racist assumptions directed at her, but she waited until her husband could no longer be politically punished for her honesty. And she has always been the best kind of mother, which means insisting that fathers be equal parents. All of this she has done with honesty, humor and, most important, kindness. Recently, over the course of the presidential campaign, Michelle has become one of the most effective public speakers of our time. That’s serious. To be less serious, she has always been a woman who knows the difference between fashion (what outside forces tell you to wear) and style (the way you express a unique self). At one lunch in the White House for women who had been spokespeople and supporters in President Obama’s second campaign, she invited local public school children to sing and perform. Those students, mostly kids, were spirited, talented and at ease in a White House that belongs to them as much as to anyone in this country, yet they wouldn’t have been there without Michelle. What will she choose to do next? That’s up to her. She could do anything, from becoming a U. S. senator from Illinois to campaigning for the safety and education of girls globally. She could also choose to lead a private life. Whatever she decides, I trust her judgment. Though I’m old enough to remember Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House — and all the couples and families since — I have never seen such balance and equal parenting, such love, respect, mutuality and pleasure in each other’s company. We will never have a democracy until we have democratic families and a society without the invented categories of both race and gender. Michelle Obama may have changed history in the most powerful way — by example. Gloria Steinem, a feminist activist and writer, has been touring America, campaigning for Hillary Clinton and promoting the paperback edition of her travelogue “My Life on the Road. ” On a lovely early autumn day in her final October in the White House, Michelle Obama stepped out onto a sunny South Lawn and, in a way, bid farewell. The setting was her celebrated organic kitchen garden, but the subtext seemed to go far beyond any single initiative. “I have to tell you that being here with all of you, overlooking this beautiful garden — and it is beautiful — it’s kind of an emotional moment,” Mrs. Obama said at a ceremony to unveil a bigger, fortified version of the garden. “We’re having a lot of these emotional moments because everything is the last. But this is particularly my baby, because this garden is where it all started. So we’re really coming full circle back to the very beginning. ” She recalled conversations in 2008 about the role she might play in an Obama presidency — and noted, tellingly, that the garden emerged after “Barack actually won,” to which she added: “He won twice. ” The gathered guests happily applauded. There, in a way, was the essential Michelle Obama, or at least the essential observable version of herself: speaking of broad public good (the garden, which was part of her campaign against childhood obesity) while revealing an arch sense of competitiveness. My husband won he won twice. As their time in the White House comes to an end, it’s worth pondering the lessons of the Age of Obama. My own view is that both the president and the first lady have conducted themselves splendidly in the White House, managing the most difficult of tasks with apparent ease: projecting a grace that masked the ambition and the drive that took them, at early ages, to the pinnacle of American life. In this they have kept faith with a tradition that, in our country, is as old as George Washington, who embodied the classical ideal of Cincinnatus, the reluctant leader summoned from his plow to lead the nation. President Obama gets much of the public credit for handling his eight years coolly, but the first lady has been a critical element of his success. She has chosen her shots carefully — not least in choosing to make the case against Donald Trump on the campaign trail in 2016 — and is leaving the country with a warm impression of an excellent mother, a steady spouse and a sensible, devoted American. Not everyone agrees, of course not everyone ever does. The Obama skeptics and the Obama haters have from time to time questioned her patriotism, but this is the same country that managed, in some quarters, to hold Eleanor Roosevelt in contempt. The important thing is that Mrs. Obama, a lawyer, found a way to withstand the scrutiny of the spotlight. In point of fact, she did more than withstand it. To borrow a phrase from William Faulkner, she not only endured it she prevailed over it. How? By finding, or appearing to find, that most elusive of things in the modern world: balance. She was not Mrs. Roosevelt or Mrs. Carter or Mrs. Reagan or Mrs. Clinton, playing roles in affairs of state. Instead she did what the first first lady arguably had to do to play a successful public role. In Voltaire’s terms, she cultivated her own garden, never threatening and never intimidating her neighbors. Much more doubtless unfolded beneath the surface or behind closed doors history will sort that out. For now, it is enough to say that she is leaving the White House a strong and popular figure with a lifetime of good will and great reservoirs of capital on which to draw as she and her husband write their next chapters. Back in 2008, musing on the life she was about to enter, Mrs. Obama recalled doubts about her garden — a bit of projection, one suspects, for doubts about the entire presidential enterprise. “What if we planted this garden and nothing grew?” Mrs. Obama asked. “We didn’t know about the soil, or the sunlight. And it’s like, oh, my God, what if nothing grows? … It was like afterwards I remember telling Sam [Kass, the former White House senior advisor for nutrition] ‘This better work, buddy. This better work. ’” And so it did. Jon Meacham, a Pulitzer biographer, is the author, most recently, of “Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush. ” The first time I met Michelle Obama was at the White House as part of a mentoring initiative, for which the first lady had brought together a dynamic group of women to speak to urban teenage girls about their career goals. Olympians, actresses, producers, writers, an astronaut and an Air Force general gathered in the West Wing to greet Michelle before we headed out to various local schools. She was warm, gracious and charming. She thanked us for coming, hugged everybody and made us all feel like her friends. As first lady, she has ticked all the boxes: loving wife, protective mother, health and fitness advocate, garden enthusiast and, yes, style icon. These accomplishments have left traditionalists feeling satisfied. But, as is always the way, her reputation as the perfect hostess invited criticism from progressives. Enter Michelle Obama, outspoken activist, a woman who isn’t afraid to remind us she is a proud woman, which is, in itself, revolutionary. A former lawyer who speaks out on behalf of gay rights and gun control, she delivered an unforgettable speech at the Democratic National Convention earlier this year, shining a clear, bright light on our country’s shameful history. Suddenly, the progressives were pleased and the traditionalists were confused. The media wants to pin her down — they’ve been trying since Barack Obama took office in 2009. But you simply can’t. Michelle Obama embodies the modern, American woman, and I don’t mean that in any platitudinous or vague way. Rarely can someone express their many identities at the same time while seeming authentic. My female friends and I often talk about feeling like we’re “too much. ” We’re complicated we want to be so many things. I want to be a boss and also be vulnerable. I want to be outspoken and respected, but also sexy and beautiful. All women struggle to reconcile the different people that we are at all times, to merge our conflicting desires, to represent ourselves honestly and feel good about the inherent contradictions. But Michelle manages to do this with poise, regardless of the scrutiny. That, to me, is the best thing for feminism. Her individual choices force us to accept that being a woman isn’t just one thing. Or two things. Or three things. The position of first lady is, unfortunately, symbolic, and that makes it fair game for media analysis ad nauseam. But no think piece can fully encompass a real woman. If feminism’s goal is equal opportunity and choice, Michelle makes me feel like every choice is available. You can go to Princeton and Harvard, you can rap with Missy Elliott, you can be a mother and a lawyer and a powerful orator. You can champion the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, while also caring about fashion. You can dance with Ellen and also fearlessly remind people, on live television, of the reality of your position: “I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves. And I watch my daughters, two beautiful, intelligent, black young women, playing with their dogs on the White House lawn. ” You can be your husband’s partner and supporter, and also use your cultural and political capital to campaign for Hillary Clinton, unflinchingly standing up to her “locker room talk” bully of an opponent with the battle cry “enough is enough!” — eloquently putting into words what a lot of people, myself included, had been feeling. Michelle Obama will have her own legacy, separate from her husband’s. And it will be that she was the first first lady to show women that they don’t have to choose. That it’s okay to be everything. Rashida Jones is a writer, actress and producer who stars in the TBS comedy series “Angie Tribeca,” and most recently an episode of “Black Mirror,” premiering later this month on Netflix. | 1 |
Hacking Accusations Against Russia Are Sign of Washington's Desperation
With Putin winning across the board, Washington is struggling to contain its humilitation Originally appeared at Strategic Culture Foundation
The Obama administration is now accusing Russia of cyber-crime and trying to disrupt the US presidential election. The claim is so far-fetched, it is hardly credible. More credible is that the US is reeling from Putin’s stunning humiliation earlier this week.
Since June, US media and supporters of Democrat presidential contender Hillary Clinton have been blaming Russian state-sponsored hackers for breaking into the Democratic party’s database.
It is further alleged that Moscow is stealthily trying to influence the outcome of the election, by releasing damaging information on Clinton, which might favor Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Russia has vehemently denied any connection to the cyber-crime charges, or trying to disrupt the November poll.
Now the Obama administration has stepped into the fray by openly accusing Russia. «US government officially accuses Russia of hacking campaign to interfere with elections», reported the Washington Post.
This takes the row to a whole new level. No longer are the insinuations a matter of private, partisan opinion. The US government is officially labelling the Russian state for cyber-crime and political subversion.
Predictably, following the latest allegations, there are calls among American lawmakers for ramping up more economic sanctions against Russia. While US intelligence figures are urging for retaliatory cyber-attacks on Russian government facilities.
Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov derided the US claims as «rubbish». He noted that the Kremlin’s computer system incurs hundreds of hacking attempts every day, many of which can be traced to American origin, but Moscow doesn’t turn around and blame the US government for such cyber-attacks.
There are several signs that the latest brouhaha out of Washington is a bogus diversion.
As with previous Russian-hacker claims by the Democrats and US media, there is no evidence presented by the Obama administration to support its grave allegations against the Russian government. Assertion without facts does not meet a minimal standard of proof.
When reports emerged in June – again through the Washington Post – that the Democrat National Committee (DNC) was hacked by Russian agents, the allegation relied on investigations by a private cyber security firm by the name of CrowdStrike. The firm is linked by personnel to the NATO-affiliated, anti-Russian think tank Atlantic Council. Again no verifiable evidence was presented then, just the word of a dubious partisan source.
Back then the Russian scare story, for that’s what it was, served as a useful diversion from far more important issues. Such as the 19,000 emails released from the DNC database showing that the party chiefs had preordained Clinton’s presidential nomination over her Democrat rival Bernie Sanders. Much-vaunted «US democracy» was exposed as a fraud, and so the Washington establishment quickly went into damage-limitation mode by smearing Russia.
It was the whistleblower site Wikileaks, run by Australian journalist Julian Assange, that released the embarrassing emails. It had nothing to do with Russia. Assange has since hinted that his source was within the Democrat party itself.
This is where it gets really explosive. Assange has vowed to release more emails that will prove that Clinton as Secretary of State back in 2011-2012 masterminded the supply of weapons and money to Islamist terror networks in Libya and Syria for the objective of regime change. Furthermore, Assange says that the emails prove that Clinton lied under oath to Congress when she denied in 2013 that she was had any involvement in facilitating arms to the jihadists.
Assange has said that Wikileaks is going to publish the incriminating emails on Clinton’s alleged gun-running to terrorists this month. If the evidence stands up, Clinton could be prosecuted for perjury as well as treason in aiding and abetting official terrorist enemies of the US.
The exposure of an American presidential candidate as being involved in state sponsorship of terrorism while serving as a top government official is a powerful incentive for the Obama administration to find a lurid diversion.
Hence, the latest charges by the US government against Russia as perpetrating cyber-crime and of trying to subvert American democracy.
This is just one more illustration of how irrational and unhinged the US government has become.
Day by day, it seems, leads to more damning revelations of Washington’s complicity in illegal wars, covert subversion of foreign states, and systematic collusion with terrorist networks which have inflicted thousands of deaths on American citizens, among many more thousands of other innocent civilians around the world.
In addition to exposure by sources like Wikileaks, much of revelation about US criminality and state-sponsored banditry has emerged from Russia’s principled military intervention in Syria. Russia’s intervention has not only helped salvage the Syrian nation from a foreign conspiracy of covert war for regime change. Russia’s intervention has also brought into clear focus the systematic links between Washington and its terrorist proxy army working on its behalf in Syria.
Washington’s mask of moral and legal superiority has been ripped from its face. And what the world is seeing is the vile ugliness beneath.
Such is Washington’s ignominious fall from pretend-grace to its grim, odious reality that Vladimir Putin this week was empowered to speak from the moral high ground.
In announcing Russia’s unilateral suspension of a 2002 accord with the US for the disposal of nuclear-weapon-grade plutonium, Putin went much, much further. He gave Washington a list of ultimatums that included the US ending its trumped-up sanctions against Russia, with financial compensation, as well as the scaling back of NATO forces from Russia’s border.
In other words, the Russian leader was talking truth to American power in a way that megalomaniac Washington, with all its ridiculous delusions of «exceptionalism», has never ever heard before.
American pretensions of greatness are eroding like a castle built on sand. Washington’s criminal enterprises and specifically the complicity in terrorism for the supreme crime of foreign aggression are being glaringly exposed.
And now with due contempt, Russia is putting manners on Washington. It must be excruciating the humiliation for the narcissistic American tyrant to be treated with the disrespect that it deserves and which is long overdue.
Moreover, the humiliation is not just in the eyes of the world. The American people can see the true ugly nature of their rulers too. When a giant banner declaring «Putin a peacemaker» was unfurled off Manhattan bridge in New York City this weekend, the popular enthusiasm went viral.
Washington is reeling from Putin’s righteous courage to call it out for what it is. The truth-telling is hard to take for this unipolar unicorn. Its deluded myth-making about its own virtues are being stripped bare.
What’s going on here is a world-class, historic exposure of American power as a nefarious excrescence on humanity.
The reaction is understandable: foaming-at-the-mouth, desperate, hysterical and panicked. Accusing Russia of hacking into the American «democratic process» is a wild attempt to divert from the paramount issues: Washington’s exposed descent into a vile morass of its own making; the emperor is a criminal; the people know it; and a genuine world leader like Vladimir Putin has the temerity to lay it on the line to this has-been. | 1 |
Hillary Clinton’s advisers and allies have begun extensive discussions about who should be her running mate, seeking to compile a list of 15 to 20 potential picks for her team to start vetting by late spring. Mrs. Clinton’s team will grapple with complicated questions like whether the United States is ready for an ticket, and whether her choice for vice president would be able to handle working in a White House in which former President Bill Clinton wielded significant influence on policy. While the nomination fight is still fluid, Mrs. Clinton is confident enough of victory that she has described a vision of a running mate and objectives for the search, according to campaign advisers and more than a dozen Democrats close to the campaign or the Clintons. She does not have a in mind, they said, but she is intrigued by several contenders and scenarios. Among the names under discussion by Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Clinton and campaign advisers: Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, former governors from the key state of Virginia Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who represents both a more liberal wing of the party and a swing state former Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, a prominent Democrat and Thomas E. Perez, President Obama’s labor secretary and a Hispanic civil rights lawyer. But Mrs. Clinton is also open to a woman, campaign advisers said. One obvious possibility is Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who is hugely popular among progressive Democrats, though she has not been helpful to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, declining to endorse the former secretary of state. Still, Ms. Warren has not been ruled out, according to the campaign advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the confidential search process. Mrs. Clinton has offered general guidance as her team begins the search: She cares less about ideological and personal compatibility than about picking a winner, someone who can dominate the debate and convince Americans that Mrs. Clinton is their best choice. She also wants a partner who is unquestionably qualified for the presidency and would help create the strongest contrast with the Republican ticket, which could be dogged by questions about Donald J. Trump’s fitness for the presidency or Senator Ted Cruz’s unbending conservatism, according to those interviewed. And she wants someone who could be an effective attack dog against either candidate. Despite the passions stirred during the primary, Mrs. Clinton does not feel pressure to enthrall the supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, since she thinks most of them would ultimately vote for her, an assertion backed up by polling. The most unpredictable issue for the search, at least at this early stage, is the turmoil in the Republican race, which may not yield a nominee until the party’s convention in . Mrs. Clinton is likely to make her pick soon after the Republican ticket is known, according to Democrats close to the campaign, and her political calculations in choosing a running mate may shift depending on whether the opposing nominee is Mr. Trump, Mr. Cruz or someone unexpected, and who the Republican No. 2 is. If Gov. John Kasich of Ohio or Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a end up on the Republican ticket, Mrs. Clinton might be more inclined to pick Mr. Brown (to help her in Ohio) or Mr. Perez (to help excite Hispanic voters). The vetting of top contenders will be led by James Hamilton, a longtime Washington lawyer who did so for the 2008 Obama campaign and other Democratic nominees, according to the Clinton advisers and other Democrats close to the campaign. The overall search process is expected to be overseen by John Podesta, the campaign chairman. Cheryl Mills, who was Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department and deputy White House counsel for Mr. Clinton, is also likely to play a key role, and Mr. Clinton will have a major voice. Mr. Hamilton, reached by phone, declined to comment and referred questions to Mr. Podesta, who declined an interview request. A campaign spokesman also declined to comment, and Ms. Mills did not respond to an email request for comment. Several Democratic allies say that during the search, the campaign will have to reckon with Mrs. Clinton’s high unfavorability numbers, which may create pressure to choose an inspiring figure like Julián Castro, the federal housing secretary, a rising star in the party. But Mrs. Clinton’s advisers expressed confidence that her favorability ratings would improve once a Republican nominee is chosen. And they and other Democrats say Mrs. Clinton’s options may expand if Mr. Trump is nominated, given his unpopularity with large portions of the electorate. “She will have a lot more flexibility in picking a running mate if the Republican nominee is Donald Trump rather than Ted Cruz, who appears a much closer contest for her,” said former Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana. Most leading presidential campaigns start organizing their searches at this point in the race, when they have a sizable lead in delegates needed for the nomination. The candidates themselves remain sharply focused on the remaining contests: Mr. Sanders insists he could still overtake Mrs. Clinton, despite her big lead. And she is superstitious about getting too far ahead of herself, as she sometimes did in her failed 2008 race. But given the methodical nature of Mrs. Clinton’s advisers, as well as the political passions of the Clintons themselves, the vice presidency is an increasing preoccupation at campaign headquarters and at the Clintons’ home in Chappaqua, N. Y. “They’re fielding ideas for a running mate, and a lot of people are suggesting names,” said former Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, a close ally of the Clinton campaign. “I’ve made some recommendations, but all I’ll say is that governing ability and winning the election are the fits that they’re looking for most. ” Former Gov. Jim Hodges of South Carolina, a key ally of the Clintons, said he favored adding a woman to the ticket. “It would be formidable and create huge buzz with female voters,” he said, suggesting Ms. Warren or Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. Advisers to Mrs. Clinton said she was in the unique position of having firsthand expertise at the vetting and selection process: She was deeply involved in Mr. Clinton’s search in 1992 that resulted in the selection of Al Gore, then a senator from Tennessee, with whom she later clashed at times. She supported Mr. Clinton putting another young Southern moderate on the ticket, which was seen as a bold choice at the time — and which her advisers point to as evidence that she may be unconventional if she is nominated. Her experience with Mr. Gore colors her perspective in two ways, according to Democrats who have spoken to her about the vice presidency. She knows that if she chooses a younger and ambitious vice president, she will have someone by her side who may be making calculations with an eye toward running for the presidency in 2024. The past two vice presidents, Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Dick Cheney, were widely seen as devoted to their jobs they appreciated and sought power, but given their ages, they were not determined to seek their bosses’ job in the future. Mrs. Clinton, 68, likes that fact, Democrats say, and has to decide if she wants a rising star or a seasoned hand who is not interested in the presidency, like Bill Nelson, 73, a senator from another key state, Florida. Mrs. Clinton is also well aware of the inherent tensions between a vice president and a powerful first lady (or first gentleman). She and Mr. Gore became rivals in the White House as she led the health care overhaul effort and he pursued his “reinventing government” initiative, and both wanted their portfolios to be Mr. Clinton’s top priority. Advisers said that in the current search, Mrs. Clinton wants a running mate who would accept and appreciate that Mr. Clinton, as a former president, would offer expertise and guidance — and perhaps play a formal role on specific issues — if she were president. “Hillary understands how the vice presidency can work well, and not work well, far better than anyone running or anyone on her staff,” said Richard W. Riley, a friend of the Clintons who was the education secretary under Mr. Clinton and advises the campaign on education issues. “And she and Bill Clinton know he’d have to be very careful about how he relates to the vice president. Hillary is the decision maker now. ” Other Democrats argue that the running mate should be or Hispanic because those two demographic groups have been such strong supporters of Mrs. Clinton — and their votes, as well as those from women, are the key blocs she would need in a general election. In addition to Mr. Patrick and Mr. Perez, Democrats close to the campaign said her advisers were also discussing Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, who is black, and Mr. Castro, who is Hispanic. (Mr. Kaine is also fluent in Spanish.) For all the vetting and strategizing, however, selections do not always work out as well as intended, especially with so many unconventional variables: the first female nominee the Republican upheaval and the angry, anxious political crosscurrents in the electorate. “It’s so easy to make a mistake in this,” said Robert Shrum, a Democratic strategist on several past campaigns, including John Kerry’s bid in 2004, when John Edwards and Richard A. Gephardt were finalists for vice president. “Choosing Edwards was a mistake because Dick could have helped us in Ohio in a way that Edwards could not, and Dick would have done better in the debate,” Mr. Shrum said, referring to Mr. Kerry’s narrow loss in that state. “But a lot of us wanted Edwards at the time. Kerry was doubtful about him, but was persuaded,” he added. “The most important thing for Hillary, in the end, is to follow her own instincts on this one. ” | 1 |
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